Organize the South

This is just weird. A Burger King executive using his daughter's email to take pot shots at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Seems a little juvenile, doesn't it? But it doesn't look like BK is out to make sense. Here's a New York Times piece from March 2007 about how BK was willing to pay more for cage-free eggs and pork. Yes, it seems that BK thinks pigs and chickens should be free but farmworkers can go to Hell. You would think a guy with the same name as a cute Sesame Street character would know better.

You can see Grover in this picture. He's the guy in blue.


Burger King Exec Uses Daughter's Online ID To Chide Immokalee Coalition

By Amy Bennett Williams
News-Press.com (Florida)
April 28, 2008
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080428/BUSINESS/804280351/1075

As the Coalition of Immokalee Workers prepares to deliver more than 60,000 petitions to Burger King headquarters in Miami today, the daughter of Burger King's vice-president Stephen Grover confirmed her father is responsible for online postings vilifying the coalition.

The Immokalee-based group is asking Burger King to improve tomato harvesters' working conditions and pay a penny more a pound for tomatoes, which could add about $20 to a daily wage of $50, workers say.

McDonald's and Yum! Brands, the world's biggest fast- food chain and restaurant company, respectively, have agreed to the raise. Yum! signed on in 2005; McDonald's in 2007. So far, Burger King has refused, while publicly saying it wants to work with the coalition to improve labor conditions.

Yet often during the past year, when articles or videos about the coalition were posted on YouTube and various Internet news sites, someone using the online names
activist2008 or surfxaholic36 would attach comments coalition member Greg Asbed has called 'libelous.'

This one, from surfxaholic36, is representative: 'The CIW is an attack organization lining the leaders pockets . They make up issues and collect money from dupes that believe their story. To (sic) bad the people protesting don't have a clue regarding the facts. A bunch of fools!'

A father's posts

Although Shannon Grover also uses the name
surfxaholic36 - mostly on social networking sites - she said the anti-coalition posts are her father's alone.

'I don't really know much about the coalition and Burger

King stuff,' she said, reached by phone at the family's Miramar home Friday. 'That was my dad. My dad used to go online with that name and write about them.'

Asked if she'd ever written about the coalition online, she was adamant: 'No, that was my Dad. That was him.'

Steven Grover did not return calls to his home or office, nor did Burger King spokesman Keva Silversmith respond to calls and a request to speak to Burger King CEO John Chidsey.

'This is truly disturbing,' said coalition member Gerardo Reyes. 'It's one thing to imagine that there's some kind of anonymous Internet stalker out there obsessively tracking every story about the CIW, posting these vicious lies about us and calling us things like `the lowest form of life' and `blood suckers," Reyes said. 'I mean, we're a farmworker community fighting slavery and trying to get a fair wage for the work we do.'

The bigger question, Reyes said, is this: 'When you realize the person posting those things is actually Burger King's vice president in charge of the ethical operation of the company's supply chain, it really makes you wonder just how high up does this whole thing go? Does Burger King, as a company, approve of this sort of behavior? If not, we'd expect to see some changes now that this has come to light.'

`The low-road approach'

Last month, activist2008 sent an e-mail to The News- Press almost identical to many of the online postings signed 'Shawn Glass.' The e-mail's Internet address showed it came from Burger King's corporate headquarters in Miami. No one named Shawn Glass works there, according to the employee phone directory.

At the time, Silversmith denied the e-mail was official BK communication, although he didn't deny it came from the company.

'This is a non-corporate sanctioned opinion,' he told The News-Press. 'The strident tone does not reflect Burger King, who wants to cooperate and bring real change to Immokalee.'

Marc Rodrigues of the Student Farmworker Alliance, which works closely with the coalition, says he's not surprised by the latest revelation but frustrated an executive would 'stoop to this level and choose the low-road approach instead of trying to work for real change.'

It was Rodrigues who discovered earlier this year the alliance had been infiltrated by Cara Schaffer, who said she was a student at Broward Community College interested in organizing campus events in support of farmworkers.

In reality, Schaffer owns Diplomatic Tactical Services, a Hollywood, Fla.-based security and investigative firm that advertises its ability to place operatives in the ranks of target groups.

Her application for a private investigator's license was denied last year because she failed to prove she had experience or training. Florida's Division of Licensing told her, 'Your employment must be terminated immediately, or your employer may reassign you to duties that do not require licensure or registration.'

That didn't stop her from listening in on two alliance conference calls. Her company's Web site is no longer online.

Reluctance to cooperate

The coalition, one of the nation's most respected anti- slavery groups, also is asking Burger King to help 'eliminate slavery and human rights abuses from Florida's fields.'

At Senate hearings on farm conditions held by U.S. Sen.
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., earlier this month, Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling 'Fast Food Nation,' praised Yum! and McDonald's for working with the coalition and urged Burger King to do the same.
'The admirable behavior of these two industry giants makes the behavior or Burger King . seem completely unjustifiable.'

Schlosser has argued it would take Burger King no more than $300,000 a year to pay the increase.

On its corporate Web site, Burger King, which has more than 11,300 restaurants in the United States and in 69 countries and U.S. territories, reports revenues of
$2.2 billion last year, up 9 percent from 2006. CEO Chidsey made $4.1 million last year, according to Forbes.com.

Given the company's profile and earnings, Grover's behavior is all the more interesting, said John Stauber, executive director of the nonprofit, non- partisan Center for Media and Democracy, based in Madison, Wis.

'I think this shows a deep arrogance that a person at such a high level in the corporation would be directly involved in that type of harassment,' Stauber said.
'This a huge black eye for the Burger King corporation.
It's the type of situation that lands companies in public relations textbooks on how not to engage the press, the public and your critics.'

(c) News-Press.com

This story originally comes from politico.com, but I got it off of Portside.


GOP Objects To Bill Allowing Recounts
Ben Adler
Politico
April 25, 2008
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=7D294509-3048-5C12-00015B2FD7DE0D76

Voting rights activists who hoped the federal government would help local governments pay for paper trails and audits for electronic voting machines have gone from elation to frustration as they watched Republicans who supported such a proposal in committee vote against bringing it to the House floor.

The result: The elections in November will likely be marred by the same accusations of fraud and error involving voting machines that arose in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential race.

When New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rush Holt's Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act came up for a vote in the House Administration Committee on April 2, the Republicans on the committee gave it their unanimous support. But two weeks later, those same Republican members voted against moving the bill to the House floor. It would have taken a two-thirds vote to push the bill to the floor; with most House Republicans opposed, the bill didn't make it that far.

Larry Norden, director of the voting technology project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, called the vote "a sad statement on how little Congress has done on the issue of making sure elections are as secure and reliable as possible."

In May 2003, Holt proposed the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. That bill would have mandated a paper trail for voting machines so that voters could verify their vote and a recount could be performed, if necessary. The measure faced conservative objections on states' rights grounds and failed to make much headway.

So Holt introduced his new bill in January. Under the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act, the federal government would help localities switch to paper ballots or attach printers to their electronic voting machines in time for the November elections. To overcome states' rights objections, Holt crafted the bill as an
opt-in: Nobody would be required to switch technologies or conduct audits, but federal funding would be available to offset costs for those who did.

Without a mandate, Holt's bill drew more bipartisan support; Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) was one of the 92 co- sponsors. "We need standards to ensure that things are auditable, verifiable and give the voters confidence, and [Davis] doesn't think that what we have now does that," said Davis spokesman Brian McNicoll.

"The principle reason for the bipartisan consensus is that this was opt-in," Holt told Politico after the bill passed committee. "Everybody, Democrat and Republican, would prefer fewer disputed elections and better ways of resolving disputes. You can't resolve disputes without a paper trail."

But Holt's bill hit a snag on April 15 when the White House put out a statement of opposition on the grounds that it was unnecessary to spend the money appropriated in the bill when funding could come instead from the Help America Vote Act.

Republicans say it was the bill's cost, not the White House's opposition, that caused them to change their votes. "The version that passed committee on April 2 did not authorize a specific dollar amount," said Salley Collins, a spokeswoman for Republicans on the Administration Committee. "We didn't receive the [Congressional Budget Office] score until the 14th of April, one day before it went to the floor. . So we did not know that the proposed legislation would cost $685 million - $50 million more than Holt's first version."

Holt and his staff dismissed that objection. "There's no reason to expect it would actually cost $680 million,"
he said, arguing that the $680 million estimate assumes more local governments will opt in than he believes is likely.

Republicans also cited concerns regarding implementation. Collins said Holt's bill is "overly prescriptive with the hand recounts," and she suggested that it might not be realistic to expect local governments to adopt new technologies in such a short timeframe. "It could wreak havoc on a hotly contested election," she said.

Holt says these issues are red herrings: Because of the opt-in nature of the bill, any state worried that it could not complete the process in time could simply choose not to participate.

While some election reform activists would have preferred a mandatory bill, many saw it as the best they could hope to get in time for the next election. "On Election Day, if machines are breaking down and there are no paper ballots, the failure of this bill will be one place to look for explanations," said Norden.

Holt is predicting exactly that: Ultimately, he said, the bill's failure will mean that "millions of voters will leave the 2008 election questioning the process and whether their vote means anything."

Editor's note: This story was updated to clarify references to bills introduced by Rep. Holt.

I was listening to the Democracy Now podcast when Amy Goodman mentioned the group Recreate 68. Of course, I had to check this out. How could I possibly pass up the chance to read about a group struggling to go back in time?

If you haven't had a chance yet, read Bill Fletcher's commentary Doing Elections. I am particularly reminded of this line, "there are those who wish to engage in an electoral politics that does not exist in the USA and wish to avoid the electoral politics that does." The Recreate 68 folks seem to me to be folks who wish to engage a social movement of 40 years ago instead of the lack of a social movement today. We can't recreate 1968 because the social conditions of today are different then they were then.

To be fair, their website does state they don't mean to be a "not a throwback group trying to relieve some vision of glory days long gone." But just because you say don't make it so. They also state we all have a voice inside ourselves "that has realized we live in a police state and we have stopped moving forward 40 years ago." I'm down with the police state part, but do they really think we haven't done anything since Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman ran a pig for President? It just reminds me too much of the white pacifist groups pulling together another march, another rally, etc. because that's what they know rather than truly engaging in the politics of building power.

Besides, why would I want to recreate 1968 when I don't look good in bell bottoms?

The New York Times has reported on comments by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice that former president Jimmy Carter's visits with Hamas has confused US efforts to broker a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord. The idea that the US has undergone efforts to broker a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord has come as a shock to the people of the US.

"I'm astounded," said Jonathan Firman, a 42-year-old walking by me while I write this. "When did these efforts start? I really thought we were just coasting for the last 7 years or so. I can't tell you how surprised I am."

The news has also surprised members of the State Department, the national agency run by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Calls to the Bureau for a Palestinian-Israeli Peace Accord at the State Department went unanswered by press time. At least one call resulted an automated message that the phone number is now disconnected. All emails bounced back. One employee at a neighboring bureau said anonymously that she hadn't seen anyone come into the office for years.

"They said something in 2001 about going to Vegas for supplies," said the anonymous official. "I haven't seen them since."