Chapter 4 - The Linkages Driving Globalization from Below

“These linkages of workers are happening everywhere, at many levels, they are growing and having an impact,” said Tim Costello, director of the North American Alliance for Fair Employment, which monitors and promotes organization of workers in the “informal” economy—an estimated 18 million workers in the U.S. alone. 

Costello is also co-author of a highly regarded book titled Globalization from Below, a good way to describe the Enlace convention. It was a slice of the powerful new decentralized but global social justice movement that erupts in the streets from time to time but spends most of its days and nights engaged in these hard, unglamorous tasks of building organizations from the bottom up and linking them with allies around the world.

The very practical question of how to fund this organizing was addressed in a workshop led by Chad Jones of the New World Foundation and Juan Carlos Aguilar of the Solidago Foundation, and in another workshop representatives from worker centers in the U.S. and Mexico shared ideas on their funding strategies.

The convention agreed on a course of action to continue its support for the Sara Lee workers and the independent SINTTIM union, to initiate support for the Guanajuato teachers and the Mexico City sanitary workers, and to further develop activities to assist worker centers and where feasible, bring them together in cooperative efforts with unions. Enlace also affiliated four new members at the convention: The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV) and Domestic Workers United, which are based in New York City, the Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco and Centro de Investigación para Trabajadores y Trabajadoras Asociación Civil (CITTAC) which organizes maquila workers in Tijuana.
“It’s been a long two days and a short six years,” said Enlace director Cervantes-Gautschi, at the conclusion of the meeting as he thanked the coaches (Ana Delia Caldera- SEDEPAC; Cindy Cho-KIWA; Sonia Laracuente; Joann Lo-Garment Worker Center; Eva Padilla-Centro de Apoyo de la Mujer en las Maquilas de Torreon; Lorene Scheer-Teamsters Local 556; Irma Solis-Workplace Project; Yanet Torres; Evelyn Urrutia-TWSC) and everyone else who helped make the meeting successful. “There cannot be a serious movement for social justice without the participation of organized low-income workers. Together we have strengthened local organizations of working poor in both Mexico and the United States.”