PASCA, UWA of Maryland, and others Found "HumanRightsBaseball.Org"
Submitted on Mon, 09/18/2006 - 5:08pm
Report from the founding of HumanRightsBaseball.Org at the offices of the United Workers Association in Baltimore, MD by members of the Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance – Bret Grote Xpending, Clark Clagett X355485, and Kenneth Miller X314812
No matter what they call it.
No matter where they hide it.
When human rights are violated
for profit, it’s a sweatshop.
In the last weekend in August low-wage workers, students, human rights organizers, anti-sweatshop agitators and baseball fans from Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Kansas met for the founding of HumanRightsBaseball.org. The purpose of the alliance was to develop an organizational structure that would coordinate and amplify the work of local organizations utilizing the terrain of professional baseball in the United States as a front in the ceaseless battle for dignity, justice, and universal human rights. This sense of purpose energized the weekend with an uncommon and strong spirit of solidarity that found powerful expression in the caliber and content of the sessions.
The United Workers Association, a Human Rights organization led by Maryland’s low-wage workers and members of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, hosted the founding meeting. Evolving from UWA’s relationship with the Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop Community Alliance (PASCA), HumanRightsBaseball.Org comes at the end of a summer of solidarity between the two organizations. On June 24 PASCA members traveled to Baltimore for a Freedom from Poverty Vigil and March, and on July 11th the UWA lent a vocal presence to PASCA’s Anti-Sweatshop Carnival at the MLB All-Star game in Pittsburgh.
With the founding of HumanRightsBaseball.org both organizations intend to sustain and expand upon a relationship that dates back to 2003, when both independently coined the term “SweatFree Baseball” to refer to ongoing local organizing efforts. Other organizations that expressed interest in working with the alliance but were unable to attend the founding meeting include the Upstate General Membership Branch of the IWW, the Fort Wayne Workers Project, Sweatfree Communities, and the Los Angeles Garment Workers Center.
The core values of the alliance draw upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to establish a conscious and important distinction between moral, values-based organizing models and transactional models that base their appeal on narrow claims of material self-interest. To this end HumanRightsBaseball.org will act as a coordinating committee limiting its work to sharing information and ideas between human rights organizations to improve strategic analysis; developing leaders within participating organizations; framing professional baseball in the United States as a ‘public utility’ that needs to be regulated in exchange for the public benefits it receives; challenging sweatshop practices and other human rights abuses of professional baseball teams in the United States by means of appealing to the values represented by the institution of baseball; fostering solidarity and cooperation between human rights organizations and struggles on a global level; amplifying local actions and campaigns and assisting local organizations in networking with other human rights organizations.
This organizational body will take action in accord with resolutions embodied in the soon-to-be adopted Statement on International Solidarity drafted during the founding meeting. Several crucial insights noticeable for their absence in traditional models of labor organizing find voice in the Statement, including but not limited to: recognition that “poverty in American cities and towns does not exist apart from the rest of the world’s poverty,” and that local struggles fought for ethical reasons of justice and dignity are necessarily global in scope; an explicit admission “that traditional labor forces have historically hindered and often undermined organizing efforts of workers outside of the United States, placing nationalism above international solidarity,” along with a commitment to challenge such and thereby “influence traditional labor practices” to struggle for universal application and implementation of human rights standards; that solidarity is not a passive belief but rather “an act of sacrifice to advance human rights values for all,” encouraging and supporting risk-taking in order to further the struggle; and calling attention to extreme North-South inequality by “directing the privileges and proximity to power of those based in the United States and other wealthy nations in ways that directly confront global power structures,” including an expectation “that U.S.-based organizations materially support the organizing efforts of their labor and human rights allies globally.” The last point is to be addressed through “establishing and supporting systems (and engaging in practices) that distribute resources to global organizing efforts in equitable, democratic, non-paternalistic, transparent and effective ways.”
Alliance founders anticipate extending invitations to constructively and creatively integrate their efforts with the IWW and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). The IWW’s rock solid One-Big-Union internationalist outlook dovetails precisely with the anti-sweatshop movement’s challenge of tackling a global apparel union organizing drive. The student role and bargaining experience of USAS in winning sweatfree policy victories is another crucial component of the movement, and it will not be lost on anyone that the IWW is the only union that is actually prepared to offer union membership to students. It was in this spirit that Solidarity Greetings were formally sent to the 2006 General Assembly from the HumanRightsBaseball.org founding meeting in Baltimore and the “From Cooperstown to Dhaka” Voluntary Assessment Stamp issued by the Upstate General Membership Branch of the IWW was presented and discussed. The work of the International Solidarity Committee of the IWW is seen as another key thread in the movement’s fabric.
The International Solidarity discussion largely focused on the National Garment Workers Federation of Bangladesh. The NGWF has substantial worker membership and operates in areas of the world affected by Multi Fiber Expiration. Challenging and hopeful questions were raised over the necessity of attending a meeting with NGWF in Central America in the coming months. Participants in the alliance recognize new potential for Industrial Organizing to take place when the NGWF model informs a plan for a REGIONAL organizing in Central America. Such a coordinated effort has the potential to begin a process of verifying wages reported by companies bidding on apparel contracts in governmental jurisdictions or applying for collegiate and/or baseball licensing agreements requiring wage disclosure.
While traditional union models have had no answer for the flexibility and insecurity of a temporary labor market, whether in the global apparel industry or amongst day labor at inner city stadiums, the United Workers Association’s Human Rights model has proven successful in organizing workers around an expansive vision of justice that speaks to the shared experiences of poor workers in today’s global economy. This model has allowed the UWA to build the substantial community support necessary for workers to win, and organizers from Pittsburgh and elsewhere left Baltimore with every intention of bringing those lessons home.
With this framework the alliance will let it be known that baseball—with its roots so deeply entrenched in the mythology of Americana—is a legitimate and vital terrain in the struggle against poverty and oppression. While Major League Baseball and teams therein currently operate as a privatized and unregulated utility, HumanRightsBaseball.org members are crying bloody murder and demanding that MLB be treated as a public utility subjected to regulation that ensures that the values and the high standards for human rights of host cities be upheld by the teams that are granted the privilege of doing business there.
Furthermore the alliance demands that all institutions—sporting, governmental, or otherwise—enforce the high standards of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the law of the land and the planet. Today MLB operates as a criminal cartel, like virtually all institutions of the powerful, mythology aside, but by reclaiming the values of fair play, teamwork and cooperation, kinship, community, collective struggle, and equality HumanRightsBaseball.org will act as a vehicle for those dedicated to reclaiming the collective, shared values of our society that have been unceremoniously hijacked in the crass pursuit of personal profit accrued at the expense of human dignity, honesty, and justice.