Register for the Labor Solidarity, Democracy, and Empire in the Americas  webinar on Sunday, September 8, 2pm Pacific Time, 3pm MT, 4pm CT, 5pm ET

Happy Labor Day to all workers! The power to change the world is in our hands!

Unfortunately, there are those who try to infiltrate, coopt, or impersonate workers movements to advance the interests of transnational capitalism and US/NATO imperialism. This often happens through the Solidarity Center, which poses as the voice of US labor internationalism, but actually receives very little funding and no oversight from rank-and-file US unions. The Solidarity Center is 95% funded by the US government, and that’s who it represents – not North American workers.

In South America in 2021, the last year records are publicly available, the Solidarity Center received $975,000 through the National Endowment for Democracy for activities in Colombia and Venezuela. It received another $975,000 for its activities in Ecuador and Peru. But even though these figures are already higher than usual, they are dwarfed by the recent $12 million awarded by the Department of Labor to the Solidarity Center for its activities in Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. (The Colombia Solidarity Center office doubles as the headquarters for Venezuela.) Particularly, for those grants destined for Venezuela, there is no information about what specific labor organizations or movements they support. It is a funding black box. In Colombia and Peru, we are seeing evidence that the Solidarity Center and other US funded organizations and agencies are working to depoliticize Left unions and move them towards the right.

FEATURING:

James Jordan of the Alliance for Global Justice will discuss his recent two months of travel and research in Colombia and Peru. He saw old and new patterns that he found concerning. Some of these seemed to possibly duplicate strategies of US labor interference in the lead up to the coups in Chile in 1973 and Haiti in 2004, as well as the attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002. Some seemed to be newer strategies aimed at neutralizing and taming militant union movements and popular political leaders.

Frank Hammer is a retired member of the UAW from Detroit. He is a long-time organizer of solidarity with the ASOTRECOL organization of unjustly fired injured workers from the GM plant in Bogotá. He will discuss that struggle in view of the larger issues of labor internationalism.

This webinar is sponsored by LEPAIO   (Labor Education Project on AFLCIO International Operations)