Cananea

UFE Steward Lin Nelson reports on Cananea:

Anne [Fischel] & I, along with the cadre of labor educators who journeyed to Mexico last May, have completed a report on the conditions there and a call for cross-border solidarity. Our key contribution has been the occupational health and environmental conditions there, as well as some of the photography and analysis. We’d like to share it with UFE sisters and brothers, who were very generous in contributing to Los Mineros (the miners union) when we journeyed there to visit striking families. This project has been done in collaboration with labor educators from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Indiana University and University of Minnesota. The report — “Crossing the Border to Cananea: High Stakes & Teachable Moments for North American Workers” — was just presented in New Orleans (March 23rd) at the annual meeting of the United Association for Labor Education. Here’s the report:

We’re also helping to plan a plenary session for the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association to be held in Vancouver in June. Featured in that session will be Napoleon Gomez Urretia, exiled leader of Los Mineros, along with Steelworkers in BC. The plenary will be based on the report, updated information about the situation in Mexico and discussion of the implications for cross-border solidarity, workers’ rights, occupational health, environmental justice and public health. The meeting site shifts each year between Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma and Portland. The Labor Center hosted it here in Oly in 2006. If anyone wants further information about the PHLHA meeting in June, just let us know; it’d be great to have other UFE folks be a part of this meeting .. June 17 – 19th. This year’s theme: “When Unions Matter Most: Opportunities for Collaboration and Solidarity.”

Thanks, Lin