Speaker 1: Call Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to ikidapp Here Podcasts, where here is the rapidly
Speaker 2: encroaching rise of fascism. My name is Mia Wong, and
Speaker 2: one of the major vectors of fascism that we have
Speaker 2: been covering on this show has been the increase in
Speaker 2: just effectively straight up black baggings by ICE and Immigration's
Speaker 2: enforcement in general. We have spent a good amount of
Speaker 2: time covering a bunch of different angles of this, but
Speaker 2: there is another incredibly distressing angle that we have not
Speaker 2: covered as much yet, which is their targeting of labor organizers.
Speaker 2: And with me to talk about that is Mark Medina
Speaker 2: from Portland Jobs with Justice and the Coalition of Independent Unions.
Speaker 2: And yeah, Mark, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad to have you on. So one of
Speaker 2: the most pressing sort of black baggings that's happened fairly
Speaker 2: recently is ICE's kidnapping of a freight Wharezy for Reno
Speaker 2: otherwise known as Lailo. Can you tell us about sort
Speaker 2: of his work and the projects that he's been doing
Speaker 2: and Famulus you need us Justicia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's been a very disheartening and scary couple
Speaker 4: of weeks since it's happened, because this opens up a
Speaker 4: new path for the state to go after organizers, to
Speaker 4: go after workers and the most underprivileged in our society
Speaker 4: in a way that I suppose we all expected. But
Speaker 4: now that we see it, now that we see it happening,
Speaker 4: now that we see it happening to people that we
Speaker 4: know in our community, it's becoming a parent. There is
Speaker 4: no turning back from the idea that we have to
Speaker 4: be able to take this on head first. We as activists,
Speaker 4: as organizers, have to look at this and then see
Speaker 4: it as an actual thing in our day to day
Speaker 4: that we have to combat and incorporate into our organizing.
Speaker 4: So maybe it might be a little helpful to start
Speaker 4: off with a little bit of a backstory on So
Speaker 4: I mean I need us by Lassa. Yeah, So the
Speaker 4: Union has its origins going back to twenty thirteen. The
Speaker 4: area in which they organize, the Bellingham or the Washington
Speaker 4: Walkins scadged areas, has the very particular type of immigrant
Speaker 4: community there. Lelo himself is of Meteco background. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of indigenous Mexican populations in the region. It's also
Speaker 4: one that has long routes a lot of these people
Speaker 4: go back generations, have been here for quite some time.
Speaker 4: This area also happens to be a very particularly with
Speaker 4: the non Hispanic population, particularly the white population, a very conservative,
Speaker 4: particularly conservative for the area. It's one of the very
Speaker 4: few areas of Northwest that Donald Trump came to visit.
Speaker 4: It's an area that has had repeated attacks on then
Speaker 4: imbric community. And so it's in this context that workers
Speaker 4: are organizing in twenty thirteen for this first independent union.
Speaker 4: And two it's important to mention the independent part of it.
Speaker 3: A lot of the.
Speaker 4: Organizers from the start of this of the union came
Speaker 4: from a tradition of the United farm Workers in California.
Speaker 4: They some of them worked with Seef Javis in the
Speaker 4: heyday of the United farm Workers. And in the years
Speaker 4: and decades since then, since the Delana voidcotts and other things,
Speaker 4: there's been a growing rift of what the next steps
Speaker 4: should be. And I think that for a lot of
Speaker 4: farm workers, because they don't organize under the general labor
Speaker 4: law that we have for most workers, there is a
Speaker 4: sort of patchwork system for how farm working organizing happens
Speaker 4: in the United States that's dependent upon different states and legislatures,
Speaker 4: and for the most part, with the exception of only
Speaker 4: two states, farm workers don't have the same kind of
Speaker 4: protections that regular workers generally in the society have for
Speaker 4: union recognition, for collective bargaining. Only Washington and New York
Speaker 4: at the moment, I believe have the laws that allow
Speaker 4: for elections for farm worker unions, and there is a
Speaker 4: very particular reasons for that being the case. Farm workers
Speaker 4: were excluded from the Wagner Act for having general labor
Speaker 4: rights in the nineteen thirty because precisely it was seen.
Speaker 3: As immigrant labor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and immigrants were not seen as meriting the same
Speaker 4: rights as white Americans in the same way the domestic
Speaker 4: workers were removed because I was seen at the time
Speaker 4: as black labor.
Speaker 3: So it has its roots and racism.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and that's something that you know, like you
Speaker 2: can tie that exclusion, like there's a straight line between
Speaker 2: that and Japanese and tournaments, which also to a large extent,
Speaker 2: is about land seizure and this sort of like fusion
Speaker 2: of racism, specifically racism in the farming sector with the
Speaker 2: tax and labor rights and with this desire to just
Speaker 2: sort of seize literally the lands and labor from non
Speaker 2: white people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a long and bleak history.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely, and I'm sure your audience is well aware
Speaker 4: of a lot of these subject matter. It is a
Speaker 4: bleak history, and it wasn't until groups like the United
Speaker 4: farm Workers in the sixties and the seventies, I think,
Speaker 4: began to create the possibility for something new for the
Speaker 4: Hispanic community. It was United farm Workers that built not
Speaker 4: just a lot of solidarity with other immigrant groups in
Speaker 4: the California area, but they also built a sense of
Speaker 4: pride and identity and belonging for a lot of communities.
Speaker 4: I grew up in Boro Heights, East Los Angeles, says
Speaker 4: such Travis and the Knight farm worker murals are everywhere.
Speaker 4: You know. Me and my friends would often joke as
Speaker 4: seb Jravis is like the Patron Saints. It's Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: even though it's nowhere near Delano.
Speaker 3: And there's a reason for that.
Speaker 4: I think that a lot of us looked up to
Speaker 4: the United farm Workers, We looked up to the farm
Speaker 4: worker Union movement, and we saw in them our heroes,
Speaker 4: our modern day heroes.
Speaker 3: We saw them.
Speaker 4: We saw people who said be proud to be brown.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a courage that comes from that history.
Speaker 4: The union movement that then sprung up in twenty thirteen
Speaker 4: in the Bellingham, Northern Washington area was coming out of
Speaker 4: that milieu. They understood that background, they understood that history,
Speaker 4: but they also understood that there was very little organizing
Speaker 4: in the region. There was a lot of fear in
Speaker 4: the region. It's very difficult to organize farm workers to
Speaker 4: have access to a lot of these areas. You have
Speaker 4: to cross just private property for quite some time before
Speaker 4: you reach the first farm workers, and it becomes very,
Speaker 4: very difficult to have organizing happen.
Speaker 3: And it's intentional that way.
Speaker 4: The rise in farm worker unions that happened in the
Speaker 4: sixties and seventies had a massive plummet by the time
Speaker 4: the beginning in the nineteen two thousands, and so these
Speaker 4: workers had heard these stories, had heard by this legacy,
Speaker 4: but had been essentially delivered with increasing frustration, racist behavior
Speaker 4: by bosses, lower and lower pay, and the use of
Speaker 4: certain types of immigrants to try to scab their jobs.
Speaker 4: It be the capitalist class using one type of worker
Speaker 4: against another type of worker, picking them against each other.
Speaker 4: It's in this context in twenty thirteen that this union
Speaker 4: starts to form, they go public at that time period,
Speaker 4: they call for recognition and they started taking action directly,
Speaker 4: and they organized this years and years long boycott campaign
Speaker 4: to gain recognition, to get the employer to start bargaining.
Speaker 4: And after years and years of this, I court battles
Speaker 4: and the employer trying to lay everyone off and hire
Speaker 4: certain types of newer immigrants coming in to replace all
Speaker 4: of them, putting one worker against another, all these types
Speaker 4: of maneuvers. By twenty seventeen, these workers win a contract,
Speaker 4: and the philosophy of the union since then has been
Speaker 4: not just to grow this union, but also for them
Speaker 4: to be able to stand on their own two feet.
Speaker 4: Their idea is that they are very proud of their
Speaker 4: independent nature of that union. They're not part of, you know,
Speaker 4: the AFL CIO, they're not part of the UNICE farm workers,
Speaker 4: They're not part of any other organization.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: When I spoke to some of their leaders last year,
Speaker 4: one of the things that came to mind was they
Speaker 4: brought up a quote from Eugene Debts, the notion of
Speaker 4: like if we were to lead you into the promised land,
Speaker 4: someone else would just lead out. And the notion of
Speaker 4: their union is we have to be able to stand
Speaker 4: on our two feet. We can't rely on anyone else
Speaker 4: because if we, if they promises things today tomorrow, they'll
Speaker 4: hold something over us. And so the notion that farm
Speaker 4: workers lead this movement and leave this union is an
Speaker 4: incredibly powerful statement of what working class people can do.
Speaker 4: The kinds of workers that everyone else kind of looks at.
Speaker 3: They could never do it.
Speaker 4: These you know, these workers could never handle this kind
Speaker 4: of level of struggle and couldn't do this kind of
Speaker 4: organization have built one of the most powerful inde kind
Speaker 4: of farm worker unions in the West Coast. Lelo Alfredo Lelo,
Speaker 4: was a founding member of this union. He was a
Speaker 4: farm worker studying at the age of twelve, and since
Speaker 4: then devote his entire life organizing to helping workers, to
Speaker 4: being the kind of person who commits himself to the
Speaker 4: work of making the world a better place than you
Speaker 4: found it. You know, at twenty five, he is significantly
Speaker 4: younger than me. And when I think of people who
Speaker 4: I look up to, who I think of, Wow, when
Speaker 4: I grew up, I want to be stione like that,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: Of Leloe little many of times over the years.
Speaker 4: He's a very soft spoken, very thoughtful type of person.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I think that the labor movement owes him
Speaker 4: a bit of a debt. Now it is time that
Speaker 4: we as a whole stand up for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are going to go to ads regrettably, and
Speaker 2: then when we come back, we are going to start
Speaker 2: talking I think a bit more about the repression we
Speaker 2: are back. So obviously, then this is this is a
Speaker 2: part of the story that you've been telling, the sort
Speaker 2: the sort of capitalist class out in Bellingham, and you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of I mean, this has been true of
Speaker 2: the broader capitalist class since it's kind of organizing starting
Speaker 2: like has been trying to break these unions this entire time.
Speaker 2: You know, that has been a major focus of everything
Speaker 2: that they've been doing. And you know, what we're seeing
Speaker 2: right now seems like a massive sort of escalation in
Speaker 2: the degree of for So, yeah, can we talk about
Speaker 2: the recent black bagging Alilo and yeah, and sort of
Speaker 2: what happens and where we go from there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the weaponization of the state to go after immigrants
Speaker 4: and go after activists is I'm sure your audience is
Speaker 4: well known, is nothing new, and it knows party affiliation,
Speaker 4: the Democratic administrations have been doing this to immigrant communities,
Speaker 4: and I've been using it to silence political activists. The
Speaker 4: Chump administration, however, is now doing this on a level
Speaker 4: that is at least to a lot of us unheard
Speaker 4: of in the modern day, which is to go after
Speaker 4: specific union leaders in the labor movement, to go after
Speaker 4: civil rights leaders. You've seen this happen also when it
Speaker 4: comes to Palasini rights activists around the country. The idea
Speaker 4: is pretty simple, to silence the loudest voices, to cut
Speaker 4: to leadership from the movement.
Speaker 3: On March twenty fifth, Alfredo Lelo Barres.
Speaker 4: Waspping off his girlfriend at a nearby farm for work
Speaker 4: and was accosted by ICE agents as he was exercising
Speaker 4: his rights or what he thought his rights were at
Speaker 4: the time because of the regime. Who knows what your
Speaker 4: rights are. They broke his window, they dragged him out.
Speaker 3: Of his car.
Speaker 4: You know, this was obviously a very traumatic incident, but
Speaker 4: also it was a real shock to the union to
Speaker 4: see to see the community group that works with the
Speaker 4: union and to the local Hispanic community in the area.
Speaker 4: Within hours of that, workers organizers community went to move
Speaker 4: to try to carry a response. Knowing that time was
Speaker 4: of the essence. He was then taken to a local
Speaker 4: Heights facility. He's now since been moved to a detention
Speaker 4: center in Tacoma, Washington. A large rally of hundreds took
Speaker 4: place calling for his immediate release. What we know now
Speaker 4: seemingly is that at the very last minute apologies, I
Speaker 4: forget the exact day, but it was within a couple
Speaker 4: of days of the kidnapping, Lelo was pulled off. He
Speaker 4: has an automatic stay of deportation in place at this point,
Speaker 4: no longer has any legal authority to remove Lelo. If
Speaker 4: this came at the last minute, he was in line
Speaker 4: for deportation and was removed at the.
Speaker 3: Very last minute.
Speaker 4: However, while this is good news, this is not good
Speaker 4: for someone's personal health and well being. These are massively
Speaker 4: cramped facilities, underfunded facilities. You know, there's horror stories around
Speaker 4: the country of the conditions in some of these places.
Speaker 4: Every day that Lelo is stuck behind these prison walls
Speaker 4: is an injustice to our movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think. The thing it immediately reminds me
Speaker 2: of is the story of Thomas Paine, who was like
Speaker 2: slated to be executed in the French Revolution and they didn't.
Speaker 2: They didn't execute him because his door was opened, so
Speaker 2: they didn't see the slash line on the cell that
Speaker 2: I was supposed to execute him. And then like the
Speaker 2: next day, the rate of terror ended with the coup
Speaker 2: against the Jacobins. There rids me a lot of that,
Speaker 2: but you know, but on the other hand, here's the thing.
Speaker 2: We have gotten the stay of the deportation, but we
Speaker 2: have not we have not brought down the rate of
Speaker 2: terror yet.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and I would hope it has the way
Speaker 3: four more years for that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good lord, good lord, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: let's let's talk a bit about So. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 2: you know what we're seeing here and this this is
Speaker 2: you know, the connection that you made is we're seeing
Speaker 2: just on a sort of broad scale, the use of
Speaker 2: the state and of the sort of black bagging and
Speaker 2: of these deportations as a way to target organizers from
Speaker 2: Palestine to label organizers. That's only going to expand as
Speaker 2: this goes on. And I think something critical about you know,
Speaker 2: one of the first things you were saying here about
Speaker 2: the fact that they're targeting sort of the loudest voices
Speaker 2: in the community. And I think a big part of
Speaker 2: this is that they know that their position isn't as
Speaker 2: strong as they're making it out to be. Right, Like
Speaker 2: they have just detonated a nuke across the entire economy.
Speaker 2: They are systemically going through and individually fucking over every
Speaker 2: single group of people who are supposed to be their base.
Speaker 2: And I think part of what they're doing is they're
Speaker 2: trying to spread sort of raw terror and spread fear
Speaker 2: and you know, and and attack the critical infrastructure of
Speaker 2: organizing because they want to make it look like resisting
Speaker 2: them as impossible, and that's just not true. They can be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4: I think that oftentimes, particularly fascistic power wants and needs
Speaker 4: to present itself as inevitable, as overwhelming, and impossible to defeat,
Speaker 4: in part because it's meant to hide the ultimate weakness
Speaker 4: of some of these powers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The actual power that these farm workers showed against the
Speaker 4: Sukuma farms when they went on strike and boycotted for
Speaker 4: years and years and years out in the fields, talking
Speaker 4: to workers for years and years and years, it showed.
Speaker 4: But no matter how powerful some of these companies are,
Speaker 4: some of the CEOs are that the power of workers
Speaker 4: overwhelms and the power solidarity overwhelms and they know that
Speaker 4: going after leadership, going after some of the most some
Speaker 4: of the bravest people in our movement is a way
Speaker 4: of trying to hit the movement at the knees and trying.
Speaker 3: To convince folks that struggle list is impossible.
Speaker 4: But I think it is important to remember that what
Speaker 4: we're doing, the struggle now, the response. This is how
Speaker 4: we show the population the world, you know, our communities,
Speaker 4: that they are not inevitable, it is not insurmountable and
Speaker 4: so and by taking action responding to the kinds of
Speaker 4: specistic behaviors of the state, we show how feeble the
Speaker 4: state can be at times, even when it seems it's
Speaker 4: most treacherous and awful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think a lot of times when we
Speaker 2: win fights, it can be very very hard to actually
Speaker 2: see our victory because we don't see the world that
Speaker 2: could have been if we didn't fight. And that's the
Speaker 2: thing I think about what the administration we're in, the
Speaker 2: first Shomp administration, they absolutely wanted to be doing this
Speaker 2: kind of shit, and they were able to do a
Speaker 2: lot of terrible stuff, but they weren't able to sort
Speaker 2: of go this far because of the kind of mass
Speaker 2: mobilizations that shut down a lot of the kinds of
Speaker 2: things that they wanted to do. And I think that's
Speaker 2: a kind of victory that is hard to kind of
Speaker 2: like process because all all we see is, you know,
Speaker 2: the suffering that did happen, and we can never see
Speaker 2: an image of like all of the people you know,
Speaker 2: who got to continue living their lives because we stop them,
Speaker 2: And that I think is another sort of powerful tool here.
Speaker 2: But also we do have an opportunity to make sure
Speaker 2: that we can beat them right here and right now
Speaker 2: in a way that's very, very public and visible.
Speaker 4: And that's a question mark about that in my mind,
Speaker 4: because you know, my entire adult life, I've heard stories
Speaker 4: of the state repression against union organizers in the twenties
Speaker 4: and the thirties and the forties. You hear the stories,
Speaker 4: if you're in argier about all the violederas and how
Speaker 4: hard it was in the past, and we forget that
Speaker 4: a lot of that does continue on is just not
Speaker 4: where you would imagine it where a lot of American
Speaker 4: workers imagine it, and so they don't see it in
Speaker 4: their shops and their factors, in their unions.
Speaker 3: But this right here is an attack on the labor movement.
Speaker 4: Had this been the head of you know, the Electricians Union,
Speaker 4: the head of the SCIU. Had this been an attack
Speaker 4: on what a lot of Americas wol view as the
Speaker 4: mainstream labor movement, this would be headlines.
Speaker 3: The fact that it isn't shows and that it has been.
Speaker 4: So much work to try to get attention to a
Speaker 4: union leader being picked up and kidnapped by the state
Speaker 4: should be you know, a blaring red light on the
Speaker 4: labor movement to take action immediately. I hope that what
Speaker 4: we're doing is the first steps to that, because you know,
Speaker 4: this is one of those moments if you know, they
Speaker 4: went after the trade unions unionists and I was not
Speaker 4: a trade unionist.
Speaker 3: Well, going after the farm work. I am not a
Speaker 3: farm worker.
Speaker 4: It isn't common upon us morally to stand up one
Speaker 4: another at this point in time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think there's been a real kind of
Speaker 2: real cowardice and a real sort of appeasement of power,
Speaker 2: and a real sort of demonstration of where a lot
Speaker 2: of these union's politics are. I mean, we saw the
Speaker 2: way that the Teamsters like leadership just I mean just
Speaker 2: you know, openly went to speak at the R and
Speaker 2: C right. We've been seeing the UAW, which traditionally has
Speaker 2: had better like immigration politics in the last few years
Speaker 2: than a lot of these other sort of mainstream unions,
Speaker 2: but it's also been sort of going to bat for
Speaker 2: Trump's tariff, Like I've been calling you the turf tariffs
Speaker 2: tariffs because of their wages of transphobia. But you know,
Speaker 2: they've been going to bat for like the turf tariffs, right,
Speaker 2: And that I think is like part of why they've
Speaker 2: been sort of unable to like respond to this moment
Speaker 2: and why they've been unable to respond to the past
Speaker 2: fucking fifty years of moments, which is that like, if
Speaker 2: you're sort of like labor politics is rooted in this
Speaker 2: sort of like American now nationalist like American jobs for
Speaker 2: American workers stuff, right, and it's not actually based in
Speaker 2: the power of workers and the power of workers everywhere,
Speaker 2: then you're going to lose. It's not just sort of
Speaker 2: reactionary politics, so so it is it's also bad politics,
Speaker 2: and we're seeing it right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that the history of the labor
Speaker 4: movement has been an interesting one in my adult life
Speaker 4: because you know, I'm.
Speaker 3: As pro liber as they come.
Speaker 4: However, the history of the labor movement in the modern
Speaker 4: day has been a fascinating one. It is one that
Speaker 4: when it came to large strikes, with that it's nadier
Speaker 4: At the mid and late two thousands, I think at
Speaker 4: one point it was just over a dozen strikes over
Speaker 4: two thousand workers. And you compare that to the high
Speaker 4: of the labor movement in the forties and the fifties
Speaker 4: when it was in the hundreds, and you've had strike
Speaker 4: actions all the time, and that is what built so
Speaker 4: much of what we call middle class for some and
Speaker 4: it was this really historic moment at the time, and
Speaker 4: we're in a historic moment now where I think the
Speaker 4: labor movement for so long from that point has been trying.
Speaker 4: Workers in the rank and file have been trying to
Speaker 4: kind of reshape the labor movement in the thoughts and
Speaker 4: the ideas of the new but it comes with its
Speaker 4: own regressive setbacks, and it comes with its own shortcomings
Speaker 4: of leadership. You know, the teams to is making statements
Speaker 4: around immigration rights was a very unfortunate thing to be
Speaker 4: said in the modern day. In the modern context, I
Speaker 4: think that you know, other unions seemingly looking to you know,
Speaker 4: circle the wagons rather than take the risks that need
Speaker 4: to happen in this current time. Has really shown a
Speaker 4: lack of imagination from some of the mainstream unions. And
Speaker 4: the thing is, I hope for the best for them.
Speaker 4: I want them to succeed and I want them to
Speaker 4: get better because the world is a better place for
Speaker 4: having these larger unions. However, if the independent movements, the
Speaker 4: independent unions like Familias who need this po Thesia, like
Speaker 4: these other unions in the region, that can be the
Speaker 4: kind of canary in the coal mine, the kind of
Speaker 4: labs of experimentation that can be the first people out
Speaker 4: to do some of the most radical and interesting and
Speaker 4: worker centric type of movement building and messaging.
Speaker 3: Like I think there is the reason why.
Speaker 4: It was the coalition of independent unions here in the
Speaker 4: Pacific Northwest that came up with the notion of having
Speaker 4: transity of solidarity, this idea of patterning contracts together to
Speaker 4: have inclusive and protections for trans workers and having that
Speaker 4: be a thing that unions take up together. I think
Speaker 4: that it's incredibly notable that it's group's life for means
Speaker 4: we need this that carry out this long years long
Speaker 4: boycott and created a model by which other workers in
Speaker 4: the region can not just organize themselves, but organize themselves
Speaker 4: on a low cost, member led democratic model. I think
Speaker 4: it's important to see that sometimes the large unions have
Speaker 4: to start looking at some of the radical pragmatism that
Speaker 4: comes from the necessities of these smaller independent campaigns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean before we go to ads, I
Speaker 2: think the last thing I want to say there is, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the the other option they have is to
Speaker 2: do the option of what the unions didn't during the
Speaker 2: rise of the Nazis, which is like dreaming the rise
Speaker 2: of the Nazis. The unions fell online, right, they fell
Speaker 2: in line because they were scared and they thought that
Speaker 2: they could fucking win benefits from it. And you know,
Speaker 2: it saved some of them, like they were a few
Speaker 2: of those people like just became Nazis, but the rest
Speaker 2: of them got fucking liquidated. Anyways, So those are your options, right,
Speaker 2: You either stand and fight now with the independent unions,
Speaker 2: or you become part of the regime and eventually get liquidated.
Speaker 2: When you know, Trump in like fucking two and a
Speaker 2: half years science executive order that says unions are illegal
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what does that do at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, even if it stays, even if you're the
Speaker 3: head of some of these larger unions. And by working
Speaker 3: with the administrative, the administration today, by selling your soul,
Speaker 3: by selling the movement out, you give up the moral
Speaker 3: high ground of our movement, of our working class democratic movement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you give it up for another generation. Then when workers,
Speaker 4: when people like myself growing up looking at images of
Speaker 4: the United farm Workers, there are similar I presume there
Speaker 4: are similar people in the United States growing up who
Speaker 4: look that way up to the United Lado Workers, look
Speaker 4: that way up to the Teachers Union. What happens to
Speaker 4: those children, to those kids, those young people who want
Speaker 4: to be the next the next leadership, the next era
Speaker 4: of the labor movement, they will not look at us as.
Speaker 3: Having the moral high ground. We give that up. We
Speaker 3: give our role in history, our moral role in history
Speaker 3: to fight for the working class when we do things
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what you become and set is just another
Speaker 2: extension of the state. You become like one of like
Speaker 2: the national syndicates and like Franco of Spain. And what
Speaker 2: and what that does to you is people people don't
Speaker 2: look at you in a generation as a labor movement,
Speaker 2: they look at you as just another arm of a
Speaker 2: fascist regime. And it doesn't have to be like that.
Speaker 2: It really doesn't.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, it does not.
Speaker 4: I took no pleasure in saying this, you know, I
Speaker 4: take no pleasure in saying this. But it's an unfortunate reality.
Speaker 4: And hopefully the turnaround can come from anywhere. It can
Speaker 4: come from from unexpected places, and I hope there is one,
Speaker 4: and things like.
Speaker 3: Solidarity for Lelo. I hope it'd be a small link in.
Speaker 4: The chain that moves the pensulum right back into the
Speaker 4: direction of an ethical and moral superiority that comes with
Speaker 4: fighting for working class folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to take an ad break, and when
Speaker 2: we come back, we're going to talk about what we
Speaker 2: can do for Lilo. Right now, as as you are
Speaker 2: listening to this, we are back. So let's talk about
Speaker 2: both the operation I mean, just immediately, the plans to
Speaker 2: sort of put pressure to free Lilo, and also what
Speaker 2: then I guess we'll get into, sort of more broadly,
Speaker 2: the kinds of fighting that we need to be doing
Speaker 2: in order to resist this.
Speaker 3: Sounds good, So, like I mentioned earlier, and you need.
Speaker 4: An aftermath of lelo is kidnapping by ice, workers in
Speaker 4: the region began organizing and unions came together and support
Speaker 4: a Lelo and help a rally in front of the
Speaker 4: tention center in Tacoma. Now, what we're trying to do
Speaker 4: is trying to spread the word further. There are other communities,
Speaker 4: particularly here on the West coast, that can't stand solidarity,
Speaker 4: that should stand in solidarity. And when we heard this
Speaker 4: needs to go down, activists within the CiU ask themselves
Speaker 4: we can't stand idly by while a leader in our
Speaker 4: movement is kidnapped by the state. We need to take action,
Speaker 4: and so we did. And the point was to move
Speaker 4: as quickly as possible to try to build a larger
Speaker 4: voice for Lelo while he is in detention. So there
Speaker 4: is a good number of activists here in the Portland area.
Speaker 4: We can be of service to the farm Workers Union.
Speaker 4: You know, we have a strong core of independent unions
Speaker 4: here in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in the Portland area.
Speaker 4: We can do what other unions are hesitant to do,
Speaker 4: which is take action immediately. It stands firmly with our
Speaker 4: brothers and sisters. Are monos up in northern Washington. So
Speaker 4: what's happening is the call from the union is workers individually,
Speaker 4: for people individually to call into the Attorney General in
Speaker 4: Washington State and call to the release of Lelo, also
Speaker 4: calling the new governor up in Washington State to call
Speaker 4: for the release, bring a wider attention, making me known
Speaker 4: that this person is someone who is important to the community,
Speaker 4: cannot be expirited away to another country where they are
Speaker 4: not from, where.
Speaker 3: That is not their home, and taken away from their family,
Speaker 3: the community and from the good work that they do.
Speaker 4: And the other thing that we're trying to do is
Speaker 4: we're trying to get local officials to also use their
Speaker 4: voice to maximize the pressure to give more attention to
Speaker 4: this issue.
Speaker 3: So that's the call so far.
Speaker 4: This rally that we're having in front of city Hall
Speaker 4: on Saturday, April twelfth at two pm is the beginning
Speaker 4: of what we hope is a larger campaign that will
Speaker 4: not end until Lelo is free and until these raids
Speaker 4: stop attacking the labor movement in the Pacific Northwest. You know,
Speaker 4: just because we in Portland, you know, are not farm workers,
Speaker 4: because we don't work with farm workers.
Speaker 3: Because a lot of the workers who who work here
Speaker 3: had maybe never met a farm worker.
Speaker 4: It does not mean that we should not stand shoulder
Speaker 4: and shoulder and arm and arm and support the farm
Speaker 4: workers Union up in northern Washington to the hilt. And
Speaker 4: this begins this fight of building that kind of level
Speaker 4: of solidarity. It begins by showing up for them doing
Speaker 4: what they can do right now. They don't have the
Speaker 4: resources to go stay by stay in city by city
Speaker 4: to bring its tension and awareness to one of their
Speaker 4: leaders being attacked. But we can do it, and if
Speaker 4: we can do it, we should do it. It's a
Speaker 4: moral imperative that little be free.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I mean statistically there are a lot
Speaker 2: of you in Portland listening to the show, but statistically
Speaker 2: most of you are not in Portland. Are there are
Speaker 2: there things that people in the rest of the country,
Speaker 2: and I guess the rest of the world. I know,
Speaker 2: I know there's so Sally statistically don't live in the US. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Are are there things that people in other places can
Speaker 2: do to put pressure specifically for Alala, but also just
Speaker 2: can do in their own communities to you know, I
Speaker 2: mean put pressure to stop these raids?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So this is very similar I think to the CiU,
Speaker 4: the Coalition of Independent Unions is Coalition of Independent Unions
Speaker 4: here in the Pacific Northwest. It was trying to do
Speaker 4: and it's trying to do with TRANSI of solidarity. The
Speaker 4: idea is, we are trying to make this work here
Speaker 4: in the Pacific Northwest, and if it's useful, if it's good,
Speaker 4: if people are paying attention to it, then we can
Speaker 4: export this to other cities in other areas to bring
Speaker 4: more attention to these causes. And so with that one
Speaker 4: pavan earning contracts together, particularly on this one issue of
Speaker 4: transgender healthcare and trans influencive language and contracts, and codifying
Speaker 4: that between unions and having that a demand of labor
Speaker 4: movement that they not walk away from this. We want
Speaker 4: to also do the same thing with this fight for
Speaker 4: freedom for the farm workers union and their leaders and
Speaker 4: workers everywhere. And the tax will comes soon soon enough,
Speaker 4: I suppose, I would imagine from this regime in Washington.
Speaker 4: If this works, we want workers in other cities to
Speaker 4: start assisting the farm worker and take them up the
Speaker 4: call of action and fighting for not just let up
Speaker 4: whoever comes afterwards, because there will be levels in the
Speaker 4: future unfortunate as they may be. So if this works here,
Speaker 4: workers here as they hear more updates, we would hope
Speaker 4: and we would love if workers elsewhere, if organizing groups
Speaker 4: elsewhere would want to take up this fight and bring
Speaker 4: attention to the cause.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, yeah, And I think there is a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, potential and sort of mobilizations. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of potential in getting people to understand that this
Speaker 2: stuff's happening, and there's a lot of potential in cross
Speaker 2: uniting organizing. And also, and I will say this too
Speaker 2: because like you know, obviously statistically like there are a
Speaker 2: large number of people listening to this who are like
Speaker 2: union staffers, but also like most of you are not.
Speaker 2: That also doesn't mean that whatever kind of organizing that
Speaker 2: you're doing doesn't overlap with this and doesn't have capacity
Speaker 2: that they can bring to bear to stop the entire
Speaker 2: deportation regime that we're facing right now. And that's something
Speaker 2: that you have to do both on the level of
Speaker 2: solid on a moral level, and also on a strategic level,
Speaker 2: because again, he is going to come for you two.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, you know, without making it too personal,
Speaker 4: like I know level personally, I have met a little
Speaker 4: many times over the years, He's a fantastic person.
Speaker 3: The reason why a lot of us as organizers.
Speaker 4: Why we do this kind of work to begin with,
Speaker 4: is because we believe, as as bizarrely as it may be,
Speaker 4: that we could be a link in the chain that
Speaker 4: makes the world a better place, that we can leave
Speaker 4: the world better off.
Speaker 3: Than we found it.
Speaker 4: And we also believe in what we're doing because when
Speaker 4: we look at people who have been attacked by corporations
Speaker 4: and attacked by the state, we feel a moral compulsion
Speaker 4: to help. And what I would say to folks who
Speaker 4: are outside of Portland who are hearing this story, who
Speaker 4: hear the calls to call the Attorney General in Washington
Speaker 4: State and demand that they'll be released, to follow up
Speaker 4: with the union, but media further direction on how they
Speaker 4: can and potentially holding their own rallies and support and
Speaker 4: solidarity and bring attention to the issue.
Speaker 3: I would hope that they do this.
Speaker 4: Imagine if Letlo were your brother, Imagine if Letlo were
Speaker 4: your cousin, your father, your friend, Act as if they
Speaker 4: were them, because it requires that level of empathy to
Speaker 4: have the kind of solidarity that we need in order
Speaker 4: to fight this fastiest regime and everything that it does.
Speaker 4: It is easy to say I will wait for someone
Speaker 4: else to do the work. I will, someone else will
Speaker 4: come along and it'll get resolved that way. No, if
Speaker 4: you don't do the work, it just will not get done.
Speaker 4: And so we have to go in every day as
Speaker 4: part of civic engagement and assisting the working class, as
Speaker 4: part of our daily routines, and using the kind of
Speaker 4: the kind of sense of moral necessity and of immediate action.
Speaker 4: It requires that you would do for someone that was
Speaker 4: close to you, because this person is you just by
Speaker 4: another name. This person is your fan, even if you've
Speaker 4: never met them. We were all in this together as
Speaker 4: working class people. And if we start coming up with
Speaker 4: boundaries and reasons for a while we shouldn't stand up
Speaker 4: for one another, those reasons then become excuses for everyone else.
Speaker 4: So I would hope that when people hear this, they
Speaker 4: look and see the struggle of this person, and they
Speaker 4: can imagine what would happen to them in the future,
Speaker 4: and they say, I would want someone there for me
Speaker 4: in my corner, in my time of me, So I
Speaker 4: will be there for them and theirs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminds me a lot of this line from
Speaker 2: Peggy Seeger, who wrote wrote an anti fascist song called
Speaker 2: Song of Choice, and one of the verses that's always
Speaker 2: stuck with me is today the soldiers took away one.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow they may take away two. In April, they took
Speaker 2: away Greece, but surely they will never take you. And
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, that's the thing that people in
Speaker 2: the thirties woke up to, right is you know, if
Speaker 2: you're in this country and this is the thing that
Speaker 2: you're waking up to now, is that, yeah, the soldiers
Speaker 2: are taking people away, and every day they're taking away
Speaker 2: more and more people. And day you wake up and
Speaker 2: they've taken entire countries. And the only way that you
Speaker 2: can stop this is by making sure that the action
Speaker 2: that you're taking is not just waking up and going
Speaker 2: back to sleep. Right, Yep, you have to take a stand.
Speaker 2: You have to fight because no one is coming. The
Speaker 2: only person who was coming for these people, the only
Speaker 2: person who is coming for the people coming next to them,
Speaker 2: and inevitably the only people who is coming to save
Speaker 2: you when they come for you is going to be you.
Speaker 2: And you know there are enough of us to stop them,
Speaker 2: right There always have been, That's always been a thing
Speaker 2: about fascism is that it relies on us not fighting them.
Speaker 2: It relies on us on our passivity, It relies on
Speaker 2: us not caring enough about the people that they take first,
Speaker 2: you know, to sit back and do nothing and think
Speaker 2: that we can wait, and you can't have You have
Speaker 2: to start right now, and you have to stop them
Speaker 2: before they advance any further, and you have to roll
Speaker 2: back what they've already done. And this is our opportunity
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, I think that says that encapsulates the
Speaker 4: sentiment perfectly.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, do you have anything else that you want
Speaker 2: to add before we head out? And we will put
Speaker 2: links to a whole bunch of things in the description
Speaker 2: to this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I suppose to those that would want to know more
Speaker 4: about not just the struggle of the farm workers Union,
Speaker 4: but also the general experiments in independent unionism here in
Speaker 4: the Pacific Northwest, I'd highly encourage that folks take a
Speaker 4: deep dive and see that to organize your workplace to
Speaker 4: have the kind of solidarity with your coworkers, you need
Speaker 4: not be dependent upon someone else and other organizations that
Speaker 4: come in and sort of.
Speaker 3: Rescue you from the mystery and drudgery. Of non union workplaces.
Speaker 3: You can do it too. You can create.
Speaker 4: You have it in your head, in your own mind
Speaker 4: and your own ends, the ability to organize, the ability
Speaker 4: to fight with your coworkers. You have the kind of
Speaker 4: clever problem solving skills that every work or has in
Speaker 4: order to come back the boss and create a better
Speaker 4: world than the one that currently exists. And also that
Speaker 4: when it comes to issues like standing up for this
Speaker 4: struggle now and struggles in the future, I would say
Speaker 4: you have it now, the creative capacity to in whatever
Speaker 4: city you're in, to make connections, to build inroads with
Speaker 4: the labor movement, to build inroads with working class people,
Speaker 4: and to try to create those bonds that happen. We
Speaker 4: here are trying to build closer bonds with city workers
Speaker 4: and farm workers out in the country. It's an important
Speaker 4: struggle because one it's going to be more and more
Speaker 4: important in the future. You don't have to wait for
Speaker 4: anyone else to tell you how to do that. You
Speaker 4: yourselves can show solidarity and work together to build those
Speaker 4: kinds of bonds now so that in the future you
Speaker 4: can create working class movements, whether that takes the form
Speaker 4: of collective bargaining or something else, organizing for the common
Speaker 4: good is useful no matter in what legal capacity it happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, you know, last one I want
Speaker 2: to add about that in terms of looking at like
Speaker 2: you not needing help to do things, like you know,
Speaker 2: I know a lot of the people who you know,
Speaker 2: like are the organizers who are hired by places like
Speaker 2: the UAW like AFLCIO unions. Right, they're good people, like,
Speaker 2: they are good people. They're good organizers. They don't know
Speaker 2: anything that you can't learn, Like, a lot of these
Speaker 2: people are just literally college students, right, who are recruited
Speaker 2: like from college campuses and are thrown with no training
Speaker 2: into organizing these things, right, and you know, and again
Speaker 2: these are people who are just like stepping out of
Speaker 2: classrooms into like into these organizing scenarios with very minimal training,
Speaker 2: and they've been able to do it. And if those
Speaker 2: people can do it, so can you, Like, I know you,
Speaker 2: I know, I know these organizers And the only difference
Speaker 2: between them and you is that they spent some time
Speaker 2: learning some things and then they apply the same tools
Speaker 2: like they apply in some ways worst versions of the
Speaker 2: same tools the independent union organizers use, and they're all
Speaker 2: tools that you can learn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And if any of the people listening want to
Speaker 4: learn sim of these tools, yeah, or you help with
Speaker 4: education and training, or just want to make connections in
Speaker 4: interroads with workers elsewhere, contact the coalition independent.
Speaker 3: Units and seeing how we can build these bonds together.
Speaker 4: Because I think that we will problem solve how to
Speaker 4: defeat this regime one way or another. But I think
Speaker 4: that we, particularly in the independent union space, provide a
Speaker 4: unique possibility for how this can happen. Because since we
Speaker 4: are not tied to larger established contracts, we're not tied
Speaker 4: to you know, jurisdictional disputes, we're not tied to a
Speaker 4: lot of the legacies of some of the larger unions,
Speaker 4: God bless them. We can create and fashion a labor
Speaker 4: movement that doesn't have to live by those rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, if you imagine the idea of what it.
Speaker 4: Would look like to refound the CIO in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 4: if you could imagine the worst aspects of labor movement
Speaker 4: and excising them, and what is the best aspect of
Speaker 4: labor move that you would want to see, we can
Speaker 4: create that together today.
Speaker 3: And today it takes the form of standing up in
Speaker 3: solidarity with LELO and farm Workers Union up to northern Washington.
Speaker 4: Not because we get anything from it, not because it's easy,
Speaker 4: but precisely because it is difficult, and precisely because it
Speaker 4: is a moral compulsion on us to take action today
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 3: We don't have to wait for anyone to tell us
Speaker 3: what to do.
Speaker 4: As part of an independent labor movement, we get to
Speaker 4: decide our future and our faith, and we get to
Speaker 4: decide our struggles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if and when we beat them here, we
Speaker 2: can beat them today, we can beat them tomorrow, we
Speaker 2: can beat the next day, and one day you know
Speaker 2: we will. We will have one one victory too many
Speaker 2: for them to hold on to power. And that's the
Speaker 2: only way forward.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, fascism wants you to believe in a nihilistic perspective
Speaker 4: of the world. They want you to believe in which
Speaker 4: it is hopeless to fight back. They want you to
Speaker 4: believe just doom scroll forever and don't take any action
Speaker 4: and focus on yourselves and naval gaze indefinitely.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: No. The way that you find out the kind of
Speaker 4: person that you are and the way that you build
Speaker 4: the kind of future that you want for yourselves, your families,
Speaker 4: for your communities, for the people that you don't even know,
Speaker 4: Oh I never will meet. What you want a good
Speaker 4: life for them. The way that you do that is
Speaker 4: you take action. Now, you start organizing, You do what
Speaker 4: you can, you build what you can.
Speaker 3: That's how we do this.
Speaker 4: Like we said earlier, they want you to believe that
Speaker 4: the fighter is already over, the history has already been written.
Speaker 3: They only say that because they know it's not true.
Speaker 4: Yep, and me and other people who talk like this,
Speaker 4: who are as optimistic and as hopeful and is fight ready,
Speaker 4: we don't believe this out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: We believe this because we truly do see that the
Speaker 3: better world is possible if we fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I think that's a spectacular place
Speaker 2: to end. Mark, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 2: the show. Yeah, thank you, and everyone else who's listening
Speaker 2: to this, go out and fight.
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