Friends of the Earth Action


Tom DeLay Discusses Critical Issues
The Nation, November 15, 1999 Now we have it--the answer to the problem of youth violence. Majority top gun Tom DeLay says, "Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence" (presumably those unfortunate students at Columbine High had bad falls). The causes of youth violence, says DeLay, are daycare, the teaching of evolution, and "working mothers who take birth control pills."

Dallas Observer, February 19-25, 1998
"I didn't see anyone sweating," DeLay said reportedly with a laugh.
Yin entered a world of 18 hour workdays and payless paydays. Her wages shrunk to almost nothing after her employer deducted charges for room, board, and transportation. Those rare times she wasn't at the factory, she lived in a tiny room shared with 15 other women in a barracks guarded by men and surrounded by a barbed-wire fence...Yin had no option of quitting. Tied to specific employers, Saipan's "guest workers" don't have the liberty to shop around for another job....
"She'd tell me she worked many hours...She was so tired, she'd start crying. Sometimes they [the garment shop's managers] would forget to feed them."
DeLay was so taken with the Saipan way of doing business...He suggested the United States institute a similar "guest worker" program "where particular companies can bring Mexican workers in "to fill jobs that Americans won't take, paid at "whatever wage the market will bear."

Salon Magazine and writer Jeff Stein, Feb. 4, 1999
"I am very tired," wrote Li Zhen Hua, a 29-year-old Chinese woman in a letter to a friend obtained by the weekly Dallas Observer. "I want to go back to my country but I can't because we must keep [sic] two years ... Very busy. So hard. Every day work up to 1:30. I've to work on Sunday. Too much to respond to your letters."...
Enter Tom DeLay and his Texas Republican sidekick, Dick Armey. When the Clinton administration sought to yank Saipan's factories into the 20th century in 1994, requiring the workers be paid a minimum wage, overtime and their living conditions improved, the island government hired a platoon of well-connected Washington lobbyists, headed by former DeLay aide Jack Abramoff, to block the plan. Abramoff, in turn, personally or through his family, contributed $18,000 to DeLay's campaign coffers. So far, the island government has paid the firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds $4 million for their efforts, records show. They also treated DeLay and Armey to trips to the island, where they played golf, snorkled and made whirlwind visits to factories especially spiffed up for the occasion, according to several accounts...
"Even though I have only been here for 24 hours, I have witnessed the economic success of the Marianas," DeLay told a banquet crowd...
"A free market success," DeLay calls Saipan's indentured worker system. If the Republicans take a drubbing at the polls in 2000, however, DeLay shouldn't be surprised if vengeance is in the air, even from his fellow Texas fat cats. Scores of textile plants in cities like El Paso and Dallas have had to shutter their doors in the face of cutthroat competition from companies like those in Saipan.

Houston Press, Melissa Hung
Carmencita Abad says six years in the brutal conditions of a Saipan sweatshop still left her unprepared for the reception she got in another place: Representative Tom DeLay's Stafford office.
Abad, a garment worker-turned-human rights activist, arrived at the office on August 9 with Bob Buzzanco, a University of Houston history professor, and two Austin activists. She says she had an appointment with DeLay aide Ann Swisher to talk about the virtual indentured servitude of her former co-workers on the Pacific island of Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth.
Abad came to Texas as part of a campaign to rally for legislation intended to end dangerous job conditions and substandard wages for the largely Asian female workforce.
The native Filipina was told by the receptionist that the meeting was canceled. Surprised, Abad called Medea Benjamin, who helped arrange the appointment. She is director of the San Francisco-based Global Exchange watchdog group that sponsors Abad's U.S. talks and protests. Benjamin told them to stay put until the group could clear up the misunderstanding.
But the only meeting the visitors got was with two plainclothes police officers. The cops arrived asking to see their driver's licenses, alleging they had refused to leave the office. "No one had ever asked us to leave, though," Buzzanco says. Escorting them to the parking lot, the officers copied down their license plate numbers.
"They said they would arrest us if we didn't leave. They kicked us out like animals," Abad says.
DeLay press secretary Michael Scanlon says the visitors were belligerent. As it turned out, Swisher had called Global Exchange earlier that day. The group says she only left a message with someone not involved with the Saipan campaign, although Scanlon says she notified them of the cancellation.
Scanlon dismisses the incident as a "public relations gimmick" by Global Exchange. Swisher, he says, canceled on instructions from Washington. "She did not know they were part of a liberal, radical group, not a legitimate organization."
But Abad is plenty legitimate, Benjamin says. "Here is this woman who spent six years in terrible conditions at a place where [DeLay] went to play golf Š. We're not naive in that we think we're going to change his mind. But we think it's important for him to hear a voice about Saipan that's different."
The House Majority Whip doesn't seem to want to listen. "We believe the people of Saipan are bright, hardworking people who should have every advantage for success," Scanlon says vaguely. DeLay opposes legislation that would set minimum wages, require tariffs on exports and ban manufacturers from using the coveted "Made in the USA" labels. Such measures would "strangle the free-market economy," Scanlon says.
Benjamin has requested an apology to Abad from DeLay's office for abruptly canceling and refusing to listen to opposing opinions.
DeLay's camp says it should be the other way around. "They should be giving an apology to the people of the 22nd District of Texas for the loss of time of the office staff who could have been working on substantive issues," Scanlon says.