Big leap forward for ACORN and organizing, if I could be so bold as to say so, as organizers and allies came together in two great meetings in Heerlen.

The first was in a surprising venue, as the ACORN Organizing School took its show on the road in the Netherlands.   We were meeting in the actual circle where the Heerlen city council – all 37 members with name plates that signified their party affiliation – meets to do its regular business.  In classic ACORN style, we might accurately call this a sit-in, but it was by invitation, which never happens.

Ron Mayer, our longtime comrade and friend in Heerlen, who had arranged the venue for the training, briefed me earlier on the historic architecture that informed the space.  When it was built originally, Holland was 90% Catholic.  The ceiling above the desks was a giant circular glasswork.  The message of the design was that when the city directors opened the doors to come in, even without turning on the lights, God was watching from above.

So be it, more than 40 organizers, leaders, and activists from around the Netherlands as well as from Sicily, Belgium, India, and Malta, as well as Canada and the United States, went through an introduction to community organizing.  There was door knocking and of course role plays for everyone to test their skills.  We detailed the outline for an ACORN organizing drive and then jumped into issue campaigns in small groups that were tackling how to win retrofits for substandard housing, which is a global issue.  Good times with good people!

Wham, bang, within hours, back at the ranch, the rest of the organizers from around the ACORN world from France and the UK were also showing up at NIVON, where we were meeting in a giant house that serves as a dormitory of sorts for meetings, small and large.  NIVON is a large volunteer operation and so was dinner, except in our case, it was assigned to first to Scotland with the USA on cleanup, breakfast by Canada, and so on.  New Orleans will be featuring jambalaya as a treat.

When the meeting convened, we were more than 50 packed cheek-to-jowl in the meeting room, as every country gave a report on their progress.  There were the usual stars who recorded another great year.  It had been the 20^th anniversary of ACORN Canada and the 10^th anniversary of ACORN in England, for example.  Jet lag and all other obstacles took a back seat as organizers listened with great interest to the reports from new affiliates in Malta and emerging ones in Belgium and the US.  We were having our first detailed briefing, so it was fascinating.

It’s always hard to win a doubleheader, but we had managed.  To top it off, the debut of the translation equipment got high marks and the meeting venue itself even seem to be passing with a good grade.  We’ll be at this for days, so let’s hope, we’re on a roll in Heerlen!

ACORN International partnered with Anthropocene Alliance to train 20 environmental justice organizations from the US Gulf Coast on the fundamentals of ACORN’s model of community organizing. It was a big success, and we’re looking forward to training dozens more organizations in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the West Coast.

ACORN International held their “Year End/Year Beginning” meeting in Louisiana this month, including including a one-day training workshop on climate change in the Gulf Coast, and two intense staff meeting days. A major highlight was the critical discussions during Sunday morning’s session!  

OnEstEnsemble organized a protest with the eco-union of residents near the SOSUCAM sugar cane plantations. These residents’ crops of cassava, peanuts and yams were destroyed by SOSUCAM’s planes spraying pesticides. The residents gathered the destroyed crops and displayed signs in protest, demanding compensation.

Residents of the sugarcane plantations of the Somdiaa group, subsidiary of the French giant Castel, have been forced to uproot their production of cassava, peanuts and yams, destroyed in their fields by spraying pesticides by the company planes. Several have gathered to protest, and planned to pour their destroyed production in front of the Sosucam headquarters.

The victims demand that the company compensate them for the huge loss.

Organized in the eco-syndicate Riverains Ensemble, the peasants were already asking through a petition to stop air expansion, banned in France.

FARM WORKERS BLOCK WORK IN PLANTATIONS AND FACTORIES FOR TWO WEEKS TO PROTEST AGAINST UNWORTHY WORKING CONDITIONS

On February 23, 2022, nearly 2,000 agricultural laborers (cutters) from the Société sucrière du Cameroun (SOSUCAM) went on strike in Nkoteng to protest against the deterioration of their already precarious working conditions. The police and gendarmerie forces immediately came to disperse the crowd, using tear gas canisters. Shots were also fired and two workers were injured, in the forearm and in the thigh.  After three days on strike, the agricultural laborers at the Mbandjock plantation joined the strike in the face of management’s refusal to dialogue, paralyzing work in all the plantations and factories. From 26 February to 8 March, nearly 8,000 people were suspended from work by the strike.[1]

The strike was triggered by requests for explanations issued the day before to 180 workers by their supervisors. These workers had used their right to refuse a task, deemed too difficult. The sanction imposed, while the supervisor is supposed to adjust the tasks to the density of canes to cut, was the last straw. Indeed, the conditions of agricultural laborers are much less advantageous than those of permanent workers (lower salary scale, lower premiums, no health coverage, etc.), and their status is very precarious (seasonal contracts), even though the work is technical and physical. An investigation report, attesting to the difficult conditions of workers at Sosucam, a subsidiary of the French group Castel, has just been published. [2]

Despite a large-scale strike, management did not respond to the workers’ demands: on 24 February, a press release from Sosucam announced discussions with staff representatives and stated that measures would be taken, without specifying their content, and urged the workers to return to work. The workers remained united and the strike gained momentum. New promises were made by management representatives in the following days, but the general manager remained silent and absent. The strikers refused to return to work. They demanded in particular: a significant salary increase (with a base salary of 250,000 CFA francs – €380), step increases with seniority, an increase in the performance bonus, and a reduction in task objectives.

On 1 March, Sosucam management issued a press release announcing resolutions taken in consultation with union representatives (CSAC, CSTC, USLC, CSIC, CTUC). However, no representatives of the seasonal workers, who represent nearly 90% of the workers, and 100% of the agricultural laborers, are present. The strikers, meeting every day in assemblies gathering several hundred workers, demanded a public meeting with the General Manager. He agreed and finally met with the strikers at the municipal stadium on March 3 but declared that “on issues related to wage increases and the harmonization of performance bonuses, [he] could not take a decision. The strikers refuse. “What really matters is fixed pay. The cutting bonuses, for example, are issued arbitrarily by the supervisors, we get between 1000 and 3000f for that only at the end of the month”, testifies one of the leaders of the strike. So The strike has been renewed.

On March 6, a new official statement from management was issued, announcing in particular:

• The cancellation of the 180 requests for explanations issued to agricultural laborers
• The improvement of the reception of workers in the medical centers
• The suspension of the new controversial cutting technique among agricultural laborers and the transparency (posting) of tasks and objectives
• The increase of the cutting premium from 175fcfa to 250fcfa
• The introduction of an end-of-campaign bonus of 15,000 CFA francs for all employees who have worked throughout the campaign
• The recruitment of a social mediator by the labor delegate among the agricultural laborers.

Despite measures deemed insufficient by striking workers, under pressure from traditional chiefs called upon by management, and with police and gendarmerie commando teams patrolling alongside Sosucam agents with megaphones in the neighborhoods, workers gradually returned to work on March 7 and 8. On March 9, the company was operating normally again.

The mobilization and tenacity of the agricultural laborers made it possible to obtain concrete progress, but they decided to organize themselves solidly in order to significantly improve their working conditions, and that their demands could be carried by legitimate and democratically elected representatives, thanks to the creation of a union of seasonal workers of Sosucam.

[1] The injured workers were taken to hospital in Yaoundé and the costs covered by Sosucam

[2] Castel: to the health of Africa – ReAct Transnational, February 2022 – https://www.projet-react.org/fr/elementor-10135/

It’s small world.  Marva Burnett, the president of ACORN Canada and ACORN International, visited several cities in Nigeria last year with her church group.  She met a young man named Edem Etido in Port Harcourt, a large city much farther southwest from Lagos, the mega-city, but also along the Gulf of Guinea, nearer to Cameroon.  I talked to Edem via Skype about his interest in organizing ACORN Nigeria, and how we could get him some training.  I promised to visit him when I was scheduled to be in Nigeria.  The pandemic postponed that visit three times with the latest now pushed back to the spring of 2021, but in the last week I’ve heard from Edem several times via Facebook and email.  Protests have broken out in Port Harcourt and throughout the country, triggered initially over police brutality suffered by young people, but now expanding to a host of other issues over corruption, the economy, and the inaction of government.

His message was simple and straightforward, as he wrote,

The youths in my country need international support for what we are advocating for at the moment. I guess you’ve heard or watched the protest that’s ongoing in Nigeria now?

The hashtag that’s trending on Twitter now #EndSars #EndPoliceBrutality is the ongoing protest by the youths here because, the (SARS) which means-Special Anti-Robbery Squad, have gone out from what their primary duties are, which is to protect lives and properties of the Nation and citizens.  All they do is intimidate, harass, and extort youths at gunpoint while also killing youths for no reason, because nobody is gonna query or prosecute them.

We’ve been on this for more than a week now and all our governments could do is just make verbal and audio promises which they have been doing way back since 2015 and we are fed up with fake promises, so we demand full action, and that’s why the protest is ongoing.

We just heard that they are going to send the military to intimidate and shoot at us for the peaceful protest. No country has said anything about this and it’s not fair. I don’t know how ACORN International could help to make this protest go round over there, so as to get the international attentions we need.

If I hadn’t heard of these protests already from Edem, and if you hadn’t heard of them yet, there was a front page picture that jumped later to a story in the Wall Street Journal, because the protests shut down the city of Lagos along with its airport and main thoroughfares.

How can we help?  There’s a petition that the young people hope to send to the United Nations that you can sign.  You can also make a donation to support the protests.  As the article points out, “More than 55% of Nigerians are underemployed or unemployed and youth unemployment is even higher, according to official statistics. More than 90% of Nigerians work in the informal sector….”  People in Nigeria are desperate for change, so anything we can do, small or large, helps make that possible.

In Douala, Cameroon, ACORN International members staged an action to push the electricity company Eneo to negotiate and solve issues of dangerous infrastructures and overcharging in bills. Members blocked the entrance to Eneo headquarters, using an empty chair to symbolize the removal of their interlocutor, and the communication interruptions.

After extensive research into nonprofit hospitals the Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, the Nonprofit Accountability Project has released our findings and recommendations in a paper, “Charity for Whom?“

Our research indicates that the non-profit tax exemption system enables hospitals to be non-profit in name only, thereby reaping the benefits of tax exemption without sharing these gains with low income families. We argue this is due to the vagueness of relevant laws and leniency of the IRS. 

This paper is the product of cooperation between Local 100 United Labor Unions, the Labor Neighbor Research & Training Center (LNRTC), and ACORN International, plus our tireless team of volunteers.

On August 22, 2020, ACORN chapters across the United Kingdom held a No Evictions! Day of Action.

From ACORN UK:

Hundreds of ACORN members took action in 17 towns & cities across England & Wales saying no to rent debt, eviction & homelessness during the pandemic.

Members held socially distanced actions outside of courts where eviction proceedings will be heard, visited the offices of landlords and letting agents to deliver ‘notices of eviction resistance’ to let them know that we won’t stand for immoral COVID evictions, and held outdoor Community Protection Training sessions! ACORN demands that the 1 month eviction ban extension announced last week is followed by serious legislation to protect renters from homelessness and rent debt in the fall out of COVID-19.

We need rent debt accrued as a result of COVID wiped and an immediate end to Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions.Over the last couple of months hundreds of people have attended Community Protection Training sessions meaning whenever evictions restart, ACORN members will be ready to resist them.

Watch the full video >>

Global social protection in times of global crisis

We low-income families are living in the popular areas of Douala, Toronto, Mumbai, Paris, Lima, Manchester, Tunis, New Orleans and Edinburg are victims of the health crisis. We lost our job, we lost much of our income. Yet we still have to pay our rent, our electricity bills and buy something to feed our families. As the lockdown comes to an end, we are tens of millions of people to find ourselves in rent debt in France, the UK, the United States or Canada. This is how we are reduced to misery and hunger.