Green jobs

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]

Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 12:40 PM

To: 'David Shove'; 'WCS-A@yahoogroups.com'; 'ddepass@startribune.com'; 'Randy Furst'

Cc: 'angela@globalexchange.org'; 'sen.david.tomassoni@senate.mn'; 'rep.dave.olin@house.mn'; 'rep.tom.anzelc@house.mn'; 'rep.bill.hilty@house.mn'; 'rep.maryellen.otremba@house.mn'; 'rep.tom.Rukavina@house.mn'; 'rep.tony.sertich@house.mn'; 'Joan Vanhala'; 'Jennifer@headwatersfoundation.org'; 'joan@metrostability.org'; 'Lynn Hinkle'; 'Chris Spotted Eagle'; 'Christine Frank'; 'info@jamesmayer.org'; 'info@jamesmayer.org'; 'info@peoplestribune.org'; 'info@autoworkercaravan.org'; 'info@insightnews.com'; 'djrie@visi.com'; 'mzweig@notes.cc.sunysb.edu'; 'rachleff@macalester.edu'; 'Charles Underwood'

Subject: Re: H.I.R.E., Global Exchange, ARISE, Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant

David,

I found it interesting saving the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant is not even mentioned in this posting in your “Progressive Calendar” by its organizers. Nor is support for Senate File 607 mentioned.

I find all of this very alarming, especially seeing as how the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability has been working in league with Lynn Hinkle and Global Exchange using Alternet.org to disseminate false and very misleading information.

Since the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and Global Exchange are working to get the Ford Plant demolished under the guise of projecting a new “green” community in place of the Ford Plant in what appears to be simply a front working on behalf of the Ford Motor Company as the pretext to taking the wrecking ball to the plant I have very little confidence that this H.I.R.E. Minnesota is anything other than one more front for the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party’s arm controlled by the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, the insurance industry and a bunch of greedy contractors waiting to get their money-grubbing fingers in the trough, again.

I think the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability has a lot of nerve and gall claiming to be advocating for creating and saving millions of jobs when they can’t even convince their Democratic friends in the Minnesota state legislature to pass S.F. 607 to save the two-thousand jobs of workers at the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant as Ford took the wealth created by these workers and built a new Ranger plant in Thailand.

And, as far as energy is concerned, ARISE, the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and Global Exchange have been completely silent when it comes to the future of the hydro dam that tax-payers have subsidized to the hilt which has powered the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant since it was built with power left over for the Ford Motor Company to sell and profit from rather than supplying this electricity for the cities and public schools--- I guess we should tremble at the thought of public institutions not having to pay for the same electricity the Ford Motor Company received for free.

At some point, these promoters of these conferences are going to have to be held accountable to the working people of Minnesota and the Twin Cities not to the philanthropists providing them with funding to support Obama’s meaningless platitudes.

Here is the article being distributed by Global Exchange via alternet.org and others like “Progressives for Obama.”

http://www.alternet.org/story/106425/

Outright lies and misinformation. As anyone knows, the only intent of S.F. 607 is to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and hydro dam intact as an industrial unit. S.F. 607 is not about destroying the plant or any part of it to create this “pie-in-the-sky” vision of what a “green community” is.

Half the businesses and even the banks in this community are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy as it is and these people want to bring in competition to drive the existing small businesses out. It makes no sense at all.

Does anyone really believe the vision of these people is to create a “new green economy and community” by taking the wrecking ball to a perfectly sound and usable plant and that new factories are going to be built in its place? No. The Ford Motor Company and land developers are using these fairy-tales pushed by the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and Global Exchange as the cover to take the wrecking ball to the plant after which they will proceed as intended to build their high-rise upscale and racially segregated housing.

What the heck, neither the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability nor Global Exchange have been anywhere to be seen as people in St. Paul and Minneapolis are victims of home foreclosures and evictions, leaving thousands of homes vacant and unoccupied for years now as they deteriorate and rot.

Or that these people will fight for real living wage jobs when over two thousand poverty paid workers are presently employed within a six-block area immediately adjacent to the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant with its nearest business neighbor the upscale, high-priced Lund’s Supermarket which pays its employees a miserly minimum wage right across from UAW Local’s hall and not one single step has been taken to organize Lund’s employees?

To top it off, Barack Obama came to the Twin Cities and was so arrogant he didn’t even mention the plight of the workers who will be losing their jobs if the Ford Motor Company has its way… I guess workers need to occupy the plant to save it if they want to get Obama’s attention.

In fact, the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and Global Exchange are so arrogant that they are proceeding with these forums and bringing forward their grand schemes of new green communities without so much as even asking those employed at the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant what it is they want. Apparently they know the answer they will get will not be pleasing to the ears of the philanthropists funding their little think tanks to come up with these hair-brained schemes.

As far as “tax-breaks,” no corporation in Minnesota has received more tax-breaks than the Ford Motor Company in the name of creating a green manufacturing operation with the promise that the plant and the jobs would stay… one would think that the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and Global Exchange would be organizing in the community to force politicians to coerce the Ford Motor Company to keep its promises rather than abscond with the profits to Thailand.

To what extent any of these other organizations are willing participants in undermining the struggle to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant behind mobilizing people into supporting more calls inviting other corporations to perpetrate the same fraud on tax-payers that the Ford Motor Company is being allowed to get away with needs to be explored.

Certainly many of the other organizations must not be aware of the struggles for equality which have been won over the years that are “people’s investment” in and of themselves… for where else in the Twin Cities can people of color and women find such jobs where they receive equal pay for equal work and most all known institutionalized discriminatory barriers against people of color and women in the workplace have ended.

Finally, workers fought long and hard for the eight hour day. Workers at the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant were forced to accept ten-hour days four days a week often forced into five, six, and even seven day work weeks by management working under conditions of brutal speed-up as the precondition for this plant remaining in operation. Working under such conditions takes a brutal toll on the human body hard for anyone to imagine who has not had to endure such terms of employment. But, workers needed these jobs to survive and they put their bodies and their families through this ordeal with the understanding their jobs would be secure.

Outfits like the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and Global Exchange owe it to Ford Workers and the community they are trying to influence to struggle with the rest of us to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant rather than running these types of diversions around this important issue.

Ironically these outfits like Global Exchange have been touting a dubious and very questionable “fact” that they are working in alliance and coalition with UAW Local 879 when in fact a number of the officers of this local viciously attacked me only recently for “distributing green propaganda” at the plant.

I think we need to find out why the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and Global Exchange did not get their members in motion to organize a massive push to get Senate File 607 through the Senate Committee on Business, Industry and Jobs dominated by their Democratic Party friends including committee chair, Senator James Metzen who had an eleven to seven Democratic majority and Senator David Tomassoni’s motion to move it out of Committee failed.

I, like many others, are now curious as to how these people now say they are working in coalition with UAW Local 879 in support of their new green vision under the aegis of S.F. 607?

Does anyone know of any discussion at a UAW Local 879 meeting authorizing the local to work in coalition to demolish this plant and destroy these jobs… workers at the plant who I have spoken to know nothing about their union participating in such dirty deeds… but then again they went to work everyday thinking the sacrifices they--- and tax-payers made--- assured them of job security… never did they think their own leaders would refuse to tell them that the Ford Motor Company was building a new Ranger Plant in Thailand with the wealth they created only to put them out of a job onto the street.

And, I don’t quite understand how it is that these student “organizers” with Global Exchange and their “coalition,” ARISE, have operated at a Macalester College under the watchful eyes of Peter Rachleff a labor historian and activist without getting any counsel.

Anyways, perhaps someone attending this conference will discuss some of these concerns. And perhaps Global Exchange will have the moral courage to admit that the information they provided concerning S.F 607 was just plain wrong and not true… perhaps due to shoddy journalism, perhaps motivated by something more sinister.

It is unfortunate that the struggle to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant got off to a bad start with a big-shot from the Minnesota AFL-CIO, Mark Froemke, proclaiming this was all a done deal and nothing could be done. Since people rejected this defeatist attitude, now we have to contend with the fairy-tale illusions being brought forward about how we need to demolish a certified green plant to make way for some kind of Disneyland/Epcott Center sci-fi community imagined in one of Lynn Hinkle’s extraordinary dreams which he hawks from conference to conference as plant after plant closes and gets demolished smothering more jobs in the debris.

Alan Maki


As posted to David Shove's "Progressive Calendar"

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From: Maura Brown and Jennifer Jimenez-Wheatley

Subject: Green jobs December 16 @ 6:30pm

Alliance for Metropolitan Stability

How do you grow the economy and ensure thousands of JOBS for Minnesotans? H.I.R.E Minnesota (Healthcare, Infrastructure, and Renewable Energy)

Town Hall Meeting

Tuesday, December 16

6:30-8:00 pm

Minneapolis Urban League

2100 Plymouth Avenue N, Minneapolis, MN 55411


As America rebuilds its economy, green industries will be a major factor in creating jobs and refueling our economic growth:

* Governor Tim Pawlenty wants $3.65 million in tax breaks for companies investing in Minnesota green jobs from 2010-2011

* President-elect Barack Obama wants 10 percent of electricity to come from energy-efficient sources by 2010 and 1 million homes in low-income neighborhoods

It makes sense! Smart green investments in infrastructure will

* JUMP-START our ECONOMY,

* CREATE and PRESERVE millions of JOBS

* REDUCE our OIL DEPENDENCY and

* EASE the CLIMATE CRISIS

JOIN the conversation!! BE Heard! BE Involved!

Come and learn about green collar jobs and local construction opportunities in our communities Light dinner will be served and there will be musical entertainment RSVP online to let the Alliance know you're coming

H.I.R.E. Minnesota is a coalition of community groups led by the Summit Academy OIC (SAOIC). Coalition members include: American Indian OIC, East Metro OIC, Anishinabe OIC, Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota, Minnesota Baptist Convention, Alliance for Metropolitan Stability, Stairstep, ISAIAH, Insight News. For more information on the campaign, read the recent article in the Insight News.

Maura Brown and Jennifer Jimenez-Wheatley
Alliance for Metropolitan Stability
2525 E Franklin Avenue, Suite 200
Minneapolis, MN 55406


Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

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Thoughts From Podunk

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