U.S. LABOR AGAINST THE WARA New Year’s Resolution
|
Forging International Labor Solidarity in Wartime No Easy Task
Iran to eliminate price subsidies, threatening mass impoverishment
More news about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict . . .
| Support USLAW’s Important Work with a DONATION!
Your contribution keeps labor’s antiwar movement going and growing.
|
| DONATE HERE |
Susan Van Haitsma writes: “A few of us Austin CodePinkers went to Killeen yesterday to participate in
their “Sick of War” demonstration at the gates of Ft. Hood. Others I spoke
with came from Ft. Worth, Denton, San Marcos and Austin. Despite the
weather, a number of news people showed up to document the event. Here is
an article published today in the Killeen Daily Herald:
http://www.kdhnews.com/news/story.aspx?s=38454
Jan. 16, 2010
By Rebecca LaFlure
Killeen Daily Herald
Despite chilly wind and rain, anti-war protesters huddled outside Fort Hood’s East Gate for six hours Friday calling for increased mental health resources for soldiers and veterans.
The demonstrators, toting signs and the occasional umbrella, said the military overmedicates its service members and does not provide adequate counseling for those returning home from multiple deployments.
Standing in front of a black banner that read, “Sick of fighting your wars,” Cynthia Thomas, manger of Under the Hood Café in Killeen, said she worries the Afghan surge will increase mental health issues in the military.
“We’re sending soldiers to war and not taking care of them when they get back,” she said. “It’s going to be another batch coming back with that many more traumas, both physically and mentally.”
The protest began with a faithful dozen Friday morning and gradually increased to 30 people by the end of the afternoon.
Mike Prysner, 26, a former soldier who participated in the demonstration, traveled from Los Angeles to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and advocate for soldier rights. Prysner said he had trouble obtaining mental health treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder upon his return from Iraq.
“It was a fight to get someone to see me,” he said. “When they finally did, they just wrote me a prescription and sent me on my way.”
Spc. Eric Jasinski, a Fort Hood soldier who also attended Friday’s event, turned himself in to Army officials last month after going absent without leave for a year.
The 23-year-old, who was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression after he returned from Iraq, said he went AWOL at the end of 2008 after he was stop-lossed and ordered to return to Iraq. “I knew I couldn’t go back again,” he said. “We need to get a better understanding of PTSD. … I want the stigma to go away.”
The protesters hoped the demonstration would encourage more soldiers and their family members to speak out.
“We’ve gotten middle fingers and peace signs,” said Josh, a former Marine. “It’s been a good day.”
Contact Rebecca LaFlure at rlaflure@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7548. Follow her on Twitter at KDHeducation
| January 18, 2010 | ||
| 9:00 am | to | 2:00 pm |
| January 15, 2010 | ||
| 8:30 am | to | 6:00 pm |
Friday, January 15, 2010, 8:30 am – 6:00 pm
East Gate of Fort Hood, corner of fort hood st and veterans ave
We, the Soldiers and dependents of the military community are literally sick of fighting the wars of the past decade. Soldiers enter the Army ready and willing to fight for this country and come back plagued with nightmares, physical symptoms, PTSD, and TBI among other injuries. Instead of receiving adequate care from counselors and physicians, often Soldiers are over prescribed medications that conflict with each other and further debilitate rather than heal. Army counselors are over worked and not able to give the necessary treatment and the progressive treatment of the soldier reset clinic has yet to be branched out base wide despite the popularity and proven efficacy. Families of Soldiers are left emotionally separated by this maltreatment where oceans previously separated. Our Soldiers and families deserve better mental health and physical treatment beyond palliative care, but rather care that is progressive so that the we indeed can become “all that we can be” rather than the broken community that we currently are; plagued by suicides, alcoholism, domestic and child abuse, and joblessness following leaving the Army. COME STAND AT THE EAST GATE , CORNER OF RANCIER & FORT HOOD STREET, TO LET THE REST OF AMERICA KNOW THAT OUR SOLDIERS DESERVE BETTER TREATMENT!
0830-1800 COME AS YOU CAN
HOSTED BY UNDER THE HOOD CAFE
Thanks to our friend Ali Issa (formerly in Austin, now in New York) for the link to his blog, Iraq Left: On Iraqi Organizing and Movement Building Now, http://iraqleft.wordpress.com/
(The Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq is a left-led, independent labor federation that has had a lot of communication and solidarity with U.S. Labor Against the War. The reference to the “Ba’athi move of banning ‘unrecognized’ unions” recalls Saddam Hussein’s edict banning public sector unions. This was one of the few Saddam-era laws kept on the books by the U.S. occupation.)
January 2, 2010
After a 53-day strike (the longest in Iraq since 1931) won workers in the leather industry the release of long promised safety benefits and back wages, FWCUI-affiliated unions are at it again, this time organizing Baghdad cotton factory workers and announcing a strike for similar demands, now entering its 19th day. There is yet a another strike, this one in the industrial area of Nahrawan (east of Baghdad) at al-Thalal brick factory. This strike began on the 23rd of December. If these actions are any indication, organizing in the industrial sector is really catching fire in Iraq. In the face of such effective and uncompromising direct action, the Iraqi authorities –surprise, surprise—have stepped up their attempts to interfere, by “relocating” organizers to out of the way offices, or simply firing them. The most threatening of these attempts though, takes the form of planned union federation elections, which the FWCUI considers to be a sham meant only to confer legitimacy on the state-backed federation. This then may lead to the very Ba’athi move of banning of all ‘unrecognized’ unions.
Here’s an earlier post with background on the same subject. Privatization is an issue everywhere:
November 26, 2009
The Baghdad based Federation of Worker’s Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) has called for an expansion of the now 41 day-old leather industries strike, into other industries and sectors across Iraq. In their call (which you can read in the original Arabic here, and in English translation here) they cite numerous wage and condition-related grievances, but also emphasize what Iraqi labor unions have for decades been struggling against: a 1987 law, enforced to this day, which prohibits worker organizing in the public sector, in addition to various economic initiatives which they see as threatening the public sector’s very existence. The FWCUI’s analysis also has a broader reach, and considers these moves an expression of the desire on the part of the Iraqi Government, multi-nationals, and the US-led occupation, to privatize nearly all Iraqi industry.
| February 10, 2010 | ||
| 11:00 am | to | 1:00 pm |
A Day of Peace and Resistance
Wednesday, February 10, 2010, 11:00am – 1:00pm
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=231199444930
Texas State University: Outside the Student Center
“In the great tradition of student protest, we will come together on Jan. 28 on Texas State’s campus to speak out against the criminal military actions of the United States government. With the recent escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the expansion into Pakistan and Yemen, and the continued occupation of Iraq, it is time to hold our leaders accountable. This day marks an opportunity to come together to discuss, to network, and to celebrate peace and resistance. As students, teachers, peace veterans, and musicians, we will make our voices heard against war. Not in our name!”
Everyone is welcome. Spread the word.
Hosted by CAMEO (Campus Anti-war Movement to End the Occupations)
cameo.txstate@gmail.com.
