By LeiLani Dowell

NYC FIST

Youth and students are an important sector participating in the struggle against the illegal coup d’etat in Honduras. Video after video of the resistance actions that have taken place since the July 28 coup have shown youth in the streets and facing repression as well.

The U.S. Delegation of Labor, Community and Clergy in Solidarity with the Honduran Resistance was able to meet with several student organizers on Oct. 9 and 10. However, as a result of the repression, the delegation was not able to meet with as many youth as expected. On Oct. 9, two men attempted to kidnap one of the student leaders; while the young woman was able to escape with a fractured hand, it prevented her organization from meeting with the U.S. delegation. Instead, they needed to meet collectively to discuss security measures and tactics.

Digna Rodríguez is a student at the pedagogical university, which has become the meeting point for many of the daily marches and rallies taking place in Tegucigalpa. She reported that the entire university has been militarized and used as a detention center by the police, who torture their detainees on the campus grounds. The school administration has threatened students with academic discipline for participating in resistance activities and has denied permission for activities on campus. Meanwhile, teachers in the resistance have also faced harassment from the administration.

A member of the U.S. delegation from the youth group FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together—described the use of massive amounts of tear gas and long-range acoustic devices in Pittsburgh to attack the mostly young protesters at the G-20 summit in September. These same weapons have been used against youth in Honduras.

Ian Díaz, leader of the youth group Los Necios, is a student at the National University, the largest university in the country with some 70,000 students. Díaz told the delegation that the resistance movement at the university includes teachers, students and workers. While the university itself has attempted to hold itself apart from the political situation within Honduras, resistance members on campus work hard to raise the political consciousness of those attending and working at the college. He said that with the extreme violence occurring throughout the country, more students are now able to relate the political situation in the country to their everyday lives.

Díaz explained: “Before, people weren’t aware of theory, of what it meant to belong to a class. Now workers see it very clearly. [President Manuel] Zelaya took politics that had been neglected for a while and pushed for change that affected the biggest sector of society—stopping privatization, raising the minimum wage.

“Over the past three years, people saw that these things were negatively affecting some, and benefiting others. They realized that there were marked differences; that the workers benefited while the businesspeople, the owners of the means of production, were affected adversely. This gave the people their class consciousness—it’s very noticeable who the coup is for. There’s no better way to learn something than through action. You can also see which students are at the marches.”

The two are members of a broader Youth Front against the Military Coup, which is a part of the larger National Resistance Front against the coup and includes students as well as youth from the rural, peasant and Indigenous populations of the country, the majority of whom cannot afford to attend college.

On Oct. 10, the delegation was able to briefly attend a class on revolutionary studies that is organized and held every Saturday afternoon by Los Necios. A class of about 30 youth listened raptly and took notes on Marxist theory. Los Necios (whose name roughly translates to “the troublemakers”) identifies as a socialist organization, taking its ideology from a combination of revolutionaries from Marx and Lenin to Trotsky, Mao and others.

When asked what their message to youth in the U.S. and worldwide would be, a member of Los Necios answered: “Our message would be that youth need to get involved politically. As young people, we are obliged to get involved. Being a revolutionary is a moral obligation.”

Dowell represented the youth group FIST on the U.S. delegation. An interview with her about the delegation’s experiences in Honduras can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/FIST-Youth.

By Easton Smith

NYC FIST

On Oct. 5 workers, faculty and students from both Hunter and Sarah Lawrence colleges were joined by union representatives and New York activists for a rally in front of Manhattan’s Hunter College against AVIFresh, an anti-union dining service corporation.

Demonstrators held UNITE HERE Local 100 flags, placards showing solidarity with the workers, and signs calling for justice and a boycott. The crowd sang chants like “No justice, no peace” and “Solidarity Forever.”

Hunter College workers explained how AVIFresh has given them nothing and how the company wants them to get a 401k when the workers don’t want a 401k.  Workers shared stories of living with kids while the threat of no health care lingers over them and of their worries about not having a pension plan. Students and faculty spoke about possible boycotts. One faculty member addressed the crowd, saying, “It seems like they have not got the news: slavery days are over. … We are not the criminals. They are the criminals!” As the rally was ending, workers, students and union representatives attempted to present a petition to the president of Hunter College, Jennifer Raab. As they attempted to get on the elevator they were stopped by security guards, who explained that since the people there (including the AVI workers) were not employees of the college they were not allowed to go to the president’s office. After some negotiating a few of the workers were allowed to go up, where they were met not by the president but by a representative who took the petitions.

This rally caught the attention of hundreds of onlookers including the heads of AVI. It was a rally aimed at reminding AVI that its dream of a submissive, weak and disconnected workforce will not become a reality. They had so ignorantly hoped that they could disconnect the workers at Hunter College from those at Sarah Lawrence, and that they could rely on physical distance, size, relative cost and the public and private sectors of these colleges to destroy any sense of solidarity. These hopes of AVI were exemplified on Oct. 8, at negotiations between Hunter College AVI workers and AVI company representatives.

AVI’s dishonest advertising

AVI, which touts itself as an Ohiobased “family-owned” business, has made an assault on the working people of New York. Grabbing hold of new food service contracts in the New York area in 2009 at Hunter and Sarah Lawrence colleges, AVI is quickly becoming a force in the Northeast school cafeteria scene.  AVI boasts a subtitle of “The Family Difference in Dining Services” on their Web site and markets their business as a conscious and friendly one. Looking at their Web site or talking to their “Human Relations” people, one would think of the words “honest” and “fair,” but since their arrival at Sarah Lawrence College and Hunter, the word that seems to loom in the air is “union-busting.”

AVI began their assault quietly, over the summer, as students and faculty left the campuses and turned their minds away from their respective college communities.  At Sarah Lawrence all workers who wished to transfer their employment from Flik (the former food service provider at the school for over 30 years) were promised employment. Despite this promise, 14 workers were suddenly fired right after being “hired.”

Hunter College workers, many of whom have seen multiple food service contractors come and go, were equally caught by surprise when they learned that their long-held and seemingly standard benefits of free family health care and pensions were denied by AVI outright. These injustices only marked the beginning of a long and continuing campaign by AVI aimed at destroying any sense of dignity, unity, justice or hope in the workplace.

A few examples of the injustices show that this company has launched an intentional and well-organized crusade to establish dominance in the workplace and destroy any worker’s hope for better working conditions. Reported incidences at Sarah Lawrence include managerial verbal and physical abuse, unpaid hours, loss of seniority, insufficient pay increases, disrespect of workers’ basic scheduling needs and the use of racial slurs in the workplace. Many of these violations are connected to the concerted anti-union campaign that has been launched at Sarah Lawrence. These violations prove that from the onsite managers to the heads of the company, AVI could not care less about their “team members,” as Human Resources manager, Bob Farmer, and vice president for Business Development, Richard Martin, so cheerfully label them.  AVI’s campaign against working people is ultimately, however, a naïve one that lacks any knowledge of the Hunter and Sarah Lawrence cafeteria workers’ strong will and fighting spirit. AVI’s assault on workers has only emboldened the workers and those who stand in solidarity with them to not stand down until justice is obtained.

Smith is a member of the Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) youth group.

By David Hoskins

NYC FIST

Fifty-four activists and health care workers were arrested Oct. 15 during sit-ins at health insurance company offices in New York, Washington, Phoenix, Palm Beach, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Reno and Portland, Ore. The protesters, chanting “Patients not Profits,” occupied the offices to demand “Medicare for All”—a public single-payer health plan that improves Medicare and expands it to cover everyone.

The sit-ins were organized by the Patients Not Profit campaign of the Mobilization for Health Care for All. More than 1,000 people have signed up to engage in civil disobedience at insurance company offices around the country through the mobilizeforhealthcare.org Web site. The crisis in health care has left an estimated 47 million people in the United States uninsured and another 25 million underinsured.

Another wave of actions is planned at insurance company offices on Oct. 28.

By David Hoskins

NYC FIST

Fifty students, faculty and community supporters protested at the Department of Education Oct. 15 to demand an immediate rollback of tuition hikes and budget cuts at the City University of New York.

The protest was called by the CUNY Campaign to Defend Education. Larry Hales of the youth and student organization Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) emceed the event. Student organizers from the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative and Radical Women also spoke.

A public organizing meeting is called for Oct. 27 at the CUNY Graduate Center, Room 5414 at 7 p.m. to strategize for further mobilizations against recent proposals to cut an additional $53 million from the CUNY budget.