{"id":409055,"date":"2010-03-09T13:33:38","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T18:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12174"},"modified":"2010-03-12T10:27:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:27:02","slug":"womens-day-march-in-san-antonio-says-ya-basta-to-abusive-treatment-of-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/409055","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Day march in San Antonio says ‘Ya Basta’ to abusive treatment of workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"san_antonio_womens_rally.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

By Chris Kutalik, Labor Notes<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

Much like its storied sibling, International Labor Day (May 1), International Women’s Day<\/a> often gets short shrift in the United States, its place of birth.<\/p>\n

But for 20 straight years women’s groups and allies in San Antonio,
\nTexas have been raising the profile of Women’s Day — and a little
\nhell — by taking to the streets. The march has grown steadily over the
\nyears, and close to 2,000 marched this Saturday, making it the largest
\nand arguably the rowdiest such event in the country.<\/p>\n

The varied messages of the annual event reflect the broad coalition
\nof groups that come together to plan it over several months of weekly women-only meetings<\/a>. Women from the worker-run seamstress collective Fuerza Unida<\/a> rub shoulders with younger Chicana feminists from the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center<\/a>
\nand women from a local university’s social work association and the
\nMartinez Street Women’s Center. Banners bearing the Virgin of
\nGuadalupe mix with signs showing old-time Latina labor leader Emma Tenayuca<\/a>
\nand those bearing slogans like “End NAFTA: Stop the Femicide in Juarez”
\n(a reference to the many violent deaths stemming from the drug trade in
\nthat border city).<\/p>\n

Starting this year in front of downtown San Antonio’s massive
\n1,000-room Grand Hyatt, this wide-ranging group placed the fight for
\nwomen in the workplace center stage. For over a year now, a tight
\nrank-and-file UNITE HERE-affiliated organizing committee has been
\nplugging away at rallies, worker-community delegations, creative street
\nactions, neighborhood outreach, and member-to-member organizing in an
\neffort to get the hotel to back down from its aggressively anti-union
\ncampaign locally — and provide a neutral process for the workers to
\nchoose a union. <\/p>\n

Many of the committee’s stalwarts are women workers in the hotel’s
\nhousekeeping and laundry departments. And many of them are just plain
\ntired and angry about their grinding workload. <\/p>\n

Iola Scott, a Grand Hyatt laundry worker and Katrina survivor,
\naddressed the cheering crowd in front of the hotel: “Sometimes I work
\nthe [laundry] chute, pulling many pounds of filthy, contaminated
\nlinens, moving them and sorting them. The work is hard and heavy. I
\nhave pain when I’m working and I have pain when I’m home…and I have
\nthe medicine cabinet to prove it.<\/p>\n

“I’m proud of myself and my co-workers, because we are not just
\nvictims,” said Scott, referring to the committee’s linking its local
\nfight to national efforts around hotel job injuries<\/a> and lifting standards in the industry<\/a>. “We are not afraid to fight back,” she said. “We are leaders in a
\ncampaign across the country to force companies like Hyatt to stop
\nabusing and hurting women. And we invite all women to join in this
\nstruggle, because our fight is a fight for all women.”<\/p>\n

Chants of “Hyatt, Hyatt, What do you say? Stop abusing your workers
\ntoday” echoed back from the towering hotel as the three-block-long
\nmarch swung out into the wide street in front of it. Hotel workers
\nwaved from upstairs windows and cars and buses honked their horns in
\nsupport as the march moved through downtown to Plaza del Zacate, a
\nhistoric meeting spot in Milam Park for the city’s various protest
\nmovements.<\/p>\n

Chris Kutalik is a Labor Notes Policy Committee member who is
\nhelping organize UNITE HERE’s community unionism project in San
\nAntonio. He can be reached at kutalik@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/i>
<\/i><\/p>\n

(Photo by Chris Kutalik)<\/i><\/font>
<\/i><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chris Kutalik, Labor Notes Much like its storied sibling, International Labor Day (May 1), International Women’s Day often gets short shrift in the United States, its place of birth. But for 20 straight years women’s groups and allies in San Antonio, Texas have been raising the profile of Women’s Day — and a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}