SWOPblogger

February 15, 2007
Westlake, Louisiana
Contact: Saket Soni, (504) 881-6610

Hurricane Katrina Survivors Join Workers in Confronting Louisiana Slave Holder

Close to 100 Mexican guestworkers have been trapped for months in Westlake, Louisiana after their employer illegally confiscated their passports. Workers were recruited under false pretenses and transported to the U.S. where they have been subjected to humiliating conditions and treatment. Workers and advocates allege that the employer, a prominent business leader, has violated anti-slavery and human trafficking laws while leasing the workers to local businesses for a profit.

Already vulnerable and economically desperate in their home country, the workers were defrauded by the employer who promised steady work and fair pay in the U.S. He charged them for airfare to the U.S., and proceeded to pack them into vans across the border. He seized their passports in Mexico, ostensibly for their own safety. Despite numerous requests by the workers, this business owner has steadfastly refused to return the passports in effect holding them captive in his employ. Workers who have organized to demand their passports have faced retaliation and threats of deportation.

Hurricane Katrina survivors and African-American civil rights leaders will join the guest workers to confront the employer and take a stand against modern day slavery. The group is demanding that the employer return the workers' passports. The groups is also challenging government officials to recognize that the H-2B visa program is being used as an opportunity to subject workers to slave-like conditions across Louisiana.

In advance of the confrontation, Katrina survivors and workers have alerted the US Attorney General, US Department of Justice, US Department of Labor, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other state and local law enforcement agencies of the practices of this prominent Louisiana slaveholder

Who: Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity

Mexican Guestworkers on H-2B Visas
Hurricane Katrina Survivors
African-American Civil Rights Leaders
New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice

New Orleans Survivor Council

What: Guestworkers & Katrina Survivors Pressure Employer to Return Passports or Face Legal Consequences

Visual: Guestworkers & Katrina Survivors Will Approach Employer Armed With Copies of Federal Anti-Slavery Statute and Handcuffs

When: February 15, 2007 at 12:30 PM

Where: 1508 S. Beglis Parkway, Sulphur, Louisiana 70663.

(02-13) 04:00 PST Los Alamos, New Mexico -- With the Bush administration and Congress fighting over how to rebuild the nuclear weapons complex, one of the country's top weapons designers said he believes it is time for the United States to consider a radical shift in policy that would ultimately eliminate the nuclear arsenal.

Joseph Martz, leader of a team designing a new generation of warheads at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a series of interviews last week that he is troubled by how the debate on nuclear weapons policy in Washington is focused narrowly on the number of weapons needed for the future, and how they would be built, rather than on how to eradicate them entirely.

Lab officials originally refused to give Martz permission to be interviewed for this article. Martz, however, said he decided to speak anyway in order to press ideas that he believes can reduce the risk of nuclear war and carve out a central role for the weapons labs, which have been threatened with budget cuts. Martz emphasized that he was expressing only his personal views and not those of the lab. But his comments still represent the first time in recent years that a senior scientist inside the weapons program has proposed making disarmament a concrete policy goal.

Klan growing, fed by anti-immigrant feelings, report says

Associated Press
January 6, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Ku Klux Klan has rebounded by exploiting current
hot-button issues, especially immigration, according to a new report
released by the Anti-Defamation League.

The Klan, and other white supremacist groups like skinheads and neo-Nazis,
grew significantly more active in the past year, holding more rallies,
distributing leaflets and increasing their presence on the Internet -- much
of it focused on stirring anti-immigrant sentiment, according to the report.

"Extremist groups are good at seizing on whatever the hot button is of the
day and twisting the message to get new members," Deborah M. Lauter, ADL
Civil Rights director, said Monday. "This one seems to be taking hold with
more of mainstream America than we'd like to see." (Read the full ADL
reportexternal link)

"Klan groups have witnessed a surprising and troubling resurgence by
exploiting fears of an immigration explosion, and the debate over
immigration has, in turn, helped to fuel an increase in Klan activity, with
new groups sprouting in parts of the country that have not seen much
activity," Lauter said.

Old Klan chapters have been revived and new ones started throughout the
South, historically the heart of the group, and in other places such as
Michigan, Iowa and New Jersey, says the report.

Last May in Alabama, an anti-immigration rally included slogans such as,
"Let's get rid of the Mexicans!" according to the document, titled "Ku Klux
Klan Rebounds."

"The Klan is increasingly cooperating with other extremist groups and
Neo-Nazi groups," Lauter said. "That's a new phenomenon."

Between 2000 and 2005, hate groups mushroomed 33 percent and Klan chapters
by 63 percent, according to Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law
Center, which tracks hate crimes.

Precise data are difficult to pin down, but Potok's group counts as many as
150 Klan chapters with up to 8,000 members nationwide. More than 800 hate
groups exist around the country, Southern Poverty research shows.
Hate groups were fading in 1990s

In the late 1990s, memberships in such groups was crumbling as they lost
leaders and struggled to organize, said Brian Levin, director of the Center
for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San
Bernardino. Many hit bottom around 2000.

"Whenever you think the Klan is down and out, they find another way to
reinvent themselves," he said of the recent resurgence.

Historically, the Klan's focus had been to terrorize African-Americans --
through race riots, lynchings and other killings -- but it reached peak
membership at more than 4 million in the 1920s by focusing on immigration.

Newcomers from Ireland and Germany were portrayed as Catholic usurpers
invading the United States, taking jobs from native-born Americans and
undermining national fabric, Levin said.

Said Potok: "It's remarkable to look back at the nativist sentiments toward
Catholics -- it's very similar to what we're seeing with Mexicans now."

Today, many white supremacists blame immigrants, particularly Hispanics, for
crime, struggling schools or unemployment, for instance. With many Americans
already divided on how to revamp laws and practices to address the nation's
swelling immigrant communities, immigration "is an issue that works for hate
groups," Potok said.
A burning cross on the front lawn

Many Latinos are feeling the effects firsthand. Last September, a Kentucky
family originally from El Salvador found a wooden cross burning on their
front lawn just weeks after they moved in.

Earlier last year, a Latino teenager in Houston was brutally beaten and
sodomized while one attacker screamed "White Power!" The victim barely
survived, and one attacker was sentenced to life in prison.

"I've been doing [Hispanic advocacy work] for a long, long time and the
atmosphere has never been as poisonous as it has been in the last few
years," said Lisa Navarrete, a vice president at the National Council of La
Raza. "The level of vitriol is new."

Increasingly, fear permeates many Hispanic communities as individuals and
businesses are targeted. Last year, La Raza held a workshop at its annual
convention titled "Keeping Our Institutions Safe."

"It was very well attended, unfortunately," Navarrete said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may
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