Weaving A Net That Works

The Network’s Youth Leadership Development Campaign, which is internal to the Network, has established an internship program; held several trainings that focused on organizing and leadership skills; and ensured the participation of hundreds of youth from affiliate and guest organizations. For all the talk in progressive movements about involving youth, SNEEJ seems to be one place where this really happens. Young people have been integrated in its decision-making and leadership. The Network’s ongoing commitment to strengthen youth involvement is reflected in the 1997 addition to its mission statement of “generational injustices” as another target. At the March 1998 Coordinating Council meeting, 21-year- old “Che” Lopez was heard as an equal; at the end of that meeting he announced his plans to run for City Council back home in Hondo, Texas.

Border Justice is Worker Justice

The Border Justice Campaign has been growing steadily in its efforts to pressure government and private industry to provide safe working conditions and living conditions in areas around the twin plant industries located in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Since 1993, it has convened meetings of representatives from many grassroots organizations on both sides of the border to discuss strategies and collaboration. It has been working closely with the Mexican Action Network Against NAFTA.

The campaign for justice on border issues often coincides with the Worker Justice Campaign. Worker justice involves a broad spread of U.S.-based groups such as Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) in the Bay Area and Fuerza Unida in San Antonio. With the Network expanding into Mexico, the maquiladoras on the border have become increasingly central to both campaigns. Again and again, SNEEJ’s work has underscored the close connection between environmental issues and labor struggles, for example, in the pesticide spraying of farmworkers. Network members often say that all worker issues are environmental issues, especially if we see environment as meaning life-style or, more precisely, the cycle of life.

In this spirit of linkage, SNEEJ began meeting with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) at the union’s invitation. Traditional environmentalist groups have often found themselves at serious odds with labor, hounded by the image of middle-class, privileged “tree-huggers” whose goals threaten the livelihood of hardworking loggers—or whatever the industry might be. “Green” picket lines outside a factory’s doors have come to symbolize the clash. Conflict is seen as inevitable, with no possibility of compromise, and the notion that workers and environmentalists might form alliances against common enemies has rarely been articulated.

In 1997, OCAW adopted a resolution recognizing that it often has the same corporate opponents as the environmental justice movement, and is often working for the same goals. Therefore, said the resolution, OCAW would make every effort to form partnerships and coalitions with environmental justice groups around common goals. In February 1998, OCAW and SNEEJ signed an historic agreement, based on “our collective desire to move a progressive agenda.” It said, in essence: let’s talk before declaring war on each other. OCAW would try “to avert divisiveness between communities and workers at facilities represented by OCAW by agreeing to facilitate meetings at the point of controversy to permit representatives to develop a common agenda and to agree, where that can’t be done, to mutually respect the mandates of each organization.”

In negotiating the agreement, the Network stood fast on certain principles. It insisted that not only SNEEJ but all the environmental justice networks be present, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Southern Organizing Committee, and North East Environmental Justice. OCAW accepted this, but then asked that they agree not to picket factories whose workers belonged to OCAW when dialogue was taking place between the union and any of those groups. This SNEEJ had to refuse; it would be like a union giving up the right to strike. Also, SNEEJ couldn’t commit its affiliates to such an accord. But the agreement to negotiate in cases of conflict was finally adopted.

In the same meetings, OCAW and the Network discussed the Just Transition, a strategy to cushion the job loss that often occurs when a corporation must phase out environmentally harmful production. OCAW had resolved in August 1997 that it would support policy initiatives to eliminate extremely harmful substances so long as dislocated workers and their communities were helped during the transition to sustainable production. This set the stage for joint efforts by SNEW and OCAW stretching from Alabama to California. In Oklahoma, for example, an indigenous tribe reported problems with the products of a facility where the workers belonged to OCAW; the Network and the union went there in April 1998. The strategy of demanding a Just Transition could be applied in many situations, as Ruben Soli told the Network’s Coordinating Council. It could be applied to Levi Strauss, to Intel, and to fight the effects of NAFTA. Any Just Transition should have its terms defined by the people affected.

The concept of Just Transition gives us an example of why making the Network truly binational requires constant, two-way translation that will explain many realities such as: U.S. and Mexican environmental laws and policies, the structure of indigenous nations and tribes in the U.S., the fact that Mexico lacks that whole U.S. world of nonprofits and grant-making foundations, and the more massive presence of the labor movement in Mexican politics. On another level, there are differences in decision-making styles and methods to be understood, or assumptions of political and theoretical knowledge. The list goes on, down to translating unfamiliar acronyms.

In daily practice, there is the need to translate into at least English and Spanish the discussion at meetings, the minutes of meetings, conference calls (crucial to Network functioning) while in progress, letters and memos, faxes, “Action Alerts,” proposals, and other documents. This is work whose necessity is not questioned but whose cost can be great. To sit through a totally bilingual, 2-day meeting of 20-plus people discussing complex subjects is to feel a great respect for the Network in undertaking to create genuine binationalism. Many U.S. organizations working on environmental problems at the border do not integrate Mexicans; paternalism defines the relationship. As Teresa Leal of Nogales, Mexico pointed out, “They may organize tours to show the impact of the maquiladoras but often the agenda has been imposed from the U.S. side.” Other Mexicans say, “We are never part of their decision-making process.”

Making A Commitment To Respect

If the Network has succeeded where others failed, this must be partly because from the beginning it sought to establish a tradition of mutual respect and cooperativeness. In December 1996 this goal was formalized as the “Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing” during a meeting held by SNEEJ at Jemez, New Mexico, to discuss international issues. The six principles included doing “bottom-up” organizing, letting people speak for themselves, inclusiveness, and having a commitment to self-transformation—changing from operating in an individualistic mode to one of community-centeredness. “We must be the values that we say we’re struggling for.”

It is natural, then, that Network meetings have always included a strong spirituality. They usually begin and end with a circle—often to hear a prayer, given by an indigenous representative, or a remembrance, a thought. The spiritual presence is one reason why an annual Network gathering often feels like a vibrant multi-colored family in action.

In this spirit of sustenance, SNEEJ maintains several training projects for affiliates on a wide range of issues, for example, environmental law and how to use it. Again, the demands of communication can be intense; for example, the annual workshop on worker health and safety is conducted in five languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Laotian. The Network also engages in “partnerships,” by which SNEEJ raises funds to help a particular organization in the Network meet a specific need for training, equipment, or other needs. Today the Network has become increasingly consolidated, without losing its grassroots essence and style of work. As the Network’s coordinator, Richard Moore, said in the early days, “We may be poor people, but we’re professional poor people.”

The need for resources, including people, has always been a basic issue for the Network. Sometimes a project has had to be put on hold for lack of resources or other limitations. This happened to the Hi-Tech Campaign, which worked on making the Intel Corporation accountable to the communities where it operates in New Mexico and helped expose Intel’s water usage. The Campaign also teamed up with the Labor Occupational Health and Safety Program at UC Berkeley, to train people in occupational health and safety related to the electronics industry; that program continues today.

On the scenic West Side of Albuquerque more than 17,000 documented works of indigenous rock art known as petroglyphs can be found. Native Americans hold the area sacred, as a place where items are placed for the deceased to begin their journey into the next world, and it is still in use by Pueblo Indians. In recognition of its significance, the Petroglyph National Monument was established in 1990.

In April 1997, Republican Senator Pete Domenici announced intentions to push through federal legislation (Senate Bill 633) that would hand over land so that a 6-lane highway could be built through this area. The goal: to facilitate access by real estate developers. They include people like John Black, whose 6,700-acre Black Ranch is slated for development.

Protest against such desecration has been led by the Petroglyph Monument Protection Coalition. Last March Native American, Chicana/o, Mexican, African American, Asian/Pacific Island and Anglo demonstrators picketed the Albuquerque office of Senator Jeff Bingaman, who supports the highway. The Network’s Coordinating Council all turned out for the “Youth Speak-Out and Prayer,” which featured drumming, native prayers, and speakers. I couldn’t help counting: of the half-dozen Native American, Chicano, Asian/Pacific and African American speakers, five were in their 20s. The bad guys just might lose this fight.

It is clear today that we need global movements to answer the globalized assault on people and the planet. The Southwest Network stands as a model for how that answer might be constructed. One thing for sure: the answer must express interdependence, like a circle, like the earth. Like life itself, as our native sisters and brothers tell us.

In the face of the threat to undermine the use of Title VI in combating environmental racism, SNEEJ and two other networks have been supporting the Chester, PA plaintiffs. They are brining pressure within the Title VI Federal Advisory Committee to the EPA, which includes representatives of industry, state government, and grassroots environmental justice organizations, and some academics. They have, for example, pressured this committee to hold meetings not just in Washington, DC but in the communities directly concerned so the impact of racist discrimination can be better understood. Also, they have struggled to have the committee see racism in more than strictly Black/white terms, so as to understand the scope of the problem.

The grassroots organizations in this fight, facing a huge and historic challenge, know they have a responsibility to defend millions of human beings     Z

This article was adapted from De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century, by Elizabeth Martinez, to be published by South End Press.