Author: mopress

The Court rules that the voters of Laredo were divided from each other in order to empower a Republican encumbent.

“…changes to District 23 served the dual goals of increasing Republican seats and protecting the incumbent Republi-can against an increasingly powerful Latino population that threat-ened to oust him, with the additional political nuance that he wouldbe reelected in a district that had a Latino majority as to voting age population, though not a Latino majority as to citizen voting age population or an effective Latino voting majority. The District 23 changes required adjustments elsewhere, so the State created new District 25 to avoid retrogression…”
Justice Kennedy Leads the Majority

“After the 2002 election, it became apparent that District 23 as then drawn had an increasingly powerful Latino population that threatened to oust the incumbent Republi-can, Henry Bonilla. Before the 2003 redistricting, the Latino share of the citizen voting-age population was 57.5%, and Bonilla’s support among Latinos had dropped with each successive election since 1996. Session, 298 F. Supp. 2d, at 488–489. In 2002, Bonilla captured only 8% of the Latino vote, ibid., and 51.5% of the overall vote. Faced with this loss of voter support, the legislature acted to protect Bonilla’s incumbency by changing the lines—and hence the population mix—of the district. To begin with, the new plan divided Webb County and the city ofLaredo, on the Mexican border, that formed the county’s population base. Webb County, which is 94% Latino, had previously rested entirely within District 23; under the new plan, nearly 100,000 people were shifted into neighboring District 28. Id., at 489. The rest of the county, approximately 93,000 people, remained in District 23. To replace the numbers District 23 lost, the State added voters in counties comprising a largely Anglo, Republican area in central Texas. Id., at 488. In the newly drawn district, the Latino share of the citizen voting-agepopulation dropped to 46%, though the Latino share of the total voting-age population remained just over 50%.”

“Against this background, the Latinos’ diminishing electoral support for Bonilla indicates their belief he was “unresponsive to the particularized needs of the members of the minority group.” Ibid. (same). In essence the State took away the Latinos’ opportunity because Latinos were about to exercise it. This bears the mark of intentional discrimination that could give rise to an equal protection violation. Even if we accept the District Court’s findingthat the State’s action was taken primarily for political, not racial, reasons, Session, supra, at 508, the redrawing of the district lines was damaging to the Latinos in District 23. The State not only made fruitless the Latinos’ mobilization efforts but also acted against those Latinos who were becoming most politically active, dividing them with a district line through the middle of Laredo.”

Dissent by the New Chief Justice

“What is blushingly ironic is that the district preferred by the majority—former District 23—suffers from the same “flaw” the majority ascribes to District 25, except to a greater degree. While the majority decries District 25 because the Latino communities there are separated by“enormous geographical distance,” ante, at 29, and are “hundreds of miles apart,” ante, at 35, Latino communities joined to form the voting majority in old District 23 are nearly twice as far apart. Old District 23 runs “from El Paso, over 500 miles, into San Antonio and down into Laredo. It covers a much longer distance than . . . the 300miles from Travis to McAllen [in District 25].” App. 292 (testimony of T. Giberson); see id., at 314 (report of T. Gib-erson) (“[D]istrict 23 in any recent Congressional plan ex-tends from the outskirts of El Paso down to Laredo, dipping into San Antonio and spanning 540 miles”). So much for the significance of “enormous geographical distance.” Or perhaps the majority is willing to “assume” that Latinos aroundSan Antonio have common interests with those on the Rio Grande rather than those around Austin, even though San Antonio and Austin are a good bit closer to each other (less than 80 miles apart) than either is to the Rio Grande.*

–From today’s Supreme Court decision in LULAC vs. Perry. Get the decision in pdf from The Court

Jenny LaCoste-Caputo of the San Antonio Express-News breaks word that the lawyer who filed the last school-funding lawsuit in Texas is preparing a new one.

“David Thompson, former general counsel for the Texas Education Agency and attorney for West Orange-Cove ISD, whose lawsuit was the subject of the Supreme Court ruling, said a second lawsuit claiming the new business tax amounts to a personal income tax, is imminent.”
LaCoste-Caputo reports this little gem in the middle of a story about San Antonio area school superintendents who are finding that the so-called funding solution passed by the lege this year doesn’t do much besides solve the state’s need to comply technically with the last lawsuit filed by Thompson.

“That’s a real concern, not just immediately but in the long term,” said one super. “We’ve gone so long without any additional revenue for maintenance and operations. We’ve cut and cut and cut some more; meanwhile our fuel costs, our utility costs, everything is going up every year.”

“Lawmakers passed this with no real understanding of what these new taxes would generate,” said another super. “There are a lot of traps in this law.”

Which is why we spend so little time on legislative shenanigans when it comes to school funding. The main purpose of the last session seemed intent to produce lying headlines, with bad faith so heavy as to crush all scales of measurement.

Here’s what Thompson told the Dallas Morning News in May:

“David Thompson, a lead attorney for school districts in the lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court’s ruling, said that the plan will definitely require monitoring on issues of adequacy and equity. Still, he said, the Legislature has ‘done something that is very significant, and I personally applaud them.’ “

by Greg Moses

CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

Workers at maquiladora factories in Mexico told recent visitors from Texas that they are sometimes asked to undo their work entirely or spend long hours in isolated spaces.

“These tactics are a new level in the psychological game, to get people used to the idea that they are kind of owned and really don’t have any worth apart from the company,” says Howard Hawhee, who helped to coordinate a listening tour in late May.
“These kinds of stories are very bizarre,” says Judith Rosenberg, who has been organizing tours across the border since 1999. “These are management techniques that someone compared to Hitler.”

For example, Hawhee and Rosenberg say women in maquiladoras report that they are sometimes asked to prove they are not pregnant by showing proof of menstruation.

“They are very distasteful management techniques,” says Rosenberg. “And you have to call them that because they are used very methodically. This business with the sanitary napkins is outrageous, and people feel the attack on their dignity, the women do. And the men do too.”

In an interview conducted in Austin after they returned (published at stateofnature.org) Hawhee and Rosenberg said they also heard new stories about workers who were directed to undo work or pass their shifts in isolation.

“One is they would have a whole section of people in a factory that for instance manufactures seat covers or seat belts,” reported Hawhee. “And they would do a whole day’s worth of work, you know, sew everything. And the next day when they came back their job was to un-sew it all. Just to make the point that ‘okay, we don’t need you. We just got you around because we like having you around, and that’s all’.”

“Another worker, and I think I heard more than one example of this while I was down there, he said he’d been insisting on some rights that he had under the Mexican Federal Labor Law,” Hawhee continued.

“And the management had been telling him no, so he kind of dug in his heels and wasn’t backing down, so he’d show up to work for his shift and he’d be there for a full day and get paid, but his job was that they would take him to a small room, maybe a six by ten foot room and lock him in. And that’s what he did. And they’d only let him out on breaks and at the end of his shift.”

In response to this escalation in the psychological intensity of management control, Hawhee said workers were asking for help with corporate research.

“So right now there is a period where they are looking to figure out how to do some economic analysis,” says Hawhee, reporting that this is also a new feature of the conversation he is encountering.

Says Hawhee, Mexican workers want to know from workers in the USA, “What kinds of tricks get played? And economically speaking, realistically, where are they? What should we be doing on this end?”

“They’ve got some very specific pieces of information they want so that they can do an analysis and figure out what buttons to push and what buttons not to push,” says Hawhee.

“Realistic” is a word Hawhee used to describe the workers’ attitudes. They want a better life, so they don’t want to act in ways that will run the companies out of town.

“We’re looking for some human dignity,” says Hawhee reflecting the voices he has heard. “We’re looking to be treated like human beings. And we expect to have a modicum of well being in our lives, and especially for our children. And we really don’t mind doing this kind of work, working really hard, and that sort of thing, but we want to be treated right and we want to think that this is going somewhere.”

Rosenberg organizes four trips per year to the maquiladoras, resuming in October. She has avoided public relations tours of factories, preferring to listen to workers.

“We never go in,” says Rosenberg. “It’s harder and harder to get in. But either way, you get a public relations tour and we’ve never wanted to do that. We have this position that if you want to know what’s going on inside the factories, ask the workers. And don’t ask them while they’re in the factories, because they won’t be able to tell you then. There’s somebody breathing down their neck.”

Instead, Rosenberg organizes small tours that pass through worker neighborhoods where visitors from the USA can listen to stories of life and work. She co-founded Austin Tan Cerca (Austin So Close) as a way to support workers’ rights and fight sweatshop conditions in the maquiladoras. In addition to the tours, the group sends money to support an organizer and office in the border town of Piedras Negras.

Rosenberg was drawn into the activism after meeting Mexican labor organizer Julia Quinones of the Comite Fronterizo de Obreras (Border Committee of Workers).

“It’s been a very important thing for me,” says Rosenberg. “I think it’s historically extremely important to all of us, and we don’t know about it.”

The complete interview has been pulished as part of the Empire edition of the online journal State of Nature:

http://stateofnature.org/listeningAcross.html

A recent report from the Dallas Fed shows that the maquiladora towns of Acuna and Piedras Negras have been struggling with long-term employment declines, while Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, and Juarez appear to be climbing out of their downturns.

Reynosa is the only maquiladora town near Texas that has demonstrated steady growth since 2000, but Kyle Arnold of the McAllen Monitor reports that Reynosa’s employment growth has cooled in recent months.

“The slowdown in job growth could be due to a slowing economy in the United States and fears of rising interest, said Keith Patridge, president and CEO of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, a group that tries to bring new jobs and business to both sides of the border,” writes Arnold in a June 27 dispatch.

According to the Dallas Fed, employment in the textile sector across the border from Texas has been steadily losing ground, while machinery, chemicals, and transportation are showing strong growth in recent years. Services, furniture, and electronics also trend upward, but less dramatically, following downturns in the early years of the new century.

McAllen Monitor: “Maquilla hiring rate slowing down” (June 27,2006) Kyle Arnold, Monitor Staff Writer

Dallas Fed: Hot Stats – Maquiladora Employment (June 2006)

Keyword maquiladora turns up an announcement on today’s PRWeb that a maquiladora company has been certified to ship materials into the USA even in the event of a terrorist attack, thanks to a certification from the USA Department of Homeland Security.

The company, Am-Mex products, is the subject of a press release by security-systems provider FreelineUSA. In the press release, FreelineUSA announces that it has installed an “IP centric, video security and VoIP communications system” at the Am-Mex “Shelter campus” in Reynosa, MX.

“Am-Mex has been certified and validated under the C-TPAT program (C-TPAT – Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) as a Foreign Related Manufacturer,” reports the FreelineUSA press release.

“This certification signifies that their Shelter campus in Reynosa, Mexico is a secure environment that works along with the Department of Homeland Security to prevent terrorism.

“Additionally, Am-Mex Products is C-TPAT certified as a U.S. Importer of Record for their McAllen facility and Highway Carrier for their truck fleet.

“Under the C-TPAT protocol, should another terrorist attack similar to 9/11 occur, Am-Mex’s C-TPAT certification of their facilities and supply chain (Reynosa manufacturing plant, trucks and US warehouse) enables crossing the border through the C-TPAT FAST lanes— with raw materials and finished goods, keeping production lines running and customer deliveries on time.”

FreelineUSA’s IP Centric, FL-USA 500 Video Surveillance Assists Am-Mex Products in Clearing the Hurdle of Tight U.S. Custom’s Mexican Border Security Controls (C-TPAT Program), press release dated June 30, 2006