Readers have no fear! Though we are away for August, we will return with wit, commentary and news of a lefty political nature in September.

Ex-workers demand Nike pay them owed dues at a rally in Honduras, June 12, 2010.

UPDATE: New York Times story on the victory

The CGT union in Honduras announced that it reached an agreement with Nike on behalf of the 1,800 former workers who sewed Nike college apparel at the factories Hugger de Honduras and Vision Tex.  One year and six months after the factories closed and failed to pay $2.5 million in severance to the workers, and after a United Students against Sweatshops (USAS) campaign severed Nike contracts with universities for the first time ever, workers and USAS forced Nike to agree to everything they had been demanding. Ex-workers demand Nike pay them what they’re owed at a rally in Honduras, June 12, 2010.

According to the joint announcement from the CGT and Nike, Nike will pay $1.5 million in a cash settlement plus a year of health insurance, and will give priority hiring and training to the 1,800 affected workers.  This is a total victory for USAS student activists across the continent and for the courageous garment workers who kept the heat on Nike on the ground in Honduras.

This is a watershed moment for USAS and the anti-sweatshop movement.  Ever since the 1990s, when Nike led the race to the bottom that produced shocking sweatshop headlines, the sportswear giant has refused to acknowledge responsibility for worker abuses at its subcontracted supplier factories where workers actually cut and sew Nike products.

Today that era is over.  Nike’s full payment of the severance owed to workers at these contracted supplier factories sets an unmistakable precedent:  Apparel corporations will be held accountable for workers’ rights in their supply chain.  No more excuses.

Banner dropped from roof the Niketown in Portland, 1st May 2010

Just months ago Nike dishonestly asserted, “no collegiate licensed product was made in either Vision Tex or Hugger,” and stubbornly swore, “Nike will not be paying severance to workers that were employed by Hugger and Vision Tex.”  Surprisingly, Nike has left those statements on its website here (but just in case they get embarrassed and remove that page, USAS will archive it here).

Nike only became more honest and finally came to this agreement after major economic pressure levied by students campaigning to end their universities’ lucrative contracts with Nike.  Students at the University of Wisconsin made their school the first ever to terminate a contract with Nike over worker rights violations, and Cornell University students fought on into the summer months to finally get a decision to end their school’s contract with Nike as well.

Today’s victory is the first major USAS victory over Nike.  In 2001, USAS fought in solidarity with the workers of Kukdong, a Nike supplier in Mexico, and the campaign won recognition for the first independent union in the maquila industry in Mexico.

The Worker Rights Consortium — the only independent organization monitoring factories producing college apparel — played a major role investigating Nike’s violations, producing several comprehensive reports for their affiliate universities.  Students used the reports to illustrate how Nike had violated universities’ codes of conducts and to compel universities to take action and cut contracts with Nike.

Noticeably absent from the field in this sweatshop skirmish was the Fair Labor Association, a notoriously weak-kneed factory monitoring organization created by Nike and other brands with the Clinton administration. While the FLA’s persistent attempts to exonerate apparel companies for wrongdoing has significantly delayed and disrupted workers getting justice in past cases, their absence and refusal to hear out complaints brought by workers led to a speedy and fair resolution.

The most recent Nike victory also comes within a year of the USAS victory with Honduran unionists who work for Fruit of the Loom, the largest private employer in Honduras.  USAS activists orchestrated the largest collegiate boycott of a single company in history, with over 100 universities cutting ties to Fruit’s Russell Athletic.  Fruit entered into a truly historic agreement with workers’ union.  With these back-to-back victories, student-labor activism is reaching new heights.

More photos can be seen here

Originally published on United Students Against Sweatshops

Results of a survey passed to the Anti Academy Alliance suggest that only 35 schools have decided to enter in to a Faustian pact with Michael Gove by taking up his offer of a fast track to academy status.

If this is true, it is a welcome set-back to the Con Dem government’s plans to dismantle locally supported comprehensive state education and create in its place a socially divisive hierarchy of academy, “free” and second-class schools, with its upper tiers accountable only to Michael Gove himself.

The weakness of the educational arguments for Gove’s academies are the true reason for his use of procedures usually reserved for anti-terror legislation to rush the Academies Bill through Parliament without proper debate.

Gove claims he has an electoral mandate for expediting the passage of his bill. This is a Big Lie matched only by David Cameron’s Big Society.

Only 35% of the electorate voted in May’s general election for the Tories and their policy of putting “rocket boosters” under New Labour’s academies programme and encouraging the creation of free-market schools. The Lib Dems have long been opposed to academies and the creeping privatisation of our state schools. Many people voted for them, precisely for this reason.

The Anti Academies Alliance, therefore, welcomes recent press reports that a number of more principled Lib Dem MPs are planning to vote against the Academies Bill tomorrow. If enough of them stick to the Lib Dems’ previous policy commitments, Gove’s plans can be stopped in their tracks.

Otherwise, academies and free schools will have to be resisted wherever and whenever they are proposed.

To quote Alasdair Smith, National Secretary of the Anti Academies Alliance:

“The Academies Bill, if passed, threatens to change fundamentally our state education system. It will have been enacted without proper parliamentary scrutiny or debate with parents, people who work in schools or the wider community.

If this is what is meant by the Big Society, then we are going to be ready to mount our own Big Resistance.”

Today’s decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to bring any criminal charges over the death of Ian Tomlinson follows a line of previous decisions when police conduct has resulted in death or serious injury and no charges were brought.

Ian Tomlinson died on 1 April 2009 in the context of a heavily-policed and high profile demonstration that generated significant public interest. The failure of the Independent Police Complaints Commission to initiate an independent investigation until seven days after the death, on 8 April 2009, led to the potential for the loss, suppression and/or distortion of crucial forensic evidence in the ‘golden hours’ following Mr Tomlinson’s death. This repeats a pattern in previous contentious deaths following police contact where the death has not been treated from the outset as a potential homicide. INQUEST believes there should be an inquiry into the role of the City of London Police, the coroner, the pathologist and the IPCC, who have all played a part in ensuring no charges were able to be brought.

Responding to the decision, Ian Tomlinson’s son Paul King said,

“After 16 months of waiting, to hear nothing is being done is a complete joke. Today they gave us no hope. This experience has broken our family apart. The DPP has told us there was an unlawful act, yet no charges are to be brought. This is no justice – everyone has failed us.”

Deborah Coles, Co-Director of INQUEST, said:

“The eyes of the world will be looking on with incredulity as yet again a police officer is not facing any criminal charges after what is one of the most clear-cut and graphic examples of police violence that has led to death. This decision is a shameful indictment of the way police criminality is investigated and demonstrates a culture of impunity when police officers break the law. It follows a pattern of cases that reveal an unwillingness to treat deaths arising from the use of force by police as potential homicides. It demonstrates yet again the flawed procedures that follow contentious deaths involving the police and stands as testament to their unaccountability.”

The family’s solicitor, Jules Carey, said:

“The CPS decision is a disgrace. They have accepted the officer’s conduct is unlawful, but have determined not to prosecute him for anything. We shall examine this decision and challenge it if possible. There must be an inquiry into whether the failure to charge is a lack of competence or of will.”

Last month the English Defence League announced plans to march in Tower Hamlets, East London, in protest at an Islamist conference planned for June 20th at the Troxy centre. The conference was planned by groups tied to Islamic Forum Europe, among the major Islamist groups in the area.

Anti-racists planned to demonstrate against the EDL: but the SWP-run Unite Against Fascism and its front group United East End insisted this should be on the basis of uncritical support for — and collaboration with — the conference organisers. This meant whitewashing the worst religious fundamentalists and supporting their right to represent the Bengali community in the borough.

While the conference was ultimately cancelled by the Troxy centre, and the EDL abandoned their march, UAF held their demo regardless. Here local Bengali secular activist Ansar Ahmed Ullah reflects on the episode.

What is Islamic Forum Europe?

In 1971, during the Liberation War of Bangladesh, there were widespread killings of the civilians and other atrocities were carried out by the occupying Pakistani forces and their local collaborators.

The collaborators were local Islamist groups, namely Jamaat-e-Islam, Nezam-e-Islam and the Muslim League.

Soon after the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 some of the alleged Jamaat-e-Islami war criminals fled Bangladesh and took refuge in various Arab countries, Pakistan and the UK. A Channel 4 Dispatches programme aired on 1995 exposed such 3 alleged war criminals.

The IFE was set up by one such alleged war criminal in 1989 to disguise their past crimes and fundamentalist ideology.

What was your reaction when the EDL announced their plans to march and UAF planned its counter-demo?

The entry of the English Defence League into Tower Hamlets to protest against the meeting was a direct provocation to stir up racial tensions, foment dissent among faiths and attempt to bring disunity amongst the communities of the borough. We condemned the fascist EDL whose sole objective is to act as storm troopers for the British National Party and pick up the pieces for them after their miserable rout in the local and national elections in neighbouring Barking and Dagenham Council.

However, we are also opposed to fundamentalism and so had watched with growing concern the way in which the United East End coalition become a hub for legitimising the base of Jamaat-e-Islami activists in the borough. We had questioned how and why the Islamic Forum Europe came to occupy such a central place in the mobilisations.

We believe that fascism and fundamentalism should be challenged equally.

They are both right wing forces growing in strength and numbers within local areas, and any campaign against the right wing should encompass an active stand against both fascism and religious fundamentalism.

We continue to oppose the EDL unconditionally but we also do not want to be involved in anything that consolidates the power base of IFE in this way.

We in the Bengali and the Muslim community were being asked to stand side by side with the most reactionary, far right, anti-Bengali, Anti-Hindu, Anti-Jewish, fundamentalist group, IFE. This we refused to do. The IFE does not represent the Muslim community in Tower Hamlets nor do they uphold the glorious tradition of Cable Street, Altab Ali (murdered by racists in 1978) and the anti-racist movement.

Under the patronage of an exclusivist Wahhabi Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia they are attempting to impose it amongst the Bengalis in the borough. Just as the EDL takes the guise of being ordinary English citizens to hide their true identity of fronting the fascist BNP, so do IFE act as the sole representatives of ordinary Muslims but are in fact operating under the direction of their parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh.

What effect did this episode have on the Bengali community?

It is hard to say what threat the EDL posed because they do not exist in Tower Hamlets: but whatever the threat the Bengali community is able to defend itself.

The Bengali community has a long tradition of resisting racists from the 1970s to 1990s. Racism has to be fought on many fronts, socially with the local white working class, politically with alliances with other progressive anti-racist parties, institutionally and in unison with all communities.

The cancellation of the Troxy event was a victory for secular forces and those who are opposed to fundamentalism. The majority of Bengalis are secular, (in the South Asian sense, not necessarily opposed to religion but against religious persecution). Like any other community, the Bengali community has many factions based on ideology, class, region, profession and party political lines. But a sense of community does exist when it comes to the greater welfare of the whole Bengali community.

Why have Islamist groups become influential in Tower Hamlets, and why do the left associate with them?

By the 1990s another key development was the increasing importance of religion, in the case of Bengalis, Islam. This was partly due to New Labour government association of faith in its agenda.

In addition, in the weeks after 11th September 2001, with the prospect of a US-led war in Afghanistan, the Stop the War Coalition was founded in London, bringing together a number of organisations, the largest of which was the Socialist Workers Party and more importantly MAB (Muslim Association of Britain) associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and MCB (Muslim Council of Britain) its leadership associated with the Jamaat-e-Islami. The inclusion of MAB & MCB enabled the mobilisation thousands of Muslims, including the young, to get involved in the anti-war movement. This ensured for the first time that large numbers of third generation Muslims took part in global political campaigns.

The MCB-linked Jamaat-e-Islami is the largest Islamist political party of the Indian sub-continent, that operates under various charities and religious organisations centred around the East London’s biggest mosque. Its activists have managed to infiltrate all the major political parties including the Respect Party that came out of SWP-MCB partnership.

The SWP under the banner of Stop the War Coalition and Respect Party has been working with Islamist groups. This wasn’t surprising as in 1994, Chris Harman, one of the SWP’s chief ideologists argued that the party should make common cause on the issue of “anti-imperialism” with Islamist movements, in part as a way of recruiting their members.

George Galloway’s victory in the 2005 General Election in the Bethnal Green and Bow area was seen as a protest against the Labour Party’s foreign policy. But it also demonstrated the strength of the Islamists within the community and the dramatic shift in British politics when it came to securing the support of Muslim voters. It reaffirmed that global issues were prioritised in the Islamist agenda and when it came to appeal to the Bengali voters, the ‘Muslim’ sentiment was the focus of the election campaign.

We must challenge those who advocate the racialisation of politics.

The Coalition Government have declared war against working people and the poor. Despite attempts to dress up the budget as “progressive”, independent economists have given it a damning verdict.

Join the fight for our rights and collective interests and get involved

Gordon Brown and Ed Balls at the City of London Academy

From 2004 to 2008, I attended the City of London Academy in Southwark, one of four Academies sponsored by the Corporation of London; the others are in Camden, Islington, and Hackney. The main subject focus of the school was therefore Business studies, regardless of the fact that it was neither a required curriculum subject nor students’ desire to actually study business, and students were also required to take the mandatory Business GCSE, again, regardless of student needs or wants.

In addition to the educational favouritism, the school also had a token amount of students who actually lived in the City, and they were provided with minibuses to ferry them to and from school every day, whilst non City students had to take public transport – even when it was quite late at night after clubs and detentions, there was no consideration for the younger students who were made to travel on buses through rough areas as late as 9PM. Uniforms were also expensive, up to £90 for a blazer, and a requirement for leather shoes, once again, not a problem for the City kids, but a large investment for the families of students in poorer areas which made up about 95% of the school population, including myself.

For the first two years of the schools existence, it was housed in a sizable complex of portacabins, first on the grounds of Waverley School (now Harris Girls Academy) in Peckham, and for the last year, on what would become the completed building’s football pitch. By the time it was moved to Bermondsey, the population had doubled, and was far too small for 300 students and 100 staff, in addition to this, it was often freezing cold in winter, or boiling hot in summer, and after a year of use, was incredibly tatty on the inside, with only two sets of toilets for males and females, these often became disgusting to the point of unusable as so many people had to use them. No attempt to improve the facilities was ever made, even after numerous complaints.

The lack of facilities or care on this matter has to be the responsibility of the overall management of the school, which was appalling. They weren’t referred to as “heads” or “deputy heads” in day to day parlance, they were the “Senior Management Team”, in addition to this, the school employs “heads of years”, these roles are not teaching roles, but another subsection of the management. This is a school, not a business, although the levels of micromanagement would lead people to believe otherwise.

I hated it there, I hated the disorganisation (GCSE students work was routinely lost, resulting in poorer than deserved results), the way badly behaved students were provided with so many resources and benefits whilst the students who actually wanted to achieve were set aside and had to suffer for it, and those students with genuine problems such as ADHD, were excluded. No help, no support, just exclusion. I have no doubts this was to keep the records looking good.

The ConDem academies program must be stopped, this is not the way our future should be taught, this serves to damage their confidence in the education system, and will leave them seriously struggling at GCSE time and the beginning of their adult life.

NASUWT & Anti-Academies have called for a lobby of Parliament on Monday 19th July 2010. For more information visit here: http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/Home/opposing-the-academies-bill/protestonjuly19th

Patrick Obinna Okoroafor was 14 when he was arrested in 1995 and has now been in prison for 15 years – half of his lifetime.

Patrick was initially sentenced to death for robbery. In 2001, when a Nigerian High Court judgement declared his death sentence to be illegal, his sentence was changed to one of indefinite detention ‘during the pleasure of the governor’ of Imo State. On 29 May 2009, after campaigning by Amnesty International, Patrick’s sentence was reduced to 10 years imprisonment, starting immediately.

If Patrick completes his sentence he will have spent a total of 24 years in prison – for a crime he says he did not commit. Besides Patrick’s age at the time of arrest, there were many irregularities in his trial and subsequent detention. He also alleges that he was tortured. Amnesty is calling for his immediate release.

Send an appeal to the Nigerian authorities now

View clips and photo galleries of activists campaigning for Patrick on the Protect The Human website

by Ulrike Schmidt & Justin Baidoo

Magyar Garda - The Fascist "Hungarian Guard"

The rise of right extremist and fascist parties and organisations in some European countries, particularly in Hungary have brought a sharp increase in violent attacks on Roma people. Often these attacks occur after a meeting or demonstration of fascist organisations like Magyar Garda or the “Hungarian Guard”.

The attacks often involve shootings of random Roma people and firebombing of houses. In this racist crime wave, very rarely are the attackers brought to justice, which might not be coincidental as one trade union of police officers has affiliated itself to the Jobbik Party and called in their newsletter for war against Gypsis and Jews. Ketrin Balogh and her mother Maria Balogh were attacked in their home at night and shot. Maria died, her 13 year old daughter Ketrin survived with severe injuries which might never heal. Amnesty International Hungary is running a solidarity campaign for Ketrin.

In Italy, the right-wing coalition government headed by Silvio Berlusconi has put forward a plan to fingerprint all Roma children, which has been criticised by the European Parliament and UNICEF. A few weeks after announcing these plans Italian citizens are photographed sun-bathing near the dead bodies of two drowned Roma girls. With Italy also legalising far-right militias, attacks on Roma and Gypsy people continue to take place, by forced evictions by authorities as well as vigilante violence. This problem goes as far as the United Kingdom as we shouldn’t forget the brutal attacks by Irish Neo Nazis on Roma people in Belfast a year ago.

This Friday 9th July, In London, Amnesty Hackney & Islington and Amnesty Waltham Forest Presents:

“Romani Dreams” - An evening devoted to Romani culture, also highlighting the recent rise of violence against Roma people in Europe.

A night of Refreshments, poetry, music, debate and film

Venue: Amnesty International UK , Human Rights Action Centre, 17‐25 New Inn’s Yard, London EC2A 3EA

Speakers :

Kate Allen – Director of Amnesty International
Ognyan Stanchev – Roma Rights Advocate
Alex Jagger – AI/UK co‐ordinator for Central Europe
Barbora Cernusakova – Researcher for Amnesty International IS
Weyman Bennett – Joint Secretary, Unite Against Fascism

A news report about the rise of the Hungarian Guard: