Domestic workers and family members, in front of the mural wall at El Centro Humanitario. (photo credit: El Centro Humanitario)

The long awaited report on domestic labor in Colorado, entitled ON THE JOB WITH DOMESTIC WORKERS:  Workplace Abuse and Worker Exploitation in Colorado’s Invisible Workforce, by Prof. Tony Robinson, and graduate students Jessie Dryden and Heather Gomez-Duplantis, was formally released on Tuesday, November 27, 2012, at El Centro Humanitario.  A pdf of the report can be found here:

http://www.centrohumanitario.org/domestic_worker_study.pdf

It is difficult to read, due to the page layout, but worth the effort, especially for those who have no personal knowledge of this type of work.  The report includes and is based on personal interviews with domestic workers who are and have been employed in Colorado.  Similar research projects have been recently and concurrently undertaken in other parts of the U.S., with an eye to finding ways to combat abuses faced by domestic laborers.  This is the first such study of domestic labor conducted locally, in Colorado.

There is one criticism I would make.  The suggested remedies are not necessarily effective in other types on low-paid employment and probably would not provide relief for domestic workers.  A worker's security lies in visibility and the ability to walk away.  For most people who undertake domestic labor, neither factor is present, as the report itself documents in several places.

(this appears to be almost two years old, but, due to the course of events, it is circulating again)

Gaza Youth Breaks Out With a 'Manifesto for Change"

by Gaza Youth Breaks Out

GAZAN YOUTH’S MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE

Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA!

We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom. We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.

The Obama administration released updated statistics today that indicated that, as of yesterday, 53,273 undocumented youths have received relief under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

As of Nov. 15, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had received more than 300,000 requests for deferred action. Most of those applicants are still awaiting the completion of background checks.

The figures the administration released didn't indicate either how many beneficiaries have received work permits under the program or whether any requests for deferred action have been denied.

DACA directs U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to practice prosecutorial discretion towards those who came to the United States without documents as minor children.

At the rate the agency is processing applications, it appears likely that more than 100,000 requests for deferred action will be granted by the end of the year.

To be eligible for the DACA program an applicant must be under 31 years of age and present in the U.S. by June 15 of this year and came to the U.S. before age 16. Applicants must have continuously resided in the U.S. since June 15, 2007, they must have attended school or served in the military and have no serious criminal record.

Anti-Israel activist Michael Rabb has called upon the community to protest Jews worshipping at Synagogue on their holy Sabbath. Its not anti-Semetic. Its anti-israel. He writes: Ask Jews and all Americans to renounce their support for Israel: stand vigil in front of Congregation Bonai Shalom, 1527 Cherryvale Road in Boulder, Saturday, Nov. 17, 9:30 a.m. Ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a crime against humanity that was conceived and perpetrated as part of the Zionist project to create the Jewish state of Israel. As a result of ethnic cleansing, most of the indigenous population of Palestine has been expelled. They, or their descendants, now live as refugees or exiles in foreign countries. About 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their native land in 1948. These expulsions were done by Zionist armies using terror, home destruction, starvation, fear inducing propaganda and threats of death. Over 500 Palestinian villages were ethnically cleansed and destroyed by Zionist armed forces at that time. In defiance of UN resolutions, none of these Palestinian refugees were allowed to return. Another wave of ethnic cleansing occurred after the 1967 war when several hundred thousand residents of the West Bank were pushed into Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. And these crimes are not past tense. The ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of Palestine continues today! State ownership of more than 90 percent of all the land in Israel is explicitly instituted to privilege Jews and bar Palestinians from living in Israel. Israel continues to demolish Palestinian homes, confiscate Palestinian property and build Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land. Ongoing Israeli colonization and the oppressive matrix of control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are designed and administered to push Palestinians off their land and out of their country. Of course, Israel continues to deny the basic human right of return to millions of Palestinian refugees.

(Reposted from: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/l... )

Anonymous

There appears to be a trend in radical circles of distinguishing prisoners based on their so-called ‘crimes’, with the intent (conscious or not) to identify ‘political prisoners’ who, by virtue of their actions, are more deserving of support and solidarity. Prisoners who have been targeted by the state due to their political beliefs and/or actions are given special attention amongst radicals, while the rest of the prison population spending their days in a cage are often only an afterthought, used as a means to lend credibility to political ideology, or completely forgotten.

This privileged and moralistic practice has invaded radical circles and creates a distinction between ‘political’ and ‘ordinary’ prisoner. Political prisoners are said to have been imprisoned unjustly, unlike the rest of the prison population. This can manifest either as an insistence of their innocence (as in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal), or, in cases in which the prisoner has obviously broken the law, they are viewed as acting only in response to unjust laws or conditions (as in the case of Walter Bond). In both cases, their innocence is maintained.

But stating that some prisoners are innocent implies that others are guilty and deserve their punishment, that some unjust laws should be broken, while others should be upheld. This distinction requires predefined ideas of what is right and wrong and the application of those ideas in all situations and to all individuals, regardless of context. This process of taking subjective ideas, reifying them as universal moral principles and claiming their objectivity is no different than the state claiming that to uphold their laws is to uphold ‘justice’.

We Americans have come to expect extraordinary events to occur before an important election day. When a National election is in play, however, the attempts to sway voter opinions assume more demonstrative proportions, whether from without or within, becoming what has euphemistically been called an “October Surprise."

Both political parties will typically withhold their most precious “bullets” until the final days for maximum effect, but occasionally the “firepower” comes from true investigative reporting. Greg Palast, an economist and financial investigator turned journalist, supported by the Nation Institute, the Puffin Foundation, and by others, recently published a revealing article in “The Nation," detailing how former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his donors held the auto industry hostage after President Obama’s auto bailout. These “opportunists” raked in billions from their underhanded shenanigans.

The article, entitled “Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza,” is a testament to how money moves in the “shadows," far from public scrutiny, to enrich special interest groups, private equity funds, and material contributors to political campaigns. The central figure in this “expose” is Paul Singer, who has been labeled by the press as a “vulture investor” for preying on distressed companies and countries by buying their debt for pennies on the market and then demanding full payment from the issuers. Fortune magazine goes further to describe him as a “passionate defender of the 1%," earning his reputation by “strong-arming his way to profit.”

We talk about these things not to toot our own horn, but with the hope that other companies will see the value in using business to help protect wild nature and improve human society. If you think your employer could benefit from similar programs, please encourage them to join 1% For the Planet. For the full scoop, download the Environmental Initiatives Booklet (17mb PDF; right-click to download) or hit the jump to browse a Flash-based version before downloading. Click on the arrows to turn the pages, or on the booklet to see a larger version. For optimum readability, download the PDF. Get your own - Open publication