Datelines
Paterno, Deena Hurwitz, Ron Chepesiuk, and Susan
DATE LINES The Walls Are Crumbling Down NEGEV DESERT "We're trying to make clear what's happening in the West Bank and especially inside Israel; how it makes us blind, corrupts the army and the...
...Hilton, a recipient of four battle stars in World War II and now a deacon and bus driver for his church...
...Flores, now twenty-four, has yet to see a penny...
...That was the first time people learned what was going on at the site...
...Citizens Tackle Toxic Dump SUMTER, SOUTH CAROLINA They tried letter-writing campaigns, visits to the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., protests at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, and petitions to their legislators in the state General Assembly...
...A delegation of Palestinian doctors described abysmal medical conditions in the prisons and hospitals...
...Even after a judge awards back pay, workers may get nothing...
...That's how Daphna Golan explains a demonstration she helped organize recently just three miles from Ansar III, the notorious Negev Desert detention center for Palestinian political prisoners...
...Some 1,200 Israelis and a smattering of West Bank Palestinians, banded together under the name The 21st Year, made a three-day encampment for peace there to symbolize conditions at Ansar III and draw attention to the effects of the twenty-one-year-old occupation and the intifada on Israel...
...Meanwhile, the city of Costa Mesa has hired a police officer to help workers recover lost wages...
...The prisoners are so well organized that they actually run the prison themselves...
...An act which might otherwise constitute a crime," she said, "may be justified under a defense of necessity where a person is confronted with a choice between two evils: a lesser evil from a prohibited act which seeks to avoid harm from a greater evil...
...People got to get away from the notion that others will fight their battles," he says...
...A number of soldiers stationed at Ansar III came to participate...
...What can we do...
...Bill Weatherly, one of the protesters...
...Usually, he says, the employer pays up within an hour of his placing the call...
...Susan Paterno (Susan Paterno is a writer with the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, California...
...I've got no more to say...
...It doesn't exist...
...But most illegal-immigrant workers accept exploitation as part of doing business in the United States...
...The trial garnered sympathy for our cause and showed the harm the dump is causing...
...One of the major problems we had was getting people to act as a group...
...Their former boss, painting contractor Steve Barnard, calls Aleman's claim "not legitimate...
...Immigrant workers are cheated out of their wages—anything from a few hundred to thousands of dollars—earned in jobs that range from ditch-digging, gardening, and busing tables to painting, plastering, and building...
...She recently returned from a month in the region...
...Locating an employer and his assets can cost the worker thousands of dollars, says attorney Annette Debs, who is helping Flores recover his money: "It usually doesn't pay...
...About 15 to 20 per cent of wage claims, state officials say, are resolved with a phone call...
...If more Israelis are beginning to voice their opposition to the iron-fist policies and the occupation itself, the question is: How much pressure are they willing to exert on their government officials...
...On any street corner where workers gather, the horror stories abound...
...Public opinion has definitely swung to our side," says Weatherly...
...They were quite impressive," says Weatherly...
...When you have no choice, you do what you have to, even if you have to do it on an empty stomach...
...and Bob Gochnauer, Vietnam veteran, retired Air Force major, and recipient of the Silver Star for his part in a P.O.W...
...Since 1978, the GSX dump has accepted 135,000 tons of hazardous waste from more than twenty-five states...
...Many workers speak no English...
...Sumter County magistrate Mary K. Herbert instructed the jury...
...WTiat were we to do...
...Considine has organized workers through the complicated and confusing process of filing wage claims...
...Many employers either disappear, threaten them with deportation, or hide their assets and flagrantly refuse to pay...
...Officer Dennis Jef-coat calls employers and advises them that "denying a laborer wages is a criminal act...
...Strange as it may seem, it's very difficult to make Israelis aware of this...
...Weatherly, a past state commander of the American Legion and Boy Scout and Cub Scout master, and Geddings, a former cheerleader, beauty queen, and co-founder of a local rape-crisis center, were joined in arrest by J.D...
...And solutions are in short supply...
...Miss Polly" Mc-Leod, mother of eight, grandmother of eleven, and an active member of the Pentecostal church...
...The Human Relations Commission educates workers, using everything from brochures to street theater...
...Who do we talk to...
...Manuel Aleman contends his employer concocted an elaborate plan to circumvent labor laws and then fired him when he refused to participate...
...Unlike hundreds of thousands of his fellows, Flores found hope in Orange County, California...
...A new sense of urgency is developing in the Israeli peace camp, and Israelis are ready to do more than show up for a few hours at a rally to protest their government's policies...
...State officials confirm that the company, Perfect Coat, is under investigation but decline further comment...
...His employer, it seemed, had disappeared...
...The majority remain silent, but a few fight back...
...And the detainees sent a message of appreciation to the demonstrators...
...The 21st Year distributed hundreds of copies of a booklet about Ansar III...
...Golan agrees...
...Palestinians joined Jews from an orthodox Tel Aviv congregation...
...Each of the three days focused on a distinct aspect of the corruption of occupation...
...He has lost several days' wages from employers who promised to pay and then disappeared...
...Israeli and Palestinian lawyers testified to the abuse of due process in the courts and presented evidence of illegalities in arrest procedures...
...The Commission has written letters to legislators and California Governor George Deukme-jian calling for budget increases to provide funding for enforcement of wage claims...
...We should sit in front of bulldozers and prevent them from demolishing houses," she says...
...He says, "I'm fighting it...
...The CASE Five testified in their own behalf, as did many character witnesses and experts...
...The women went to investigate and were alarmed to learn the site's purpose...
...rescue mission in North Vietnam...
...Their concern began when Geddings and Carolyn Boy-kin, another CASE member, noticed the heavy truck traffic to and from the dump site...
...And only about half of those who win claims actually collect their back pay, thanks to lax enforcement on the part of state and Federal labor officials...
...Weatherly believes other communities can learn from the CASE experience...
...asks Jose Lopez, a twenty-six-year-old native of a small village in Michoacan, Mexico, who works illegally in Orange County...
...The rest take months to process...
...That's called slavery...
...The dump is only about 600 feet from Lake Marion, South Carolina's largest inland body of water...
...It has a heart of iron, a brain of plastic, and a conscience of rubber...
...A long, moving poem written in Hebrew by one of the prisoners was read...
...Across the country, the number of worker-abuse cases is growing, according to a recent Congressional study...
...We got the governor's attention and now the local politicians are taking an interest because they realize a lot of votes are involved...
...Fellow CASE member Louise Geddings explained to the crowd, "We have been nice and worked within the system, but to no avail...
...The state requires that workers find criminal employers' assets before starting collection proceedings, he says, and that results in more than a few Pyrrhic victories...
...Highway Patrol officers asked the demonstrators to stop the protest, but the crowd refused...
...It was up to him to find his former employer and collect his earnings...
...They passed out fliers to GSX employees coming to work that morning, explaining their tactics...
...It's difficult to get people to take steps beyond the usual protests, but it's time now to take risks...
...Israelis were drawn from the comforts of home to voice opposition at its gates...
...But she is encouraged by the success of the encampment...
...It's clear that more and more people are ready to find out about the demolitions, to be there when they destroy homes, to work against deportation...
...Anthony Mischel believes that plan "completely misses the point...
...We never did get put in jail," recalls Weatherly, "but it was a strange feeling being led away by the police, knowing we had gotten into trouble with the law...
...The next step may well see Israelis filling their own jails—and soldiers refusing service at detention centers like Ansar III...
...The thirty-two-year-old worker says he and sixteen other workers were asked to incorporate as a phony company, thereby relieving the employer of paying insurance and other benefits...
...If they won't stop the occupation within a few months," said Knesset member Shulamit Aloni, "we'll start a big movement of civil disobedience...
...In January 1988, he filed a claim with California's Department of Industrial Relations, which ordered his boss to pay Flores $2,300 in back wages...
...how it makes us blind, corrupts the army and the judicial system...
...One flier read, "We are sorry for any inconvenience you may be experiencing because of the protest...
...Since the passage in 1986 of the immigration-reform law, Flores's story has become a common one...
...We are acting in self-defense of our lives...
...The work of fifteen artists was displayed...
...labor laws, but undocumented foreigners are the most likely victims of exploitation—they tend to refuse to report abuse, says Considine, because they fear deportation...
...The 21st Year drew members of Peace Now, along with well-known artists, lawyers, academics, medical professionals, and Knesset members...
...Flores worked for a while in a furniture factory but never got a paycheck...
...The red line was crossed a long time ago...
...After Flores won the order for his back wages, though, the state refused to do any more...
...If we say anything, they threaten to send us back...
...We had tried everything else...
...It's as the old preacher said: 'Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.'" —Ron Chepesiuk (Ron Chepesiuk is a free-lance writer in Rock Hill, South Carolina...
...They are denied overtime, breaks, medical insurance, disability coverage, and vacations, and some employers induce them to commit fraud to circumvent labor laws...
...In the past three years, thousands of immigrant workers like Flores have won claims against unscrupulous employers, but they represent only a fraction of the number who lose wages each month...
...The worker was routinely paid fifty cents an hour for fourteen- to twenty-hour days, Mischel says...
...He works ten-hour days, but rarely gets paid overtime...
...All workers, regardless of their immigration status, are protected by U.S...
...asks c.a.s.e...
...Lois Gibbes of the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste testified that extreme actions are sometimes needed to protect the country's health, and William Myers, a former EPA official, testified to the inherent dangers of the landfill site...
...We really unite them this way...
...In making the award, the Federal judge disregarded the woman's illegal status...
...But the immigrants keep coming, pushed out of their home countries by disastrous economic or political conditions...
...Anthony Mischel, an attorney with the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation, recently helped a Guatemalan domestic worker win $ 10,000 from a now-defunct board-and-care home...
...At the trial, which began on July 22 last year, the lawyers presented a case justifying the defendants' conduct on the basis of their "necessity for action...
...Immigrant Workers Fight for Wages ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA Ignacio Salgado Flores came to southern California in search of the American dream...
...It's so stupid for the Palestinians to be there," said one...
...The result is a growing underground economy that not only deprives workers of millions of dollars in wages, but also threatens to drive honest employers out of business because they refuse to stoop to the level of their dishonest competitors...
...Even so, Debs perseveres for Flores with the hope "that maybe some good will come of this...
...The GSX dump is still in Sumter County, but CASE members believe the trial was the turning point in their environmental battle...
...GSX is a powerful company that's got a lot of people in its pocket...
...Instead, he found a version of American reality...
...And so, in the chilly morning of March 14, 1988, fifty members of Citizens Asking for a Safe Environment (CASE) took the law into their own hands and blocked the entrance to the GSX waste dump in Sumter County, South Carolina...
...The problem is collecting," says the state's Roger Miller...
...Individual members of the Rabbinical Board for Human Rights participated, and orthodox, conservative, and reform Jews together dedicated a Friday evening sabbath service to peace and an end to the occupation...
...Barbara Considine, an employment specialist, helped Flores through the maze of forms and appointments...
...Under such circumstances, the law promotes the greater good by excusing conduct which violates the literal term of the criminal law...
...The action chipped away at the walls of silence and denial which surround Ansar III as a symbol of the occupation...
...As long as jobs exist, Mischel says, foreign workers will come to the United States to take them, law or no law...
...It took the jury only three hours to return a verdict of not guilty...
...The CASE activists were almost apologetic in their protest...
...If labor abuses go unchecked, he says, "it would create an incentive for employers to hire only undocumented workers, since they'd know they wouldn't have to pay them...
...Nobody listened...
...Despite the growing number of wage-exploitation cases, the Federal Government continues trying to control illegal immigration by making it difficult for foreigners to work...
...We are acting in self-defense this morning...
...We cannot count on this government any more," said Mohammed Miari, a Knesset member from the Progressive List party...
...Deena Hurwitz (Deena Hurwitz is on the staff of the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz and co-chair of New Jewish Agenda's national task force on the Middle East...
...He adds, however, that "we've got a lot more work to do...
...They arrested five blockaders, who turned out to be long-time members of the Sumter County community for whom breaking the law did not come easy...
...The CASE Five, flanked by their attorneys, justify their defiance of the GSX dump by a defense of necessity— the dump is a greater evil than their illegal acts...
...They tried to stir up public opinion, but nothing really happened until they gave a talk at the local post of the American Legion...
...Geddings and Boy-kin used Weatherly's insulation company office to launch a membership drive that eventually recruited 5,000 people for CASE...
...The local Human Relations Commission is one of the few county agencies in the United States that help immigrant workers win wage claims...
Vol. 53 • June 1989 • No. 6
