Why I Support Striking Vale Inco Workers

I support the mine workers of USW Local 6500 who are striking against Vale Inco. I support them for a number of reasons, but I'm going to talk about one: I support them because we share a common enemy. I think you should support the strikers too because, chances are, that enemy is your enemy as well.

I don't say that we have a common enemy because I work for Vale Inco, any subsidiary of Vale Inco, or any tentacle of the massive corporation that owns it. Never have, probably never will.

I don't say that we have a common enemy because I think of non-Canadians as my enemy and I buy the line used by some in the community that it is a big deal that Inco is no longer owned in Canada. I don't, either one of those things. Sure, it maybe matters that the pretty-huge corporation was bought by a mega-huge corporation which has deeper pockets to try and break the union. But do you honestly think owners and managers trying to make an extra buck off of your hard work or mine has anything to do with the fact that some of those owners and managers live in Brazil? Do you not remember the awful things that Inco did to its workers and our community when it was owned and run by rich Canadians? Do you honestly think that the good wages, the solid benefits, the nickel bonus, the seniority rights enjoyed by Sudbury miners were given by good-hearted Canadian owners rather than won by tooth-and-nail struggles over decades by ordinary working people against those owners? No, I don't think nationality has much to do, on its own, with whether someone is a friend or an enemy.

No, I say we have a common enemy because the demands that Vale Inco is making and the situation that allows the company to make those demands is not just random, not just one bad company, but part of a pattern.

Globally since the 1970s, but in Canada especially since the 1990s, the rich and the powerful -- corporations and billionaires and the like -- have been winning battles to make themselves even more rich and powerful, at the expense of ordinary people [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ]. As they have done this, they have talked a lot about "freedom" as if they meant everybody, but it turns out it only applies to a pretty select group of people, and most of us, especially the worst off, end up a lot less free. They've also talked about "prosperity," as if these changes would unleash super dynamic economic growth that would help us all. Turns out, even in their own terms, this one is a lie -- there are hotspots of growth here and there, but global economic growth has been consistently lower than before these attacks began. What has been consistent, though, is that the rich have been getting richer across the board, the powerful more powerful, and the poor, poorer [7].

These attacks on ordinary people have taken a lot of different forms. Changes in employment so that more and more jobs have become low-wage and precarious. Cuts to welfare, and rule changes to make the welfare system nastier, which pushes people into jobs that are unpleasant, unsafe, underpaid, insecure, non-union -- that is, it makes labour cheaper. Attacks on unions, which have the same effect. Cuts to social programs. Privatization, so that things that had once been run for the public good, at least in theory, came to be run so a few people could make money. There was plenty wrong with how things worked before these attacks started, but now they are worse.

The things Vale Inco is trying to do in the demands they've made fit perfectly with this pattern. They want to take money out of the hands of workers by making the production bonus when the company is doing well harder for workers to get, and turn that into profit for rich owners and managers -- the $4.1 billion profit that Vale Inco made from Ontario between 2006 and 2008 just wasn't enough, apparently. They want to radically change how pensions work for new hires. Instead of risking their lives and health doing dangerous work for thirty or forty years and knowing they'll be able to enjoy their grandchildren in peace and security, new hires will have pensions where a set amount of money gets paid in but how much comes out depends on luck, on "how the markets perform" -- so much for reward being about effort. The company wants to mess with seniority, which fits with the pattern because it is about managers taking ever more control of the work process from workers in the name of efficiency and flexibility, never mind if it ruins people's lives.

This way of doing things, this way of organizing how the world works, and the rich and powerful who benefit from it, are attacking Vale Inco workers, just like they are attacking people the world over. (It might help to give it a name. Some people call it "neoliberalism." A group of indigenous peasants in Mexico called the Zapatistas, who decided they weren't going to take it any more, have called the global struggle against this pattern and the system which makes it possible the "fourth world war".)

I see the striking miners as ordinary people like me, like you, like most of the people I know, who are doing the only thing that has ever made the people and institutions making neoliberalism happen sit up and take notice: standing up together and saying "No!" The more we find ways to stand together, the stronger our "No!" will be, and the better our chances of turning the tide so that we might get to a place where ordinary people get the decisive say in which "Yes!" actually happens.

In saying this, I recognize that among the great numbers of people whose lives are being attacked by these changes, the miners are in a pretty privileged position. They have good livelihoods that they are defending, which even in Sudbury lots of people don't have, let along the world at large. They have a collective voice, their union, which they can use to stand up and say "No!", which many of us lack. The process of rich people making money depends enough on them that they have at least a little bit of power to strike (hah!) back at the system that's attacking them. There are many, many people -- on reserves, in poor neighbourhoods, in abusive relationships, in the indentured servitude enforced by the Canadian state that comes with being 'migrant workers', on the streets, and so on -- facing harsher attacks with fewer material resources and fewer opportunities to resist. But I don't think that means we shouldn't support the strikers with the energy we have left from our own struggles for survival and liberation -- it just means that we should expect Local 6500 to change its ways a bit and get more actively involved in supporting struggles lead by the many other people getting attacked by neoliberalism.

It also isn't to say that I don't have questions. The whole act of industrial mining in Sudbury deserves serious questions. Why is this nickel being stolen on a daily basis from the indigenous nation that rightfully owns the land? Why is it that Sudbury is so rich in natural resources yet, outside the miners themselves and a layer of professionals in the city, the place is so damn poor? Why is that a common pattern in mining towns across North America? Why is it that a group of serious, careful environmentalists are questioning the company-controlled propaganda and suggesting that eating food grown in downtown Sudbury and Copper Cliff might be hazardous because of metal pollution in the soil, and there is, so far at least, nothing obvious we can do to fix the problem or hold the company accountable? I even have questions for the union leadership -- questions about whether it is a good move strategically to invoke Canadian nationalism, and about how a relatively powerful industrial union local can best relate to the many other struggles against our common enemy.

These are, to adapt another expression from the Zapatistas, questions we need to ask while walking. However all of them get answered, our common enemy is attacking the workers at Vale Inco right now, and through them it is attacking Sudbury as a whole. So it is important to support the strikers. And that is why I support them.

Though, to be honest, I'm not sure how to support them, beyond turning up and being a body at community events. I'm sure more useful things must be possible. Maybe "how" is one more question we need to talk about while moving forward together.

Howard Zinn, R.I.P.

Here is an article from the Boston Globe reporting his death. He was an activist, a scholar, and an inspiring historian-from-below. His death is a sad loss to the North American left. Condolences to his family and friends.

EDIT: Check out this tribute from Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and others from Democracy Now!

Review: A Brief History of Neoliberalism

[David Harvey. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.]

Though it limits its vision in some conventional ways, this book is an excellent introduction to and summary of many of the key features of neoliberalism, a shift in social relations that has swept the globe since the 1970s. It is organized much as you might expect for a book with such a goal. It examines the theory underlying neoliberalism, moves on to looking at how neoliberal changes were instituted in different places, how they function in practice (and how that differs significantly from the theory), and the particular ways that they can change state relations. There is a more focused look at the neoliberal shift in China. Then there is an assessment of the actual impacts of neoliberalism as well as some brief attention to struggles against it in the past and opportunities for struggle in the future.

Perhaps the most important accomplishment of this book is its thorough demonstration of the utter disconnect between the legitimizing rhetoric of neoliberalism and its actual consequences. Neoliberal disciples wax rhapsodic about freedom, and about the unmatched capacity of unfettered markets to meet human needs. Harvey demonstrates, in contrast, that the actual consequences of social relations organized in neoliberal ways are misery and want for many. Even rates of that oh so capitalist measure, economic productivity, are poor overall under neoliberalism -- often high in a few places at any given moment, but consistently low globally. The most consistent outcome of neoliberalism -- so consistent that Harvey concludes it must be neoliberalism's actual point -- is the reconstitution of capitalist ruling-class power (measured principally through concentration of wealth, with predictable political consequences) or its constitution de novo in some places.

Now, just before I read this, I finished another book by Harvey, which I may or may not get around to reviewing. This other book is a far ranging exploration of geographical theory that was somewhat beyond me but that I found a wee bit mindblowing and plenty challenging, that was materialist yet engaged with theory far beyond marxism, and that felt like it could, perhaps, end up giving me some very useful-to-me inputs into my own thinking about things (though I'm not sure yet). Because of that, I was a bit surprised that A Brief History of Neoliberalism set its boundaries in some fairly conventionally marxist ways. I mean, it isn't hidebound about it, but it is clear that this is a book that is meant to explore one particular topic using existing, well-worn tools, rather than something that takes the tools apart to see if they really are best for the job.

This shows up in lots of ways -- insert your favourite limitation of standard academic marxist analysis here -- but there were two ways in which I particularly noticed.

The first was the book's uneven engagement with the idea of freedom. Towards the end of the book it tackles the question with a certain amount of sophistication, and a recognition that the neoliberal understanding of "freedom" is far from the only one, but earlier on the book is very dismissive of freedom as a focus of struggle in ways that do little or nothing to explore what it can actually mean. This is connected with some very brief, dismissive analysis about a number of the social movements that arose in the 1960s which included freedom among their goals. It even goes so far as to assert that freedom and social justice are inherently incompatible, sometimes tempering that by saying they "seem to be" but at other times just saying it blankly. Now, it is clear from later in the book that Harvey doesn't actually mean this, exactly -- he's not some old marxist crank yearning for the days when women and people of colour knew their place while industrial wage earners lead the proletariat -- but I think there is far, far more to be said about freedom, about class, and about the movements of the '60s and '70s, and it is potentially politically dangerous not to say that stuff because of how readers might take up what is said. I suspect even if Harvey did explore all of that stuff in some depth, I would disagree with some of what he said, but it is the easily misunderstandable shorthand that I object to the most.

The other concern has to do with unarticulated assumptions about what exactly a book looking at the history of neoliberalism should talk about. That is, this is primarily a book about the elements of social relations that get reified as "the economy" and "the state." Which are important. They may even be central when neoliberalism is your focus. But are they everything? Really? It just seems like a huge mistake to try and talk about as all-encompassing a shift in social relations as neoliberalism and then to limit what you talk about so narrowly. I can't point to any sources that do it in ways that completely satisfy me, but I've seen a small number of things that talk about neoliberal shifts in relations of white supremacy and patriarchal relations -- enough to convince me that changes have happened in these areas that can legitimately be understood as neoliberal in nature. Which isn't to say that Harvey completely ignores race and gender, but they enter the analysis more in the form of occasional attention to racialized and gendered consequences of neoliberalism rather than as social relations completely integral to state relations and relations of production.

I think there are lots of political reasons why it is important to take a broader view, but one reason is that the political economy approach assumes that the causal energy moves in one direction and one direction only -- that, sure, there might be differences in how patriarchy is experienced because of neoliberalism, but neoliberalism happened because of changes in relations of production, right? Well, maybe, but I don't feel like I've ever read anything that demonstrates that. Yes, the crisis in accumulation in the early '70s was important, but was it everything? What about analysis that builds on the sorts of ideas in the book reviewed here and talks about the role of shifting relations of reproduction and how that exists in constant dynamic tension with production? What about Sunera Thobani's analysis around the instability of white supremacy in the '50s and '60s, the role of official state multiculturalism in Canada in stabilizing white supremacy in new forms, and the connection between multiculturalism and new approaches to immigration resulting from the demands of accumulation in the '70s? Is it possible that the impulse to stabilize global relations of white supremacy after the success of decolonization struggles in the '50s and '60s played an important role in shaping the overall condition now known as "neoliberalism"? I have no idea, but it seems to me to be the sort of thing that requires investigation.

So. Very predictable reservations on my part, I suppose. And certainly no reason not to read the book. Even if it is only part of the story, it is a very important story in understanding where we are at today and what we need to be doing. It doesn't do everything, but no book ever does, and the things that it does do are important. So read it.

[For a list of all book reviews on this site, click here.]

Petition: Medical Relief, not Military Intervention, in Haiti

This is a crucial issue, though I admit it is always a question how much a petition can actually achieve. This one is being circulated and signed by folks I respect, and I think it is important to sign it and pass it on. Sign here.

The full text:

Haiti needs emergency relief, not military intervention!

21 January 2010

We, the undersigned, are outraged by the scandalous delays in distributing essential aid to victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Since the US Air Force seized unilateral control of the airport in Port-au-Prince, it has privileged military over civilian humanitarian flights. As a result, untold numbers of people have died needlessly in the rubble of Port-au-Prince, Leogane and other abandoned towns. If aid continues to be withheld, many more preventable deaths will follow. We demand that US commanders immediately restore executive control of the relief effort to Haiti's leaders, and to help rather than replace the local officials they claim to support.

We note that obsessive foreign concerns with 'security' and 'looting' are largely refuted by actual levels of patience and solidarity on the streets of Port-au-Prince. The decision to avoid what US commanders have called "another Somalia-type situation" by prioritizing security and military control is likely to succeed only in provoking the very kinds of unrest they condemn.

In keeping with a longstanding pattern, US and UN officials continue to treat the Haitian people and their representatives with wholly misplaced fear and suspicion. We call on the de facto rulers of Haiti to facilitate, as the reconstruction begins, the renewal of popular participation in the determination of collective priorities and decisions. We demand that they do everything possible to strengthen the capacity of the Haitian people to respond to this crisis. We demand, consequently, that they allow Haiti's most popular and most inspiring political leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (whose party won 90% of the parliamentary seats in the country's last round of democratic elections), to return immediately and safely from the unconstitutional exile to which he has been confined since the US, Canada and France helped depose him in 2004.

If reconstruction proceeds under the supervision of foreign troops and international development agencies it will not serve the interests of the vast majority of Haiti's population. Neoliberal forms of international "aid" have already directly contributed to the systematic impoverishment of Haiti's people and the undermining of their government, and in both 1991 and 2004 the US intervened to overthrow the elected government and attack its supporters, with devastating effects. This is why we urgently call on the countries that dominate Haiti and the region to respect Haitian sovereignty and to initiate an immediate reorientation of international aid, away from neo-liberal adjustment, sweatshop exploitation and non-governmental charity, and towards systematic investment in Haiti's own people and government.

We demand a much greater international role for Haiti's genuine allies and supporters, including Cuba, South Africa, Venezuela, the Bahamas and other members of CARICOM. We demand that all reconstruction aid take the form of grants not loans. We demand that Haiti's remaining foreign debt be immediately forgiven, and that the money that foreign governments still owe to Haiti - notably the massive sums extorted by the French government from 1825 through to 1947 as compensation for the slaves and property France lost when Haiti won its independence - be paid in full and at once.

Above all, we demand that the reconstruction of Haiti be pursued under the guidance of one overarching objective: the political and economic empowerment of the Haitian people.



Signed,

Jean Saint-Vil, Canada Haiti Action Network

Pierre Labossiere, Haiti Action Committee, USA

Noam Chomsky, MIT

Niraj Joshi, Toronto Haiti Action Committee

Roger Annis, Canada Haiti Action Network

Brian Concannon Jr., Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti

BC Holmes, Toronto Haiti Action Committee

Yves Engler, Canada Haiti Action Network

Peter Hallward, Middlesex University

Kevin Pina, journalist and film-maker

Kevin Skerrett, Canada Haiti Action Network

Please sign!

Some Media Making Things Worse for Haiti

My consumption of mainstream news is sporadic at best, so my first-hand experience of the mainstream reporting about the awful earthquake in Haiti is minimal and impressionistic. However, from what I have seen of what has been published, from what I've seen written about what has been published, and from many long years spent learning about how the dominant media work, I'm pretty confident that there is a lot of awful stuff out there -- a lot of highly performative concern and charity overlaying a lot of racism, a lot of (post)colonial nonsense, a lot of historical forgetting, and a lot of sensationalism. All of that is helping pave the way for Western states and other elite institutions to get away with militarizing the situation, prioritizing private property over human wellbeing, and later using this tragedy to transform Haitian society in Western interests.

Rebecca Solnit recently published a book called A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. I haven't read it, but I've picked it up and looked at it in bookstores a few times. Of more immediate relevance, she has also just published an article called "When the Media is the Disaster: Covering Haiti." It's worth a read. Check it out.

(Thanks to JM for the link.)

Donate but also Learn About Our Role in Haiti's Plight

As you donate to support the survivors of the massive earthquake in Haiti, read this, a piece called "Our Role in Haiti's Plight."

It says, among other things:

Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.

...

The noble "international community" which is currently scrambling to send its "humanitarian aid" to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.

The piece is published on a British website and it primarily talks about the role of the United States, but it all applies to Canada too -- from its role in shipping and military interventions to maintain the slavery-based plantation economy in the Carribbean in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, to its active complicity in the coup against the democratically elected president of Haiti in 2004, to its long-term enthusiastic promotion of neoliberalism on the world stage, the settler society in what is now called "Canada" and its ruling institutions have been actively involved in creating the social conditions that have made this natural disaster so much worse than it had to be.

Mini Video Documentary of John Moore's Struggle for Justice

Check out the following two videos, which are a trailer or mini-documentary made by Ottawa-based filmmaker Samantha Pollock about the case of John Moore, an Ojibway man unjustly convicted of second degree murder who is struggling to clear his name. (See here for further background on the case.) Pollock is using these videos as a basis to seek funding for a full-length documentary.






Note that not all of the voices in the videos are supportive of John's struggle and there is certainly room for a full-length production to flesh out why John and those of us on his support committee see his situation as profoundly unjust, but the videos are still a useful source of basic information about his case, and provide some opportunity to learn about his story directly from him. It also incorrectly states that the entire NDP caucus has signed on to the statement asking for a review of John's conviction by the federal government -- we understand that it will be happening, hopefully soon, but as far as John and the committee are aware it has not actually happened yet. Right now, Glenn Thibeault is the only confirmed endorsement from the caucus.

The full information from the first of the videos:

The first of two parts to a Trailer/ Mini Doc about Ojibwe man, John Caleb Moore's fight for exoneration.

John Moore was convicted of second degree murder for the death of Sault Ste. Marie taxi driver Donald Lanthier.

He spent 10 years in prison, though it is acknolwedged that he was not present at the scene of the murder and two other men were charged with second and first degree counts of murder for stabbing and strangling Lanthier. John and his supporters believe John's story is one of terrible injustice and example of a long standing systemic issue - institutional racism towards aboriginal people in Canada.

This film was produced, written, edited and filmed by Samantha Pollock. A full length film is in the works.

Thandi Fletcher and Brier Dodge were present during the production of this film, and aided in some of the filming.

Please contact Samantha with any information, interest, or insight into the issues raised in this film, or if you are interested in taking part in the full length production. spolloc2@connect.carleton.ca

Rally Against Proroguing in Sudbury

This article from The Sudbury Star, link via Green Sudbury:

Sudburians to voice discontent

A group of Sudburians will join other concerned citizens across Canada on Jan. 23 to rally against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to once again prorogue Parliament.

Parliament was originally supposed to return Jan. 25, but Harper has delayed the return to March 3.

Since then, an army of angry Canadians have joined a Facebook group called Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament has formed -- attracting about 70,000 members as of Wednesday afternoon. Group members are now planning rallies across the country on Jan. 23.

The Sudbury and District Labour Council, along with the local NDP riding association, is organizing a rally in Sudbury that day.

Chris Duncanson-Hales, president of the NDP riding association, said it will give people a chance to voice their discontent.

He said people were still angry about the last prorogation in 2008 -- which Harper requested after a poorly received budget and threats of non-confidence from a coalition of opposition parties.

"Now it seems like it's a routine in order to squelch debate," Duncanson-Hales said.

This time, the Tories said they needed to wipe the slate clean and start fresh with a throne speech and budget. Government sources say they are contemplating formally shutting down Parliament at the end of every year.

That way, the argument goes, the public will have a clear idea what the government plans to achieve for the coming year.

But the opposition says the shutdown is just a ploy to avoid questions about the handling of Afghan detainees and climate change.

"If the Prime Minister's reason for proroguing Parliament was they feel they have to step back and re-evaluate their plan, it shows how shortsighted this government is that they can't think in more than 12-month blocks," Duncanson-Hales said. "There is no long-term plan and that's a real problem. I think it's a huge problem."

Sudbury MPP Glenn Thibeault will be one of the speakers at the Sudbury rally.

Thibeault said it's important for the prime minister to get the message that it's not OK to continue to "snub his nose at democracy."

Thibeault said he also wants his constituents to know he believes he should be back at work in Ottawa in January.

The prime minister campaigned on a platform of accountability.

"Closing the doors and putting a pad lock on Parliament" is not being accountable, Thibeault said.

Details such as the venue and time are yet to be determined. A planning meeting is being held on Tuesday to discuss details of the rally, Duncanson- Hales said.

Sure, the politics of these rallies have significant limitations, but I think it is important to support efforts, even moderate efforts, that help us ordinary people in this atomized, neoliberal era start to reengage with collective mechanisms for putting limits on a government that is, among lots of other awful things, interested in getting away with complicity in torture and assorted war crimes. Please attend if you are in Sudbury, or if your city is having an event on the 23rd!