The plant opened in October 1998 and currrently has around 1,000 workers, with enormous turnover due to the bad work conditions.

Ingram said, "Since June 1999, when the union organization drive began, 42 workers have been fired and 61 suspended. The line speed is 140 birds per minute, which leads to many injuries, and can cause you to lose your sense of equilibrium."

Decker told of workers getting fired when they reported injuries.

Hatcher explained that $20 per week comes out of workers' paychecks to help pay off the loan to build the plant. "Starting pay is $7.25 per hour," he said. "There are 300 Latino workers in the plant who the company tries to pit against the others," he added.

A crisis fund has been set up to help those who have been fired. Contributions can be sent to UFCW Local 227, 7902 Old Minors Lane, Louisville, KY 40219. The e-mail address is ufcw227@aol.com.

Dan Fein
Atlanta, Georgia
 
 
Farmers targeted too
Does the scenario culminating in the chilling predawn INS raid on the home of the Miami relatives of Elián González have relevance to U.S. working farmers?

U.S. farmers, like the Miami Cubans, are used as scapegoats. Farmers are singled out for the consequences of free market competition driving individual management decisions to maximize production in hopes of hitting a high market.

So the farmer ends up being blamed for environmental destruction, pesticide residues in the food supply, wanton use of chemicals, farm worker abuse, and pure greed.

Nothing is said about the exploitation of working farmers by the giant monopolistic food processing and merchandising interests, the agrochemical and seed conglomerates, banks and insurance companies, rent-gouging landlords, as well as the callous land speculators. This is the milieu of the independent producers' price-cost squeeze leading to rising debt and ever-threatening ruin.

Also like the Miami Cubans and other scapegoated groups, farmers are often characterized as irrationally militant and potentially dangerous. Farmers' organizations focusing on social injustices are labeled as unrealistic or motivated by greed.

All these tendencies degrade working farmers' public image, providing enforcement officials ammunition for violating their human and constitutional rights. It helps them justify massive displays of force to "maintain the rule of law" while brutally victimizing members of the targeted group.

So if farmers are silent on this widely publicized military-style assault on a Miami working family's home, they aid the government's ability continue to use these same tactics against them when they decide to fight for fair treatment, against foreclosure, and/or subsequent ejection from their farms.

Karl Butts
Plant City, Florida
 
 
Stalin admirer advocates 'Bomb Little Havana'
I would like to congratulate the Militant on your excellent coverage and editorial with regards to the INS raid on the González household in Miami.

I have been able to get out on sales teams with this issue of the Militant and have gotten a very interesting response. Overall, many workers I talked to appreciated the coverage, saying that their gut reaction was similar to the line of the Militant: there is something extremely unsettling about seeing the INS and federal marshals bust into someone's house and remove an individual before sunrise. Several Vieques activists also saw the connection between the two raids, and had a strong reaction against both.

One individual I spoke to, however, a fellow student at Hunter College, had a very different response. His opinion was that, not only was he glad to see the INS bust up "those gusanos'" house, the U.S. government should have gone further and dropped an atomic bomb on Little Havana. He also said that he considers himself a communist, though one who sympathizes more with Josef Stalin. We're doing another sales table at Hunter tomorrow.

Elena Tate
New York, New York
 
 
Des Moines racist killing
Vigils have been occurring every Sunday night at the Polk County Courthouse in Des Moines to demand justice for Charles Lovelady, a young Black man strangled to death at Graffiti's nightclub February 16 after being told to leave for not adhering to the club's dress code.

Although the death was ruled a homicide, neither of the two bouncers involved have spent a day in jail. A grand jury indicted the two men for involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum of two years in prison.

On May 5, attorneys for the defendants succeeded in convincing a judge to postpone the June trial to October, saying they did not have enough time to prepare their case. William Kutmus, attorney for the owners of the nightclub, said the new date would give the city time to cool off.

At the April 30 vigil it was announced that lawyers for the bouncers would ask for a change in venue because of the publicity generated in the case.

Speaking to a crowd of 60 protesters, Pam Williams said, "It doesn't matter whether they move the trial to Davenport in the east or Spencer in the west of the state. We will be there."

Citizens for Justice announced it will continue the Sunday night vigils and is planning a series of fund-raising activities leading up to the annual Juneteenth holiday where the case will be highlighted.

Edwin Fruit
Des Moines, Iowa
 
 
Invaluable tool
Militant issues dated May 1 or May 8. Fortunately, the website is easy to use, and we were able to access the excellent editorials and discussion about the INS raid in Miami. These are invaluable tools in this important discussion.

I had to work Easter weekend, and then found a massive approval rating for the raid by my co-workers at an aircraft maintenance facility, who almost unanimously supported the return of Elián to his father and to Cuba. And this blurred into support for "take charge" Reno, amnesia over the role of the government in setting up this entire situation and, for some, hostility to Cuban-Americans as a whole. By the middle of the week, just before I left, some conscious rightist co-workers had leaped into the discussion with references to how this sort of raid might happen in communist countries, but isn't "what this country stands for." Which several co-workers from the Caribbean found laughable, though they made a one-time exception in still approving this raid.

The Militant is providing what we need in negotiating this minefield.

Kathleen Denny
Oakland, California

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