A couple months ago, Drug War Chronicle ran an interesting story on developments for the Bolivian coca farmers since Evo Morales, a former cocalero union leader, took political office. Things are much better than they were in the days of U.S.-backed forced eradication. But times are still hard in the Chapare:

For more than two decades beginning in the early 1980s, various Bolivian governments working at the behest of the United States government embarked on a policy of forced eradication of coca crops in Bolivia’s Chapare, a lowland region in the state of Cochabamba. It was a time of strife and conflict, human rights violations and peasant mobilizations as tens of thousands of families dependent on the coca crop fought with police and soldiers, blocked highways, and, eventually, coalesced into a powerful political force that helped topple governments. Now, with a Chapare coca growers’ union leader, Evo Morales, sitting in the presidential residence in La Paz, times have changed and the days of a US-imposed zero coca policy are history.

Under US-imposed legislation adopted in 1988, Law 1008, only peasants in the traditional coca growing region of the Yungas were allowed to grow coca, and total coca production was limited to 30,000 acres. But that did not stop peasants from growing coca in the Chapare, where, in the early 1980s, production had boomed during the cocaine coup years of Gen. Luis Garcia Mesa. The development of coca production in this non-traditional, non-allowed area was the most significant target of US-backed forced eradication efforts throughout the 1990s and the beginning of this decade.

… The change actually began in 2004, before Morales was elected president, when then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada signed an accord with coca growers (or cocaleros) aligned with the Six Federations of the Coca Growers of the Tropics of Cochabamba allowing each family to grow one cato (1,600 square meters — about the size of one third of a football field) of coca.

But as part of a broader policy of coca, si; cocaine, no adopted by Morales since he took office just over a year ago, the Bolivian government has in effect turned its back on the 30,000-acre legal production limit, now formally allowing an additional 20,000 acres in the Chapare to be cultivated with coca. But while such measures have brought peace to the region, it remains mired in poverty and desperation, as Drug War Chronicle saw during a visit there this week.

On a small plot of land near Villa Tunari in the Chapare, peasant farmer Vitalia Merida grows coca, along with oranges and bananas, in an effort to feed and clothe her seven children. Times are tough, she said. My kids don’t want to go to school for economic reasons, she told the Chronicle. They want to go and make money. Her oranges and bananas bring only a pittance, she said, while her cato of coca allows her to pocket about $75 month, gaining her about $900 a year — close to the average income in Bolivia, one of South America’s poorest countries.

Despite the constant struggle to earn an income, said Merida, a former Six Federations leader (and still a member), life is better than in the days of forced eradication. We are still poor, but we are free now, she said. It is peaceful now. Before, we waited for the soldiers to come like bandits. They killed us, they took us prisoners.

… While campesinos like Vitalia Merida are struggling, the Morales government is attempting to ease their plight. Part of that effort revolves around helping them get their crop to market. In a coca warehouse just outside nearby Shinahota, cocaleros are drying and weighing the crop in preparation for transport to legal markets in Bolivian cities.

This is our local crop, said Six Federations member Felix Cuba at the warehouse. Under this new program, we are able to sell direct to the cities without middlemen. This means a little more money for us, he told the Chronicle. And it keeps the coca out of the hands of the narcos.

— Drug War Chronicle 2007-03-01: Chronicle on the Scene Feature: In the Bolivian Chapare, Evo Morales’ “Coca, Si; Cocaine No” Policy Brings Peace, If Not Prosperity

With all due respect to Sr Morales and Sr Cuba, that seems like an awful lot of trouble for a set of government programs that are doing only a little to help out poor cocaleros. Perhaps there may be simpler solutions to the difficult problem of how to lift rural coca farmers out of grinding, and sometimes desperate poverty.

For example, why not just back the hell off and let them sell cocaine?

I hear you can make some money at that.

Further reading:

• GT 2004-11-20: The tall poppies
• GT 2007-01-13: The tall poppies, part 2: food, drugs, and female sexual slavery in Afghanistan

We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years

We have fed you all for a thousand years,
And you hail us still unfed,
Though there’s never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest,
And you lie on crimson wool;
But if blood be the price of all your wealth
Good God we have paid in full.

There is never a mine blown skyward now
But we’re buried alive for you;
There’s never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go and reckon our dead by the forges red,
And the factories where we spin;
If blood be the price of your cursèd wealth
Good God we have paid it in.

We have fed you all for a thousand years–
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our husbands and wives,
And called it your legal share;
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth
Good God we bought it fair.

–First printed by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1908. Words by an anonymous proletarian, tune by Rudolph von Leibich

Fellow workers:

Today is May Day, or International Workers Day, a holiday created by Chicago workers–most of them anarchists–to honor the memory of the Haymarket martyrs and to celebrate the struggle of workers for freedom, a better life, and determination of the conditions of their own labor. It’s also the second annual day of strikes and marches for immigrant workers’ rights. May Day is and ought to be a day of resistance against the arrogance and power of the plutocrats. A day to celebrate workers’ struggles for dignity, and for freedom, through organizing in their own self-interest, through agitating and exhorting for solidarity, and through free acts of worker-led direct action to achieve their goals, marching under the banners of We are all leaders here and Dump the bosses off your back . A day to cheer immigrant workers struggling for their own freedom, in defiance of the attempts by La Migra and freelance nativist bullies to silence and intimidate them, marching under the banners We are not criminals, and We are not going anywhere. A day to remember:

There Is Power In A Union

There is power, there is power,
In a band of working folk,
When we stand
Hand in hand.

–Joe Hill (1913)

In honor of the day, it’s a pleasure to recommend some reading from anti-state radicals–from a history of May Day’s American roots at The Agitator (Lauritz, not Balko), to Kevin Carson’s Organized Capital vs. Organized Labor, to Sheldon Richman’s column Labor’s Right to a Free Market. And I’d especially like to recommend Kevin’s simply brilliant earlier column, The Ethics of Labor Struggle: A Free Market Perspective. Kevin’s and Sheldon’s columns do an especially good job of showing the gulf between the managerial style of establishmentarian business unionism–so familiar to us in these the waning days of Babylon, with Wagner and Taft-Hartley carefully arranged to bring the established unions into the web of State privilege and State regulation–with the older, state-free tradition of wildcat unionism that May Day celebrates. Here’s Kevin Carson:

First of all, when the strike was chosen as a weapon, it relied more on the threat of imposing costs on the employer than on the forcible exclusion of scabs. You wouldn’t think it so hard for the Misoids to understand that the replacement of a major portion of the workforce, especially when the supply of replacement workers is limited by moral sympathy with the strike, might entail considerable transaction costs and disruption of production. The idiosyncratic knowledge of the existing workforce, the time and cost of bringing replacement workers to an equivalent level of productivity, and the damage short-term disruption of production may do to customer relations, together constitute a rent that invests the threat of walking out with a considerable deterrent value. And the cost and disruption is greatly intensified when the strike is backed by sympathy strikes at other stages of production. Wagner and Taft-Hartley greatly reduced the effectiveness of strikes at individual plants by transforming them into declared wars fought by Queensbury rules, and likewise reduced their effectiveness by prohibiting the coordination of actions across multiple plants or industries. Taft-Hartley’s cooling off periods, in addition, gave employers time to prepare ahead of time for such disruptions and greatly reduced the informational rents embodied in the training of the existing workforce. Were not such restrictions in place, today’s “just-in-time” economy would likely be far more vulnerable to such disruption than that of the 1930s.

More importantly, though, unionism was historically less about strikes or excluding non-union workers from the workplace than about what workers did inside the workplace to strengthen their bargaining power against the boss.

The Wagner Act, along with the rest of the corporate liberal legal regime, had as its central goal the redirection of labor resistance away from the successful asymmetric warfare model, toward a formalized, bureaucratic system centered on labor contracts enforced by the state and the union hierarchies.

…

It’s time to take up Sweeney’s half-hearted suggestion, not just as a throwaway line, but as a challenge to the bosses. We’ll gladly forego legal protections against punitive firing of union organizers, and federal certification of unions, if you’ll forego the court injunctions and cooling-off periods and arbitration. We’ll leave you free to fire organizers at will, to bring back the yellow dog contract, if you leave us free to engage in sympathy and boycott strikes all the way up and down the production chain, boycott retailers, and strike against the hauling of scab cargo, etc., effectively turning every strike into a general strike. We give up Wagner (such as it is), and you give up Taft-Hartley and the Railway Labor Relations Act. And then we’ll mop the floor with your ass.

— Kevin Carson, The Ethics of Labor Struggle: A Free Market Perspective

That’s just a sampling. You really must read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, in the news, some creep in Washington is wandering around proclaiming Loyalty Day and demanding our renewed allegiance; and while the punch-drunk official unions are begging the government for more favors, the captains of industry are begging the government to keep a tight leash on free association. But the most significant events for labor and for human freedom are happening beyond the noise and spectacle of that gladiatorial arena, in the streets of cities all over the country where workers demand their rights in defiance of the so-called immigration law, and in unrecognized, grassroots unions organized along syndicalist lines, where workers have won concrete gains from the biggest corporations in their industry by operating through the use of creative secondary boycotts. There is a lesson here–a lesson for workers, for organizers, for agitators, and anti-statists. One we’d do well to remember when confronted by any of the bosses–whether corporate bosses or political, the labor fakirs and the authoritarian thugs styling themselves the vanguard of the working class, the regulators and the deporters and the patronizing friends of labor all:

Dump the Bosses Off Your Back

Are you cold, forelorn, and hungry?
Are there lots of things you lack?
Is your life made up of misery?
Then dump the bosses off your back!

–John Brill (1916)

Further reading:

• GT 2006-05-01: May Day 2006: A Day of Resistance
• GT 2005-05-01: May Day, May Day
• GT 2004-05-01: Free the Unions (and all political prisoners)!

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has scored another major victory in their ongoing campaign to improve wages and conditions for Florida tomato-pickers.

McDonald’s USA, the largest fast-food burger business in the nation, Monday reached agreement with a Florida farmworkers organization to pay about 75 percent more for the tomatoes it buys from state farms.

According to McDonald’s and the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, which waged a two-year campaign for the increase, laborers who now receive 40 to 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes will earn about 72 to 77 cents for that measure, a 1 cent per pound increase.

The company said the hike would not cause it to raise its prices at the counter.

The workers coalition said the agreement would affect between 1,000 to 1,500 workers who labor for several Florida tomato growers. It is the second major victory for the farmworkers – similar to a pact reached in 2005 with Yum! Brands, the owner of Taco Bell and other fast food chains. That agreement, according to the coalition, affected about 1,000 workers

This is a very good day for us, Julia Perkins, a spokeswoman for the coalition, said Monday. What it represents is a glimmer of hope that things can change across the country, with Burger King, Wal-Mart and Subway too.

Those chains also are large buyers of tomatoes, and the coalition is pressing them to raise payments to tomato pickers. The farmworker organization announced that the next company it will target for higher wages for pickers is the arch rival of McDonald’s, Miami-based Burger King.

Lucas Benitez, leader of the farmworkers coalition, was participating in a protest caravan heading for the corporate headquarters of McDonald’s in Oak Brook, Ill., near Chicago, to stage demonstrations when the agreement was reached. He said he would continue the caravan.

When we get up there to Chicago we will announce the good news of the agreement with McDonald’s, he said.

…

Farmworkers are some of the lowest paid workers in the country. According to Perkins, before the Taco Bell agreement, wages for tomato pickers had hardly moved in 25 years.

Taco Bell, which resisted the coalition demands for about four years, was the object of a nationwide boycott until it reached its agreement. During the boycott, several universities ordered Taco Bell franchises on their campuses to close their doors.

No boycott had been called yet against McDonald’s. Perkins said the campaign had included some picketing outside McDonald’s franchises, a letter-writing effort and meetings on university campuses and at churches. But she made it clear that the campaign had been heading toward a possible boycott.

Yes, it was looking like the campaign was going to get more aggressive, she said.

Perkins said the details of the agreement had not been completed, but she expected it to work much like the Taco Bell pact. She said that Taco Bell pays the extra penny per pound directly to the workers, who receive a separate, second check — a bonus check — for those Taco Bell tomatoes.

She said the increase did not represent a 75 percent increase in total wages for pickers because many of the tomatoes they pick are destined for other buyers who have not agreed to the increase.

But it can make a difference of 15, 30 or even 100 dollars per week for some workers depending on how many of the tomatoes are heading for McDonald’s, she said.

Benitez said the McDonald’s pact, like the Taco Bell agreement, will ensure that all workers picking McDonald’s tomatoes also will have their human rights and civil rights respected and that a system for protesting workplace violations will be instituted between the coalition and McDonald’s.

…

Benitez identified three growers the pact would affect: Six L’s of Immokalee and Pacific Tomato and Taylor & Fulton, both of Palmetto.

— John Lantigua, Palm Beach Post (2007-04-10): McDonald’s agrees to increase pay for workers who harvest its tomatoes

The CIW isn’t done yet. Taco Bell held out for four years of a long and bitter struggle; the CIW won with McDonald’s after two years of low-intensity pressure that was about to be stepped up into a major campaign. They have already begun to organize their next campaign — to bring Burger King into a similar agreement — and every victory that they win will make the next one faster and easier than the last.

While establishmentarian unions in the AFL-CIO and Change to Win [sic] are fighting (punch-drunk) for their very survival, and begging the political class for yet more government protections, the CIW has won agreements with two of the biggest corporations in their industry — first Yum Brands (owners of Taco Bell) and now McDonald’s — with no government privileges to wield and with members speaking several different languages, organizing across barriers of culture and nationality, amongst workers who are constantly moving and who are amongst the poorest and most exploited workers in the United States. But they’ve won precisely because they aren’t restrained by the smothering patronage of government-approved labor relations: without government recognition, there are no government strings attached, and that has allowed the CIW to make use of fight-to-win tactics — such as secondary boycotts — that are simply illegal for NLRB-recognized unions to use. This win is, in other words, another inspiring example of the real power of wildcat unionism and creative extremism.

Fellow workers, you have both my congratulations and my thanks. Yes, we can do it–ourselves. And we will.

Further reading:

• GT 2006-01-18: Rad Money w/ John Brill
• GT 2005-03-31: Anarquistas por La Causa
• GT 2005-03-23: El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!
• GT 2004-05-01: Free the Unions (and all political prisoners)!
• GT 2001-08-30: Si se puede!

Here’s a notice I received a couple days ago from Amnesty International about a pair of fellow workers recently forced to go into hiding in Zimbabwe out of fear of violence at the hands of the police and the government intelligence agency:

Trade unionists Edward Dzeka and Joyce Muwoni have gone into hiding, after threatening phone calls from the police, who want them to come in for questioning about illegal trade union activities. Edward Dzeka was arrested by the police in September and reportedly tortured. Amnesty International believes he and Joyce Muwoni would be at grave risk of torture if arrested.

Edward Dzeka and Joyce Muwoni are local organizers for the General Agriculture and Plantations Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) in the farming town of Chegutu. Edward Dzeka is also the district chairperson of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). They went into hiding on 3 April after receiving threatening telephone calls from people who said they were officers of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and Central Intelligence Organization (CIO). The ZRP and CIO officers reportedly accused the trade unionists of organizing workers in Chegutu town and on the surrounding farms to take part in the national job stay away’ demonstration organized by the ZCTU on 3-4 April. ZRP and CIO officers called at the GAPWUZ offices on 4 April asking where the two trade unionists were, and later went to look for Edward Dzeka at his home in Chegutu.

Some of the ZRP and CIO officers allegedly threatening Edward Dzeka and Joyce Muwoni are known to the trade unionists. They are believed to be targeting trade union leaders following the national job stay away demonstration.

Edward Dzeka had been arrested with 10 other trade unionists on 13 September 2006 for organizing peaceful protests for the ZCTU. The 11 trade unionists were reportedly tortured by ZRP officers at Chegutu police station. They have been charged under the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and freed on bail.

Amnesty International understands that Edward Dzeka and Joyce Muwoni are being threatened solely for exercising their rights to freedom of association and assembly by organizing a peaceful demonstration as part of their work for GAPWUZ and the ZCTU. The rights to freedom of association and assembly are guaranteed under Section 21 of Zimbabwe’s Constitution, Articles 10 and 11 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Zimbabwe is a state party.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Trade unionists in Zimbabwe operate in the face of severe repression. They cannot freely organize peaceful protests and risk being arrested and tortured by the ZRP and CIO.

On 13 March ZCTU officers Gilbert Marembo and Michael Kandukuti were assaulted by ZRP officers who had arrived at the ZCTU offices with a search warrant allowing them to seize all subversive material found on the premises. The officers were from the Law and Order Section of the Criminal Investigations department based at Harare Central police station. The assault was witnessed by lawyers from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. Police later seized fliers on the planned job stay away demonstrations.

On 13 September 2006 in Harare, ZCTU President Lovemore Matombo, Secretary General Wellington Chibebe and First Vice-President Lucia Matibenga were arrested while attempting to engage in peaceful protest about deteriorating social and economic conditions in Zimbabwe. Other ZCTU members were arrested in Harare, Beitbridge, Bulawayo, Mutare and other urban centers. The day before the protests, in an apparent pre-emptive action, police also arrested a number of ZCTU leaders at their homes and offices in Rusape, Gweru, Chinhoyi and Kariba. (See UA 247/06, 14 September 2006, AFR 46/017/2006.)

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

• calling on the police and CIO to guarantee the safety of Edward Dzeka, Joyce Muwoni and other trade unionists in Chegutu who are being threatened;
• urging the police and CIO to immediately investigate the threats reportedly made to the trade unionists by ZRP officers, and bring those responsible to justice;
• urging the police and the CIO to respect trade unionists’ rights to freedom of association and assembly, guaranteed under Section 21 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, articles 10 and 11 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Zimbabwe is a state party;
• reminding the police and the CIO that torture is prohibited under international law, as well as under Section 15 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, and that those accused of torture will be held accountable.

APPEALS TO:

Provincial Commanding Officer Mashonaland West Province
Zimbabwe Republic Police
P O Box 292,
Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe
Fax: 011 263 6725370
Salutation: Dear Provincial Commanding Officer

Zimbabwe Police Commissioner
Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri
Zimbabwe Republic Police
Police Headquarters
PO Box 8807
Causeway
Harare, Zimbabwe
Fax: 011 263 4 253 212
Salutation: Dear Commissioner

COPIES TO:

General Agriculture and Plantations Workers’ Union
PO Box 1952
Harare, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
P.O. Box 3549
Harare, Zimbabwe

Ambassador Dr. Machivenyika T. Mapuranga
Embassy of the Republic of Zimbabwe
1608 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Washington DC 20009
Fax: 1 202 483 9326
Email: info@zimbabwe-embassy.us
Via website: http://www.zimbabwe-embassy.us/contact.html

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action Office if sending appeals after 17 May 2007.

Here’s the letter that I sent to the local police commander, with copies forwarded to the commissioner, the Zimbabwean Embassy, and to GAPWUZ and ZCTU.

Provincial Commanding Officer Mashonaland West Province
Zimbabwe Republic Police
P O Box 292,
Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe

Dear Provincial Commanding Officer:

I am writing to you today as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, living and working in the United States. I am worried because I heard today that two of my fellow workers, Edward Dzeka and Joyce Muwoni, have gone into hiding after receiving threatening phone calls from people claiming to be officers of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Central Intelligence Organization. These calls reportedly threatened Dzeka and Muwoni in retaliation for organizing workers in Chegutu and on the surrounding farms. It is my understanding that Dzeka and Muwoni are being targeted and threatened by local authorities solely for organizing a peaceful demonstration as part of their work for the General Agriculture and Plantations Workers Union of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.

Dzeka and Muwoni’s peaceful organizing work is an exercise of their inalienable human right to freedom of aassociation and freedom of political assembly, as recognized and protected under Section 21 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, as well as articles 10 and 11 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I urge you to protect the rights of my fellow workers in Zimbabwe–and to live up to Zimbabwe’s constitutional and international treaty obligations–by guaranteeing the safety of Edward Dzeka, Joyce Muwoni, and any other trade unionists in Chegutu subject to similar threats. I also urge the police and CIO to immediately investigate the reports of threats made against trade unionists by ZRP and CIO officers, and bring to justice any officers responsible for making these threats against peaceful union organizers.

My fellow unionists and I are following situation in Zimbabwe with grave concern, sir. They and I would appreciate a reply from you as soon as possible. In view of the above information, we urge you to investigate this situation and act as quickly as possible to assure the safety of trade unionists from threats or violence. Thank you for looking in advance for your time and, I hope, your prompt action in this urgent matter.

Sincerely,
Charles W. Johnson
Member, Industrial Workers of the World IU 640

You can help by writing your own appeal in support of Dzeka and Muwoni. If it helps, you should feel free to rip off my own letter as shamelessly as you like.

Many thanks to Wally Conger (2007-04-04) for pointing this out. The 1980 short documentary Karl Hess: Toward Liberty can now be watched in three parts on YouTube. It’s a fascinating and sympathetic look at Hess — once a Republican columnist and speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, who after 1964 became, by turns, a movement libertarian, anti-war radical, tax resister, anarchist revolutionary, and advocate of decentralism and what we might now call sustainable technology. It’s also a great primer on many of the ideas behind individualist anarchism and left-libertarianism.

My favorite bit from the documentary comes in part 2. Hess says something really profound here which I want to say something about sometime soon. I don’t have all the words for it yet, but I think that this has a close connection — probably a much closer connection than even Hess himself realized — with the solution to the problem that he mentions in another of my favorite Hess quotations — this one from 1982 documentary Anarchism in America. I hope I’ll have more to say about this later, or maybe even sooner.

The ideological revolutions, the kind that we’ve mostly had lately, have as their purpose to seize power. It occurs to me that the really American revolution, would be to destroy power. See, I don’t think of society as some big thing… society is people together making culture, and I think the most crucial part of all the considerations about social matters, is scale: society, in fact, is neighborhoods, and I think it should be that in practice.

–Karl Hess, interviewed in Karl Hess: Toward Liberty (1980)

Anyway, enjoy!

Further reading:

• GT 2006-07-21: Karl Hess on the Country, the State, and a new language of patriotism