Occupied: Reports From the Front Lines

Via Infoshop News

by Jennifer Sacks

YOUR WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF OCCUPY MOVEMENT NEWS

Occupy Denver staged a Canadian student solidarity march on June 1. Photo: lthnmsrtk

This week in Occupy, the Cruz home at 4044 Cedar Avenue in South Minneapolis became a national flashpoint for the Movement, overthrown Egyptian former dictator Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison, Canadian solidarity had everyone wearing red, the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall sparked a frenzy among politicians and activists alike, and an Occupy Yale activist left us far too soon.

Occupy Homes MN protestors are condemning Minneapolis police and Mayor R.T. Rybak after 14 were arrested defending the home of Alejandra Cruz and her family from foreclosure. 100 protestors gathered to link arms around the home – which has been blockaded from eviction by occupiers for the past month – and successfully fought off raids three times in two days, forcing sheriffs and police to retreat. The Minneapolis police chief doesn’t even want to foreclose anymore. Freddie Mac, the current holder of the Cruz family’s mortgage, hired round-the-clock private security, who called the police to enforce the May 31 raid. PNC Bank, which originally held the Cruz loan, has repeatedly assured the family that they are working to resolve the issue.

Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian former dictator and casualty of the Arab Spring, was sentenced to life in prison. For thousands of Egyptians, the overthrown autocrat’s sentence was too lenient: protesters in particular want Mubarak to pay with his life for his brutal regime.

On May 29, Occupy Chicago rallied against the police brutality employed during the NATO protests and demanded compensation for ”lost income, lost stability and treatment costs from trauma [police] inflicted upon [protesters].” While the mainstream media has praised Chicago PD for the supposed restraint officers demonstrated, it is clear they simply trained their cameras away from police violence.

Marina Keegan, an Occupy activist and recent Yale graduate, died in a car accident on May 26. Around campus and in the pages of the New York Times she took on Wall Street campus recruiting practices as part of an action known as Occupy Morgan Stanley. “I’m just not convinced that the most productive use of 25 percent of my graduating class’s time is to spend two or three years pushing figures around spreadsheets to make more money for those with the most money,” she wrote in November.

The WIrecall of Governor Scott Walker, who is just the third governor in U.S. history to face a recall, will be decided on June 5. Occupy Appleton held a Solidarity Sing Along to get out the vote. Walker holds a narrow lead over Democratic opponent Tom Barrett, but Democrats are confident they’ll win the state senate. The drive to oust the despised governor was spurred by anger over his plan to effectively end most public workers’ collective bargaining rights, and the wave of activism that followed paved the way for Occupy Wall Street.

Ireland – Ivory tower academics fail to see mass popular organisation against Household Tax

Via WSM Ireland

Dan Hayden and Colin Scott (‘Why People Avoided Paying Household Charge’ 16th April) should get out of their academic ivory tower and talk to some real people if they want to answer the question as to why almost a million households have decided to put themselves in conflict with the government by refusing to register for and pay the household tax.  Instead of presenting any real analysis of what is by any stretch of the imagination a massive rejection of government policy they start off by insulting those who decided not to register and go on to present a hotch-potch of half-baked theories which seem designed to do anything other than admit the truth – people made a conscious political decision not to pay.

First the insult. “Even in the worst days of the 1980s,” they claim, “this level of tax avoidance was unthinkable.” As was evidenced from the Beef Tribunal, the tax amnesty of the early 1990s, the Ansbacher scandal and many other examples, tax evasion and avoidance was indeed rife in the 1980s. Not by ordinary workers however who throughout that decade paid inordinately high levels of taxation while many at the top of society adopted a ‘tax is for the little people’ attitude.

30 years later the battle for taxation justice continues. While ordinary workers face, on top of income tax, Universal Social Charge, pension levies, increased levels of VAT etc etc figures from the Revenue Commissioners show that the number of high earners (€100,000+) in Irish society has increased since the onset of the recession while the effective tax rate they pay has fallen.

IWW Direct Action! Demand Unpaid Wages for Worker at 3rd St. Diner in Richmond, Virginia

Via Infoshop News

On behalf of Fellow Worker Moriah “Mo” Karn, the Richmond General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World and IU640 (Restaurant, Hotel, & Building Service Workers Industrial Union) are initiating a campaign to demand that $183.18 in unpaid wages be paid in full to fellow worker Karn.

Fellow worker Karn worked as a bartender and waitstaff for 3rd St. Diner located at 218 E. Main St. in Richmond, Virginia. Karn has yet to receive any compensation for their labor after working a total of 86 hours at a wage of $2.13 an hour, between November 3rd and November 22nd, 2011.

Although in the state of Virginia, it is a violation of law to withhold a final paycheck from an employee after removal (see §40.1-29 Va State Code), the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry was of little help. When fellow worker Karn filed a complaint with the Virginia Department of Labor, they were told that because there was no written proof of their hours worked, ie. a time sheet, schedule, etc., and because the employer failed to process their W2 form, there was nothing the Department of Labor could do for them.

In lieu of this news, on Friday April 6, 2012 a letter was issued to owner, Mr. William “Billy” Polyaris, requesting he do the right thing and pay fellow worker Karn in full by 4:00pm Friday April 12, 2012. Informing him that failure to do so would result in further action. We received no response.

Whereas the inability of the state to procure justice for workers who are victims of wage theft, and whereas Mr. Polyaris appears to have no remorse for the exploitation of his workers, we call upon supporters to participate in a phone blast, putting pressure on management and demanding retribution and accountability for Karn and her fellow workers.

Tenants Union: Fight Your Landlord and Win

Via Libcom.org, and Buffalo Class Action

A pamphlet on tenant union organizing by Buffalo Class Action, an anarchist political organization based in Buffalo, New York.

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”

– Frederick Douglass

Decent housing should be an absolute right for all people. But, we continue to live in a world that homelessness, evictions of the poor, and degrading housing conditions are all too common. At the same time, we see abandoned housing left to rot. This should convince us that our housing problems come not from a lack of resources, but from a poor distribution of those resources. As is the problem with so many facets of our lives, housing is organized for private profit and not for people’s common needs. The only way for us to change these problems is to organize together and demand it. But, who do we organize and how? And, who is the enemy?

Who is the landlord?
For most working class people, owning our home isn’t a possibility and we’re often forced into a housing market with large landlords. Just as often, the tenants and the landlords have conflicting sets of interests. While we’re simply trying to hold onto a basic necessity of life, landlords hope to gain a profit from us. Sadly, the interests of the landlords are usually dominant, thanks to a system of legal and government support rarely enjoyed by tenants.

Supposedly, we have a choice. We can live wherever we’d like – if we can afford it. So the “choice” offered to those of us that live in or near poverty is between a variety of bad housing situations and homelessness. This is obviously not a choice, but a threat. Where can you go to leave an unfair housing market? Our life experiences repeatedly tell us: “You will take whatever horrible standards your income can afford, or you will have nothing.”

Revolution in America

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Though I frequently try. :)–WG

From Adbusters

This is a sincere call for an American Revolution against the decadent, vile plutocrats driving our nation into the ground. Super-consumers, sinister bankers, celebrity whores dine on foie gras and truffles while more than 25 million Americans are unemployed and 2.8 million homes are in foreclosure. A cabal of greedy bastards has turned America, the pioneer of modern democracy, into a corporatocracy where a handful of nonhuman megacorps own our government, political parties, courts, schools and media. The opulent one percent are sucking us dry even as they push us, debt-ridden and redundant, over the precipice. Only an insurrection against their monied despotism can save us now.

Making the case for the overthrow of the American corporatocracy is a serious matter. From the perspective of the plutocrats in power, it is a criminal, seditious, treasonous act punishable by a lengthy prison sentence. Therefore we must be absolutely certain that ours is a righteous rebellion. We must be confident that although our revolution may be illegal from their perspective, it is supremely legitimate, commendable and obligatory from the perspective of universal, natural law. And so that we may guard against recklessness, we must be judicious and put the actions of the American government on trial before deciding if the sentence of execution by popular revolution is necessary and just.

Our case for a forceful disbanding rests on the charge that the American regime is illegitimate and antidemocratic because it is a danger to Americans as citizens, to America as a nation and to Homo sapiens as a species. Acknowledging that insurrection is only warranted when there is no other avenue to fully removing the corrupt from power, we will contend that all other tactics have already been tried unsuccessfully.

Every politician in office today, Democrat and Republican alike, accepts corporate bribes and is therefore corrupt. Their election is perverse evidence that they groveled before corporate lords and do not serve the will of the people. We know this because on January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court told us who runs the nation by granting corporations the freedom to donate unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. As it is already an established statistical fact that the candidate who spends the most money wins in 9 out of 10 races, it is undeniable that we live in an era where anyone genuinely opposed to the corporate takeover of America, and unwilling to compromise, will never be elected. That makes the government a dangerous enterprise that is a hazard to individual freedom.

Not content with stripping us as citizens of our sovereignty, our corporate-backed rulers have instituted a foreign policy that delights in permanent war and international instability. From cynically squandering billions of dollars of taxpayer money each year in gifts to the apartheid state of Israel or in military support given to keep Arab tyrants in power, everything about America’s foreign policy is wrong, pro-war, anti-freedom and unjust. Two preemptive wars in the last decade … ongoing occupations with new war crimes daily … secret drone attacks on civilians … military bases encircling the world … a nefarious, unelected military-industrial complex sows discord abroad and guarantees that our nation will never live in peace.

And then there is the deepest charge of all: America’s corporatocracy is committing a crime against humanity. Nature is dying, sentient species are disappearing, catastrophic climate change threatens us all. And yet the ideology of rampant consumerism reigns supreme in America. Ecocide is the official policy of these mammon worshipers who use their military might to keep the oil flowing and industrial pollutants pumping. Glaciers are melting, oceans are acidifying, climate wars are looming. If America is not overthrown, the cancerous growth of capitalism will not end until all life on Earth is extinct.

Everywhere we look there are signs of moral decay, political corruption and fascistic tendencies. However, activists have not been passive. For decades, since the end of democracy in America first became undeniable, we have tried every tactic to avert catastrophe. We have voted, written letters, donated money, held signs, protested in marches, clicked links, signed petitions, tweeted websites, written books, taught classes, knitted sweaters, learned how to farm, turned off the television, programmed apps, engaged in direct action, committed petty vandalism … All this has been for naught. Popular revolution remains the only reasonably viable tactic remaining.

In the 18th century, America’s founding fathers were in the same situation as we are today. They also sought justification to start a rebellion against a despotic empire that claimed to be their rightful government. They knew that what they intended to do was illegal from the king’s perspective, but they found solace in a higher law, a universal law that takes priority over temporal authority. The thirteen colonies made the case for insurrection in the Declaration of Independence of the United States and thereby permanently enshrined as inalienable “the Right of the People to alter or abolish” the government. The precedent of our own history grants us the right to revolt. Further, the seriousness of corporate America’s threat to the world puts us under obligation to act. Now we will sweep the parasites out of power and reinstate the rule of the people.

Micah White is a contributing editor at Adbusters

In Egypt, Revolution Moves Into The Factories

Via Infoshop News

from NPR

Egypt’s popular revolution was launched from a public square. Now there’s an uprising on factory floors — with labor strikes across the country.

Under the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, many industries were privatized as Egypt turned from a state-controlled to a market-driven economy. But government-owned factories were frequently given to loyalists or foreign buyers who had the right connections. Many of them got rich by cutting wages and benefits.

Now, the workers are fighting back.

In Menoufia, about 90 miles from Cairo in the Nile Delta, the main employer is the Shebin spinning and weaving factory. For generations, local men have worked at the sprawling 150-acre plant, spinning Egyptian cotton into products for the world market.

But the factory is closed now. The workers are all on strike.

The Modern Relevance of the IWW

Via Infoshop News and FW Arthur Miller

by Arthur J. Miller

Working people have always existed in every society. Those who produce the goods and services that all depend upon are the one common element that all human communities must have in order to survive. All other human endeavors are secondary to the work necessary for survival. Rulers, bosses, armies, churches, political parties, and so on cannot exist without the workers. Throughout the ages there have been those who did, or sought to, exploit the labor of working people for their own benefit. No matter what form this exploitation takes, it all come down to the accumulation of wealth and power by a few from the labor of the many. This has been justified in many ways by the talking heads of the exploiters. But the single fact remains that the exploiters are not a necessary part of human society, whereas working people are.

There has been a conflict of interest between working people and those who exploit them since the beginning. That conflict of interest has been between the interest of the few exploiters to gain as much as possible off the labor of the many, and the interest of the many, the working people, to produce the needs of society for the well-being of all.

The struggle of working people against their exploitation has taken many forms over the years. At one point in that struggle, they started to organize their places of labor and these organizations became known as unions. The first organizations were that of single shops and later based upon the trade or skill of the workers. It was found that single shop organizing did not have the power to stand up to the employers who were able to use the might of the State against the workers. It was also found that the trade or skill form of unionism tended to divide workers and left many so-called unskilled workers unorganized.

April 4 – National Day of Action – Events Across the US

Via We Are One

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., where he was standing with sanitation workers demanding their dream of a better life. Today, the right to bargain collectively for a voice at work and a middle-class life are under attack as never before. Find out more here.

Join us to make April 4, 2011, and the days surrounding it, a day to stand in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin and dozens of other states where corporate-bought politicians are trying to take away the rights Dr. King gave his life for.

It’s still not too late to set up a solidarity event on April 4, or later this week! We have resources to do so here. Send an Email to SReynold@aflcio.org to get support and tips from our field organizers.

However you get involved, be sure you find a way to join millions of others who are electrified by King’s same dream and are joining together for our common dreams.

Find your local action here.

Ohio Governor Gets 3,000 Boos

This post was delayed, I thought that I had published it already. Sorry for the SNAFU –WG

Via Labor Notes

Howard Ryan

|  March 18, 2011

Firefighter Dan Rihm uses a bullhorn to rally the thousands of activists protesting Ohio Senate Bill 5, which ends collective bargaining for most state workers. Photo: Mike Elicson/SEIU.

Ohio Governor John Kasich delivered his “State of the State” speech March 8 with all the pomp expected of a new governor setting his agenda.

But 3,000 union members and allies—led by 2,000 firefighters along with teachers, state workers, electrical workers, steelworkers, and many others—had just finished rallying outside the Columbus statehouse damning Senate Bill 5, the governor’s proposal to gut public employee unions.

And now hundreds of protesters packed the hearing gallery, with many more outside, filling the air with boos and “Kill the Bill” chants while the governor spun down-home tales, like one about a young girl who walked up to him during his campaign to say, “Mister, please don’t tax my eggs.”

Seth Rosen, vice president of Communications Workers District 4, said Ohio politics are usually mild. Booing the governor isn’t typical.

The governor and the legislature’s Republican majority certainly don’t have moderation in mind. After a little reworking, the senate passed a bill in early March that ends collective bargaining for most state workers, by a 17-16 vote. The assembly was still considering it at press time.

Britons rally against budget cuts

Via Al Jazeera

Tens of thousands march in protest against tax rises, unemployment and reductions in public spending.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied in London, the British capital, in opposition to public spending cuts introduced by the country’s coalition government.

Organisers said that Saturday’s demonstration could be the biggest rally in the capital since mass protests against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Crowds of demonstrators, including public sector workers, pensioners and students, kicked off the “March for the Alternative” along the banks of the river Thames.

Many protesters carried banners reading “Don’t Break Britain”, “No to Cuts” and “Defend Our Public Services”, while others blew vuvuzelas, the plastic trumpets made famous during the South African football World Cup.

Families with children were among the protesters and steel bands, choirs and dancers also joined the march, giving a carnival atmosphere to the demonstration.

Tim Friend, Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the march, said: “It’s all good fun for many people here but there is a serious message as well, which the government will be watching very carefully.

“There are ‘unsung heroes’ here, from communities across Britain who have come down to London.

“The closure of their projects [due to cuts] for their local communities might not get much publicity, but for the people who use those services it will be absolutely devastating.”