Returning

I returned to L.A. Saturday evening - the last few days were pretty harrowing. On Thursday we had a supper meeting with the human rights officer from the CUT the labor rights organization. I didn't know this during dinner but he had to bring along 2 or 3 bodyguards because of frequent threats of violence and a few attempts on his life. It's hard to image living like that.

On Friday we went to visit the Minister of Social Protection, a government agency meant to safe guard the rights and safety of workers, among other things. The Labor Ministry was eliminated under Uribe and all things labor were thrown into the Ministry of Social Protection's basket.

About 15 minutes into the meeting I was turning green and heading for the bathroom. Thank god for my trusty minidisc, cause from what I hear from the others it was a pretty impressive show of flailing hands, indignation and excuses from the somewhat (ok, very) flamboyant Minister (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Then reinforcements were brought in in the form of an attractive young woman (hey, were was the attractive straight guy?!). My compatriots remained unconvinced.

Due to my stomach troubles I missed the next meeting with the US Embassy and my minidisc was unable to attend as well. Everyone seemed to think this meeting was more satisfying in terms of responses and reactions. Though I tend to think he just may be a better lier.
But them again John Perkins writer of "Confessions of An Economic Hitman" came to the light while in Colombia.

So now that I'm home I'm going to be filling in a lot of the blanks I didn't have time to do while in Colombia. The meeting schedule was hella hectic, which is probably why I wound up getting sick. I'm going to transcribe my notes from the prison visit and listen to the Minister of SP's rant and try to pull it all together. There's a lot to think about here and about 20 sides to every story. Some of the unions were obviously in distress and worthy of support, some seemed like they had complaints similar to that of US workers - privatization, contracting out, use of temp. workers to get around giving benefits. Of course it needs to be remembered this is in a framework of a 60% poverty rate, the still-frequent murder of unionist and AFTA bearing down on them like a hurricane of economic destruction.

In the here and now in the catagory of "what YOU can do" is find out about AFTA, get mad and write your damn Congressman. It'll thrill his/her heart and it will make a difference, especially now with the poll numbers dropping like a lead Teho puck.

Charged with "rebellion"

We did our prison visit today. Later I´ll add another entry just on that visit. I´m trying to write and edit it on paper so I won´t spend time and valuable pesos on internet time. The basics are we split into two groups one went to the men´s prison and the other went to the women´s.

I went to the men´s high security prison with a Colombian human rights lawyer and Bob, one of the delegation escorts. The three men we visited are charge with ¨rebellion" which seems to mean whatever the government wants it to mean. Although Uribe claims there are no political prisoners, everyone refers to them as political prisoners including the prison officials and the lawyers.

These delegation trips turn into endurance tests after a while with all the traveling and meeting after meeting after mee....... I skipped out on one this afternoon to rest. My fellow delegates feeling obligated to go to every single meeting, met with these oil trade workers and fell asleep during his talk. Both of them. That´s what you get for scheduling meetings after lunch.

We flew back from Medellin last night and I´m still exhausted even after a little nap. So if my writing is at times less than coherent please forgive me. I´m trying to push the idea that sometimes less is more but apparently every union in Colombia wants to meet the American delegation. That does make sense considering how much involvement our country has in Colombia - I think I´ve gone through before: the millions of dollars from Plan Colombia and the upcoming AFTA vote.

So I´m going to try to write up the prisoner´s story and post it tonite, tommorow at the lastest.

Medellin

We´ve been in Medellin for almost 2 days now and we´re leaving in a couple of hours. Our delegation escort Alison just told me the teacher´s union are sending over some sort of television crew to do an interview with us!!! Ack! I hope I can get out of this - the not speaking Spanish thing should help.

I have to make this brief because as usual they have us on a super-tight schedule.

I was interviewed on KPFK on MayDay - they called literally as I was boarding the plane for Medellin. So I gave the workers of the world unite speech. No I was glad I got on at rush hour because more people need to be aware of the AFTA and what it means for the Andean region countries - more on that later.

Time for one small ancedote - we went to talk to CUT, which is a umbrella organization for unions. While the president of CUT was speaking he mentioned the previous president had been shot by paramilitary or Colombian government agents. Then he pointed to a hole in the table where we were sitting and told us the assisination happened right there, leaving bullet holes in the table and a nearby cabinet. It´s hard to image a world where your work could get you gunned down in your office. The term they use is "impunity"- and the paras in connect with the government (that the US sends millions of dollars to every year) acts with impunity to destroy any form of opposition.

Must go - this is costing me $2500 an hour!

May Day, moonshine and exploding bar games

Today was a fun day all around. Great march, big numbers, no police violence and barbeque and moonshine at the end.

We got out to the street around 9:30 - I had called KPFK to do a live call-in but we never got a call to the cell phone. Could be a bad connection. The delegate leader Alison gave her cell phone number but international cell phone calls are iffy. Even domestic cell phone calls from a "foreign" phone are pretty iffy.
As for the march - the numbers were huge. Hundreds of thousands - one guy said up to a million but we{ll see. There is so much oppression of various kinds people are pissed. There were anarchist, communist and trade unionists as well as people who had lost relatives to police and state violence. A new campaign specifically against riot police was lauched today because it{s the anniversary of a young student being beaten to death by police last May Day.

When everyone got to the main plaza - Plaza Boliver there were a few speeches and then the sky opened up and dumped a few hours worth of rain on us in a coupla minutes. Both good and bad because it may have prevented any build-up of tension between the cops and the people.

Then some electrical workers took us to this barbeque place where they feed us hunks of chicken and this strange vinegary tasting corn alchohol called.....oh, don´t remember. Thats how good it was. But the best part was the exploding bar game called TEJO - see, that I remember - thats how good IT was.}

Somebody called it exploding horse shoes and thats about right. You get a weight from say 2-5lbs and you toss it underhand toward this target. The target is a box filled with clay andset up at an angle. Before you toss they set up these little triangles of pink paper filled with gunpowder at four point along this metal hoop in the center of the box. That s so when the metal puck hits against the metal ring it explodes the little gunpowder packets. And you re throwing from like, at least 15ft away. So the drunker people get the poorer their aim gets until.....let s just say there was a big, gaping hole in the ceiling.

I m building one in my backyard when I get home.....

So we are off to Medellin in about 15 minutes. I write from their as I m able . forgive weird mistakes in punctuation - Colombian internet cafe keyboards can be hard to navigate.