Deb Howze

Template:TOCnestleft Deb Howze is a Minnesota activist. She is a resident of St. Paul and has been a home care worker for more than 20 years. She sits on The Governor’s Council on an Age-Friendly Minnesota and is a member leader of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota.

Protesting Condoleezza Rice

Christopher Getowicz April 18, 2014 Minneapolis, MN - Hundreds of students and community members gathered outside of Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota (U of M), on the evening of April 17, to protest an appearance by Bush White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Rice was speaking as an invited guest of the University’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

The crowd of over 250 protesters, led by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), heard speakers including professors David Pellow and August Nimtz, AFSCME 3800 President Cherrene Horazuk, Welfare Rights Committee member Deb Howze, Anti-War Committee member Sabry Wazwaz and representatives from other student groups such as Whose Diversity and Students for Justice in Palestine.

Speaking to the rally, Stephanie Taylor of SDS stated, “Condoleezza is advocating for the erasure of history and the covering up of crimes committed.” Sociology Professor David Pellow spoke about how Rice’s ‘humanitarian’ work was done in places like Iraq with F-16 jets.

Professor August Nimtz stated, “Hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of others” could have spoken to the “narrative about how a particular black family coped with, and refused to be broken by, that system” of white supremacy in the Jim Crow south. Nimtz himself grew up in the Jim Crow south in New Orleans and highlighted the fact that Rice was “missing in action” while some “90% of her cohorts made the decisive contributions for the victory, the Children’s Crusade, when the masses took to the streets.” Nimtz also highlighted her absence from struggles against apartheid in South Africa.

2013 May Day celebration

More than 50 people gathered Minneapolis May 3 2013 for a celebration to mark International Workers Day. The event was organized by Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!. In a festively decorated hall, the celebration began with a dinner and slide show that highlighted the struggles of the past year.

Deb Howze, of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!, welcoming audience.Jess Sundin, a Twin Cities leader of FRSO, gave the opening speech. “This day, International Workers Day, is celebrated by the working class in every corner of the world. This great holiday, a communist holiday, is marked with protests and marches, and also with meetings and celebrations. It’s been more than 125 years since May Day began, and struggles by U.S. workers and our unions have won the eight-hour work day, the 40-hour work week, health and safety rules at work, the right to unionization, unemployment insurance, welfare and Social Security, minimum wage and much more. These things are threatened in workplaces and government halls every day.”

This year’s May Day celebration had a strong emphasis on the employed and unemployed sections of the working class. Mark Froemke, the president of West/Red River Valley Area Labor Council, talked about the heroic struggle waged by the workers who had been locked out at Crystal Sugar. More than $400 was raised for their support.

Joe Burns, author of an important book on the way forward for the labor movement, Reviving the Strike, talked about the key elements of class struggle unionism. Cherrene Horazuk, president of AFSCME Local 3800, spoke about attacks on public employees and the need for resistance. Angel Buechner and Ebony Harris of the Welfare Rights Committee gave a riveting account of the fight to raise public assistance grants.

Francisco Segovia of Mesa Latina, and a key organizer of the 1000-plus Saint Paul May 1 immigrant rights march, spoke on the need to fight for demands of the undocumented.

Other speakers included leaders of the Anti-War Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Acton Committee.

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