Filed under: crime | Tags: lubavitch money laundry, diamonds, drugs, nyc diamond district
I will not recopy the blog but have given you the link in order for you to read the story if there is an interest.
Major Israeli Newspaper “Maariv” reveals: The Jewish Laundry of Drug Money
By DaisyNavidson(DaisyNavidson)
An important member of Tal’s laundering ring was Rabbi Shalom Leviatan, a Lubavitch Hassid, head of the branch in Seattle It is assumed that all the considerable political power of of these Hassids and of their rebbe (then alive), …
How to Exterminate the Federal… - http://federalreservebankingpyramidscam.blogspot.com/
Filed under: Nebraska slaughter house | Tags: agriprocessors, Gordon Nebraska, Local Pride, Oglala Sioux And Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
http://failedmessiah.wordpress.com/2005/06/23/rubashkin-set-to-open-new-nebraska-slaughterhouse-in-cooperation-with-oglala-sioux-and-pine-ridge-indian-reservation-%E2%80%93-usda-must-approve-but-is-expected-to-do-so-tomorrow-%E2%80%93-usda-still/
June 23, 2005…10:52 am
Rubashkin Set To Open New Nebraska Slaughterhouse In Cooperation With Oglala Sioux And Pine Ridge Indian Reservation – USDA Must Approve But Is Expected To Do So Tomorrow – USDA Still Refusing To Release Results Of Last Year’s Investigation
GORDON, Neb. – An Iowa meatpacking firm that has drawn fire from an animal-rights group has bought an old packing plant in Gordon, Neb., and plans to process kosher beef, lamb and bison products using workers from the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
If the plant passes a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection scheduled for Friday it could begin slaughtering cattle as soon as Monday, according to Tally Plume, executive director of the Oglala Oyate Woitancan Empowerment Zone, which encompasses the reservation.
The firm, Local Pride, announced this week that it would begin hiring and training local workers for the plant. The plant will employ 40 to 50 local residents, according to a Local Pride news release. Plume said many of the workers would be tribal members.
Local Pride is owned by the Rubashkin family, which also owns Agriprocessors, operators of a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.
Local Pride is working with the empowerment zone, created on the reservation in 1999, along with the Oglala Sioux Tribe Workforce in Action Program, the city of Gordon and the Nebraska Department of Agriculture.
Plume said the empowerment zone board expanded the zone, with USDA approval, to include 300 acres where the plant is located in Gordon, 36 miles southeast of Pine Ridge village.
Plume said the project considered Gordon for a site because the reservation lacks infrastructure to accommodate such a facility.
By being in the empowerment zone, Local Pride will be able to get a tax break for hiring tribal members, Plume said.
Reservation residents already have undergone training at the Postville plant.
“The potential for employment on this project could get pretty high,” Plume said. He said the Postsville plant began with about 50 employees and now has 700 workers.…
Meanwhile, Plume said he was not worried about allegations by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that Agriprocessors’ Postville plant uses cruel slaughtering methods that violate federal rules and strict kosher slaughtering standards.
PETA cited a video secretly made by an activist working undercover at the plant that showed workers using large knives to slice cows’ throats, as required for kosher preparation. The video also shows some of the cows then stumbling around for as long as three minutes. PETA says the animals were still alive and suffering.
Plant officials say the animals’ movements are involuntary and that massive blood loss to the brain brought on by slitting their throats renders them insensitive to pain within seconds.…
Plume said he is confident that the USDA probe will exonerate the Iowa plant. He said rabbis will be present at the Gordon plant as well.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency also filed a lawsuit accusing the Postville plant of exceeding limits set in wastewater discharge permits and failing to submit proper risk management plans or hazardous chemical inventory forms.
Plant spokesman Mike Thomas told the Courier that those matters have already been resolved with city and state officials.…
The USDA is expected to find against Rubashkin in the PETA-exposed throat-ripping scandal. But the USDA has been moving slowly and has refused to release the findings from last year’s investigation.
The Jewish community has a long history with Pine Ridge and the Oglala Sioux. Most of it good; some, not. The tribe’s positive exposure to Orthodox Judaism has largely been through left-leaning Orthodox Jews, including at least one rabbi, Moshe Lichtman, who practice a sort of social action, peace and justice style, Judaism and who work with non-Orthodox Jews.
But the Rubashkin family has a history of illegal and anti-social behavior – a history that includes bank fraud, misappropriating union dues paid by it’s employees, the documented recruitment of illegal alien workers, repeated EPA violations and the original Postville controversy.
One wonders whether the Oglala Sioux have trusted too much, based on their past experience with an atypical “bein adam lehaveyro“* Orthodoxy.
*In Judaism, the mitzvot (commandments) are broken down into two main parts, “bein adam lehaveryro,” between people, and “bein adam lemakom,” between people and G-d. Although both parts are meant to be equal, Orthodoxy tends to put more weight on commandments between people and G-d (for instance, prayer and keeping kosher) and to minimize the interpersonal and social justice commandments (for instance, not stealing union dues).
Filed under Kosher Business?, Kosher Meat Scandal
Filed under: Uncategorized
http://mississippifarian.wordpress.com/
Jew baiting at the Strib(Star Tribune)
August 6, 2008
“Violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa’s child labor laws.”
And their parents are sitting in federal prison, victims of a mass trial and insufficent legal counsel. The only question here is who’s the bigger criminal: Agriprocessors or Bush’s immigration enforcement personnel.
And since this isn’t a “local” story, the Strib’s allowing comments:
My only reluctance in writing about the cultish Chabad Lubavitch connection was that some people might lump me in with these folks.
As for the Strib, they can either moderate their comments or get rid of them altogether. It’s too late to fire Kersten — now that her pals have started to hang around in the comments there isn’t enough rodent repellant in the world to get rid of them.
And yes, I left a comment of my own:
What crawled out from under a rock
It’s funny how this crap keeps showing up in Strib comments. The further to the right the Strib moves, the viler and more racist their commenters become. While Agriprocessors is run by a virulent cult comprised of Chabad Lubavitch extremists, they are no more whacked out than your average prosperity gospel parishioner who belongs to a mega-church. Greed is not a religious value, and is usually a sign that your faith isn’t about God, but rather about yourself. The victims in this story are the Guatemalans who were willing to work for low pay in horrible conditions because Americans refused to work in that “jungle.” But instead of Upton Sinclair, the Strib gives us Katherine Kersten, or in this case, a story from yet another Republican-run wire service. Jon Tevlin did a great job with this story. Did that offend your investors? I wouldn’t bother to ask except the Strib refuses to say who specifically owns them now. For all we know, the Rubashkins own a piece of the Strib. Come to think of it, a newspaper is a lot like a packing plant. Except your kill floor is upstairs where the editors pick and choose which stories will make Obama look bad, and McCain look like he’s awake. But in the end, you both produce a lot of sausage.
posted by MarkGisleson on Aug. 6, 08 at 7:55 AM |
I love that one big long paragraph comment style they use. Visually, it turns a good rant into a note tied around a brick.
UPDATE: Thomas Franks’ Captives of the Meatpacking Archipelago [h/t G Spot]
http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=3662
If you’ve been reading me, you know I don’t think Agriprocessors is much worse than any other meat processing plant.
I don’t know anything about the place beyond what I read online.
But how stupid are the following rabbis to take a trip and a one-day tour sponsored by Agriprocessors and then give the place a clean bill of health? Didn’t the Red Cross do something like that at various concentration camps in World War II?
NEW YORK (JTA)—Organizers of a delegation of Orthodox rabbis say the Iowa meat-packing plant raided by federal immigration authorities in May bears no resemblance to its image as a place where safety lapses are routine and workers allegedly are abused and underpaid.
Some 25 rabbis went to Postville, Iowa, last week on a visit paid for by Agriprocessors, the slaughterhouse’s owner, and coordinated through the National Council of Young Israel, an Orthodox synagogue association.
In the course of their one-day visit, the rabbis toured the plant and met with its recently hired compliance officer, the mayor of Postville and a Presbyterian minister.
Some of the rabbis also met with representatives of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, which has taken the lead in ministering to families affected by the raid.
“At this point I don’t see any reason why someone should not buy things from Agriprocessors,” Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, the regional director of Chabad Lubavitch of Illinois and the president of the Chicago Rabbinical Council, told JTA.
“They run a very impressive operation. They’re very dedicated to making sure that everything is being done in the most appropriate way possible.”
The visit is the latest effort by Agriprocessors, the largest kosher meat producer in the United States, to reassure kosher consumers and revive its public image. Its image has taken a drubbing since authorities arrested some 400 illegal workers May 12 in what the government describes as the single largest immigration raid in American history.
http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/
Friday, August 08, 2008
ORTHODOX RABBIS VISIT TO POSTVILLE PLANT IS ANYTHING BUT KOSHER
Now comes the news that a few days after that demonstration on July 31, a group of 25 Orthodox rabbis and community leaders visited the Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa and declared the plant was clean and the workers happy.
One of those in the group, Chabad Rabbi David Eliezrie (pictured here), President Rabbinical Council of Orange County writes in a letter to the Indianapolis Star, “We found a state-of-the-art plant; workers receiving fair wage and benefits such as health, dental and vacation pay; great attention to worker safety; and the use of the e-Verification system to ensure all workers are legal.”
Give me a break. Everyone from other Rabbis, to the National Labor Relations Board, to a wide variety of Jewish publications, local Catholic Churches, immigrant rights groups, and on and on have found what Rabbi Eliezrie and his buds say to be a joke. Even a federal government warrant that paved the way for a notorious anti-immigrant raid on the plant in May detailed numerous abuses inside the plant.
As the Jewish Forward wrote this week, “…investigations have produced a long list of allegations against the company, including that it employed underage workers, that insufficient safety training led to workers being injured and maimed, and that workers were underpaid.”
Just days after the Orthodox Rabbis visited the plant the Iowa labor commissioner referred 57 allegations of child labor violations to the state attorney general, calling the violations “egregious” and recommending they be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”
But somehow this group of Black Hats found everything A-Ok. Of course, I must point out, the entire junket was paid for by Agriproccessors.
Ben Harris of the Jewish Telegraph Agency reports:
“…In the eyes of the company’s critics, and even some Orthodox rabbis, the fact that Agriprocessors paid for the trip rendered the rabbis’ conclusions suspect. Neither of the national council’s two news releases regarding the trip disclosed that Agriprocessors had footed the bill for the rabbis.”
“If they’re going and being paid by Rubashkin (plant’s owner), then that should be forthrightly disclosed,” said Maury Kelman, a lawyer and Orthodox rabbi who has led congregations in Israel and New York.”
Kelman said Jewish law, or halachah, insists that rabbis involved in such matters do everything to avoid even the perception that their judgment could be compromised.”
“It’s very important if rabbis are going that things look totally above board, and that it’s 100 percent clear that the desire is to do the right thing and not just the expedient thing,” he said. “If somebody’s being paid, you’re beholden to them. Halachah is very clear about this.”’
As I said of the family who ran the plant in my last articles, I say about this group of Orthodox misleaders, “They should be ashamed.”‘
“Some in the Orthodox community are calling for a more rigorous investigation. On July 30, one day before the Orthodox leaders visited the plant, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Washington’s Ohev Sholom — The National Synagogue, sent a letter to Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, which is the largest organization of Orthodox rabbis. Herzfeld demanded that the RCA commission “a transparent, independent investigation” into the charges against Agriprocessors.”
“We need a commission with incredible stature and with rabbis of great merit who can spend a few weeks or a month [in Postville] and can make recommendations,” Herzfeld told the Forward. Herzfeld, who is a member of the RCA, said that the recent trip to Postville was too short and that Agriprocessors’ sponsorship of the trip compromised the findings.”
Herring declined to comment on the letter specifically, saying that it was a private communication. He said that the RCA lacked the resources, expertise and powers to conduct an appropriate investigation into the allegations and that it made more sense to wait for federal investigations to run their course.”
Rabbi Herzfeldu wrote this week in an op/ed piece in the NY times,
“Unfortunately, the responses of the leading Orthodox organizations, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, have, in my opinion, fallen far short of what is needed to be done and have done little to diminish the extent of the desecration of God’s name. I am a member of both groups, but I am dissatisfied with their stance, which asks us to sit back patiently and wait for the results of a federal investigation. On some level, this might be prudent, but on another it is unacceptable.”
“Hebrew National (the folks who made the hot dogs, etc) used to run a commercial that said: “We answer to a Higher Authority.” Well, we do. We need to express shame and embarrassment about the reports coming out of Iowa, and we need to actively work to change these matters. Then we should ask ourselves if our behavior and our values need improvement. Only if we truly think about these issues will we truly be keeping kosher.”
Filed under: Real Estate, Uncategorized | Tags: Cooper City Florida, Hollywood Fl
http://www.crownheights.info/index.php?itemid=13123
This week, a federal jury found that Cooper City discriminated against Chabad of Nova in using zoning laws to run the synagogue out of the city’s business district. Jurors awarded the Orthodox Jewish group more than $300,000.
Just two years ago, Hollywood officials agreed to pay Chabad Lubavitch $2 million to settle a similar discrimination case.
You would think by now the word is out, and the lessons have been learned by other cities. Municipalities have enough worries these days without incurring avoidable litigation.
(below are the original articles I found when this all began)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cooper City challenged over Chabad: Cooper City may be the next Broward municipality embroiled in a fight over zoning rules and the right to religious expression
The Miami Herald
By Nikki Waller
Aug. 1, 2006–Less than a month after Hollywood paid $2 million to settle a suit with an Orthodox synagogue operating in a residential neighborhood, another fight over zoning and religious expression could be brewing in Broward County.
This time, a Cooper City rabbi is challenging that city’s zoning rules, which bar houses of worship from operating in commercial areas.
Rabbi Shmuel Posner has tried to open a Chabad outreach center at a storefront in a Griffin Road shopping center for more than a year, but he can’t get an occupational license from Cooper City. The city does not permit places of worship in commercial areas, meaning the city has no storefront churches or religious education centers near other businesses.
Posner, who briefly opened the center last year until it was closed down by city code enforcement, says he wants to negotiate with the city and open the center, which would cater to students at Nova Southeastern University.
LAWYER ENLISTED
In case that strategy fails, Posner has enlisted Franklin Zemel, the same attorney who fought the city of Hollywood on behalf of the Hollywood Community Synagogue Chabad Lubavitch, a suit that cost the city $2 million and is forcing leaders to rewrite the city’s zoning criteria for religious groups.
The steep price being paid by Hollywood could prove costly for other cities, which want to protect neighborhoods and tax revenue, but now must walk a finer line to accommodate the faithful.
In Hollywood, commissioners tried to prevent an Orthodox synagogue from operating in a residential area. The city and the synagogue settled the issue last month, after a fight that lasted nearly five years and strained relations between the city and members of its Orthodox community.
Cooper City’s stance is nearly the opposite of Hollywood’s. The city forbids religious institutions, which do not pay property taxes, from operating in commercial areas. It limits houses of worship to parcels with 300 feet or more of frontage, virtually relegating religious institutions to the city’s agriculturally zoned areas. Because the tax rates there are lower, the potential tax loss to the city is less.
Zemel has not yet agreed to take on Posner’s case, but believes Cooper City’s laws amount to discrimination against religious institutions.
“Does it make sense that you can have a Starbucks but not a house of worship?”Zemel said.
LETTER TO MAYOR
In a letter to Cooper City Mayor Debby Eisinger last week, Zemel wrote that the city’s codes violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal act that protects religious expression in land-use and zoning disputes.
“I certainly believe that our city’s codes are consistent and not discriminatory against any group, religious organization or business,” Eisinger said. “We will do what’s fair and equitable.”
City Attorney Alan Ruf said the city has hired outside counsel and has been working on the issue for more than a year.
With the new school year at NSU coming up, Posner says he doesn’t want a drawn-out legal fight.
“My lawyers told me I have the right to be there, we just have to work it out,” he said.
Posner’s challenge to city codes may not be the only legal side effect of the Hollywood settlement. Zemel said he has been inundated with calls from other religious groups around the country.
“I think this issue is going to be huge,” said Zemel of city codes and federal compliance. “It’s far more complicated than anybody realized.”
In Heated Meeting, Orthodox Activists Spar With Kosher Meat Company
The Forward
When two progressively minded Orthodox rabbinical students sat down last week at a Manhattan kosher dairy restaurant with four Lubavitch businessmen, radically different segments of the Orthodox world collided, and sparks flew.
The rabbinical students and a young rabbi who accompanied them were from Uri L’Tzedek, a liberal Orthodox activist group organizing a boycott of Agriprocessors, the country’s largest kosher meatpacking company. The businessmen were tied to that company, which has come under fire for alleged labor violations.
Last month’s government raid on the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, which had been employing hundreds of undocumented workers, created the unusual circumstances under which the meeting took place. Progressive Jewish groups had long criticized Agriprocessors for its treatment of employees and animals, but the raid precipitated the first significant outcry from within the Orthodox world — that is, from within the primary community that buys kosher meat.
Late last month, Uri L’Tzedek leaders released an open letter to Agriprocessors owner Aaron Rubashkin asking that the company obey all applicable labor laws and that it empower a third party to monitor its progress. It cited allegations that the plant has hired child labor, paid its workers below minimum wage and employed supervisors who mistreated employees.
The letter, whose 1,300 signatories included prominent Jewish leaders from a variety of different denominations and organizations, called for a boycott on Agriprocessors products, and on restaurants that sell those products, until demands for reform were met.
Uri L’Tzedek’s willingness to organize a boycott seems to have succeeded in persuading the often unreachable Agriprocessors leadership to sit down and talk. The meeting marked the first time since the raid that Agriprocessors has agreed to talk with any of the Jewish groups calling for reform at the plant.
In attendance on the Agriprocessors side were Menachem Lubinsky, a consultant to the company; David Oberman, director of operations and sales; Sholom Baer Minkowitz, a son-in-law of Aaron Rubashkin and director of New York operations, and another son-in-law, Milton Balkany, who has no official position within the company. Balkany, the first person affiliated with Agriprocessors to make contact with Uri L’Tzedek, is something of a public figure apart from his connection to the company. A prominent figure within the Brooklyn Lubavitch world, and a major Republican campaign donor, he made headlines in 2003 when he was charged by the federal government with embezzling $700,000 from an Orthodox girls’ school. After issuing an apology and making restitution, he was not prosecuted and remains dean of the school.
Shmuly Yanklowitz and Ari Hart, co-directors of Uri L’Tzedek and students at the Manhattan liberal Orthodox seminary Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, along with Jason Herman, a young pulpit rabbi, represented the organization.
According to both parties, the conversation was frequently acrimonious.
“They came in trying to intimidate us,” Yanklowitz said.
According to the rabbinical students, Balkany at one point made an ominous reference to “the last guy who went up against my father-in-law.” Balkany denies having made any sort of threat, maintaining that he had referred only to a business loss that a Rubashkin competitor had suffered.
In a conversation with the Forward, Balkany dismissed Uri L’Tzedek as being too far to the left for its positions to be relevant within the rest of the Orthodox community. Lubinsky invoked the Nuremberg Laws in his criticism of the calls for a boycott.
“As someone whose grandparents suffered greatly during the German boycotts, I don’t even like to hear that word,” Lubinsky said.
Lubinsky suggested that if company representatives had anticipated that Uri L’Tzedek would report to the media about the meeting, they would not have agreed to meet.
Whether anything will significantly change at Agriprocessors because of the meeting remains unclear. The company agreed to draft a document stipulating its workers’ rights policies and to send it to Uri L’Tzedek within 48 hours after the conversation. To date, the document has not arrived.
“There’s no reason to believe that substantive change is about to happen,” said Morris Allen, head of the Conservative movement’s Heksher Tzedek initiative, which spearheaded the efforts within the Jewish religious community to reform conditions at Agriprocessors but has not called for a boycott of the plant.
“We met with Agriprocessors extensively throughout fall and winter in 2006, and are still awaiting their response from the recommendations we made,” Allen added.
The Uri L’Tzedek representatives have been in touch with Jim Martin, a compliance officer the company hired earlier this month to monitor its workplace conditions. Martin is authorized to speak to the government about violations he finds in the plant, and Uri L’Tzedek hopes he will be authorized to report to the public, as well.
The activists said they were still optimistic.
“This is a good opportunity to restore the faith that has been lost in the Agriprocessors product,” Hart said. Lubinsky was less certain.
“I think this was a one-time dialogue,” he said.
Filed under: Iowa Slaughter House | Tags: Aaron Rubashkin, Aaron's Best, Aaron's Choice, agriprocessors, Menachem Lubinsky, Sholom Rubashkin
After Iowa Raid, Immigrants Fuel Labor Inquiries
Published: July 27, 2008
New York Times
POSTVILLE, Iowa — When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.
Stephen Mally for The New York Times
Gilda O. says she worked the night shift at the Agriprocessors plant, even though she is only 16.
Audio interviews with three young immigrants who worked at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa:
Stephen Mally for The New York Times
Elmer L., right, and an older brother were arrested in a May raid at the plant, in Postville, Iowa.
Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week.
One, a Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.”
At first, labor officials said the raid had disrupted federal and state investigations already under way at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher plant. The raid has drawn criticism for what some see as harsh tactics against the immigrants, with little action taken against their employers.
But in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.
Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant. They have told investigators that they were routinely put to work without safety training and were forced to work long shifts without overtime or rest time. Under-age workers said their bosses knew how young they were.
Because of the dangers of the work, it is illegal in Iowa for a company to employ anyone under 18 on the floor of a meatpacking plant.
In a statement, Agriprocessors said it did not employ workers under 18, and would fire any under-age worker found to have presented false documents to obtain work.
To investigate the child labor accusations, the federal Labor Department has joined with the Iowa Division of Labor Services in cooperation with the state attorney general’s office, officials for the three agencies said.
Sonia Parras Konrad, an immigration lawyer in private practice in Des Moines, is representing many of the young workers. She said she had so far identified 27 workers under 18 who were employed in the packing areas of the plant, most of them illegal immigrants from Guatemala, including some who were not arrested in the raid.
“Some of these boys don’t even shave,” Ms. Parras Konrad said. “They’re goofy. They’re teenagers.”
At a meeting here Saturday, three members of the House Hispanic Caucus — including its chairman, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois — heard seven immigrant minors describe working in the Agriprocessors plant.
Iowa labor officials said they rarely encounter child labor cases even though the state has many meatpacking plants.
“We don’t normally have many under-age folks working in our state,” said Gail Sheridan-Lucht, a lawyer for the state labor department, who said she could not comment specifically on the Agriprocessors investigation.
Other investigations are also under way. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is examining accusations of sexual harassment of women at the plant. Lawyers for the immigrants are preparing a suit under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act for wage and hour violations.
Federal justice and immigration officials, speaking on Thursday at a hearing in Washington of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee, said their investigations were continuing. A federal grand jury in Cedar Rapids is hearing evidence.
While federal prosecutors are primarily focusing on immigration charges, they may also be looking into labor violations. Search warrant documents filed in court before the raid, which was May 12, cited a report by an anonymous immigrant who was sent to work in the plant by immigration authorities as an undercover informant. The immigrant saw “a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees.” Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards.
In another episode, the informant said a floor supervisor had blindfolded an immigrant with duct tape. “The floor supervisor then took one of the meat hooks and hit the Guatemalan with it,” the informant said, adding that the blow did not cause “serious injuries.”
Audio interviews with three young immigrants who worked at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa:
So far, 297 illegal immigrants from the May raid have been convicted of document fraud and other criminal charges, and most were sentenced to five months in prison, after which they will be deported.
A spokesman for Agriprocessors, Menachem Lubinsky, said the company could not comment on an active investigation.
“The company has two objectives in mind: to restore its production to meet the demands of the kosher food market and to be in full compliance with all local, state and federal laws,” Mr. Lubinsky said. Reports of labor violations at the plant “remain allegations only, that no agency has charged the company with,” he said.
The Agriprocessors kosher plant here has been owned and operated since 1987 by Aaron Rubashkin and his family. His son Sholom was the plant’s top manager until he was removed by his father in May after the raid. The plant’s products are distributed across the country under brands including Aaron’s Best and Aaron’s Choice.
Most of the young immigrants were hired at Agriprocessors after they presented false Social Security cards or other documents saying they were older than they were.
But in an interview here, Elmer L. said he had told floor supervisors that he was under 18. He asked that his last name not be published on advice of his lawyer, Ms. Parras Konrad, because he is a minor in deportation proceedings.
“They asked me how old I was,” Elmer L. said. “They could see that sometimes I could not keep up with the work.”
Elmer L. said that he regularly worked 17 hours a day at the plant and was paid $7.25 an hour. He said he was not paid overtime consistently.
“My work was very hard, because they didn’t give me my breaks, and I wasn’t getting very much sleep,” he said. “They told us they were going to call immigration if we complained.”
Elmer L. said that he was clearing cow innards from the slaughter floor last Aug. 26 when a supervisor he described as a rabbi began yelling at him, then kicked him from behind. The blow caused a freshly-sharpened knife to fly up and cut his elbow.
He was sent to a hospital where doctors closed the laceration with eight stitches. But he said that when he returned, his elbow still stinging, to ask for some time off, his supervisor ordered him back to work.
The next day, as he was lifting a cow’s tongue, the stitches ruptured, Elmer L. said, and the wound bled again. He said he was given a bandage at the plant and sent back to work. The incident is confirmed in a worker’s injury report filed on Aug. 31, 2007, by Agriprocessors with the Iowa labor department.
Gilda O., a Guatemalan who said she was 16, said she worked the night shift plucking chickens. She said she was working to help her parents pay off debts.
Another Guatemalan, Joel R., who gave his age as 15, said he dropped out of school in Postville after the eighth grade and took a job at Agriprocessors because his mother became ill. He said he worked from 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m. in a section called “quality control,” a job he described as relatively easy that he got because he speaks English.
But he said he and other workers were under constant pressure from supervisors. “They yell at us when we don’t hurry up, when we don’t work fast enough for them,” said Joel R. He and Gilda O. did not want their last names published because they are illegal immigrants and they were not arrested in the raid.
Most of the young immigrants have been released from detention but remain in deportation proceedings. Ms. Parras Konrad said she will ask immigration authorities to grant them special four-year temporary visas, known as U visas, which are offered to immigrants who assist in law enforcement investigations. Iowa labor officials are considering supporting some of those requests, Ms. Sheridan-Lucht said.
Agriprocessors executives said they had begun an overhaul of hiring and labor practices, starting with hiring a compliance officer, James G. Martin, a former United States attorney in Missouri. In an interview, Mr. Martin said the company had contracted with an outside firm, the Jacobson Staffing Company, to handle its hiring, and new safety officers, including one former federal work safety inspector.
Mark Lauritsen, a vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to organize the plant, said he remained skeptical. “They are the poster child for how a rogue company can exploit a broken immigration system,” Mr. Lauritsen said.
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2008/07/agriprocessor-3.html
Make sure to go over to The New York Times site and listen to the audio interviews with these kids. Hear them talk about being extorted by Agriprocessors, forced to work long overtime hours without overtime pay and breaks, told that, if they complained, Agriprocessors would turn them over to Immigration police.
This is slavery, pure and simple.
Now ask yourself: Was your glatt kosher rib steak or Shabbos chicken worth this?
Also remember Rubashkin’s rabbis were there on site, “inspecting,” through all of this. In some cases, it was those very rabbis apparently committing crimes.
Think about that the next time you see an OU, Supreme Kosher, Crown Heights Beis Din, KAJ, UMK, or other Rubashkin-related hechsher on a product. Then buy something else.
Escape From the Holy Shtetl
Gitty Grunwald fled the pious world of her mother to return to the secular city of her grandparents. There’s only one problem: The Satmars kept her daughter. A family saga of four generations of American Jews.
New York Magazine By Mark Jacobson
- Published Jul 13, 2008
|
|
|
Gitty and Esther Miriam eating a meal—tuna salad and toast—at Gitty’s mother’s house. (Photo: Clémence de Limburg) |
A more typical American scene would be hard to imagine: a young mother and her daughter in Wal-Mart. Yet as she pushed the shopping cart with the 4-year-old Esther Miriam sitting, princesslike, in the child’s seat, Sterna Gittel Grunwald (call her Gitty), her five-one frame nicely defined in snug black jeans and white cotton shirt, kept an eye out for spies.
The Satmar Hasidim from Kiryas Joel, the Catskill village where the now-23-year-old Gitty grew up, only came to Wal-Mart for the big sales. There was something about the store’s dizzying display of cheesy American choice that made the townspeople nervous, Gitty thought. But still, in KJ, you could never be too paranoid.
Once, when Esther Miriam was a baby, Gitty took her for a walk. “A guy looked into the carriage,” Gitty recalls. “He said how cute Esther Miriam was and went on his way.
See Also
Slideshow: Gitty’s World
“It was nice. But then these three minivans come tearing down the street. Hasids jump out and surround me, screaming, ‘Who was that guy? What did he want?’ ”
It was the Vaad Hatznius, Kiryas Joel’s “moral police,” whom Gitty refers to as “those stupid Talibans.” Mostly, the Vaads write down the license plates of people who drive on Shabbos and note which women enter the Landau supermarket with their legs insufficiently covered. But if someone ratted on you, the Vaads might come to your house to see if you were watching porn on that DVD hidden under the bed. In Kiryas Joel, Gitty says, they think there’s no reason to have a DVD except to watch porn.
“They call it the holy shtetl,” Gitty said, rolling her matchless pale-green eyes as she talks about her former hometown, where the streets are named for famous rabbis and European Hasidic settlements. When KJ was founded in 1977 by the Satmar grand rebbe Joel Teitelbaum—Kiryas Joel means Joel’s Village in Yiddish—holiness was the goal. Like Moses before him, Rebbe Teitelbaum had led the Satmars from the shadow of Auschwitz to the Williamsburg promised land, where they thrived, becoming the largest Hasidic sect in the world.
But Williamsburg could be noisy and cruel, with the thrum of the BQE and Puerto Ricans on the street. Kiryas Joel, an incorporated village within the town of Monroe 50 miles up the Thruway, would be a sanctuary. In Kiryas Joel, a Jew could live as he did in eighteenth-century Europe, where the great sage the Baal Shem Tov first articulated the mystic, ecstatic path to G-d that would evolve into modern-day Hasidism. Here, a scholar could think of nothing but Torah amid the bounty of Creation.
Only 3 when her mother, Deborah, a former hippie and the child of secular New York Jews, first came to KJ as a bal tshuva, or Jew returning to orthodoxy, Gitty would reach her late teens before she realized she was living in perhaps the most religiously conservative community in America. “In my parents’ house, there’s no TV, no radio, no newspapers not in Yiddish, no Internet,” Gitty says. “We weren’t supposed to pay any attention to the outside world.” Indeed, even today, a year and a half after fleeing KJ, in one short conversation, Gitty evidenced unfamiliarity with Che Guevara, Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Dolly Parton, and Keith Richards.
It was only after her arranged marriage, at age 17, to Joel—nicknamed Yoely—Grunwald, another Kiryas Joel teenager, who would become Esther Miriam’s father, that Gitty knew “I couldn’t live in KJ anymore, that I didn’t want to be one of those women who pop out babies every eighteen months and think whatever their husbands tell them to … When Esther Miriam was born, that raised the stakes, because now there were two of us. Two KJ girls.”
In early 2007, Gitty fled Kiryas Joel for good, taking Esther Miriam with her. At first, they lived in the relatively relaxed frum (Orthodox) community of Monsey, New York, then moved to Brooklyn. “It was just the two of us. I loved it,” Gitty says. Then in January of this year, as Esther Miriam was walked with her class to a Flatbush playground, she was taken, says Gitty, who believes her husband was behind the act.
“Some KJ guys snatched her off the street. Esther Miriam said they were wearing masks. All she remembers was crying, crying so hard,” Gitty says, calling it the worst day of her life. “When they told me what happened, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was being suffocated. I still do.”
Since then, Esther Miriam has been in KJ, at times in the house of Yoely’s parents, as Gitty works through the courts, both secular and rabbinical, to try to regain custody of her daughter. For the time being, Gitty says, “Yoely calls the shots, when I can see my daughter and where.” That’s why Gitty was nervous taking Esther Miriam to Wal-Mart. Yoely had decreed the store off-limits.
(To read on go to )
