Commentary: Biting Into a Smithfield Tar Heel Ham This Holiday Season? Someone Wants You to Think TwiceDate: Thursday, December 21, 2006
By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com


Should Americans boycott products processed at the Smithfield Packing Co. plant in Tar Heel, N.C.? Leila McDowell thinks you should. Before you bite into that holiday ham, McDowell wants you to consider if was packed by what she calls “abused workers” at the Smithfield Tar Heel plant.

You’ve met McDowell before. I wrote about her in this column during the summer about the situation of Smithfield’s Tar Heel workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are black and Latino. Since April, McDowell has served as the communications coordinator of the Smithfield campaign for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

McDowell could be the multi-tasking poster lady of 2006. In addition to her UFCW work, she’s a media consultant for the Washington, D.C.-based Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, where she worked as the director of communications from 2000 to 2002. McDowell also works as a media consultant for the Venezuelan embassy.

“I work with (embassy personnel) on trying to get information out to the American people about what’s really going on in Venezuela, because there’s so many inaccuracies out there,” McDowell said (You may have correctly surmised that she supports the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.).