CANTON, Miss. – Hayat Mohamed has a cause.
“We are different from other generations,” says the
19-year-old English major at nearby Tougaloo College. “We have such an
individualistic ideal, how we see things. We have to get away from that and see
other people’s problems. … If we took
our eyes off that narrow path and look at the person next to us, we could
unify.”
Her cause? Doing everything she can to get the 5,000-plus
workers at the Nissan plant in Canton membership cards with the United Auto
Workers. “To be able to voice their opinions and their needs without being
worried they are going to get fired. … (to) have the grounds to talk to someone
about safety issues, health care benefits, temp workers, what happens to them
if they get injured.”
I’m sitting across the table from Mohamed and fellow
Tougaloo student Kimar Cain at the UAW office on Nissan Parkway, and I’m
remembering my student days back in the ‘60s, protesting for civil rights and
against the Vietnam War. Young people need a cause. They’ve got the energy, the
courage, the idealism that tells them they can make a difference.
(To the right is Kimar Cain)
And they can.
Young people are a key reason things are happening on the UAW-Nissan
front. The call from workers and community supporters for a fair union election
at the Canton plant is getting louder.
The 150-plus members of the Mississippi Student Justice
Alliance from Tougaloo and Jackson State University in Jackson, joined by
supporters from other colleges in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, are taking
the issue into neighborhoods, car dealerships, auto shows, on-campus rallies,
the Internet and YouTube.
They are part of a larger campaign that has seen Nissan-Canton
workers speak to audiences in Brazil, Japan and South Africa as well as in U.S.
cities such as Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Detroit. Brazilian labor leaders
and students have come to Canton to show their support and study what veteran
observers see as potentially the most important labor campaign in decades.
“We have a lot of talent on this team,” says Cain, a 23-year-old
senior at Tougaloo majoring in history and African-American Studies. “From
writers to videographers to photographers. Everything visual and that can be
heard, we have those things, and we have the ability to get it out, and get it
out quickly and let it be seen so people can really dig into what we are saying,
and they’re like … `How can I get involved?’ ”
I can’t help but reminisce. What was missing back in my day
was a real alliance with working-class people. Students were out there
protesting in the 1960s, but few blue-collar workers joined them. Most were
even hostile.
(Jeffrey Moore)
This cause is dramatically different. Students are on the frontlines
side-by-side with workers, and the workers appreciate it. “I am very proud” of
the students, says Jeffrey Moore, 35, an 11-year veteran Nissan employee. “They
are doing something out of their time. You’ll never get a lot of play on that
out of the media. They are doing a lot of hard work for us, trying to make this
thing go down.”
They’re getting Nissan’s attention, too.
After a history of mixed relations with local political
leaders who’ve been prohibited from annexing the plant and who’ve had little
input into its expansion plans, Nissan’s bosses “all of a sudden are pillars of
the community,” Moore says.
In recent months, Nissan announced a $500,000 education
grant to Canton schools and a $100,000 gift to the Medgar and Myrlie Evers
Institute, hosted a 10-year anniversary free festival featuring the R&B
group Kool & the Gang, promised a pay raise to workers (after a seven-year
hiatus since the last pay raise), and a new program to help temporary workers
transition into fulltime workers.
Nissan’s $100,000 gift to the Evers Institute is a key
reason, sources believe, why Hollywood celebrity Danny Glover, a vocal and
active supporter of unionization at the Canton plant, did not speak at the annual
Medgar Evers dinner last month even though he had been a speaker in the past
and was expected to speak again this year.
(To the right is Anthony Wayne Walker)
“The barbarians are at the gates,” says Anthony Wayne
Walker, 39, a metal finisher at Nissan’s Canton plant and union supporter. “You
got to give them something to eat. It is one thing the corporation doesn’t
like. It is bad publicity. That equates to sales, to dollar signs, so you
counteract everything the union is doing. Throw ‘em a bone, and it looks good
on TV. All of a sudden you come out with a checkbook.”
Of course, leading the applause for Nissan are Mississippi
Gov. Phil Bryant and the state’s other top pols, despite a recent report
showing the state’s record $1.3 billion investment in Nissan has failed to reap
the promised rewards and resulted in a $290,000 subsidy for each Nissan-Canton
job.
Nissan worker Walker says he knows why, and a question to
Gov. Bryant would explain it to the rest of us: “Who are you playing golf with?”
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