Uprising in Cincinnati

Protesters on Race Street in Cincinnati demonstrate against the police killing of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed Black man.

Compiled by Robert Brown

The Cincinnati establishment is trying to look respectable following the mass protest, in the streets, of the murder of an unarmed 19 year old man by a police officer.

The fatal shooting occurred early April 7 when a Cincinnati policeman, Steven Roach, chased Timothy Thomas into an alley and shot him in the chest at close range. The cop pursued Thomas because he fit the description of an individual sought by the police for 14 warrants, all of them misdemeanors or traffic violations.

Friends said Thomas had left the apartment he shared with his fiancee, Monique Wilcox, and his 3-month-old son, Tywon, to buy cigarettes. Thomas had recently earned his general equivalency diploma and secured a job as a laborer. He was planning to marry his fiancee in June.

By the morning of Monday, April 9, protesters were gathering in the streets, demanding justice. Thomas was the fourth black man killed by Cincinnati police since November, and the fifteenth such victim since 1995. A police news conference about the death of Thomas suggested a whitewash.

Later the same day, during a public city council meeting, angry local residents carrying signs and banners chanted and voiced their outrage. According to press accounts, protesters screamed at Council members and prevented them from leaving during a three-hour confrontation. Eventually they were able to get Thomas’ mother, Angela Leisure, to the podium to demand an explanation from city officials about her son’s death. She said, “You took him from his family and his son, and we want to know why. And don’t get me wrong, even when you tell me why, it’s not going to make it better.”

By the end of Monday a crowd of over 800 protesters, mainly youth, was in the street in front of police headquarters.

At midnight, riot police began to encircle the crowd that remained. They repeatedly fired beanbag stun guns and sprayed pepper gas in attempts to disperse the demonstration.

Protesters fought back by lobbing bottles and bricks at the cops. Bricks were also aimed at city buildings.

Police eventually charged the crowd and made at least 10 arrests. Dozens were injured in the clash, mainly by police stun guns. Local hospitals reported admitting 25 people injured in the conflict.

Public anger continued Tuesday afternoon and evening as crowds took to the streets. In the downtown, Over-the-Rhine, and West End areas of Cincinnati, crowds broke windows and knocked over garbage cans, vendors’ carts and statues. Numerous stores were broken into and looted.

Police began working 12 hour shifts and riding three in a patrol car. In the city’s streets, they walked arm-in-arm and rode horseback, using tear gas and guns loaded with rubber bullets and “bean bags” – bags, about the size of a tea bag, filled with an ounce of lead birdshot.

Sixty-six people were arrested, including five juveniles.

Several schools were closed Wednesday, and US Post Office officials announced that they were suspending mail deliveries in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood for the duration of the violence. Residents of the area were requested to pick up their mail at a postal substation.

A number of individuals and organizations principally from Cincinnati’s white community met and adopted a statement of support for and solidarity with the African American community:

“We condemn the top leadership of the Cincinnati City government and the Cincinnati Police Department for their failure to deal with the long history of police abuse of power and institutional racism in the department, above all the killing of 15 black men since 1995, and the recent killing of Timothy Thomas…We wish to express our sympathy to the family of Timothy Thomas and the other families and individuals who have been victims of police violence, and to the African American community more broadly, which as a whole has been a victim of long-standing discriminatory practices…We express our support for the African American community’s public protests against the Cincinnati Police Department and the Cincinnati City government…We condemn the Cincinnati Police Department for its handling of the current protests over the killing of Timothy Thomas…”

The statement was a joint product of the Coalition For a Humane Economy ,the Cincinnati Zapatista Coalition, Cincinnati Refuse and Resist!, the Greater Cincinnati Defend Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, Solidarity, the International Socialist Organization, and Anti-Racist Action.

The violence continued that night, although reduced to scattered incidents. Another 82 people, including 22 juveniles, were arrested, as police cracked down. A policeman was hit by a bullet Wednesday night but escaped injury because he was wearing a protective vest. Early Thursday morning residents broke into clothing and furniture stores, and fires continued to burn in several Cincinnati neighborhoods.

On Thursday, Cincinnati Mayor Charles Luken declared a state of emergency and said he might have to call in the National Guard by the weekend if the violence did not subside. Luken said that fatigued Cincinnati police, working 12-hour shifts, might need outside reinforcements to bring rioting under control, particularly with the evidence that it was spreading. He announced a citywide curfew: only people going to and from work would be allowed on the streets between 8 pm and 6 am; a conviction of curfew violation is punishable by 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Referring to the efforts of “community leaders” to defuse the situation, he said, “‘’The results of our work in trying to calm things down are not seen in the streets tonight. We’re just going to have to do whatever it takes to bring it under control. It has to stop.’’ The Hamilton County Sheriff’s office was asked to provide helicopter surveillance. In Washington President Bush said through a spokesman that he joined civic leaders “in their appeal ... for calm.”

Friday morning, the fire division declared a large area in Cincinnati a “hot zone.” A “hot zone” is an area where firefighters and emergency medical units will answer calls only if accompanied by a police escort. One hundred and twenty-five riot-trained Ohio State Highway Patrol officers arrived to aid Cincinnati police. Sheriff’s deputies continued to provide helicopter surveillance, and also assisted on the ground.

“In a city where 15 black men have died at the hands of police since 1995 — including four since November — the issue is getting the police under control,” said Canon Vicar Kwasi Thornell, a Black Episcopal clergyman at Christ Church Cathedral. “If they don’t see that, they’re missing the boat.’’ James Diamond, dean of the cathedral, added, “Black men, African-American men, in this city have a reason to be afraid. As a white person, I’m afraid for them.’’

Cincinnati’s Safety Director Kent Ryan, supervisor of the police and fire divisions, resigned, leaving the Chief of Police, Tom Streicher, as Acting Safety Director.

Local radio stations broadcast information about school closings, cancellations and rescheduled events. With the curfew in effect, Cincinnati’s streets had a ghostly, unreal look on Friday night.

Chief Tom Streicher said that Saturday would be important. “Saturday is going to be a crucial day,’’ he said. ‘’We look for Saturday to be a potential turning point for us in this whole event.’’ He said that police informants had told him to expect violence after Timothy Thomas’ funeral.

African drum music pounded the packed area outside the site of the funeral at the New Prospect Baptist Church. Members of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam stood along with New Black Panther Party members.

A couple hundred people surrounded the African drum band, waved African flags, and held signs saying, “It Is Right To Rebel” and “It’s Time To Shoot Back.”

Mr. Thomas’ silver casket was brought into the church adorned with two dozen red carnations. Tears flowed from Thomas’ relatives, who filled the first four rows of seats in the church. Hundreds of mourners were told Thomas’ death was a tragedy that raised awareness of the struggles of blacks in the city. “This is not a riot. This is a rebellion,” Malik Zulu Shabazz, national spokesman for the New Black Panther Party told hundreds of mourners. Shabazz later chanted “black power” three times, bringing cheers from those inside the church and others outside who listened to a broadcast of the service. The Rev. Damon Lynch III said, “All you need to do is hold on. Right now we have the world looking at Cincinnati. The world needs to see first of all that Black men know how to stand up and be counted. Stand up for justice. Stand up against oppression.” Stepfather Eric Leisure read poems that family members wrote about Thomas, and when Angela Leisure closed the casket many in the audience sobbed.

As Mr. Thomas’ casket was brought out of the New Prospect Baptist Church, the crowd of more than 1,000 outside went silent and lined the street to allow it passage.

Into this period of relative calm and closure, the Cincinnati police chose to inject a final controversial act. In broad daylight, in front of hundreds of witnesses, including reporters and photographers, a squad car pulled up to a number of people walking to a park from the funeral. Four Cincinnati police officers jumped out and fired “less than lethal” ammunition into the crowd. They hit a 7 year old Black girl and her 11 year old cousin, a 34 year old white woman, and a 50 year old Black man. The woman, Louisville teacher Christine Jones, was hospitalized with a bruised spleen, cracked rib and bruised lung. The officers remain on duty while the investigation continues.

Sources: Associated Press, Cincinnatti Enquirer, Reuters, et. al.

Textile workers build solidarity in Bangladesh

By Seumas Milne

Apr. 9— In the stifling upper floor of an inner-city Dhaka factory block, Derbyshire textile worker Pat Gale tries her hand ironing shirts destined for Littlewoods stores in Britain. The Bangladeshi “ironmen” who normally do the pressing look on smiling, having been told that this is the job she did at her own factory in England for many years. But although the work and equipment are similar, the gulf in pay and conditions could scarcely be wider. The lines of mainly young women who make Littlewoods clothes at the Dressmen factory — something of a showcase in the mushrooming Bangladeshi garment industry — get less than a fiftieth of the hourly rate earned by their relatively low-paid British counterparts. Unskilled workers start on the industry minimum of 930 takas a month for a six-day week -- £12 at the going exchange rate. The more experienced are on 1,295 takas (£16.80) basic. Ten-hour days are the norm.

At the nearby Islam Garments factory, where Ms. Gale and two fellow British trade unionists arrive unannounced, working conditions are strikingly worse, with women machinists packed together, some gangways blocked by barefoot teenagers trimming thread-ends on the floor.

Most child laborers have been cleared out of Bangladesh’s export sector under international pressure, but several workers at Islam Garments, which supplies Wal-Mart and other western brand-name buyers, look barely 10 or 11 years old.

Musammet is 18 and has worked at the factory for seven years. “Of course I would have preferred to stay at school, but my family could not afford to send me,” she tells the visiting British textile workers. Later, outside the factory, the workers are more open, reporting standard 12-hour days, one day’s holiday a month, regular physical abuse by supervisors and compulsory overtime, sometimes through the night.

Women garment workers in Dhaka are often raped or robbed as they leave work and factory fires have killed 400 workers in the sector over the past five years.

The British textile industry is losing 2,000 jobs a week, mostly to factories such as Dressmen and Islam Garments. Clothing imports have tripled in the past 15 years, overwhelmingly from the developing world, and now account for over half the clothes sold in Britain, as the big retailers and brand-name multinationals have switched production to cheap labor contractors in countries such as China, Indonesia, Morocco and Bangladesh.

The same process is happening throughout western Europe, and while consumers have benefited from falling prices in real terms, the corporations and buyers — who dictate terms to producers in the developing world — have benefited far more from burgeoning mark-ups and arms-length control.

The three British textile workers have come to Dhaka, courtesy of the charity War on Want, in an effort to build solidarity in the face of a global redivision of labor which is setting national workforces against each other in competition for orders. Ms. Gale is senior shop steward at Jaeger Knitwear in Belper, owned by Coats Viyella, which has sold or closed factories employing thousands of workers in the past year, as its main buyer, Marks & Spencer, switches to low-cost overseas production centers. Sandy Rankin, a GMB union activist, lost his job in December, when his Ayrshire knitting factory was closed by John Aird & Co. — and the machines were reportedly sold to China. Only Mike Gratton, union convenor at a Devon industrial fabrics factory, John Heathcoat, which has a specialist market, looks safe.

The three activists hammer home the need to organize from the bottom up to win basic labor standards and better conditions. But building trade unionism in Bangladesh’s mushrooming garments industry — of the kind that has proved effective in countries such as Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia — is proving an uphill struggle.

There are now 2 million mostly women workers making clothes for export — compared with around 275,000 in Britain — working for 3,300 employers, plus another couple of million producing in what can be even worse conditions for the domestic market.

But unions are legally registered in only 127 factories and fewer than a dozen employers actually negotiate with them. Workers are regularly sacked, beaten up, or subjected to police frame-ups for being active in unions — two-thirds of Bangladesh’s Members of Parliament directly or indirectly own garment factories — while an estimated 35% unemployment provides an army of willing substitutes ready to take their jobs.

At the entrance to the giant South Korean-owned Dada factory in the tax-free export processing zone outside Dhaka, Nike and Tommy Hilfiger codes of conduct proclaim the companies’ support for workers’ right to free association, along with their opposition to child labor and enthusiasm for decent pay and working conditions. But the zone’s general manager, Syed Nafizuddin Ahmed, is unequivocal. “Trade unions are banned here,” he says.

Jobs inside the zone, where the average monthly wage is around 2,000 takas and conditions are often better than in the city factories, are highly coveted. But the employers take no chances with troublemakers. Rafiqul Islam Sujan organized a protest at one export processing zone factory over poor conditions and ended up having to bribe his way out of jail and change his name to get another job.

In the Demra slum district of Dhaka, where tens of thousands are crammed together in flimsy shacks, between mud tracks awash with sewage and refuse, women from the garment factories and others describe to the British workers their struggle for survival without running water, electricity or health services.

Faced with calls for better wages and conditions, Bangladeshi employers point to the demands for ever-lower prices by the western buyers. Lutfor Rahman, of the clothing exporters’ association, cites the profits of companies such as Wal-Mart. “They talk to us about ethics all the time, but will not share their profits. If they pay us more, we can also pay more.”

Fahim Abdullah, director at the Dressmen factory, recalls an approach from a British company wanting uniforms for security guards for five and a half dollars a dozen. “We simply couldn’t do it at that price, but they got it elsewhere.” Bangladeshi manufacturers face the prospect of being undercut in turn by even lower-wage workforces in countries such as Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia and China.

Both Bangladeshi and British union activists find little difficulty in pointing the finger at the multinational corporations who control the industry for their problems, rather than each other.

“Most textile workers at home blame the greed of the manufacturers and retailers,” Mr. Rankin says. “If the general public in the west was confronted with what we have been in the last few days, they might start questioning the companies and demanding change. After what we’ve seen, anything you can do, as a human being, you want to do.”

Source: The Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk