10.11.2006

Victims of racist cop lead protest

Published Oct 5, 2006 8:23 PM

On Sept. 30 CopWatch activists, community members and victims of police brutality—Loree McCormick-Rice and her family—protested against the latest case of police brutality in Aurora, Colo.

Cassidy McCormic

Cassidy McCormic

Pedestrians and people in cars showed a lot of support. People also stopped to recount horrible incidents of terror at the hands of Aurora and Denver cops. Many people talked about being stopped by cops for no reason and being made to strip on the side of the road, a violation of all their rights.

The protest was called for Loree McCormick-Rice and her daughter, Cassidy McCormick, who say Aurora cop Sgt. Charles DeShazer beat them brutally on June 17.

What makes this latest case even more despicable is that McCormick-Rice is disabled. She suffers from severe asthma and has had one of her lungs removed. Cassidy, her daughter, is only 12 years old.

Workers World interviewed them after the demonstration to get their take on what happened last June. Their story follows:

On the night they were beaten, McCormick-Rice and Cassidy were leaving a King Soopers supermarket in Aurora. DeShazer, who moonlights as a security guard for the supermarket, approached them.

McCormick-Rice was parked in a handicapped parking spot. DeShazer asked where her handicapped placard was and she pointed it out. She had to point it out twice to him, and then pointed to her carbon dioxide and a nebulizer to relieve asthma, which were on her seat.

Cassidy McCormick. " border="1">

Loree McCormick-Rice and her daughter,
Cassidy McCormick.

A white woman who did not have her placard displayed openly approached McCormick-Rice. The white woman remarked: “That’s just pure racism. When will it ever end? I’m parked right here next to you in a handicapped zone without a placard and he walked right pass me and didn’t question me, and yet he’s harassing you.”

DeShazer, as he was walking away, said, “F—king n——s.” The woman talking to McCormick-Rice volunteered her name and number as a witness. Other witnesses also said they overheard the slur.

When DeShazer admitted to McCormick-Rice that he had used that racist insult, Cassidy suggested they report him to the store manager. Back in the store, another woman of color, overhearing McCormick-Rice’s complaint at the Service Desk, volunteered that she had had problems with DeShazer before.

As McCormick-Rice was walking to her car after lodging a complaint, DeShazer, who was sitting in a blue Ford Taurus, called her a “f—king idiot.” She responded.

McCormick-Rice and Cassidy drove out of the parking lot. DeShazer pulled up behind them and flashed his lights. McCormick-Rice turned to pull back into the parking lot, which is well lit. It was 10 p.m. She and her daughter were afraid. DeShazer blocked their way and yelled for them to “Get out of the f—king car.”

McCormick-Rice asked DeShazer if they could go into the parking lot where there were witnesses, and DeShazer again yelled at her, this time saying, “Turn off your f—king engine.”

McCormick-Rice told Cassidy to go and get help. DeShazer grabbed the young girl by her arm, after threatening her if she didn’t get back into the car. DeShazer, a large man, shook the small, young girl repeatedly.

Cassidy screamed for help from her mother. DeShazer threw the child against the car and put her in handcuffs, while McCormick-Rice pleaded for him to let her daughter go and not to hurt her.

McCormick-Rice then got out of the car and put her arms around her daughter. DeShazer threw the mother to the ground. Witnesses noticed the attack. McCormick-Rice picked herself off the ground and tried to get her cell phone, which was ringing. It was her 15-year-old son, and she told him she needed help.

DeShazer grabbed her and threw her to the ground again. He put McCormick-Rice in handcuffs, stood up, stepped down on her and kicked her. He then threatened the witnesses who were gathering.

The “back-up” that DeShazer called for arrived. McCormick-Rice told them what had happened, but they laughed her off and refused to give her her medicine. When asked what he was charging them with, DeShazer said, “I’ll think of something.”

McCormick-Rice was having difficulty breathing, but was repeatedly denied her medicine and was told that she was faking.

DeShazer continued to be belligerent, even asking, “You still want to screw with me?”

The full-time security guard for the store came and corroborated McCormick-Rice’s story about the racial slur, but was told to accompany DeShazer into the middle of the street, where they had a brief conversation.

McCormick-Rice said she was worried about her daughter because they were put in separate cars. She heard Cassidy screaming and crying. Finally, one cop said that McCormick-Rice should be let go. A female cop threw McCormick-Rice’s shoes at her when she asked if she could have them back.

When McCormick-Rice returned to her car, she noticed that her purse had been rummaged through and that the witness list was gone. Cassidy was taken to the Aurora police station. The 12-year-old was bruised and crying when her family picked her up.

Cassidy’s shoulder was fractured, it was later discovered. McCormick-Rice and Cassidy were charged with obstructing a peace officer, resisting arrest and failure to obey. McCormick-Rice also received a charge of disturbing the peace.

This is their story. This latest episode is an outrage for many reasons, but it illustrates that incidents of police brutality are not isolated.

Young Cassidy would later ask her mom, “Is this what we get for being Black?”

The reality is that cops are agents of the racist capitalist state. But what’s more, the agenda of the racist state filters down through the capitalist-run media, which constantly demonizes people of color. Even a 12-year-old Black woman, who has received numerous school accolades and, after this ordeal, support letters from teachers, principals and deans of students of schools she has attended, is seen as less than human and brutally attacked.

However, the family has vowed to fight until DeShazer is fired, and to continue to fight against racism and police brutality. And the community has rallied around them, even trying to start a defense campaign.

DeShazer, though, is not an anomaly, a bad cop among good cops. He is one among an army of thugs whose job is to protect capital and to keep the poor, people of color and workers in line.

Sanitation workers force mayor to meet demands


Published Oct 7, 2006 12:38 AM

Raleigh sanitation workers have taken a step forward and forced Mayor Charles Meeker to meet with the union to discuss their demands.

The elected workers’ committee and union representatives met with the mayor on Sept. 26 demanding an end to forced overtime, time-and-a-half pay for all overtime, immediate hiring of all temporary city workers as permanent workers, an end to bosses’ harassment, and the right to organize.

The city has hired at least 10 temporary workers to full-time positions, and committed to hire more. The city has also been forced to pay the workers regular overtime pay.

Workers will meet with the mayor again Oct. 3 to further press their demands.

The North Carolina Public Service Workers’ Union, United Electrical Local 150, represents a large majority of sanitation workers, as well as other city workers in Raleigh and throughout the state along with a variety of other public-sector workers. North Carolina is the only state with a law preventing any public workers from having a contract—a relic of the racist Jim Crow era and a clear violation of the workers’ human rights.

The courageous work stoppage of the sanitation workers that took place for several hours on Sept. 13 and their struggle for justice that continues to gain momentum are a first step toward pushing back a century of anti-worker laws and racist repression in the U.S. South.

The spirit of these workers, taking a stand for dignity to improve their conditions, is resonating with workers across the South and the entire United States. When the most oppressed sector of the work force, low-paid Black sanitation workers, take such a stand it encourages the working class as a whole.

Workers across North Carolina and other city workers are being drawn further into this struggle. They are building power to overturn the state’s racist anti-worker laws. Solidarity statements are also coming in from fighting unions across the country.

Building community solidarity

Inspired by the sanitation workers’ struggle, community groups and leaders are coming together. Anti-war and anti-racist activists have covered the city with signs and leaflets. Supporters and activists with Raleigh FIST—the youth group Fight Imperialism Stand Together—travel the city every day in a sound truck, holding street meetings, distributing yard signs, and building visible solidarity with the workers.

Union supporters from the International Action Center in New York and Atlanta have traveled to Raleigh to help in the fight. Activists in at least four other cities have helped organize through computer help. The North Carolina conference of the NAACP has been very vocal in its support of the sanitation workers; its president, Rev. Dr. William Barber, serves as UE-150’s most vocal champion in the fight for full collective-bargaining rights.

Ministers at Black churches from across the state have motivated their congregations and are organizing mass support for these workers. Residents across the city have expressed continuous solidarity, putting signs on their trashcans or in their yards, honking and waving at the trucks, offering cookies and coffee to the workers on their routes.

Although the workers have now won significant gains, and continue to meet and confer with the mayor and other city officials, they have their eyes constantly on a larger struggle—that is to win full union recognition, collective-bargaining rights, and to help organize all unorganized workers in the U.S. South.

The writer is an organizer with Raleigh FIST. Contact FIST@workers.org for more information.

FIST leader confronts police, metal detectors


Published Oct 1, 2006 4:27 PM

Sept. 26--After two days of protests, metal detectors had been removed. The following is an account by the organizer of the protests.

On the morning of Sept. 22, dozens of police officers armed with guns and scanners monitored the doorway of Humanities Preparatory School, making students of Humanities and two smaller schools inside of the building walk through metal detectors. This was in response to a rumored stabbing at the Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities.

This police occupation not only violated the students’ personal space, but also turned students into petty criminals. Students were suspended for personal possessions the law might call “illegal”, but things that were no threat at all. Police officers took away cell phones, iPods, and even artistic markers—claiming they were for graffitti. Threats of confiscation escalated to arrests.

I happen to go to one of the smaller schools in the building, James Baldwin School. As I arrived that day, it looked like a police state. Since the original fight had nothing to do with either of the smaller schools, I staged a picket across the street to give a statement to the Board of Education that we do not approve of these scanners.

What was planned as an hour-long picket turned into an hour-and-a-half of explaining to officers, teachers and students why we need our cell phones—on a Friday—and why we need our privacy. The police were stopping students as far away as the subway station, searching them for inappropriate reasons and saying inappropriate things. Altogether, about 40 students joined us and 23 of them signed in and spent time on the picket with me. Students and an administrator who wanted to join us were intimidated and some went home. Some others went into the school, but promised to spread the word and tell others to join us on Monday’s picket!

After about an hour-and-a-half, officers and the principal of Humanities told us that truancy officers would be picking us up, so more students went into the school and more left. They tried to take us into the school before the truancy officers came, but I refused to go through the scanners. They finally called my mother and told her to pick me up so I would not be marked truant. They then took me inside the school without being scanned, and the principal whispered in my ear, “I’m proud of you.”

I was held in the Dean’s office of Humanities, until my mother picked me up. While waiting, I heard stories of experiences that these students will never forget. A classmate of mine was bodily searched and arrested. Objects were confiscated which didn’t even fall into any illegal category. The police seemed to be scared by what they didn’t recognize.

Cruz is a member of FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together

Raleigh, N.C., sanitation workers’ struggle heats up


Published Sep 29, 2006 11:03 PM

“What do we want? Justice! What do we want? Collective Bargaining!” chanted more than 100 sanitation workers and supporters in front of Raleigh’s City Hall on Sept. 25, in response to City Manager Russell Allen’s inadequate response to their demands. The workers had gone back to work in good faith after their wildcat strikes the previous week, and had given the city until Sept. 22 to meet their demands.

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Leo Brown, sanitation worker, at Sept. 25
protest at Raleigh City Hall.
Photo: Takaaki Iwabu

The issue underlying the struggle is serious understaffing across the city. On Sept. 19, workers made a strong presence at the City Council meeting, where the council motioned to retain six positions they had deleted in an earlier meeting and add six new positions. However, there was no mention of the 20 positions the bosses have kept unfilled.

Allen mentioned that he has given authority to the bosses to pay overtime pay; yet this leaves discretion in their hands. The workers need written confirmation that they will be given time-and-a-half pay as a permanent policy, and that working over 10 hours of overtime will be voluntary, not forced.

Workers have been getting paid for overtime only with compensation time, which legally can only be accrued up to 70 hours, after which time-and-a-half pay must be given. This practice has clearly been violated. The bosses do not keep track of workers’ hours and pay all workers for 40 hours every week. Workers recently filed for a written record of hours worked, knowing no such records exist.

Workers also demanded the right to collectively bargain. They have been organizing and over three-quarters of the sanitation plant workers are now signed up with UE Local 150, the N.C. Public Sector Workers Union. In response, Mayor Charles Meeker said he wanted to establish “meet and confer” practices—a step between no recognition and collective bargaining—with the workers.

Allen promised to be at the plant on Sept. 22 to meet with workers, but when he showed up he refused to meet with any of the workers in the union. He left the meeting having addressed very few of the demands.

“[Allen] did not guarantee that we would not be forced to work overtime, nor did he make any promises about paying us for our overtime work. … He has no respect for us or the union,” said John T. McNeill, UE 150 member and sanitation worker. “It was a disaster,” says union-meet-and-confer committee member and sanitation worker Jerry Ledbetter. “Normally I do not call out racism, but he was plain racist.”

Later at the union meeting, workers gave Allen a vote of no confidence and are currently seeking to meet and confer with the mayor.

The South and the movement for collective bargaining rights

Sanitation workers in Raleigh say that they wouldn’t have struck had they been given the dignity and respect of city management through collective bargaining. The same has been said throughout North Carolina by the International Workers Justice Campaign.

The campaign is organized by UE Local 105 and Black Workers for Justice to bring international attention to the working conditions created in an environment without collective bargaining rights, and to repeal North Carolina General Statute 95-98, which makes collective bargaining illegal for public employees.

Workers, mostly UE members, spoke out in public hearings over the last year in Greensboro, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount, Durham, Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Charlotte. This culminated in a statewide hearing where members of the United Nations’ International Labor Rights Commission from South Africa, Nigeria, Sweden, Mexico, Japan, Quebec, and India listened to workers’ demands. The ILRC prepared a 90-page report that was delivered by UE activists to members of the N.C. General Assembly. Thousands of petitions were also delivered to Governor Michael Easley.

This entire struggle must be considered in the context of right-to-work laws, runaway shops, deindustrialization, and all working conditions in the U.S. South. Until last year—when the Farm Labor Organizing Committee signed a contract covering 7,000 migrant workers—North Carolina was the least unionized state in the country, with less than 2 percent of workers having union representation. Now it is second worst, only ahead of South Carolina.

Because of NC 95-98, North Carolina is the only state in the country where it is illegal to collectively bargain. It was written in 1959 in response to Jimmy Hoffa’s announcement that he would lead the Teamsters Union in an effort to organize 10 million public workers. Eleven other mostly Southern states do not have laws protecting collective bargaining rights.

Striking is illegal in North Carolina, but the laws cannot be taken out of the context of workers’ power. Workers are continuing to organize and fight for their demands.

“Unions have been needed here for a long time. … Now we are standing up and fighting for justice,” said Ledbetter.

The writer is a member of the FIST youth group and the UE 150 staff.

Sanitation workers forced into wildcat strike

Sanitation workers forced into wildcat strike

Published Sep 21, 2006 10:36 PM

On the mornings of Sept. 13, 14 and 15, workers for the City of Raleigh Solid Waste Division carried out an historic wildcat strike, withholding their labor power and shutting services for several hours on each of those days.

Sanitation workers in Raleigh, N.C.

Sanitation workers in Raleigh, N.C.
WW photo: Dante Strobino

In a plant with over 100 workers, more than 80, including both drivers and laborers, refused to mount the trucks and drive the city streets to pick up the garbage. The vast majority of these workers are Black.

Sanitation workers suffer from some of the worst conditions of all public employees in a city rife with irresponsive governmental bureaucracy and cronyism. These super-oppressed workers are raising their voices and organizing around their just demands, which include: no forced overtime (10 hours a day maximum), time-and-a-half pay for voluntary overtime work, all temps be made permanent workers, an end to harassment from bosses, and respect for the workers’ right to organize and elect their own leaders.

UE Local 150—the North Carolina Public Sector Workers Union—has been organizing public sector workers since 1996. It represents workers in four strategic areas: Department of Health and Human Services, the University of North Carolina system, city workers, and private workers in auto and aerospace in eastern North Carolina. UE 150 has been meeting with Raleigh sanitation workers for over a year now and supported the recent worker-initiated job actions.

On Sept. 14, over half of the solid waste workforce attended the UE 150 union meeting. There they voted, signed up and took an oath to join and build the union. Many other workers who could not attend the meeting have already joined. Many others are joining every day. In the parking lot outside, energy was high as workers chanted, “The orange brigade is rolling in.” The workers had pledged to wear bright orange shirts.

There was an incredible amount of unity in the room, as workers themselves decided what steps to take next, elected a leadership structure to meet with bosses and speak with the media, and decided on what demands to prioritize.

Raleigh is one of the fastest growing cities on the East Coast. From 1990 to January 1999, Raleigh registered a 30.1 percent increase in population and expanded its area by more than 20% but has not had a similar growth in the workforce. In fact, recently the City Council cut $135,000 from the budget to get rid of six city worker positions. The city has also implemented “one-armed bandits,” new automatic trucks that only need one worker to operate, causing increased stress, danger and workload.

Jimmy Gaye, a solid waste laborer for 22 years and UE 150 member said, “The city is growing but the workforce is not growing. … The only changes I have seen have been to benefit the [bosses]. The job action has been a long time coming. They cut down our truck from four to three people and made me work … without extra pay. I joined the union so someone would listen to me. The heads and superintendent won’t listen.”

Speaking about the high risk work environment, he said, “I have seen a man almost get his head cut off here; I know one guy got killed; I have seen fights; they get against each other, until we are mad because the system is mistreating us.”

As of Sept. 19, the sanitation workers have gone back to work because they care about the public’s health. They are giving the city until Sept. 22 to meet their demands. If the city abuses this act of good faith and does not meet their demands, then the workers will be forced to consider other serious actions.

For the first time that most workers can remember, an assistant city manager—Lawrence Ray—was forced to come right to the sanitation yard and speak to workers and hear their issues face to face.

This whole struggle must be considered in the context of the deep anti-union sentiment in the South. This struggle is also part of the movement for collective bargaining rights and to repeal the so-called “right to work” anti-union clause, North Carolina 95-98. This is a goal of the International Worker Justice Campaign initiated by Black Workers For Justice, UE Local 150 and others.

The workers are asking people to call Mayor Charles Meeker at 919-833-8756 (home) and 919-828-0564 (work) to express their support.

Strobino is an organizer with the Raleigh FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) youth group and UE Local 150.