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Harbor Interfaith Holds Annual Fundraiser Online

Terelle Jerricks
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Harbor Interfaith Holds Annual Fundraiser Online

The South Bay Auxiliary of Harbor Interfaith Services is hosting a fundraiser for the charity’s Children’s Center from April 25 to 29. It will be held using a silent auction online, with more than 70 prizes up for bid.

The auxiliary normally holds an in-person fundraiser every year, but because of the pandemic, this year’s event will be virtual, as was last year’s.

The fundraiser is just for the general operation of the center, said Nancy Roebuck, president of the auxiliary. The center’s budget is between $450,000 to $500,000 per year, and a portion of that comes from the auxiliary’s fundraising.

“The Children’s Center is supported only by private donations,” Roebuck said. “There’s no grant money from government organizations.”

At last year’s fundraiser, the auxiliary raised about $185,000, said Kathy Siegel, a member of the auxiliary. This was in part thanks to Kennedy Health Services, which donated $100,000, Roebuck said.

“Last year was unusual,” Siegel said. “We’re certainly striving for as much as possible. The years prior to that we were [at] $100,000.”

The auxiliary is composed of 15 women, all volunteers.

Harbor Interfaith has a variety of services that help homeless people, or people on the brink of homelessness. This includes shelter, transitional housing and job placement, as well as the children’s center. All the children at the center have parents that use Harbor Interfaith’s other services.

“It’s not a separate daycare center that anybody can come into,” Siegel said. “This is really an integral part of the success of parents either getting higher education, [or] going out and securing jobs.”

The center takes in children from six weeks old to school age. It has an infant and toddler care room, and a preschool room with a curriculum. Roebuck said that children graduate from the preschool program ready for kindergarten.

In addition, the center has an after-school kids’ club, and Harbor Interfaith has vans that pick up the children from their schools to take them to the center. The club has tutors that help the children with their homework. The children are allowed to stay there until 6 p.m. The club accepts children up to 17 years old, but most are from grade school to the beginning of middle school.

The pandemic had a big impact on the operation of the center, especially when schools shut down in 2020.

“The after-school kids, who are in a population that maybe don’t have Wi-Fi at home or internet access, or the hardware, were severely impacted when they couldn’t go to school at all,” Roebuck said. “That space was turned into a classroom, and Harbor Interfaith Services bought computers and headphones and hired a certified elementary school teacher to supervise them.”

The center also has a chef who prepares healthy meals and snacks.

The center is licensed for up to 80 children, but the number of children enrolled fluctuates.

“As people get into housing, it might not be geographically available to them anymore,” Roebuck said.

Roebuck said that the center is in a secure location within a building operated by Harbor Interfaith, and a badge is needed to get in.

“Some of these families are fleeing domestic abuse,” Roebuck said. “There’s custody issues sometimes.”

The auxiliary has existed since 2007, and previously it raised money for Harbor Interfaith in general. It decided to focus its efforts on the Children’s Center about six years ago, when its members learned that the center only operated on privately raised money.

Sometimes the center does not charge for its services.

“The people that have their children there pay only what they can afford,” Roebuck said. “And sometimes that’s zero. But they try to make sure that if they can afford something, they pay something, just to feel an investment in the place.”

While the 2021 fundraiser was online, the auxiliary did not host a fundraiser in 2020 due to the pandemic.

“That was really challenging,” Siegel said. “We tried other ways to just generate fundraising.”

This entailed reaching out to people and asking them to donate.

For this year’s fundraiser, all prizes up for auction were donated.

“All of us do our best to reach out to people that we do business with, local businesses, restaurants that we go to,” Siegel said.

The fundraiser is at www.hisauxiliary.org

Labor Briefs March #2

Mark Friedman
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Minneapolis Educators Continue Strike

On March 8, members of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and the St. Paul Federation of Educators staged a walk-out after a Feb. 18 strike authorization was passed. The strikers are in two bargaining units: 3,000 teachers and 1,000 education support professionals (ESPs), which includes teacher’s aides.

The SPFE, a combined unit of 3,600 teachers and ESPs, got a last-minute tentative agreement.

Two hundred Minneapolis Public Schools food service workers with Service Employees (SEIU) Local 284 filed their own 10-day strike notice on March 15.

ESPs in both cities are paid poverty wages and some live out of cars. The strikers are demanding a living wage for ESPs, along with more mental health workers and smaller class sizes — all of which they say translates directly into stability and supportive learning opportunities for students.

MFT is also demanding more counselors, caseload caps, lower health insurance premiums, and policies to support and retain educators of color.

The settlement in St. Paul will limit class size, add new counselors, and raise ESP wages substantially.

“MFT members get it,” said Shaun Laden, president of the MFT ESP chapter. “If St. Paul can add mental health workers, cap class size, and pay their ESPs $37,000, Minneapolis can figure out how to do that too.”

All three unions face a threat to the very existence of public schools: a proposed constitutional amendment that would end the state’s mandate to fund public education.

Broader Fightback Emerging

These unions are part of a larger coalition of Minnesota unions threatening strikes — including county and school clerical staff (AFSCME Locals 56 and 2822), social workers (AFSCME Local 34), and janitors and security guards (SEIU Local 26).

“At a time when billionaires’ wealth is exploding and our state is sitting on a $7.7 billion surplus, it is maddening we are still stuck in a debate where one side insists there is not enough to provide for the common good,” wrote leaders of the coalition in a joint op-ed. It has been fifty years since the MFT last strike.

A Few Gains and Plenty of Frustration as Minneapolis Teachers’ Strike Ends

After three weeks, the Minneapolis teachers strike is over. The Educational Support Professionals and teachers’ tentative agreements were ratified by 76 percent and 80 percent, respectively. While the contract does include some gains, the result is far less than what teachers demanded and deserve. Many teachers vow to continue the struggle for quality public schools for all.

Union Election at Leo Marine in SP

Michael Vera, Patrolman with the Inland Boatmen’s Union of the Pacific (Marine Division ILWU) told RLn that “The NLRB has ruled that an election for representation at Leo Marine should take place in both San Francisco and LA/LB. They have set the ballot to have Inland Boatmen’s Union, Masters, Mates and Pilots, Seafarers International Union or No Union. Ballots go out on March 28 and the vote will be conducted by mail. Ballots will be counted on April 25.”

The board decided that Centerline Logistics, the parent company of Leo Marine, illegally recognized the SIU in March 2021. The IBU and the MMP are competing over jurisdiction for the Leo Marine employees.

Additionally, ​the NLRB has issued a consolidated complaint based on several charges in violation of the National Labor Relations Act when Centerline Logistics transferred work away from IBU represented Westoil Marine ​Inc. to the new company Leo Marine. ​Charges include bargaining in bad faith and repudiation of contract. The board will conduct a hearing on the matter on June 21. Theoretically the work (Glencore) should be returned to Westoil​ Marine Inc. and the ​workers should be made whole for any lost wages and damages.

Grocery Store Workers Overwhelmingly Authorize their Unions to Call a Strike

Los Angeles– Grocery store workers represented by seven UFCW Locals voted overwhelmingly to authorize a ULP strike at Ralphs, Albertsons, Von, and Pavilions stores across Central and Southern California. These locals represent over 47,000 supermarket employees impacted by this vote.

“The companies are not playing fair by violating our rights and federal labor laws. After all the hard work we’ve done through the COVID pandemic serving customers so they can feed their families, we deserve to be able to feed ours,” says Rachel Fournier, a Bargaining Committee member and a cashier at Ralphs in Los Angeles. “While Kroger made over $4 billion in profits last year, many employees are struggling to make ends meet. This has to change. It is time for the grocery corporations to do better and come back to the bargaining table with an adequate contract proposal that respects our work.”

The Unlawful Labor Practices (ULP) charges include unlawful intimidation, harassment, and surveillance of workers protesting low wages and short hours; refusing to implement wage increases as required by the contract; giving small token bonuses when the grocery chains should be bargaining over permanent wage increases and subcontracting food preparation work to non-union outside companies.

Food sales skyrocketed while grocery companies made billions of dollars in profits — Kroger, Ralphs’ parent company, alone made over $4 billion in profits in 2021. This wealth went to CEOs’ wages and stock buybacks.

A recent study conducted among Kroger employees called “Hungry at the Table” showed that 78% of workers struggle to feed their families with nutritious foods; over 63% of Kroger workers have wages that are insufficient to afford basic necessities and 14% of workers are houseless or sleeping in their car.

Workers presented reasonable proposals including a $5/hr raise over the 3-year contract, more hours and staffing, and safety in the stores. The companies only offered $1.80 and rejected proposals to improve safety, minimum guarantee of hours and staffing, among other substantial improvements included in the union’s proposals.

Negotiations resume March 30 with UFCW and Ralphs and Albertsons/Vons/Pavilions. No dates have been set yet for a strike.

On March 29th, labor leaders representing 300 unions and 800,000 workers and their families, affiliated with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (LA Fed) unanimously approved the UFCW’s request to support a ULP strike at Ralphs, Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions. & Commit to Honor Picket Lines in the Event of a Strike

Union leaders from numerous industries expressed their full support for grocery store workers who recently authorized their UFCW local unions across Central and Southern California to call a strike if deemed necessary.

All the unions pledged their commitment to not cross the picket lines should the UFCW supermarket workers walk out of the stores.

Randy Cammack, President of Teamsters Joint Council 42, joined supporting unions and pointed out that his members won’t cross the picket lines and will also stop delivering merchandise to the grocery stores in solidarity of UFCW members if a strike is called.


“MOUNT VERNON, Washington — Rosa Martinez held up a sign over her head Wednesday that read ‘huelga’ — Spanish for ‘strike’ — with hands covered in clusters of sores she says were caused by the caustic liquid daffodils release when cut.

“Martinez said she and other field workers are left to buy their own medical-grade disposable gloves, which can cost $30 a box, and are only provided a small container of ointment the size of a ketchup packet to treat sores upon request.

“That and several other complaints prompted Martinez and more than 70 other farmworkers employed by Washington Bulb Co. in Mount Vernon to walk off the job Wednesday morning. With the help of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent union of Indigenous families, the workers are also demanding an increase in wages, guaranteed eight-hour workdays, improved sick leave and safer application of pesticides.

“Washington Bulb Co., which farms about 2,000 acres of land, is owned by RoozenGaarde Flowers and Bulbs, the largest tulip-bulb grower in the country and one of the largest employers in the Skagit Valley.“(submitted to Labor briefs by Geoff Mirelowitz from Seattle.

Conde Nast Workers form Union

Hundreds of workers at the publishing giant Condé Nast, which owns titles like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit and GQ, announced 3.28 that they had formed a companywide union. The union is affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York, which also represents editorial employees at The New York Times as well as other publications.

The union includes 500+ employees from all of Condé Nast’s brands, except those from Ars Technica, Pitchfork, Wired and The New Times, which unionized separately with the NewsGuild in recent years. The union has asked management for voluntary recognition. The company has voluntarily recognized the four existing unions.

The employees in the newly formed union, are pushing for better pay, increased job security, and a stronger commitment to diversity and equity.

The Unhidden Truth

RLn
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The Unhidden Truth

By Gray John Gray, Wilmington

All who were raised in San Pedro love the town and recognize it as a wonderful place to grow up. Most of us are proud to say, “I am from Peedro. Some say the town was ordained to prove to the world that equality and respect for each other are important to local order.

But like all places, San Pedro is not perfect. It seems that the ugly, hurtful stain of de facto segregation remains in the city (that is separation of persons by fact rather than by legally imposed requirement). In the matter of San Pedro Afro-Americans continue to be denied access to apartment rentals south of Sixth Street. More particularly, in the southwest parts of the city.

I was recently informed of two Afro-American persons who applied for rental property in suspected de facto segregated areas of San Pedro. Both, who were outstanding candidates regarding yearly income, secure employment, no criminal histories and they had respect in the community, had submitted applications but reportedly received no responses from apartment representatives.

In the early 1960s, there were many protests regarding de facto segregation in San Pedro and after South Bay Communities, meetings were held, policy changes were suggested and ultimately in 1965, the Jess Unruh Civil Rights act was passed (California Civil Code 51A). The new law was equal for anyone who simply desired access to an apartment or other real property being made available regardless of race or other factors.

The passage of the Unruh Act caused lawsuits in San Pedro and a modicum of change to take place in opening rental property to all. But unfortunately, rental property providers have found legal methods to sidestep codified law. Thus rental discrimination laws were never effective and San Pedro resumed is a generalized standard practice of failing to provide rental property to Afro-Americans.

The big question now is how do we solve the problem? Realtors are between a rock and a very hard place. Some apartment owners’ perceptions of Afro-Americans are that of the 1970s television series, Starsky and Hutch (Thus persona non grata). That all Afro-Americans as drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes. All in all, will there only be a compromise of what is codified law? Does equality and respect matter anymore? Is one to accept Critical San Pedro Theory that de facto segregation is acceptable in a town that glorifies its good race relations.

We know that San Pedro’s politicians shake in fear at the words, “de facto segregation” kind of like E=MC^2 as too hot to handle. Will the new 15th district councilperson address the issue? We will be waiting.

Dear Mr. Gray,

You might find this history enlightening.

The California Fair Housing Act of 1963, better known as the Rumford Act (AB 1240) because of its sponsor, Assemblyman William Byron Rumford, was one of the most significant and sweeping laws protecting the rights of blacks and other people of color to purchase housing without being subjected to discrimination during the post-World War II period.

The Rumford Act called for an end to racial discrimination in all public and private housing in the state and immediately met opposition in the California legislature. Republican legislators exempted most forms of private and single family housing before the bill was finally passed on September 20, 1963. The new law made illegal discrimination in public housing and in all residential properties with more than five units.

Despite the exclusion of the vast majority of the homes occupied by Californians, the California Real Estate Association (CREA) immediately launched a repeal campaign. Exploiting the growing hostility toward all liberal social programs and promoting the call for “property owner rights,” the CREA-led effort resulted in the Proposition 14 referendum on Nov. 3, 1964, which saw a 2-to-1 vote in favor of repeal of the Rumford Act.

Despite the vote, the Rumford Act was restored in 1966 when the California Supreme Court ruled that Prop. 14 was illegal. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court strengthened this ruling stating that Prop. 14 violated the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which “prohibits all racial discrimination in the sale or rental of property.”

This by no means explains how some landlords still get away with discriminating against people of color.

James Preston Allen,Publisher

Life After Mother — Three Bedrooms, Just Me

Lyn Jensen
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Life After Mother — Three Bedrooms, Just Me

When I moved into my mother’s house, I cleared out the front bedroom that she’d been using the way people use an attic or basement — where unused half-forgotten clutter goes to gather dust. I was still thinking in terms of “my room in her house,” and so I turned that room into something resembling a studio apartment, a suite within the house. I combined my bedroom with my home office, not ideal, but if I squeezed in a microwave and mini-fridge, I’d have a stereotypical starving-writer arrangement.

My office stays in the front bedroom because my huge beautiful L-shaped executive desk, big enough to hold a computer, printer, writing space, file boxes, desk accessories, and enough allowance for leg and elbow room, too, is so large I was only able to get it out of the garage and into the front bedroom when I persuaded a crew that was installing new windows to lift the desk through a window frame. If I move anything to another room, it’d have to be my bed, because I can’t move the desk unless I remove the windows again.

You’d think a three-bedroom house would be enough space for one person and a cat, but mix together several lifetimes’ worth of furniture and personal property, and you’ve got enough possessions to fill a palace. My mother’s bedroom I’ve made into a guest room, but it still contains original furnishings. Her bed makes a handy space to sort laundry, papers and the like, and it’s covered with throw pillows, two (reupholstered) backrests, and a bedspread she made herself. The dresser, closets, nightstands and bookcase-like headboard are still mostly storage for her things, despite literally dozens of bags being filled and donated to charity, and a few boxes packed and mailed to relatives.

The third bedroom, the one that used to be mine, the smallest but sunniest, my mother used as her home office. By the time she died, procrastination-level order had long since become dementia-level chaos, and the floor was barely visible. Papers, files and office supplies, dating back to the 1980s were piled high. I spent a year, and wore out two shredders, separating the trash from anything important. It’s still a room where, stick your hand out, and you’ll find something to do. It’s become a jack of about six uses but master of none — a combination library, secondary office, file room, storage closet, media room and sewing-crafting station.

To maintain a one-bedroom (or even two-bedroom) lifestyle, I’d have to downsize to a single office and a single bedroom. That’s on top of downsizing the kitchen, garage, living room, service porch and storage space. I have to downsize before I can downsize.

LA Mayor’s Race― What’s In Caruso’s CAN?

James Preston Allen
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LA Mayor’s Race― What’s In Caruso’s CAN?

Long before Rick Caruso started dumping a million dollars a week into his campaign to run for mayor of Los Angeles it looked like it was going to be a battle between Mike Feuer and Joe Buscaino. Feuer, the twice elected City Attorney and Buscaino the former LAPD officer turned councilman from the 15th district. Clearly this was an opportunity for both to lead this city but with very divergent approaches. One with a well thought out set of policies and programs and the other with his anti-homeless no camping ordinances. Buscaino’s gambit was to lean into the outrage of conservatives and let the more liberal factions battle for the majority of the democratic leftwing voters ostensibly splitting the primary vote to get him into the runoff. Now I’m not so sure.

This was before Congresswoman Karen Bass and then billionaire Rick Caruso entered the race. Now you can’t pick up your cell phone or open your computer without viewing “Caruso Can” ads. He even dropped his first campaign mailer earlier than what some political strategists would consider prudent, but hey he’s got the money, so why not? The only question that lingers is What Caruso CAN do?

It would seem like this newly minted “Democrat,” who only changed his registration about a month before announcing, has borrowed extensively from policy initiatives that were well formulated by City Attorney Feuer and a growing consensus of liberal democrats on housing, mental health and drug treatment programs. So what makes him so different?

Yet, I have a hard time believing that a guy who just bought an $18.6 million, 7 bedroom, 8.5 bath mansion in NewPort Beach, right next door to the one he already owns on Balboa Peninsula has much concern for those living in a tent on skid row or Beacon Street in San Pedro. His massive Brentwood estate could probably house many of our current unsheltered neighbors, but that would really rock the boat up in that tawny area. What would the neighbors say if Caruso actually started housing the homeless instead of buying an election or palatial estates for the wealthiest people who will never be homeless? Clearly Los Angeles doesn’t have a shortage of mansions for the wealthy.

You can’t accuse Caruso of not being a real billionaire, unlike the wannbe dictator-grifter who should be indicted for trying to subvert the 2020 election results. Caruso’s wealth is real and can be calculated by his extensive property holdings, his Fortune 500 listing and his all-American luxury yacht which sold for $100 million. And after four years of corruption both at City Hall and in the White House, is anyone really willing to elect another rich guy who has never been elected to office before?

On the other hand we have Karen Bass, perhaps one of the most overly qualified contenders for mayor in the entire history of this office.

Upon Bass’ entering the race, the polls immediately showed her approval ratings in the double digits while Buscaino, Feuer and (did I forget to mention Kevin de León?) all with single digits. I have not seen a poll with Caruso listed yet, perhaps he can buy one.

Karen Bass comes with a very long public service resume that includes six terms in the US Congress, many years in the California State Assembly where she became the first black woman speaker and before that, a social worker and community organizer in South Los Angeles. She grew up in Mid City Los Angeles, which is the same area she represents today in Congress. She is a graduate of Cal State Dominguez Hills, the University of Southern California’s School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program, and the USC Masters Program in Social Work. She worked as a Physician Assistant and as a clinical instructor at the USC Keck School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program.

I had the opportunity to do a short interview with her at her recent fundraising event in San Pedro and found her engaging, smart and earnest in her aspiration to come back to LA and fix it. I have no doubt that she, Feuer and de León would make a sincere effort at fixing all that ills Los Angeles. I’m just not convinced that L.A., such as it is, can be fixed!

What I mean by this is that the bureaucracies, the overlapping jurisdictions and the top-down management of the city breeds a long established distrust between city departments and the citizens they serve. It operates in both directions ― from the City Clerk’s office, to the LAPD, to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (which is a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one). People don’t tend to trust the city, and the city tends not to trust the people, unless you are a “part of the city family.”

And yet, there’s a kind of complacency that is born from this distrust that allows the common people of Los Angeles to abide the benign neglect that blankets their being disempowered up until the day there’s a drive-by shooting in their rather quiet neighborhood, their trash day is missed or the homeless camp expands to Echo Park Lake where they walk their Golden Retriever. Then watch out!

The only one of the top tier candidates that seems to understand this is Mike Feuer, and he may not make it past the primary. But if he does not get elected, whoever does should hire him to implement his plan to untangle LA’s fundamental dysfunction.

At this point, I’m waiting to interview de León to see if he’s the real deal. All I can say at this point is that we don’t need another billionaire wanting to come in and run the city “like a business.” Such candidates aren’t to be trusted with the keys to the city.

I don’t even know what Caruso’s CAN might look like but I can only imagine that it’s a gold plated toilet and something the city can’t afford even if he only gets paid a dollar a year.

TROUBLE IN THE TULIPS Organized Farmworkers Win Basic Demands in a Quick Strike

David Bacon
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TROUBLE IN THE TULIPS Organized Farmworkers Win Basic Demands in a Quick Strike

Labornotes, March 30, 2022

https://labornotes.org/2022/03/trouble-tulips-organized-farmworkers-win-basic-demands-quick-strike

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2022/03/trouble-in-tulips.html

Tulip workers take a vote. Photo: Edgar Franks

MT. VERNON, WA – Tulips and daffodils symbolize the arrival of spring, but the fields are bitterly cold when workers’ labors begin. Snow still covers the ground when workers go into the tulip rows to plant bulbs in northwest Washington state, near the Canadian border.

Once harvesting starts, so do other problems. When a worker cuts a daffodil, for instance, she or he has to avoid the liquid that oozes from the stem — a source of painful skin rashes.

Yes, the fields of flowers are so beautiful they can take your breath away, but the conditions under which they’re cultivated and harvested can be just as bad as they are for any other crop. “Tulips have always been a hard job, but it’s a job during a time of the year when work is hard to find,” says farmworker Tomas Ramon. “This year we just stopped enduring the problems. We decided things had to change.”

On Monday, March 21, their dissatisfaction reached a head. Three crews of pickers at Washington Bulb accused the company of shorting the bonuses paid on top of their hourly wage, Washington’s minimum of $14.69. Workers get that extra pay if they exceed a target quota set by the company for picking flowers.

The parent company of RoozenGaarde Flowers and Bulbs is Washington Bulb, the nation’s largest tulip grower.

“We’ve had these problems for a long time,” explains Ramon, who has cut tulips for Washington Bulb for seven years. “And the company has always invented reasons not to talk with us.”

Workers stopped work that Monday and waited from eight in the morning to see how the owners would respond. The general supervisor was sick, they were told. Someone from the company would talk with them, but only as individuals. “We didn’t want that,” Ramon says. “We’re members of the union, and the union represents us.”

Union Wherever They Go

Over two-thirds of the 150 pickers for Washington Bulb work at the state’s largest berry grower, Sakuma Farms, later in the season-where they bargain as members of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), an independent union. Starting in 2013, farmworkers there struck and boycotted, and finally won a contract after four years. They formed Familias Unidas. At Washington Bulb there is no union contract, yet. But to Ramon and his workmates, they are members of FUJ wherever they go.

When the company wouldn’t talk on that Monday, 70 workers voted to strike the following day. Another 20 joined them the next morning, when they again demanded to talk with the company. This time one of the owners told them he wouldn’t talk if the president of Familias Unidas, Ramon Torres, was present.

“So we said, ‘If you won’t talk with our representative, we won’t talk without him,'” Tomas Ramon remembers. “‘We have a union and you have to make an agreement with him.’ So the owner got angry and left.”

That Wednesday the flowers were just waving in the breeze, waiting for someone to pick them. The day after, the company lawyer was on the phone to union attorney Kathy Barnard. With a commitment to begin negotiations, workers agreed to go back into the rows after the weekend, and talks got started.

“By the first day of the strike the workers had already met, elected a committee, and put their demands in writing,” said FUJ’s political director Edgar Franks. “After the four years of fighting for the contract at Sakuma Farms, they knew how to organize themselves quickly. They had community supporters on their picket lines after the first day. They had their list of demands, and finally forced the company to accept it.”

Rubber Band Time

When the workers committee and Torres met with Washington Bulb president Leo Roosens on Friday, they went point by point over their 16 demands. Roosens made an oral commitment to resolve all except the demand over wage increases.

Worker leader Tomas Ramon. Photo: Edgar Franks

“The most important one for us was that they pay us for the time we spend putting rubber bands on the ring,” Ramon says. Workers have to snap a rubber band around each bunch of flowers they cut, from hundreds of bands held on a ring. Each worker harvests thousands of bunches a day, so putting the bands on the ring takes a lot of time.

“There’s never enough time, and supervisors don’t want people to stop during work time. So on breaks and at lunch we’re still filling the ring. They even give us a bag of bands to take home and do it there.”

The company doesn’t pay this extra time, so demand #7 says, “All work using rubber bands to bunch flowers will be performed during working time, excluding lunch and rest breaks. This work will not be performed off the clock.” “Workers knew they had a right to this, because the union won a suit forcing Washington growers to pay for break time, even for workers working on piece rates or bonuses,” Franks says.

Parking, Ointment and Bathrooms

Workers often have to walk half a mile from where they park their cars to the rows where they’ll work, which the company also won’t pay for. So point 3 says, “Workers will be paid the hourly rate from the time they leave their vehicles in the company’s parking lots until they return to their vehicles…at the end of their daily shifts.”

Gloves are $30 a pair, according to Ramon, and working without them means getting rashes from liquid from cutting daffodils. “The company has cream you can put on to help with that, but it’s in the office and they often won’t give it to you. Even if they do, they just give you a tiny bit, not enough.” So another demand is for company-provided protective gear, and ointment available in the fields.

Of the eight people on the union committee, two are women. There’s often just one bathroom for a crew of 50-60 people, and they included a demand for four bathrooms per crew, two for women and two for men, cleaned every day. They also insisted on a demand for better treatment, prohibiting favoritism from supervisors, who “will be trained to treat workers with respect … and not pressure workers to pick flowers at unreasonable speeds.”

The last demand is that the company recognize Familias Unidas por la Justicia as bargaining representative for Washington Bulb workers. If agreement is reached on that point, it will make the company the second in the state with an FUJ contract.

Strategic Timing

The annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is set to start on April 1, and runs for a month. The lightning job action less than two weeks before presented the Roosens, the most prominent family in the tulip industry, with the prospect of picket lines in front of fields, as tourists arrive to take photographs and buy flowers.

Almost all Washington Bulb workers have at least three years doing this work, and some as many as 15. They knew the importance of timing and the company’s vulnerability. The fact that they were already organized made it easier to reach a quick decision on a job action.

The decision process relied on the collective traditions of the two indigenous groups from Oaxaca and southern Mexico who make up the workforce, Triquis and Mixtecos. Ramon, a Triqui, explains that “each community talked within itself. Each community has its own process, but we have the same kind of problems and the same experience. We all wanted to make things better, so we reached agreement.” In that process community members meet, discuss and arrive at a decision on behalf of everyone.

At Sakuma Farms, women were not elected to the union’s leadership, and within the communities, women took a back seat. At Washington Bulb, however, two women were elected to the union committee, and made specific demands. “That’s a big step forward for us,” Ramon says. It also gives women in the fields suffering sexual harassment the ability to bring complaints to women in the union leadership, instead of men.

The Bosses’ Biggest Fea

“Direct action is what makes things move,” Franks says. “People put up with a lot because they’re scared that they could be unemployed. But when workers go on strike, they lose that fear, they push back, and that’s what makes things move. Direct action is the most valuable tool we have, and the bosses’ biggest fear. When workers take that leap of faith they can see the world in a whole new say, and recognize their own true value.”

Today in western Washington, a growing number of farmworkers have had that experience, and FUJ is following them into new places and farms as a result. It’s not a new idea-in the 1940s, Larry Itliong followed Filipino cannery workers from Alaska, where their pitched battles formed Local 37 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, back to their work in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. There, they became the heart of union organizing until the great grape strike of 1965. They eventually joined with Latino workers to form what is now the United Farm Workers.

“We’re trying to make sure not to force the issue with workers here,” Franks said. “The union is ready to support them once they’re ready to take the step. The issues have been present for 20 years, but now, because of Sakuma, there’s an ecosystem they can rely on. They can see workers winning and feel better about taking action than they would have years ago. They have a growing leadership, and don’t have to put up with this anymore.”

NOTE: At press time negotiations with the company had reached agreement on the workers’ list of demands. While the union is not the official bargaining agent, the company agreed to treat the union committee as the representative of the workers. Workers voted on the agreement on March 29.

 

Striking in the tulips. Photo: Edgar Franks

LA Unified’s BSAP: A Tide to Lift All Boats

Terelle Jerricks
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LA Unified’s BSAP: A Tide to Lift All Boats

Resource Fair at Dana Middle School to Feature Jobs Training, Mental Health

On April 2, there will be a resource fair hosted at Richard Henry Dana Middle School, hosted by that campus’ Black Student Union Center which houses the Black Student Achievement Plan program. The fair is intended to connect students and their families to needed resources addressing job training and food insecurity, but primarily mental health services. Essentially, this fair is intended to address issues affecting the student’s home life, and not just the student.

“We want to get the parents something, we want to get the kids something, and at the same time,” explained Gregory Sims, the school climate advisor. He creates a rapport with students, helping inspire them to reach academic and personal goals.

To Sims, the objective of the resource fair was to help the students’ home life. He noted that a lot of resources and money are directed at the student via school and after-school programs, but if the students’ family struggles are front and center every time they go home, those resources are rendered ineffective.

“If the parents at home are still struggling, it’s kind of hard to really change the environment for the student because he has to go back to that,” Sims said. “So we have resources for the student, [and] we have resources for the parents.”

Sims was particularly happy with the Port of Los Angeles which will have a booth at the fair, especially after announcing this past January it was building a Goods Movement Training Campus. In a released statement, Port Executive Director Gene Seroka said the campus will train those with the aptitude to work in a fully automated goods movement future and retrain the current workforce by seniority.

Assistant Principal Jewel Brown says this will be the first time the nearly century-old middle school has hosted a fair of this kind.

Brown explained that the resource fair is intended to shed light on mental health, which she believes is impacting students more than it’s credited for.

“We’re not having enough conversations about the mental health of kids and we’re addressing it,” Brown said. “Like in the Olympics with Simone Biles and other athletes coming out and being honest about [their struggles].”

Brown, who is in her sixth year as one of Dana Middle School’s assistant principals, explained that the fair is also intended to open its doors to the community to be more effective in serving students.

“Some of the things like fights or issues of racial transgressions or homelessness or whatever it is, we have to partner with our community,” Brown said. “If we [are] ever really going to address it, eradicate it, or fix it now, so many people have to be involved.”

After two years, Los Angeles Unified School District has had to find ways to educate students outside of the classroom while adjusting to changing realities following the 2020 racial justice demonstrations, this resource fair represents a coming-out party of policies directed at longstanding education deficits.

Since Brown v. Board of Education, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional, Black students as a demographic have lagged behind nearly every demographic, while being the leading demographic in school absenteeism, dropout rates and suspensions.

In the summer of 2020, Los Angeles Unified cut its police budget by $25 million and redirected that money toward the $36.5 million BSAP program.

The investment appears to be paying off dividends. ABC News ran a story about the successes at Dana this past December, even though at the time it was anecdotal.

BSAP at Dana

This marks the fourth year of Sims’ tenure at Dana Middle School. He started as an assistant teacher in the Special Education Department at Dana and assisted teachers in his department and classes in the rest of the school with class control. He served in the capacity of teacher/authority figure, at times counselor, or big brother as the situation required.

When the school district created BSAP, Sims became the school climate advocate — a role in which his job is to create rapport with students, while helping inspire them to reach academic and personal goals — a role he was already fulfilling but now given the space and resources to go further in this capacity.

Sims, in this capacity, provides social-emotional support for students, and the advocate’s training in conflict resolution helps stop disagreements early, thus reducing the frequency of traditional forms of discipline.

Sims began working at Dana during a period he says the middle school was regularly racked by student fights that are exacerbated by Black and Latino racial tensions.

“With me being the SCA, the school climate advocate, I actually can get with these students before they have these fights between friends, that kind of escalate,” Sims said. “The BSAP actually gave me [the time and space to build] more relationships and build more rapport with the students. So once I’ve done that, I could speak to both parties. So now on, you can talk to the Latino kids. You can talk to the Black kids and you can actually find that common ground. It has stopped the majority of our fights.”

Sims estimates that there were fights at least once a week, or three times a month when he first started working at Dana. Now, there are about two in a semester.

“The discipline rate has gone down. A lot of our kids are struggling with just reading and that’s some of the reasons why they were ditching. Getting to know them through the BSAP program, they can tell me that now. They feel comfortable saying, ‘Mr. Sims I don’t like doing this because I can’t really read,’ so we can give that student extra tutoring. So now they feel a little more comfortable and they’re trying.

“So those same problems where we were having them ditching, and fighting and escaping the work, now, they actually sit and try. So, discipline rates have gone down, grades and attendance have shot up. Referrals have [went] down.”

Sims was there when Dana Middle School still had a school police officer. The popular educator called the officer an “amazing and great guy,” but noted the officer had no rapport with the students. “As a matter of fact, when students see him, they automatically think, ‘Cop … trouble … get away,’” Sims said.

It was while reporters were interviewing students Sims saw the regard in which they held him.

“I heard kids say like they were giving an honest opinion on this, and it was my first time hearing it, ‘He’s like a father figure … We can talk to him …’” Sims said.

“It could be the uniform. It could be that I’m privy to do more and build that rapport. But it’s been a drastic change here at Dana.”

A Child of the LAUSD

Assistant principal Brown explained that the funding of BSAP was the result of the school district shifting funding from school policing to alternative methods of addressing classroom control, truancy, and on-campus fights. She explained that it was because of this shifting of resources that a budget was created to establish programs like BSAP.

“In light of like what had happened with George Floyd and what had happened with Breonna Taylor at some point, we have to stop saying that there wasn’t a problem and you have to start saying that one existed,” Brown explained.

But beyond identifying the problem, Brown explained, we also have to act on the problem.

Brown wasn’t simply referring to the racism in policing that contributed to the deaths of the above-mentioned. She was also referring to the very real conditions related to Black underachievement in education — conditions caused by a variety of factors, including systemic racism, poverty, under-investment, and simply lack of specific data-driven targeting of areas of concern.

Brown explained that the district identified Black student populations where they exist in the district and scrutinized those populations through the district’s Whole Child Integrated Data system, which captures data on all student populations in the school district.

“In this particular area of San Pedro, we had more students of color at our school than the neighboring Middle School, Dodson,” Brown said. “That’s how the [school district] began to design this tier level of support. BSAP aimed to answer the question, ‘How do we reach that population of students?’”

Dana Middle School is identified as a Tier 1, with a total Black student population numbered 153 in a school of 1,500.

Brown, a product of the LAUSD, said she never had a place to belong as a student while growing up.

“You identify the individual teachers that you could connect with, but I never had a full staff that was dedicated to my success,” Brown said. “We’re here for the long haul and you have students.”

Referring to a student she encountered and provided a mask to on her way to the interview with Random Lengths, she discussed the encounter, explaining that if he had gone into class without a mask, he would have been sent to the administration’s office and his parents called to retrieve him, causing him to miss an entire day of school.

“I think our BSU and our BSAP program has allowed us to just develop relationships that were very different than probably the ones we were having before everything was on the surface. And now when you go through the BSAP process, I get to ask all those questions underneath that surface,” Brown explained.

The important part of the efforts of educators like Brown and Sims is that they look to collaborate with potential partners in the surrounding community like Robert Daniels, the founder of The Do Good Daniels Family Foundation. The nonprofit addresses food and housing insecurity by providing shelter for those in need.

“We brought in Mr. Daniels onto our team,” Brown said. “With each piece, we add to our group. It always elevates us and I think that that’s powerful and each member becomes a seamless component to our entire fabric.”

Daniels recently published a book, Breaking the Chains, a guide intended to help parents, parental figures, educators and teens build stronger bonds and lines of communication.

Daniels said he was impressed by the goals of the BSAP program and the work Sims and Brown have done so far. One of his four sons attends Dana.

“I wanted to know how my kid felt it. So when I talk to him, I learned that Mr. Sims was his world and Miss Brown was his world,” Daniels said. “For my kid to come back and tell me that, I’m just totally thankful for this program.”

From that day forward, Daniels aimed to engage other parents and see to it that the BSAP program has what it needs to be successful.

A part of that effort is programming like the April 2 resource fair.

“We want the community to come out,” Brown explained. “We always are looking at what has not been done and what ways of outreach or parent engagement have we not tapped into.”

Brown explained the fair began with a Donuts and Coffee With the Dads session as a way to engage fathers of students attending Dana. Like a squirrel to a nut, Brown says she aims to chase down any idea that will further parental involvement.

Sims noted that KJLH radio station and other guests will be in attendance at the fair.

Time: 9 a.m. to 1p.m., April 2

Location: Dana Middle School, 1501 S. Cabrillo Ave., San Pedro

LAPD Hosts Gun Buyback Event in Wilmington

Reporters Desk
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LAPD Hosts Gun Buyback Event in Wilmington

The Los Angeles Police Department March 26, held several gun buyback events at sites across Los Angeles, including the Wilmington Municipal Building.

Ghost guns are the cause of growing concern, as they can be assembled by unlicensed buyers from kits and are essentially untraceable as they lack serial numbers according to police.

Held at five locations Saturday morning, additional gun buyback events happened in south L.A., in three separate locations, and in Van Nuys.

 

Faces are edited per LAPD request to allow images. Photos courtesy of Chris Villanueva

In exchange for turning in a ghost gun or any unwanted firearm, police officers handed out gift cards worth between $100-200.

In November, the L.A. City Council passed an ordinance to prohibit the possession, purchase, sale receipt and transportation of ghost guns.

As of April 1, possession of a ghost gun is cause for a misdemeanor charge, jail time and a financial penalty, according to police.

 

Songs of Past and Present, Near and Far Chanteuse Jessica Fichot Evokes Paris and Old Shanghai at Collage

Reporters Desk
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Songs of Past and Present, Near and Far Chanteuse Jessica Fichot Evokes Paris and Old Shanghai at Collage

By Bondo Wyszpolski

For those on the alert for musicians with a singular grace and style, it is impossible to bypass Jessica Fichot, whose first two albums were in the French chanson tradition and whose third album is a paean to 1940s Shanghai jazz. This youthful sounding artist and her quartet, with guest Annie Zhou on guzheng, perform on Saturday, April 9, at Collage.

“I grew up in France, in a suburb of Paris, close to Versailles,” she says.

You always knew you wanted to be a musician?

“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that,” Fichot replies. “I think it came from the fact that I just liked to sing, and my parents never discouraged me. That’s probably why I never changed my mind; and then probably a lot of it is delusion, where you imagine that it’s going to be a certain glamorous life.” She laughs. “Now I know that it’s not always glamorous, but I can take it with a sense of humor.”

After high school in France, Fichot came back to the States (she was born in upstate New York to a French father and Chinese mother) and soon graduated from the Berklee School of Music in Boston with a degree in songwriting.

Not long afterwards she moved to Los Angeles with the intention of pursuing a career in music. While in France she only wanted to write songs in English, but once she’d settled in L.A. she rediscovered the French chansons of her youth. Her first two albums (“Le Chemin” in 2007 and “Le Secret” in 2012) are comprised of songs, most of them originals, that were inspired by the tunes she heard growing up on the doorstep of a multicultural European capital.

Earlier, Fichot had been writing children’s songs for educational programs, but about 12 years ago she formed a band and began writing, recording, and performing with them. She’s since toured the United States as well as overseas, although there’s been a hiatus of two years:

“My music work did not stop during COVID, though: it gave me a chance to work on some solo material, perform virtual concerts (from my home or streamed from different venues), as well as create little music videos for some of my songs. A video game I had composed music for, Growbot, was also released.

“When I perform it’s usually with a quartet. It’s me on vocals and accordion and a toy piano.”

Her core band features a clarinetist, stand-up bassist, and classical guitarist.

Although she’s proficient on both the piano and the accordion,

“I’m not a virtuoso on any instrument.”

But does she compose her own music on one or both of those instruments? Somewhat surprisingly, the answer is no.

It’s all in the voice

“I feel like if I wrote on the piano or the accordion I would be limited by my skills on the actual instrument. So for me, the best ideas that I have musically, especially for melodies or lyrics, come when I’m not using any instrument at all.

“My strongest instrument is the voice, and writing songs is not quite like composing instrumental music. For me, songs are the songs that are sung. They need to be written by the voice.”

It’s a statement that makes a lot of sense. Fichot has a warm and inviting voice, a bit ethereal as opposed to earthy, and with a charming flirtatiousness rather than being ardently sensual. On some tracks (“Le Secret” on the album of the same name, for example) I’m reminded of Mary Hopkins and her late 1960s hit, “Those Were The Days.”

Although Fichot sings in five languages, she seems especially respectful of her French-Chinese heritage. We see a few nods to her lineage on Le Chemin and Le Secret, the latter with a cover in Mandarin Chinese of Cher’s Bang Bang (1966), written by Cher’s then-husband Sonny Bono. But then there’s the third album, “Dear Shanghai” (2014), which is a delightfully packaged recording in every sense of the word, in which Fichot evokes and illuminates a faraway and long-ago time. She combines tunes written in the 1940s with compositions of her own that emulate the sound of that era.

“The style of music from Shanghai in the 1940s actually debuted in the ‘20s,” Fichot says, “and coincided with the introduction of the gramophone record in China.”

The result is a blend of European-style jazz (I think of Stéphane Grappelli) and Chinese singing. One imagines the heyday of this music extending from the 1920s to the mid-1930s before being impacted by the invading Japanese, resurging in the late 1940s but only to be repressed again under Mao Zedong.

I’m guessing that “Dear Shanghai” might be a hard sell in that it’s period music in a language that most Americans don’t speak or comprehend. But you know what? I don’t think this matters, and I’ll tell you why in a moment.

“When I recorded the album,” Fichot says, “the goal was to do something a little different.”

What she means is that she didn’t set out to faithfully copy the originals, but to allow modern elements into the production. I won’t say it’s “Americanized,” but it’s pleasant to the ear (if you don’t mind vocals occasionally being in a higher range).

“The most unusual thing about it,” Fichot points out, “is that it’s sung in Chinese. But in terms of instrumentation, it’s very similar to the music from the ‘20s and ‘30s in France. You have clarinet, you have guitar, upright bass, drums, piano. I think it’s pretty accessible.”

So do I, and that’s because I hear in it a more intimate version of Cirque du Soleil’s world music mélange, more scaled down, to be sure, and one able to fit inside of a darkened cabaret, whether in Europe or in Asia. I can picture a small stage in front of maybe a dozen circular tables, one or two fashionably dressed couples at each table sipping drinks, chatting amicably, not chastised if they decide to light up a cigarette.

And if you and I were sitting at one of these tables, what would we be drinking?

“To go with my music?” Fichot says. “Probably, in most cases, it would be a whisky cocktail of some sort, like an Old Fashioned. I’m not a big fan of red wine,” she adds, “but I imagine that some people might enjoy it.”

I give this some thought and announce that I’d order a Whisky Sour.

“Whisky Sour. Perfect,” she replies.

Jessica Fichot’s concert at Collage won’t quite replicate this kind of intimate scenario, and presumably there will be no bartenders or cigarette girls coming around, but it should feel warmer and more personal than performing at Marsee Auditorium, the large hall at El Camino College where she had been scheduled to play and which was canceled at the last moment in March of 2020. Many of us had looked forward to that event. In the meantime, what can we expect from her show in San Pedro?

And as the lights go down…

Selections from all three albums, more recent songs, and a few cover tunes. A fourth record is finished, but not yet available (she didn’t want to release it during the pandemic). This isn’t to suggest that Fichot has been taking it easy, because she’s also been composing music for video games and films.

“The hardest part is writing songs for myself, for my band, because nobody’s given me a deadline.”

The group will also play a few tunes that Fichot didn’t write.

“In a two-hour or two-set performance it might be 60 percent original and 40 percent covers. If I play a 45-minute set it’s probably going to be mostly my own songs. I do understand that for people coming to a concert that’s in a language they don’t necessarily speak, two or three hours of just original music that they don’t know might be kind of tricky. So I’ll play some songs that people will probably know.”

Despite a fondness for several numbers on her three albums, such as the catchy Dans le Métro on “Le Secret,” and Manli on “Dear Shanghai,” during our conversation I inadvertently downplay the music’s commercial potential.

“Well, you never know,” Fichot replies.

I backtrack a little, rephrasing what I’d just said: You aren’t trying to have a hit song necessarily where you’re pursuing a certain formula.

“I think that’s true. But there’s certain things that are possible even in my modest music. There’s still a lot of cool things that could happen.”

No one should argue with that. Fichot has already amassed quite a following, especially in cities — such as San Francisco, Ashland and even Tucson — where she’s frequently performed. If she’ll make additional forays into the South Bay she may be able to add another name or two to the cities where her music is always well received.

As for what she’d like to achieve over the next few years, Fichot answers that it’s to continue as she has, except to make it even better.

“Being ambitious means you’re never quite satisfied with what you have.”

That said, she adds, “In a way I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do. Really, writing good songs and having them heard is my major goal.”

Jessica Fichot and her quartet (clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Chloe Feoranzo, upright bassist Jonathan Ahrens, guitarist Vincent Islas, and special guest Annie Zhou on guzheng (Chinese zither)

Time: 7:30 p.m. April 9

Cost: $20 to $30

Details: www.collageartculture.com

Venue: Collage: A Place for Art and Culture, 731 S. Pacific Ave, San Pedro.

Carefree Cruise or Pirate Ship?

Paul Rosenberg
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Carefree Cruise or Pirate Ship? 

Carnival Celebrates 50 Years…of What, Exactly?

Carnival Cruise Lines recently celebrated its 50th anniversary of presenting itself as an affordable, carefree kind of experience for the masses. But Jim Walker, a former cruise line defense attorney — who switched sides to represent cruise ship crime victims (including 125 rape/sexual assault victims) after being asked to defend against a rape lawsuit — sees a much darker legacy. He sees Carnival as more like a pirate ship line, deliberately intended to evade the law as much as humanly possible — be it U.S. labor law, or tax law, criminal protections for victims of rape, sexual assault or molestation, or environmental law protecting the seas it travels. Its corporate parent, Carnival corporation, owns nine cruise lines — all of which “committed criminal environmental violations from 2017-2021” according to Friends of the Earth’s 2021 “Cruise Ship Report Card” — with nearly 100 ships. One line, Princess, sails out of the Port of Los Angeles, while Carnival sails out of Long Beach, home to the Queen Mary, retired from the Cunard line, also now Carnival-owned. Random Lengths News interviewed Walker to shed light on Carnival’s record of lawlessness, from how it started to where it stands today.

Ted Arison, father of the current chairman, Micky Arison, started Carnival Cruise Lines in 1972. “He had a vision of having what I characterize as like a Walmart on the seas, a mass, family-oriented, funship. They’re still using the funship mantra in their marketing,” Walker said.

“To do so he was the first to perfect the model of basing their companies in foreign ports, foreign incorporation,” he explained. “Carnival Cruise Lines is not an American-based company. It’s registered and incorporated in Panama. Why Panama? Because it lets Carnival do whatever they want to do. It’s not a country that cares about minimum wage or overtime laws, or the issue of pollution, employment rights or safety and security. So he created a cruise corporation, in the eyes of a businessman, without any of the limitations of the American government that has wage and labor laws.”

It also avoided U.S. income taxes, “Which is considerable, considering that Carnival in the first year before COVID-19, collected over $20 billion and had profits of over $3 billion,” Walker added.

But there’s more involved than just saving Carnival money. “It’s always considered itself its own entity and its own government, so to speak. When a crime occurs there’s no U.S. police forces on the ships,” Walker said. As a law firm that only handles cases against cruise lines, “We see the side of this corporation that does everything it can to insulate itself from legal exposure,” he explained. “Some of the ways it does that are perfectly legal, but they’re on the edge of legality and they really pride themselves in not showing responsibility. This is a corporate culture that has very little regard for the safety and security of their guests and their passengers.”

How Carnival operates illustrates a larger worldwide problem — certain areas are well governed, but there are cracks where it isn’t. “This is a corporation that you could say exists in the cracks, it was grown in the cracks. It is not a corporation that values light in the organization. There’s very little sunshine shining on this corporation,” Walker said. Crime occurs, but it’s hidden, of necessity.

“To promote an image of a fun family vacation, you can’t admit the fact that you have a shipboard problem with crime, and in particular, rape and sexual abuse and sexual assaults against the female passengers, and against the children,” Walker noted. But there was no crime reporting before Congress passed the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Law of 2010, which “came about through the efforts of many of our clients who testified before Congress.” As a result, “You can actually go online and find which ships in which companies have the worst records as far as shipboard rape. And you’ll find Carnival at the top of the list.” In fact, “Carnival Cruise Lines has more rapes per capita then half the states in the United States of America, including California, New York, New Jersey and in a dozen or so other states.”

Of course, crime occurs everywhere, “But a crime on a Carnival Cruise Ship is not going to be solved it’s not going to be prosecuted, because the culture on the ships is to blame the passenger, to blame the woman who gets raped or to suggest that they did something wrong. They drank too much,” Walker says, even though “This is an industry that prides itself in selling many millions and millions of dollars of booze every year.” Carnival sells all-you-can-drink drink packages, and “There’s a direct correlation between shipboard violence, including rape, and the amount of alcohol.”

Bartenders and bar servers aren’t paid anything by Carnival — they work exclusively for tips and gratuities, which is strictly illegal under U.S. labor law. “So the bartenders and the bar servers push alcohol very aggressively. The statistics show that in many rape cases — in cases of one guest assaulting another guests — both being intoxicated with as many as 15 or 20 drinks. It’s really quite extraordinary,” Walker remarked.

In effect you have one crime — or should-be crime — (wage theft) contributing to another (rape or sexual assault). “They’re not violating the law because there are no laws that apply to Carnival Cruise ships,” Walker points out, “even though it sails from the United States.”

The Great Pretender

Carnival pretends to be American. “For the longest time there were advertisements which showed Carnival Cruise ships with an American flag flying at the stern, going across the TV screen,” but “There are no American flag Carnival cruise ships sailing, whatsoever,” Walker flatly stated. “They create this illusion, this is part of America. Their current CEO coined the term ‘America’s cruise line,’ which is like, ‘What does America have to do with it?’ The only connection to the United States is their executives are living here in waterfront properties in Miami.” Walker estimates, “Maybe 3% of their crew members are U.S. citizens. Those are typically say the cruise director, some of the singers, dancers and entertainers,” but “Most of the fleet consists of crew members from the Philippines, Indonesia, India and what is commonly referred to as Eastern Europe.”

When rapes or other crimes are reported, Carnival routinely lets crew members return to their homelands, thwarting investigations. “You’ll never see the FBI taking a crew member off the ship and leading them down the gangway with the call ahead to the press telling them that we got a rapist on a cruise ship,” Walker said. It never comes to that.

But rapes and sexual assaults aren’t the only problems. Thefts are also a concern. “The cruise industry fought the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Law Act that I mentioned. They really fought to limit the types of crimes that needed to be reported. They were successful in limiting the language only to thefts involving over $10,000,” Walker explained.

Carnival also protects itself against civil liability. “All the cruise tickets limit liability for any type of personal items that are left that are lost or stolen on the ship,” Walker explained. “You don’t realize it, it’s in fine print, but most cruise lines, Carnival limits their liability to $100 for anything that is left lying around the cabin, that’s the term they use. So if you have your jewelry, take jewelry off — priceless jewelry that your grandmother gave your wife, some story like that — they’ll give you a check for a hundred bucks.”

Even the high rate of reported rapes is probably an undercount, given the lack of support for victims — rape crisis centers, support groups, etc. Walker cites the example of Laurie Dishman, a client who testified before Congress about her experience. “She was raped by a shipboard security officer, and she was faced with the dilemma of having to report the crime and she initially reported it to what’s called the front desk, where the purser and customer relations are, and they said you have to talk to the security,” Walker explained. “So she was faced with this issue. Do I really want to report a crime involving a member of the security detail to the security department? It’s like being raped by a police officer and having to go to the police department to report the rape.”

That might be a worst-case scenario, but it’s part of a broader pattern. “Probably of the 125 women that we’ve represented — we also represent parents whose children have been molested on ships — probably 25% of those women don’t report the crime until they get off the ship, come to their senses, gain some stability and support from their family, and then report it,” Walker estimates. “A good portion of the people who are victims of crime decide not to report the crime simply because there’s no vehicle to report it. The ships of course begin building a case against the victim even before the victim gets off ship.

“So they decided not to solve the problem by making an example of a bad apple, by showing that we take this very seriously and were going to prosecute criminals on our ships. They take the other attitude, they begin attacking the victim and minimizing the victim. So I think that the reporting statistics certainly do not include those women that don’t report the rape on the ship.”

The free flow of alcohol and lack of a supporting environment aren’t the only risk factors involved. “One of the major problems that we’ve seen over the years is that many of the rapes are committed by the cabin attendants,” as well as child molestations. These tend to happen the last day of a cruise, after attendants have ingratiated themselves. “The cabin attendant, typically on the last night of the cruise, after they become familiar with the family, come back into the cabin, see that mom and dad are not there … and there’s a sexual molestation that occurs,” Walker said. “Cruise lines know it, they absolutely know it. They could take their key cards away, they could deactivate the key cards outside of business hours. They don’t do that for reasons I don’t quite understand.”

Although Walker’s firm doesn’t deal with it, he calls pollution Carnival’s biggest and most consistent crime. It’s had multiple multi-million dollar fines for long-running violations, but given Carnival’s multi-billion dollar revenues, these are mere slaps on the wrist. “In 2002 Carnival pled guilty to widespread pollution that led to this $18 million fine and they had a five year probation,” Walker said.

During that probation — beginning in 2005, four or five Princess cruise ships began using “magic pipes” used to bypass the ship’s oily water separator and make untreated bilge water “magically disappear.” This came to light in 2013, when a newly-hired engineer on the Caribbean Princess took pictures of the “magic pipe” in use and then when it was removed before a mandatory inspection. A wide-ranging investigation resulted in a record $40 million settlement in 2016.

But it didn’t go far enough. “They stopped short of really tracking it from the shipboard employees, the engineers, to the shoreside managers and then all the way up the chain to the executives,” Walker pointed out. “Certainly the executives knew that no one was incurring any waste disposal expenses at all for a period of time.”

Walker contrasts the $40 million fine with their $20 billion revenue. “So what is $40 million as a percent?” he asks. “Is it like a traffic court fine? A parking violation to you or me? Maybe. It’s just the cost of doing business with them. They don’t care about the water and the air, they don’t care about their employees.” In fact, “They were fined another $20 million in 2019,” for violating their origin settlement agreement with further violations, including the dumping of plastic mixed with food waste in Bahamian waters, as well as deceptively evading compliance provisions, which have been tracked in a series of annual reports. “And the fact is they continued to violate, and a couple months ago in January this year, 2022, they were fined another $1 million.” Combined with fines on their other subsidiaries, Walker sets their total fines at roughly $82 million.

The 2016 probation was overseen by Judge Patricia Seitz, who at one point seemed to have had enough, according to Walker. “She said this: ‘We have a program [for] recidivist criminals that are likely to commit their crimes again, and it seems to me that Carnival is one of those recidivist criminals. They happen to be a corporation but they’re a corporate felon, they’re likely to do it again.’ She seemed to have a real understanding of what was before her, this mess that was before her, and she said, ‘It seems to me that nothing’s really going to change until I do something more serious, until I either block all Carnival Cruise ships from ever calling in a U.S. port, or we have prison time for their executives and their board of directors.’ And man did Carnival freak out.”

And yet, “The next time they violated the probation, nothing happened. She didn’t call the marshals in. No one left the court in handcuffs. Micky Arison’s still worth $10 billion. None of this comes out of his pocket. He has his yachts that he lives on. He enjoys his lifestyle, he’s not affected by it.”

Adding insult to injury, the $20 million settlement was entered without hearing from victims. “They found evidence, while Carnival was on probation, that Carnival had dumped 500,000 gallons of trash and plastic items” throughout the Bahamas, Wright said. “There were Bahamian environmental organizations that were affected, and claimed damage due to Carnival’s criminal conduct, who wanted to testify. And there is a federal statute that permits victims of crime to testify regarding the court’s treatment of the criminal that committed the crime,” but Seitz refused to let them be heard. “It was a real lost opportunity … for the court to really open the proceeding up, and to get to the bottom of it, and to really try to make real change.”

The final, fifth annual probation report, issued on Feb. 16, credited Carnival with “important work toward building a sustainable compliance culture,” in contrast to its earlier intransigence, but noted “remaining barriers,” such as a “blame culture,” an “anti-learning leadership mindset,” and “prioritizing guest experience and revenue generation over ship operational and compliance needs.”

The blame culture is deeply entrenched, Walker noted. When “magic pipes” were exposed, “They blamed the subordinate crew members, what they called the ‘rogue engineers.’” But “All those activities of storing waste, whether it’s waste oil, sewage, or plastics, and disposing of it, cost a lot of money — hundreds of thousands of dollars per ship.” When it’s not being done, to cut costs, upper management has to know it — if not bring pressure to cause it in the first place.

As things stand now, “That five year probation that was started in 2016 is scheduled to end next month. Quite frankly, then this is going to be the Wild Wild West again,” Walker lamented.

So what would it take to really make Carnival and other cruise lines change? Judge Seitz had the right idea, but failed to follow through, in Walker’s view. “We’re not going to see any changes until someone from Carnival corporation board of directors, some of the chief executives, maybe the chairman of the board goes to jail,” he said. But then added, “I think quite frankly that the prospects of that are slim and none.”

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