A weekend in the life of a candidate
Filed under: Articles by Ralph Carmona, Campaign Trail, Portland Issues
Thursday, I attended the Portland Democratic City Committee meeting to resign as vice chair in order to run for Mayor of Portland.
It’s been an honor to work with Jill Barkley and the other Portland Dems, and I look forward to participating as an active member. However, because there are eight Democrats in the race, Jill and I agreed that it would be best for me to step down in order to avoid the appearance of favoritism. Look for events and information from the City Committee aimed at supporting ALL of the Democrats in the race. May the best man or woman win!
Friday, I was interviewed by Mike Violette for his WGAN “Maine Points” slated to air on July 17. Later, I attended a EBNO (East Bay Neighborhood Organization) talent show to support EBNO’s efforts. Talked briefly with fellow candidates Jed and Markos.
Today, I am attending the training at the Maine People’s Alliance, the start of a full-bore effort to get a “peoples’ veto” onto the ballot to reverse a new law that bans voting day registration. It’s an important issue, as the new law has the effect of disenfranchising many poor, elderly, disabled and young people, who face barriers to getting to City Hall during working hours. It’s particularly important for Portland, because we have a significant population of students, older people and people with disabilities and language barriers. It’s important to me that EVERY Maine citizen who has the right to vote be allowed a chance to do so.
I will also be attending the march and celebration of the independence of South Sudan, which will include a march to the Portland Expo as well as dancing, food, speeches and music.
Tonight, I plan to attend a fundraiser performance on the labor movement at Lucid Stage. Harlan Baker, actor, activist and former legislator, will be performing “Jimmy Higgins: A Life in the Labor Movement,” which he has also performed in Wisconsin to benefit workers there. Proceeds from tonight’s show will benefit efforts to restore Maine’s labor mural.
Tomorrow I will join my wife Vana at a reception, following “The Hidden Gardens of Munjoy Hill” tour.
It’s a busy weekend, and I hope to meet you while I’m out!
DeCoster Chicken farm practices highlighted
Filed under: Articles about Ralph Carmona
BY RAMONA DU HOUX – MAINE INSIGHTS
April 14th, 2011 · Filed under: Civil Rights, Community Maine, Public Safety
The Maine League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) discussed a series of interviews being conducted with workers at the DeCoster Chicken farm on violations involving working conditions and worker rights. LULAC State Director Jose Lopez talked with past and present DeCoster employees on employee conditions that can only be described as inhumane and slave-like.
“These are poor people seeking the American dream,” Lopez emphasized, “some as old as 60 years of age, who migrated to Turner, Maine on a company commitment for both liveable wages and working conditions. They were lied to, fired when injured and forced to work in unspeakable conditions.”
Maine LULAC said that they will have three hours of tape interviews and will work to provide an hour-long DVD for public availability.
Lopez highlighted the issue because proposed legislation, LD 1207, would eliminate overtime, minimum wage and the civil rights for DeCoster workers to collectively organize and bargain on worker rights, conditions and benefits.
Testimony on the bill will be heard at 1:00PM Friday, April 15, before the Maine State Legislative Joint Committee on Labor, Commerce, Research and Economic Development.
“This bill hits at the heart of a worker’s livelihood. We do not see the camel’s nose under the tent, we see the whole hump,” said Dr. Ralph Carmona, President of Portland LULAC. “It is bad enough for the DeCoster people to outright reject claims from poor, immigrant and injured people. Worse, DeCoster is circumventing ownership responsibility with a legislative proposal crafted that specifically exempts his company and symbolizes the destruction of Maine civil and worker rights.”
“For more than 20 years, under the DeCoster watch, female workers have been raped and harassed on work premises, consumers have been delivered poisonous (Salmonella) products, decent worker conditions, animal rights, child labor and environmental laws have been violated. This is a billionaire who is directly and indirectly responsible for one-third of America’s egg production. He is a public monster for his seamless decades of cruel, wicked and terrifying business effects on Maine people and the American public.” said Carmona.
“The political dimension of this monstrosity is the ability through legal, lobbying, and business procedures to rearrange and rename the company to undermine worker rights and seek special legislation like LD 1207.”
The Maine LULAC also will oppose LD 1346, that establishes “training” work at below minimum wages for teenagers and removes hourly regulation for child labor. “It is,” Lopez concluded, “an effort to reverse child labor law as we know it.”
Founded in 1929, LULAC is the nation’s largest and oldest Latino civil rights organization with over 900 councils throughout the country. The Maine State LULAC is headquartered in Lewiston with chapters also in Portland, Auburn and Bangor.
Latin American group meets with LePage
Filed under: Articles about Ralph Carmona
By Susan M. Cover – Kennebec Journal
Ralph Carmona, president of Portland League of United Latin American Citizens, and Marc Mutty, treasurer of the group, met with Gov. Paul LePage today to emphasize the importance of Latinos to Maine and the country.
“The purpose of the meeting with the governor was to see if we can move forward and get beyond the kind of chaotic discourse that’s occurred in the public arena,” Carmona said. “To express our disagreements with him on a number of issues.”
One of those disagreements comes over an executive order LePage signed in January that requires workers at the state Department of Health and Human Services to verify that those seeking assistance are in the country legally.
Carmona presented the governor with a program from last month’s Cesar Chavez ceremony, which LePage did not attend. Carmona has also been critical of the governor for directing that all Department of Labor conference rooms be renamed, including one that was named after Chavez.
Carmona said LePage brought up the issue of the labor mural removal. LePage asked Carmona if he thought it was fair that money from an unemployment fund went to art work instead.
Carmona said the decision to remove the mural goes beyond dollars and cents.
“Working people like all people look at quality of life beyond just a direct benefit or a direct wage,” he said. “They look at all the things around them.”
Carmona said the governor did assure him that he wanted to travel to Lewiston and Portland to hold forums with immigrants.
Mayor’s Corner: “The Humanity of Cesar Chavez is a Guide for Maine’s Future”
Filed under: Articles about Ralph Carmona
Twin-City Times, April 7, 2011
By Laurent F. Gilbert Sr., Mayor of Lewiston
Several months ago Joey Lopez, originally from Texas and now director of the Maine Chapter League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and his friend Albeni Dasilva, formerly of Brazil, came to see me in support of Latin American issues.
Lopez and Dasilva invited elected officials and police officers for a Latin American meal at LULAC State Directors location at 40 Strawberry Ave. in Lewiston. It was a wonderful celebration, and it provided an opportunity for L-A officials to get to know L-A LULAC members. Joey Lopez and I became good friends. I introduced him to hockey, and now he is as staunch a MAINEiacs fan, as I am. I recently became a member of LULAC. Together we worked on the DREAM Act, a subject I addressed in an earlier column.
Dr. Ralph Carmona, president of the Portland LULAC, moved to Portland this past year with his wife Vana, who is originally from Maine, and we have become good friends since working on a number of human rights issues. Lopez and Carmona were the principals in the development of the Cesar Chavez celebration on March 31 at the historic First Parish Church of Portland.
With Carmona’s permission, I share with you below what he wrote in the program at Cesar Chavez Celebration:
“At 9 a.m. at First Parish of Portland, March 31, people will gather to celebrate the birthday of Cesar Estrada Chavez. Bobby Kennedy characterized him as “one of the heroic figures of our time.”
“It will be an observance beyond Cesar’s organization of this nation’s poorest rural workers into the United Farm Workers of America. It will be Cesar in his complexity and universality: Cesar the educated man, voices of his prayer, faith, music, environmental sensitivity and human rights, a Cesar who goes to the moral core of collective organizing as a civil right for working people.
“My voice will be of Cesar the All-American.
“The Maine League of United Latin American Citizens comes with a political climate symbolized by February testimony we gave against a “birther” bill before a state legislative committee. The legislation required candidates for elective office to prove citizenship. We opined that the proposal deserved no legislative hearing because it is rooted in an extremist belief that our President is a non-citizen and energizes a racist past. The mere introduction of such xenophobic legislation betrays Maine’s demographic reality.
“For the whitest and oldest state in the union, in contrast to states like Arizona, immigration is a non-issue. But understanding Cesar’s humanity is critical for Maine’s future. Like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, his inner faith energized national sentiment. Through thought and deed, Cesar organized against deplorable conditions affecting poor rural workers.
“A child of racial segregation in a Los Angeles that was almost 90 percent white Protestant during the 1950s, my sense of segregation’s injustice came from Robert Conot’s “Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness.” The book is about the city’s 1965 Watts Riots and prophesized a coming Chicano Movement revolt in Los Angeles.
“Cesar’s farm worker movement first came to mind in 1968, when Bobby Kennedy embraced him as a presidential candidate. Along with King, Kennedy was assassinated in that tumultuous year of countercultural and civil rights turmoil.
“Student protests got me into college, after graduation in 1969 from a ‘Mexican’ high school engulfed by citywide Chicano student walkouts. It made me a desegregation college activist and campaigner for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign. I was moved by Cesar’s endorsement of McGovern and joined co-founder, Dolores Huerta, at a UFW rally for him. I was a guest during the 1970s at Cesar’s headquarters in La Paz, California.
“It was a time, Marc Grossman, Cesar’s spokesman reminds me, when Chavez was told to ‘go back to Mexico.’ Last year, his granddaughter, was asked about her immigrant status and a commentator suggested Cesar’s body be shipped back to Mexico. ‘What is astounding,’ Grossman told me, ‘is that the Chavez family has been in this country longer than many Americans.’
“Fleeing from servitude in Mexico, Cesar’s grandfather, Cesario, settled in Arizona and received property through the 1862 Homestead Act. One of Cesar’s uncles witnessed the legendary 1881 gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. In the late 1800s, he ran a business cutting wood, hauling it in wagons pulled by mule teams that built mines. And, of course, his business contributed to the Internet of a pre-state Arizona economy: The building of its railroads. At the turn of the Century, Cesar’s dad, Librado, drove a Wells Fargo stagecoach, was a farmer, local postmaster and ran a country store that was a community center for Anglos and Latinos. The Chavez family helped build the Old West.
“Born on March 31, 1931, in Arizona, Cesar served in the military. Like the Depression-era Okies in John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ his family lost their property to the banks and migrated to California. From family tragedy came Cesar’s movement for social justice.
“There will be other diverse Chavez voices mindful of a forgotten past when ‘progressive’ leaders equated immigrants with apes and denied women voting rights because they would grow male body hair. Today is a time when ‘others’ of differing gender orientation or immigrant status still feel compelled to hide in life’s public closets and shadows.
“Hopefully, Cesar’s birthday celebration will mark the beginning of a diverse Maine future with opportunity and growth through acts of common humanity.”
I thank Dr. Carmona for allowing me to share his words with you!
I am extremely disappointed with my fellow French-Canadian descendent, Governor Paul LePage, a former fellow mayor of Waterville, for removing the historical mural of the history of the labor strife of immigrants to America.
“They can take a painting down, they can take the names of history down from the conference rooms, but they cannot take our voices and that’s why we’re here today,” said Joey Lopez. He is correct: history is what it is; you cannot hide it in a closet or paint over it because those who lived it will always remember and pass it on, as the Cesar Chavez remembrance has done.
In actuality, Governor LePage brought attention to the mural panels most of us Mainers never knew existed. The murals depicted the labor struggles here in Maine such at the infamous 1937 shoe strike right here in L-A, the paper mill strikes, Frances Perkins, the first woman Labor Secretary under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was instrumental in bringing about Social Security and other worker benefits, as she had Maine ties and has the Department of Labor’s building in Washington, D.C. named in her honor.
Thankfully, Governor LePage brought attention to the mural panels, albeit in a very negative sense. The result is that he has made himself as the governor of our great state the laughing stock of our country with the national attention he has brought by his negativism and sarcasm. Strangely enough, his motto is “People before Politics.”
In my opinion, he has yet to live by his words. The words “Business Politics before People” might be more appropriate. Business and workers need to work together, not one with advantage over the other, in a spirit of fundamental fairness. When Governor LePage says: “We are open for business,” his disrespectful and insulting comments become counter-productive to luring any business to establish itself here in such a negative climate.
If Governor LePage wanted to bring attention to business and economic development, perhaps he should commission a mural to be painted at the offices of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. Then he could strike the balance between business and labor that he claims to seek.
As a Franco-American and as a mayor, quite frankly, I am truly embarrassed. I wonder if Governor LePage has forgotten his roots. I hope that he will heed the advice of his Republican Senators and Representatives and cool his rhetoric for the sake of our great state and make us proud again with our state motto: “Dirigo.”
He should either lead or get out of the way. He has a duty and responsibility to do so!
LePage actions add significance to Chavez event
Filed under: Articles about Ralph Carmona
By Curtis Robinson, Portland Daily Sun
Mar 30, 2011
After dinner at an Austin-area restaurant early last year, noted historian and biographer Douglas Brinkley was asked by a colleague if there is “one major American figure” lacking a really definitive biography.
Brinkley, himself the author of several best-selling biographies, did not hesitate. “Cesar Chavez,” he said.
In a telephone interview Tuesday, Brinkley explained that Chavez, the co-founder of the National Farm Workers Union and an icon of Latino civil rights, is a “sustainable hero” from the 1960s and predicted he will grow in importance as the United States Latino population grows.
Chavez and the labor movement have gained relevance in Maine this month as Gov. Paul LePage decreed that the state Labor Department conference room that bears Chavez’s name, along with seven other such meeting areas, have their names changed to reflect a more “balanced” attitude toward business-labor relations.
That same decision included removing a labor mural, a move that earned international headlines and mockery on network late-night television.
In Portland, the LePage controversy has added significance to the community’s annual observance of “Cesar Chavez” day, scheduled for tomorrow at First Parish Church on Congress Street. Chavez, who died in 1993, would have been 84 on Thursday.
If any writers take Brinkley’s advice on the next big biography, they could get a good start Thursday as several Chavez colleagues are scheduled to speak, including an 86-year-old Bangor physician who served as the labor activist’s doctor and a onetime critic and Nixon supporter (who came to embrace the movement) who will testify that he was honored to work with Chavez, who it turns out was an accomplished ping-pong player.
The program, which begins at 9 a.m., will also feature immigrant speakers and address the Chavez legacy on immigration. Some historians contend that Chavez and the UFW opposed illegal immigration based on concerns that undocumented workers could not only be exploited but drove down wages for American workers. The First Parish participants argue that’s a distortion, and that any opposition was only to a specific program and that the union embraced rights for “all workers.”
The First Parish program takes aim at a couple of common Chavez misconceptions, including that he was from Mexico — he was actually born in Arizona, where his grandfather had settled after receiving land through the 1862 Homestead Act. His grandparents were actually Euroupean immigrants.
Ralph Carmona, president of the Portland chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) which counts 900 councils including four in Maine, says Thursday’s program celebrates “a man who really made a difference” and drew comparisons with civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., noting that both used non-violent protest.
“Cesar Chavez worked for the poorest workers in America,” said Carmona, who spearheaded organization of the First Parish event. “He shifted the arch of the moral universe.”
As for removing the Chavez name from a conference room in Augusta, Carmona said that putting the name there was clearly symbolic — and so was its ordered removal. The governor has agreed to a meeting with LULAC next month and the name-change is a likely topic, he added.
Chavez actually visited Maine in August of 1974 as part of a New England tour promoting a boycott of non-UFW harvested grapes and lettuce — it would become widely regarded as the longest-running nationwide boycott ever atempted by the harvester’s union.
In published accounts of the visit, local historian and former state reprentative Herb Adams reports that “… at a noon rally at Lincoln Park, flanked by Portland Mayor Bill Troubh and State Rep. Jerry Talbot, Chavez told 500 cheering supporters that 65 % of New England markets respected the UFW boycott, the best in the nation. Mayor Troubh presented Chavez with a key to the city, and Chavez grinned he was soon returning to his hometown of Delano, Calif., ” where if I live for 200 years I’ll never get a key to that city !”
The march, reminicent of civil rights marches of the era, is another reminder that, for many, the Chavez parallel with Martin Luther King Jr. included tactics like public protest and non-violent events. But Brinkly says that there’s another link through both men’s spiritual approach.
King famously held to his Baptist faith while Chavez remained a Catholic.
Eventually, that spirituality will help with ongoing efforts to create a national holiday for Cesar Chavez, predicted Brinkley. Eight states now officially note the day, but national recognition remains elusive.
Brinkley says several factors may work against a national Chavez holiday, ranging from the fact that his political battles with Ronald Reagan left cultural scars with supporters of the popular president and that some Americans confuse him — believe it or not — with Hugo Chavez, the controversial president of Venezuela.
It’s unlikely there will be much of that confusion at First Parish tomorrow morning, where the next step for Mainers in support of the Chavez legacy will begin and end with the Highlander Folk School ballad “We Shall Overcome.”
(Curtis Robinson is editor of The Portland Daily Sun. Contact him at curtis@portlanddailysun.me.)
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