FACING SOUTH: Friday, February 1, 2002 - Issue #40

FACING SOUTH is a progressive Southern news update, brought to you by the Institute for Southern Studies and Southern Exposure magazine.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY: Thomas Jefferson

"Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to . . . the general prey of the rich on the poor."

-- Thomas Jefferson

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

On February 1, 1960, four students at North Carolina A&T State University sat at the "whites only" section of a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. The four black youths -- Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond -- were teenage freshmen on academic scholarships. Their sit-in sparked a wave of student protest that spread to 54 cities in nine states. It would inspire the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) later that year, which lit new fire under the freedom movement.

DATELINE: THE SOUTH - News around the region

DOWN ON THE FARM: MODERN DAY SHARECROPPERS
An Alabama farmer contracted to grow chickens for ConAgra lost his farm to the company as a result of balking at their demand that he go into debt to expand. Rural Advancement Foundation International says the problem of peonage to corporate agribusiness is far from rare. (TomPaine.com, 1/23)  Read more...

INSTITUTE INDEX - Arming Occupation Percentage of U.S. foreign aid earmarked for Israel: 17 Of this amount, percentage that must be spent on US-made armaments: 80 Percentage of U.S. weapons production for Israel in 2001 located in the U.S. South: 66 Of U.S. weapons for Israel made in the South, percentage produced in Fort Worth, Tex.: 97 Minimum value of U.S. weapons sent to Israel after the signing of the Sharm el-Sheikh peace agreement (Sept. 1999) and leading up to the Al-Aksa Intifada (Sept. 2000): $3,607,000,000 Minimum amount Lockheed Martin Corp. has received since 1995 for arms sales to Israel: $4,373,104,063 Number of Hellfire laser-guided missiles - made in Orlando, Fla. - made for counter-insurgency Blackhawk helicopters sold to Israel in November 1999 (after peace agreement signed): 480 Minimum number of Palestinian homes destroyed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and February 2001, as reported by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights: 773 All sources on file at the Institute.

HUNDREDS TURN OUT TO DENOUNCE KLAN IN EASTERN TENNESSEE
Outnumbering supporters 2 to 1, anti-racist activists from Newport, Tenn. and around the southern Appalachian region braved cold rain and a deployment of nearly 200 Tennessee State Troopers to chant down a local Klan group's message of division. (Asheville Global Report, 1/24-30)  Read more...

MILITARY CONTRACTOR CHARGED FOR SEX SLAVERY
A Texas employee of Virginia-based DynCorp Technical Services has filed suit, alleging that the private military services company covered up for supervisors and employees who bought and sold teenage girls in Bosnia as sex slaves. (Insight, 1/14)  Read more...

INDICTMENT IN TYSON CASE LEAVES SOME ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS STRANDED
With six former Tyson managers under indictment for smuggling undocumented immigrants into the United States, former employees find themselves stranded without work or protection. An INS officer says they'll be arrested if they surface, acknowledging it's a "bad situation, but at the same time they are in violation of the law." (AP, 1/21)  Read more...

IN GEORGIA, VERMONT CIVIL UNIONS DON'T EQUAL MARRIAGE
The Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled that a lesbian couple that established a civil union in Vermont could not seek child-visitation rights because their relationship does not constitute a marriage. (CNN.com, 1/26)  Read more...

DEMOCRATS: BLACK VOTERS CAN HELP US TAKE BACK SOUTH
The Democratic Party is pursuing its own "Southern strategy" of grooming moderate white politicians with appeal to black voters to tip close races in Dixie from the Republicans. The newly-elected Democratic governor of Virginia, Mark Warner, may be their model. (USA Today, 1/22)  Read more...

H. 'RAP' BROWN'S BROTHER COMES TO HIS AID, AGAIN
Jamil Abdullah Al Amin, who gained renown as civil rights leader H. Rap Brown in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is on trial for murder in Atlanta. His brother considers it the final step in an escalating official war against him. (Pacific News Service, 1/22)  Read more...

ENRON, CHRISTIAN COALITION TIES REVEALED
Robert Scheer reports that the former head of the Christian Coalition secured a position as an Enron lobbyist with the help of Bush advisor Karl Rove. It helped Bush line up the Christian right in support of his presidential campaign, and Reed helped Enron deregulate Pennsylvania's energy markets. (workingforchange.com, 1/29)  Read more...

FACING SOUTH EXCLUSIVE - Haliburton: To the Victors Go the Markets

The influence of big energy corporations in the Bush Administration is no secret. But the story of Dick Cheney and his former company, Haliburton Co., has received little attention -- and it may be the most important

By Jordan Green
Institute for Southern Studies

Prospects for democracy in post-Taliban Afghanistan appear dimmed by the bare-knuckled oil services deal-cutting overseen by the victor, the United States. Last December, the US Department of Defense made a no-cap, cost-plus-award contract to Halliburton KBR's Government Operations division. The Dallas-based company is contracted to build forward operating bases to support troop deployments for the next nine years wherever the President chooses to take the anti-terrorism war.

"Augmenting our military troops with contractor-provided support has proven to be an invaluable force multiplier," boasted Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar, celebrating the deal in a euphemistic language that is understood both as military triumphalism - and to Wall Street - as a cue that the new military mobilization could punch up the company's flagging stocks. In an October press release, the CEO who was compensated $11.3 million last year, had forecasted a good fourth quarter for profits in engineering and construction.

A Jan. 29 Washington Post article drew comparisons between Halliburton and Enron, pointing out that both their stocks plunged last fall, and that they share the same accountant, Arthur Andersen. (Halliburton has been plagued with lawsuits over its use of asbestos, discouraging investor confidence.) Another similarity is that their CEOs both cashed out before fall. In Halliburton's case, Vice President Dick Cheney cashed out $20.6 million in stocks before retiring as CEO. With Halliburton now ailing financially, it's only natural that the Defense Department, over which Cheney presided in the administration of Bush I, would provide the bailout.

The Pentagon posts all contract announcements exceeding $5 million on its Website, but in Halliburton's case declined to disclose the estimated value of the award. A spokesperson for Halliburton gave $2.5 billion as the amount the company earned from base support services in the 1990s, acknowledging that the contract value could exceed that number assuming that the scope of US military actions widens in the next decade.

Though the Pentagon may be wary of admitting its favor towards Halliburton, the British Ministry of Defence shows no such reticence. In the third week of December 2001, the Defence Ministry awarded Halliburton's subsidiary Brown & Root Services $418 million to supply large tank transporters, capable of carrying tanks to the front lines at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.

The first increment of Halliburton's award is being subcontracted to Oshkosh Truck Corporation in Wisconsin and King Trailers in Market Harborough, England. Because of Prime Minister Tony Blair's invaluable service of persuading Britain's reluctant public to go along with the American campaign and in providing British peacekeepers to secure Afghanistan, America's junior partner has been rewarded with a boost to its manufacturing base.

But the major rewards are reserved for the Texas oil oligarchy.

Halliburton Company has close connections with the Bush family. Aside from Cheney, there is Lawrence Eagleburger, a Halliburton director and former deputy secretary of defense under Bush Sr. during the Gulf War.

In its earlier incarnation as Brown & Root Services, the company sponsored Texan and future president Lyndon B. Johnson's stolen election to the US Senate in 1948, building the state's spectacular political-industrial muscle.

As the number-one oil field services company in the world, Halliburton has an active interest in positioning itself to exploit the newly-opened oil and gas fields in adjoining Uzbekistan, where the US Army's 10th Mountain Division already occupies a base.

The Bush Administration's chief corporate interest is in advancing the fortunes of the energy industry. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice is a former board member of Chevron, which has been operating the Tengiz oil fields in neighboring Kazakhstan through the past decade. Commerce Secretary Don Evans is the former chairman of the Denver-based oil firm Tom Brown Inc. Houston-based Enron, whose phenomenal implosion has recently brought critical attention, was the single biggest contributor to the Bush campaign last year.

Halliburton's nine-year troop-support contract falls under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, which provides "the warfighter with additional capabilities to rapidly support and augment the logistics requirements of its deployed forces." The company is required to deploy within 72 hours of notification and install forward operating bases for some 25,000 troops within
15 days. The base camp services Halliburton will provide include mess hall, food preparation, potable water, sanitation, laundry, transportation, utilities and warehousing.

Through the past ten years, Halliburton has built bases to support troop deployments in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans. During the Vietnam War, the company (then as Brown & Root Services) built roads, landing strips, harbors and military bases throughout the areas under US military control.

"They drop these boys in and they construct a town," relates retired Special Forces operative Stan Goff. "In no time at all they'll have barracks and latrines. Then they'll put in a club that serves alcohol, soccer fields, and baseball fields."

Halliburton's publicity material boasts of its ability to establish temporary military bases under often hostile conditions - an invaluable preparation for the second phase of its project: laying the groundwork for oil exploration under often hostile conditions. Vice President Cheney has been famously quoted in reference to the country of Iraq: "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States."

Other oil-rich countries potentially targeted in the US anti-terrorist war in which Halliburton is jockeying for access are Colombia
and Venezuela in the Americas. In Colombia, only 20% of the oil reserves have been explored because of political instability. Desperate to increase the country's output, President Andrés Pastrana sweetened the foreign investment terms for multinational oil companies. In 1996, BP Amoco and Occidental joined Enron in the U.S.-Colombia Business Partnership to lobby for more military aid for Plan Colombia.

Venezuela - though not named as a target so far - is the third largest oil supplier to the United States and an influential member of OPEC. President Hugo Chávez convinced the OPEC cartel to cut production in order to raise international oil prices. His high-profile visit to Saddam Hussein last August and refusal to allow the US military to fly over Venezuelan airspace has irritated the United States, leading to speculation that the country will soon find itself subject to the wrath of the American anti-terrorist campaign.

But in the immediate future, the key to the United States' energy security and Halliburton's profit enhancement lies in Central Asia. Its chief competitor in oil fields services, Houston-based Baker Hughes, already has a significant head start in exploiting the immense wealth of natural gas in Uzbekistan. Baker Hughes has entered into a partnership with Uzbekneftegaz, the state holding company that controls the oil and gas sector, to develop the country's North Urtabulak project with options on three other fields.

Baker Hughes has its own political connections to aid its muscling in on the Central Asian prospecting game. Board member Edward P. Djerejian served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs under both the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations. His resume cuts across the arenas of corporate strategy and foreign policy as a director of Occidental Petroleum Global Industries Ltd. and as a director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

At stake in Uzbekistan are oil reserves estimated at 600 million barrels. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the country can't modernize its drilling operations fast enough. Despite the fact thatits oil and gas reserves are estimated to be more than that of all the other Central Asian republics combined, Uzbekistan has lagged behind its neighbors in production.

In April 2000, President Islam Karimov announced preferential treatment to foreign investors, including tax exemptions. In what promises to be a phenomenal resource grab, Uzbekistan is opening up 80 oil fields to drilling by multinational oil companies. This year, President Karimov has promised to privatize 49% of the national energy company Uzbekneftegaz.

Chevron, which has successfully developed the Tengiz oil fields in the Caspian Sea in neighboring Kazakhstan, is well poised to expand into Uzbekistan. Shell has recently completed oil explorations in the country. In Turkmenistan, on Afghanistan's northern frontier, ExxonMobil owns a 40% stake in the Burun oil field. UK-based Trinity Energy committed to investing over $400 million for gas exploration in Uzbekistan over the next 40 years.

The proposed Central Asia Oil Pipeline - through Afghanistan to the deepwater port of Gwadar, Pakistan on the Arabian Sea - remains Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan's best opportunity to export its oil to western markets.

Now that the country of Afghanistan has been reduced to rubble by US bombs and the American and British militaries have locked in their occupational forces, Halliburton has established a beachhead for a spectacular expansion.

Jordan Green is an Editorial & Research Associate at the Institute for Southern Studies.

IN-DEPTH - UT-Knoxville workers build an independent union movement

By Cameron Brooks
Labor Notes

"Who are we?" shouts union leader Sandy Hicks.

"United Campus Workers!" chants back a group of 30.

"What do we want?"

"A living wage!"

So began a membership meeting of the United Campus Workers (UCW), a democratically-run independent union at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Members from housekeeping, dining services, transportation, physical plant and the library were meeting to draw up a list of demands for the coming months.

For over a year and a half, workers at UT have been fighting for better conditions without direct assistance from an international union. And they have been winning, despite critics' prediction that the task was hopeless because of the lack of collective bargaining.

The UCW emerged from a living wage campaign that began in fall 1999. That campaign was originally led by students, some of whom had training from the AFL-CIO's Union Summer, and by community supporters who had been active in a living wage campaign in the city of Knoxville.

Unlike other living wage campaigns, which have largely been led by community activists and even students, the UT campaign had a goal that workers should be the leaders of their own struggle. This is a key difference from campaigns like that at Harvard.

Workers began holding meetings in early 2000 where they made decisions about the campaign. "There was not an elite group of one or two people calling all the shots," explained Richard Haviland, a UT custodian of 26 years. "At these meetings workers would hash out situations. We would talk and not have to fear censorship or intimidation. It took a few meetings for some of the workers to be accustomed to speaking out."

HEPATITIS B

"Even in the earliest days when student leaders had more experience and savvy, these very same people encouraged workers to develop their own leadership skills. We were not patronized, we were not spoon fed, we were encouraged to take up our own bed and walk, as it says in the Scripture," explained Haviland.

When the UT living wage campaign emerged in March 2000, other grievances came to the forefront. "The Campus Workers for a Living Wage (CWLW), the precursor to the United Campus Workers, began with open meetings where we all got out our frustrations with low wages," explained library worker Chris Pelton. "Soon other common problems came out: things like forced overtime, the hepatitis B situation, and racism."

Custodians were at risk of coming into contact with hepatitis B from their work cleaning dorm showers and bathrooms. UT's refusal to pay for hepatitis B vaccinations quickly became a focus for the CWLW.

"I knew that the campaign for the hepatitis B shots was a big issue" said Ernestine Robinson, a five-year housekeeper who makes $6.25 an hour. "We run into a lot of stuff that you wouldn't run into - like feces, and blood that is smeared on the wall. We run into everything in the freshmen dorm."

After months of educating co-workers about the issue, petitioning, and holding protests, the university agreed in June 2000 to provide free vaccinations. It demonstrated that organizing and collective action, with workers in the lead, could win

Sandy Hicks, a housekeeper of 23 years who makes a little over $8 an hour, was one of the original founders of the CWLW. The CWLW changed its name to the United Campus Workers in October 2000, to reflect the change the group went through from being a "living wage group" to an independent union. "I was surprised when we won the shots," said Hicks, who is now co-chair of UCW. "I figured we'd be fighting a lot harder."

Wages at the UT Knoxville are appalling. According to a study by the Council for a Living Wage and Worker Justice at UT, 1,453 UT workers (68 percent) are in job classifications that pay less than a living wage of $9.50. One in three qualifies for some form of government assistance.

To make matters worse, since 1990 UT has privatized dining services and a large portion of janitorial work.

NOT AFFILIATED

Since March 2000, workers from the library, dining services, the physical plant, and other areas have joined the union. UCW has built strong ties with Knoxville's AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, and has even become a sister union with UE Local 150, which has organized workers at the University of North Carolina.

For now, the UCW has chosen not to affiliate with any international union because its members don't want to replicate the business unionism model that de-emphasizes member control and participation.

"In the end, we agreed that a lot of what we saw other unions doing wouldn't work for us - we had to be more patient, more democratic," explained UCW Secretary Chris Pelton. "I think this is why we have such a diverse membership and why we have workers picking up new skills and taking responsibility for things that they never thought they would do - like public speaking, organizing events, and even using e-mail."

Cameron Brooks, a former student activist, is now a University of Tennessee employee and a member of the United Campus Workers. For more information on the UCW, visit www.korrnet.org/ucw or e-mail ucw@postmark.net.