[act-ma] 11/4 [Tonight!] The Trouble with the Coal You Use - Union Leader Jose Brito (7:00 p.m. @ e5)

[Suren Moodliar]

HEAR FROM AND DIALOGUE WITH A LEADER OF ONE OF THE  TWO LARGEST
COLOMBIAN COAL MINER'S UNIONS

Presentation with Translation, Refreshments, Discussion

7:00 pm Thursday November 4, 2010
Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave., 5th floor, Chinatown
(a few blocks from the Orange Line Chinatown stop
or the Green Line Boylston stop)
(try to arrive by 6:45 so that we can begin on time)

Jose Brito--former Sintracarbon leader, member of the International
Federation of Chemical, Eneergy, Mine and General
                  Workers' Unions and the Andean Labor Institute

Jose Brito formerly worked at and represented workers at the Cerrijon
mine, and Raul Sosa continues to represent workers at the Drummond
mine.  Raul is in the U.S., but is not able to particfipate in the
Massachusetts portion of this speaking tour.  The program, however,
will include information about the Drummond mine and workers.  The
thousands of workers in these two unions and the two giant surface
strip-nmines that they work, the Drummond and Cerrejon mines, produce
90% of Colombian coal and 90% of Colombian coal exports.  The Mass.
Salem and Somerset electrical generating plants geet much of their
coal from these two mines, as do many other generating stations in the
U.S.

Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the
hemisphere, and the country with the highest levels of official and
paramilitary violence, including forced displacemenet, killings of
journalists, trade unionists and human rights activists.  During most
of the period of this high level of U.S. military aid, Colombia had
the highest per-capita level of unon leader assassinatons in the
world, with several thousand assassinated, including several leaders
from the Drummond mine.

A U.S. network supports these unions and a number of villages and
towns surrounding these two mines.  The surrounding communities have
been severely damaged in every imaginable way by these mines.  A
number of folks from Eastern Massachusetts are involved in this
network.

Sponsored by:  Massachusetts Global Action, the MLK Bolivarian Circle
of Boston, Alliance for Democracy