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Organizing Gig Workers: Interview with Vanessa Bain, Instacart Organizer

Workers picket outside of Instacart headquarters in San Francisco on September 5, 2019, to demand a $15/hr minimum pay rate, ane nd to employer tip theft, and a line-item breakdown of earnings and expenses.

Instacart is the Uber of grocery shopping. It is a delivery service where customers order through a digital grocery list. Orders are shopped, checked out, and delivered by workers like Vanessa Bain of Palo Alto, California.

Vanessa Bain (VB): I used to work in education and was experiencing burnout. Around four years ago, I decided that I needed to do something different. Things were decent for the first 6-7 months. I was making more money working less hours than I did when I was teaching. I wasn’t coming home totally drained, which was a new feeling for me. I loved it at first.

Around September of 2016, they told us they were going to be taking tips out of our apps. Tips accounted for about 50% of my income. I was devastated, and I knew that I couldn’t take this lying down. I typed “#BoycottInstacart” into Instagram and found somebody else who was thinking like me, and we started organizing together. That was my entry into organizing.

Overcoming the obstacles of organizing in the gig economy

VB: There are a lot of obstacles to organizing in the gig economy:
1) We’re misclassified as independent contractors, so we have no protections under the National Labor Relations Act. This also means we’re not entitled to a minimum wage, overtime, rest, and meal breaks. We’re not entitled to draw from programs like workers compensation, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance.

2) The other major hurdle is that we have no centralized workplace. When organizing typically happens, you’re organizing with people in close proximity who you see on a regular basis. Instacart shoppers and Uber drivers are an atomized workforce. There could be a month or two months at a time where you don’t run into someone else who’s doing the same work. The infrastructure that is necessary to organize in a meaningful way is intentionally absent.

The companies want to pit us against each other and call it the hustle and say that we’re our own boss and our own CEO. This is bullshit. They don’t want us to see ourselves as coworkers who could fight back together. Camaraderie breeds collective action, unionizing, and feeling like we’re interconnected. That interconnectivity between folks and the feeling of being accountable to your fellow worker is incredibly important for organizing. The way in which they are implementing this structure is new, but this is centuries’ old bullshit that was regulated away in decades past, but they’re finding ways to bring it back.

Workers Voice (WV): Capitalists would like to see the whole economy go in this direction. They want to radically increase exploitation, thus increasing their profits. So venture capitalists just threw money at startup companies like Uber and Instacart.

VB: Totally. And none of these are profitable business models. In a nutshell the gig economy is a Ponzi scheme. Not to sound conspiratorial, but that’s really what it is.

Vanessa uses the internet plus face-to-face organizing
WV: How did you face the challenges?

VB: Our organizing is necessarily going to be a hybrid of doing things in person and doing things digitally because we don’t have a centralized workplace. We don’t have a break room, for example. We have to create the equivalent of that online, but not everybody is plugged into social media, so how do you organize? You’re going to have to do it in person. We’re lucky that we do have some sense of shared workspace in grocery stores.

Instacart workers have carried out four walk offs since 2016
VB: Our very first walk off had a couple hundred participants. When we started organizing I don’t think we had the intention of continuing to do this. We did walk outs in 2016 and 2017 and 2019. We did a work slowdown in 2018.
The company has caved to some worker demands, but they are still on the offensive.

VB: Historically, when we do an action, the company gives it about a month and then implements our demands, acting as though it had nothing to do with our action. They don’t want to seem as if they’re responding to worker grievances because workers will see that this works, and we should keep doing it.

The last time they responded by cutting pay. We had a quality bonus, a measly $3 that we were paid for each order when customers rated their experience five stars. It seems like a small sum of money, but a batch can pay as little as $7.00 when you’re shopping and delivering for three customers, so $3 is a big deal. When they cut the quality bonus, it disproportionately hurt people who had done this the longest and were the best at their jobs because it is ostensibly a performance bonus.

Solidarity between shoppers and customers
VB: This outraged a lot of customers. So that was like a secondary boycott. Customers were on Twitter and FB sharing the hashtag “DeleteInstacart.” Instacart’s tactics backfired. Instacart is nothing without shoppers and customers. Pissing off both is really a bad business tactic.

I think that solidarity between customers and shoppers is natural because Instacart is just a software program, but we’re the face of it. Customers have more loyalty to the human being than they do to the company that employs them. And if we’re unhappy, customers know.

Instacart began as a luxury service but it’s becoming more of a service that is oriented toward people who are located in food deserts, no transportation, or people who are disabled and house-bound. We provide a vital lifeline. I saw so many instances of people saying, “I can’t leave my home,” “I can’t go to a grocery store,” “I’m house-bound,” or “I have chronic fatigue and I can’t lift things.” But they are still extending solidarity by boycotting.

2020 should be a lit year for labor
WV: How do you view the strength of the U.S. labor movement right now and in the coming year?

VB: 2019 has been pivotal year for labor. There’s been an explosion of raw energy and cross-sector solidarity. People from all different types of organizing have expressed solidarity. Some are white collar workers who are well compensated, but they are still organizing in their workplaces because they don’t want the technology that they’ve built to be contracted out to the Department of Defense and ICE. They don’t want the technology that they’ve built to be used to oppress people and contribute to climate change.

I’ve been organizing for three and a half years now and I never felt more optimistic than I do now. And I think that we’re gonna see expansion of a lot of the organizing that has sprung up. I think it’s gonna get bigger, and more powerful. Our problems are rooted in capitalism itself.

A lot of current organizing is rooted in the understanding that capitalism is unsustainable. A lot of the problems that we’re struggling with are inherent to capitalism. At some point, capitalism must go. I’m inspired, and I hope that other people can share in that optimism and can feel like when they look at what Instacart workers did in their organizing, they think, “If this person can do it, then I can do it,” and reach out to one another.

The day that we kicked off our walk off, the Google walkout organizers called us and expressed solidarity. They offered an infrastructure that they had available, and we didn’t. They lent their expertise in areas that we didn’t know much about.

I think it’s going to be a lit year for labor! I’m 33. I think that the tides are changing. I think that people are feeling more empowered and emboldened to take bold action.

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An Interview with John Catalinotto: Re-evaluating  the German Democratic Republic and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Workers Voice Radio, November 9, 2019

Gregory William: Today is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is being celebrated in the capitalist media. Just today there was an unveiling of a statue of war-monger, of arch-enemy of the working class, Ronald Reagan, in the city of Berlin, and the guest of honor for this unveiling is Mike Pompeo of the Trump administration. 

All we ever hear about the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the end of the Soviet Union, is that this was a triumph of freedom and democracy. But we have to ask ourselves, is that true? Was that really the effect of it? 

We’re going to talk to John Catalinotto. He’s a long-time organizer, notably playing a key role in the American Servicemen’s Union during the U.S. war against Vietnam. They were organizing rank and file troops, as workers,  to resist the imperialist war. He’s the author of the book, Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions, which came out in 2017. He spent time in East Germany, also known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or socialist Germany. 

John, can you say a little bit about when you first went to the GDR? What was your impression of this society? Was it absolutely horrible like they say in the capitalist press? 

John Catalinotto: No. It’s wasn’t. The first time I visited the GDR was in 1973, more as a tourist than anything else. I speak German, so I talked to people. Right at the border, you had to go through a process that wasn’t pleasant, because it’s like all these official people. But once you get a quarter mile away, it was like any other city, and people were living like they live anywhere else. 

Only in this case, they had a lot of social benefits that were more extensive than what Western Germany had, which had more benefits than the U.S. had at that time. They had pretty much written into the laws a lot of social benefits. There was a great deal of equality. There was absolutely no unemployment. So basic security and being able to stay alive without too much trouble was easy for the people of the German Democratic Republic, and there was no problem for a visitor. 

In fact, I ran out of money because that was the particular week that Nixon had made some changes in how they support the dollar, and the dollar dropped enormously against the Western European currencies, so I ran out of money. But on a little bit of money, I could buy milk and bread and stuff like that, and survive for the last couple of days that I was there. 

I would say that what you hear about it is not the truth. What we’re hearing today is the version of history as told by the winners of this battle in a long class war. 

Gregory William: What kind of benefits did people actually enjoy? What was the status of women’s rights or for workers? 

John Catalinotto: You have to live in a place to know how it actually works out in reality. But there are certain things that were definitely true. For example, any woman who wanted to work, worked, and not only was able to work and get a job, but had support if she happened to be a mother, especially if she was a single mother. There was care available both for infants and for kindergarten. So you had infant care and care for 3-6. It was very inexpensive, or free, and it was available to anyone who wanted it. In Western Germany at the time, only about 50% of women were in the workforce, whereas about half of the workforce in the GDR were women. [In capitalist West Germany, a married woman needed her husband’s permission to work outside the home as late as 1977.]

That’s one one way of measuring it, but there’s a lot more. They had rights to healthcare, abortion, education (all the way up to university, which was free).

They had rights to housing. Of course, they did not have adequate housing in the beginning years after World War II and even into the 1970s. Housing was short. [In the 1970s, the government initiated a massive wave of public housing construction aimed at ending the housing shortage.] But especially for people who had special problems, like single mothers, they would be put higher up on the list for receiving housing. 

Gregory William: Listeners have to understand that this was a society that had been destroyed during the Second World War. This was a country where Nazism was born, where Hitler was in power. That’s how bad it was in Germany. There was a long revolutionary workers’ tradition in the country. Unfortunately, Hitler was able to rise to power and went about destroying everything that had been gained. 

But once Nazism was defeated by the Soviet Red Army, the East German people (with Soviet aid) built the society back up from the ashes. And just to think of the fact that Hitler had been trying to conquer the world and oppress, and even eradicate, people for being Jewish and other nationalities. But then the German Democratic Republic, the socialist German society, was then supporting liberation struggles in Africa, at a time when the U.S. and West German governments were supporting the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa. I mean, how amazing is that? 

Gavrielle Gemma: We should also recall how the GDR government dealt with the Nazis as compared to how the capitalist government of West Germany put the Nazis into the government. 

John Catalinotto: In West Germany some high profile Nazis were charged with war crimes in Nuremberg after the war. But they more or less let the Nazis stay in the positions that they had, even if it was in teaching, the police, or the courts, etc. They kept a lot of it intact even though they dismantled the Nazi party. 

But in Eastern Germany they had to purge the education system, and the police, and the entire system outside of that. And, of course, if they caught war criminals, they put them on trial. So they had to build up a new cadre of people to run the government that were not associated with the Nazis in any way. That was hard to do, of course.

Also, Western Germany received a lot of assistance, or investment, from the United States, which came out of the war extremely wealthy. The U.S. [government and ruling class] were able to purposefully assist the development of the capitalist economy in Western Germany. They knew that this was the front line of a global war that they were carrying out against the socialist countries, and they made life very difficult for the people in the GDR. 

You brought up the GDR’s assistance to the anti-colonial liberation struggles. Now, it’s significant that [in the commemorations of the wall coming down] they put up a statue of Ronald Reagan, not Nelson Mandela. If they wanted to raise a statue of freedom, it should be Nelson Mandela or one of the other African leaders. But no, they didn’t do that. The choice here is telling. 

During the history of the German Democratic Republic, especially in the 60s and 70s, they gave enormous amounts of assistance to those who were carrying out the liberation struggles in southern Africa. For example, if a liberation fighter was wounded in South Africa, or Namibia, or Angola, or Mozambique, in battles with the colonial power, they would often be slipped out of the country and treated in East German hospitals at no cost. This is the kind of stuff that was going on all along. 

I was there in 1989, just a few weeks before the wall came down, and I interviewed some Angolans who were getting technical training at Humboldt University in East Berlin. This is the kind of thing that the German Democratic Republic was doing throughout that entire period – assisting the liberation struggles in the way that they could do best, which was most often giving technical help. It wasn’t as industrially advanced, and didn’t have as much capital, as western Germany, but it was still very technologically and educationally advanced. 

Gregory William: Thank you, John, we’re going to have to wrap it up. I just want to make one final statement. With all the gains that the workers made in East Germany – once that system was brought down because of counter-revolution – the gains of the working class there were decimated. Industry was dismantled, mostly, in the eastern part of Germany. And with the east absorbed into the new unified Federal Republic, Germany returned to its imperialist ways. They have played a part in the NATO wars, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. And within the European Union, Germany acts to impose anti-worker austerity policies on weaker European countries, like Greece. So it is playing precisely the opposite role that the East German republic played (which was a progressive, peace-loving role). So the dismantling of the GDR was a real loss for the global working class, and for humanity as a whole. 

John Catalinotto: I hope we can do as much as we can to correct the false impressions of history that are being imposed upon the working class here in the United States. You just have to be skeptical whenever the bosses, the ruling class, lays down what seems to be a united, uniform position on something. You have to be skeptical enough to ask why they are doing it. You have to ask what interests does it serve for them. And, in this case, the point is to vilify the whole idea of socialism. And I think that one reason they’re doing it here is that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with capitalism, especially among young people. It’s not satisfying the needs of the people, and they’re looking for something else. So those on top are saying, “Look how terrible it was,” and they lie and exaggerate. 

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Seafood Workers Alliance

A conversation with Chayito

By C.D.

The Seafood Workers Alliance is a group made up of seafood industry workers in Louisiana who are organizing across the rural areas of the state to address the many injustices they face in the industry, such as forced labor, unfair wages, and workplace safety issues. These are the workers who produce and process the seafood that makes Louisiana famous, and they are making a call to allies and fellow workers to join them in this fight. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the vice-president of the Alliance, who goes by Chayito.

Where are you from and how long have you been working in the United States?

I’m from Sinaloa, Mexico. I came to the United States, invited by a friend who told me about a job at a crawfish plant in Baton Rouge. I have been working here for 11 years as a guest worker.

How did you get to know the Seafood Workers’ Alliance?

Eleven years ago I met organizers from the Guest Worker Alliance. I had a problem at the crawfish plant I was working at, where the workers wanted to be paid more. They wanted 25 or 50 cents more per hour. I met two organizers who were helping the workers in their struggle. The boss was very upset, he disrespected the organizers. The boss got so angry he cut off the electricity, disrespected the workers, and sent for a truck to return all of the workers to Mexico. I decided to stay with a friend because I had a child in the hospital, and I had to work to pay for the clinic expenses. I started working in a taqueria and made tamales a few days a week. Here I was completely lost. We could not speak the language. It was difficult, but I endured, and I left before the visa expired.

After being in Mexico for a while, I wanted to come to work again. But when I went to hand over the copies of my passport to another company, a friend of my sister told me, “I can’t bring you because the company does not want those who have been involved with in organizing.” I started having problems again. I met another person who offered me another visa in Lafayette. The manager of that plant had problems with me, and he insulted me. As we are organized, [the bosses] are also organized. They all know each other.

I returned to Baton Rouge and worked for another company. During my time there I was living in a house with co-workers. It was a company house, and we had to pay rent to the company. The house was very dirty, with rats and cockroaches. We were 23 people living there with only three bathrooms and a kitchenette.

When I started I was not very involved with the movement. Now I am more involved because I started to know about other cases. The workers began to talk among ourselves and realize what was happening, and we began to organize to defend ourselves. I want to avoid these things that have happened to me and my coworkers. The Seafood Workers’ Alliance was formed two years ago, and I serve as vice president of the Alliance.

What are the conditions like for women in the industry?

The pay is not the same. Men are paid more. Of course there is sexual harassment. We have a task this year to find a way to raise awareness among people to make reports and not to remain silent about this issue. There are many women organizing.

What inspires you in this work?

It inspires me that more people are approaching us. We have managed to get people to support us. We have opened the doors for people to listen, to learn about the experiences of guest workers, and I’m very inspired because there is a lot of support amongst ourselves. We know it’s not easy, but we have to keep going.

What is a message you have for people who are trying to get organized in their industry?

Do not stay silent. There will always be a door that will open. You have to lose your fear. All human beings have rights no matter race, color, fat or skinny. We all have the right to work. We are not objects. We have dreams, and no one has the right to take them away.

We want to inspire allies to join the cause, inspire people who are from here, who have the will to support and the heart to support. We can all support, but I have seen that people like to ignore these issues. I want the people in power to be able to see how people are treated in the rural areas where the food that is eaten is processed. Where the people who process what they put in their mouths live. This food is made with tears, with bad working conditions. We have no protection. We want to inspire the people who support us to change the industry. Because when something is made with love, it will be healthy.

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Alianza de Trabajadores de Mariscos y Pescado

Una conversación con Chayito

By C.D.

La Alianza de Trabajadorxs de Mariscos y Pescado (ATMP) es un grupo de trabajadorxs de la industria de mariscos y pescado en Louisiana, quienes se están organizando en las áreas rurales del estado para enfrentar a las injusticias en la industria como el trabajo forzado, salarios injustos, y el tema de la seguridad en el lugar del trabajo. Ellxs son lxs trabajadorxs que producen y procesan los mariscos y pescados famosos de Louisana, y están invitando a lxs aliadxs y a otrxs trabajadorxs a unirse a la lucha. Lo que sigue son partes de una conversación con la vicepresidenta de la Alianza, Chayito.

¿De dónde viene usted y cuánto tiempo ha estado trabajando en los Estados Unidos?

Vengo de Sinaloa, México. Yo vine a los Estados Unidos invitada por una amiga que me contó sobre un trabajo en una planta de crawfish en Baton Rouge. He estado trabajando aquí por 11 años como trabajadora huésped.

¿Cómo empezó a organizar?

Hace once años conocí a la Alianza de Trabajadores. Tuve un problema en el trabajo donde los trabajadores queria ser pagados más. Querían 25 o 50 centavos más a la hora. Conocí a dos organizadores de la Alianza de Trabajadores que estaban ayudando a los trabajadores en su lucha. El jefe se molestó mucho, le falto el respeto a los organizadores. El señor cortó la luz, se puso grosero, y mando por un camión y corrió a los trabajadores de regreso a México. Yo decidí quedarme con una compañera porque tenía un niño internado en el hospital, yo tenía que trabajar para pagar los gastos de la clínica. Empecé a trabajar en una  taquería y hacia tamales unos días, aquí me quedé completamente perdida, no podíamos hablar el idioma, fue difícil pero aguante y salí antes de que se me termino la visa.

Después de estar en México un rato, quería venir a trabajar de nuevo. Pero cuando fui a entregar las copias de mi pasaporte para otra compañía, una conocida de mi hermana me dijo “fijate que no te puedo traer porque la compañía no quiere los que han estado organizando.” Empeze a tener problemas de nuevo, conoci otra muchacha que me ofreció otra visa en Lafayette. La encargada de esa planta no le gusto mi trabajo. Me falto el respeto. Como nosotros estamos organizados, [los jefes de las plantas] también están organizados. Ellos todos se conocen.

Me regrese a Baton Rouge y trabaje por otra compañía. Durante mi tiempo ahí estuve viviendo en una casa con compañeros de trabajo. Era una casa de la compañía y teníamos que pagar renta a la compañía. La casa estaba muy sucia, con ratas y cucarachas. Eramos 23 personas viviendo ahí con solo tres baños y una mini cocina.

Cuando empecé no estuve muy involucrada con el movimiento. Ahora estoy más involucrada porque empeze a conocer de otros casos, los trabajadores empezamos a platicar entre nosotros y darnos cuenta de lo que estaba pasando y organizarnos para defendernos. Quiero evitar estas cosas que me han pasado a mi y a mis companeros y companeras. La Alianza de Trabajadores de Mariscos Y Pescado se formó oficialmente hace dos años y yo sirvo como vice-presidenta de la Alianza.

¿Como son las condiciones para las mujeres en la industria?

La paga no es la misma, a los hombres les pagan más. Claro que hay acoso sexual. Tenemos una tarea este año de buscar la manera de cómo concientizar a la gente que denuncien y no se queden calladas sobre esto. Hay muchas mujeres organizando.

¿Que le inspira de este trabajo?

Me inspira que más gente se están acercando a nosotros, hemos logrado que lleguen personas a apoyarnos, se nos han abierto las puertas para que la gente escuchen, que sepan como es el trabajo de los trabajadores huéspedes, y muy inspirada porque hay mucho apoyo entre nosotros. Sabemos que no es fácil pero tenemos que salir adelante

¿Tiene algún mensaje a personas que están intentando organizarse?

No se queden callados, siempre va haber una puerta que se va abrir. Se tiene que perder el miedo. Todos los seres humanos tienen derechos no importa raza, color, gordo o flaca, todos tenemos derecho a trabajar. No somos objetos, tenemos sueños y nadie los deben de romper.

Queremos inspirar a personas aliadas a unirse a la causa, inspirar a personas que sean de aquí, que tengan las ganas de apoyar y el corazón para apoyar. Todos podemos apoyar, pero he visto que la gente ignora. Yo quiere que las personas en poder puedan ver como se trata la gente en las áreas rurales donde se procesa la comida que se come. Donde vive la gente que procesa lo que se pone en la boca. La comida ahora esta hecha con lágrimas, con malas condiciones de trabajo, no tenemos ninguna protección. Queremos inspirar a las personas que nos apoyen para que la industria cambie. Porque cuando se hace algo con amor va ser sano.

 

 

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Interview with Breakout! Trans Activist

Bayleigh Martin

Since late August, six trans women of color have been murdered in the United States, including a woman murdered by a serial killer working for the US Border Patrol. In 2018 so far, over 20 trans people have been murdered in the United States. In New Orleans in 2017, two Black trans women were murdered over Mardi Gras weekend; the status of their cases is unclear. The media has consistently misidentified them, misgendering and demonizing them. Police response to these murders has been inadequate at best and insulting at worst. Trans people, especially Black trans women, face disproportionate violence in the United States. Instead of receiving protection from police, they are often profiled as sex workers and criminalized for simply being themselves. In New Orleans, NOPD continues to harass trans women of color, and local resources are sparse.

Workers Voice spoke with Bayleigh Martin, a Black trans woman who works as an organizer for Breakout, a local organization that serves LGBTQ youth of color, about what trans youth of color face in New Orleans and the conditions that they live in.

Workers Voice: Hi, Bayleigh. Can we start with your telling me a little bit about what trans youth face in New Orleans on a daily basis?

Bayleigh Martin: People are just on them, making them feel like they’re less than, like they’re not worth anything. There’s not many schools that actually take the time to do a mental health check of the child. Some trans kids are not comfortable being who they are; some kids can’t not live how they want to. Some parents kick them out. How can they go to school if they have no place to call home?

Workers Voice: You mentioned children being kicked out by their parents. What are their options for finding shelter when that happens?

Bayleigh Martin: Trying to find shelter is very hard. Covenant House is always full. Trying to navigate in the world without that support from your family is very disheartening and very hard. Even as a heterosexual person, it’s hard. When you’re confronting yourself and your own sexuality, when people aren’t accepting it, it becomes … a mental health issue. It’s very hard to try to cope, because… You’re saying, ‘You’re my mom and you’re treating me like this. Am I not worthy? Am I not good enough to live?’ It can make you wanna kill yourself.

Workers Voice: What do trans youth face in local schools?

Bayleigh Martin: There’s not really support. It’s either or. Most of them do have something, but it’s like, ‘Do I wanna go through all of this just to go to the bathroom?’ I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t. I’m damned if I go into the boys, because I might get raped or beat up. If I go in the girls, they think I’m looking at them, but I’m not. They’re not on my radar.

Workers Voice: You’ve talked before about challenges trans people face when it comes to their IDs. Can you tell us more about that?

Bayleigh Martin: Your ID is important because [for instance] if I’m trying to be called, say, Melody and everybody calls me Melvin, so like the name my mother gave me, that’s not my name. Or I say, ‘Please call me this, or use she and her pronouns,’ but you’re still trying to correct me on who I am based on my ID, it’s hurtful. I’m telling you who I am. I don’t care what my ID says. It creates an issue. And for me, working in fast food, it was very hard because your real name is put out there [on your name tag].

Workers Voice: What do trans youth of color face when it comes to the local police?

Bayleigh Martin: Well, they can arrest you for carrying condoms in your purse, because they think you’re doing [sex work]. They can stop you and you could be subject to a search. There’s so much. They harass you. You could be put in the wrong jail. It’s dangerous just being out there as yourself.

Workers Voice: There were two murders of black trans women here last year.

Bayleigh Martin: The girls who are living their life, just living their best life, it’s dangerous for them. A friend of mine said, ‘How can we expect respect when the police don’t respect us?’ It’s a lot.

Workers Voice: What sort of obstacles do trans youth face when it comes to medically transitioning in New Orleans?

Bayleigh Martin: Some [trans youth] end up going to different people, asking what’s the best way to transition or come out. They want to hurry up. They’re not able to go to professionals. You’re not gonna have the right [treatment]. I know one girl had some stuff that was killing her from the inside out. There are risks if it’s not a professional. But everybody’s transition is their own. You are not going to be the same size, the same color, as another woman, because as you see, everybody’s different. While you find a role model, they’re not gonna help you on your own. You’re not becoming your own way.

Workers Voice: What changes would you like to see in New Orleans to make it safer or better for trans youth?

Bayleigh Martin: More queer spaces for queers to be safe in. More help as far as jobs and housing. More help with mental health issues. I want the police to step up and not downtrod on us. I want them to not keep us under the board, under the counter, tucked away, then wanna come when it looks good for the press.

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Blood in the Cane Fields: An Interview with Chris Dier

By Gregory William

Chris Dier was born and raised in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. He was displaced by Katrina, but returned home in 2010. Like his mother, he is a history teacher at Chalmette High School, and author of a new book, Blood in the Cane Fields: The 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre.

W.V.: What was the St. Bernard Parish Massacre?

Chris Dier: In St. Bernard Parish there was a massacre in 1868, right after the Civil War. Following the war, many black males had gained the right to vote and that threatened the economic relations of these parishes, where white supremacy ruled the land. Around New Orleans, there were sugar-producing regions where black people were the majority, and had been locked into slavery. When they were emancipated and gained voting rights, many voted for the Republican Party, which in that time had sided with liberation. This threatened the white political and economic elite. That elite pushed the narrative that all the problems after the Civil War were caused by the freed people and a lot of poor whites bought into it…1868 was the first presidential election after the war. The Republican candidate was Union veteran, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Democratic candidate was Horatio Seymour, an opponent of Reconstruction and rights for African Americans…Days before the election, armed white groups, many poor planters – not the elites themselves, who had been stoking the fire – carried out one of the most violent episodes of the Reconstruction era in Louisiana. These groups went from plantation to plantation and executed up to 135 people in the streets.

W.V.: So this was a reaction to Reconstruction, which was coming down from the federal level, but did you also uncover information about what freed people were doing in the region at a grassroots level to secure their rights?

Chris Dier: Yes. The first Republican meeting in St. Bernard was a group of freed people coming together. They had their own processions and meetings. There were a lot of grassroots efforts in Louisiana. Interestingly, 19 years after the massacre, in 1887, black and white St. Bernardians marched in unison against the planter elite. That unity is terrifying to the rich…The idea of race had to be strongly imposed over the centuries, going back to the 13 colonies, where there were many instances of poor whites joining in struggle with enslaved people… During the labor movement in New Orleans, blacks and whites came together in 1892 and 1907 along the Mississippi River fighting for their common rights, and this is what brought about some of the harshest reactions from the rich…There are many lessons in this history for the struggle now.

W.V.: How have your students responded to this research?

Chris Dier: My students have been very eager to explore this event. Many see their last names in the book. Some of the last names of perpetrators as well as victims are those of students sitting in the same classroom today. This is their history and most knew nothing about it…It is so important for young people to learn about history, because they are the ones who are going to carry struggle forward.