FYI: Palestinian Prisoners Hunger Strike in Day 39

From: Torres, Azalia
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 6:07 PM
Subject: FYI: Palestinian Prisoners Hunger Strike in Day 39

On March 15, 2017, the Legal Aid Society and Attorneys of Color of Legal Aid jointly said:“[F]or as long as The Legal Aid Society exists, we will stand in solidarity with marginalized communities in their fight for equal justice and racial equity.” Today, in the very same spirit, people around the world are standing in solidarity with 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners now in their 39^th day of a hunger strike against conditions that Amnesty International calls “unlawful and cruel.”

Hunger strikes, like that held by U.S. prisoners last fall, are part of a long international tradition of resistance to injustice. But the Israeli government — which receives $3.8b/year in U.S. weapons, and closely coordinates with the NYPD and other police agencies that systematically target Black, Brown, and Native communities in this country — has branded the strikers “terrorists,” just as the South African apartheid regime once labeled Nelson Mandela.

Despite threats of force-feeding, the prisoners remain steadfast: “Our chains will be broken before we are, because it is human nature to heed the call for freedom regardless of the cost.”

With our own government funding this injustice, the prisoner strike concerns us all. Dr. Martin Luther King, while himself a political prisoner in Birmingham Alabama, put it best: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

*Legal Workers, Legal Organizations and Law Students Letter of Support for Palestinian Hunger Strikers (National Lawyers Guild, April 2017)

*An Injury to One is an Injury to All: Workers Support Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike (Labor for Palestine, May 21, 2017)

In addition, there is a NYC solidarity protest for the prisoners, 5:30pm tomorrow (Friday) in Union Square. Legal observers needed.

Labor and Women’s Rights Movement Plan Ambitious Mass Protests to Fight Trumpism

• http://www.alternet.org/activism/labor-and-womens-rights-movement-plan-ambitious-mass-protests-fight-trumpism
• ACTIVISM
  Key labor groups are throwing their weight behind an International Women’s Day of mass protests.

  By Sarah Lazare / AlterNet

  March 3, 2017

  

  Photo Credit: Michael Wende / Shutterstock.com

  Sectors of the U.S. labor movement are throwing their weight behind an International Women’s Day call for mass actions to protest the gendered violence wrought by neoliberalism, from workplace harassment to environmental destruction to the gutting of welfare systems.

  Timed for Wednesday, March 8, the global day of action was “organized by and for women who have been marginalized and silenced by decades of neoliberalism directed towards working women, women of color, Native women, disabled women, immigrant women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer and trans women,” according to the International Women’s Strike, which describes itself as a grassroots movement.

  The mobilizations also have the backing of the organizers of the January 21 Women’s March, the largest inaugural protest in U.S. history. While Women’s March organizers have termed March 8 “a day without women,” actions will include rallies, protests, direct actions and teach-ins, in addition to a more traditional work stoppage. Similar actions are slated to sweep nearly 30 countries, from Mexico to Bolivia to Russia.

  Tithi Bhattacharya, who is active with the U.S. arm of the International Women’s Strike, is a longtime activist for Palestinian justice, a professor of South Asian History and the director of Global Studies at Purdue University. She told AlterNet, “We knew very well when we used the word ‘strike’ that women (and men) in the vast majority of workplaces will not be able to go on strike. How could they? Union density is currently at its lowest in this country. Moreover, even where unions exist, they usually carry no-strike clauses in their contracts. A vast number of people work in states where striking has been criminalized for years.”

  “But despite these challenges,” Bhattacharya continued, “the involvement of labor unions and labor groups has been amazing.”

  Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools just announced it will close down March 8 because it expects large numbers of employees to go on strike.

  Under the banner, Women Workers Rising, major unions and workers’ organizations are calling for a demonstration at the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., to “end workplace violence and harassment and promote pay equity, one fair living wage, paid leave and labor rights at work.” The action is being organized by One Billion Rising in coalition with at least eight union or worker organizations, including National Nurses United, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, OUR Walmart, the American Federation of Teachers, Jobs with Justice, the Domestic Workers’ Alliance and other labor and social justice groups.

  “Every day, we see the Trump administration’s attack on women’s bodies and lives, especially immigrants and women of color,” Andrea Cristina Mercado, the campaign director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, told AlterNet. “Our work, contributions, and humanity continue to be undervalued. That is why we endorsed A Day Without Women—as a way of showing opposition to the terrorizing and criminalizing of our communities.”

  “While some domestic workers are participating, we did not call on members to strike, because it’s hard for many who are caring for elders or children to take a day off,” Mercado continued. “But there are so many ways to show resistance, and on March 8, we will stand together, and embody radical sisterhood.”

  The day of action has earned the endorsements of union locals and workers’ organizations, including Labor for Palestine, Rutgers AAUP-AFT and UAW Local 2325 — Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. Among the endorsers is the SEIU Lavender Caucus, which describes itself as “the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/ Transgender (L/G/B/T) Caucus of the Service Employees International Union, whose purpose is to facilitate open and respectful communication between the L/G/B/T community and the labor movement.”

  Megan Moskop is a New York City teacher and an organizer with the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers. Moskop said MORE officially endorsed the March 8 day of actions “because 70 percent or more of the teaching profession in New York City is women. Sexism in our profession is rampant. We only have the most basic family medical leave. Part of the reason it is such a hard job is because it’s a job women have traditionally done.”

  “When women are standing up in the international community and saying sexism is real, we want to stand alongside them,” Moskop said.

  The U.S. platform for the International Women’s Strike includes calls for labor rights, a halt to gender violence, environmental justice and an “anti-racist and anti-imperialist feminism,” stating: “This means that movements such as Black Lives Matter, the struggle against police brutality and mass incarceration, the demand for open borders and for immigrant rights and for the decolonization of Palestine are for us the beating heart of this new feminist movement.”

  In addition, the platform calls for “full social provisioning” and issues the demand “that the welfare system work to support our lives rather than shame us when we access such rights.”

  Organizers say they draw inspiration from mass protests far beyond U.S. borders. “Following the example of Icelandic women in 1975, Polish women went on a day-long strike to halt plans for criminalizing abortion and miscarriage on Oct. 3, 2016,” the International Women’s Strike writes. “That planned legislation was immediately withdrawn by the government. Similar issues brought Korean women to protest several times that same month against introduction of higher penalties for doctors performing abortions. On Oct. 19, 2016, Argentine women responded with massive hour-long strikes and rallies to an inhuman femicide and brutal repression [by police] of the Women’s National Meeting.”

  Union members told AlterNet that these kinds of mass protests are sorely needed in the United States, and that labor’s participation is often driven by the rank and file. “It’s important to see labor use its power to move protests further and go from demonstrations to strikes,” Peter Lamphere, a member of MORE-UFT and a teacher in New York City, told AlterNet. “We’ve seen that already in the immigrant community and with New York City taxi workers.”

  On February 16, thousands of people across the United States walked off the job, shut down their stores and restaurants and stayed home from school to participate in an immigrant strike against the deportation policies of the Trump administration. The strike was accompanied by mass protests in cities and towns across the country, including Chicago, Raleigh, Austin and San Francisco.

  Those mass protests followed a one-hour strike on January 28 by the New York Taxi Workers, in solidarity with large-scale protests against Trump’s travel ban targeting Muslims. “Drivers stand in solidarity with thousands protesting [the] inhumane and unconstitutional Muslim ban,” the 19,000-member strong union declared over social media.

  “We see the Trump administration as posing an existential threat to the labor movement, so right after the election we immediately got involved in pushing UFT to take whatever action it could to challenge what Trump was doing,” Lamphere emphasized. “So we pushed for the union to endorse the Women’s March and sent buses. The women’s strike is the next step coming out of that.”

  Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, she coedited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.

Fw: Strikers have a message for Trump & Schwarzman

From: Wright, Deborah
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 11:34 AM
To: ALAA MEMBERS
Cc: Alexi Shalom
Subject: Fw: Strikers have a message for Trump & Schwarzman
FYI.  Let’s also not forget our very own sisters and brothers in UAW Local 1508 in Green Island, NY who have been locked out by Honeywell since last May!

 

 

From: Blum, Richard
Sent: Monday, February 6, 2017 11:04 AM
To: Wright, Deborah; Taylor, Bret
Cc: Hofmeister, Beth
Subject: FW: Strikers have a message for Trump & Schwarzman

 

FYI. Please distribute.

Richard,

700 striking workers at Momentive in Waterford, NY have a message for Donald Trump and Steve Schwarzman: What about us? *

Trump promised to restore good jobs for millions of American workers, and picked Wall Street billionaire Stephen Schwarzman to Chair his “Strategic and Policy Forum” to help create jobs and boost economic growth.

But Schwarzman isn’t a champion for working people. He’s a Wall Street billionaire with a personal fortune of $11.1 billion and has a history of driving down workers’ standard of living at the companies he owns.

Momentive fell prey to Schwarzman’s Wall Street financial interests that destroyed good jobs, and cut pay and benefits. Apollo Global Management – the firm that owns the bulk of Momentive –  has also been one of the puppet masters driving down workers’ standard of living at Momentive for years. Workers are paying the price for their greed, but they are standing strong and making sacrifices on the picket line to protect their livelihoods.

Stand with the working families on strike at a rally on February 9th right outside Schwarzman’s posh Park Avenue apartment to demand good jobs in upstate New York.

The Details:
When: February 09, 2017 • 5:30 PM
Where: Steve Schwarzman’s Apartment • 740 Park Avenue , New York, NY
RSVP: MomentiveWorkers.com/ SchwarzmanRally

“They’ve been doing this to us for years. We aren’t greedy, we aren’t asking for much — just a fair contract, and some decent benefits for the younger guys,” said Momentive worker John DeSantis.

Let’s make sure Schwarzman and Trump hear us loud and clear Feb 9: If you really want to support good jobs and benefits for workers, start in Waterford.

Thanks,

Bob Master
Communications Workers of America

* Check out the article in the NY Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/ new-york/n-y-plant-workers- hope-trump-honors-promise- create-jobs-article-1.2963002
CWA District 1
80 Pine Street, 37th Floor
New York NY, 10005
cwad1.org

Text CWAD1 to 69866 to Join Our Text List.

 

FYI: Two More Events Today: Protest Uber & Labor for Standing Rock

From: Letwin, Michael
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2017 10:59 AM
Subject: FYI: Two More Events Today: Protest Uber & Labor for Standing Rock

Thursday, 5-6pm in NYC:
Protest at Uber’s Headquarters NoBanNoWall
Location: 3100 47th Ave, Long Island City, NY
Facebook event page

Join us to protest Uber on the day before Uber CEO Travis Kalanick meets with Donald Trump as part of his advisory council.

**** PLEASE NOTE: We’ve updated the our protest end time to 6 PM so that folks can head over to Foley Square for the Rise Up for #RamarleyGraham protest****

Now is the time for all those who value justice and equality to join together in holding Uber accountable, not only for its complicity with Trump’s hateful policies but also for impoverishing workers.

Backed by billions from Wall Street, gig economy corporations like Uber and Lyft are upending labor standards for which workers have spent centuries fighting.

Let’s send Uber and its gig-lord allies a message: workers’ rights and democracy come before profit. #NoBanNoWall

LIST OF SPONSORS IN PROGRESS

32BJ SEIU

ALIGN New York

Black Lives Matter Greater New York

Center for Popular Democracy

DRUM – Desis Rising Up & Moving

Labor for Palestine

Make the Road New York

Muslim Democratic Club

National Lawyers Guild Labor and Employment Law Committee

New York Communities for Change

New York Immigrant Action Fund

New York Immigration Coalition

New York Progressive Action Committee

New York Taxi Workers Alliance

New York Worker Center Federation

New York Working Families Party

Strong Economy for All

 

---

Thursday 8-9pm EST:
Urgent Labor for Standing Rock Conference Call with Water Protectors 

In recent days, Donald Trump has met with pro-DAPL building trade leaders and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and pressured the Army Corps of Engineers to grant a final easement for DAPL. Today, highly militarized police made mass arrests of 76 water protectors.

In response, Chase Iron Eyes of the Lakota People’s Law Project and Last Real Indians will speak about what those of us in organized labor can do at this point to support water protectors at Standing Rock.

Call times in US/Eastern: Thursday, Feb 02, 2017, 8pm (1 hour). To participate, please register here.

 

FYI: NYC Protest Calendar

From: Letwin, Michael
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2017 2:41 PM
Subject: FYI: NYC Protest Calendar

“Event calendar of NYC protests, political actions, protests, demonstrations, workshops, organizing trainings, and planning meetings. Attend, act, and create social change!”
http://takeactionnyc.com/nyc-protest-event-calendar/

FYI: How We Can Stand With Standing Rock

From: Letwin, Michael
Date: Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 12:31 PM
Subject: FYI: How We Can Stand With Standing Rock

Despite brutal state violence so familiar to NYC communities of color, Water Protectors at Standing Rock are continuing to engage in nonviolent mass resistance against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on Sioux treaty land.

As the harsh northern winter sets in (with temperatures plummeting into the teens this week), here are some ways that each of us at Legal Aid can help:

• Sign the Urgent Call on the AFL-CIO: Reverse Support for the Dakota Access Pipeline (14k+ signers and rising).

• Donate to Labor for Standing Rock’s emergency fund to winterize Oceti Sakowin (Standing Rock) camp.

• Join, or donate to, the NYC labor/community delegation going next week to build a winterized camp and deliver a vehicle to Standing Rock for sustained solidarity.

• Donate and/or offer legal assistance to the Water Protector Legal Collective/NLG, a nonprofit organization coordinating criminal and civil litigation for water protectors in Standing Rock, in partnership with the National Lawyers Guild.

• Reply via email to host a Standing Rock report back from our recent Labor for Standing Rock delegation in your office or community.

From Labor for Standing Rock: Urgent Mobilization This Weekend

From: Letwin, Michael
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 5:02 PM
Subject: From Labor for Standing Rock: Urgent Mobilization This Weekend

During the past few days, highly-militarized police in North Dakota have escalated brutality and arrests against Native American opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

To demand an end to this growing repression, defend indigenous rights, and stop DAPL, Labor for Standing Rock has called Union Camp this weekend (October 29-30) at Standing Rock.

To support this historic campaign, please:

*Sign Urgent Call on the AFL-CIO: Reverse Support for the Dakota Access Pipeline
*RSVP Union Camp and like Labor for Standing Rock on Facebook
*Contribute to Labor for Standing Rock

For more info: LaborForStandingRock@gmail.com

FYI: Please Sign Call On AFL-CIO to End Support for Dakota Access Pipeline

From: Korotzer, Daniella
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 3:30 PM
Subject: FYI: Please Sign Call On AFL-CIO to End Support for Dakota Access Pipeline

To sign the statement below, please click here

This petition will be delivered to:
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

[When signing, please list trade union and/or other affiliation in the comment box]

Urgent Call on the AFL-CIO: Reverse Support for the Dakota Access Pipeline
Labor for Palestine, September 17, 2016

As trade unionists and social justice activists, we urgently call on the AFL-CIO to reverse its disgraceful support for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

DAPL continues more than 500 years of settler-colonialism, dispossession, and genocide against indigenous people in the Americas, who are defending the Earth’s vital resources against the same corporate greed, state violence, and repression that violate workers’ rights on a daily basis.

Like the Black and Brown Lives, Immigrant Rights, Palestinian, and other freedom struggles, the courageous Sioux resistance at Standing Rock has become a worldwide beacon for all who fight injustice.

In solidarity, numerous trade union bodies — including the Amalgamated Transit Union; California Faculty Association; Communications Workers of America; Industrial Workers of the World; IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus; National Nurses United; New York State Nurses Association; National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981; United Electrical Workers; SEIU 503 OPEU; Border Agricultural Workers; and the Labor Coalition for Community Action, which includes the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work — #StandWithStandingRock.

Workers’ rights are inseparable from indigenous rights. We need decent union jobs that protect, rather than destroy, the Earth — there are no jobs on a dead planet.

An injury to one is an injury to all: #NoDAPL!

=====

Labor for Palestine Co-Conveners:

Suzanne Adely, U.S.-MENA Global Labor Solidarity Network; Former Staff, Global Organizing Institute, UAW

Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325

Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired)

Jaime Veve, Transport Workers Union Local 100, NYC (retired)

=====

See also:

From Standing Rock to Occupied Jerusalem: We Resist Desecration of our Burial Sites and Colonizing our Indigenous Lands (Palestinian BDS National Committee, September 9, 2016)

Open Letter from U.S. Trade Unionists to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: Boycott Apartheid Israel (Labor for Palestine, December 4, 2009)

=====

info@laborforpalestine.net
http://laborforpalestine.net/
https://www.facebook.com/LaborForPalestine/
https://twitter.com/Labor4Palestine
Donate: http://laborforpalestine.net/donate-to-lfp/

=====

May 20, 2016: Brooklyn UAW Member Solidarity with Verizon Strike (Slideshow)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Members of Legal Services Staff Association/UAW 2320 and Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW 2325 join the Verizon strikers picket line.

Chants:
*CWA, CWA!
*No contract, no work!
*On strike, shut it down, New York is a union town!

Share on Facebook

#StandUp2Verizon #UAW #OneDayLonger

Legal Services Staff Association, NOLSW/UAW Local 2320
Association of Legal Aid Attorneys – UAW 2325

https://www.facebook.com/standuptoverizon/?fref=ts

FYI: Donate to the Verizon Striking Families Solidarity Fund

From: Letwin, Michael
Date: Thu, May 12, 2016 at 3:00 PM
Subject: FYI: Donate to the Verizon Striking Families Solidarity Fund

Please forward widely!

To donate, please click here.
Like on Facebook: Verizon Strike Solidarity

Being on strike is a hardship for every family. Some may have resources that they can turn to in these difficult times, but others will have extraordinary needs that they’ve been struggling to meet even before facing the hardship of being on strike.

Donations to the Verizon Striking Families Solidarity Fund will be used exclusively to assist striking families with special needs who are facing very difficult financial circumstances.

The strike is strong and the outpouring of support and the demonstrations of solidarity for striking workers is tremendous. Thank you for standing with us.

If you prefer to contribute by check, contributions should be sent to Verizon Striking Families Solidarity Fund, c/o CWA, 501 3rd Street, NW, Washington, DC