We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Justice for casino workers now.


Hmmmmmm… what’s on my mind today?
By: Alan Maki Tuesday April 17, 2012 5:52 am
  
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What’s on my mind today… hmmmmmmm.
Like you, I am repeatedly invited to campaign fundraisers, debates and public forums, meets and greets, etc.
Like you, I seldom go because the candidates and their backers refuse to address any meaningful issues or concerns with anything other than meaningless rhetoric.
These politicians refuse to address the issues of casino workers so I just send them a “thanks for inviting me but…”
The turnouts for these things keep getting smaller and smaller until now we seldom see anyone except the usual “party hacks” at these events making sure anyone who has the nerve to ask a real question gets mocked, made fun of or if someone persists in demanding an answer these hacks jostle the previously invited guest out.
The small turnouts seldom make it worthwhile to waste the expense of gas to attend so I send them something like this:
“I can’t make your event because our resources have to be used fighting for the rights of casino workers.”
However, I would like to know why these candidates who have received a tremendous amount of funding from the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association have been silent on the plight of over 40,000 casino, hotel/motel, restaurant, convenience stores, bars and theme park workers comprising the Indian Gaming Industry here in Minnesota who are forced to work in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos and places of employment at poverty wages and without any rights have remained silent on this issue--- and the issues of poverty, unemployment and racism on Indian reservations and in urban centers with large concentrations of Native Americans living there?
I put this same question to DFL politician Tarryl Clark at a meeting during the NetRootsNation National Convention of bloggers in Minneapolis and she ducked answering my question by claiming she is working on the problem “quietly” and then she tried to explain that this was an issue of “sovereignty” just as most MNDFL politicians try to evade this criminal injustice.
The problem is the DFL is responsible for drafting these “Compacts” which intentionally excluded the workers from having any rights in the Indian Gaming Industry as a favor to the casino owners, managements and the owners of the slot machines— none of whom are Indians, but rather very wealthy white mobsters.
Whoever heard of a “sovereign nation,” any sovereign nation, being allowed to deprive working people of their most basic and fundamental human rights— the right to organize unions to protect and defend their quality of life and standard of living with a voice at work?
In creating these hideously racist “Compacts” from which everyone except Native Americans benefit, the DFL schemed to make sure it would derive huge campaign contributions for its racist white politicians who then have turned around and excluded Native American Indians from the political process.
How many Native American Indians do we see sitting in the Minnesota State Legislature or among Minnesota’s Congressional Delegation or on city councils or county commissions or township boards or school boards even though the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association has flooded DFL coffers with tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions?
Don’t people find it strange that the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association would pump so much money into the campaigns of racist white politicians who then turn their backs in racist indifference to the massive racist poverty created by massive racist unemployment and the racist poverty caused from poverty wages which are enforced by these racist “Compacts” which intentionally deny casino workers the right to organize in order to attain a decent standard of living which the Treaties are supposed to assure forever?
Why the intentional misinterpretation of the Treaties to exclude the right to a living?
Furthermore, I would like to know the positions of these candidates running for public office on enforcing Affirmative Action in employment in line with Federal Executive Order #11246 since these large pools of unemployed among Native Americans and all people of color are causing severe problems and misery for the victims of racist discrimination while pushing all wages down?
Do any of these candidates support closing the loop-holes permitting Affirmative Action to be evaded here in Minnesota?
Quite frankly, not many Minnesotans bother attending these candidate forums because they know these worthless politicians are just sticking their hands out for campaign contributions and they will evade answering these “tough” questions concerning their lives and living conditions.
Until we are able to free ourselves from this two-party trap set for us by the wealthy, fewer and fewer people will be participating in this corrupt and rotten political process.
Politics in Minnesota has been turned into one big circus as a result of the enormous influence by the monied interests— especially the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association whose Executive Director is a racist, anti-labor, anti-union white man— John McCarthy— who has grown enormously wealthy directly from the massive poverty of the Indian people.

John McCarthy and his group of high-paid lobbyists dish out campaign contributions to all of these racist politicians with one hand as fast as they can to purchase their loyalty to injustices; and, then, John McCarthy— the owner of Tony Doom Supply Company which manufactures all kinds of election paraphernalia from yard signs to business cards and pens and pencils and bumper stickers— with his other hand John McCarthy takes back as personal profit the campaign contributions his high-paid lobbyists hand out. All of this goes on at the expense of Native American people and by the time McCarthy and all these other greedy people get their hands on the revenues from Indian Gaming the only thing left for Indian people is the poverty caused by miserly wages and massive debt as the huge pool of unemployed people on the Indian Reservations assures casino workers and most Native Americans will remain mired in poverty. After all, when casino workers are paid poverty wages, they and their families are going to be poor— any school child can figure this out.

Ever heard of little things like ethics and morality in government?
The fact is, the one and only way Native Americans are ever going to get anything of substance out of the Indian Gaming Industry is when all casino workers are paid real living wages.
Corrupt and incompetent state and federal elected officials created tribal governments in their own image, and now these tribal governments try to pass off the idea that these tribal governments are a part of “sovereign” Indian Nations when in fact these tribal governments are just as thoroughly rotten and corrupt as the Minnesota State Legislature or the Bemidji City Council or the United States Congress which controls these tribal councils.
One can look at any of the tribal governments in Minnesota and all you see is the same kind of creeps and sleaze you see sitting in the Minnesota State Legislature or in the United States Congress.
Check it out, Red Lake has its thoroughly corrupt Floyd Jourdain, Leech Lake has its Archie LaRose, Bois Forte has its Kevin Leecy.

Kevin Leecy is in a league all by himself. He beats the crap out of his wife,  politicians “fix” the charges so he gets off, and then he goes before state legislators telling how money is needed to help counsel for spousal abuse programs and when he gets the money he hires his creepy friends to run the counseling program who he knows will support him .

If this isn’t the definition of a “racket” I don’t know what is.

Kevin Leecy is also the Vice-chair of the National Indian Gaming Association which is nothing but a front for organized crime.

Kevin Leecy is also the Chairman of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council which perverts and distorts— they call it “education”— the meaning of the Treaties and “sovereignty” to make them both jibe with enforcing the corruption and racism of the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association:
Conveniently, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council never tackles the questions concerning the major employment injustices of the Indian Gaming Industry and refuses to take a stand insisting that Affirmative Action be enforced while distorting the main intent of the Treaties which was to assure a decent standard of living for Native American Indians through the right to work.
A wife-beating crooked and corrupt Kevin Leecy is protected by law enforcement and a court system and the politicians elected by campaign funds distributed by the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association.

And, oh yes; Kevin Leecy also heads up the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association which has as its Executive Director John McCarthy.

And this entire racist and corrupt process is wrapped and packaged in “Indian traditions” and “Indian culture;” doing this is the epitome of racism.

Just read this article ghost written by John McCarthy passed off as having been written by the wife-beating Kevin Leecy:

Does anyone find it strange that not one single newspaper, not one single radio station nor one single television station will do a news story about the wages and working conditions of workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry forced to work in these loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without any rights under state or federal labor laws?
Well, check out how many advertisements for these casino operations you see and hear in the same newspapers, radio and television.
What a racket!
Yes, a racket.
A racket that resulted from a brain fart mobster Meyer Lansky had after he was kicked out of Cuba looking for places to put his slot machines where he wouldn’t have to pay taxes or be scrutinized by politicians, government officials or police agencies other than those he was able to pay-off with bribes.
It is all about “the American way” of free enterprise, eh?
Indian Gaming is among the two fastest growing industries here in the United States. Indian Gaming is right up there in expansion among an otherwise sluggish and suffering economy, right up there with the expanding Goodwill Industries which flourishes as poverty grows.
The Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party promises “jobs, jobs, jobs;” but did you ever think your next job was going to be working in a smoke-filled casino without any rights or another poverty wage paying outfit like Goodwill Industries? 

·         Something to think about: Unemployment on the northern Minnesota Indian Reservations ranges from 60% to 85%. On any given day, the Native American Indian population in the Beltrami County Jail is no less than 60% of the inmates. In no business or industry in northern Minnesota, with the exceptions of the casino industry and tribal government agencies, are Native American Indian workers more than 1% of the workforce including in township, city, county, state and federal offices, departments and agencies.
·         Question: Why isn’t T.E.R.O. being fully enforced?
·         Question: Why isn’t Affirmative Action being fully enforced as Federal Executive Order #11246 intended?
·         An observation: Federal Executive Order #11246 was never intended to be limited to federal departments, agencies and projects in eliminating racist barriers to employment; but, rather, was intended to serve as a guide to action on how to put an end to racist employment practices at every level of government and private employment.
·         Comment: The struggle for racial equality is everyone’s business because while racism hurts and harms the victims the worst; racism eventually hurts us all in one way or another.
·         What we need: A massive “blitz” against racist poverty in Minnesota.
Contact info:

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
E-mail: alan.maki1951mn@gmail.com

My Blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

A good union contract is better than any government anti-poverty program.

Justice for casino workers would cost about four rolls of quarters per hour for each employee. Ending smoking in casinos, except for the cost of a few signs, would cost nothing.

People without jobs are going to be poor. People paid poverty wages are going to be poor. Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage. Full employment now.

End racist discrimination in employment in Minnesota.
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Friday, April 13, 2012

Yesterday we buried our good friend Gregory W. Paquin who was murdered by the FBI and Beltrami County Prosecutor Tim Faver

http://my.firedoglake.com/alanmaki/2012/04/13/what-price-are-we-willing-to-pay-for-political-pragmatism/ 

What Price Are We Willing To Pay For Political "Pragmatism?"

Up here in northern Minnesota many people are mourning the death today of our friend and fellow activist Greg Paquin who we were forced to bury yesterday after he became the target of a massive campaign of racist hate initiated by the FBI working in cahoots with racist police, judges and prosecutor.
Several years ago we, about 50 community leaders and activists, had a meeting with the head of the Justice Department out of Chicago asking the United States Department of Justice to intervene and put an end to this ongoing racism and racist violence up here in northern Minnesota .
Obama’s Department of Justice refused to respond to our pleas for help and now one of the most influential civil rights and labor rights activists, Greg Paquin, is dead— buried yesterday in the Northbird family plot.
Where does “pragmatism” fit into the scheme of things?
Is there not a time when it becomes time to act to remove Obama from power because his horrendous dirty deeds are more important to take under consideration than his political “pragmatism” of failing to act in a conscionable manner?
At this meeting when I specifically asked the head of the United States Department of Justice’s Chicago region who is responsible for delaying the required investigations needed to bring federal charges for violating the civil and constitutional rights of Native American Indians by federal, state and county law enforcement agencies he specifically stated: “My boss.”
I then pushed him with another question: “Who is your boss?”
His response was: “My friend President Barack Obama.”
I am sure that many Minnesotans and many Americans— including very progressive Minnesotans and Americans at that— must surely be aware of the longstanding historic, structural, systemic and institutionalized racism now complicated by the “lateral racism” being imposed by the corrupt tribal governments created by the white racist political  establishment that is taking a terrible toll on the lives of Native Americans… surely many of you must aware of this.
Well, how do you explain the United States Department of Justice has not lifted a finger to put an end to this but instead acted in collution and cahoots with these racists and bigots and as a result Gregory W. Paquin is now dead?
Come on, really; does political “pragmatism” trump human life?
Gregory Pacquin was buried yesterday because Barack Obama feared that ordering his Justice Department into northern Minnesota to put an end to this racism would somehow be bad for his political life.
Does the politics of “pragmatism” take on a different perspective now that there is one more victim of racist discrimination, Gregory W. Paquin, lying in a grave?




Yesterday we buried our good friend Greg Paquin who because of his determined struggle to enforce Affirmative Action in the most racist city in America— Bemidji, Minnesota— was targeted and harassed to no end by the racist power structure with the FBI and the Minnesota Public Safety Commission using the racist Beltrami Prosecutor Tim Faver to carry out their racist agenda.
This bunch of racists in the power structure targeted Greg Paquin with a vindictive vendetta and utilized the same government resources it used to enforce discriminatory racist employment practices that should have been used to jail drug dealers; but Tim Faver is known to be personally profiting from the drug dealing in Beltrami County where he has been known to refuse to prosecute these drug dealers and members and leaders of the Native Mob who have been terrorizing people living on Indian Reservations.
The racism of Tim Faver, Beltrami County Sheriff Phil Hodapp and Beltrami County Judges has been well documented by the foundation-funded Minnesota ACLU Racial Justice Task Force headed up by Audrey Thayer and her staff, which in spite of having spent over one-million dollars documenting Tim Faver’s racist policies using these viciously racist vindictive vendettas against civil and human rights activists like Gregory W. Paquin to try to stymie the movements for racial equality in Northern Minnesota.
Tim Faver jumped at the opportunity created by the FBI to maliciously— under color of law— prosecute Greg Paquin based on the most vicious rumors and lies initiated by the FBI itself in, what is fast becoming a pattern of repressive behavior aimed at destroying the most basic freedoms in this country protected by the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
In fact, these foundation-funded outfits like the Minnesota ACLU’s Racist Justice Task Force are serving as the cover enabling this racist and repressive atmosphere and activity to continue because they lead people to believe something is being done to try to resolve these problems when nothing in fact is being done; they are part of the larger scheme of things to enable this racism in employment.
Audrey Thayer, when recently questioned during a public forum as to what the results have been for all these years of “collecting data” has resulted in, hid behind that old excuse in evading an answer, “I am not at liberty to discuss what actions are being taken,” when everyone knows no action to end this institutionalized racism in northern Minnesota directed at Native American Indians is being taken.
Audrey Thayer sat in the courtroom smiling as Greg Paquin was being maligned and framed by Beltrami County Prosecutor Tim Faver without so much as decrying this perversion of justice and gross act of repression directed towards Greg Paquin that culminated in Greg’s death.
Beltrami County Prosecutor Tim Faver and Beltrami County Sheriff Phil Hodapp should be charged with the murder of Greg Paquin. These racist bigots should be removed from public office. Greg Paquin has not been their first victim and he will not be their last.
Anyone can sit in any Beltrami County courtroom on any day of the week at any time to witness the racism in the Beltrami County Court system as racist repression against Native American Indians is delivered under the guise of justice.

The FBI and Beltrami County Prosecutor Tim Faver spun a campaign of racist hate against Greg Paquin which resulted in his death.

A federal grand jury  investigation should be convened to determine all of the culprits responsible for civil rights and trade union activist Greg Paquin’s death at age 49.

Greg Paquin was a founder of the Native American Labor Union #12 and a determined activist organizing and demanding Affirmative Action in employment be enforced as a way to begin alleviating the disgraceful poverty plaguing Indian Reservations and urban Native American communities.

Greg Paquin became well known for making a very simple, yet very profound observation:

“Working people without jobs are going to be poor.”

Greg went on to point out that the majority of Native American Indians are working class people suffering unemployment on the huge Indian Reservations of northern Minnesota with unemployment rates ranging from 65% to 85%.

Gregory W. Paquin, a member of the Plumber’s and Pipefitter’s Union-AFL-CIO, initiated and led a grassroots effort to enforce Affirmative Action when the largest public works project in Northern Minnesota since the Great Depression, the Bemidji Regional Event Center (now called the Sanford Center), got underway without one single Native American Indian being employed in this sixty-million dollar boondoggle where individual wheelbarrows were rented to the contractors for $60.00 a day and individual  sledgehammers were rented to the same contractors for $10.00 a day for over two years.

Greg continually pointed out that Native American Indians are being used as a pool of cheap labor to push all wages of all workers down. Greg’s research exposed how Native Americans are systematically being denied employment in the public and private sectors in Minnesota.

After reading Stewart Acuff’s book, “Getting America Back To Work,” in which Acuff calls on each and every worker to become a “warrior for justice,” Greg with his friends organized a new political party, “Warriors for Justice.”

For his activities in trying to get Affirmative Action enforced, Gregory W. Paquin, was targeted by the FBI working in cahoots and collusion with the Beltrami County Prosecutor Tim Faver and Beltrami County Sheriff Phil Hodapp for a vicious and vindictive racist vendetta which ended up killing Greg Paquin.

Greg’s best friend, Curtis Buckanaga, a leader of grassroots efforts to improve the lives and living conditions of Native people declared at Greg’s funeral that a powerful movement to end racism and enforce Affirmative Action will continue being built in memory of Greg Paquin.

Greg Paquin’s remains were laid to rest by his family and friends in the Northbird Family Plot located in a peaceful forest setting beside a river on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation as his spirit soared like an eagle.

[Note: A photo journal of pictures taken at Greg's funeral will be forthcoming.]


I should point out that as a result of the bogus racist conviction on trumped up charges Greg Paquin was framed on resulting in imprisonment that included the intentional denial of health care for treatment of his diabetes which contributed to his death, part of the probation which Greg Paquin was placed on is that he must not blog for a period of ten years. Greg was ordered by a Beltrami County Judge not to continue working on this blog. And the Minnesota American Civil Liberties Union and its Racial Justice Taskforce did not see this as a problem involving Greg being denied his constitutional rights.

-- 
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
 
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

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Saturday, April 7, 2012

What Must Be Said

The poem that has caused such controversy the world over:

What Must Be Said

Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long
What clearly is and has been
Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes.

It is the alleged right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people–
Enslaved by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation–
Because in their territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.

Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no testing is available?

The universal concealment of these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
And force–the punishment is promised
As soon as it is ignored;
The verdict of “anti-Semitism” is familiar.

Now, though, because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and confronted
The very crime
That is without compare
In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
But through fear of what may be conclusive,
I say what must be said.

Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I think my origin,
Which has never been affected by this obliterating flaw,
Forbids this fact to be expected as pronounced truth
Of the country of Israel, to which I am bound
And wish to stay bound.

Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we–as Germans burdened enough–
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.

And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
Prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
Of the governments of both countries.

Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
In the end also to help us.
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