Solidarity & Defense

The S&D site will be updated soon

2010-09-15T10:31:00.002-04:00

We have underutilized this media site and have been inconsistent with news, article and updates.

We are going to revamp the web page so that anyone finding us here or looking for material wont wonder if we really exist.

We do exist and we have been busy!

So check back in mid-October and you will find a new look.

National Days of Action Against Racism & Fascism

2010-07-20T00:08:00.001-04:00

Monday August 2nd

5-6pm
Protest & Picket Against
SB 1070 Copy Cat
Legislation in Michigan
Capital Building
Lansing, MI - Corner of Michigan & Capitol

The State of Arizona recently passed Bill SB 1070, which tasks local police departments with asking for proof of residency if they have reasonable cause to suspect someone is an undocumented immigrant. What this really means is that you will be asked for papers if you are brown or have an accent.. This is racial profiling, and a copy cat version of this legislation has been introduced in Michigan by Representative Kim Meltzer. This threat to working people in Michigan cannot go unanswered and will not be ignored. Join us in Protesting this Racist Legislation!

National Days of Action Against Racism & Fascism

2010-07-18T23:53:00.001-04:00

Saturday July 31st

2-5pm
Anti Fascist BBQ & Concert
w DJ Ruckus, P.h.I.l.t.h.y., The Amature,
J Young the General & Guests
@NorthStar 106 Lathrop St. Lansing, MI 48912

Please Join us for a day of food and music celebrating anti-racist and anti-fascist organizing. Explicitly neo-nazi and fascist activity has exploded in Michigan in the last few years and is positioning itself within the anti-immigrant and tea party activities. They cannot be ignored and should be confronted wherever they appear. This concert and BBQ will be highlighting past local struggles against fascists and racists. It will also continue conversations on how we can confront and defeat the fascists & racists active in Michigan. Food will be provided but feel free to bring a dish to pass. No Alcohol.

I.C.E. Raids in Lansing, Michigan

2010-06-30T10:39:00.002-04:00

****************please forward****************

ICE Arrests Tonight In Lansing, Michigan 6-29-10

As of 10pm on Tuesday 6-29-10, it has been confirmed from a reliable source that at least one person has been picked up in Lansing, Michigan by (ICE) Immigration Customs Enforcement. It is unknown where there are now or what it was for but they are being detained by ICE.

There may be more arrests that have happened, anyone with reliable and trusted information about other arrests should be in contact: nhiin.lansing@gmail.com

It is unclear if further arrests will happen. if you know anyone that may find this information useful, please contact them immediately. This is a time for us all to be as calm as possible and to do what we can. We should also base things we say or email to other people on what we know and not on hunches or rumors. We are not trying to cause panic with this email but to get the word out. When we know more, so will you.

Update:

It appears that three workers were snatched by ICE while at their worksite. More soon…

Oakland and Los Angeles group, Raider Nation. Message on the Struggle for Justice and Against the Police Murder of Oscar Grant

2010-06-30T09:57:00.008-04:00

COMMUNIQUÉ: MANSLAUGHTER IS NOT ENOUGH! IT’S MURDER OR NOTHING!

The most likely outcome of the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the BART cop who murdered Oscar Grant on the morning of January 1st 2009, is a manslaughter conviction. Why is this likely? Because convicting Mehserle of manslaughter is the best way for the state to protect itself by sacrificing one of its own. To the police, manslaughter simply means: be careful when you kill. To the people, manslaughter means: you got a conviction, what more do you want? Or in other words: don’t riot, don’t rebel, no public outcry necessary.

On the other hand, a murder conviction would not be tolerated by the police and their unions, and even the most opportunistic of political leaders see a murder conviction as tying their hands in the future: they need the police, and police need to be able to kill.

Not that it matters what the state or its leaders think about murder: white supremacy and cop culture will ensure that Mehserle won’t get what's coming to him. We have already seen both in the disgusting jury selection process, which yielded a jury which includes three relatives of police officers but not one single Black person. And Michael Rains feeds on this, deploying an ingenious out-of-court strategy of defaming Oscar Grant and manipulating public opinion by leaking selective information to the press—a press which eats it up like an organic delicacy.

And if Mehserle is convicted of manslaughter, the arguments being put forward in his defense suggest that this will not even be “voluntary” manslaughter. Rather, it will be “involuntary,” allegedly the result of a tragic mistake of judgment, where a 9-pound Sig is mistaken for a 3-pound Taser.

Involuntary manslaughter in California carries a determinate sentence ranging from 2 to four years. Mehserle’s race, his former profession, the teary-eyed stories of his youth, and his lack of a criminal record, will all be presented to guarantee the lowest possible sentence (and we wouldn't want to guarantee that will even be as much as 2 years).

2 short years for cold-blooded murder of Oscar Grant.

2 short years for permanently traumatizing Grant's friends who witnessed the murder.

2 short years of taking one for the team and ensuring that the genocidal system of policing and imprisonment in California can go unchecked, unrestricted, unquestioned.

For Mehserle’s 2 short years we have 2 short words: FUCK THAT.

We fully expect and hope that Oakland will respond to a manslaughter conviction as it would respond to an acquittal: with an expression of creative rage that transforms our political landscape beyond all possible recognition.

With love and rage, we’ll see you in the streets,

RAIDER NATION COLLECTIVE, Oakland and Los Angeles

Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 3906 Stands in Solidarity with the Detained G20 Protesters

2010-06-30T09:54:00.001-04:00

I am writing on behalf of CUPE 3906, representing over 3000 academic
workers at McMaster University, to condemn the arrest, detention and
abuse of 900 G20 protesters.

Reports from the Movement Defense Committee?s Summit Legal Support
Project indicate that protesters are given incorrect information about
the bail process and denied timely access to counsel and release.
Meanwhile, those peacefully protesting the detention are subject to
police assault and illegal detention.

G20 Protesters are standing up for values of justice, equality, and
rights for working class people, indigenous people and the
environment. The unprecedented, violent response of the Harper
government, the Toronto Police, and the Integrated Security Unit marks
an attack on all of our democratic rights. It is a clear program of
intimidation, silencing and assault on people of conscience who oppose
the neoliberal agenda of the G20 leaders.

CUPE 3906 calls upon the government to ensure that courts and crown
attorneys act to enforce constitutional rights, to end of the program
of police violence and intimidation against G20 protesters and their
families and to hold accountable those officers and elected officials
responsible for this attack on democracy.

CUPE 3906 stands in solidarity with the detained G20 protesters in
their fight for release, fair representation, and justice.

In solidarity,
Mary Ellen Campbell
President, CUPE 3906
http://www.cupe3906.org/archives/1547

All Out Against Police Brutality and in Solidarity with the Toronto 900!

2010-06-30T09:51:00.001-04:00

All out against police brutality and in solidarity with the Toronto 900!
A protest outside police headquarters in every city!

June 30, 2010 in Hamilton
5:00pm at Hamilton Police Headquarters
155 King William Street

June 30, 2010 in Ottawa
5:30pm at Ottawa Police Headquarters
474 Elgin Street

June 30, 2010 in London
6:00 pm at London Police Headquarters
601 Dundas St (Dundas and Adelaide)

June 30, 2010 in Windsor
6:00pm at Windsor Police Headquarters
150 Goyeau Street

THURSDAY, JULY 1st, NOON in MONTREAL (organized by CLAC)
*** new starting point: Square St-Louis ***
(St-Denis & Rue du Square St-Louis, métro Sherbrooke)

July 1, Toronto (organized by CAPP)
5:30 - Queens Park (in front of the legislature)

The events of the past week in Toronto have been unprecedented in Canadian history. Over 900 people were arrested, the biggest mass arrests ever in Canada, for daring to protest against the destructive policies of the G20.

Protesters and local residents were subjected to violent baton attacks, snatch squads, tear gas and rubber bullets. Sleeping people have been pulled from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night. Many have been beaten. People who have been arrested have been strip-searched and held in cages, facing long delays in obtaining legal support. We have heard numerous accounts of sexual abuse by police from women who were arrested. Journalists have been punched, arrested and had their equipment broken.

On the streets of Toronto, the mask of “liberal democracy” has slipped off and the police reminded us of the State's willingness to use blatant violence against its own population in the face of popular dissent. And thanks to citizen journalists, the alternative media and even some in the corporate media, the truth of what happened in Toronto is slowly emerging.

In order to make sure that the actions of the police state are fully exposed, we must keep up the pressure on the police and the government.

We must also publicly demonstrate our solidarity with all those arrested so that they are released as quickly as possible and charges are dropped against all those caught up in the net of the police state.

In Toronto, solidarity rallies outside detention centres and police stations are already taking place. But just as police forces from across the province converged on Toronto for the G20, so our resistance must spread out from the epicentre of oppression to every corner of the province.

Common Cause thus calls on all those concerned to take the fight back across the province and across the country.

Starting this Wednesday, June 30, we are calling for solidarity rallies outside police headquarters in as many cities as possible.

Our message will be clear:

Free the Toronto 900!

Fight back against the police state! We are putting you under surveillance!

Build the resistance against the G20! Build the resistance against austerity!

Build the general strike!

Common Cause
www.linchpin.ca

To add your rally to the list or to send pictures from rallies, please email us at commoncauseontario@gmail.com Media may also use the same email address to contact us. Check our website for regular updates on rallies in your city.

G20 Capitalism Attacked in the Streets of Toronto

2010-06-30T09:45:00.004-04:00

From the Montreal, Quebec based organization, No One Is Illegal.

TORONTO, June 26, 2010 -- The intersection of King and Bay is the financial capital of Canada. Within blocks of these infamous cross-streets, amidst iconic skyscrapers, are the headquarters of the banks, corporations, public relations companies and law firms that help drive global capitalism. King and Bay in Toronto is the heart of Canadian colonial capitalism, which projects its misery all over the world, through mining, forestry and other resource extraction companies.

While the G20 leaders planned to meet behind a steel cage and an unprecedented 1-billion dollar security operation, a contingent of thousands-strong protesters gathered to defy Stephen Harper’s Fortress Toronto.

An over 1000-person strong contingent, representing diverse movements of community-based struggles in Toronto, Ontario and across Canada converged in a bloc entitled “Get Off the Fence”.

Activists and community organizers represented rank-and-file labour, migrant justice, indigenous solidarity, anti-police brutality, ecological justice, anti-war, anti-occupation, queer and trans justice, anti-poverty, anti-capitalist, feminist, anarchist, and many more struggles and campaigns. We are united together, learning from each other and inspired by each other. We are rooted in our communities.

Today’s radical contingent separated from the “People First” Labour March (which would march in a circle from Queen’s Park, a police-designated and permitted “protest zone”). Led by the Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble street band of Montreal, the contingent took the streets, and occupied a large bloc within the labour march. Several times along Queen Street, protesters attempted to break through police lines, only to be met with riot police who hit and bloodied protesters with their batons and shields.

Undeterred, protesters waited for the People’s First march to continue its march up Spadina Avenue, the radical contingent doubled-back, and headed east along Queen Street, with some protesters engaging in corporate property destruction, including Starbucks and Nike stores along Queen Street. At times running, at other times waiting to gather together, the protest was able to march south onto Bay Street, and down to Canada’s financial capital at Bay & King.

Chanting “No G20 on stolen native Land”, and “No borders, no nations, stop the deportations”, there were cheers of support amidst the sounds of glass smashing, as targeted property destruction of well-known corporate criminals continued down Bay Street. The demonstration continued east on King until Yonge, and then marched up Yonge Street to Dundas Square.

Commenting on the property destruction, one Toronto Star reporter wrote: "For the most part, their targets are specific and symbolic: As the crowd tore across Queen St., they hammered police cruisers, attacked banks and other corporate companies. Yet they left a record store, a local tavern and an independent hardware shop untouched."

Most of the targets are symbols to many of the ethical backwardness of a society in which wealth is systematically stripped from poor and racialized people who produce it, and remains concentrated in the hands of a few corporations, banks, and global elites. Several police cars were destroyed by protestors as well, many of whom felt anger over a week of unlawful searches, arrests, and arbitrary violence that had hurt many, even on the peaceful demonstrations of Friday.

* * *

Earlier in the day, key community organizers and activists from anarchist and anti-capitalist groups were targeted for early-morning arrests (including at least two members of No One Is Illegal based in Toronto and Montreal, as well as organizers with the Toronto Community Mobilization Network). Despite the preventative arrests and the downpour of rain, organizers and activists regrouped and improvised together to take the streets of Toronto.

The repression of billion-dollar “Police State Toronto” has showed that civil liberties can be suspended at whim. They have been officially suspended within 5 metres of the G20 steel cage, but unofficially suspended everywhere else. Stephen Harper’s G20 police state has seen arbitrary arrests, beatings, searches and seizures (including a confiscated umbrella yesterday, now dubbed the “billion-dollar umbrella”).

The steel cages of Fortress Toronto are a microcosm of global apartheid, where the elite gather behind police lines, while the rest of us survive in a police state. Toronto has seen a taste of what much of the rest of the majority world experiences on a daily basis.

We live in a world which is defined by, and maintained by violence, a violence which self-interested G8/G20 leaders both perpetuate and deny. This violence is lived daily by those in the Global South. It is lived by indigneous people in 'Canada' and worldwide, who face continued destruction of their cultures and environments by mining companies, mega-dams, and other forces of on-going colonization. It is lived by racialized people who are harassed by the police. In the face of this extreme social violence that is day-to-day reality, there can be no tears shed for the cars and windows broken by those who have had enough with the forces profiting from their exploitation.

The fence did not come down today, but the interests that the G20 protects on Bay Street were attacked. We organize, daily, in our communities. But those community-based struggles also came together today, for a few hours, to courageously defy Stephen Harper’s billion-dollar Fortress Toronto and the G20 agenda.

by Robyn Maynard & Jaggi Singh, members of No One Is Illegal-Montreal and the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC 2010)

[Independent and alternative media are welcome to reprint this article (as well as to post and forward the audio and video), with attribution and link to the following website: http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com ]

All out against police brutality and in solidarity with the Toronto 900!

2010-06-29T12:08:00.001-04:00

*All out against police brutality and in solidarity with the Toronto 900! A protest outside police headquarters in every city!*

The events of the past week in Toronto have been unprecedented in Canadian history. Over 900 people were arrested, the biggest mass arrests ever in Canada, for daring to protest against the destructive policies of the G20.

Protesters and local residents were subjected to violent baton attacks, snatch squads, tear gas and rubber bullets. Sleeping people have been pulled from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night. Many have been beaten. People who have been arrested have been strip-searched and held in cages, facing long delays in obtaining legal support. We have heard numerous accounts of sexual abuse by police from women who were arrested. Journalists have been punched, arrested and had their equipment broken.

On the streets of Toronto, the mask of “liberal democracy” has slipped off and the police reminded us of the State's willingness to use blatant violence against its own population in the face of popular dissent. And thanks to citizen journalists, the alternative media and even some in the corporate media, the truth of what happened in Toronto is slowly emerging.

In order to make sure that the actions of the police state are fully exposed, we must keep up the pressure on the police and the government.

We must also publicly demonstrate our solidarity with all those arrested so that they are released as quickly as possible and charges are dropped against all those caught up in the net of the police state.

In Toronto, solidarity rallies outside detention centers and police stations are already taking place. But just as police forces from across the province converged on Toronto for the G20, so our resistance must spread out from the epicenters of oppression to every corner of the province.

*Common Cause thus calls on all those concerned to take the fight back across the province and across the country. Starting this Wednesday, June 30, we are calling for solidarity rallies outside police headquarters in as many cities as possible.*

Our message will be clear:

*Free the Toronto 900!*

*Fight back against the police state! We are putting you under surveillance!
*

*Build the resistance against the G20! Build the resistance against
austerity!*

*Build the general strike!*

*First Rally:***

*June 30, 2010 in Hamilton*

*6pm, outside Hamilton Police headquarters,*

*155 King William Street***

*
*

*To add your rally to the list or to send pictures from rallies, please
email us at commoncauseontario@gmail.com Media may also use the same email address to contact us. Check our website for regular updates on rallies in your city*

*
*

--
Common Cause
P.O. Box 347, Station E
772 Dovercourt Rd.
Toronto, ON, Canada,
M6H 4E3

Email: commoncauseontario@gmail.com
Web: http://linchpin.ca
Online Forum: http://anarchistblackcat.org/viewforum.php?f=61

A New World From Below: An Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Convergence at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum

2010-06-11T13:19:00.003-04:00

The New World from Below workshops will take place both within the “official” USSF schedule and at the anarchist convergence space, so as to be part of the official USSF schedule, but also to get the word out on many other self-organized workshops as a part of our presence.

follow link

Call to Action Against Racism and Fascism July 31, 2010

2010-06-11T13:16:00.001-04:00

“During the early morning hours of March 27th, a Portland, Oregon anti-racist activist was shot in what appears to be a well orchestrated attack. It is suspected that the attackers were members of the neo- Nazi movement…

The March 27th shooting occurred within a backdrop of growing Right wing, racist, and emerging fascist organizing and activity. There has been a dramatic escalation of rhetoric and action from the broad Right. While all sectors of the working classes and poor face economic and social uncertainty, the racists, the Right wing, and the smaller but significant sections of the neo-Nazi and fascist movements are looking to divide our class and peoples…

We propose Saturday July 31, 2010 as a Call to Action Against Racism and Fascism. We want to use the CA to both engage the broad, independent, and radical anti-racist/anti-fascist movements… we argue for a maximum of creative and independent initiative… to use the CA as a means to increase collaboration between our forces and work in a popular manner to highlight the need for a mass, radical response to racist and fascist organizing.”

Read the entire Call to Action:

Español

Français

English

Happy Malcolm X day - May 19th

2010-05-19T15:31:00.000-04:00

Today was the birthday of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz aka Malcolm X. Born Malcolm Little.

Anarchists reject the cult of personality and notions of the "great men of history". We see people for what they are and attempt to understand peoples importance both as individuals and as members of the social collective. Within everyone there is a unique character. The society we live in attempts to grind us down, enslave us to its morality and law. It is understandable for many to adapt to these pressures in the course of survival. But there are moments that open up and allow for people to break with this society and its commands.

Individuals can in one moment, in the course of a fundamental change in their lives, see the world differently and embark on a new path. People weigh their old lives and ideas to new ones. The old transforms and gives way to new conclusions. Through that process, people are
reborn. Malcolm was reborn. He came of age in a world marked by mass oppression of Black people. But he also came of age in which Black people were struggling for dignity and emancipation. Malcolm came to symbolize an ongoing transformation of mind and life. He defined himself in opposition to the corrupt unjust and white supremacist order. He moved from gangster to Black Separatist to Afro-American Nationalist. Before his death he was moving towards a more holistic vision of radical socialism and anti-imperialism.

"Telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell (Leader of the American Nazi Party)"

Malcolm X

1965

This is to warn you that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad's separatist Black Muslim movement, and that if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not hand-cuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence, and who believe in asserting our right of self-defense -- by any means necessary"

Portland Anti Racist Action Media Release

2010-04-01T14:34:00.000-04:00

MEDIA RELEASE

For immediate release: April 1, 2010

Contact: Portland Anti-Racist Action

fight_them_back@riseup.net 971.533.7832 (voicemail)

*Portland Anti-Racists: Downtown Shooting was Likely a Neo-Nazi Ambush*

*Anti-Racist Targeted in Saturday Morning Attempted Murder*

Portland, Oregon – In a city that still remembers the 1988 beating death of Mulugeta Seraw by three racists, a recent downtown shooting may thrust the issue of white supremacist violence into the forefront of public consciousness once again.

A local anti-racist organization claims that the early morning shooting in downtown Portland on March 27, whose survivor remains in Intensive Care, was most likely an attempted murder by one or more neo-Nazis. The victim of the shooting, Luke Querner, is an entrenched and beloved figure in the anti-racist community. He has devoted over a decade of his life to opposing Portland’s white power movement.

Luke Querner was shot at approximately 12:20AM on Saturday morning, in an unprovoked attack on SW 5th Avenue, between Stark and Washington Street.The shooting appears to have been well-orchestrated; the assailant concealed his identity, fleeing at least initially by foot in a closely-surveilled area.

The attempted murder of Querner occurs in the context of escalating activity from a racist underground that believes it can operate with impunity. The past half year has been one of increasing audacity from local white supremacists, with organizations such as Volksfront, the Northwest Front and the National Socialist Movement drawing closer together. Members of these and similar organizations--as well as cliques on their periphery--share information about anti-racists and the Left, and have been increasing their actions against such targets.

Portland Anti-Racist Action believes that the attempted murder of Querner was a political act, most likely by neo-Nazis. To treat this violence as gang-related obscures its political context and almost certainly misses its point. The shooting seems designed to send a message and to intimidate anti-racists. Portland ARA criticizes the police’s choice to release

Querner’s name on Sunday, placing him at further risk. The organization also questions the police portrayal of the shooting, which frames the incident as near-random, rather than as an act of political terror and attempted assassination. Querner was shot because of his convictions, the group believes.

“The Portland Police aren’t telling the whole story” states Alicia of Portland ARA, “They have not mentioned the most obvious motive for the shooting. We fear that they are more interested in smearing the victim than in uncovering the truth. Our thoughts go out to Luke right now.”

An expanded statement with further details surrounding the shooting is available on the website: rosecityantifa.org. Information on how to contribute to Querner’s medical bills and related expenses may also be found on this site. Portland Anti-Racist Action continues to be interested in any and all information related to white supremacist organizing in Portland and its vicinity.

For more information, please contact Portland Anti-Racist Action at

fight_them_back@riseup.net or 971.533.7832 (voicemail.)

Callout to Confront INSF ‘White Pride World Wide’ March in Chicago

2010-03-14T19:14:00.000-04:00

Solidarity & Defense endorse this call:

Callout to Confront INSF ‘White Pride World Wide’ March in Chicago

UPDATE: Download the flyer: (English JPG, Spanish JPG, or Quarter-page Printable PDF) and also call the hotline at 773-980-6013 for day-of updates about the action.

On March 21st, 2010 the Illinois National Socialist Front is planning to march in Chicago for what they call “White Pride World Wide”. South Side Anti-Racist Action is making plans to confront the march to let them know that they are not welcome in our city.

March 21st is recognized as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination because of the massacre of demonstrators demanding an end to apartheid in Sharpesville, South Africa in 1960. However in 2000, neo-nazi and white nationalist organizations came together to attempt to reclaim March 21st as “White Pride World Wide” day against “multi-racial supremacy”.

The Illinois National Socialist Front is a neo-nazi organization primarily based in Peoria and the suburbs of Chicago, some of which are former members of Bill White’s American National Socialist Workers Party. Over the past year they have organized a variety of events including nazi barbeque recruiting events, a speaking event celebrating Hitler’s birthday, a rally against the opening of Holocaust museum in Skokie, a Belleville protest of “black-on-white hate crimes”, and more. They have shown efforts in working with other hate groups such as the National Socialist Movement and are attempting to gather regional support for the White Pride march in Chicago by posting information to websites such as Stormfront and Vanguard News Network.

Besides the activity of neo-nazi hate groups, fascism is still alive in many forms across the US from attacks on immigrant communities to homophobic hate crimes. Even in Chicago, racist graffiti has been seen very recently – an indication that even in Obama’s America, racism is far from being over with. The INSF’s intention to march in Chicago shows that they are growing bolder and aren’t go away unless we take a stand.

South Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action is calling out for other groups inside and outside of Chicago to stand with us against fascism. Join us to confront the National Socialist Front’s march on March 21st!

Endorsers:
South Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action
Gay Liberation Network
Four Star Anarchist Organization
News & Letters
Bash Back
North Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action
Genderjust
Progressive Labor Party
sort sol collective

Get in contact if you are interesting in endorsing and/or helping organize this action:

southsidechicagoara@hushmail.com
http://southsideara.wordpress.com
http://www.twitter.com/chicagoara

The INSF has not announced the location of the march yet – but check back at the above websites for additional information as the date approaches. You could also call our update hotline at 773-980-6013

Two Views of the United Auto Workers

2010-03-05T18:55:00.002-05:00

from Gathering Forces:

In early November, Ford workers voted down by a large margin a concessions package that would have accelerated two tier hiring and given away the right to strike for 6 years.

Here are two views on the meaning of the Ford workers vote and on the role of the UAW in the offensive against autoworkers and whether it should be by-passed altogether or it can be reformed.

from comments:

"The initial subject of this discussion is an emerging potential for working class resistance to a prolonged experience of class accommodations that uniformly have turned out to be defeats.

One strand, thankfully it appears to be a minority, suggests that this should be channeled into union reform where unions currently exist and implies support for parallel approaches to organizing where they don’t. But that approach rests on little more than the very partial and limited truth that activated workers, “…will first look to the union.” It ignores that there have been hundreds of such union reform and revitalization efforts over many decades just in this country without any example – specifically including the TDU experience – that might reasonably be called a strategic success. While some leftists may be unaware of this reality, it will hardly be news for autoworkers.

These union reform politics fit comfortably within a social democratic perspective preoccupied with incremental “successes”. Unfortunately, they also have a foothold among radicals and revolutionaries. For a case in point, read the last paragraph in Shawn Hattingh’s otherwise excellent description of the current wildcat mine occupations in S. Africa. (ZNet, 2/3/10).

For a very good treatment of the underlying political issues from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective, I’d recommend the 2009 paper, “Strategy & Struggle” by the Brighton Solidarity Federation."

Updates on Yesterday's Student Protests and Occupations

2010-03-05T18:50:00.000-05:00

From Infoshop:

Students and college staff across the United States today are participating in protests and occupations to protest budget cuts, tuition increases and much more.

Search for updates on Twitter using #march4
Pics: UCLA | UCSC | UMass | Sacramento
March 4 Updates from Occupy California
California: Thousands rally on campuses, streets for schools
Democracy Now: Hundreds of Thousands Take Part in National Day of Action to Defend Public Education
Fresno State students, faculty rally against cuts
U.S. students protest fee hikes at universities
Millions Protest Education Cuts in California
Students Rally Against Education Budget Cuts at Cal State Los Angeles
Rowdy protester target funding cuts at US campuses
March, Walkout, Rally, and Sit-in at CSU-Fresno
16 UW-Milwaukee protesters detained after scuffles
Rowdy protests target funding cuts at US campuses
UCLA: UCLA students still sitting-in inside of Murphy Hall! 50 students inside, police just declared it an unlawful assembly.
Arizona State: Banner drop at ASU
UC Berkeley: Sather Gate blocked
NYC: Walk-Out / Indoor demo at CUNY Hunter
UC Santa Cruz shut down
Berkeley Pre-Game Communiqué (That's Not The Sky, That's The Ceiling)
Updates from UC Santa Cruz
San Diego: Black community lends UCSD students support
Day of education protests gets under way
Day Of Action Dawns With Excitement; Protests Underway
Thousands of Students Taking Part in National Day of Action to Defend Public Education
Banner at UC Riverside
CSU Fullerton OCCUPIED!
Claremont, Calif.: Students Support Worker Demands for Independent Unions and End to Abuses
Georgia: Student leader: Drastic cuts ‘a death knell  for public education’
California: Protests, rallies mark "Day of Action" for education funding
California Students Protest Education Cuts
D.C. area: Area students will protest higher education tuition hikes
List of Bay Area Protests

Background

Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor’s Office
March 4 the Regents!: How and Why a Movement gets Co-opted
Communique from the occupied HCC: The Evergreen State College, Coast Salish Territories
Why we reject the plan to fix the schools by cutting prison funding
December 2009: Update on Student Struggle in California
Bankrupt the System, Exploit The University
The Bricks We Throw at Police Today Will Build the Liberation Schools of Tomorrow
Four Theses on The Invisible University

Websites

Occupy California
Occupy Everything!
Reclaim UC
Stand Up For Schools
Subversities

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March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education

2010-03-04T11:31:00.005-05:00

March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education

As people throughout the country struggle under the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, public education from pre-K to higher and adult education is threatened by budget cuts, layoffs, privatization, tuition and fee increases, and other attacks. Budget cuts degrade the quality of public education by decreasing student services and increasing class size, while tuition hikes and layoffs force the cost of the recession onto students and teachers and off of the financial institutions that caused the recession in the first place. Non-unionized charter schools threaten to divide, weaken and privatize the public school system and damage teachers’ unions, which are needed now more than ever. More and more students are going deep into debt to finance their education, while high unemployment forces many students and youth to join the military to receive a higher education. And all of the attacks described above have hit working people and people of color the hardest.

In California, students, teachers, workers, parents, and faculty have taken action against these attacks. They took to the streets in a one-day strike on September 24th, organized strikes and actions across the state during the University of California Board of Regents meeting from November 18th to 20th, and have called for a state-wide day of action on March 4th. These actions have created a broad mass movement in California, drawing in students from all over the state to create a powerful struggle. As the effects of the economic crisis continue to spread into the education system nationally, it’s time to join our voices with students and workers in California and draw inspiration from their example.

We support each group or coalition organizing in the manner and for the duration of their choosing. In solidarity with those in California, we the below-signed individuals and organizations call on students, teachers, workers, parents, faculty, and staff across the country to join together on March 4th to Take A Stand For Education!

Visit the Web site for more details at http://www.defendeducation.org.

Endorse the call at the bottom of the page or by sending an email to march4nationaldayofaction@gmail.com.

Find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=213637229312.

To join the national discussion, please visit the March 4th Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/march4thaction.

Endorse the Call by clicking the link below or selecting the page above

Endorse

ENDORSED BY (list in formation):

Organizations

The 1212 Community, Bronx, New York
5c Cultural Center, Lower East Side, New York City
The Adjunct Project, CUNY Graduate Center, New York City
AFSCME 3800, University of Minnesota Clerical Workers
AFT Local 1839, New Jersey City University
All Nations Alliance
Anakbayan Los Angeles
Anakbayan New York/New Jersey, Jersey City, NJ
Anthropology Graduate Student Association, UT Austin
Associated Students of Portland State University Executive Staff
ASU Resist, Arizona State University, Tempe
Augusta State University Political Science Club, Georgia
Autonomedia
AZ Education Association
Bail Out the People Movement
Baltimore Algebra Project
Baltimore Solidarity Center
BAYAN-USA
Cal Poly Unite to Save Public Education, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
California Prison Moratorium Project
California State University Employees Union
Californians for Justice, Oakland
Campus Antiwar Network (CAN)
Chicago World Can’t Wait
Chop from the Top Coalition, University of Minnesota
Coalition for Community Justice, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL
Coalition for Equal Quality Education, Boston
Coalition for Public Education / Coalición por la Educación Pública, New York City
Coalition for Social Reform, UMass-Lowell
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
Committee for Revolutionizing the AcaDemy (ComRAD), University of Minnesota
Community Organizing Center for Mother Earth, Columbus, Ohio
Connecticut Students Against the War
Cornell Organization for Labor Action, Ithaca, New York
CUNY Campaign to Defend Education, New York City
Democracy Insurgent, Seattle
The Democratic Left @ GWU, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Department of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Pennsylvania
DestroyIndustrY, Raleigh, NC
East Village Community School Parents Association, New York City
Education For All, San Diego
Feminist Students UNITED UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Fight Imperialism, Stand Together
Free UCR Alliance, UC Riverside
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Freedom Socialist Party
George Mason University Graduate and Professional Student Association (GAPSA), Fairfax, Virginia
Georgia State University Progressive Student Alliance
Giant Record Corporation, Amherst, MA
Graduate Employee and Student Organization, Yale University
Graduate Employees’ Organization, AFT/IFT 6300, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Graduate Student Employees Union, SUNY Stony Brook
Graduate Student Workers United, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul
Graduate Students United, University of Chicago
Grassroots Education Movement, New York City
Hawai’i Solidarity Committee
Human Rights Action Committee, Framingham State College, Massachusetts
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Council of Chairs, Indiana, Pennsylvania
Institute for Critical Animal Studies
International Socialist Organization
International Workers and Students for Justice, University of Washington in Seattle
The Kennebunks Peace Department
L.A. County Peace & Freedom Party
La Voz de los Trabajadores- LIT, California
Latin American Students Association at UCR, Riverside, CA
League for the Revolutionary Party, New York City
Liberty Tree Foundation
Low-Income Student Alliance, New School University, New York City
Lucha, New York City
March 4 Organizing Committee, CSU Monterey Bay
Massachusetts Student Action Coalition
Massachusetts Students Uniting
May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights, New York City
Million Worker March Movement
Movement for a Democratic Society
National MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán)
Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlán (MEChA), Milwaukee
Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlán (MEChA), UC San Diego
Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlán (MEChA), USC
National Assembly to End the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars & Occupations
Network to Fight for Economic Justice
New School in Exile, New York City
New York State Youth Leadership Council
NYC Anti-War Coalition
New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
Northbay Uprising, Vallejo, California
Oakland Education Association
Olympia Coalition for a Fair Budget, Olympia, WA
Pan American Solidarity Organization (PASO), Portland State University
People’s Organization for Progress, Newark, NJ
Peoples Video Network
p.o.n.d. records
Pride and Equity Faculty and Staff Association, UT Austin
Progressive Democrats of America, Ohio
Progressive Faculty Network of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Progressive Student Alliance, University of Florida
Progressive Student Alliance, University of Memphis
Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM)
Purchase Polis, SUNY Purchase
PUSH: Ideas into Action, SUNY Purchase
Queens College Antiwar Coalition
Queer People Of Color Action
Radical Student Union, Bard College
Radical Women
Rebel Diaz Arts Collective, Bronx, NY
Recreate ‘68 Alliance
Rhode Island Unemployed Council
Riverside Latino Voter Project, Riverside, CA
Santa Monica College Students for Social Justice
Save LSU, Baton Rouge
Seventh Generation Nation, Putatoi
The Silent Radio DJs
Small Schools Workshop, Chicago
Social Justice Alliance, SUNY Stony Brook
Social Justice Alliance, UC Riverside, California
Socialism Now!, Chicago
Socialist Alternative
Socialist Organizer
Socialist Party of Connecticut
Socialist Party USA
Solidarity
S.O.S. Save Our Schools Coalition, Providence, RI
SOUL School of Unity & Liberation, Oakland
Space, Time, Research Collective, CUNY Graduate Center
SpeakOut – the Institute for Democratic Education & Culture, Oakland, CA
Straight and Gay Alliance (SAGA), City College of New York
Students Promoting Engagement Through Activism and Knowledge (SPEAK), Georgia State University
Student / Farmworker Alliance
The Student Insurgent, Eugene, Oregon
Student Labor Action Project (SLAP)
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society, Animas, Durango, Coloardo
Students for a Democratic Society, Chicago
Students for a Democratic Society, College Park, University of Maryland
Students for a Democratic Society, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, California
Students for a Democratic Society, Gainesville Area
Students for a Democratic Society, Milwaukee
Students for a Democratic Society / Movement for a Democratic Society, Michigan State University
Students for a Democratic Society, Oklahoma
Students for a Democratic Society, Rochester
Students for a Democratic Society, Syracuse
Students for a Democratic Society, Temple University, Philadelphia
Students for a Democratic Society, TFHS
Students for a Democratic Society, UNC-Asheville
Students for a Democratic Society, UNC-Chapel Hill
Students for a Democratic Society, UNC-Charlotte
Students for a Democratic Society, University of Houston
Students for a Democratic Society, University of Minnesota
Students for a Democratic Society, University of North Dakota
Students for a Democratic Society, University of Tuscaloosa
Students for a Democratic Society, Waukesha, Wisconsin
Students for a Democratic Society, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Students for Educational Rights, City College of New York
Students for Quality Education, Cal Poly Pomona Chapter
Students for Social Action, Virginia Commonwealth University, VCU
Students for Unity, Portland State University
Students Taking Action to Reclaim our Education, University of Maryland
Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights, Portland State University
SUNY Downstate College of Health Related Professions Council
Take Back NYU!, New York City
Take Back WBAI Coalition, New York City
Teachers 4 Justice Now, New York City
Teachers as Leaders in Newark, New Jersey
Teachers for a Just Contract, New York City
Teachers Unite, New York City
Texas State Employees Union
Third Coast Activist Resource Center, Austin, Texas
TWU 100, New York City
UCSD Coalition for Educational Justice
Undergraduate Graduate Alliance (UGA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
United Council of UW Students, Wisconsin
United In Campaign Against Budget Cuts, University of Illinois-Chicago
United Socialists of Pittsburgh State
United States Student Association (USSA)
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS)
University Democrats, UT Austin
University of Massachusetts-Lowell Coalition for Social Reform
University of Washington Student Worker Coalition, Seattle
USC Students for Justice in Palestine
UT Austin Stop the Cuts Coalition
UTLA / Project Great Futures / CAMS
UW-Milwaukee Education Rights Campaign
UW-Whitewater P.E.A.C.E., Whitewater, Wisconsin
Workers Action
Workers World Party
Young Democratic Socialists

International Endorsers

Anakbayan Philippines
International League of Peoples Struggle Youth, Philippines
League of Filipino Students
National Union of Students of the Philippines
Socialist Student Front, Bangladesh
Student Christian Movement of the Philippines
Student Representative Body of the University of Marburg, Germany
Teachers Unity Forum, Kerala, India

International Solidarity Greetings

Dear Friends,

Revolutionary Greetings. It is our great pleasure to get the chance expressing our solidarity to March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education are being held in US Countrywide. Thanks to all who have arranged such a painstaking movement struggle against violation of Education rights in US. We express our heartiest solidarity to your movement, specially this March 4 program. Now a days, the Capitalist and Imperialists are intensifying their attack on basic human rights including widely in Education sector. They are trying to resolve their crisis and maximizing profits through privatization & commercialization of education and curtailing budget in education sector. In Bangladesh our organization in fighting against the attempt of national capitalist & imperialist to privatize and commercialize education including fee increase, cuts of different student facilities.

We feel deeply that, In this era of globalization and imperialism, the Movement for education rights should be go through solidarity among the Students Organizations Worldwide.

We are very much interested to build up and strengthen solidarity with all of the organizations fighting in US for this cause.

We would be pleased if you informed us the contact details of all organizations. Please inform how can we communicate each other regularly.

Keep in touch.

Wish March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education a success.

With revolutionary greeting,

Central Committee
Socialist Students’ Front (SSF)-Bangladesh

Individuals (*all organizations listed for identification purposes only, listed in order recieved)

Ed Childs, Chief Steward UNITE/HERE L. 26 (Harvard Univ.)*
Frantz Mendes, President, United Steelworkers L. 8751 – Boston School Bus Drivers Union*
Steve Gillis, Vice President, United Steelworkers L. 8751 – Boston School Bus Drivers Union*
Andre Powell, Delegate, Baltimore, Maryland AFL-CIO Metro Central Labor Council*
Phebe Eckfeldt, Harvard Union Rep., Harvard Union of Clerical & Technical Workers (HUCTW)/AFSCME L. 3650*
Mike Gimbel, Local 375, AFSCME delegate to the NYC-CLC & Chairperson of Local 375, AFSCME, Labor/Community Unity Committee*
Heather Cottin, Adjunct Lecturer, History Department, LaGuardia Community College, PSC member*
Peter Cook, Boston Teachers Union, Local 66 MFT AFT, AFL-CIO*
Julia La Riva, member of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)*
Martha Grevatt, Chair, Civil Rights Committee, UAW Local 122*
Andy Griggs, United Teachers Los Angeles; Co-chair, California Teachers Association Peace and Justice Caucus; Steering Committee, US Labor Against the War*
Susan E. Davis, National Writers Union, United Auto Workers Local 1981*
Robin Anderson, Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) at UMass-Amherst, Part of UAW Local 2322*
Barry Eidlin,UAW Local 2865, University of California Academic Student Employees Union*
Geoff Carens, Union Representative, HUCTW/AFSCME Local 3650*
Dan La Botz, Spanish teacher, Cincinnati Waldorf School, Cincinnati, Ohio*
Robin McCubbin, professor, Southwestern College, Chula Vista, CA*
Minnie Bruce Pratt, Professor, Women’s & Gender Studies, Syracuse University*
David Sole, Prof. of Chemistry, Wayne Co. Community College, Detroit.*
Nicholas Camerota, Professor of Philosophy & Political Theory, Springfield (Mass.) Techical Community College*
Cindy Bui, Social Justice Alliance at UC Riverside*
Ana del Rocío, CCNY Students for Educational Rights, New York City*
Sarah Meunier, student, UMASS
Jessica Hollinger, student, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Katherine Johnson, doctoral student, University of San Francisco, middle school teacher
Susan Massad, Associate Professor, Framingham State College*
Eleanor J. Bader, writer and adjunct faculty member, Brooklyn*
Chuck Turner, Boston City Council*, District 7
Colia Clark, Guadeloupe-Haiti Tour USA, Grandmamas For the Release of Mumia Abu Jamal, Richard Wright Centennial 2008-2010*
Dr. Sue Harris, Co-Director, Peoples Video Network*
Imani Henry, Playwright/Performer*
The Most Rev. Filipe C, Teixeira, OFSJC, Diocese of Saint Francis of Assisi*
Billy Wharton, National Co-Chair, Socialist Party USA*
Todd Vachon, Low Society Music*
Christopher Hutchinson, General Strike Comics*
Gloria Rubac, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement*
David Harding, New Brunswick, NJ
Eric Acedo
Abayomi Azikiwe
Jane Chischilly
Jesse Lokahi Heiwa,Hawai’i Solidarity Committee, UN in New York City*
Hon. Charles Barron, New York City Councilmember *
Teresa Gutierrez, International Migrant Alliance, Deputy Secretary General, New York City*
William J. Neville IV, Billings, MT, currently serving in Iraq
Michael Shane,Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice,Detroit, MI*
Marisa, LAUSD, LA*
Cindy Sheehan
Maria C. Federico Brummer, Tucson, AZ
Dan McDowell, Massachusetts Students Uniting, UMass Boston Student Senate*
Tatiana Guerrero, Young Democratic Socialists, New Jersey*
James Tarr, Coalition for Social Reform, Lowell, MA*
Mary Lou Finley, Peace and Freedom Party, San Diego*
Tony Van Der Meer, Adjunct Prof., Africana Studies, UMass Boston*
Gina M. Sartori, Boston Teachers Union*
Chai Montgomery, unit steward, Teamsters Local 214, Ann Arbor, Michigan*
Michel DeMatteis, adjunct lecturer, philosophy, CUNY, New York, NY*
Vanessa Vaile, New Faculty Majority, Mountainair, NM*
Marvin Gentz, Ukiah, CA
Bryan G. Pfeifer, M.S., Union of Part-Time Faculty-AFT, Detroit, Michigan*
Patricia McAfee, California
Mike Alewitz, Labor Art & Mural Project, Central CT State University*
Michael Klonsky, Small Schools Workshop, Chicago*
Cindy Varela Henderson, Peace & Freedom Candidate, 26th S.D., Los Angeles
John Catalinotto, Professional Staff Congress–Bronx Community College, New York, N.Y.*
Anthony J. Nocella, II, Central New York Peace Studies Consortium, SUNY Cortland*
Yves Nibungco, Anakbayan New York/ New Jersey, Jersey City, New Jersey*
John Neal, Charlotte, NC
Tiffany Huang, NewCLA, UCLA*
Nick Theodosis, San Francisco State University, San Francisco*
Martin Rzeszotko, Hunter College*
Luis Roman, McNair Research Scholar, MEChA de UCLA, La Joteria, UCLA*
Vickie Hay, CalWORKs at Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, CA*
Steve Fox, Hoosier Writing Project, Indianapolis, Indiana*
Tim Hawks-Malczynski, Duarte, California
Nicolle Dunnaway, Hammond, LA
Rosa A. Eberly, Penn State U*
Denise Beck, Indianapolis, IN
Austin Jacobson, Philadelphia
William Calathes, Criminal Justice Department, New Jersey City University*
Carolina Garcia, Student Government Organization, New Jersey City University*
Kinte Allah, New Black Panther Party, Atlanta*
Edwina Smith, San Francisco
Bobbi Jo Chavarria, Chavarria for Fontana Mayor 2010, Fontana, California*
Micah Littlefield, Lafayette, IN
Carolyn Jacobson, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)*
Kyra Pearson, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA*
Leticia Garcia, Education Advocate, Fontana, California*
Lina Montes, Rialto
Dan Esposito, Manhattan Beach, CA
Laura Howard, Educational Paraprofessionals, South Carolina*
Ben Manski, AFT 6100, Sociology Instructor, Madison College, Wisconsin*
William Reid, London, Ontario
Robert Zech, South Amboy, New Jersey
Jason Belch, Raleigh, NC
Roger Marheine, President Pasadena City College Faculty Association*
Mike Hill, Associate Professor & Department Chair, English University at Albany, SUNY*
Joel Scott, Detroit Public Schools, Cass Tech High School*
Viridiana Mora, UC Riverside*
Mark Clinton, Dept. of Critical Cultural Studies, Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, Massachusetts*
Joshua Yoerger, Tyler, TX*
Kaye Peters, St. Paul, MN
Nancy Welch, United Academics AFT/AAUP, University of Vermont*
Marva Berry, Washington, D.C.
Michael Friedman, Professional Staff Congress/AFT, New York*
Marco Abe, Lincoln, NE
Tyler DeRubio, Babylon, New York
Marc Engel, New York City
Sarah Holmes, Los Angeles, CA
Madonna Lee, New York
Marc Bousquet, Higher Ed Columnist, Los Gatos, CA*
Ghazal Khan, New York
Zach Martin, Tifton, GA
Noah Rubeling-Kain, Stevenson Univeristy, Baltimore, MD
Thomas A . Robinson, TWU Local 100, Jamaica, NY*
Meera Sitharam, University of Florida*
Riad Azar, William Paterson University Young Democratic Socialists, Wayne, NJ*
Christopher Searles, New York City
Matthew Porter, Torrance, California
Patrick T. Lafferty, Overland Park, KS
Joy London, Atlanta, GA
Rebecca McCarty, Dallas, Texas
Mariela Nunez-Janes, TX
Marie Stolzenburg, Madison, WI
Charlie Thunell, Brooklyn, NY
Christopher D’Antonio, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey*
Stephanie, San Francisco
Amos Young Jr, I.E & Orange County Young Democrat Regional Director, Fontana, CA*

Endorse the Call by clicking the link below or selecting the page above

Endorse

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
National Call for March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education

California has recently seen a massive movement erupt in defense of public education — but layoffs, fee hikes, cuts, and the re-segregation of public education are attacks taking place throughout the country. A nationwide resistance movement is needed.

We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations and communities across the country to massively mobilize for a Strike and Day of Action in Defense of Public Education on March 4, 2010. Education cuts are attacks against all of us, particularly in working-class communities and communities of color.

The politicians and administrators say there is no money for education and social services. They say that “there is no alternative” to the cuts. But if there’s money for wars, bank bailouts, and prisons, why is there no money for public education?

We can beat back the cuts if we unite students, workers, and teachers across all sectors of public education — Pre K-12, adult education, community colleges, and state-funded universities. We appeal to the leaders of the trade union movement to support and organize strikes and/or mass actions on March 4. The weight of workers and students united in strikes and mobilizations would shift the balance of forces entirely against the current agenda of cuts and make victory possible.

Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services and will be an inspiration to all those fighting against the wars, for immigrants rights, in defense of jobs, for single-payer health care, and other progressive causes.

Why March 4? On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education. After hours of open collective discussion, the participants voted democratically, as their main decision, to call for a Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. All schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics — such as strikes, rallies, walkouts, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. — as well as the duration of such actions.

Let’s make March 4 an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and the re-segregation of public education.

- The California Coordinating Committee
California Contacts (also refer to the contacts list in development):

http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/
march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184333923808&ref=ts

Endorsed by:

October 24th Mobilizing Conference to Defend Public Education
Statewide Coalition of University Employees
Statewide UPTE
Solidarity Alliance at UCB
General Assembly at UCB
CFT: CA Federation of Teachers
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)
AFSCME Local 444: East Bay Municipal Utility District
AFT 1021
California Labor Federation
California Faculty Association (CFA)
Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC)
Carpenters Local 713
CDPH Inter Union Organizing Committee: SEIU 1000, Stationary Engineers 39, CAPS, PEGS
Oakland Education Association (OEA)
Association of Raza Educators
San Francisco Labor Council
California State University Employees Union
California Teachers Association
Coalition for Equal Quality Education, Boston, MA
United Educators of San Francisco
Third World Assembly at UCB
SWAT at UCB
Oakland AFT 771: Representing part-time / hourly Oakland adult education teachers
CUNY Campaign to Defend Education (CCDE)
Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS)
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS)
California State University Employees Union
Academic Professionals of California
California Partnership/Stop the Cuts Coalition
The Mount Diablo High School Site Action Council
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
SEIU 1021: Representing over 55,000 workers
International Socialist Organization
California Prison Moratorium Project
Rouge Forum
Bay Area United Against War
The 2009 National Assembly of US Labor Against the War
Peralta Federation of Teachers
Purchase Polis

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Call for Solidarity and Funds for the Working People of Haiti!

2010-01-14T19:14:00.007-05:00

01/14/09- A natural disaster has descended upon Haiti whose scope we only are seeing the surface of at this time. The Haitian people will be struggling to rebuild their lives and their home possibly for decades in light of unprecedented collapse, both physical and social. Yet despite the unpredictability of earthquakes, this disaster is unnatural, a monstrosity of our time. The extent of the damage of the earthquake is part of the cost of unrestrained exploitation which at every step put profit above the health, safety, and well being of the Haitian people. While the world watches on ready to help, power is being dealt an opportunity. The Haitian workers and peasants have been fighting for their rights to even the most basic level of existence for decades, while the UN-occupying force, the state, and the ruling elites maintain the social misery without relenting. Now as Port-Au-Prince is in rubble, new opportunities arise for rulers to rebuild Haiti in their own interests, and likewise for the Haitian workers and peasants to assert their right to their own Haiti, one where they will be not be forced to live in dangerous buildings, and work merely to fill the pockets of elites, foreign or domestic.

As we move from watching in horror to taking decisive action, progressives can offer an alternative. There is a strong and beautiful desire to do something, to help others in this time of need. Our actions are strongest when we organize ourselves, and make a concerted effort in unity. Right now we can have the deepest impact by committing ourselves to act in solidarity with the autonomous social movements of Haiti directly. They present the best possible option for the Haitian people, and are in the greatest need. At the same time, we are in the best position to help them out our common interest as people engaged in struggling against a system that works to exploit us all. We are calling for solidarity people-to-people engaged in common struggle. It is not only a question of money for AID but also an autonomous and independent act of international solidarity that illuminates the bankruptcy of the occupying forces, multinational corporations, and Haitian elites that are primarily responsible for the decayed state of Haiti. There will be aid flowing and money givenas a form of charity until the next disaster. Our act of solidarity should, in no shape or form, be solely an act of humanitarian aid. It should not be an apolitical act, and we shouldn't give the green light to those that wish to capitalize on the suffering of others. It should be an act of solidarity to the struggling people of Haiti and their organizations while at the same time rejecting the totally inept Haitian elites and their state apparatus for bankrupting Haiti. The earthquake is a natural disaster, but the state of Haiti, the abject poverty of the masses and the vile injustice of the social order, are unnatural.

We have a relationship with one organization, Batay Ouvriye, and are putting our resources and time into helping Batay Ouvriye to help rebuild from the catastrophe and maintain the struggle for a better Haiti and a better world. Batay Ouvriye is a combative grassroots worker and peasant’s organization in Haiti with workers organized all over Haiti, especially in the Industrial sweatshops and Free Trade Zones. We have set up a means to send money to Batay Ourviye. If others wish to send money to Batay Ouvriye, please DONATE HERE or mail checks payable to “Miami Workers Center” with a note “for: MAS/BO” in the memo line to the following address:
Miami Workers Center
6127 Northwest 7th Avenue
Miami, FL 33127-1111

Miami Autonomy & Solidarity and Batay Ouvriye Haiti Solidarity
Network

BATAY OUVRIYE is an organization that regroups factory unions and committees, workers’ associations and militants, all struggling in Haiti for the construction of an independent, combative and democratic union movement, and to organize wage-workers, self-employed workers as well as the unemployed for the defense of their rights. Theorganization is an alternative to the traditional bureaucratic, corrupt union movement that upholds the dominant classes’ power amongst the exploited masses of Haiti. Not only does it take the initiative of developing spontaneous direct issue struggles, but also it incites the working class to fight and to organize themselves to defend their independent interests. Batay Ouvriye also links these particular struggles with those, more wide-ranging, of the people. In this sense, it takes part in all types of popular democratic struggles by encouraging the involvement of workers.

http://www.batayouvriye.org/

Workers Solidarity Alliance Statement on the 2009 US-Afghan Escalation

2010-01-04T16:10:00.000-05:00

The following has been issued by our

friends in the Workers Solidarity Alliance. - sd

**********************************************

Workers Solidarity Alliance Statement on the 2009 US-Afghan Escalation

On December 1, 2009, President Barack Obama announced that he will send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, escalating the war in central Asia. Obama claims to want peace while he orders more war and death for poor and working people. He claims that the US fights for freedom and democracy, but he allies himself with tyrannical Afghani warlords. He does this with the backing of both Democrats and Republicans and the corporate interests they serve. None of this is new or unusual for the United States Government and its NATO allies. The only thing “new” is the person issuing the orders today: Obama, the “Candidate of Hope” was elected promising “Change.” Now in office, he delivers more of the same—using the US military to install pro-capitalist governments in countries around the world in order to maintain and expand access to raw materials, cheap labor and consumer markets for Western corporations.

Obama and his cohorts have lured many sincere working people into supporting the war in Afghanistan by promises that it will curb terrorist attacks against the US and bring freedom, democracy and women’s rights to Afghanistan. The real facts in Afghanistan show such “humanitarian” concerns to be nothing but lies: US/NATO aerial bombardments relentlessly murder thousands of Afghan civilians in their homes, villages and cities; in fact, air bombings in Afghanistan have significantly escalated under President Obama US/NATO forces have allied since day one, and remain allied, with the “Northern Alliance” warlords responsible for mass atrocities against civilians in 1992 and who now dominate the corrupt regime in Kabul, through which they secure immunity for their past and present crimes Afghani women activists—to whose cause the occupiers pay lip service have consistently denounced the US-led occupation and puppet regime, demanding that foreign troops leave and calling for prosecution of both Taliban and pro-US war criminals.

The escalation of the war is a disaster for the oppressed poor and working people of Afghanistan. As such, the “surge” will inevitably fuel more terrorist attacks against civilians in the US and elsewhere, attacks which elites will then use to justify the far bloodier terrorism of “Western” military powers against cities and villages in the Middle East. US elites will then seek to manipulate workers’ fear of terrorist attacks into support for the so-called “War on Terror,” increased defense spending and decreased funding of education, welfare, healthcare and social services, increased militarization of the domestic police, and increased spying and repression of workers organizations and anti-capitalist political organizations in the United States. All in the guise of “fighting terrorism.”

It is our stance that authentic peace and security can only be achieved through worldwide working-class solidarity against all forms of oppression. The Workers Solidarity Alliance firmly stands with the oppressed people of Afghanistan and with progressive organizations such as the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and others, who we know are risking their lives at this moment to defy imperialists, warlords and fundamentalists alike. The WSA unequivocally supports the aspirations of all oppressed Afghanis for a free, democratic and peaceful life.

There can be no hope for liberation of Afghanistan by foreign occupiers—only the struggle of oppressed Afghanis and authentic solidarity from struggling people around the world offers any such hope. American workers who wish to stand up for oppressed Afghanis should stand against the war-mongering of “our” government.

It is heartening to see the anti-war movement stirring in the US and internationally against the troop surge in Afghanistan. However, the movement as it stands now suffers grave limitations. It is telling that many liberals and Democrats who have spoken out against the war in Iraq are willing to compromise with the Afghan war. This fact alone speaks to the dire lack of coherent social principles in the broadly defined anti-war movement. Many who criticize it do so (as with Iraq) out of “strategic” or “pragmatic” reasons—that the war is a “mistake” or “cannot be won.” Such reasoning is not anti-war. These reasons imply that the war would be just fine if the US could achieve its aims.

That is but a flip-side argument to those now clamoring for “victory.” On the other hand, in our experience, many in the protest movement seem more concerned to prove their moral righteousness, while neglecting to build an anti-war movement that can actually defeat wars. We find both the “pragmatic” and “moral” arguments against the war unsatisfactory.

The WSA proposes a different orientation for the anti-war movement. As an organization of working-class militants rooted in the traditions of anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian socialism and class struggle, we are convinced that militarism can only be defeated by the rank and file of working people, in common struggle against the class of bureaucrats, politicians and capitalists who profit from the slaughter of war. Only through a mass struggle against all bosses and the overthrow of capitalism and its supporting political structure will war and imperialism ever be definitively ended. While we firmly support anti-war protesters, we know full well that news-grabbing marches by a small crew of professional activists are no substitute for the kind of mass working-class resistance that wreaked havoc on the US war effort in Vietnam: rank-and-file refusal, sabotage and mutiny, social upheaval in the ghettos and working-class communities from which the soldiers are recruited, and so on.

Here we find the Achilles heel of US imperialism. The US military is an army made up of recruits largely from working-class backgrounds. With rampant unemployment and underemployment in precarious service industry jobs, many workers increasingly see military service as their only viable career option. Many immigrants join the US military in exchange for US citizenship, interpreted as a path to a decent job and a better life. Frontline GIs are enlisted largely from working-class neighborhoods, towns and ghettos suffering economic hardship. The rank and file of the US military do not simply enlist because of blind patriotic loyalty to the ruling elite. They often enlist out of the economic hardship inherent for working-class people forced to live under an economic system in which basic necessities such as shelter and health care are treated as luxuries for those who can pay rather then necessities that all people are in need of and have a right to, in a word—capitalism. Already we have seen the first stirrings of resistance in the military's rank and file, from soldiers who have refused to serve in Iraq. We deeply respect the courage of those soldiers and technicians who have taken a stand against the madness of war, asserting the value of working-class lives. Their brave example serves as the clearest manifestation of the fact that US soldiers do not fight simply out of ideological faith in the objectives of US imperialism.

The anti-war movement, if it is to have a chance at success, must encourage the growing resistance in the lower ranks of capitalism’s armed forces. The rank-and-file soldiers of capitalist empire, recruited from the working class, could turn against the brass to become a true workers' army dedicated to fighting the real enemy at home: the ruling class of capitalists, politicians and the middle managers who do their bidding.

We pledge our support for rank-and-file soldiers who refuse the orders of their commanders. We extend our support in particular to the Iraq Veterans Against the War, an organized grouping of veterans and active-duty soldiers that seeks to undermine support for imperialist war in Iraq and Afghanistan from within the US military. We also encourage efforts to establish solidarity across battle lines with the rank-and-file of state militaries around the world.

While supporting anti-militarist resistance within the armed forces of the US, NATO, and other imperialist states, we also acknowledge the right of oppressed Afghanis to resist all forms of aggression and despotism at home, whether it be in the form of foreign imperialism or homegrown autocracy. Thus the Workers Solidarity Alliance extends its solidarity to all who struggle to build a truly democratic Afghanistan that respects the humanistic aspirations and needs of all working-class Afghanis, male and female alike. We affirm again our internationalist, anti-authoritarian principles and our solidarity with oppressed and struggling people everywhere.

Workers Solidarity Alliance (W.S.A.)

wsany@hotmail.com

www.workersolidarity.org.

Video: A Voice from RAWA: Zoya on Afghanistan

2010-01-04T15:50:00.002-05:00

From RAWA

Barack Obama announced last night that the US would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. (No word on how many private contractors would be accompanying them.) He did not explicitly use the Afghan women as justification, but many politicians have, claiming that we cannot leave the women to their fate.

RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, is an underground women’s organization and one of the groups that predicted a long, deadly engagement. Zoya is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of RAWA and she joined us to talk about what would really be best for the women–and all the people–of Afghanistan. The Afghan Women’s Mission has coordinated her speaking tour.

Zoya is a pseudonym and her face is obscured to protect her identity.

Flying Squad pickets and the need for independent workplace groups

2010-01-03T21:27:00.000-05:00

from our friends at Gathering Forces. - sd

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One of the innovative things that came out of the Teamsters Rebellion in 1934, was the flying squad picket. The flying squad picket is a rapid response group of members who are ready to mobilize on short notice to provide direct support for pickets or actions. It is important for how it mobilizes many workers in real time. Farrell Dobbs talks about how the flying squad pickets then included not just union workers, but also unemployed workers and people from the community.

This sort of direct action seems particularly relevant given the times that we are in right now. Unions are weak, union busting is normalized, unemployment is rising, and social services budgets are slashed with no qualms. Many workers are losing confidence that the contract negotiation process is going to help them keep their jobs, or tide through the lows of the economic crisis. The recent resounding No vote by 75% of UAW members and up to 90% in some locals,against the concessionary UAW/Ford contract, is the clearest testament to this utmost lack of faith and indignation against the union bureaucracy. This has not happened for decades. It is clearer than day that union bureaucracies have cowered at the economic crisis and perpetuated this sense of inevitability and legitimacy of attacks on workers. This can be the only foreseeable result after decades of racism that have only too conveniently shifted the blame unto third world workers, as well as economic nationalism that is more about keeping US companies afloat rather than fighting for the working class in the US.

This raises the question: What can sufficiently fight back against this economic crisis? What kind of actions and organizations can counter these endless attacks and criminalization of workers struggles?

read more

Libertarias

2009-11-10T17:11:00.006-05:00

Saturday

November 14th
Noon
NorthStar
106 Lathrop St. Lansing, MI 48912

This film is set during the Spanish Revolution and Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s. Maria, a young nun is recruited by Pilar, a militant feminist, into an anarchist militia and the Mujeres Libres, an anarchist womens’ organization.

Libertarius depicts the struggle of these women to be treated as equals in society and by their male comrades.The film opens with scenes of working class militants shouting "down with Capitalism!" and "long live the libertarian revolution!”

Presented Jointly by Solidarity & Defense and the Workers Solidarity Alliance

Minneapolis, MN - Oppose the neo-Nazi N.S.M. this Sat. Oct 3rd

2009-10-01T10:12:00.000-04:00

***Please Forward Far & Wide***
Minneapolis, MN - Oppose the neo-Nazi N.S.M.

Defend Our Neighborhoods!
Defend Anti-Racist Organizing!

10:00 am Saturday
October 3rd 2009
Lake Street & 22nd Ave
(outside the Midtown YWCA)

This Saturday, October 3rd, 2009, the neo-nazi National Socialist Movement
(NSM) has threatened to demonstrate against an anti-racist workshop being
held at the YWCA on East Lake Street in Minneapolis. The NSM has declared
the anti-racist organizers "traitors" to white supremacy.

This provocation also has a wider goal: The NSM has been holding racist
anti-immigrant rallies in southern Minnesota, and now they are seeking to
establish a presence inside the City of Minneapolis. For years Minneapolis
has been a virtual "no-go" area for organized racist activity, due to the
efforts of young anti-racist organizers.

In the wake of the racist attacks in Brooklyn Park last week, the nazis'
threat cannot be ignored. They plan to bring their racist, homophobic,
anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic message of division and hate right into the
heart of the city. They must not go unopposed!

10:00 am Saturday
October 3rd 2009
Lake Street & 22nd Ave
(outside the Midtown YWCA)

Solidarity Against Racism!
No to the Nazis!

Join the Detroit Workers protest against cuts and austerity.

2009-08-18T22:18:00.003-04:00

Detroit Workers protest against cuts and austerity. Against the Mayors office!
Wednesday August 19th, 4:30pm at the City-County Building downtown Detroit (in front of the Spirit of Detroit Statue ).

Detroit is faced with receivership (Sate takeover of operations due to bankruptcy). Mayor Bing and City Council President Cockrell are arguing: for 10-20% cuts in city workers pay; cuts in city services including limiting weekend bus service routes; privatization of city book keeping and finance depts; the bringing of DPS (Detroit public Schools) under direct control of the Mayors office.

An assortment of union locals, teachers, and community organizations plan to organize resistance against the City's proposals. The tasks are daunting with much of the militant organized labor having been dispersed and beaten in to retreat. We must build fighting movements that can both act with clear ideas and strategies for building a popular labor and citizens struggle. These movements must be determined and controlled by its base - the rank and file.

It will be over the next several weeks that workers and our communities can determine the potentials for such a fighting movement.

Join the demonstrations, be seen, be heard, and connect with others who want to raise up the D from its downward spiral!

S&D reading group meeting

2009-08-18T21:22:00.003-04:00

Solidarity and Defense study group this
Saturday August 22nd at noon.
This will take place at the NorthStar Center.


Last time we read and discussed
"The Two Main Trends in Anarchism"
by Wayne Price,
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13536

To follow up on this article it was decided to
read a sample from each very broad trend. 
For this Saturday we are reading and discussing
Hakim Bey's "Temporary Autonomous Zones"
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html#labelPirateUtopias

and Tom Wetzel's "Social Anarchism,
Individualist Anarchism, the State and
Leninism"
http://workersolidarity.org/?p=486

There are also copies of both articles
available at NorthStar (starting Tuesday).

Hope you can join us for the discussion.

For more information on
Solidarity and Defense please check:
http://solidarityanddefense.blogspot.com/

Micheal Joseph Jackson: 29 August 1958 - 25 June 2009

2009-06-27T13:13:00.003-04:00

Chuck D (of Public Enemy):

“He’s been the soundtrack of my life… As a black man I feel the mess of multimedia coverage of the last 15-20 years is just a bunch of crap to me. Yesterday was a sad and a bad day for me, because I think Michael Jackson died of a broken heart and a broken soul. The same fame that he thrived on that these boardrooms create, I think he felt chained to it. I think it was painful. The thing is the hypocrisy of this country. Now fame means the worst side of you will get the most coverage. It’s kind of haunting that these record companies wouldn’t give him the light of the day or these radio stations wouldn’t give him the light of the day over the last couple years, but now that he died everybody’s on his jock, so to speak. It makes me angry because in the end, no matter how much he messed with himself or his appearance, which to me didn’t mean anything to anybody when it came down to him wanting to entertain and just make people have a good time, I just thought all of that was irrelevant. And now you see all these areas of multimedia praising him and jocking him. But once again, as a black man dead, it’s just convenient for American media, and much of the people living in it.”

and

Right Back Where We Started

2009-06-01T09:18:00.002-04:00

repost from UAW rank-n-file militant, Gregg Shotwell

Live Bait & Ammo: #129: Right Back Where We Started

Sometimes one can’t see the precipice for the pitfalls. When you’ve lost a job or taken a steep pay cut; when your pension is threatened and your backup plan nose dives; when you’re faced with foreclosure or stuck in an abandoned neighborhood; when your biggest investment in life just lost half its value despite all the time, love, money, and labor you put into it; when you’re forced to relocate but can’t afford to uproot; when you’re too young for medicare and too old not to have preexisting conditions that exclude you from health insurance; when you’ve followed all the rules only to find that the rules have changed; when one or all of the above apply, it’s understandable that you may cling to your private barrel of anxieties as the current hurls you down the Niagara.

Understandable, but useless. The barrels that we cling to—contracts, unions, pensions, promises, IRAs, VEBAs—will not protect us. Workers’ rights are not defined by law or contract. Workers’ rights are defined by struggle. Empty barrels won’t protect us from the precipice, and there’s no turning back.

The United States is not in a recession. We’re getting “restructured” and “rationalized”.

The good news is, the barrels that once provided an illusion of safety are smashed to smithereens. From the wreckage we can clearly see that either we all rise up together, or no one walks away with dignity, let alone a living wage. The good news is, no one—not the salary workers, the knowledge workers, or the retirees—will be spared. The carbon monoxide of ‘Too-bad-for-them-but-I’m-okay’ complacency has blown away. Catastrophe demands unity. The good news is, our history can lead us.

Money isn’t lost, it changes hands. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s capitalism. The transfer of wealth from labor to capital didn’t begin with the current crisis. We can trace it back to Caterpillar, Staley, Bridgestone, and every lockout since then. We can trace it back to the offshoring of steel, rubber, textile, and electronics; to restructured airlines that pilfered pensions; and PATCO. We can trace it back to narrow interest bargaining and lunch bucket politics that allowed the corps to pick us off, one isolated union at a time. We can trace it back to southern tenant farms and garment sweatshops in Manhattan. What’s new isn’t the method but the magnitude. All workers in all sectors are under the whip this time.

The Delphi bankruptcy characterizes the contemporary strategy and serves as a template for what the Detroit Three and subsequent industries can expect. Recently Delphi abolished health care and life insurance for salary retirees. The switch enabled the company to report to the SEC that it “swung to a $566 million net profit from a $577 million loss a year earlier” [Autobeat, 5/13/09]. Easy money. Unearned money. Lots of it.

Next, they will liquidate the salary pension. What’s to stop them? Capitalism is the law.

GM and Chrysler may not achieve all their goals in the quick rinse bankruptcy controlled by the feds, but they’ll be back in court to finish the job, just like Delphi. Observe how history repeats itself.

Base wages at Delphi were negotiated by the UAW in 2004, eighteen months prior to bankruptcy: $14 per hour and no pension. Base wages at the Detroit Three were negotiated by the UAW in 2007, eighteen months prior to bankruptcy : $14 per hour and no pension. One coincidence leads to another.

Each new UAW contract promises security in exchange for concessions from workers. The latest UAW Concession Con promised to deliver members from bankruptcy and plant closings. As soon as it was ratified Chrysler went into bankruptcy and announced more plant closings.

But the nail in the coffin is the agreement to settle the contract in 2011 by arbitration based on non union standards. That isn’t a contract, it’s a death warrant for the UAW. What could be more clear? The Concession Caucus has effectively decertified the UAW.

The union agrees not to strike and commits to a goal that nullifies any benefit to union membership. This is the price we pay for company stock in a VEBA? The UAW signs confidentiality agreements with the companies and leaves members in the dark. Read the actual contract language at www.soldiersofsolidarity.com.

Read it and weep. Weep for the unsung heroes who risked everything they loved in the depths of the Great Depression so the next generation might labor in dignity. Weep for the youngsters who tread in the footprints of the generation who chose to collaborate with management and sold their birthright for a bowl of maggots that the clipboards call joint programs.

Read it and revolt like the heroes of America’s Civil Rights Movement who faced guns and clubs, police dogs and fire hoses, pimped out politicians, and judges controlled by cowards in hoods, so their children might live in dignity.

Read it and recognize that UAW members lost their voting rights.

We’re right back where we started. Sometimes, where we started is the right place to be.

Recently my wife, Sheila, and I ventured down to the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi for the annual Juke Joint Festival. Every year it seems there is one old standard that predominates, that bands play at every juke joint we frequent. Each year it’s different. This year it was “Big Boss Man” by Jimmy Reed. Over and over again, we heard:

You got me working, boss man / Working 'round the clock.
I want me a drink of water / You won't let me stop.
You big boss man / Can you hear me when I call?
Oh, you ain't so big / You just tall, that's all.

The blues is essentially subversive. Every blues like every river has an undercurrent, a subtext, a baseline shackled to oppression and resistance. A song like “Baby Please Don’t Go”, for example, isn’t just another song about love. It’s a song about slavery and addiction; it’s a song about poverty and injustice; it’s a song about fear and violence and solitary confinement. And like every old blues, it’s a song about the struggle, the struggle to be human in an inhuman world—like Detroit or Buffalo or Cleveland, North Carolina. Or a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa that treats workers like animals, and where the feds arrest those workers under regulations as cruel and uncivilized as Fugitive Slave Laws.

We’re right back where we started. The authorities turned fire hoses and police dogs on the children in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and arrested them just like the police beat and arrested children trying to escape the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. The struggle isn’t between North and South, black and white, native born and immigrant, it’s between labor and capital.

When we try to take back what belongs to us, they will beat us and arrest us, and we will know exactly where we stand on the precipice.

Northwest Chicago: Workers Approve Sit-In At Hartmarx Suit Factory

2009-05-12T19:40:00.004-04:00

DES PLAINES, Ill.Five hunded workers at the Hartmarx suit factory in northwest suburban Des Plaines have authorized a sit-in over the threat that the company's largest creditor may shut it down.

Employees want the largest creditor for the 130-year-old Chicago area company, Wells Fargo Bank, to help it reorganize instead of shutting it down. In the event that the factory closes or is liquidated, they will not leave.

As CBS 2's Susan Carlson reports, just months ago, the company formerly known as Hart, Schaffner & Marx, which has its factory at 1680 E. Touhy Ave. in Des Plaines, was best known for making the favorite suits of President Barack Obama. But that has changed.

Wells Fargo has received $25 billion in federal bailout money, and has the option of either selling the bankrupt Hartmarx to bidders or forcing the company to shut down. If that happened, the 600 workers at the factory would lose their jobs.

"We are all upset that, they should give us another chance to make sure that somebody comes in who actually wants to bid," said Workers United Local President Ruby Sims. "Take the bid. Let us work. We deserve to finish paying those bills, paying for our houses, taking care of our children."

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from chicagotribune.com

A touch of history in Hartmarx struggle

David Greising

May 12, 2009

They came from many countries to work at the Hart Schaffner & Marx plant. They shouted and jeered at the capitalist powers arrayed against them. They became a political sensation with national impact.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps so. But the events just described are not those that led some 600 workers to stage a boisterous rally Monday at the Hartmarx Corp. plant in suburban Des Plaines. Rather, they took place in 1910 at the famed suitmaker's West Side Chicago production plant. That strike led to the creation of the United Garment Workers union.

Life, and the union movement, have changed substantially since then.

At least three workers died in the Chicago garment strike a century ago. Fortunately, violence is virtually out of the question today.

In most other respects, the union movement is weaker than it was. Some 30,000 Hart Schaffner & Marx employees struck in 1910. Today, there are not that many textile workers left in all of Chicago.

The workers a century ago were fighting owners who unilaterally cut wages, ran an unsafe workplace and insisted on 70-hour workweeks with no overtime pay. Employers could count on uniformed police and hired goons to crack down on labor disturbances.

Today, the workers are fighting forces that seem all the more powerful because they are so hard to define. They are the powers of capital flows, of financial crisis and global change. Hartmarx is, after all, in bankruptcy.

A new owner that comes in may be tempted to shut the U.S. operations in five states and Canada and move production to China or another country where quality is nearly as good and costs run half as much.

This is not the fault of Hartmarx's U.S. workers, of course. But it will prove difficult for a costly, unionized workforce to become part of the solution to Hartmarx's problems.

Marina Franceschi, a 54-year veteran who emigrated from Puerto Rico, leaves her home at 3:30 a.m., riding two hours on buses and trains to her job pressing hand-sewn suits. "I pray. I pray that they're going to stay in business."

Of course one feels sympathy for Franceschi and her colleagues. They are rightly proud of their work, and their Chinese, Polish, Puerto Rican, Mexican, African-American and Italian origins speak to the enduring resonance of the American dream.

Quiquiang Huang, 39, and Yan Huang, 26, arrived from Guangzhou, China, just four years ago. They work for Sydney Branford, 64, a press room manager from Jamaica.

Speeches and rallies -- and the sit-in that might follow -- will not change the economics facing Hartmarx. What is important, though, is how politics and union pressure are coming into play.

Hartmarx workers learned from those at Republic Windows and Doors, who staged a sit-in last year after the company shut abruptly and refused to pay severance. Bank of America -- a recipient of federal bailout funds -- eventually made money available.

Now Hartmarx workers are leaning on Wells Fargo & Co. -- the bank providing the funding to keep Hartmarx in business -- to make certain the right buyer winds up with control of the company.

Yucaipa Cos. of Los Angeles and Emerisque from London have shown an interest in keeping Hartmarx in business. But Mistral Equity Partners of New York -- the bidder the workers are worried about -- has indicated it would do better by selling the company's brand names and shutting down its operations, say sources knowledgeable about the talks. Politicians have gotten involved too. Wells Fargo, another recipient of government money, can hardly ignore State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias' threat to take away $8 billion that the bank manages for the state.

Bob Bruno, an assistant professor of labor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said unions are taking advantage of the fact that the banks have taken government money and may need more of it in the future. "The banks are exposed," Bruno said. "The unions are smart enough to see where they can apply the pressure."

The recession is creating a strange new solidarity among management and labor. Among the 600 workers gathered in the cafeteria Monday at the production plant stood, here and there a few men in spiffy Hart Schaffner & Marx suits. As national leaders from the Service Employees International Union exhorted the workers to fight on, the men in suits applauded -- more than politely, I might add.

They were managers of the plant -- people whose jobs might be saved, too, if the right buyer gets the plant. In this labor fight, it's not blue collar versus the suits. It's everyone involved in making suits, scrambling desperately to save their jobs.

Workers @ AT&T Poised to Strike

2009-04-15T10:37:00.005-04:00

Submitted to us by IWW comrades in Minneapolis, MN. Article is from the forth coming May issue of the Industrial Worker. Following the article are videos and related news on the building struggle between CWA workers and AT&T.

The struggle of the CWA rank-n-file is and will increasingly become an important one as it is one more sector that has the ruling classes attempting to gain concessions from the union - steel, aero, auto and now telecommunications to name but a few and most known, although healthcare workers, city workers, teachers, and transport workers are all feeling the capitalist crisis and related offense by the bosses.

As the IWW comrade states, this would "be the first major strike under the Obama regime" and "there is a growing mood among workers at AT&T and throughout the class in general that workers should not have to shoulder the bosses’ economic crisis – that the rich must pay". There has been a near media blackout on the emerging struggle. As is often the case, real and radical perspectives may only find light through outlets designed by and in solidarity with the people fighting back. - S&D

Workers @ AT&T Poised to Strike

By x359209 IU 560 Job Shop (dual card CWA)

Job action would be biggest U.S. strike in recent years, and first under Obama

IWW/CWA dual-carders in the heart of the struggle

At midnight April 5, 2009 contracts for most of the component groups represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at the telecom giant AT&T have expired. After weeks of mobilizing, around 90,000 workers are poised to strike one of the largest and most profitable multinational corporations. A job action by CWA would be the largest and among the most significant labor action in the United States since the UPS strike in 1997. It would also be the first major strike under the Obama regime. The brewing confrontation could set the tone for class struggle in the U.S. for the near future.

Attack on Healthcare
AT&T has been pressing hard for major concessions from its call center, billing & ordering, and technical workers, especially in the area of health care. The company is demanding harsh cost shifting in the form of premiums and huge deductables for current employees and even steeper cuts for “second tier” workers hired going forward. AT&T is also demanding concessions in areas of seniority, over-time, and discipline. Raises would be replaced for the first two years by one-time lump payments.

Billions in Profit
AT&T corporate PR hacks have been spinning that healthcare must be reduced to avoid a repeat of what has happened to the U.S. auto industry. But AT&T is not General Motors. It is in a growing, innovative industry – one where AT&T bosses made $12.9 Billion in profits in 2008 alone. Besides, the U.S. healthcare crisis and its skyrocketing costs are not the fault of workers and their families and we should not be made to shoulder its burden. Workers at AT&T are furious that such a rich company would attack their families’ access to healthcare.

The company has also sought to pit the different component parts of “the new AT&T” against each other (the old Ameritech, SBC, Pac Bell, Cingular, etc) by taking advantage of real wage and benefit gaps and separate contract expiration dates. CWA has only partially resisted these efforts. A new contract at the fastest growing (and least compensated) component AT&T Wireless was approved just as negotiations were hitting the wall for 5 of the other major groups. The Union has given up on negotiating the old Bell South component contract, which doesn’t expire until August 2009. By agreeing to postpone these negotiations until summer, the union has given away more of all the workers’ leverage.

Time for Action
In the first few days after the contracts expired CWA leaders announced that workers should report to work for now, while still expressing exasperation at the “Final offers” being pushed by AT&T. It is clear that AT&T is advancing the same attack that has drastically reduced the wages, benefits and power of all the core unionized sections of the working class (auto, steel, airlines, etc.) AT&T bosses are confident that telecom workers can also be tamed for the international capitalist economy, and are hardly fearful of the business unions, which have no real experience or desire to wage militant struggle.

But there are factors that favor us, the workers, too. There is a growing mood among workers at AT&T and throughout the class in general that workers should not have to shoulder the bosses’ economic crisis – that the rich must pay. The issue of Healthcare is one that is on everyone’s mind, and a group of workers seen as struggling to defend their healthcare has the possibility of striking a chord deep and wide across the working class. Finally, Obama was elected in no small part because workers wanted “change”, and it will not be easy for his administration to openly attack any emerging struggle without damaging his standing and costing him room to maneuver.

The View from the Floor
Over the last few weeks in the Midwest call center where we work it has been interesting to join the union mobilizations and watch the attitude of our co-workers move quickly towards a determination to take action. A month ago any talk of a strike brought either yawns or fear from most people. As the deadline neared, however, the reality of AT&T’s demands hit home. At the top of the hour, union employees stand up in their cubicles and press loud “clickers”, shake noise makers, or tap pens on their desk in a show of solidarity. The effect is like a massive cloud of locust sweeping over the office and adds to the tense atmosphere. Groups of people discuss the latest news and share opinions about a strike. Red Union T-shirts are everywhere, and cubicles are decorated in union flyers. Petty discipline and rule enforcement from management have sparked a much stronger and organized reaction than usual – turning “team meetings” into heated debates. Now there is a wide group of workers who are not only willing to strike, but WANT to strike.

Strike to Win
If we are forced to go on strike it is important that we win. We have little confidence that the business union approach can beat such a committed and powerful adversary. It is likely that the withdrawal of our labor alone will not be sufficient. It is clear that AT&T is prepared to force us to strike and has calculated the short-term losses and chaos it is prepared to endure in order to implement the long-term cuts to workers’ healthcare and implement a second-class tier for newly hired workers. Certainly workers with greater skill and specialization than those of us in a call center have been replaced in strikes.

Direct action tactics like those most recently employed by the Republic Windows workers in Chicago, who successfully blocked the sell-off of their factory by staging an occupation/sit-in are ones we need to look at and advocate.

The IWW @ AT&T
Among the active core of union workers in our call center is a group of dual card I.W.W. members. The group grew out of a major struggle for greater union democracy in our CWA local about 4 years ago. We do not try and get workers to leave or dismiss the Communication Workers, but instead to participate in the CWA as “solidarity unionists”, fighting for greater militancy, democracy and revolutionary analysis of the system we are up against. We have built support for other local struggles including in the airlines, at the University, and for active IWW organizing campaigns in our area. We try and create a social scene with our co-workers built on solidarity. We do not ignore the CWA or let it exclusively define our activity. It is this mix of independent IWW organizing and dual-card organizing that really defines our GMB and points toward a successful model for bringing the IWW back to the cutting edge of the struggle for emancipation from capitalism and the state.

CWA National Video Mobilization 2009 - AT&T

Sabotage attacks knock out phone service

Fourth-generation telecommunications worker says AT&T squandering a legacy

District 4 members at the NCAA Final Four Game in Detroit, MI

The Auto Crisis: Placing Our Own Alternative on the Table

2009-04-13T08:25:00.003-04:00

By Sam Gindin
ZNet April 10th, 2009
read full article here.

"Instead of waiting to see what else the corporations put on the table, workers need to put their own alternatives on the table...

This is an historic moment that challenges us to think big or suffer even worse defeats. Faced with immediate needs, workers and their union have too often shied away from taking on larger issues of social change that seemed too abstract, too distant, too intimidating. The lesson however is that if we only focus on the immediate, the options we have are always limited. We are all now paying the price of that failure to think bigger.

This is a moment when the elite - from the financiers through the Detroit auto executives and all those pushing the virtues of letting greed run free - have lost credibility. Yet it is the labour movement that is on the defensive and getting hammered. In this context, what is truly unrealistic is not new options, but the notion that stumbling through the present crisis will preserve past gains or bring new security.

Being realistic means resolving the crisis not so much in terms of saving the corporations, but as saving productive capacities and the economic base of our communities. And rather than speaking only (or at least primarily) for the members still working, it means also addressing the job needs of all those already, or about to be, laid off.

Being realistic means taking on a new and necessary fight - daring to put something new on the table. Rather than perpetuating our dependence on markets, competition, private corporations and the values and pressures they represent, this proposal builds on the first principle of unionism - organizing around our own, independent vision of how ‘progress' is defined. It means reviving the best of working class leadership: unions seen as not only negotiating for their members but raising the largest issues on behalf of their members and society as a whole.

Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches and putting it in the hands of workers. Workers have courageously taken over their plants only to end up 'winning most of the severance they were owed' (as a CAW press release put it); they should be encouraged and inspired to demand that the facilities are kept in operation and they be allowed to do productive work. And alongside this, it means that the need for work should not have to be traded off for accepting inferior working conditions - in fact, demanding social control over production might be a first step in going beyond defensive demands and thinking about what a truly democratic workplace might look like.

The alternative raised here will, as any significant change must, throw up new problems around democracy, accountability and balancing difficult choices. And it needs to be emphasized that this alternative is less a ‘technical' solution than a political one in the sense that it challenges the status quo of property rights in the name of democratic and social rights, and demands a cultural change in how we think of the economy and possibilities. It can't succeed, or even really begin, if it isn't part of the widest degree of discussion and debate from below, mobilization within and across unions, a clear identification of allies, and strategies for building new worker, union and community capacities."

Movie review for a day suppossedly dedicated to being Irish

2009-03-17T19:18:00.004-04:00

Michael Fassbender in "Hunger."
review from salon.com

Were posting this on St. Patricks Day. Hunger, is a new film on the imprisonment and resistance of 1981 Irish Republican Army soldier and commander, Bobby Sands. - S&D

"Hunger" opens with a tremendous racket. A woman is banging a trash-can lid against the street, her face set in determination or anger. From the orchestral, discordant clanging around her, we can gather that many other people are doing the same thing. The next thing we see is completely different, an intimate, domestic image: a man in a bathroom, filling the sink with hot water and wincing as he washes his injured hands. It is daylight, apparently morning. When he is done washing, he sits at the kitchen table as his wife brings him breakfast: fried eggs, sausages, toast.

Only through context do we know what is going on, and viewers will come to "Hunger" -- the award-winning feature film debut of British video and installation artist Steve McQueen -- with widely varying degrees of information. Not much about these early scenes will be clear to American audiences, other than the fact (provided in on-screen text) that the place is Northern Ireland and the time is 1981. British and Irish viewers will of course understand them better, but not completely. Why are the man's hands cut and bruised, for instance? No matter how many books and articles and diatribes about the Irish "troubles" you have absorbed, you won't know that until later in the movie.

"Hunger," which won the Caméra d'Or (for best first film) at Cannes last year, is first and foremost a sculptural or architectural work that asserts the physical reality of the much-mythologized events it depicts. There have been other films about the 1981 hunger strike at the Maze prison (aka Long Kesh) outside Belfast, in which Irish Republican Army prisoner Bobby Sands and nine other inmates starved themselves to death. (Most notable of these is probably Terry George's 1996 "Some Mother's Son," which remains mysteriously unavailable on DVD.)

But McQueen's film is unique in its relentless focus on the nearly incredible everyday details of what happened in and around that prison. IRA prisoners lived naked and filthy in cells smeared with their own excrement and infested with vermin. Messages and contraband were smuggled in and out of Long Kesh in the body cavities of prisoners and female visitors, and occasionally even in the bodies of their infant children. Guards regularly beat and brutalized prisoners, sometimes driving them out of their cells for forcible cold baths, haircuts and delousing. One prisoner refused to eat, and slowly wasted away in pain and delirium, his internal organs failing and his skin covered with weeping sores. (Sands died on May 5, 1981, after 66 days on hunger strike.) Others followed him, at two-week intervals. Prison guards who ventured out in public were sometimes blown up with car bombs or shot through the head on Sunday outings.

It's virtually impossible to write that description without inserting political and ideological context, and it would be misleading to suggest that McQueen and his co-writer, Irish playwright Enda Walsh, completely withhold such things. "Hunger" does not provide the expository background or the conventional character development of an ordinary movie, but it isn't quite a non-narrative or experimental work either. Watching "Hunger" for the second time, I see it secondarily as a puzzle or intellectual challenge, designed to confront the issue of whether information is actually helpful, and how much or how little of it we need to understand historical events.

Do we need to know that the refusal to wear prison clothing or to wash or finally to eat prison food were all part of a gradually escalating IRA strategy, designed to force the British authorities to grant privileged political-prisoner status to men the British regarded as terrorists? Would it help to learn that Sands' hunger strike caused angry worldwide protests, or that -- to the British government's intense embarrassment -- he was elected to Parliament from a majority-Catholic Northern Ireland constituency four weeks before he died? You may glean those things from the thin scattering of info throughout the film, or you may not. McQueen is more concerned with showing us what life in Long Kesh was like in practice: Young IRA prisoner Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) tries to masturbate under his blanket in a room encrusted with weeks worth of shit, while out of the corner of his eye he sees his sleeping roommate's pillow alive with unidentifiable white crawly things, maggots or bedbugs or lice.

Do we also need to know that Ulster Protestant prison guards like Ray (Stuart Graham), the man with the bruised knuckles, felt humiliated on one side by their disgusting working conditions and humiliated on the other by the British government, which talked tough in public but continued to negotiate with their IRA enemies in secret? Or that Northern Ireland prison guards were the target of a long-running intimidation and assassination campaign, and that 16 of them were murdered during the period of the Maze protests? That statistic emerges at the very end of the film, but the rest of that information you have to pick up by inference or not at all.

And then there's the fact that I am describing things in words that McQueen and Walsh describe almost entirely without words. The first half-hour of "Hunger" includes, at most, two minutes' worth of comprehensible spoken dialogue, along with some snippets of news broadcasts and parliamentary speeches by then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, professing imperious indifference to the fate of IRA prisoners or the outcome of the hunger strikes.

That initial third of the film is also misleading in that we meet two people -- Ray, as he prepares to go to work at the Maze, and Davey, as he arrives there to serve his sentence -- who seem as if they will become central characters. In fact, we learn almost nothing about them, except that in this context they are playing their parts, Ray as a dispenser of harsh discipline and Davey as a loyal IRA soldier who lives "on the blanket" as ordered. (The woman with the trash-can lid never reappears at all.) The real protagonist of "Hunger" is of course Bobby Sands (played memorably by the German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender), who seems to rise unnoticed, almost magically, to the top of its chaotic human stew.

During the concluding section of "Hunger," which follows Sands through his final weeks in the prison infirmary, there is even less talking, if that's possible. McQueen has rejected suggestions that he intentionally depicts Sands' death as a Christlike agony, but to say that such comparisons only exist in the eye of the beholder is not to say they don't exist at all. Religion is scarcely mentioned in this film, and is sometimes described as playing only a minor or accidental role in the long-running Irish conflict. But the hunger strikes were consciously designed to appeal to the Roman Catholic and Irish nationalist ideals of martyrdom, which seemed repulsive and bizarre to loyalist Protestants.

In between those two sections, though, comes a sudden volcanic eruption of dialogue. Not long after Sands is viciously beaten down and scrubbed clean by guards, in the film's most harrowing scene, he invites a Belfast priest named Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham) to visit him in prison. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt's odd, elegant and subtly disorienting camera angles abruptly give way to a single fixed-camera shot of almost 15 minutes, as we watch Moran and Sands banter, dodge and butt heads around the forthcoming hunger strike. Amid all that clatter, violence and silence, we are suddenly forced to engage with a Jesuitical debate, conducted in dense Ulster dialect, about the morality and efficacy of sacrificing your life for a cause, and for this somewhat murky cause in particular.

Moran argues that the IRA prisoners have backed themselves into a corner in their refusal to accept various compromises offered by British authorities (e.g., they were allowed to wear "civilian-type clothes," but not their own clothes), and that in the oppressive atmosphere of Long Kesh they have become detached from reality and psychotically obsessed with martyrdom. Sands argues that the hunger strikes will be invaluable as propaganda and recruiting tools, and that while he and others will probably die, the British will eventually capitulate to the prisoners' demands in the short term, and to the IRA's campaign for Irish reunification in the long term. It's a fair summary of positions held at the time, and in the long lens of history it looks like neither man was entirely wrong or entirely right.

In fact, after 10 hunger-strikers died and worldwide outrage grew against the Thatcher government, prison officials did grant IRA detainees a range of special privileges (while never officially acknowledging their "political status"). The Northern Ireland conflict burned pretty hot during the latter years of the Cold War, and Sands and the IRA's campaign became a cause célèbre for leftists around the world. There is a monument to Sands in Havana, and one in Hartford, Conn. Streets in at least four French cities are named after him. Tehran has both a Bobby Sands Street (adjacent to the British Embassy) and, somewhat infelicitously, a fast-food restaurant called Bobby Sands Burger.

On the other hand, it's impossible to say whether Bobby Sands' self-starvation hastened or delayed the end of the Irish conflict. For practical purposes, that arrived with the complicated power-sharing compromise between the Catholic and Protestant communities and British and Irish governments known as the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, although it was not fully in force until 2005. Given Sands' zealous devotion to the cause of a united Ireland, it strikes me as very unlikely that he would have supported peace on those terms. (His sister, Bernadette Sands McKevitt, has been linked to the Real IRA, a splinter group opposed to the agreement that has continued to commit sporadic acts of violence.)

When I met McQueen in Cannes last May, he joked that as a 12-year-old London kid in 1981, he was obsessed with two things: the Tottenham Hotspur soccer team that would win the F.A. Cup that year, and Bobby Sands' hunger strike. Although it's fair to say that McQueen's own position is somewhat closer to that of Sands than, say, to Maggie Thatcher, "Hunger" is more a document born of that fascination than an ideological position-paper. While the fact that McQueen is a black man of Afro-Caribbean ancestry isn't directly relevant to the film, it may mean that he felt even more detached from Northern Ireland politics than other English people did.

What McQueen seems to admire in Sands and the hunger strikers is their almost monomaniacal willpower, and their ability to resist a much stronger oppressor to the point of sacrificing their human dignity and their very lives. This kind of David-vs.-Goliath resistance is by its nature morally unstable. As I think McQueen is well aware, Western viewers are more likely to sympathize with the IRA cause of 1981, which is largely a moot point today, than with similar forms of resistance from Islamic detainees at Camp Delta.

McQueen began making "Hunger" without reference to any present-day news hook -- the Irish conflict was beginning to recede into history, and Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay had not yet made the headlines -- but it's safe to say that he intended the film both as a chronicle of something quite specific and something much more abstract. "Hunger" is a mesmerizing 96 minutes of cinema, one of the truly extraordinary filmmaking debuts of recent years. It's also an uneasy, unsettling experience and is meant to be. It captures a disturbing episode in a dirty little civil war on the northwestern fringe of white Europe. And it captures the ambiguous, dehumanizing theater of oppression and resistance, of brutality and self-sacrifice, that recurs throughout human history as surely as if God had planted its seed.

"Hunger" opens March 20 at the IFC Center in New York, with wider theatrical release to follow. It's also available on-demand from IFC In Theaters, on many cable TV systems.

Q&A at I.W.W. Starbucks Workers Union Presentation

2009-02-28T13:36:00.000-05:00

Hosted by Solidarity & Defense and the NorthStar Center
Lansing, MI 2-21-09

Israeli/Palestinian solidarity and direct action movement, Anarchists Against the Wall: Feb 26th

2009-02-24T07:42:00.008-05:00

Feb 26th - Detroit

Sponsored by Barbara Harvey Jewish Voice for Peace Detroit and American Jews for Just Peace, Detroit
AJs Music Cafe
240 W. 9 Mile Road, Ferndale, MI
7 - 9 PM

Anarchists Against the Wall is a direct action group that fights against Israeli apartheid and oppression in all its forms, most recently also the atrocities in Gaza. For five years the group has waged a constant struggle against Israel's Wall. The work on the ground in the West Bank, alongside the Palestinian popular movement is breaking new ground in the joint struggle for Palestinian liberation. In December 2008, Anarchists Against the Wall and the Bil'in Village Committee were jointly awarded the prestigious Carl von Ossietzky Medal---an award given annually by the Berlin-based International League of Human Rights, named after German Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky who died in a Nazi concentration camp.

Now more than ever, it is critical to support the Israeli resistance movement against the state's attempted repression of our work. Members of Anarchists Against the Wall continually pay the price for our activism, including being shot, beaten, arrested and indicted. We desperately need funding for legal support for both Palestinian and Israeli activists who are arrested and charged in the course of the struggle.

Schachaf Polakow, a member of Anarchists Against the Wall, will be touring the U.S. and Canada from February 1st to March 9th. His presentation will include film and photos, and will focus both on AATW's recent work in solidarity with Gaza and our ongoing work in the West Bank. Please see the tour schedule below, and help us get the word out. A highlight of the tour is bound to be a special evening with Noam Chomsky at Harvard Square, February 17th.

For more information questions about the tour, please email aatwtour@gmail.com.

Worker Organizing At Starbucks

2009-02-19T01:55:00.003-05:00

Saturday Feb. 21st, 4PM, North Star Center, Lansing

Renewing the New Years Promise

2009-01-22T20:17:00.004-05:00

Saturday Feb. 7^th - 6PM – Detroit

International Institute – 111 E. Kirby St. – Room 3(downstairs)

Renewing the New Years

Promise

Building radical grassroots social movements in the new era

January 20^th, 1991, Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42^nd U.S. president. The Democrats victory came with much hope and enthusiasm after 12 years of Republican government. After years of government attacks on working and poor people, the 1991 Democratic win left many feeling that change was coming.

The new Clinton/Democratic administration instead continued agendas of aggression – invasions; sanctions and air strikes against Iraq; creation of a mass prison system; cuts in social aid programs; and the expansion of a global economic system that benefited corporations and private interests at the expense of poor and working peoples across the globe.

On New Years Day 1994 an uprising shook the boss class and inspired new social movements against the emerging capitalist globalization. Throughout the southern region of Mexico a new movement declaring itself the EZLN, or Zapatistas, overran the military/police and occupied many cities. The Zapatista movement represented a new voice against the impoverishment of capitalism and the state.

Fourteen years later we are once again emerging from years of Republican rule. We are faced with a far reaching crisis: a collapsing economy; millions facing foreclosure and homelessness; wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; imprisonment of millions of citizens; and schools on the brink of failure. The Democratic Party offers us the words of Change & Hope that so many of our peoples desperately want to hear. However, the Democratic Party only offers these words through our acceptance of their capitalist program. Change & Hope have become concepts only realizable if we accept the rule of the State.

With this New Year we must search out and renew the actual promise for change and hope – that of broad based, independent social movements that fight with militancy and determination. Movements of individuals united on collective, anti-authoritarian, and anti-capitalist visions.

Solidarity & Defense is hosting an evening event of presentations and discussions. The event will feature Detroit and regional organizers speaking about their organization’s visions of social change and how these visions contribute to movement building.

Speakers will include organizers from: Centro Obrero – Southwest Detroit; Y.O.U.T.H (Youth Organizing to Uplift Tomorrow’s Humanity) Northwest Detroit; Solidarity and Defense from Michigan; Members of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World); Chicago’s Four Star Anarchist Organization.

S & D members hold banner at rank and file auto workers rally outside of IAS

2009-01-15T20:08:00.002-05:00

January 11th , Hart Plaza, 1pm. Rally outside of the North American International Auto Show.

2009-01-07T20:08:00.005-05:00

Make the Bankers and Bosses Pay!
Labor and Poor Organize to Fight Back!

Labor Notes, Soldiers of Solidarity, and the organizers of the recent auto caravan to DC are calling on labor and community supporters to join in a rally to “stand behind auto workers and all workers who are bearing the brunt” of the economic crisis and the bosses continuing attacks on the working classes.

Despite the recent bailouts – Wall Street and the global economic institutions, followed by GM and Chrysler –thousands of working people connected to auto will lose their jobs. Our cities and communities already facing tough times are looking at a further downward spiral. The breakdown in auto is leading to a wave of City, County, and State agencies across Michigan and the Rustbelt slashing jobs and limiting access to needed social services.

We are calling for a broader organizing initiative of labor and the poor. We can not rely on the government or the Union leaderships that have made concession after concession. We need an independent social movement that can fight for the remnants of militant labors gains as well articulate new visions for long-term community and class survival.

Join with Solidarity & Defense around the Black & Red banners. Meet at Hart Plaza, 12:30 PM

Black & Red are the colors of the mass strike. Black & Red are the colors of revolutionary unionism. Black & Red are the colors of the popular and participatory resistance movements. Black & Red are the colors under which movements march against the State, authority, and injustice.

Win at Republic Windows for the workers

2008-12-14T10:07:00.004-05:00

'Yes' Vote at Republic: Workers Get Pay, Plant Occupation Ends & Final Press Conference Republic Factory Occupation

Solidarity Actions With republic Workers

2008-12-14T09:44:00.003-05:00

There were actions across thee country this past week in solidarity with the UE workers at Republic Windows and Doors. Actions took place from Minneapolis to NYC to Detroit.

In Detroit various organizations and individuals joined the Moratorium Now, Stop Florclosures! coalition to conduct a demonstration in downtown at Congress and Woodward at BoA. Industrial Workers of the World, Labor Notes, Moratorium Now, Centro Obrero/Workers Center, and Solidarty & Defense were all on the ground.

The picture to the right is of the Detroit action.

links to other reports: Workers solidarity in action...

Picket In Solidarity With Chicago Factory Occupation

2008-12-13T19:20:00.001-05:00

Thursday, December 11th – Lansing, Michigan

On Wednesday, December 10th members of Solidarity & Defense, The NorthStar Center and other concerned community members gathered outside the Bank of America in the heart of downtown Lansing, Michigan. They came together in solidarity with the factory occupation being carried out by UE Workers in Chicago.

The workers’ occupation of the Republic Windows & Doors Factory began after Republic announced it would close its doors due to its Credit Line being cut. The decision to cut Republic’s credit line was made by Bank of America, and as a result, the company lacked the funds to pay the severance packages or sick time rightfully due to the workers. This is the same Bank of America that is receiving money from the latest Federal Bailout plan.

In Lansing, the picketers joined others across the country in demanding that Bank of America extend the line of credit needed to pay these workers what they are owed. They handed out flyers about the occupation taking place in Chicago and talked to passersby on the street. The picketers urged the local bank branch to contact corporate headquarters with their message of support for the UE Workers. The picket ended with those present planning continued support of the UE Local 1110, the workers and their occupation of Republic Windows & Doors.

IWW Committee launches National Day of Support and network for flying squads.

2008-12-10T21:25:00.001-05:00

The Chicago IWW's UE Workers solidarity Committee is calling a national day of action in support of UE workers The committee's primary purpose is to work as a network between interested organizations and individuals to provide rapid response in an emergency

An Injury To One is An Injury To All

The Chicago IWW's UE Workers solidarity Committee is calling a national day of action in support of the strike.

In solidarity, Iww's will hold similar rallies and pickets across the U.S at Bank of Americas on Wednesday.

The committee's main purpose is to coordinate between organizations to provide a rapid flying squad if it is required by the U.E. If other organizations are working in a similar capacity then we need to work together to build our strength.

To get involved in the committee come to our next meeting or call/email:

Wednesday & sunday 7:00
UE Hall
37 s Ashland

Greg Ehrendreich
312-479-8825

Marisa Holmes
614-260-0545
marisaholmes (at) gmail.com

Solidarity Forever

BANK OF AMERICA GETS BAILED OUT, WHILE CHICAGO WORKERS GET SOLD OUT!

2008-12-09T19:36:00.002-05:00

Thoughts on the Chicago factory occupation by members of Solidarity & Defense

On Dec 5th Republic Windows and Doors, a Chicago firm, was set to close. Republic’s financial institution/creditor is Bank of America.

When Friday arrived Republics 260 workers organized in UE1110, seized the plant. The occupation continues.

4 days before workers were abruptly informed their jobs were gone. Federal and Illinois state laws respectively require 60/70 days notice of closing on the equivalent in wages/severance pay. Adding insult to injury Republic has denied the workers a collective $1.5 million in severance plus unused earned vacation pay. The average seniority worker is owed $3,500.

Republic’s owner said the closing and failure to pay severance is based on Bank of America’s unwillingness to extend credit. A Bank statement released Dec. 6th said it was not responsible for Republics obligations to its employee’s. This criminal and callous action comes after Bank of America received $25 Billion in taxpayer bailout money. Since the plant seizure Republic has remained silent.

Conspiracy?

Republics sales have been hit by the home building slump. Last month its sales dropped to $2.9 million from a previous $4 Million. Two weeks prior to he announced closing, workers reported management started moving equipment out of the plant.

There are suspicions that Republic intends to move out of state, slip its $14/hr with benefits union contract, and then financially restructure and reposition itself. Could Republic and Bank of America be in collusion? Suspicions aside, BoA is responsible for the closing and lack of payment to the Republic workers. The $25 Billion it was given was for the purpose of extending credit and keeping the economy moving.

Direct Action

The workers of UE1110 have seized more than Republics plant. They’ve seized the attention of thousands of workers being hammered by the unfolding crisis.

They have not gone away quietly. Hopefully their dramatic actions will spark other groups of working people to direct action.

Several Democratic politicians and the President Elect have come to support UE1110 with astonishing speed because they fear such actions. They feel a pressing need to remove a dangerous and dramatic example from the news. More so given the ongoing turmoil involving the auto industry. They are moving to wind up the events at Republic by channeling peoples dissatisfaction and anger back into the political process.

Hopefully the UE workers will press beyond the issue of severance pay. If BoA is forced to extend credit it should be to reopen the factory. Republic management should be tested on its commitment to reopen the plant and keep it in Chicago. If management fails to do this the plant should remain open as a worker/community controlled enterprise, infused with public funds. Republic workers and their supporters throughout Chicago and the U.S. should organize to demand that the entire labor movement as well as community groups back this course of action. It should be demanded of the incoming Obama regime that the worker/community enterprise be given work supplying windows and doors to the proposed public works and “green jobs” agendas.

The spread and generalization of these kinds of demands involving worker-community control, as well as a refusal to make the workers pay in the face of the crisis, could build the combativity and self-confidence of the working class. Moving us towards a struggle to break the rule of the capitalist and political classes and embark on the revolutionary course of building an alternative society.

What began as a courageous action by a small group of Chicago workers could provide the need act of inspiration to move us along in this direction.

Love and Solidarity to the UE Workers,

Drafted by members of Solidarity & Defense - Detroit Branch.

POBox 5024 - Detroit, MI - 48215
sd@riseup.net
http://solidarityanddefense.blogspot.com/

Making a new New Deal: Sitdown Strike in Chicago

2008-12-07T19:31:00.001-05:00

from the Nation:

Much has been made about the prospect that Barack Obama's presidency might, due to economic necessity and the president-elect's interventionist inclinations, be a reprise of the New Deal era.

But there will be no "new New Deal" if Americans simply look to Obama to lead them out of the domestic quagmire into which Bill Clinton and George Bush led the country with a toxic blend of free-trade absolutism, banking deregulation and disdain for industrial policy. Just as Roosevelt needed mass movements and militancy as an excuse to talk Washington stalwarts into accepting radical shifts in the economic order, so Obama will need to be able to point to some turbulence at the grassroots.

And so he may have it.

After the Bank of America -- a $25-billion recipient of Bailout Czar Hank Paulson's "Wall Street First" largesse -- cut off operating credit to the Republic Windows and Doors company, executives of the firm announced Friday that they were shutting its factory in Chicago.

Instead of going home to a dismal Holiday season like hundreds of thousands of other working Americans who have fallen victim to the corporate "reduction-in-force" frenzy of recent weeks -- which has seen suddenly-secure banks pocket federal dollars rather than loosen up credit -- the Republic workers occupied the factory where many of them had worked for decades.

Members of United Electrical Workers Local 1110, which represents 260 Republic workers, are conducting the contemporary equivalent of the 1930s sit-down strikes that led to the rapid expansion of union recognition nationwide and empowered the Roosevelt administration to enact more equitable labor laws. And, just as in the thirties, they are objecting to policies that put banks ahead of workers; stickers worn by the UE sit-down strikers read: "You got bailed out, we got sold out."

"We're going to stay here until we win justice," says Blanca Funes, 55, of Chicago, who was one of the UE members occupying the Republic factory over the weekend for several hours.

Most of Republic workers are Hispanic and they want answers from the Bank of America and the company.

According to the UE, the workers hope "to force the company and its main creditor to meet their obligations to the workers."

"Their goal is to at least get the compensation that workers are owed; they also seek the resumption of operations at the plant," explains the union. "All 260 members of the local were laid off Friday in a sudden plant closing, brought on by Bank of America cutting off operating credit to the company. The bank even refused to authorize the release of money to Republic needed to pay workers their earned vacation pay, and compensation they are owed under the federal WARN Act because they were not given the legally-required notice that the plant was about to close."

UE is an independent union that is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, although its roots go back to the militant labor organizing of the 1930s that gave rise to the groundbreaking Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Some of the solidarity of old has been on display in Chicago this weekend, as UE members have been supported by unions that are affiliated with both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition of major unions.

Recognizing the absurdity of taxpayer-funded bailouts that enrich banks that in turn cut credit for American manufacturers, Richard Berg, president of Chicago's powerful Teamsters Local 743, said. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country."

Invoking Chicago's rich record of labor struggle -- from the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century to the steel industry organizing of the 1930s -- American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 regional director Larry Spivack hailed its latest expression.

"The history of workers is built on issues like this here today," Spivack told union members at the plant.

Spivack's right.

But it is not just the history of workers that turns on struggles such as this. It is the history of presidents and the United States.

Barack Obama will not be the new FDR, and this coming period will not see a "new New Deal" unless labor is inspired to fight once more to keep workers on the job, plants operating and American manufacturing industries muscular enough to survive in the global market. Then, the proper demands can be made on an Obama administration to back up not just unions but their expanding membership.

If the right history of this time is written, it will be said that the new New Deal began in Chicago -- not just because Obama comes from the city but because workers there chose to stand up by sitting down.

For updates on developments in Chicago, UE website.

Workers Occupy Republic Factory in Chicago

2008-12-07T19:15:00.003-05:00

A member of Solidarity & Defense was in Chicago on Saturday and participated in Solidarity mobilizations for the workers. Follow this link to photos of the event. Photos from Chicago Indymedia.

Hundreds of people gathered Saturday afternoon at the Republic Windows factory on Chicago's Goose Island to lend their solidarity to Republic workers, who occupied the plant on Friday. The workers have vowed to continue the occupation until they are paid back pay and benefits, or until the plant is re-opened -- by the owners or by the workers themselves.

Dec. 5th: Chicago factory occupied

2008-12-06T11:16:00.002-05:00

http://socialistworker.org/2008/12/06/republic-window-occupation

Chicago factory occupied
Lee Sustar reports from Chicago on an occupation by workers who want what's theirs from management and the Bank of America.

December 6, 2008
WORKERS OCCUPYING the Republic Windows & Doors factory slated for closure are vowing to remain in the Chicago plant until they win the $1.5 million in severance and vacation pay owed them by management. In a tactic rarely used in the U.S. since the labor struggles of the 1930s, the workers, members of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1110, refused to leave the plant on December 5, its last scheduled day of operation. "We decided to do it because this is money that belongs to us," said Maria Roman, who's worked at the plant for eight years. "These are our rights." Word of the occupation spread quickly both among labor and immigrant rights activists--the overwhelming majority of the workers are Latinos. Seven local TV news stations showed up to do interviews and live reports, and a steady stream of activists arrived to bring donations of food and money and to plan solidarity actions. Management claims that it can't continue operations because its main creditor, Bank of America (BoA), refuses to make any more loans to the company. After workers picketed BoA headquarters December 3, bank officials agreed to sit down with Republic management and UE to discuss the matter at a December 5 meeting arranged by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill), said UE organizer Leah Fried. BoA had said that it couldn't discuss the matter with the union directly without written approval from Republic's management. But Republic representatives failed to show up at the meeting, and plant managers prepared to close the doors for good--violating the federal WARN Act that requires 60 days notice of a plant closure. The workers decided this couldn't go unchallenged. "The company and Bank of America are throwing the ball to one another, and we're in the middle," said Vicente Rangel, a shop steward and former vice president of Local 1110. Many workers had suspected the company was planning to go out of business--and perhaps restart operations elsewhere. Several said managers had removed both production and office equipment in recent days. Furthermore, while inventory records indicated there were plenty of parts in the plant, workers on the production line found shortages. And the order books, while certainly down from the peak years of the housing boom, didn't square with management's claims of a total collapse. "Where did all those windows go?" one worker asked. Workers were especially outraged that Bank of America, which recently received a bailout in taxpayer money, won't provide credit to Republic. "They get $25 billion from the government, and won't loan a few million to this company so workers can keep their jobs?" said Ricardo Caceres, who has worked at the plant for six years. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE MEMBERS of Local 1110 have a history of struggle. In 2004, they decertified the Central States Joint Board--a union notorious for corruption and sweetheart contracts with management--and brought in UE, a far more democratic organization. In May of this year, Local 1110 mobilized for a contract by organizing a "practice" picket, and 70 workers used their lunch break to confront the boss with a petition listing their demands. The workers were able to turn back company's effort to win major concessions and won solid pay increases.Now, management is trying to get revenge by pocketing money that belongs to the workers. UE officials and workers acknowledge that it will be difficult to stop the plant from closing. But they're determined to get the money owed to them--and they believe that by fighting, they can set an example for other workers facing layoffs and plant closures as the recession deepens. Negotiations are set for Monday, December 8. Whatever happens, however, the workers have already sent a message to employers that if they violate workers rights and the law, they can expect a fight. "This is a message to the workers of America," said Vicente Rangel, the shop steward. "If we stand together, we will prevail until justice is done, and we get what we're due." = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
What you can do
If you live in the Chicago area, come to a rally on Saturday, December 6, at 12 Noon at Republic Windows, 1333 N. Hickory in Chicago, on Goose Island. If negotiations with Bank of America fail to resolve the issue, there will be a picket of BoA's Chicago headquarters at 231 S. LaSalle on Tuesday, December 9 at 12 noon. Members of Local 1110 need your support. Make checks payable to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund, and mail to: 37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607. Messages of support can be sent to leahfried@gmail.com. For more information, call UE at 312-829-8300. At the Jobs with Justice Web site, you can send a message of protest to Bank of America (http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bankofamerica/).

news on the financial and auto crisis

2008-12-06T10:46:00.003-05:00

below are the following: 1) from union militant and Soldiers of Solidarity organizer, Gregg Shotwell, Legacy Cost a smokescreen for Fraud; 2) from Kasama website, Autoworkers Targetted as a Crisis Ground Zero; 3) from detroit Free Press pictures from Jackson Detroit rally/press conference and D.C auto rally

Live Bait & Ammo #116: Legacy Cost, a Smokescreen for Fraud

The media keeps reporting that GM workers make on average $70 per hour in total compensation, and that Toyota workers only make $45.

The $25 difference is attributed to legacy costs.

Legacy benefits were earned in the past. Tacking compensation earned in the past onto active workers in the present is deceptive bookkeeping.

Since legacy benefits were earned in the past, why are they now charged to workers in the present?

Since GM included the cost of deferred compensation in the price of cars sold in the past, why are they charging customers for that cost again?

Since the compensation was deferred, was any of that money put into a trust fund?

If so, didn’t GM get tax breaks for money deposited in the trust fund?

What happened to the trust fund?

Should the victims of fraud be blamed for destroying the American auto industry?

Management, not labor, is responsible for legacy cost. Management, not labor, is over compensated in comparison to foreign competitors.

“In the fiscal year that ended in March 2007, Toyota’s top 32 executives — a group that included CEO Katsuaki Watanabe — together pulled in $7.8 million in bonuses on top of salaries of $12.1 million. For the comparable period, one single GM exec, CEO Rick Wagoner, raked in $10.2 million.” [www.toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html]

In 2008 Wagoner got a $5.3 million dollar raise.

Economist David Gordon in his book “Fat and Mean” said, “In the 1980s, by common measures, the proportion of managerial and administrative employment was more than three times as high in the United States as in Germany and Japan.” Gordon points out that in the US we have a higher percentage of supervisors than Germany, Japan, and Sweden combined.

According to Gordon, 20% of the purchase price of every product made in the USA goes to supervisors and monitors, not including secretaries and assistants and bean counters. In other words, when you buy a $20,000 vehicle, $4,000 goes to pay for the burden of supervisors, managers, and executives whose sweatless efforts add no value to the product. Less than 10% of the purchase price can be attributed to assembly line workers.

Perhaps the biggest question is: Why doesn’t Ron Gettelfinger, the President of the UAW, raise these issues?

Why doesn’t he defend the reputation of his members?

Why doesn’t he publicly acknowledge that the legacy cost mantra is a smokescreen for fraud?

Stay Solid, Gregg Shotwell

Autoworkers Targetted as a Crisis Ground Zero

Posted by Mike E on December 4, 2008

Flint Michigan, 2006 (Photo: Jim West)

By Mike Ely

“Concessions, I used to cringe at that word. But now, why hide it? That’s what we did.”

Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers (New York Times, Dec. 4)

As the ruling class (and the new administration) debate a “bailout” for the auto industry, it is hard to miss that the autoworkers are becoming a key target.

So much about this stinks. It is outrageous and infuriating.

Within days of erupting crisis, 700 billion were rushed to “protect” (and soothe) huge banks — and a whole superstructure of media mouthpieces announced they were “too big to fail” and that they “needed it.” But meanwhile, those same mouthpieces report that the autoworkers have “bloated” or “supersized” benefits — and that the auto companies have been “irresponsible” in granting concessions (to the workers!) that now “need” to be plucked before any “bail out” can be considered. All the talk of Chapter 11 bankrupcy (for General Motors) revolves around the power this gives the auto capitalists to simply tear up the agreements and benefits (around which hundreds of thousands of working people have structured their lives and plans.) In the brutal language of capitalism, these promises and agreements are called “the dilemma of legacies” (as if the workers’ futures is just a problem hoisted from an outdated past.)

And the argument made is pure capitalism: Why bail out the auto industry if they are not “competitive,” and how can they be competitive without much more thoroughly shredding the “social contract” made with autoworkers (driving them from their current often-stable and middle class status, to a situation “competitive” with the workers of capitalist rivals — in the Deep South or in other countries).

For decades Detroit was allowed to slip away — as a livable city — and now we are seeing the Detroitization of the surrounding region.

What gets laid bare here is capitalism’s drive for the bottom — when it comes to wages and conditions of the workers. And the incredible fluidity of capital — which first granted benefits (and even relative privilege) to autoworkers after world war 2, and then announces that it “can’t” sustain this (as a whole generation prepares to retire).

At night the mind is haunted by the suffering and uncertainty of Iraqi people under occupation and unjust imprisonment. At dawn in Bangla Desh, an army of young women stream into vast textile mills to clothe the world — why they themselves stand barely fed and clothed. As sunset passes over each part of the world, young women are sold and brutalized again and again in a global sex trade. Each day, in China, thousands of coal miners face death in badly ventilated mines with poorly supported roofs. There are other “ground zeros” of global capitalism — and so many of them much more bittern and relentless than what has hit in Michigan .

For decades, a section of workers in the U.S. have been relatively shielded from the worst of these horrors. And then comes crisis, and the cold arithmetic of a restless system. And suddenly it is unclear where the bottom is to this slide.

The following article from the New York Times lays out the concessions just extracted from the autoworkers.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, holds a news conference Friday at MotorCity Casino in Detroit

BRIAN KAUFMAN/DFP

AN AUTO BOOSTER: The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, holds a news conference Friday at MotorCity Casino in Detroit to address the troubles facing the Detroit Three. He is joined by some in the auto industry and others concerned about it in hopes of helping to promote congressional approval of auto loans.

JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AP

Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., speaks Friday at a rally on Capitol Hill in support of loans to Detroit's automakers. Suppliers and dealers from 50 states and D.C. wore red, white and blue jerseys that bore the number of jobs believed to be at stake.

Oct 31 Halloween: Bay Area Youth Protest Against ICE in SF; Call for an Immediate End to All Raids

2008-11-02T18:03:00.005-05:00

This Halloween, Friday, Oct. 31, hundreds of youth from throughout the Bay Area gathered with community members and families to denounce the atrocities committed against immigrant communities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Youth demanded an immediate end to all ICE raids, the shutdown of all detention centers, and the creation of real sanctuary cities.

The protest started at 10 am in San Francisco’s Ferry Park (Washington between Davis and Drumm) with blessings from Danza Azteca and community organizer and author Betita Martinez, skull face painting, and other festivities. At 11:30 am, a funeral march made its way to the ICE office at 630 Sansome, followed by a mass rally in front of ICE.

The protest was a response to ICE attacks on immigrant communities, attacks that have taken place even in so-called “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco. The protest also brought attention to the repression and violence faced by immigrant communities during a presidential election season that has seen neither major candidate address the issues facing immigrant families.

Breaking News From 10/31:

2:15pm: In Oakland, 400 people were reportedly prevented from attending the protest because of BART's closure of the Fruitvale station.

2pm: Protesters have surrounded the ICE building on Sansome. Several people have locked down with 55-gallon drums on both ends of the building's driveway, where vans normally load and unload detainees.

11am: BART police have shut down at least three stations - Richmond, Fruitvale, and Coliseum - from which groups of protesters were gathering to commute to the protest in downtown San Francisco. At least three protesters were arrested in Richmond. Some trains were delayed, and others were bypassing Fruitvale and Coliseum stations.

read more at Indymedia
view pictures

Oct 18 &19th: ICE Immigration Raids In Lansing Area

2008-10-31T10:10:00.003-04:00

From the Lansing based community center, NorthStar

Across greater Lansing, MI this past weekend (Oct. 18th & 19) several immigration raids and detainment's occurred, carried out by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). ICE is a Department of Homeland Security under provisions of the Patriot Act.

Detentions resulted from raids at two restaurants and an apartment complex. Another detention occurred when a motorist working on a vehicle on the side of the road was stopped and questioned by ICE, and then arrested. All together there are 6 confirmed arrests and at least 3-6 more that have yet to be confirmed.

There is a need to speak out against these raids and detentions. ICE engaged in several actions that can only be considered as racial profiling and repression. Nothing else can explain why a motorist would be stopped and arrested by ICE agents while working on his vehicle. Its unlikely
that Homeland Security agents would stop this person other than that they were seeking out people of identifiable Latino/Chicano origins.

The arrests this past weekend are part of a larger national ICE campaign of raids and detentions. Thousands of working people are being arrested. Families and communities are being broken up. Those detained are being placed in crowded jails or in makeshift detention facilities that resemble those run by the United States government at Guantanamo Bay. Access to these facilities by lawyers and families is restricted in some instances, making communication between those detained and their families and communities difficult or impossible.

These are the first Immigration raids that have hit close to home, but over the past year there have been immigration raids in Grand Rapids, Detroit, Jackson and the Ypsilanti area. ICE
operations have been carried out with what amounts to terror campaigns with ICE officers kicking in doors, throwing people to the ground, and having drawn and loaded firearms pointed at families including mothers and their children. We need to wake up, these Gestapo tactics have been happening across the country and now they have come to our own back yard.

What Can We Do?

We need to inform those vulnerable to raids on how to protect themselves as much as possible. We need to speak out against the attacks on our neighbors, co-workers and community members. We need to start talking about what is going on and then take steps to do something about it. An Immigrant Rights Coalition of organizations and community members needs to come together and speak out PUBLICLY against the raids and educate people on how best to protect themselves. We hope this can be a collaborative effort between people and organizations from across the greater Lansing Area.

We call on our fellow citizens to defend all members of our communities against these ICE actions. Raids by ICE must be put in the context of the broader attacks being leveled against working people. As our communities face mounting troubles - economic and social - we cannot allow ourselves to be divided.

************************************************************************************

more news:

The raids were broader than first thought, with 64 people being arrested.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Service confirmed today that they had detained 64 people over the course of last weekend in the
Lansing area for immigration violations.

See the rest of the story here

http://michiganmessenger.com/6999/immigration-raids-net-64-in-lansing

and story with video here

http://michiganmessenger.com/7214/video-federal-agents-make-immigration-arrests-at-east-lansings-el-azteco-oct-19

Detroit,: Highland Park fire kills 4

2008-10-30T20:34:00.000-04:00

Woman, 3 children die in Highland Park blaze

Video from WSWS: Detroit residents denounce social decay in fire deaths

Soul survivor... the veteran who gave Motown its voice

2008-10-27T19:10:00.001-04:00

Reposted from Ireland's edition of the Independent

Oct. 25th, 2008. Levi Stubbs, who has died aged 72, was one of the most distinguished soul singers of his generation and, as lead singer with the Four Tops, a pioneer of the Motown sound that dominated the pop charts in the 1960s.

Between 1964 and 1968, the Tops enjoyed 12 Top 20 American hits, including I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honeybunch), It's The Same Old Song and Bernadette.

But perhaps the group's -- and Stubbs's -- finest moment was Reach Out, I'll Be There, a number one record in 1966 which characterised the Motown sound at its most sublime, with its galloping rhythm and symphonic orchestrations, and Stubbs's soulful, beseeching baritone pitched somewhere between a cry for help and a prayer against the silken harmonies of the other Tops.

Like most of the group's greatest hits, that song was written and produced by the team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland (H-D-H), the most consistently inventive and successful partnership at the Motown "factory".

For the Four Tops, they produced songs that were perfectly measured to Stubbs's declamatory, pleading style -- love songs tinted with desperation and melodrama in which Stubbs was usually cast as a wounded lover, begging for release or redemption.

"He would feel that type of thing, and he'd be able to sell it because he's basically a dynamic singer anyway," Eddie Holland once recalled.

The English songwriter, Billy Bragg would pay tribute to the emotional force of Stubbs's voice in his 1986 song Levi Stubbs' Tears: "She takes off the Four Tops tape and puts it back in its case / When the world falls apart some things stay in place / Levi Stubbs' tears ... '

Levi Stubbs was born in Detroit on June 6, 1936 into a family with a strong musical tradition. The soul singer Jackie Wilson was a cousin, and his brother Joe Stubbs sang with the Detroit R'n'B group the Falcons.

His singing career began in 1954, when he started performing with three other high-school students, Lawrence Payton, Abdul "Duke" Fakir and Renaldo "Obie" Benson, as the Four Aims.

Two years later, the group changed their name to the Four Tops, supposedly to avoid confusion with another popular vocal group, the Ames Brothers.

The Tops performed in supper clubs and lounges, and made records for Red Top, Riverside and Columbia, with no great success. In 1961, they were approached by a young entrepreneur, Berry Gordy. An erstwhile boxer, Ford production-line worker and songwriter, Gordy had recently founded the record label, Motown, gathering around him a crop of fresh young local talent that included Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells and the Temptations.

The Four Tops were seasoned veterans, but Gordy was determined to bring them to the label. "Smooth, classy and polished, they were big stuff," Gordy remembered. "I wanted them bad."

The Tops were initially sceptical, particularly when they learned of Gordy's policy of not allowing his putative signings to take contracts away from the office to study at their leisure. They persuaded him to make an exception in their case.

It was two years before they came back, explaining that while the contract was satisfactory they had doubts that a small, black-owned label like Motown could survive.

Their first Motown recording, a vocal jazz album, Breakin' Through disappeared without trace. For a while they marked time providing backing vocals for other Motown acts, including the Supremes.

Their first H-D-H production, Baby I Need Your Loving, in 1964, reached number 11 in the US charts, and they enjoyed their first number one, I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honeybunch), the following year.

The group would become popular in Britain, where, for a while, they enjoyed the distinction of being Motown's biggest-selling act.

Like Eddie Kendricks with the Temptations, and Diana Ross with the Supremes, Stubbs might easily have left the group to pursue a solo career.

But he remained loyal to his friends, arguing that the group could never break up -- "We'd be lost, baby lost without each other turning up for a game of cards or a sing-through."

The group would retain the same personnel until 1990, and the death of Lawrence Payton.

In 1967, H-D-H fell out with Gordy over profit-sharing and royalties, leading to their departure from the company.

The Four Tops' fortunes suffered, and in 1972 they too left Motown following a contractual dispute. Over the following years, recording for ABC and Casablanca, they enjoyed hits with Keeper Of The Castle, Ain't No Woman (Like The One I've Got) and When She Was My Girl, all of which displayed the group's customary polish without ever reaching the heights of their Motown work.

A glowing exception was the duet which Stubbs recorded with Aretha Franklin, I Want To Make It Up To You, in 1982 for her album Jump To It -- a smouldering call and res-ponse.

In 1983, the Four Tops returned to Motown.

But the homecoming was shortlived, and they moved on to Arista, for which they recorded the grating novelty song Loco In Acapulco, which gave the group their last British Top 10 hit, in 1988.

Their recording career effectively over, the Four Tops continued to tour and perform. Ill health finally led to Stubbs retiring from the group in 2000.

Levi Stubbs is survived by his wife, Clineice, and five children.

FAREWELL TO A MOTOWN LEGEND: Four Tops singer's legacy will live on

Understanding the capitalist crisis and financial meltdown

2008-10-03T10:32:00.002-04:00

Paul Bowman of the Irish anarchist organization, the Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM), presents a talk of the nature of the current crisis and a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) both from the perspectives of the capitalist ruling classes as well as for revolutionary anarchists and the anti-capitalist movements.

While Bowman is speaking to an Irish audience, he makes his presentation relevant on an international basis, just as this recent crisis of capital is itself international.

Solidarity & Defense hosted this past April a presentation by a member of the WSM. The event was held in downtown Detroit.

listen to the audio talk by Paul Bowman here, The cause of the crisis and the opportunites it presents

Who We Are: Statement from General Membership of S&D

2008-09-29T17:02:00.001-04:00

adopted September 13th, 2008

We are a small but growing alliance of anti-authoritarian militants active in both the workplace and the community. We champion grassroots organizing, participatory politics, and determined action from below. The histories of social struggle and revolutionary action have led us to see that the masses of everyday people – at the base, from the ranks – are the agents of real and popular social change and liberation.

In our lifetimes we have seen inequality grow exponentially. While the majority move downward, a fewer number of elites hold an ever-growing proportion of the wealth of society. At the same time popular culture is more obsessed with materialism and the open promotion of misogyny, anti-immigrant sentiment, homophobia, and racism. The youth are encouraged to get rich or die trying. We end up tearing at each other for an ever-diminishing number of crumbs thrown our way by our politicians, bureaucrats, and bosses. Meanwhile we face a continuous assault from the ruling classes in the forms of global war and the expansion of capitalism into every corner of our lives.

As these ruling classes forge ahead we suffer cut backs, sellouts, and abandonment of our urban and rural communities. The results are a deepening economic, environmental, and social crisis. We must resist these attacks and their effects through mass and popular direct action. This direct action is based on our initiatives outside of and against the rule of the State.

A voice against the dog eat dog world is essential. The movements necessary for this must be built on solidarity within the working classes and with those social struggles fighting for justice and dignity. We must build the capacity for our movements to defend the remaining gains made by the struggles of past generations, while continuing to expand our base by pushing forward the ides of self-reliance and a confidence in ourselves.

There is a culture of resistance growing and taking shape. With each fight there are lessons for our movements to learn from. As we struggle, we improve our ability to combat the rulers, and create the visions of community renewal and human potential. We are Solidarity and Defense.

ICE raids in Chicago

2008-09-21T14:13:00.001-04:00

from Immigration News Briefs

*3. CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD RAIDED, AGAIN

On Sept. 18, ICE agents raided several homes and apartment buildings in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood in an operation targeting people who allegedly produce and sell fake identity documents. ICE agents executed search warrants simultaneously at five locations in the area: an office where fraudulent identification documents were allegedly produced; two residences; and two photo studios which allegedly produced photos for fake documents. Activists on the scene reported that ICE agents stormed buildings, hid in garages and interrogated people on the street. Word of the raid spread quickly; tensions in the heavily Mexican neighborhood have been high since ICE made dozens of arrests at a Little Village shopping mall in April 2007 in a similar operation targeting a false document ring [see INB 4/28/07]. [Associated Press 9/18/08; ICE News Release 9/19/08]

José Landaverde, the pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican church in Little Village, said he was questioned during the raids by agents who asked to see his mica, a slang term for green card. Landaverde said he was visiting the local alderman's office to pick up a block-party permit. "When I walked outside the office, three officers of Immigration approached me and put me on top of my car, and then searched me," said Landaverde. "And they said, 'I want to see your documents, mica.' And then I said, 'I don't have any mica, but I have my United States passport because I'm a United States citizen.' When he saw the passport, he gave it back to me right away and he said, 'Go away.'"

On 26th Street, the neighborhood's main drag, Landaverde said immigration agents "were stopping everyone who was walking on the sidewalk and saying, 'Lay down on the floor, searching you, give me your documentation.' If you didn't have it, they were taking you." [WBEZ (Chicago Public Radio) 9/19/08]

Landaverde held a press conference on Sept. 19 to denounce the raid. "The agents showed up in the neighborhood starting at 9pm on Tuesday [Sept. 16], with helicopters and guns, and they have been terrorizing the community and taking away innocent people," said Landaverde. At the press conference, Landaverde introduced Josefina Pérez, a mother of six children who said her husband, Héctor Medina, was arrested in the street during the raids. "He was walking with his cousin and the agents arrested him, accusing him of being a false document seller when in fact he works all day doing auto body repair," said Pérez. [El Financiero (Mexico) 9/19/08 with information from Notimex/JOT]

It was not clear how many people were arrested in the raid. An ICE news release said the operation was a followup to the April 2007 sweep at the Little Village mall--targeting a competing ring of false document producers who stepped in to pick up extra business after those arrests. The news release said that on Sept. 18 "ICE agents began arresting up to 21 new defendants," and that 21 people were charged on Sept. 19 in two federal court indictments with conspiring to produce false identification documents. The news release cites US Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Northern District of Illinois, and Gary J. Hartwig, special agent-in-charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Chicago, as saying that 15 of the defendants named in the two indictments had been arrested in Chicago since the night of Sept. 16, while six are fugitives. [Note that both Landaverde and ICE say the arrests began on the night of Sept. 16, while ICE reports that the search warrants were not served until Sept. 18.] [ICE News Release 9/19/08] ICE said it will continue searching Little Village indefinitely searching for more people implicated in the production and sale of false documents. [El Financiero 9/19/08 with information from Notimex/JOT]

*4. "FUGITIVE" RAIDS IN CHICAGO AREA

From Sept. 12 to 15, agents from four ICE Fugitive Operations Teams arrested 144 people in Chicago and nearby areas in an operation targeting people who have failed to comply with deportation orders. (ICE calls such people "fugitives" or "absconders.") Of those arrested, 110 had final orders of deportation; 34 were people without legal immigration status who were encountered by ICE officers during the raids. Those arrested during the four-day operation are from 26 countries: Albania, Belize, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Croatia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Lithuania, Malawi, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia and Yugoslavia.

The arrests took place in Chicago; in the Illinois communities of Beach Park, Country Club Hills, Gurnee, Grayslake, Harwood Heights, Libertyville, North Chicago, Nottingham Park, Round Lake, Skokie, Waukegan, Willowbrook and Zion; and in the northern Indiana cities of Elkhart, Goshen, Mishawaka, Nappanee and South Bend. The US Marshals Service Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force assisted ICE with the operation. [ICE News Release 9/17/08]

In Chicago, immigrant advocates called the raids an emblem of a broken system that has separated thousands of families through deportation. As part of Citizenship Day, activists protested on Sept. 17 in Grant Park against increased fees for US citizenship applications; the filing fee for such applications jumped from $400 to $675 on July 30, 2007. Advocates say the increased fees have reduced the number of legal residents applying for citizenship. In Chicago, applications for US citizenship dropped 39% during the first four months of the year compared with the same period last year, according to the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. [Chicago Tribune 9/18/08]

Republican National Convention Report Back and Reflections

2008-09-20T10:48:00.003-04:00

By Lacey for Solidarity & Defense

The Pre RNC Organizing

After spending 9 days in Minneapolis, it is difficult to begin to write a report back from that experience. Residing in Minneapolis and St. Paul during those nine days was both inspiring and at times brought a frightening consciousness of state repression against dissent. Although much could be written about the experience, the main points I want to focus on is the pre-RNC organizing, the raids and representation of state repression before, during and after the convention.

To begin, I was inspired by the organizers that I met from across the Midwest and broader who came with a strong commitment to disrupt the RNC and provide support for other anarchists in the community. People formed strong and quick bonds and demonstrated a concern and solidarity with one another both on the street and in between. Being in the twin cities gave me the opportunity to meet solid and dedicated organizers from across the country. For a short window, I experienced living in a city of a few hundred anarchists (from Minneapolis & out of town organizers) and what that experience felt like.

While I speak positively of many organizers, I also carry strong critiques of the local sector organizers & 'black bloc' style anarchists. Before arriving in Minneapolis, I had an illusion of an existing strong and cohesive organization and upon arrival to the Twin Cities, it became apparent that it did not exist. While the RNC welcoming committee did an excellent job providing a convergence space, workshops, information, legal and food for hundreds of activists, within the 7 sectors, the organization was a disaster. Many organizers and affinity groups had done little to no planning or recruiting work specifically for the sector my affinity was assigned. Original measures of a vouching system were temporarily disastrous when the main security person was arrested on conspiracy charges. Very quickly, what earlier seemed like a semi-secured and organized process became vulnerable to infiltration and disorganization. Affinity groups from out of town ultimately picked up the work (vouching, facilitating, scouting, developing tactical strategies, providing medical assistance, etc.) that had been understood to have been completed. As a result of the disorganization of the sectors, the necessary numbers were not achieved to make the block aids effective in every sector.

Multiple anarchist organizers demonstrated a disinterest in straying away from the black bloc strategies. To me they demonstrated a dangerous disinterest in developing strategies that may be more effective and minimize arrests. The concerns I had played out before my eyes on September 1^st when a unplanned black bloc 'swarm' developed of about 50 people who were ultimately ineffective in providing anyone (Bash Back, block aids, detainees...) support because they were being marched around by the police and national guard.

In reflection, I think that the 'swarm, seize, and stay' model demonstrated an effort to break away from the reoccurring and ineffective black block strategy. However, without an increased number of people willing to participate in the overall strategy, it left people participating in block aids naked to the police attention and brutality. Original ideas of working with other organizations/blocs such as the anti-capitalist bloc or the Rude Mechanical Orchestra did not materialize and left groups of 25-50 (at best) in each sector isolated away from the permitted march downtown.

People participating in the block aids made a commitment under the pre-arranged 'St. Paul Principles' to be separated from the permitted march by 'place or time.' This was developed out of not wanting to attract police activity and potentially harm to people who were marching in the permitted march. However, these principles left thousands of marchers unaware that three blocks away people were blockading intersections, turning away delegate buses and being maced, tear gassed, pepper sprayed and experiencing the effects of concussion grenades.

The Raids

Before the main days of action against the RNC, the police demonstrated tactics of intimidation through raids, detainments and preemptive arrests.

On Friday, August 30^th around 9:30 pm, the police raided the RNC Welcoming Committee's Convergence space. Everyone inside was detained, and to be released were photographed and profiled by the police. While the raid was occurring, a group of about a hundred community members, activists, legal observers, medics and journalist gathered outside the convergence space. Instead of people being demoralized by the raid, people seemed to use it as fuel for the upcoming actions. Each detainee was welcomed from being released with cheers, water bottles and eventually snacks!

This challenged the police intentions of instilling fear and demoralization to the protesters.

On Saturday, August 31^st the police raided three houses of organizers in the Minneapolis area. One of the houses included the Food Not Bombs house which had opened it doors to many out of town organizers that week. Beginning around 8:00 am the police and members of the FBI raided the houses and detained all the members (expect one four year old child who was eventually allowed to leave). Police and FBI came in the houses guns drawn and handcuffed and detained everyone in the homes, arresting one-two people for each house listed on the affidavit.

An impromptu meeting was called that afternoon in Powder Horn Park to discuss the raids and provide updated information. Over a hundred people attended and although the raids were a demonstration of the frightening level of police repression, people were in good spirits and undeterred by the raids. Committees were formed to provide safe child care, additional legal work and assist in repairing raided houses. It was personally inspiring to see people come together, and as 'main' organizers of the RNC Welcoming committee were being picked off & imprisoned by the police, the Friends of the Welcoming Committee was formed! People both from Minneapolis and out of town worked and sweated together to continue the work of the RNC Welcoming committee when it became apparent that the police and FBI were trying to bring the 'leadership' to their knees. As each 'leader' was brought down, a few more strong organizers were brought up!

The Police Repression

As of Wednesday, September 3^rd, it was made public knowledge that the first step of police repression against anti-RNC organizing came through the installment of two paid informants and an undercover officer in the RNC Welcoming Committee over a year ago. These three people worked for over a year developing activist profiles of the welcoming committee's 'leadership' of the group of the original 30-35 people who attended the meetings. The information gathered by the informants led to the arrests of eight RNC Welcoming committee organizers who were being held in the Ramsey County jail but as of Thursday, September 4^th were all released on bail or bond. Each organizers is facing 7 ½ years of prison time for conspiracy charges.

In addition, organizers from out of town were painted by the police as 'organized criminals' coming to carry out criminal anarchist activities. One police statement goes as far to suggest that organizers were planning to kidnap a delegate! It is obvious based on the police actions that they are attempting to instill a message of fear to people engaging in dissent against the government in any way outside of begging them for a permitted march. (Which, by the way, the Poor People's March received a permit, but that did not stop the police from tear gassing & shooting off concussion grenades at the marchers as they left from the permitted march!) The police/State/FBI in the Twin Cities sent the message that they believed the organizers posed a real threat to the convention and required high levels of infiltration, surveillance, media misrepresentation, and mass arrests.

While in the Twin Cities during those nine days, I spent a lot of time contemplating the idea of 'security culture.' Many of the police tactics I witnessed pre and during the RNC, were things I was conscious existed but had not directly experienced (phone taping, arresting/brutalizing journalists, taking film/videos/photos that were evidence of police brutality, FBI raids, text message disruptions, police informants, arresting 'leaders' with conspiracy charges to name a few). It became incredibly apparent that there is a desperate need for organizations to work within a semi-closed system of organizing to develop the necessary trust and responsibility to one another to be effective organizers. I still maintain the importance of public actions and groups to function to politicize people, but the experience at the RNC was a fierce reminder of the potential devastation to organizations that police infiltration poses. Reading the affidavits for each arrested organizers, some of the 'evidence' included casual conversations, previous workshops attended, materials found in their home, rallies and demonstrations people had attended. All things that many committed organizers locally and across the country could be vulnerable to.

I left the Twin Cities extremely motivated to work harder and more thoughtfully about organizing, and look forward to engaging in discussions with others about issues raised above as we develop the visions to develop our organization.

The RNC protests and the lessons from them

2008-09-07T10:16:00.005-04:00

reposted from Anarkismo.net

A Tale of Twin Cities in the Age of Desperation

As more and more information surfaces here in the Twin Cities—beyond the news or more raids, mass arrests, brutality, etc—I cannot help but feel like I am taking a step back to see a more complete, more startling picture than what I had previously seen, and I know I am not alone in this.

The first revelation, ironically, was that the seemingly gargantuan forces at work to bring the streets of St. Paul to a standstill were little more than a determined core of militants, who were admirably committed but desperate enough to create a facade that victory was all but certain, in the hopes that such blind optimism would bring forth a cascade of young anarchists to flood the streets—not so dissimilar from the posture of the Weathermen when they were promoting their national action, known later as the Days of Rage. There were, however, hundreds of militants who were both tactical and disciplined in their efforts, but this could not substitute for the shortcomings of the organizational model being utilized. This is the most obvious thing that one is struck by when assessing the situation on the ground, but this simple truth is perhaps inconsequential compared to what is becoming more and more evident.

The second thing that has become clear is the level of infiltration of the RNC Welcoming Committee (RNCWC) anarchist group by the authorities. The affidavit given to the judge who signed-off on the warrant to raid a number of spaces all over the Twin Cities reveals that there were, at least, one undercover cop and two paid informants (rats) within the ranks of the relatively small RNCWC. This must necessarily call into question the level to which their work was compromised, manipulated and/or sabotaged. There was, for example, an early split within the group over the question of doing community outreach around the actions, with the faction opposing this course of action remaining, and the few in favor leaving to do separate work. This point is crucial, of course, because it has become all too obvious that the militant actions this week had virtually no base outside the radical activist milieu, and have quite effectively been isolated in the public eye via the mainstream media (MSM).

This course of events suggests that the state recognized the potential of a second Battle of Seattle, which at face-value was in many respects similar to the 2008 RNC. In the current situation, however, there is seemingly no solidarity from organized labor like in Seattle which greatly contributed to the presence of bodies in the streets in defiance of the police state, as well as putting pressure on the state to release those who had been jailed when the ILWU threatened to strike the Port of Seattle. There are of course other factors, such as the inoculation against independent media reporting; the MSM now generally ignores any reporting that isn’t “on-message,” and the state aggressively attacks anyone with “illegitimate” press credentials.

There are many conclusions people could take from this snapshot described above. We could resign ourselves from taking part in direct action in the streets, retreating into this Party or that like so many radicals did in the wake of the utter organizational destruction left by COINTELPRO in the early 70s; we could join the North American underground in the hopes that maybe, this time, the people will be moved to action by the propaganda of the deed; or we could write-off social action entirely in favor of personal redemption via lifestyle choices or identity politics. Each generation of movement activists has to make this choice, and the answer we give determines what mark we will leave on history. My hope is that we have come far enough on the US far left to be strong and determined enough to stand tall in the face of repression, tighten our ranks, and to continue putting down our roots wherever we may find ourselves. I don’t consider this a difficult decision to make, so much as it will be difficult to carry out and convince others of. For those of you who are like in mind, my advice is to lead by example, and don’t be too startled when others begin to walk along beside you.

Workers Solidarity Alliance Statement on RNC

2008-09-07T10:14:00.000-04:00

In the opening days of September 2008 people from all over the country came together in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to protest the agenda of the Republican National Convention. And in response, police cracked down, hard. And even before the events had begun police responded to mere calls for protest through strong-arm tactics reminiscent of a police state, including infiltration and spying by state agents against protest organizations and preemptive raids with guns drawn against private protest centers. During the event police responded with the indiscriminate arrest of hundreds of protesters, and even journalists recording the event where arrested. Decked out in full military garb masses of police indiscriminately assaulted numerous protesters with batons, pepper spray and other weapons, that though listed under the term "less then lethal" nevertheless inflict great pain and suffering, and have been implicated in serious medical complications and even death. Fortunately no one was killed in the Twin Cities, but the use of tactics befitting a police state should be a cause of grave concern for all people of good conscience.

In response we at the Worker Solidarity Alliance (WSA) call upon all poor and working people everywhere to reach out in support of the 284 protesters that have been jailed by the cops.

Please make a donation to help cover the legal fees of our jailed comrades, and to cover any medical fees that may arise among protesters due to the brutal tactics utilized by police on behalf of the Republican Party. One place you can donate is the web site of the Coldsnap Legal Collective: http://coldsnaplegal.wordpress.com/

Although the Workers Solidarity Alliance extends unconditional solidarity and support to the victims of state repression during the RNC, we also call for a critical evaluation of the approach taken by anti-authoritarians and anarchists. The repression of RNC activism demonstrates that new organizing models will be needed if anticapitalists are to mount a genuine challenge to the power of capital and the state. Specifically, we must avoid playing into the hands of the state by using rhetoric, rituals, and tactics that isolate us from the majority of the world's population that suffers under capitalism. We call for a resistance based not exclusively on the advanced tactics of a jail-ready minority, but the solidarity and militancy of a revolutionary social bloc, organized in workplaces and neighborhoods, fighting for self-determination. As the raids on activists spaces have already shown, anything less is political suicide.

The reasons people protested were varied, as was the political background of the protesters. Some of the protesters came seeking to end the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, some economic justice, others out of criticism of the current Republican administration in Washington. Some protesters came to voice their dissent and in support of Obama. Some came to protest the havoc that the endless pursuit for capitalist profits has wrecked upon the environment. And yet others still came to protest the political rule of the U.S. government, whether under the leadership of Republicans or Democrats, or other would be contenders for the throne.

The "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent came to protest the war, for economic justice, for a healthy environment, and against white supremacy, nationalism, sexism and homophobia --- and to promote the idea that simply changing office holders does not do away with capitalism and the political state. This contingent called for a new world, a world without bosses, states and bureaucrats.

The Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) seeks the self-empowerment of ordinary poor and working class people through democratic self-management of their workplaces and their communities without mediation by elite's from above. Those of the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and their supporters in the WSA and elsewhere, are sick and tired of living in a society that is dominated by the special interests of wealthy men and the political system that these elites have set in motion to protect their interests at the expense of the genuine interests, the aspirations and collective well being of the vast majority of the population, the working class. As supporters of the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent we of the WSA denounce both the Republican and Democratic parties, as we understand that the true motivating cause of all political parties, in every part of the globe, is that of keeping a small elite entrenched firmly in political and economic power over, and to the detriment, of the working class across the earth.

The WSA also denounces the Patriot Act, under which the state has charged eight (RNC-8) prominent protest organizers with "Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism," this despite the fact that the RNC 8 were arrested days prior to the beginning of both the convention and the actual protests and had not carried out any actual protest actions whatsoever. The provisions of the Patriot Act grants the state power to charge people with "conspiracy" for simply planning a nonviolent protest, and in turn to saddle them with a felony for making calls for dissent to state policy. Thus the true purpose of the Patriot Act is to criminalize exercises of the right to free speech, peaceful assembly and protest. In light of the true intentions of the Patriot Act the WSA calls for the working class to get together in solidarity to put pressure upon the state to rescind and abolish the Patriot Act.

Yet despite all of the terror and mayhem unleashed by the police the fact that ordinary people maintained their presence, their solidarity and their dissent against the unjust policies of the political elite for the duration of the convention is in the last analysis a demonstration of the courage of the working class. The protesters that made up the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and others as well, have a positive vision of a better society. A society in which ordinary folks come together in brotherly solidarity to create a new system based upon the moral value of "Mutual aid" and free from the rule of a lying, scheming and predatory elite. For a society in which "freedom and liberty for all" are not mere sentiments regulated to paper, or simply buzz words to throw about by self-interested politicians looking for your votes, but are instead the overwhelming living reality of society, and not just in the United States but throughout the entire earth.

Workers Solidarity Alliance
339 Lafayette Street - Room 202
New York, NY 10012 USA

http://www.workersolidarity.org.

The Politics Driving Mississippi's ICE Raids

2008-09-05T09:42:00.005-04:00

by David Bacon
from, The Black Commentator

Laurel, Miss. - On August 25, immigration agents swooped down on Howard Industries, a Mississippi electrical equipment factory, taking 481 workers to a privately-run detention center in Jena, Louisiana. Some 106 were also arrested at the plant, and released wearing electronic monitoring devices on their ankles, if they had children, or without them, if they were pregnant. Eight workers were taken to Federal court in Hattiesburg, where they were charged with aggravated identity theft.

Afterward, Barbara Gonzalez, spokesperson for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stated the raid took place because of a tip by a “union member” two years before. Other media accounts focused on an incident in which plant workers allegedly cheered as their coworkers were led away by ICE agents. The articles claim the plant was torn by tension between immigrant and non-immigrant workers, and that unions in Mississippi are hostile to immigrants.

Many Mississippi activists and workers, however, charge the raid had a political agenda - undermining a growing political coalition that threatens the state's conservative Republican establishment. They also say the raid, which took place during union contract negotiations, will help the company resist demands for better wages and conditions.

Jim Evans, a national AFL-CIO staff member in Mississippi and a leading member of the state legislature's Black Caucus, said he believed “this raid is an effort to drive immigrants out of Mississippi. It is also an attempt to drive a wedge between immigrants, African Americans, white people and unions - all those who want political change here.” Patricia Ice, attorney for the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), agreed that “this is political. They want a mass exodus of immigrants out of the state, the kind we've seen in Arizona and Oklahoma. The political establishment here is threatened by Mississippi's changing demographics, and what the electorate might look like in 20 years.”

RNC 8 Charged with "Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism"

2008-09-05T08:48:00.001-04:00

from, Twin Cities Independent Media
Source:
Bruce Nestor, President
Minnesota Chapter of National Lawyers Guild

In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty.

Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provacateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.

"These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts to place the stated political views of the Defendants on trial," said Bruce Nestor, President of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience, he said."

The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC -- other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement -- and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Searches conducted in connection with the raids failed to turn up any physical evidence to support the allegations of organized attacks on law enforcement. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police. As a result, police sought to claim that the seizure of common household items such as glass bottles, charcoal lighter, nails, a rusty machete, and two hatchets, supported the allegations of the confidential informants. "Police found what they claim was a single plastic shield, a rusty machete, and two hatchets used in Minnesota to split wood. This doesn't amount to evidence of an organized insurrection, particularly when over 3,500 police are present in the Twin Cities, armed with assault rifles, concussion grenades, chemical weapons and full riot gear," said Nestor. In addition, the National Lawyers Guild has previously pointed out how law enforcement has fabricated evidence such as the claims that urine was seized which demonstrators intended to throw at police.

The last time such charges were brought under Minnesota law was in 1918, when Matt Moilen and others organizing labor unions for the Industrial Workers of the World [ed. correction-TCIMC] on the Iron Range were charged with "criminal syndicalism." The convictions, based on allegations that workers had advocated or taught acts of violence, including acts only damaging to property, were upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court. In the light of history, these convictions are widely seen as unjust and a product of political trials. The National Lawyers Guild condemns the charges filed in this case against the above 8 defendants and urges the Ramsey County Attorney to drop all charges of conspiracy in this matter.

Poor Peoples March

2008-09-04T13:00:00.001-04:00

After Hundreds of arrests the day before during the main march agianst the RNC, and a visible increase in a police tactic to intimidate, it was a question if the Poor Peoples March would continue as planned.

As crowds gathered in Mears Park riot police marched in and surrounded the park. Protesters with red and black flags were identified and harassed, but not immediately arrested. Police attempted to have the marches organizers expel "anarchists" but the Poor People's March organizers resisted this pressure and welcolmed all who would stand with the goals of the march.

Undercover cops mingled in the crowd. An Indy media journalist was arrested which sparked a brief surge towards the police lines with chants of "Let 'em go!". as the march took off it had roughly 500 participants. The march was constantly followed by police.

As the march came towards the capital on its way to the Xcel center, an impromptu show by Rage Against the Machine (RATM) which was canceled by the police helped to increase the Poor Peoples March by several thousand. With no RATM show, audience goers joined in and marched towards the Xcel center and the Republicans. Police began to build up their ranks again and after the end of the march attacked the crowd.

Indy Media Pictures:
March For Our Lives: Gallery 1 from Poor People's March on the RNC
March For Our Lives: Gallery 2 from Poor People's March on the RNC

Flower Power?

2008-09-02T22:00:00.000-04:00

Holding a flower up to the police - trying to recreate one of those classic protest images of peace - one protester is mercilessly doused in pepper spray. The woman should have known this would happen. Flower power is a myth that liberals seek to maintian, partly to undermine the argument for revolutionary action and the building of movements that fight back. Still, the fact that these cops just covered her in the spray and she just kept standing there, well, you cant stop from feeling for her.

The actions of the police were at times exactly what they are supposed to be: cruel and callous as they try to maintain the Systems authority and rule.

View of the 1st Day.

2008-09-02T21:00:00.000-04:00

The bulk of the protests in St. paul were organized under the following:

We recognize that protests at the RNC will take many forms. With that in mind, we have worked for common ground with other forces to ensure that our various projects work in concert, with a commitment to ensure no one's plans are disrupted or undermined by fellow protesters. Our coalition agrees to the following principles for the September 1, 2008, March on the RNC.

(1) our solidarity will be based on respect for diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.

(2) the actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.

(3) any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.

(4) we oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.

These principles were set forth by the Coalition to March on the RNC
and Stop the War

As Hurricane Gustov draws closer to the US gulf region, Bush and Cheney the night before have called off RNC appearances. Although Laura Bush and Cindy McCain step in, the hurricane is used as an excuse that allows McCain to have more distance between himself and the unpopular ruling administration. The RNC will continue but on a smaller scale for its opening day.

Still, the planned marches against it will go on.

The overall numbers of the march were much smaller than the projected 50-60 thousand. In the end, estimates are closer to 10 thousand.

Every Left group is there, but their contingents are small. It is a question of if this is the case because the RNC is in St. Paul, MN rather than if it had been an any other anti-war march in DC, where historically the numbers have been much higher. Perhaps the East Coast can draw out larger numbers because of the concentration of the populace in the region.

It is also a question of if war weariness and that the Left/liberal forces stayed away hoping that the Democrats will end the war if they are seated as the ruling party in November. Obama has come to the position he is in a nominee in large part because of a false illusion that he is the "anti-war" candidate. All evidence has determined that he will continue to prosecute wars abroad, expanding the front in Afghanistan and a new one into Pakistan.

The Anti-Capitalist Block has one of the largest contingents and continued to grow as the march goes forward. The ACB is not that different from previous anarchist/anti-authoritarian contingents. But what is positive is that its organizers and the bulk of its participants thought strategically about 1) raising the political profile of revolutionary libertarian politics 2)not wanting to recreate de-politicized caricatures of "anarchism" 3) attempted to make this public presence a space open to those not capable for various reasons to engage in more direct action, ie. families with children, those who are physically challenged, working people under attack.

The ACB also, never acted to counter the more direct action organizing. But the purpose of the ACB was not to engage in such actions either. Its presence was a political one and never sought to become a support mechanism for pure physical confrontation. It was only one part of the broader goal of creating a conscious social revolutionary movement against the Systems of capitalism and the State.

The legal and permitted march lasted for several hours often going at a snails pace. thousands of police on bikes, in riot gear, on horse back, and on various vehicles lined the streets or massed at intersections.

At one point a group of White male student types emerged with pro-Sadrist banners. ACB members argued that Sadr does not represent an anti-imperialism or a liberation movement. While Sadr represents an anti-US politic, the Sadr movement is reactionary in its professed political vision and if given the ability on a mass scale would seek to eliminate opposition and dissent just as it has in areas it currently controls in Iraq. In Basra, Sadrist militia have attacked mixed gender student groups, beaten opposition members, and outlawed behavior that does not conform to their (Sadrist) dictates. The American Sadrists state that the ACB participants are racists, just like the working class in this country. Like many authoritarian Left sects, this odd pro-Sadr contingent thinks that an "anti-US" position somehow opens up space for positive social organizing to emerge. But just like their authoriatarin Left sect counterparts, these pro-Sadrists represent attempts to limit free movements.

As the march winds down the protesters disperse. Street fighting soon emerges in various parts of St. Paul.

Through out the day reports come in that delegates buses have been disabled or rerouted.

Mass arrests take place. But there are also several daring un-arrests as protesters snatch back those who are grabbed by cops. One night time news report show a cop dragging a protester off the street when another protester does a flying leap into the cop, knocking him down, and freeing the guy who would have been arrested. Nice video!

FUNK THE WAR!!

2008-09-02T20:29:00.006-04:00

FUNK THE WAR (FTW) is an SDS affiliated protest splinter bloc. About dancing on the grave of capitalism and war, the FTW dance party, had no intention of just steppin' to a regulated beat. As a result the Freedom Road Socialist Organization-Fight Back!, who were the main organizers of the mass march, told FTW they would not be allowed to pareticipate in the main marches and would have to leave the capital buildings lawn. FTW danced itself out of the vincinity and was confronted by police.

"War is a waste of our youth! Funktocracy is in the streets!"

Anti Capitalist Bloc Video

2008-09-02T20:08:00.000-04:00

From the 1st day of protest in St. Paul. Bloc during main anti-War, anti-RNC marches.

The ACB started with near 70 persons from different anti-authoritarian, revolutionary syndicalist, and anarchist organizations. The ACB swelled at it's height to over 200. Because of its dynamism, energy and avowedly revolutionary politics, young and old jumped in and participated in the chants and the handing out of literature. The ACB became one of the loudest and energetic sectors of the march.

St. Paul Police Conduct Mass Preemptive Raids Ahead of Republican Convention

2008-09-02T19:44:00.002-04:00

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:43:28
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! among the arrested

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of “preemptive raids” before the Republican National Convention. The raids and detentions have targeted activists planning to protest the convention, as well as journalists and videographers documenting police actions at protests.

read more

Anti-Capitalist Bloc UPDATE #1

2008-08-31T17:00:00.002-04:00

Today at 1pm we held at the Lake and Hiawatha Light Rail Station in solidarity with Starbucks workers and to celebrate getting our comrade Erik Foreman’s job back. The rally was a great success with about 100 people showing up. At about 1:45 we all legally boarded the light rail (using rail passes) and headed down to the Mall of America in order to escort our fellow worker back to his first shift.

Everyone was peaceful and orderly on the train as we headed south. At the Bloomington Station the train we were met by police who asked to speak with us regarding our plans. We informed the police that we did not wish to cause any trouble, to protest inside of the mall, or to unlawfully assemble in any way inside the mall. The police told us we should be fine and that we would not have any trouble. We were then allowed to proceed to the MOA stop. At the MOA the train was surrounded by police in full riot gear. They threatened to arrest us if we left the train. We were trapped inside the train for about 20 minutes. The police even prohibited a woman with a child who needed insulin from leaving the train, endangering the child’s health. After about 10 minuets and only after repeatedly insisting that we had a medical emergency did the police permit the woman and child to exit the train. When asked why we were being detained a policeman said: “the mall doesn’t want you here.” The officers’ badge numbers were mostly covered by their gear.

After about 20 minutes the police ordered the train back the way it came and, with us stuck inside, we didn’t have much choice in the matter. As far as I know, there were no arrests (thankfully) and everyone is safe.

This is clearly a violation of our rights as a union to public picketing, our rights as citizens to lawful assembly, proof that the Minneapolis and Bloomington cops are outright liars, proof that they protect and defend corporate capitalism rather than the rights of citizens, and proof once again that our organized power is the only “right” that we have.

2008-08-30T09:51:00.010-04:00

Solidarity & Defense will be updating our site over the next several days with news and interviews from the anti-Republican National Convention organizing that is taking place in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Solidarity & Defense rejects the platforms and policies of the Republicans and Democrats. We maintain that the real CHANGE we need comes only through the actions of masses of everyday people thinking, acting, and experimenting with politics at the grassroots. It is through directly democratic organizations in which all have the opportunity to participate and have their say, that we understand movements are built - Movements that themselves are capable of creating new societies based on justice, dignity, and liberation.

Solidarity & Defense is an endorser of the Anti-Capitalist Bloc (Red & Black Bloc). this call has been initiated by the Twin Cities Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World.

news and updates:

St. Paul and Minneapolis: More Police raids Saturday Morning

Illegal Police Raid on Anti-RNC Covergence Space in St. Paul

A Call for an Anti-Capitalist Bloc (Red & Black Bloc) at the RNC Protests

2008-08-30T09:43:00.005-04:00

On "Labor Day" 2008, and throughout the Republican National Convention (RNC), tens of thousands of people from our community and from across the Unites States will protest against the GOP's pro-corporate policies of war and discrimination. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc will join these mobilizations not just to protest a bad president or failed policies, but to stand up against the whole system of exploitation and oppression: capitalism.

It is the inherent character of capitalism that is creating the current economic crisis. Tens of thousands of laid-off workers, thousands of homes in foreclosure, and quickening inflation of gas and food prices are all signs of a system out of control, a system where the sins of the bosses are visited on the masses of workers.

Capitalism needs wars and exploitation to maintain itself. The war in Iraq was not simply a blunder by W., but the extension of a long-term strategy of U.S. domination of that region. The forced displacement of the poor of New Orleans is a new episode in an old legacy of racist subjugation. The recent raids against immigrant workers show the insidious connection between racism, and the system's needs for a low waged precarious workforce. Continued oppression of women and the hatred whipped up against the GLBT community are designed to reinforce an authoritarian patriarchal culture.

Not a conspiracy or mistaken policy, capitalism is a system in which a small ruling class profits from the labor of the working class majority. The stolen wealth is used to dominate the political system (including both major political parties), and finance a massive apparatus of repression, cooptation and division necessary to maintain capitalist rule. While the earth warms, and bridges collapse, the capitalists continue to do whatever is necessary to increase their profits. To defeat their attacks we must defeat their entire system.

The Anti-Capitalist Bloc stands for solidarity, direct action, the general strike and revolution. We advocate an economic system controlled collectively and democratically, and an end to the racism, sexism and violence of the capitalist system.

Is this a black bloc like in Seattle?
No. While remaining tactically flexible, our goal is not a confrontation with the police, but to raise the profile of organized working class direct action against capitalism. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc is independent from, but not competitive with or hostile to the RNC Welcoming Committee.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Police Raids and Arrests of Protesters

2008-08-30T09:24:00.002-04:00

FROM RNC WELCOMING COMMITTEE AFTER SHERIFF AND SPPD RAID OF CONVERGENCE SPACE

FRIDAY AUGUST 29 2008

The ramsey county sheriff’s dept and the SPPD raided the RNC convergence
space and detained over 50 people in an attempt to preempt planned
protests of the rnc on Monday.

read more

Violence on the Streets of Chitown: beginings of an anti-authoritarian analysis

2008-08-18T08:42:00.000-04:00

Recently the Illinois governor made comments about sending both State Police and National Guard onto the streets of Chicago to help "de-escalate rising crime". The story made national news. As we organize in our region we see the need to highlight and examine stories that deal with our various communities.

The following is a short interview conducted between a member of S&D and a member of the new class struggle anarchist group, Four Stars Anarchist Organization (four stars representing the four stars of the Chicago city flag).Q & A were conducted in personal capacities and do not necessarily reflect the views of either organizations.

Q: In the July 16th, edition of the Chicago Tribune (CT), the Illinois Democrat Governor Rod Blagojevich suggested sending in State Police and National Guard as “a constructive way… to do everything that we possibly can to help… end” Chicago’s street violence and shootings. The Governor said the violence “is out of control”. And the August 6th CT edition cited the murder rate up 18 percent with sixty-two slayings in July alone. It seems so bad its making the national news, too. What’s going on here? Is this a real issue? Is Blagojevich playing political games, trying to embarrass Mayor Daley? Or IS there mounting violence and rise in crime?

A: Well, the issue is real, and serious, but Blagojevich’s statement was largely posturing. It reminded me of when Hugo Chavez offered to send Venezuelan troops to help with relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina. Maybe I’ve just seen too many episodes of The Wire, but I’m not convinced that the actual murder rate is dramatically higher this year. There are at least a couple different political factors that could play a role in shifting the statistics. The new police chief is a former FBI agent who has no previous ties to the Chicago Police Department (CPD). It seems at least plausible to me that old guard cops who want to embarrass the new chief are inflating the rate relative to previous years. Alternately, it could be that the new chief is inflating the stats in order to demand more thorough reforms to CPD that would enhance his limited power base. Finally, I think local and eventually national media pick up on a story that sounds hot. That’s what happened with the student killings (your question #4) last year, and now this year with the overall level of violence. Regardless of the statistics, however, violence is and has been a serious issue in a range of poor and working class communities for a long time. What seems different in the last couple years is that the violence has increasingly intersected with neighborhoods that are being gentrified on the south, west and northwest sides of town.

Q: If there is a spike what are the reasons behind it and how does it compare to the recent past’s history of violence in the city?

A: I’m not an expert on this, and I haven’t looked closely at the statistics, but it seems at least anecdotally that the spike in violence, especially gun violence, has been localized in particular neighborhoods where three factors intersect: gentrification, the slumping economy, and changes in the structure of street gangs. For more than a decade, gentrification has continued its advance across Chicago, transforming previously poor and working class neighborhoods into dramatically whiter and wealthier communities. This process has frankly brutal effects on the lives of families and especially young people, forcing frequent changes in living situations, jobs, and schools. One result has been a series of shifts in gang boundaries and periodic flare-ups in border areas, where a gang’s membership has been displaced and forced to move to a new neighborhood that already has an established gang structure. In the past year or so, the rate of gentrification has slowed as a result of the economic downturn and especially the mortgage/credit crunch, but this has only exacerbated the problems facing poor folks in the city. This has increased the appeal of gang activities, especially drug dealing, for people whose economic prospects in the legal economy are extremely limited. Finally, over the past two decades the CPD and the FBI have largely succeeded in crippling the traditional gang hierarchies that previously held strongly centralized power over the vast majority of gang activity in Chicago. The creation of the supermax prisons at Tamms (Illinois Department of Corrections) and Florence Colorado (Federal Bureau of Prisons) a decade ago finally severed the links between the incarcerated gang leadership and the mid-level leaders still on the streets. The result was predictable to anyone who followed the trajectory of the Basque or Kurdish armed struggles in Spain and Turkey during the same period: a spiraling decomposition of the gang structure into smaller and less cohesive segments, with less central control and a greater tendency toward spontaneous and often counter-productive violence. The average street gang in Chicago now is fully autonomous and in total control of a few blocks of terrain, and the long-standing grand alliances known as “people” and “folks” have almost completely deteriorated. The old guard leaders who could have prohibited revenge killings, for instance, no longer hold power. These three factors have combined to heighten the trends toward violence in certain neighborhoods over the past few years.

Q: Parts of Chicago really come off nowadays as being “locked down”. Police surveillance cameras on all kinds of street corners and an increase in the cop cars cruisin’ the streets. What parts of the city are getting this beefed up presence and what is their intention? I find it hard to think that all the cameras are just to keep “the Order” and an eye on the gangsters. Should we think there are deeper State motives for this surveillance? Crime, which is real and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise, can also be the pretext for initiating broad population and information monitoring programs, right?

A: Mayor Daley has really pushed for Chicago to follow London, Englands lead in terms of ever expanding surveillance networks. His rationale is of course based on the “war on terror” rhetoric so common since 9/11. He also likes to position Chicago as a world city (eg. the Olympic bid for 2016) and regularly reminds people that we could be a target for international terrorists. Some of this has to do with local politics and gentrification questions, but I think the more important consideration is the broad shift since 9/11 toward a generalized. low-level police state consciousness. I don’t think there’s anything particularly sinister or conspiratorial going on, but there seems to be a broad ruling class agreement that surveillance is always useful in preventative counter-insurgency. This assumes that economically marginalized communities of color are still the primary potential source for any insurgent threat to the status quo. Given the degeneration of organized black radicalism in the US over the past thirty years, I find it instructive that this assumption is still current within ruling class circles. For instance, there’s no reason Daley couldn’t argue that the surveillance cameras are primarily needed in wealthier neighborhoods, in order to prevent crime against the middle class. That he has instead positioned the cameras largely in poor and burnt out neighborhoods (including some that have gentrification potential) says something important about the purpose of the surveillance in the first place.

Q: This year some 25 students were killed while walking to and from school. Last year it was something like 32 students – some as young as 7. Looking at the gunfights and shootings that are destroying families and their communities, beyond the police build up, what other responses have there been?

A: Beginning with the media coverage a year ago, there have been a series of responses in the communities most affected by the student deaths. A number of church-based anti-violence coalitions emerged, although it’s not clear to me that they have continued. There have been periodic spontaneous marches against gun violence, and most black-oriented radio stations in town have devoted extensive airtime to discussing the situation (including several stations with an all or mostly music focused programming schedule). At the same time, there have been a series of under-reported killings by the CPD (almost a dozen in the past year), which have led to a number of protest marches and at least one near-riot on the west side. To the best of my knowledge there has been no serious attempt to analyze the police killings within the broader context of gun violence, the student deaths, and so forth.

One other response worth looking at is represented by the group “CeaseFire,” (CF) which employs former gangmembers to deescalate tense situations and prevent revenge killings or other spirals of gang violence. CF has historically been a mainstream organization that despite its unorthodox methods didn’t really rock the boat as far as law-enforcement was concerned. For obscure reasons, the group lost almost all its funding a year ago (most of it came from the State of Illinois, and the state budget crunch was the officially cited reason for cutting their funding), and the group is now largely staffed by volunteers with only a handful of paid employees. Nonetheless, the group has attempted to respond to a series of killings in our neighborhood (a half dozen people have been killed within walking distance of our home in the past year).

Q: Considering the complex and the near overwhelming issues here, between the violence and the States response, what should radical anti-authoritarians be doing?

A: First, I think we should be talking more about the situation. There is a tendency on the left to ignore this sort of violence and focus exclusively on police brutality, but in working class communities street violence produces ambivalent attitudes toward the cops. Many people of color, especially immigrants, do not trust the CPD at all, but in the context of gang violence there is often an acknowledgement that there are only two alternatives: revenge, or police intervention.

Second, we should work to build a third alternative. In Chicago, I think that means some level of engagement with groups like CF. Especially in the current context where the group is largely supported by volunteers, a critical mass of radical anti-authoritarians could have a real impact on the organization’s work. There are multiple risks here: on the one hand, the group’s historical identity has never been particularly radical and it is possible that direct engagement with CF could be a political dead-end; on the other hand, there are real physical dangers in engaging so closely with the world of current and former gangmembers, even when de-escalation is the stated goal. These dangers would only increase if some attempt was made to politically influence the trajectory of the group in a radical direction. Nonetheless, the potential of a group like CF is real, and we should examine it in more detail.

Detroit: Arm the Spirit

2008-08-11T12:10:00.000-04:00

"Where the Spirit... is, there is liberty" - from Corinthians (3:17) and inscribed on the Spirit of Detroit monument.

by C. Alexander

The Free Press Sunday Edition made another call for ousting Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. With Kilpatrick being jailed on Thursday for traveling to Windsor – a violation of his probation – The Detroit Free Press in its editorial read, “Out of jail, now leave office”. On the same day as Kilpatrick was jailed, Free Press Columnist Stephen Henderson basically made a thinly veiled call to action to evict Kilpatrick from office. He wrote regarding the actions of Kilpatrick,

In any other American city – in most banana republics – half of that would be enough to inspire some kind of populist effort to change leaders

Henderson, one time supporter of Kilpatrick now one of his loudest critics, represents one of the fault lines. The city has been divided on what to do about City Hall. Henderson and the Free Press are one voice coming from the city’s establishment, the “leadership”. But they are not alone. Other voices for and against Kilpatrick have risen up. Protests are becoming common place. City Workers unions continue to call for Kilpatricks resignation, while some of the Service Employee unions rally to his defense. Inner city community coalitions want him out while groups like the New Black Panther Party help mobilize a street presence to intimidate and silence those who reject Kwame. In one corner you have working-class alliances with a scruffy but for-real-street vibe standing against City Hall corruption, and in the other corner you have professional well dressed political leaders saying that it’s Kwame who is the real Heartbeat of Detroit. You have splits in the police ranks and splits in the neighborhoods. Depending on who you talk to, Kilpatrick is either the symbol of hope and Detroit’s new generation, or, he is a political gangster thinking he is above the law he was elected to enforce.

The Free Press and a growing number of Detroit’s “leadership” say that the city has reached “an all time low”. But the Kilpatrick episode is just another example of the deeper conflicts that have marked the city’s history. People put their faith in Kilpatrick because he is young, charismatic, and full of ideas. After years of loss and desperation, citizens of Detroit looked at this man and considered him to be a break with what had gone before.

During his tenure as Mayor the downtown strip has become more alive than in 30 years. There is a bustling in many of the streets. At 12 midnight on a Friday, you can get caught in a traffic jam when all the people start coming out of the clubs and restaurants.

During this time Kilpatrick related to a new generation raised on hip hop and brought in the biggest names of that industry, hanging at the clubs while helping to push the conversation of how hip hop can inform and build needed community empowerment.

But what propels all of this is that Kilpatrick represents a player in the development of a new bourgeois power elite. Self-determination - the idea of a peoples sovereignty against occupation and colonization and once a corner stone of the socialist, Black liberation, and revolutionary people’s movements - has been co-opted. Kilpatrick is the face that had come to represent the rise of a new boss class. Kilpatrick has tried to put their bourgeois idea of, “Our time has Come” into practice. Self-determination is now the ideology of a narrow minded capitalist class. Theirs is not a concern with “popular power” and masses of people in motion but in creating a power structure over people.

Kilpatrick and his team defend them selves by telling us to look at all they have done, pointing to the redevelopment of the downtown and river front with its casinos and new lofts. But that is just that – the downtown redevelopment is limited to just that small strip within the city. Once you get outside of it you see the continuing poverty and crisis that has defined this city for two generations. When there is already mass unemployment we see this new boss class eliminating needed city workers jobs by cutting deals with private firms like the Carlyle Groups waste treatment subsidiary, Synagro. We see a cronyism that has the Mayors friends and relatives getting bids on contracts, lining their pockets, at the expense of the city. And you have cover ups of murders, like dancer Tamarra Green aka. Strawberry, who was found dead after a rumored party at Manoogian Mansion i.e. the Mayor’s home. It was also reported that Green had been beaten with a bat by the Mayor’s wife, the medical evidence of the assault mysteriously vanishing.

It would be a mistake to put all the city’s problems on Kilpatrick, he’s just one person. His problems have not brought Detroit to “an all time low”. It would also be a mistake, as many make, to say the real outrage is on the Mayor’s sexual transgressions (although his affairs show his dishonesty). The real issues here are about power and vision of the future. Kilpatrick and the elite use power to bolster their own ends, not the masses of Detroit’s citizens.

People have felt beat down for a long time. The organizations of collective action and revolutionary social change have nearly been eliminated. There are many on the ground still trying to engage and build community and city wide movements, but they are small, fragmented and often unaware of others trying to do the same thing on a city, metro or broader regional basis. The tasks before us are many, as well as serious. We need a real debate on approaches to movement building while still working to connect and strengthen the fractured opposition. We need a critique and rejection of the centralization of power and knowledge into the hands of a few. This process means fighting to open up - and defend - space for others to participate, raise their voice, and act. This constant building up of our abilities, and capacities, is the chance to confront the boss class, turn things around and upside down, and allow liberty's rays to penetrate into the darkest of corners.

The struggle goes far beyond Kilpatrick and the "leadership" of this city. It’s time Detroit, lets Arm The Spirit.

A Perfect Capitalist Disaster

2008-08-11T11:05:00.001-04:00

"Health care is ground zero of the perfect capitalist disaster. Miller & Friends want to fix health care so retirees don’t live too long and the private insurance industry keeps making jackpot profits. He and his class of vulture capitalists want health care that restricts access to workers and retirees and specializes in serving those who were never exposed to the hazards of hard work.

One way or the other the perfect capitalist disaster will be a catalyst for change."

August 11, 2008

A Perfect Capitalist Disaster
by Gregg Shotwell/UAW Local 2151

What appears to be a catastrophe in the auto industry could be the perfect storm for GM, Ford, and Chrysler. They’ve wanted to close plants and jettison dealerships for a long time. The 2007 contracts with the UAW gave the auto companies an unrestricted license to close plants because of conditions “beyond the control of the Corporation” such as “market related volume decline”. Now they are ready to open that gift, that is, the contract.

Unlimited plant closings coupled with time limits on the Job Bank means the Concession Caucus has delivered the union’s head upon a platter. But I am no great prophet and this is no great matter of speculation. Everyone knows “market related volume decline” is in sync with the goal to close plants and cancel commitments to dealers.

The 2007 GM-UAW contract listed nine plants to be closed for certain and one to be “closed or sold”. But that was before the perfect capitalist disaster. Now, poaching is legal and the game are penned in.

Manufacturers didn’t push free trade agreements because they expected to export from the USA. They never expected to export anything but jobs. The objective of free trade agreements was to close factories in the US, invest offshore, and import products formerly “made in the USA” back to the US market. The current capitalist crisis gives auto companies a perfect opportunity to bankrupt North American Operations and become major importers.

GM and Ford (like Delphi) invested profits overseas (foreign assets are protected under US bankruptcy law) rather than pump dollars back into US plants. Chrysler does not have extensive investments overseas but they have made a deal with Chery Motors in China and they could partner with another foreign auto maker to import small cars to the US. Unless Cerberus, the three headed private equity fund that owns Chrysler, prefers a fire sale. In either case we can’t deny the dogs from hell are at the gates.

Some speculators feel that unlike Delphi it would be too risky for GM to declare bankruptcy because consumers would not want to buy vehicles from a bankrupt company. But Americans buy tickets to fly on bankrupt airlines maintained by disgruntled mechanics and depressed pilots. Why wouldn’t they buy a car from two bankrupt companies: Delphi & GM?

Under bankruptcy protection GM would continue to operate some plants in the US. The disaster scenario would enable them to accelerate the transition to lower tier workers and extort greater concessions from the UAW. Bankruptcy, like a boxer taking a dive, is a business plan.

There is simply too much cash to be skimmed by reneging on VEBAs and pensions. If they can’t pay, they can’t pay. So who will have to pay and pay and pay? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Money isn't lost, it changes hands. We are about to experience a massive transfer of wealth from workers to investors (inside investors). It will be the most enduring legacy of the UAW’s partnership with the corporations.

The VEBA was sold to UAW members as an insurance against the specter of bankruptcy. What the Concession Caucus didn’t explain is that the health of the VEBA depends on the profitability of the company. Because they didn’t get the money upfront, the VEBA is essentially a promissory note. If the company goes bankrupt prior to an actual transfer of cash, the VEBA is busted flatter than a penny on a train track.

The security of retirees depends on the success of the VEBA. In turn the VEBA depends on concessions from workers and plant closings. Some would attest that the UAW has a serious conflict of interest. But members know better. The sweethearts have already made their beds.

Steve Miller, who is managing the perpetual failure at Delphi, said in a recent speech to the Detroit Economic Club, "One of the biggest factors in a decision to put new investment offshore is the punitive effect of health care costs on job creation in America."

Miller told the audience that after Delphi emerges from bankruptcy he would like to take a role in solving "the country's number one domestic political and economic issue [health care]”. He thinks he knows how to take waste out of health care.

Look at what’s left of Delphi and Bethlehem Steel, then ask yourself if you want the likes of Miller fixing your health care plan. Miller’s idea of waste is workers. Or more to the point, the cost of workers and retirees who, as he said in a previous speech, live too long [(when workers retired at “age 65 and then died at age 70.....the social contract inherent in these programs seemed affordable.”) Steve Miller, Detroit Economic Club, 4/03/2006].

One of the areas of waste that Miller cited during his speech was malpractice lawsuits. Miller is suing the Appaloosa hedge fund for backing out of an investment in Delphi. Apparently, due diligence exposed Miller’s reorganization plan as flimflam. Miller didn’t hesitate to file a frivolous lawsuit to force a hedge fund to invest against their better judgment.

What sort of businessman coerces someone into investing?

Miller has spent the last three years wasting money on fruitless legal proceedings and rewarding Delphi executives for continuous failure. If we don’t mount a counter offensive to wrest control of health care from parasites like Miller, we will lose more than VEBA. Our lives are on the line.

We’re not affordable. We live too long. Miller & Friends want to fix that.

Manufacturing workers have lost too many jobs and made too many concessions. Retaliation is in order. We know how to take the waste out of the system — cut out the middlemen. We don’t need them. They do not perform any value added function in the delivery of health care. They are more than a burden. They are a moral hazard.

Why should duffers sporting cologne that costs more than a doctor visit be allowed to skim money from doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics, medical supply companies, and patients? We don’t need the middlemen. Give them six months severance and offer to retrain them for work in the foundry.

Health care is ground zero of the perfect capitalist disaster. Miller & Friends want to fix health care so retirees don’t live too long and the private insurance industry keeps making jackpot profits. He and his class of vulture capitalists want health care that restricts access to workers and retirees and specializes in serving those who were never exposed to the hazards of hard work.

One way or the other the perfect capitalist disaster will be a catalyst for change.