Category: Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy

Hundreds of Somali workers hold protest march to city hall yesterday in Grand Island, NE

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 17th:   As of yesterday, Swift had not fired any Somali workers here.

Update:   If you are having trouble following all this Somali/meatpacker controversy on-going in Greeley and now Grand Island, see our new category.

And the beat goes on….   What is their beef?  It’s Ramadan, what else, and Somali workers are protesting because their employer, who else, Swift & Co., is not letting them pray in the middle of the shift.  From the Grand Island Independent:

A group of 500 Muslim workers from Grand Island’s JBS Swift & Co. plant staged a protest Monday afternoon.

Members of the B shift (3 to 11:30 p.m.) and some members of the morning A shift walked off the job after being denied time to pray during what they said is the holiest of times for them — Ramadan.

A group of protesting women said they were kicked by a supervisor when they attempted to pray at work.

Asha Abdi said she knelt to pray when the supervisor said, “You can’t pray here,” kicked her feet and told her to go home.

Another woman, Hawo Mohammed, said she told her production supervisor she needed to go to the bathroom. She attempted to pray quickly in the bathroom until the male supervisor followed her in and told her she was taking too long.

“The main point is freedom for religion,” said Ridwan Abbi, a second-shift production worker who gladly supported his peers.

Calling all doubters!  Tell me now that this isn’t a planned and orchestrated campaign.  Listen to this guy:

“The company said we aren’t going to give you any time to pray, but this is a free country,” said Ahmed Abdi, a spokesman for the largely Somalian group, who formerly worked at the plant. “We are Muslim and this country is about freedom.”

Notice he formerly worked at the plant and the woman who claims she was kicked has the same last name (wife, sister, maybe?).  These are most likely community organizers sent by someone to Grand Island, NE.   Just as I’m predicting the whole mess at the Swift plant in Greeley, CO is orchestrated.  This is to send a message to American businesses, accommodate Islam, or we will give you hell.  Bets on when CAIR arrives on the scene?

To the US State Department:  What the hell were you thinking when you gave 83,000 Somalis airfare to get here.   Or, for that matter, when you gave a tea party send-off to Somali illegal aliens in Malta recently.

And, to Swift & Co.,  I do feel sorry for you, but if you had stuck with American workers and paid them a decent wage (I’m willing to pay more for meat) then you wouldn’t be in this deep stuff now.

New readers, see this post about the stealth jihad and how Shariah is creeping into Minnesota and into America.  Religious accommodation is an early step.  We need only look at the UK, a country further along in the process, to know what is in store for us.

More from last spring on Somali problems in Nebraska here.

Sharia law comes to Britain

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’re seeing it in Greeley, Colorado, in Minnesota, and other places around America: The quiet jihad, that gradually introduces Sharia law and forces concessions from the society in which Muslims have chosen to live.  Now comes a report from Abul Taher in the Times of Britain,

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

Nobody in government made a decision to set up Sharia courts. Muslims figured out how to use British law to accomplish their aim.  There already exist parallel courts for domestic law under something called the Arbitration Act.

Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.

So the Muslims took advantage of the law to set up their own Sharia courts, which have been ruling on some cases for a year. They have dealt with divorce, inheritance and domestic violence. Here’s what has happened:

Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.

The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.

In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

Funny that Sharia’s valuing of women as less than men doesn’t seem to bother the politically correct class. In the contradiction between Islam and feminism, Islam wins.

The Muslims who have set up these courts said that if the Jewish courts are allowed to exist, so must the Sharia courts. The British have no defense against this claim, since they are so “fair” that they cannot discriminate between Jews who wish to practice their religious in private, posing no threat to the larger society, and Muslims who wish to impose their religion and their legal system on the entire country, many of whom have been quite open about their goal.

It doesn’t help that high officials have been supportive of instituting Sharia courts:

The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future “seems unavoidable” in Britain.

In July, the head of the judiciary, the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, further stoked controversy when he said that sharia could be used to settle marital and financial disputes.

There are some great comments from readers, including one from a Dutchman who says in his country fundamentalist Muslims are losing ground because the Dutch are fed up with them.

CAIR calls JBS Swift “uncooperative”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In this Denver Post story from Saturday we learn that CAIR and its handmaiden, the EEOC, have been trying for a long time to get Swift to cooperate with demands for religious accommodation in another of Swift’s plants but to no avail, so far.   And,  CAIR predicts a long haul in Greeley.   Hang in there Swift!    I can’t believe I am cheering for a meatpacker. 

A civil-rights group holds little hope that a week-old dispute between Muslim workers and their bosses at a Greeley slaughterhouse will end quickly, based on the company’s recent response in a similar standoff in Nebraska.

A mediation session between Brazilian-owned JBS Swift & Co. and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to discuss issues involving Muslim employees at its Grand Island, Neb., plant ended Wednesday without progress, CAIR officials said.

“They were completely uncooperative,” said Christina Abraham, director of civil rights at CAIR’s office in Chicago, which is handling both Swift disputes.

“Though we’re hopeful, the issue in Greeley may follow the same route and it could take years,” she said.

Notice how CAIR is labelled a civil-rights group by the Denver Post, what a joke.   This is the type of story that will continue to appear—bad meatpacking business screws poor Somalis who only want to pray.  I would have some respect for the Denver Post if they explored the issue of what the Somali workers are saying to the Arab press about the “Mexicans” in Greeley.  But they won’t.    Gates of Vienna tells us why:

News stories that pit one protected minority against another make the MSM very unhappy. Whether it’s Muslims and homosexuals, Eskimo seal hunters, or wife-beating Latinos, news items about conflicts between officially recognized grievance groups give the mainstream news services indigestion. There’s no way that they can shoehorn these stories into the dominant narrative — evil white heterosexual racist men against minorities, gays, and women — so they tend to leave them out.

Since our readership has boomed over the last week, new readers may want to use our search function for the word “Somalis” to begin to get up to speed on the community clashes with this huge immigrant group across America.    For a starting place on the Greeley/Swift/Somali story go here.

Somalis in Greeley on a “long walk to justice”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I admit I am having trouble keeping up with the action and rhetoric in Greeley, CO where over 100 (mostly Somali) workers were fired from the Brazilian-owned Swift & Co meatpacking plant after they walked off the production line a week ago Friday.

Now lawyers for the Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, say they will fight for each job.   Joining in the meeting with fired workers yesterday was State Representative, Jim Riesberg D-Greeley, who got in on the “we are welcoming” act.  We are fighting for you, he said,  and in the meantime sign up for your taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.  From the Greeley Tribune:

“We need to spend a lot of time negotiating with Swift so you can have your jobs back,” said Riesberg, who fielded questions from frustrated former employees.

Riesberg assured the Somalis that they are welcome in Greeley.

Without guarantee that they will get their jobs back, people at the meeting were urged to register for unemployment and file for workman’s compensation.

Programs such as the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and the Colorado State Refugee Services Program are in place to help the Somalis survive this transition, the workers were told.

Amber Tafoya with the coalition said she has spoken with employees that were laid off [fired] and believes JBS Swift was in error.

“We will be with you on your long walk to justice,” Tafoya said. “I’m confident that you as a community have the solution to your problems.”

To learn about what the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition is go here.

These government supported Immigrant Rights Coalitions must be active in every state.  We saw them making waves in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and the Illinois “Rights” Coalition was involved in Obama’s little money circle for community organizing that involved Arab groups, the Woods Fund, and William Ayers.

I wonder if there could be a taxpayer supported group called “Regular old American Rights Coalition.”

Somalis fired by Swift blame Hispanics and say they were harrassed

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 15th:  CAIR calls Swift “uncooperative”

More on September 14th:  Patrick Cleburne at VDARE helps fill in more details.   As does the Baron here at Gates of Vienna.

Update September 13th:  News from a Somali publication here.

Now here comes yet another tale about the Greeley, CO meatpacker saga, this time published in The National from Abu Dhabi. (Hat tip:  Blulitespecial) Two of the most vocal Somalis fired by Swift this week got to tell a story in a friendly publication sure to fire up a sympathetic audience—-their Muslim brothers and sisters.   They say, the Hispanics are the problem and someone fondled  Muslim women’s breasts—now here we go.

First we have Somali Graen Isse.  I mentioned him here the other day.  He is in the news clip.

“I have been working in this country since I was 16,” says Graen Isse, who was informed this week that his job at the JBS Swift & Co. plant in Greeley, Colorado, had been terminated. “I have never faced anything like this.”

He apparently told The National reporter it’s the Mexicans’ fault.

Simmering tensions between Hispanic immigrants, mainly from Mexico, and Muslim factory workers, most of them Somalis, erupted during Islam’s holy month when the Muslim employees asked management to shift the break time on the afternoon shift to sunset.

And, he also says he isn’t leaving Greeley.

“I am staying in Greeley,” said Isse, who previously worked as a paralegal. “But I wouldn’t want to try a job with Swift again.”

Then we have Farhia Abdi of the fondled breasts.   She must be one of the three women mentioned in earlier reports who left work and went without permission to the locker room.  I also wonder if she is the woman in many of the photographs, the one who in an earlier news clip is distracted because her cell phone rings.  (CAIR calling?)

Farhia Abdi, who like Isse lost her job, said she and other women had their breasts fondled as they prayed in the plant’s locker rooms. She claimed male employees had been kicked while they knelt in prayer.

“It is part of our religion that you can’t talk or move while you pray,” said Abdi, who worked in Quality Assurance in her three months on the job with Swift.

Like Isse, Abdi had worked in other US firms, including major retailers like Macey’s and Target Superstores. “I always told my employers, ‘I am Muslim and I pray five times a day.’ No one ever had a problem with that, and I never even had to ask permission.”

It’s those bad Hispanics again.  What? No one has told all these immigrants that diversity is beautiful and multiculturalism rules in America!

Abdi and Isse claimed their attackers were mainly Mexican immigrants and described the two ethnic groups as battling over scarce jobs at the plant.

“This is mainly down to misunderstanding,” said Isse. “First we had an agreement and they told us we can have a break at 7.30. Then the Mexicans got together and said we don’t want a break at that time.”

Here is what I wonder, if Isse had been a paralegal and Abdi had good jobs where no one bugged her about her religion at Macy’s and Target, why are they both in Greeley at a meatpacking plant which by all accounts is one of the toughest places in America to work?   Could they be members of that most noble profession, community organizers?

Somali refugee numbers in the US (not including all the children in 25 years).