Magaly Licolli, co-founder of Venceremos shared her experiences as a workers organizer for poultry workers in the northwest section of Arkansas. Magaly’s work at a non-profit community planning organization revealed the systemic problems facing migrant workers at the various poultry packing plants; mostly owned by Tyson. Some of the problems were disabled workers with no benefits, unstable employment, and harsh, unsafe, and severe working conditions in the middle of the COVID pandemic.

Although mutual aid had been established, the working conditions had not been addressed. As there were no organizations to address this issue, Magaly Licolli began the outreach of connecting with workers that came to her for aid.

As always happens, there came a tipping point. When Tyson increased the “line speed” in December 2020 to make up for the lack of workers due to COVID-19. Thirty workers walked off the line and refused to work that very day.

This is when Venceremos helped out by initiating a strike. The next day, the Tyson plant agreed to decrease the line speed and promised a few other items, such as staggered shifts, sanitizer stations, and protection such as masks. But the struggle had only begun and is going on still.

Currently, the migrant workers in Northwest Arkansas have a distrust of organized unions, due to the various languages among the workers and the inherent isolation from the Arkansas community, Venceremos has adopted a different successful organizing strategy learned from other worker’s-oriented organizations.

“Worker driven social responsibility model” consists of workers making contracts with the supply chain vendors and not their employers. Their working condition complaints go to these intermediaries requesting they be addressed to improve the quality and quantity of the product the vendors receive. This still requires a majority of workers to build a strong base for negotiation, however, it appears that supply chain vendors are more responsive to any problem which might impede their supply of products.

This new approach bears watching to see if it is a model that can be applied elsewhere. To read more, go to https://www.facebook.com/venceremosarkansas/

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It is clear that religious biases have been entrenched into our local and national governments for years; it’s clear that we currently need to fight for a separation of church and state that treats religion as a individual private affair. Any attempt to encroach upon the rights of others becomes the business of others. Who shall stand up for working women in America, surely not the Republicans who, surely not the Democrats who talk of resistance, yet when conflict rises, they collapse and allow our hard earned rights to be eroded. Both parties have clearly shown the only “people” they fight for, are those of Wall Street and big industries.

What working women need is a government that provides financial and social support when it comes to abortions; when pregnancy becomes a risk to a woman’s health, or becomes life threatening; when accidental conception becomes occurs and the woman is in no desire to carry out pregnancy. Here is what women can do to take action.

• Contact your state senators and local representatives
• Join the Women for Racial and Economic Equality (WREE)
• Stage demonstrations

Women have a rich progressive history in America and worldwide, we must struggle to advance and defend democratic rights won by working women. No to the erosion of working women’s rights! No to patriarchy!

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In Northern Minnesota, the oil giant Enbridge Energy is attempting to construct Line 3 pipeline to extract oil from Canada’s tar sands region. Line 3 will transport hundreds of thousands of barrels of tar sands crude oil each day. Tar sands crude oil is some of the dirtiest oil in existence and will carry a massive carbon footprint that would exceed that of the whole state of Minnesota.

The Ojibwe people, who will be greatly impacted by this, live in both Canada and the United States, across the Great Lakes. In Minnesota, they have seven reservations called Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, White Earth and Red Lake. Several treaties with the Ojibwe people to formalize their right to gather along the proposed route for the pipeline, hunt and fish are in violation. Two hundred bodies of water will be crossed by the pipeline, including the Mississippi River.

We must fight against Line 3

The battle against Line 3 has lasted for seven years now. Long lasting grassroots organizing against it continue to take public actions, which result in many arrests. Some of the water protector groups include Native American Anishinaabe (Obiwbe) organizations, Honor the Earth, Gitchi Gumi Scouts, and Rise Coalition. Since the beginning, thousands of people have written letters to Army Corps of Engineers’ Jaime Pinkham, organized in their communities, educated their neighbors, protested, and showed up at hearings. We need to stand with them to do the same.

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It was an honor to participate in your Zoom meetings and get to know the work and accomplishments of the Pakistan Department of Peace.

Pakistan has a great role to play in the world on the issue of peace, being a nuclear power and occupying a strategic position in South Asia, near the Middle East and the nuclear powers of India and China. Just as Pakistan and the United States have a close military relationship, it is important that the Pakistan Department of Peace and the US Department of Peace, being in the ‘belly of beasts’, have a close working relationship to mitigate the military presence of our respective countries.

We thoroughly enjoyed reading your manifesto, and learned a great deal from it about the important issues of economic justice, women’s empowerment, denuclearization/demilitarization, climate action and youth. We look forward to working closely with you and participating in your webinars on these issues. We also look forward to visits by Ali Muhammad Khan and other leaders of the Pakistan Department of Peace to us in the US, and hope to have an opportunity to visit you in Pakistan.

At this historical juncture the US and China, two of the world’s biggest nuclear powers are at odds with each other. India and Pakistan, two other large nuclear nations are in conflict. And the US military is now-in, now-out of Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East creating so much destabilization and war. The role of the Pakistan Department of Peace is globally critical, so we hope together with US Department of Peace to be able to march forward with these three points:

1. The Pakistan Department of Peace and the US Department of Peace working together to encourage other countries to establish their own Departments of Peace
2. Then all Departments of Peace affiliating and jointly opening an office in the United Nations with consultative status;
3. Each respective national Department of Peace leading their government to abide by their own Department of Peace Manifesto/Mission/Vision to carry on the work in their country.

Peace and Economic Justice for the whole of humanity.

Nuri Ronaghy — Co-Founder, US Department of Peace
Alan Shorb — Co-Founder, US Department of Peace

To download the original PDF of this letter, click here.

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Described by the Chicago Police Department as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters,” Lucy Parsons is a strong example of woman leadership in union work. She was enslaved early in her life and consistently participated in activism for the homeless, women of color, political prisoners, and lead marches for seamstresses. Along with her husband, Albert Parsons, she helped found the International Working People’s Association and was one of the first female members of the Industrial Worker of the World (IWW).

American women were some of the first to workers to form unions in the Industrial Revolution after being thrown into the workforce. Unions were a way for working women to bring about change in the labor movement, especially at a time when voting was not permitted. For example, women textile workers took on the first of America’s labor strikes, reform groups, and protests. They fought to change grueling fourteen-hour shifts, dangerous conditions, and extremely low wages. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union formed through uniting with male co-workers to achieve higher wages and shorter hours.

Woman-dominated sectors of labor such as nursing, retail, and service entailed lower wages and longer hours after women lost their former jobs once World War II ended. Such conditions, as well as sexist views of women in the workforce, gave birth to the second wave of feminism. The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) formed as a fierce advocate for women in the workforce; seeking to increase female participation and leadership in unions. Many issues in the workforce specifically effecting women were addressed, such as equal pay, nondiscriminatory hiring, paid family leave, and sexual harassment.

Women have worked hard to fight for equal rights and opportunities as men in the workplace. Under the chains of capitalism, unfair treatment and exploitation will always be commonplace. A woman’s place is not only in the workforce or the union, but also in the revolution to destroy capitalism.

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After all, the United States Government and the corporations it serves have been the main cause for pollution of our environment; leading to the climate index that we are at now. In fact, the United States military is the #1 polluter, with constant wars being fought for oil and other natural resources, use of atomic weaponry and constant destruction of nature. The United States also lacks proper legislation to hold corporations accountable for their negative environmental impact, in fact, Congress has worked to ease regulations in place for these big corporations, leading to the acceleration of our climate crisis.

Currently women, including older women, have been suffering health wise throughout this heat wave. Women in agriculture have been forced to work at night to avoid the brutal heat, which carries its own risks. Supervisors have refused women the proper breaks to avoid getting heat stroke, leaving those to perish for profit.

Women who work minimum wage and are unable to get healthcare, are left to take care of themselves. Our care system for older women has been left neglected and starved, all due to the neoliberal policies over the years. Right now we need to address the climate crisis with no further delay, further delay will only cost more lives and leave us with a world that is becoming less habitable.

We demand:

1. Reducing the war budget and placing the money towards human needs
2. A federal healthcare service to all regardless of income
3. Boosting the care system for older women
4. Stronger environmental regulations that carry higher penalties
5. A shift to a cleaner energy system

At WREE we are committed to fighting against the injustice being done to, not only women, but the entire working class. There is a choice between sacrificing our environment and health for profit, or the option of dismantling big business once and for all; where workers alike are in control of everyday society. WREE is one of the ways women in the workforce can fight to make a life saving difference for all working people.

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What kind of demands are they making? They’re making demands for more breaks, more hiring on Tyson’s part to make up of a lack of workers, less exposure to chemicals and more protections for workers in dangerous roles, as well as adjusting the line speed in the factory so as not to injure or wear out the workers. On top of that, they are staging a call to action for medical rights in Tyson. Tyson has a medical staff for injured workers, a staff they are forcing workers to report to. That staff is also telling workers they cannot report their injuries to any other practitioner not associated with Tyson. These are basic workers rights that Tyson is denying its workers. Rights that the Venceremos, headed by Magaly, are fighting to attain.

Who does the organizing? Organizing is done with the workers under Magaly’s leadership. The workers are in full agreement with the organizing and calls to action. It seems the workers have had enough abuse, and are more than willing to make a stand and demand rights they should rightfully have. Allies are welcome to support the movement, but the organizing is not done with allies. Organizing is done by and with the workers of the plant, while allies can help to put more pressure on Tyson.

This movement under Magaly shows her excellent leadership and organizing skills, and it reflects on women everywhere. It shows that women have just as much of a role in organizing, if not more so, as men do. It shows how powerful women are in the labor movements. The workers have had enough at Tyson, and Magaly’s leadership is showing them they deserve more.

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Hindsight is 20/20 they say. Looking back, there were so many signs that her words of unity and female empowerment were just a front. She would close a little early on some days and say things like, “Hey! It’s a beautiful day! Don’t you want to spend time with your family? Go home!” – and yeah… of course I want to go home and spend time with my family! But, I also need the money that I’m all of a sudden not going to make because you felt like it was too sunny to work! After a few days of this “gracious early release” from work, I brought my concerns up to her. She said that it never even crossed her mind that I needed the hours! She said she would allow me to stay in the closed building to work the rest of my shift. I could just “find something to do ”. That was the first crack in her image. She’s not like us.

My coworker, who had been working for my boss longer than me, was telling me about her future plans with her and her daughters after her upcoming raise. I say “working for ” but technically she was “contracted”. In her contract she was not allowed to work for other agencies or to practice with any of the clients that went to this office and she was also only allowed to negotiate her base pay every 2 years, so technically not an employee but it sure sounded like my boss was her boss to me! She was going to talk to our boss next week and I was so excited for her!

One day my coworker came out of the bathroom at the office with red eyes. I asked her what’s wrong and in a whispered voice said, “She said no.” I gave her a confused look. She responded in an even quieter voice, “I’m not supposed to talk to you about it and she’s in her office so she might hear me.” She walked away looking defeated and pissed off.

I asked her to lunch. And there she let her story and emotions out. At the end of it all, I asked her why she thought my boss said no. She shrugged her shoulders and as she let out a sigh she said, “She’s not like us.” I asked her what she meant. She went on, “She doesn’t know what it’s like to not have money or enough money. She’s not lazy, but she was born rich, she lives rich, and she’ll probably die rich too.” We both sat in silence for a bit to ponder what she had just said. It clicked. She’s not like us. We’re part of the working class and grew up in the working class. We didn’t have parents who came from wealth that set us up with money for school or businesses. We didn’t depend on not paying workers enough so that we could make a profit. And we couldn’t just leave early for work to go spend time with our families on a sunny day.

I gave her a hug. She finished her contract and left that office. I never got the chance to thank her for the lessons she taught me. I could never find the right words. But I think about her sometimes and I think about my boss too. We were both women with families but she chose to feed her family off of my labor and the labor of my sister coworkers while I had no choice but to sell my time and work to her for pennies back. She’s not like us.

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Liberalism and the Limits of Identity Politics

Democrats have boasted about progress and appealing to the LGBT+ community, but it’s merely a cynical ploy that has been used as a tactic to suppress the movement for Queer Liberation. The Democratic Party on the surface appears to be the benefactor while continuing to support policies that affect the LGBTQ+ community, both as part of the working class and as LGBT+.

For example Kamala Harris has been responsible for locking up trans women (especially black trans women), Biden has continued supporting the historically racist system of policing in the United States, the Biden Administration also proposed an LGBT+ protection law that allows Religious Schools to continue to engage in discriminatory behavior, state governments are passing laws that discriminate against transgender individuals and the Biden Administration is continuing to fund wars of aggression.

It is clear that the Democrats have shown they only engage in identity politics when it cynically allows them to keep up the act of being inclusive; yet the administration has done nothing to improve the lives of working LGBT+ people. There has been no increase in the minimum wage or improvement to working conditions. Identity politics leaves out class in exchange for hollow platitudes. It is time we show working class LGBT+ peoples that the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans, despite their attempts to claim otherwise.

Real Change for Working Class LGBT+

What is needed is to take the fight towards the wealthy elite whom the government currently represents. During this pride month it is time to form a real workers oriented queer liberation movement with these demands in mind:

1. A Nationalized Health Care Service
2. A minimum wage of at least $15
3. Full job benefits like paid fraternal and maternal leave
4. A hefty divestment from foreign wars toward heavy investment in domestic affairs
5. Free public education from K-12 to college.
6. A divestment away from policing and ending police immunity
7.  LGBT+ Anti-discrimination laws that provide full protection with no exceptions 
8. A separation of Church and State
9. A focus towards rehabilitation instead of mass incarceration 
10. Equal pay for equal work

It is the duty as working class LGBT+ peoples to raise awareness and continue the struggle against big business/big tech that only seek to maximize profits, while struggling against capitalism’s attempt to divide and exploit. As a working class we are stronger together.

Going Back to the Roots of Pride Month

Another important thing is to continue the fight against co-optation of Pride by the likes of big business that continues to fund anti-LGBT+ groups and police who, under capitalism, seek to only protect the interests of big business and keep the working class suppressed. It is time to join a mass organization that fights for the demands of the working class LGBT+ community! Join WREE today!

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Out of about 100 staff members, 80 are women. Nurses and CNAs are overworked and underpaid to an extent that many lose patience and become discouraged with their caseload. Without a doubt, the reputation of nursing homes stems from conditions caused by misogyny, ageism, capitalism, and ableism. The important role of women as caretakers is taken for granted, as well as the need for those they serve.

The current nursing home I work for was one of the first in the state of West Virginia to experience COVID-19. No one knew how to effectively prepare as little was known about the virus. Eventually, over 50 staff and residents became infected with COVID-19 and it took a very long time with diligent efforts to eradicate it in our facility.

The first facility I worked for offered no hazard pay for their workers. CNAs continued to only make $11 an hour for the grueling work they put in every day. Housekeepers made the minimum wage; $8.75 an hour. A facility full of exhausted, frustrated staff effected the wellbeing of residents who already struggled with being in quarantine. On the other hand, the one I currently work for provided an extra $5 on the hour. CNA’s typically making $12 an hour were now making $17 an hour. Housekeepers typically making $11 were making $16 an hour.

In addition, all staff was compensated with an extra $2 an hour for working nightshift. The workload was remarkably similar with typically 20 patients relying only on one nurse and two aides, at times, only one. However, receiving a fair wage and being shown appreciation made a difference in patient care.

Flash forward a year later, hazard pay has been taken away. Many have quit or walked out since the drop in pay. I am a counselor but was recently asked to administer COVID-19 tests on staff and family visitors due to the significant shortage in nursing staff.

Nursing homes are a prime example of how traditional women’s occupations are underappreciated. The important role of women as caretakers is taken for granted in comparison to roles typical for men. In addition, a vast majority of nursing home residents are women. The issue of women’s needs being neglected extends into old age. If we were always paid a fair wage and given the support we need, perhaps nursing homes would not have the terrible reputations they do.

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