Submitted on Mon, 11/14/2005 - 12:35am
Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.
Article by David Bacon
As evening fell on November 5, Gilberto Soto received a call on his cell phone at his mother’s home in a working-class neighborhood of Usulutan, El Salvador. Unable to understand the caller, Soto stepped out of the door to get better reception. In the street outside three men lay in wait. According to witnesses, they ran up to Soto and shot him in the back and then fled in a car and bicycle as he lay bleeding on the pavement. Soto was taken to a local clinic where he died shortly afterwards.
Soto’s death was no ordinary assassination. He’d left his home in 1975 and was later a supporter in exile of the FMLN, El Salvador’s left-wing movement that carried out an armed guerrilla war during the 1980s. But this was not the likely reason why three thugs pumped bullets into him as he stood on his mother’s doorstep. It is much more likely that his murder was connected to a new international campaign to organize trucking workers—from the docks of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Soto had been working, to those of Central America, where he met his end.
Submitted on Mon, 11/14/2005 - 12:28am
In front of the violence of a State which against the poverty sends us only a pile cops;
In front of a State which for three decades has promised a Marshall plan to us, for the zones of poverty conveniently called suburbs;
In front of the violence of a State obeying only the mere desires of MEDEF [Employer's association], eager to cut down a little more each day, our last social rights;
In front of a State only responsible for the tensions via its Minister of Interior Department who managed the conflicts of the post offices [Bordeaux July of 2005] and the SNCM [marine transport towards Corsica, Marseilles October of 2005] by its GIGN [ Intervention Group of the National Gendarmerie] which does not stop swiping thousands of illegal immigrants;
The "republican start" of the government is a takeover with military accents and bitterness of war of Algeria, against us, workers, precarious, unemployed and "young people".
The CNT denounces the decree of application of the curfew answering by no means, once again, at the requests of social justice of the population.
With the exploiteurs, never!
With exploited, always!
CNT, Le Bureau Régional Région Parisienne, 8-XI-2005.
