(St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee members and civil rights activist Percy Green at St. Louis City Hall, protesting Veolia’s involvement in apartheid and segregation in Palestine. Photo: St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee)
On January 16, 2013 at City Hall in St. Louis, Missouri, a diverse group of 60 Palestinian rights organizers; environmental activists; workers; civil rights leaders; veterans; local business owners; students; members of the local Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities; and other concerned citizens packed a meeting of the St. Louis Board of Estimate & Apportionment (E&A) to show opposition to a proposed city contract with Veolia Water. Two mayoral candidates on the 3-person board, which considers public contracts, took opposite sides over the contract, prompting the third member to call for a public hearing for testimonies from local citizens regarding Veolia.
Contract opponents lined the halls leading to the mayor’s office, citing Veolia’s abysmal record of poor environmental standards, labor abuses and involvement in human rights abuses in Palestine. Each held a sign stating “Say No to Veolia” followed by their personal reasons, which included: “I can’t ride their buses because I am Palestinian,” “I think all people deserve equal treatment,” “My tax dollars are not for corporate profit,” “They don’t have to drink our water,” “I love coffee.” The mayor’s office had to change the meeting venue at the last minute to accommodate the large public turnout. [Click here for photos.]
The St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) learned of the proposed $250,000 Veolia contract for a four-month consultation for the St. Louis Water Division in December 2012 after the story was leaked to the Riverfront Times. When the contract came up for approval, PSC organized in less than 24 hours a grassroots effort to tell the E&A Board, which is comprised of St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay, Comptroller Darlene Green and President of the Board of Aldermen Lewis Reed (running for mayor against Slay), not to approve the contract without investigating Veolia’s record. At the December 19, 2012 meeting of the Board, the Board agreed they could not in good conscience vote to approve a contract with so many allegations outstanding.
Immediately, the PSC reached out to diverse communities to join the fight against Veolia, all under the coalition St. Louis Dump Veolia.
The contract was reintroduced last-minute to the January agenda by Mayor Slay, the contract’s chief proponent. Slay had received a trophy and award check for $15,000 from the President of Veolia Water in 2007, on behalf of the City. Following mass mobilization by the coalition, Mayor Slay decided one day before the January meeting to remove the contract from the agenda, delaying the vote for a second month.
In the presence of an uncharacteristically large audience and media presence, the two mayoral candidates Slay and Reed came head-to-head in tense disputes regarding agenda items, transforming the meeting into what some coined an “ad-hoc mayoral debate.” President Reed ended by praising the public showing and affirming his opposition to the Veolia contract, while Slay stressed that the public had misconceptions about the company.
Comptroller Green, who holds the deciding vote, said she hoped the public’s voices could be heard and asked for a public hearing. The PSC delivered and posted letters to Comptroller Green asking her to reject Veolia from the Palestinian Freedom Riders, Boycott from Within and the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem.
Veolia has been a major focus of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian freedom and equality. The St. Louis campaign against Veolia may be the first time that a BDS campaign has entered mainstream political discourse and, perhaps, a mayoral race. Media coverage in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Riverfront Times and St. Louis Public Radio acknowledge that Veolia’s contracts in Israel/Palestine have been instrumental in bringing the controversy out in the open.
The nationwide We Divest campaign targets Veolia for divestment from the holdings of financial services giant, TIAA-CREF. St. Louis-area resident and PSC member, Steve Tamari, is the lead filer for a nationwide, broad-based shareholders’ resolution calling for divestment from Veolia and other companies that profit from Israel’s human rights abuses. Individuals holding a CREF account are encouraged to sign on to the shareholders’ resolution and to vote in support of the resolution before or at the July 2013 annual meeting.
St. Louis Dump Veolia is committed to keeping up the pressure on City Hall until the Veolia contract is rejected once and for all. The PSC will be mobilizing residents to testify at the hearing, putting the Israeli occupation, and its corporate enablers, on trial for all to see.
The next E&A meeting will occur on Wednesday, February 20 at 2pm in St. Louis City Hall.
To follow developments and action items on the campaign, join the St. Louis Dump Veolia and Palestine Solidarity Committee Facebook pages, and follow @stlpsc on Twitter.
Here in the UK, councils have the discretion to exclude from a public contract companies where it is found that the organization has committed grave misconduct in the course of its business, Violia have been excluded from several contracts, notably some large ones in London Boroughs for these and other crimes of inter alia, being a partner in the Jerusalem light rail project. In April 2010 the UN Human Rights Council declared the tramway and its operation to be illegal (A/HRC/RES/13/7 of 14 April 2010). The resolution was passed 44 to 1, with the UK, France and all the EU members of the Council voting in favour. The operation of the tramway is precisely what Veolia has a contract to do.
Veolia is recruiting operators for the tramway through an advertisement requiring Hebrew to mother tongue standard, no mention of Arabic, a clear indication that the tramway is expected to be used primarily by Jewish Israelis, not Palestinians. Full army or civic service is also required, i.e. no Palestinians.
Thus, through its involvement in the building and future operation of this tramway linking Israel’s illegal settlements with West Jerusalem, Veolia is facilitating Israel’s ‘grave breaches’ of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and is complicit in its perpetuation of those breaches. In other words, Veolia is involved in aiding and abetting on-going war crimes. It is also facilitating, exacerbating, aiding and abetting Israel’s breach of the Hague Regulations. I wonder if St Louis have similar provisions in their contractual relations with such organizations?
It’s more than just BDS that will bring them out about Veolia. Watch Blue Gold – World Water Wars. It’s amazing how many of these transnationals have taken over the the public water supplies and reservoirs of cities and municipalities here in the USA. Cities and municipalities lose valuable workers who know how to fix the problems; these private corps cut back on proper maintenance to increase their profit margins; and some are draining the watertable for bottled water that they resell to the community, and abroad:
http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com
And here’s the counter-point. Rapper Lupe Fiasco raps about Gaza and Obama’s silence. He gets thrown off-stage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i1t6PyaClBI#!
We still got work to do. And this says a lot about the democratic impulses of Obama.
One has to also wonder how while Veolia is being put through this hassle in cities in the US and the UK, it can still operate on hassle-free contracts in almost every Arab country stretching from North Africa to the Gulf states; contracts in the billions for transport systems, desalination and electricity generating plants and waste management.
Veolia is a major polutter on the West Bank dumping there 200,000 tonnes of garbage yearly from Israel proper along with the waste from the WB settlements:
“… Close to Jericho in the illegally occupied Jordan valley, north of Yafit settlement, by Tirza Reservoir, the Samaria Towns Environmental Association manage the 33-hectare Tovlan waste-disposal site. A Veolia Environmental Services Israel subsidiary,
TMM Integrated Recycling Services, operate Tovlan and pay royalties to Jordan Valley Regional Council. Tovlan has operated since the 1990s as a private business, without a plan approved by the regional council, or infrastructure to prevent ground pollution
and emission of greenhouse gases, or a rehabilitation plan. In 2004, the Towns Association upgraded Tovlan and enlarged its capacity to 1000 tons of refuse a day.
The landfill was established in 1999 on land ethnically cleansed of Palestinians in 1967. The site is managed by the Israeli settlement regional council of Biqat Hayarden, which covers 21 illegal settlements, and the land is leased from the occupier:
Currently, the site is used only by Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea area, large settlements such as Ari’el, and the Barkan industrial area (illegal Settlement Industrial Zone).
Over 200,000 tonnes per annum from Israel alone is dumped along with waste from illegal settlements in the Jordan Valley. Some hazardous waste appears to arrive from hospitals inside Israel for incineration. Tovlan’s settlement sewage water plant generates electricity using extracted methane gas. The energy is used exclusively by the settlements whilst noxious smells and flies make the nearby impoverished Palestinian village of Abu Ajaj virtually uninhabitable, especially in summer. Tovlan’s Palestinian workers earn £13.35 a day, are not provided with any safety clothing or equipment but risk accidents and the dangers of gas explosions. There’s no union. Two Veolia subsidiaries, TMM – Integrated Recycling Services and YARV Sherutei Noy 1985, are amongst the companies authorised to transfer waste to Tovlan.”
http://www.labournet.net/other/1202/veolia.pdf
Inspiring St Louis. The movement has become far more diverse the last five years.