Leaflet Big Y With Jobs With Justice

Saturday April 19

LEAFLET BIG Ys FOR JUSTICE @ SMITHFIELD

Chicopee store (650 Memorial Drive, near MassPike exit ): 1-2pm; contact Jon, (413) 827-0301, wmjwj@wmjwj.org, for more details for the Chicopee Team, or to do another store.

Amherst store (175 University Drive): Noon-1pm;

Northampton store (136 North King Street - Rt. 5) &/or downtown intersection (Main & Pleasant & King) - team will decide: 1:30-2:30pm;

contact Rose, (413) 320-2028, [or (413) 827-0301, wmjwj@wmjwj.org] for more details for the Amherst/Northampton Team.

THE BIG WHY:

Smithfield Foods has created an environment of intimidation, racial tension, violence, and fear of deportation for workers who want a voice on the job.

Poverty wages, brutal line speeds and other working conditions, crippling injuries, a dictatorship at work - 5,500 workers in Tar Heel, North Carolina, face this every day at the world's largest hog processing plant. They are trying to correct it by forming a union.

Their employer's response got it cited by Human Rights Watch for violating international human rights standards and cited by the National Labor Relations Board and US Court of Appeals for labor law violations.

More info at www.smithfieldjustice.com.

You can help them exercise their right to a union. The local Justice @ Smithfield committee is asking Big Y to stop selling Tar Heel pork (USDA establishment codes: 18079 and [bacon] 79-C).

Stop & Shop, Atkins Farms Country Market (Amherst), State Street Fruit Store and Delicatessen (Northampton), Coopers Corner (Florence), and US Foods at Westover Job Corps (Chicopee) are not offering Tar Heel pork. The Springfield City Council and Mayor have urged all area stores to join in. State Rep. Ben Swan has personally appealed to Big Y.

But when a delegation of religious, community, labor, educational, and student leaders tried to see Big Y's owners, they were kicked out of the Springfield headquarters.

So we're leafleting Big Y customers.

Join us! Info: 827-0301, wmjwj@wmjwj.org.

And you can ask Big Y to stop selling Tar Heel pork at https://www.bigy.com/contact/index.php! Please let us know if you get a reply from Big Y.

No-Match Letters Hurt All Workers

The Bush administration is still pushing for No-Match Letters, a proposed program where Social Security Administration would send employers letters listing Social Security Number (SSN) mismatches. The program would require workers to rectify these mistakes and employers to fire workers who are unable to do so within a specified time period.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the AFL-CIO and other labor organizers have many credible arguements agains this program. It is detailed very consicely and eloquently in this Jobs With Justice video.

Breaking the Chains Program at WBAI

For those who missed it, WBAI (a New York based Peace and Justice Community Radio Station) had an hour-long report on April 1st, 2008, focusing on the war on immigrants. Titled Global Movements, Urban Struggles, the program includes conversations with...

• David Fraccaro, Coordinator of the *Sojourners* Program, a prison visiting program based at Riverside Church, serving primarily immigration detainees at Elizabeth Detention Center (re: needs, including huge gaps in services available to asylum seekers)
  
• Families for Freedom members, including, Ravi Ragbir and Michelle Brane of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (re: the impact of the Intensive Supervised Appearance Program or *ISAP* that recently arrived in NYC)
• Linda Rabben, long time Human Rights activist and author; Khalid Koser fellow in Humanitarian Affairs at the Brookings Institute; and Deputy Director of the Internal Displacement Project at Brookings-Bern; and Dr Esther Ezra Lopatin, Visiting Scholar at Georgetown's Institute for the Study of International Migration (re: comparison of immigration policies and politics in *Europe* to ours)
• Betsy Dewitt, member of Families for Freedom (re: the recent passage of NY City Council Resolution 1250 and upcoming plans to help pass the Child Citizen Protection Act-HR1176 (CCPA)).
  

The program can be downloaded from here, or streamed from here.

May Day Rally

Immigrant Rights Are Human Rights!
Injustice To One Is Injustice To All

May Day Rally

Amherst Common
12 – 2 pm

Northampton City Hall Steps
5 pm

We believe in the human right of family

• 14 million people in mixed status families
• 3 million citizen children with one or both parents undocumented
• Stop tearing families apart!

We believe in the human right to work

• Wages should ensure living with dignity
• Everyone has the right to form and join a union
• Immigrants’ Rights are Workers’ Rights!

We believe in the human right of living with dignity and respect

• Protection from arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home
• Protection from attacks upon honor and reputation
• Immigrants are human beings!

We believe in the human right of recognition as a person before the law

• Protection from torture and cruel or degrading treatment or punishment
• Protection from arbitrary arrest and detention
• Guarantee legal representation and due process
• Equal protection before the law!

For more information please email
wmciwr@gmail.com

Co-Sponsors:
Artists for Justice, SAGE, Western Mass. Jobs With Justice, Western Mass. AFSC, Greensboro Justice Fund, Western Mass. Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Justice, Western Mass. CopWatch

Welcoming Massachusetts

The Welcoming Massachusetts campaign urges individuals, organizations and elected officials to take a moral stand on immigrants and immigration policy. The goal is to collect 10,000 pledges by July 1st, which will then be presented to legislators at the MA State House. The following is the actual pledge.

I commit to publicly reject the politics of division and isolation that fan anger and hate against any person or community and to work towards just, workable and humane immigration policies that are anchored in America’s finest ideals and core values.

Furthermore, I call upon members of the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation and the Administration to enact real solutions to America’s broken immigration system in the first 100 days of the 111th Congress.

Please take a minute to sign this important pledge and show your support for immigrants in Massachusetts.