Category: Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy

Greeley, CO Round 2 in the Ramadan battle? What is this all about?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I directed readers to this excellent and extremely informative article in the Greeley Tribune that basically suggests a new round of protests is likely at meatpacking plants as the Muslim Ramadan holiday approaches.   Read my post yesterday and be sure to go back and read the Greeley Tribune as well. 

Since the ruckus began first in Shelbyville, TN with the decision by Tyson’s Food to give up the Labor Day holiday in exchange for Eid-al Fitr, the last day of Ramadan, and through the demonstrations in Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE it wasn’t so clear to me what this was all about other than a spontaneous demand by mostly Somali “refugees”  for religious accommodation in the workplace.   However, in the last year we have learned a lot and we now know this is much bigger then a few spontaneous demonstrations.  There is nothing spontaneous about this—protests are being orchestrated.

So I don’t get too long, I’ll tell you what is happening in bullet format.

* Progressives (radical leftwing community organizers) are using the Alinsky model of community organizing.  We call it community destabilization and we have a whole category on the topic, here.   The gist of what they are doing is using angry poor immigrants to create chaos to bring about “change.”     And, “change” means socialism and ultimately a world without borders, without sovereign countries.

* The Progressives, including Obama’s friends at the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and their helpers at CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) have “organized” Somalis in certain cities in the US and trained them to disrupt the workplace by demanding religious accommodation.  I have noted that Somali “community” centers are springing up and Somali “community” organizers are arriving in meatpacking company towns.   The most recent one I mentioned was Ft. Morgan, CO where Somalis are already agitating through their new “organizer” that they don’t have any supervisory positions at the Cargill plant there (did you notice this issue is also being raised in the Greeley Tribune story?).  In addition to special treatment for prayer times, mark my words, this supervisory promotion issue will be popping up everywhere this year.

* You might say the Progressives, the socialists, are using the Somalis, but the Somalis are also using the Progressives.   Baron Bodissey writing last year at Gates of Vienna blog says this is all about probing western countries to see how much Shariah law we will tolerate.   Always on Watch reminds us what the Eid-al Fitr holiday is all about—it’s about conquering people (well, infidels!), about creating a worldwide caliphate.

So as the battles begin later this summer, keep what I have said in mind.  It is planned, it is organized, it is a strategy to change America.   The only thing that makes no sense to me is, do the Progressives think they can control the Islamic fundamentalists in the end?    If they do, they are miscalculating very badly.

*To new readers:    

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.

Grand Island Swift plant expects more problems when Ramadan begins in August

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Don’t you just love these stories about how diversity is strength? 

Here is an update from Grand Island, NE of the story we created a whole category for last fall.  Big meatpackers, like Swift & Co. are apparently still having on-going conflicts between immigrant workers—workers they employ so they can keep wages low.

Last September, culture and religion came to the forefront at the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant.

About 500 Swift workers, all Muslim and most Somali, walked off the job and marched a mile to Grand Island City Hall to protest for religious freedom. They wanted prayer time during the holy month of Ramadan.

The plant’s attempt to accommodate the requests led to counterprotests staged by Caucasians, Hispanics, Vietnamese and African-Americans.

Six months later, despite efforts to understand better the work force and its cultures, Swift and union officials believe the turmoil is far from over.

Established Hispanic workers are angry at the newer immigrants.

Stephanie Riak Akeui, a Grand Island-based consultant on Sudanese and humanitarian issues, said a growing number of workers from southern Sudan have approached her about alleged discrimination at the Swift plant.

The acts come not from Swift administration but rather from other immigrant workers.

“The complaints range from verbal abuse to physical taunts and allegations,” Riak Akeui said.

Riak Akeui said the stress and tension seem to be coming from the more established immigrant populations, such as Latino workers, against the newest immigrants.

It was stress seen during the counterprotests last September as Hispanic workers complained of concessions being made for Somali workers who hadn’t been at the plant as long as more established immigrant workers.

Muslim demands cause Christian Africans to get a bad rap too.

There also seem to be misunderstandings about the differences in two of the newest immigrant populations — the Sudanese and Somali workers, who collectively comprise 16 percent of the Swift work force.

Although both come from Africa, the Sudanese population is largely Christian while the Somalis are predominately Muslim.

Riak Akeui said immigrant workers frustrated with requests made by Muslim staff often show that frustration to all African workers, many of whom are not Muslim.

Readers, it looks like we will be seeing you back here in August for a new round of stealth jihad demands by Somali Muslim workers.

“As far as Ramadan and break time, I’ll be honest, we don’t have a clear-cut plan yet,” Hoppes (Dan Hoppes, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local No. 22) said.

“In order to do what they really want us to do, you have to shut off production, and that just isn’t going to happen,” he said. “The company has the right to run.”

Somali chicken-plant workers are awarded $1.35 million for discrimination

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We thought this was all settled last November, but the Minneapolis Star Tribune is just now reporting:

A federal judge gave approval for Gold’n Plump Inc. and an employment agency to pay $1.35 million to settle lawsuits alleging religious discrimination against Muslims at a chicken processing plant in Cold Spring, Minn.

The money will go to 128 Somali Muslims who claim that St. Cloud-based Gold’n Plump violated their religious rights by refusing to allow them prayer breaks during work hours, and to another 28 workers who said a St. Paul employment agency, the Work Connection Inc., required them to sign forms acknowledging they would be required to handle pork.

The amount awarded was previously said to be $365,000; now it’s $1.35 million. Is this a different lawsuit? Maybe Ann can straighten me out. In addition, there are these requirements:

In a settlement approved Tuesday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeanne Graham, Gold’n Plump will add a paid break during the second half of each shift to accommodate Muslim employees who wish to pray. The break is in addition to one early in the shift and lunch breaks required by law.

The Work Connection has agreed to provide offers of employment to the 28 job seekers who were turned away for not signing the “pork form.”

Thus progresses the stealth jihad.

Old article sheds more light on Hispanic/Somali culture clash in meatpacking plants

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, when I wrote about Islam Expert(?) Frankie Martin’s views on Somalia, I came across this article  by Martin at the Huffington Post from October.    The article is entitled, “Hundreds of Somali Muslims fired for praying.”   In fact they were fired for walking off the production line, so even the title is an attempt to gain the readers sympathy for the Muslims right off the bat.

Martin begins:

These are not easy times for Islam in America.

[…..]

In this environment, the recent firings of hundreds of Somali workers in JBS Swift Meat Co. plants in Greeley, Colorado, and Grand Island, Nebraska have taken on an added significance. The workers had demanded and were refused time to pray and break their fast at sundown during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

He doesn’t tell you that when a prayer break time was given that the entire production line must shut down.  Since the originally promised break needed to be early in the shift to satisfy Islamic requirements regarding sundown, it meant that all the workers would have a very long (tiring) second half of the shift.  The other workers preferred their break midway through the shift.   That was the crux of the problem for the other workers of varying nationalities.

I have to give Martin credit though because he is one of the few who have written at all about the clash of cultures within the plants themselves.  The Hispanics, mostly, felt that they had been there a long time and resented the newcomers making demands.  However as we reported in our extensive coverage of this issue, those protesting against the Somalis were from many countries.  

Martin on the culture clash:

There had been tensions building up for some time between the Somali workers and the mainly Latino management of the plant over cultural and religious issues like prayer times. The final straw came when managers grabbed two Somali women who were praying and removed their prayer rugs from under them, which the Somalis viewed as a major religious and cultural insult and attack on their honor. [Editor:  These women had left the production line without permission.]

The Somalis reiterated their demand for a short break from the meat assembly line and were granted a break at 7:45 pm for prayer. But then Latino workers protested that the Somalis were being given preferential treatment. Tensions escalated. In response, the management at Swift canceled their offer of 7:45 pm prayer and then, to the ire of the Somalis, pushed the break back to 9:00 pm. This was seen by the Somalis as a deliberate slight to them and as a sign of favoritism to the Latinos.

[…..]

There is also suspicion from Americans fearful that Muslims are not assimilating and are seeking special favors. “We don’t get time to pray at work,” said one white Grand Island women I spoke to, “why should they?” But in reality things are a bit more complex as the real culture clash seemed to occur between immigrant groups within the plant.

Somali’s told Martin, “It’s a win.”

Yet, despite these trials the Somalis still had a strong sense of dignity, of confidence. I asked them how they felt after losing their jobs, and they said they felt great. “This is not a loss for us,” one worker said, “It is a win.” In their minds they had preserved their culture and their religion, Islam — the only thing, it seems, they have left.

Come on Frankie!  That is just B.S.   Of course it’s a win because this whole event was a set-up from the beginning to force Americans and American places of employment to accomodate Islamic religious demands.   They know what they are doing — wearing us down.  They have been taught well by the Left, create a “crisis” and force “change.”

For more background on the controversy at Greeley and Grand Island we have an entire category on the subject here.

Somali Organizing: The Mohamed Rage story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We first became aware of Mohamed Rage, the chief Somali community organizer in Nebraska, during the Grand Island Swift Meatpacking plant prayer dispute last September.   My first post on Rage, the head of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization was on September 19th here.  His threatening (a lawsuit) comments are recorded here on September 22nd.  Check those out and then come back and continue reading!

Yesterday I came across this fluffy puffy AP article on Rage.   How did Rage get to Nebraska?

For the Somali native, who has become the voice of Nebraska’s growing Somali population, that decision eight years ago came down to chance.

“I tossed a coin. Nebraska won,” he said.

Undeterred by the challenge of starting again in a new place, today he works to help others do the same.

It’s been five years since Rage created a nonprofit group in Omaha aimed at promoting and protecting the interests of the Somali population across the state. He estimates their number at around 5,000 — most of them here for meatpacking jobs.

The Omaha Somali-American Community Organization has gotten by with the rare donation and the help of its volunteer board. But the work of confronting problems such as language barriers and a new culture falls mostly to Rage, the group’s chairman.

It’s been a busy 2008 for Rage. Most notable was his involvement in a dispute over prayer time for Somali Muslims at a Grand Island meatpacking plant. There were mass job walkouts and firings.

At a time when Somali refugees are working toward stability and self-sufficiency, Nebraska is at a crossroads in determining whether it is open to outsiders, Rage said.

Sure I believe that!   He just tossed a coin and ended up in Nebraska organizing Somalis to protest for prayer breaks at meatpacking plants!  Notice he also happened to run across CAIR (see suing the mayor of Grand Island, NE, here) along the way too.  

How many of  you have ever set up a non-profit?  It is not easy.  Someone (who?) told Rage to pick a place and then they helped him set up a community organizing outfit, that’s my guess.

Then check this out, he came to the US on a student visa 28 years ago and never left!  So, did he just stay?  What is his immigration status now?  Illegal alien?  Notice the AP reporter never goes there to explain further.

Rage left Somalia in 1980 and came to the United States on a student visa. He guesses he was about 18 years old …

He must have eventually become an illegal while in Maryland (our home state).  So, do our Maryland state refugee folks know Rage? 

He settled first in Maryland because he knew other Somalis there.

Was his student visa for a college in Maryland?   And, if he went to college for 4 years then what was he doing from 1984 until the year 2000 when he got this idea to go west?   Or, did it take him 20 years to get his Strayer degree?   Sure I believe this too:

In 2000, armed with a business degree from Strayer University, he headed west, searching for a lower cost of living and dreaming of returning to school for an advanced degree. He had narrowed his options to Utah and Nebraska.

Then came the coin toss.

In Omaha, home was a motel.

So he then just got the idea to start a non-profit community organizing group to help place Somali religious demands on the likes of Swift and Co., selflessly giving up his own dreams.

Through all this, he hasn’t lost sight of his own plans, which include becoming a U.S. citizen and going to graduate school.

I don’t know, if you overstay your student visa can you eventually be a US citizen?  Humm!  Just wondering.