Tyson and the Beauty of Vertical Integration

Tyson employess 114,000 around the world

Tyson has more than 300 facilities and offices world wide

There are 65 poultry processing plants in Arkansas

Tyson also controls close to half of the chicken production in Mexico

Arkansas is the number two chicken producing state in the nation

Arkansas is third in turkey production
________

Live kill is when fully conscious birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail

Live hang workers are doing one of the most dangerous jobs on the factory floor

This step in the process is performed in near-total darkness in order to quiet the birds

About 200 chickens per minute are moving into the live hang room

As workers finally hoist the birds onto the hooks the chickens urinate and defecate onto the workers below

Live kill workers experience large-scale violence that has been proven to lead to serious psychological trauma for the worker

The large scale violence of slaughtering also affects the collective consciousness of communities located around processing plants.

Communities surrounding slaughterhouses consistently have higher rates of violent crime than other demographically similar counties.

Six of the top twenty manufacturing employers in the northwest region of Arkansas are poultry plants

Within a 30 mile radius of the Workers’ Center in Springdale, Arkansas there are 10 poultry processing and hatchery plants
_______

Poultry workers hourly earnings remain the lowest in the entire food industry

One in twelve Arkansans earns a living in the poultry industry

Arkansas has 1 in 4 children living in poverty

Arkansas women earn on average $19,100.00 per year

This is the lowest median earning for women in the nation

Women in Arkansas receive wages that are twenty-five percent below their male counterparts earnings

Nationally immigrant populations in poverty are at the seventeenth percentile

In Arkansas 26% of immigrants live below the poverty line

Advocates for women who have experienced violence in the home connect domestic violence and poverty issues

With the inequality in women’s earnings, and its connection to violence, it is therefore not surprising that the state of Arkansas is number three in the nation in murder by men of women
______

The U.S. government provides Tyson and its three closest competitors with feedstock subsidies that total 1.25 billion dollars a year.

In Arkansas processing plants are no longer required to pay state sales tax for the “cost of materials used in the manufacturing, processing or production of poultry product."

In 2009 Arkansas will cut 107 million dollars from the budget for state services which include Medicaid and funding for colleges.

Arkansas public libraries are required to pay sales tax on books
_____

Tyson's market research showed that consumers wanted to buy products from a company with christian values

Tyson has 128 chaplains in their plants

Tyson published a prayer book for workers and consumers

The Tyson family built a subdivision and golf course and named it The Blessings.

Workers, Poverty and Immigration

Arkansas is an environment plagued by economic violence. Despite the presence of five companies that generate the highest amount of revenue for corporations headquartered in the United States, Arkansas struggles to keep its working families above the poverty line. Nationally immigrant populations in poverty are at the seventeenth percentile. In the Northwest corner of our state where both Tyson and Wal-Mart are headquartered 26% of immigrants live below the poverty line (Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, 2006). Nationally 17 % of immigrants live below the poverty line.

In the state of Arkansas 1 in 4 children live in poverty. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (2006) the state with the lowest ranking economy for women is Arkansas. On average Arkansas women only earn $19,100.00 per year. Hispanic women in Arkansas earn only $17,700.00 per year. These are the lowest median earnings in the nation (Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2000).

The need for a safe & justice workplace that pays a living wage has outcomes that are unique for women. A women living in poverty i.e. working a low wage job or who is underemployed is more likely to experience violence in the home (Davies, 2002). Domestic violence makes it difficult for women to achieve financial stability as well as poverty being a barrier to dealing with the abuse at home (Davies, 2002) With the inequality in women’s earnings, and its connection to violence, it is therefore not surprising that the state of Arkansas is number three in the nation in murder by men of women (Arkansas Commission on Child Abuse, 2000).

In Rogers and Springdale police have undertakin training in “immigration enforcement” more widely known as 287-G. This program exists for the purpose of identifying and detaining undocumented workers. 287-G actually deputizes the police force to act as immigration officers. This new program has intensified the culture of fear among Latino residents.

Arkansas state policy serves to protect the interests of the business owners at the expense of the worker. The Arkansas State Department of Labor can only investigate unpaid wage claims that are less than $1,000. The federal Department of Labor will only investigate wage claims when a company makes more than $500,000 annually. This has left a large number of workers who have no place to file a claim. Another issue for workers are hot payroll checks. A lot of payroll checks are written on a closed or overdrawn bank account. There is little to assist these workers because Arkansas state law reads in such a way to allow county prosecutors to choose to not prosecute hot payroll checks.

September 11ths and the Cost of War in Arkansas

September 11, 1919 - U.S. troops landed in Honduras on this day to protect American banana interests.

September 11, 1922 - At this time the British mandate of Palestine began

September 11, 1941 - Ground broken for the construction of The Pentagon.

September 11, 1942 - One of the first internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II opened on this day in Topaz, Utah.

September 11, 1971 - On this day Attica prison in New York was in the midst of the most historic prison uprising in U.S. history.

September 11, 1973 - The democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, died on this day as the Chilean military led a coup against his government and installed the dictator, Augusto Pinochet.

September 11, 1965 - The first cavalry division arrived in Vietnam on this day, marking an escalation in the long, brutal, U.S. war against Southeast Asia

September 11, 1977 in South Africa Steve Biko founder of the black consciousness movement was being beaten in the back of a van by apartheid forces. He died in the early morning hours of Sept. 12, 1977.

September 11, 1990 - U.S. President George H. W. Bush delivers a nationally televised speech in which he threatens the use of force to remove Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait, New world order is mentioned in his speech for the first time.

September 11, 2001 2,974 people are killed in the world trade center attacks.

September 11, 2001 at 4:30 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq

September 11, 2001 was the day the government made the first of 935 false statements about the Iraq war.

September 12, 2001 Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets



Photo taken from Warfour

$21,000 per U.S. household has been spent on the Iraq war so far

$103.5 million is the amount Fayetteville, Arkansas tax payers have paid for the Iraq War

$130.5 million could have helped Fayetteville provide:

68,438 People with Health Care or

86,479 Homes with Renewable Electricity or

2,027 Music and Arts Teachers or

17,476 Head Start Places for Children

In the state of Arkansas 1 in 4 children live in poverty.



Survey conducted by the University of Arkansas

Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for.

$474 billion has been spent as of 12/07

$3 trillion dollars is the estimated total cost of the war in Iraq

80 Arkansans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan

145 servicemen have died of self inflicted wounds since the beginning of the Iraq war.

3992 U.S. Military service people have been killed in the war

29, 203 Number of U.S. troops wounded in combat since the war began

155,000 Number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq

946,000 to 1,120,000 violent deaths due to the Iraq War death

3.4 Internally displaced and Iraqi refugees

5 million Iraqi children are orphans

95 percent of the urban and 75 percent of the rural populations in Iraq had access to safe water before the first Gulf War.

30 percent of Iraqis lack clean drinking water in 2003

5,000 people in northern Iraq have cholera from unclean drinking water

April 5, 2005, the State Department had reallocated funding for water to other priorities such as security

April 13, 2005 A slime-mold beetle was named in homage to Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney. (Agathidium Rumsfeldi, Agathidium Bushi, Agathidium Cheneyi)

This is an introduction to a tour of Springdale, Arkansas.(2008)

I know most of you if not all of you have worked in Latin America and are familiar with the use of landscape—especially in indigenous movements—as a way to create community identity and then use this community identity to empower people to work for change.

In southern Mexico where you fund micro credit initiatives and lead experiential learning tours the landscape is beautiful and the sacredness of it is evident. Mayan leader Subcomandante Marcos illustrates this point perfectly when he says "patient companion was the night. Lover and accomplice the mountain." The EZLN army moved through the darkness and they were protected by the mountain. The landscape was their cohort. The sacredness or potential for powerful rebellion against injustice was evident in the beauty of the mountains and its ability to protect them.
I am saying all of this because today you are not going to see a beautiful landscape. Today you will see plain brick buildings, sheet metal plants and run down ranch houses. I am asking you to remember that the sacred to be found in the work here is not going to be in the landscape. The landscape here is not pretty. It is ugly.

I struggled to figure out a way to show a place that you could connect with. It's so hard because how does a soul connect to a suburban landscape? How can I prove that the community is connected to this place in a deep way despite a lack of the visible evidence that would speak to this truth?

To show you the beauty here you have to know the stories of the economic refugees aka the workers in Northwest Arkansas. Many workers have been forced—by trade agreements and by the policies of corporations that are headquartered here—to leave their homes just to sustain themselves and their families. To quote another indigenous leader this time from Oklahoma N Scott Mamaday "places are important, because they’ve been made sacred by sacrifice, by the investment of blood and experience and story. In the telling of our stories we are speaking into being the sacred” So today you will hear the about the struggles of workers you will hear their stories. Hopefully you will connect with the work we are doing at the Workers' Center and I can make it real to you.

Racism in Arkansas

The number of hate groups in the U.S. increased 48% since 2000.

In Arkansas There are 18 active hate groups

6 of these hate groups identify themselves as Christian organizations

In 2007 there were 8 documented hate group/extrimest events in the state of Arkansas.
-The Faith and Freedom Conference,
-the National Klan Congress,
-the Klan winter conference and the
-Oktoberfest bonfire. (Oktoberfest is particularly scary because of its genocidal connotations.)

Seven states in the US have no hate crime law

Arkansas is one of them

In 2006 the FBI recorded 113 hate crimes in Arkansas

I got most of this information from The Southern Poverty Law Center and from the FBI and more places I didn't think to keep track of.