http://rebelrabble.org rebelrabble.org Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:14:28 +0000 http://rebelrabble.org en http://rebelrabble.org/Very-Nice-Very-Nice http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/Very-Nice-Very-Nice Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:14:28 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3576963 7-minute short film by Arthur Lipsett, 1961 7-minute short film by Arthur Lipsett, 1961 http://rebelrabble.org/Snapshots-of-the-Student-Movement-in-Montreal-Written-on-a-hot-May-23 http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/Snapshots-of-the-Student-Movement-in-Montreal-Written-on-a-hot-May-23 Wed, 30 May 2012 03:27:15 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3495875 By P. Gage I arrived in Montreal the night the government of Quebec had turned the province into a police state. Jean Charest had passed a law declaring any demonstration over 50 people not pre-approved by the police to be an illegal gathering punishable by up to $1,000 in fines for individuals and $125,000 in fines for any organisation endorsing the action. That night, over twenty five thousand students and supporters defied the law and marched through downtown Montreal. We marched under banners dropped from apartments, past bar patrons cheering with raised fists, and among cars honking in support. In that and other nightly demontrations, I saw random beatings on the streets by a police force run amok. While we marched, the student delegates met all weekend in their congresses and debated whether to endorse the demonstrations. There is a strong temptation to write a protest tourism piece that says “I was there,” and no doubt that phrase still makes me smile a couple days after having left Quebec for New York. I am still in awe, but this piece is not intended to talk about how amazing it all was. That does not do students, working families, and the unemployed any good. Instead, this article is intended to convey to militants in the rest of the world a few of the things I saw and heard about in Quebec that I thought were tremendously strong developments, and things that any organization in the class struggle could learn from. The more questions I asked, the more the mask of Quebec exceptionalism fell away to reveal a real practical movement that succeeded not because they were at the right place at the right time but because they did things right. Below I will outline three explanations for why this movement has been so successful: the class analysis of the Quebec students, the elevation of rank-and-file assemblies over executive power, and the central role direct action plays in the movement. The Student Union System in Quebec Like in the rest of Canada, student unions in Quebec are united into various federations of campus unions. In English speaking Canada, the two main federations are the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), who generally line up politically with the New Democratic Party and the Canada Labour Congress, and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), a more right-leaning federation with ties to the Canadian Liberal and Conservative Parties. Quebec is an exception, however: neither of those student federations has a strong presence there. Instead the three main Federations are ASSÉ (l’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante), the FEUQ (Fédération Étudiante Universitaire du Québec), and the FECQ (Fédération Étudiante Collegiale du Québec). The FEUQ and the FECQ both have strong ties to the Parti Québecois, a nationalist populist party in the province. The FECQ (Federation of Quebec College Students) is based in the Cégeps, a school system that sits between high schools and the post secondary system that many Quebecers go to before moving on to a trade school, a career or university. The FEUQ (Federation of Quebec University Students) is based in the universities. ASSÉ (pronounced ah-say, a play on the French word for “enough”) is different in that it hostile to political affiliation and openly anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-colonial. They have no formal connection to the mainstream labour movement, though many workers are now looking to the students for how to move their own struggles forward (this worker included). CLASSE is the “coalition large” of ASSÉ and allows the members of the other federations to affiliate with ASSÉ through their local. During strike mobilization, student associations joined the coalition as a way of strengthening their numbers and improving coordination of the strike. This allows the militant anti-capitalist politics of ASSÉ to influence the politics in other federations while at the same time keeping their separate organizational identity, their militant autonomy from the official left, and their radical politics intact. It has also allowed ASSÉ to spread the assembly system of decision-making and organization to schools where the students were represented by other student federations. As the strike gained momentum, more and more student organisations claimed dual affiliation with ASSÉ through the CLASSE coalition. The strict requirements placed upon this affiliation shifted the decision making power in the local organisations: all associations that joined had to hold regular general assemblies and these assemblies had to be the highest decision making power in the association, even above the local union executive. This took control of the strike and the collective actions of the students out of the student politicians’ hands and placed it firmly in the hands of the rank-and-file. Soon ASSÉ transitioned from being an anti-capitalist student union to also being the central hub in a network of student militants fighting against the steadily rising debt load of student graduates. The Assembly System There can be no doubt that the charismatic, articulate and brave leadership in ASSÉ and CLASSE has played a major role in the public perception of the strike, and these spokespeople should be commended for putting forward a point of view that runs counter to that of every powerful person in our society (that is a lonely place to be). However, the strength of the student movement lies in the limits it has placed on reliance on leadership, and the way that its politics revolves around direct action rather than charismatic personalities. The assemblies are organized either by department (like biology) or faculty (like sciences) that meet regularly. For example, the geography department at Concordia has very strong support for their strike, and they meet every week to debate the strike’s effectiveness, tactics, and demands, and vote on whether or not to renew the strike for another week. Other departments or faculties, like the science faculty at McGill, decided not to strike and classes continued there. The assemblies are run on a majority rules system with clear rules of order spelled out in a constitution, however there are some hallmarks of consensus such as designated people who watch the room for students who might be upset, or not speaking up, and who can alter the meeting stack according to these dynamics. Many of the assemblies have a huge turnout, especially around strike votes, but they also grow and shrink depending on what is going on. The faculties that are on strike have strong strike mandates, often well over eighty percent. This is a typical outcome of the practice of voting by a show of hands and why trade unions traditionally took strike votes this way. Often it is the fear of being alone, more than the fear of taking action, that affects the outcome of a strike vote. Seeing those around you willing to openly show their willingness to strike by raising their hand emboldens everyone. In fact, the McGill administration tried to reduce momentum for the strike by requiring strike votes to be taken online – not too different from government-supervised strike votes for union workers. (This failed when students voted overwhelmingly in favour anyway.) Trade Union Bargaining and Direct Action Many commentators have raised the issue whether students can really form effective unions the way grocery store clerks or steel workers can. Of course this shows a certain short-sightedness in how we as a society define a union. Fortunately, working people don’t generally let semantics get in the way of what they want. As far as effectiveness is concerned, a union is a collective body of working class people organized to exert pressure on the capitalist system in order to extract concessions in the short term, and to advance the political interests of its members in the long term. The student movement in Quebec is a union movement because it is organized on a class basis and uses direct action to achieve its goals. In fact, by these lights, the student movement is a better example of a union than many unions in North America. Student unions in Quebec are regulated by laws and register and certify like other unions. In general, the way that unions advance their agenda is through disruption of capitalist profit. If businesses don’t make money, either by striking, sabotage, boycott, or social disruption, they are brought to their knees very quickly. The students’ capacity to bargain likewise comes from their capacity to create a disruption. They have two main fronts in this disruption: their picket lines on campus and their demonstrations in the streets, especially in Montreal but also at Jean Charest ‘s office and home (the Premier of Quebec), or at Liberal party gatherings like in Victoriaville, where a police riot ensued. As far as picket lines go, some militants I spoke with felt that the best pickets let students cross but block professors, often other union members who were sympathetic anyways. This was very effective because it minimized the group of angry anti-strike students stubbornly trying to get through the classroom doors while ensuring class wouldn’t happen anyway. As far as demonstrations go, these had been happening for thirty straight days by the time I arrived in Montreal, and continue at the time this article is going to press. Students have now been joined in the streets by the “casseroles” marches, which involve other Quebec residents who object to Law 78. There have also been weeks of targeted economic disruption – blockading the National Bank building early in the morning, blocking delivery routes to the port, blocking doors to the Ministry of Education’s office, blocking the doors of Hydro Quebec, or the headquarters of the SAQ, or the Association of Cegep Administrators… the list goes on and on and on. Decision-making in the Assemblies The discipline required to carry out the strike on such a massive scale relates directly to the way decisions are made in the assemblies. Even those who were opposed to the strike were encouraged to attend and debate. At the end a vote would be taken that was considered binding on everyone. This sort of collective, horizontal discipline is the root of all unionism and also probably why consensus decision-making was not adopted. One practice that made all of these separate votes and separate picket lines work together on a larger scale was a practice called “the floor”. Basically student groups would vote to strike but hold off on walking out of classes until enough other students likewise voted in favour of striking in their own assemblies. So, for example, one association might vote in favour of a strike, but pass a motion not to walk until at least 2,000 more students, in other assemblies at that school, voted in favour of striking. This would contribute to the sense of momentum while at the same time allowing for a high degree of coordination among a large group of students. It is telling that there were attempts to break up this kind of organization and encourage the more “moderate” student unions to take the lead, with the Charest government eventually kicking CLASSE out of negotiations. But barring them from the negotiating table more than anything proved the strength of ASSÉ and the CLASSE, since it showed that the capacity to negotiate came from the power to disrupt, and an end to disruption was only likely to come through the assemblies. The assemblies, as a place for decision-making that included everyone, short-circuited the crisis of leadership that exists, and has existed for decades, in most union and left-organisations in Canada. Rank-and-file students were radicalized by their own sense of power and at their first taste of an actual, living democracy they began to become less and less interested in cutting a deal regardless of what their leaders might think. The student leaders, some emboldened and others held hostage by their radical constituents, have become caught up in a process that is much bigger than any single personality. In fact when CLASSE was barred from negotiations the two more moderate federations stopped negotiating in solidarity. This move is especially significant considering the bad blood between these groups based on political differences. Conclusions By the end of my weekend in Quebec (May 21st) CLASSE had instructed their spokespeople to announce that they would not only refuse to condemn the “illegal” marches, but would actually endorse them. The following day, an illegal march celebrating the 100th day of the strike drew over 400,000 people in what was described as the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. And now, regular “casseroles” marches are drawing in growing sections of the Quebec population in solidarity. It’s easy to think that these things come out of nowhere, that there is such a thing as spontaneous social combustion. There is an element of spontaneity, and the social foment that exists on the streets in Quebec is partly a product of the tensions that can explode anywhere in society at any time. But from the militants I talked to, one thing that stood out was a strong connection between the veterans of the failed strike of 2007 and the new generation of strikers in 2012. The veterans have brought their past experiences in struggle to the current strike. As their struggle progresses, the Quebec students have become a rallying point for workers’ unions. Let’s be clear though, the workers’ unions’ support did not come earlier because the student movement represents something completely different. CLASSE has the courage to defy the legislation that the CAW, the IAMAW, and the CUPW did not. These business unions are offering their support now because they can advance their own bargaining agenda by making the students appear to be an ally of theirs. But it is not enough to line up the big old unions behind CLASSE. The next step is to build similar structures to the ones that facilitated this strike. We need structures across workers’ unions like what CLASSE contributed to the student federations: assemblies grounded on the shop floor that plan and manage direct action without the interference of political specialists. Building a stronger movement isn’t simply a question of a sharper analysis, but of useful practices. A broad conception of the problems with the education system, and with capitalist society more generally, is empty until it is linked to practical proposals regarding the strategic decisions movements have to make on a day-to-day basis. For many people, including some of the students I spoke to, action precedes consciousness in a very real way, and analysis is generated from the struggle. Capitalism is no different than any other machine: you don’t really learn how it works until you take it apart. The Quebec struggle has revealed a way for us to struggle that makes it harder to turn our organisations against us, and we need to learn from that. Source: http://recomposition.info/2012/05/27/snapshots-of-the-student-movement-in-montreal/ Information for this article was generously contributed by Amber Gross, Rémi Bellemare-Caron, and the Montréal IWW. Thanks to Marianne for editing and research. For more information on the student strike in Quebec, see http://www.bloquonslahausse.com/ in French andhttp://www.stopthehike.ca/ in English. You can use paypal.com to donate to support the strike via CLASSE. Make your donation to executif@asse-solidarite.qc.ca By P. Gage I arrived in Montreal the night the government of Quebec had turned the province into a police state. Jean Charest had passed a law declaring any... http://rebelrabble.org/The-Gender-of-OWS http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/The-Gender-of-OWS Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:19:29 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3253442 By Cinzia Arruzza The OWS movement took place after several years of absence of cohesive nationwide movements, and amidst an extreme fragmentation of struggles. The economic crisis and the evident iniquity of the austerity policies implemented by the government created the conditions for a new social explosion. The first great achievement of the OWS movement is that it provided a response to the risk of the rise of a racist and libertarian right. This is always a possible outcome of any economic crisis, and especially now because of the disappointment of the great hopes raised by Obama’s election. OWS also allowed for a reconnection between fragmented struggles to emerge again and give visibility to a plurality of experiences of resistance and protest which, in their isolation of the last decade, were drowned out by the noise of mainstream politics. The 99% discourse has certainly represented one of the major elements of the symbolic and communicative efficacy of the movement: it evoked the force of the numbers, made immediately apparent the deep injustice of neoliberal capitalism, and stimulated a sense of belonging, and of immediate solidarity among the members of the 99%. However, in order to avoid being re-signified in populist terms, the 99% discourse required and still requires articulation. Not only is capitalist society composed by more than just two classes, but even the field of exploited and oppressed people is marked by divisions, disparity of conditions, different experiences and partially divergent short-term interests. That this basic datum was initially not self-evident within the movement is shown, for example, by the episode recounted by Manissa Maharawal concerning the discussion on the Declaration of the Occupation of Wall Street, in September. The first line of the document stated: “As one people, formerly divided by the color of our skin, gender, sexual orientation, re¬ligion, or lack thereof, political party and cultural background, we acknowledge the reality: that there is only one race, the hu¬man race . . .” (1) Only after Manissa and her friends stood up and “blocked” the discussion, offering to the people gathered in the assembly an accelerated course on white privilege, structural racism and oppression, was the line finally erased. The “formerly divided” of the initial draft revealed indeed some difficulties in, or resistance to, understanding that racial, sexual, gender divisions, are not just a matter of false consciousness, or of fake ideological assumptions, which can be immediately or almost magically overcome within the struggle through just an appeal to the unity of the “human race”. On the contrary, they have a very material basis, play a decisive role in the reproduction of capitalist relations, produce sets of sedimented habits and behaviors, and rely on the appeal of short-term interests. This is why what is required for them to be addressed is not alchemy, but rather a political strategy. Between the pulverization into hundreds of different identities, all characterized by diverse forms of oppression and exploitation, and the longing for unity and homogenization in the name of the “human race”, or of the immediate magic negation of all instances of the capital-relation, it might seem that little or no space is left for an alternative view. However, there is something interesting in the story told by Manissa. In the face of the infamous first line of the Declaration, of the resistance opposed to her “block”, of the initial lack of understanding for her reasons, she did not leave. She stayed and insisted “that in order for this movement to be inclusive it needed to acknowledge these realities and find creative ways to work through them instead of ignoring them” (2). In other words she implicitly raised the question of strategy, of the necessary temporal framework which both separates and joins the current situation and the goal of the abolition of hierarchizing differences, and of the necessary practices to put in place in order to work through these lines of division within the movement. She and her friends won, the Declaration was changed. I’m recounting this episode not in order to underline the frequent resistance of social movements to adequately recognize the complexity of class, gender and race relations, a difficulty which often compels the birth of forms of non mixed organization in order to cope with these issues and avoid the ruse of only apparent universalisms. On the contrary, what I find particularly interesting in this episode is rather the emergence of a new space created by the OWS movement, a space which could help overcome the divorce of class politics and gender, and of sexual and race politics. The ambiguous slogan of the 99% against the 1%, although using a new language and new discursive forms, managed to put again the question of class relations at the center of the American political discourse. If this was still only implicit and not perfectly transparent in the first weeks of the movement, particularly in NYC, it became clearer through the call for the general strike in Oakland, on November 2nd. By this I don’t mean that the OWS movement managed to massively mobilize the working class across the country. On the contrary, the mobilization of the working class, in all the various forms in which this can take place, is exactly what is at stake in the next months, if the movement wants to survive, expand, and possibly gain more than simply a shift in political discourse. But the 99% slogan, the catalyzing power of the movement, the re-emergence of a public space in which alliances among fragmented and dispersed struggles can be built, has opened at least the possibility for a new wave of class struggle. This is because it has given back to class struggle its political legitimacy, after decades of political and cultural delegitimization, dismissal, removal and oblivion. It is precisely this re-emergence of class politics that raises a crucial question for feminist thought today. In her article “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History” Nancy Fraser, referring to the last decades of feminist thought and to the increasing divorce of class politics and gender politics, notices that With the fragmentation of the feminist critique came the selective incorporation and partial recuperation of some of its strands. Split off from one another and from the societal critique that had integrated them, second-wave hopes were conscripted in the service of a project that was deeply at odds with our larger, holistic vision of a just society. In a fine instance of the cunning of history, utopian desires found a second life as feeling currents that legitimated the transition to a new form of capitalist: post-Fordist, transnational, neoliberal (3). Indeed, the use of feminist discourse to justify the attacks to Iraq and Afghanistan or the racist laws against Muslim people in France; the aggressive rightwing feminism à la Sarah Palin; the commodification of sexual identities, including homosexual, transsexual, intersexual and queer identities with the birth of new kinds of consumers and market sectors: all of this should really invite us to carefully rethink the divorce between gender politics and class politics and the subsequent dismissal in academia of class discourse altogether, as the event which made feminist and then queer discourse available for institutional and capitalist cooptation. Fraser concludes her article by suggesting that this is a moment in which feminists should think big, i.e. they should reconnect feminist critique to the critique of capitalism, repositioning in this way “feminism squarely on the Left”. The article was published in 2009, just at the beginning of a world-wide financial and economic crisis with few precedents, in the middle of the failure of the neoliberal model, and two years before the sudden, unexpected, refreshing event which goes under the name of the OWS movement. If Fraser is right in her diagnosis of the impasse of feminist thought today, one may hope that the shock provoked by this state of “normal exception” which characterizes the period we are living in, can help us find a way to get out of this impasse. In particular, my suggestion is that the OWS movement could give us a concrete opportunity to accept the invitation by Fraser to “think big”, and to confront our feminist critique to a concrete experience, that of the new forms of subjectivation and political and social struggle of the last months. This would imply at least two things. The first, on a theoretical level, is a new availability to seriously analyze the relationships between gender oppression, sexual identities and late capitalism. Recent Marxist theory has offered a much more sophisticated, non-reductionist understanding of concrete social formations, and of the interplay between forms of oppression on the one hand, and the process of extortion of surplus-value and the realization of value on the other. In other words, a large part of Marxist literature has deeply problematized the relationship between, to use a formulation by Rosemary Hennessy, “the discourses by which we make the world intelligible and the structures of accumulation and labor” (4) . By doing this it has largely overcome the trite base-superstructure model, offering in this way powerful tools we can use in order to understand the relationships between gender, sexuality, and capitalist accumulation. The second necessary move is to think the way in which a feminist critique can help give impulse to the movement, contributing to a new understanding of what class and social struggle is and should be, while at the same time being a constitutive part of the movement. To be clearer, I think that the practical experience of the OWS movement challenges the often separatist and isolationist choices of identity politics, and also the tendency of the last decades toward an increasing de-politicization in particular of gender discourse. Firstly, because, as noted earlier, it made apparent the appeal and the evocative power of the unity of struggles, especially in a situation of the vertical crisis of neoliberal policies and the end of the illusions of wellbeing promised by late capitalism. Secondly, because within its horizontal organizational form, a plurality of forms of activation, action, and subjectivation have been made possible. In spite of some difficulties and some episodes of clear sexism, the OWS movement has been characterized by a fundamental attempt to be as inclusive as possible. This experience has therefore clearly been a good first step in direction of a re-politicization of gender discourse and of a possible strategic alliance among different social struggles with various protagonists and agents. However, the risk is that in its strive to be inclusive the movement might just operate a simple addition of separate and almost entirely independent activities, actions, and events. In other words, the risk is to give birth to a sort of potpourri: very nice ambiance, but also quite ineffective. One can notice this kind of trend, for example, in the extreme multiplication of working groups and affinity groups within the OWS movement in NYC: the website of the NYC General Assembly lists today 103 groups. Among meditation, wellness, Tea and herbal medicine, Occupy Yoga, and a “warrior group” with 6 members, one can find also WOW (the Women Occupying Wall Street), a LGBTIQA2Z Caucus, a People of Color Working Group, a Strong Women Rules Working Group, and so on. While this explosion of creativity and vitality is clearly a positive sign, and indicates a legitimate desire to live alternative social relations, the risk is to cultivate the illusion that the simple addition and coexistence in a same political and social space of groups, identities, actions, and struggles will be sufficient. The risk implicit in the logic of the arithmetic addition of the different identities and of their struggles, moreover, is to go in the direction of a crystallization of identities, and therefore in the direction once again of a depoliticization of the question of identity altogether. On the contrary, I suggest that what is urgent today is the strategic reciprocal articulation both of identities and of a plurality of different struggles. This implies, on the one hand, the identification of common goals and actions, while taking into account the diversity of conditions and needs determined by the various and interrelated forms of oppression, and on the other, the identification of inclusive practices and of internal forms of empowerment for disadvantaged groups among the 99%. Since often some answers come from the movement itself, in order be more concrete, I will give an example that might go in this direction. The Occupy Oakland call for a general strike on May 1st reads: In 2011, the number of unionized workers in the US stood at 11.8%, or approximately 14.8 million people. What these figures leave out are the growing millions of people in this country who are unemployed and underemployed. The numbers leave out the undocumented, and domestic and manual workers drawn largely from immigrant communities. The numbers leave out workers whose workplace is the home and a whole invisible economy of unwaged reproductive labor. The numbers leave out students who have taken on nearly $1 trillion dollars in debt, and typically work multiple jobs, in order to afford skyrocketing college tuition. The numbers leave out the huge percentage of black Americans that are locked up in prisons or locked out of stable or secure employment because of our racist society (5). This text of course might raise the problem of an opposition between unionized workers, on the one hand, and the non-unionized workers and unemployed people, on the other. Such an opposition would be detrimental and should be avoided at all costs. At the same time, the Oakland statement raises a crucial question. What is at stake is to rethink what a strike means in a situation in which the class composition and the organization of labor has radically changed, in which the rate of unemployment is raising, in which underemployed people, women, people of color and immigrants represent an increasing large part of the employed working class, and in which the processes of subjectivation of the working class are not the same as we have known in the past. This demands reimagining different ways in which the production and the circulation of commodities can be blocked, including the possibility of variable forms of participation in the strike, involving also the sphere of reproduction, and rethinking the sites of the democratic empowerment of the different sectors constituting the working class. Beyond the discussion about the feasibility or utility of calling for a general strike on May 1st, what I think is really at stake in this practical experience is the possibility of rethinking what class struggle means, reopening a space in which the particular needs, conditions, and processes of the subjectivation of different social sectors and of different identities can articulate each other. So, we have here a practical challenge as feminist thinkers and feminist activists: if we want to avoid our critique being systematically co-opted by a capitalist discourse, and one form of oppression being simply replaced by another, in what way can we contribute to this strategic and reciprocal articulation of different struggles? For example, what would our participation in a new form of general strike or in a day without the 99% mean? And, ultimately, what kind of subjects of this common struggle do we want to be? (1) M. Maharawal, “Standing up”, in Occupy! Scenes from Occupy America, ed. by A. Taylor, K. Cessen and editors from n+1, Dissent, Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry, Verso, Londo-New York 2011, pp. 34-40. (2) M. Maharawal, “Standing up”, cit., p. 39. (3) N. Fraser, “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History”, New Left Review, 56 (2009), p. 99. One can find similar arguments in H. Eisenstein, Feminism Seduced. How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World, Paradigm Publishers, London 2009 and in N. Power, One Dimensional Woman, Zero Books, Hampshire 2009. (4) R. Hennessy, Profit and Pleasure. Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism, Routledge, New York and London, 2000. By Cinzia Arruzza The OWS movement took place after several years of absence of cohesive nationwide movements, and amidst an extreme fragmentation of struggles.... http://rebelrabble.org/Action-Plan-for-Blockupy-Frankfurt-May-16-19 http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/Action-Plan-for-Blockupy-Frankfurt-May-16-19 Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:03:03 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3253406 Action plan for the blockade on May 18, 2012 in the financial center of Frankfurt and participation of the blockade groups on May 17 and 19 A broad coalition of organizations, initiatives and networks are mobilizing to diverse days of action in Frankfurt from May 16th to 18th . The central element of the protest choreography is mass blockades on May 18, taking place after the take the squares action on May 17 and before the mass demonstration on May 19. The goal of our action on this day is to effectively disrupt the normal business activities of European Central Bank and other central actors in the financial center in Frankfurt. The parties responsible for the global politics of crisis and impoverishment are to be confronted directly in front of the doors of their decision-making headquarters with imaginative blockades and creative forms of civil disobedience. Our mobilization aims at a mix of mass and decisiveness. Thousands of people with various backgrounds and cultures of protest want to and will participate in the protest actions in arranged affinity groups or spontaneous swarming. Thursday, May 17: Take the Squares May 17, the day before the blockades, has the motto “take the squares”. Various spaces in the city center as well as green areas near the bank towers shall – to the extent that authorities prohibit declared activities – be appropriated for cultural-political protest events and asambleas. As blockade groups, we will participate in the occupy activities as much as possible and attempt – to the extent that the police wants to deter us from the occupation with prohibition measures – to contribute to the implementation of the occupations. “Take the squares” is a unique element of the Blockupy mobilization. It should symbolize our solidarity with the struggles at Tahrir Square in Cairo, the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Syntagma in Athens and all Occupy camps. As we, the blockade groups, want to begin our action the following morning at 6:00 am, successful occupations in the banking district additionally provide us with a good point of departure. We want to use these spaces for blockade-training, and the occupations on May 17 can both temporally and spatially flow into the blockades on May 18. Friday, May 18: Block the ECB On Friday, May 18, the blockades start at 6:00 in the morning. The primary focus of this day is the European Central Bank. The ECB is not only the symbol of the crisis management of finance politics that benefits major banks – as part of the Troika, the ECB is also a direct social political actor. It plays a role in dictating austerity policies and impoverishment programs in Greece and Portugal. This is enough reason to pester this institution. Early in the morning on May 18, demonstration groups coming from multiple directions in the city center will begin to move in order to block all entrances of the Eurotower. To accomplish this, we will use mobile blockade fingers to flexibly react to police concepts and actions, and we will – if necessary – obstruct the adjacent streets in order to make it impossible to access the ECB. Creative resources The blockade groups that are making preparations have agreed on a common consensus for action (http://17to19m.blogsport.eu/2012/04/07/blockade-action-consensus/). The consensus mentions that each blockade finger will carry diverse objects and symbols in line with thematic concentrations in order to simultaneously visualize the diverse elements of our resistance against the authoritarian crisis regime. We will use shopping carts, cooking pots and hospital beds to criticize the impositions and cuts of social policies as well as policies of privatization in the healthcare system. Cardboard military tanks will symbolize the militarization of society and show the connection between war and crisis. Boats and ladders will symbolize resistance against the border regime. Giant marionettes will refer to the precarious labor relations of (not only) migrants. The protest against education policies will be present in a book block made of oversized books. We will use ventilators, stilts and yucca palms to express the struggles against global climate change. We will use barrels, white protection suits and masks to expose the countless disastrous ecological catastrophes, such as Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon. We will use all of these symbols and objects – which will also include red-and-white barrier tape and woolen thread – in order to effectively set up and hold onto substantive blockade points. Flooding Frankfurt Both in the time before and on the day of the blockade itself, we will publicly communicate our the subject matter and goals of our actions – to persons who work in the bank towers who will not be able to reach their places of work and to all persons who will not be able to use the streets and particular subways and other local trains that are blocked. The transportation authorities will be informed prior to the actions that the stations surrounding the ECB and in the banking district will be affected by a “strike from elsewhere” as well as why this will be so. The blockade of the ECB will affect other banking and business centers in this district. Depending on the strength of the mobilization, the call to blockupy should be spread as early as possible to further actors of global exploitation. With blockades and occupations, go-ins, encirclements and diverse forms of creative action, we wish to and we will transform the financial center for this entire day into a colorful and loud zone of protest. May 19: Mass demonstration On the day after the blockades, May 19, the mass demonstration will take place. For this and for all the action days, mobilization is occurring on a Europe-wide scale. As blockade groups we will participate in this demonstration with all of our symbols and thematic forms of expression. We are hoping for a resolute demonstration that points to our (hopefully) successful occuptions and blockades on the day before and send a strong signal of transnational solidarity. We are using our symbols to express that we understand the collaborative mobilization of Blockupy Frankfurt as a catalyst and demand to transform the unendurable conditions in intensified struggles in our daily lives. Action plan for the blockade on May 18, 2012 in the financial center of Frankfurt and participation of the blockade groups on May 17 and 19 A broad coalition of... http://rebelrabble.org/Labor-and-Occupy-A-Match-Made-in http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/Labor-and-Occupy-A-Match-Made-in Sun, 08 Apr 2012 15:13:35 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3163666 By Gabriel Thompson <img src="http://payload43.cargocollective.com/1/6/212430/3163666/portblockade.jpeg" width="620" height="413" width_o="620" height_o="413" src_o="http://payload43.cargocollective.com/1/6/212430/3163666/portblockade_o.jpeg" data-mid="16176761" border="0" align="left"/> http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article24726 As the name suggests, there’s a lot to like about Pleasanton. Located thirty miles southeast of Oakland, the upscale enclave is a perennial contender in « best » or « wealthiest » city competitions, and on a Saturday morning in February it’s easy to see why. The sun is shining, a nearby farmers’ market is bustling and tan people on bicycles worth more than many used cars are zooming past. Which makes the scene at one end of the quaint downtown –where a line of a dozen cops keep close watch on a boisterous crowd of union activists and Occupy Oakland members ?all the more incongruous. The out-of-towners are gathered to mark an anniversary. Two years earlier, management at the nearby Castlewood Country Club had locked out its workers after trying to slash healthcare benefits. « They told us they had a philosophical problem with paying family healthcare, » says Sarah Norr, an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 2850, which represents the workers. According to the union, the move would have resulted in a wage cut of 40 percent for many of the employees, particularly egregious at a club whose members reportedly pay up to $25,000 to join, along with a monthly fee of more than $600. (I was promised exact figures from a Castlewood spokesperson but never received them.) Despite twice-daily pickets, an NLRB complaint against the club for unfair labor practices and the disruption of a large tournament last summer, Castlewood ?s management has been unwilling to budge. So in January workers took their campaign to Occupy Oakland. After detailing a fight that seemed tailor-made for the movement ?the wealthy versus the workers, amid a backdrop of palm trees and golf tees ?Occupy voted unanimously to support the campaign. In Pleasanton, that support has added a noticeable jolt of energy and visibility to the fight, where at least 100 Occupy Oakland members have turned out, complete with a nine-person band and a satirical « Save the 1% » rally, with people dressed in suits carrying signs like Golfing Is a Human Right. « Instead of looking above for solutions, we look to the people next to us, » Barucha Peller, an Occupy activist, tells the workers. « Therefore, the fight of Castlewood workers is also our fight, and gives us strength. All right, let’s shut it down ! » When the large march reaches the country club, the deed has already been done : fearing disruption, the club has closed its doors for the day. It was enough to make a person believe one of the signs I noticed on the march : Labor + Occupy = Working Class Victory. * * * Nothing, of course, is so simple –especially not in Oakland, where two port shutdowns have led to increasingly strained relations between Occupy Oakland and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Both shutdowns –on November 2 and December 12– were called by Occupy in solidarity with the ILWU’s fight against grain terminal operator EGT in Longview, Washington. The conflict began last year, when EGT brought in another union to work its $200 million terminal. This threatened the jurisdiction in the grain industry of the ILWU, whose master agreement covers 4,000 workers in the Pacific Northwest. If one company could defy the ILWU and chip away at the hard-won standards guaranteed by the agreement, others would almost certainly follow suit. The ILWU leadership was mostly silent on Occupy’s first shutdown, but when Occupy upped the stakes with the December call to shut down all West Coast ports, International president Robert McEllrath made clear that he was less than pleased. « Support is one thing, » he wrote. « Organization from outside groups attempting to co-opt our struggle in order to advance a broader agenda is quite another. » That the first major conflict between Occupy and organized labor would break out between the ILWU and Occupy Oakland is ironic in light of the union’s proven willingness to engage in bold, sometimes extralegal direct actions, which would seem to fit right into Occupy’s philosophy. In Longview, for example, ILWU members blocked trains with their bodies, dumped millions of dollars’ worth of grain and even tore down fencing and occupied the terminal. « The ILWU has a long and proud history of militant action to defend the working class, » Craig Merrilees, the ILWU’s communication director, tells me. « But those actions happen within the context of the unions’ democratic decision-making process. » By calling for shutdowns without consulting the ILWU, the president of Local 19 in Seattle told Labor Notes, it was as if « I planned a party at your house and didn’t ask about it. » In response, Occupy Oakland cited support among ILWU members within its ranks. (How union membership would have voted, had the question been raised within locals, remains an open question.) Others argued that the Occupy movement has the right to chart its own course. « You can’t co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class, » Boots Riley, an Occupy member and musician with The Coup, told the New York Times. « No one has a copyright on working-class struggles. » That logic wasn’t convincing to a number of labor groups, like the Alameda County Building Trades Council, which endorsed the November action but came out against the December shutdown. « Port workers were not involved in the decision-making process, » says Andreas Cluver, the council’s secretary-treasurer. « Any action that has significant impact on workers has to include them. Occupy rattled the cage and got people nervous, which a lot of us are excited about. But a tremendous opportunity for a real partnership was missed. » * * * If the track record between labor and Occupy Oakland has been mixed, the two movements have enjoyed a far more harmonious co-existence in New York City. « On balance, the relationship has been very positive, » says Andy Pollack, a member of OWS’s labor outreach committee. « There is a lot of skepticism about unions [within OWS], and some people want to try and go around them instead of reforming them. But people in the labor committee have fought for decades for union democracy. » Many Occupiers were impressed with the large turnout of union members when they were threatened with eviction from Zuccotti Park in October. Unions also helped legitimize Occupy to a skeptical media, according to Jackie DiSalvo, who formed the committee within OWS. « Unions changed the depiction of Occupy Wall Street, » she says. « We were originally depicted as a bunch of freaky slackers. Once we had the unions involved, they could no longer say that was all we represented. » In New York, longtime union activists like Pollack and DiSalvo serve as a key bridge : they are critical of unions for their hierarchy and lack of radicalism but also believe organized labor is a key institutional partner in any fight for the 99 percent. Young people struggling with poor job prospects or precarious employment haven ?t found the union movement relevant for a long time and aren ?t likely to be won over by someone like Richard Trumka. Seasoned unionists who don’t always toe the union line ?and who were with OWS from the beginning ?make much better messengers. The OWS labor outreach committee, which meets in the union office of DC 37, fields more than half a dozen requests each week from unions looking for support. According to DiSalvo, the group has actually grown more active since the eviction, despite media claims to the contrary. (« The mainstream media don’t seem to know we exist unless the cops beat us up, » she quips.) Especially exciting for DiSalvo has been the ability of OWS to bring various unions together. During the ongoing Teamster campaign against Sotheby ?s auction house on Manhattan ?s Upper East Side, OWS mobilized some 200 people from ten different locals for a raucous picket. « Different unions have supported us more than they ?ve supported each other, » she marvels. Labor’s debt to Occupy –beyond its helping with turnout and engaging in creative civil disobedience– can best be measured by the dramatic change in the national conversation. Labor had its charts about CEO-to-worker pay and the correlation between the drop in organized workers –today standing at a measly 11.9 percent– and the rise of inequality. But they tended to put people to sleep. While powerful unions like SEIU (my previous employer) were dropping millions of dollars trying to come up with an answer to the poisonous atmosphere created by the Tea Party, a small group of scruffy radicals moved in and showed the way. éAll of a sudden, in the last month or two, unions are winning contracts," says DiSalvo. In Philadelphia several contract negotiations ended on good terms after Occupy Philly set up tents. In New York the 22,000 office cleaners of SEIU-32BJ also inked a new contract on favorable terms. Although it’s impossible to ascertain the extent of Occupy’s influence on such specific outcomes, unions readily admit that the new environment has shifted the terms of the debate in their favor. The powerful are now forced to adopt Occupy’s vocabulary, doing their best to react to a changed landscape in which they are suddenly on the defensive. A spokesperson for Pleasanton’s Castlewood Country Club told me that the majority of the club’s members are not part of the 1 percent. There’s good reason to doubt the claim –but it’s worth noting that he chose that phrase. I had asked him about something else. * * * Back on the West Coast, there have been more developments recently in the ILWU’s situation that have added a new dimension to its relationship with Occupy. After learning that a grain ship was likely heading to EGT’s Longview facility, ILWU president McEllrath issued a call for members to prepare to mobilize. Not long after, despite less than encouraging words from much of the ILWU’s leadership, Occupy groups in Oakland, Portland and Longview pledged to physically prevent the ship’s loading, and prepared to send caravans to Longview. (OWS sent $25,000 to help pay for the buses and other expenses.) In response to the threats, the Coast Guard announced it would establish a « safety zone » and usher the ship in under armed watch. The image –unfair or not– of hundreds of black-clad anarchists from Oakland descending on Longview and causing chaos was certainly something that weighed heavily on Washington’s governor, Chris Gregoire, who pulled the two sides together and brokered an agreement in late January. Even people who accuse Occupy of meddling in ILWU affairs acknowledge that the threat of the caravans was an important factor in winning the settlement ; the ILWU’s own paper cites the support of independent « community groups » without mentioning Occupy by name. (It’s also worth noting that not everyone within the ILWU is satisfied with the settlement, as it doesn’t bring EGT into the master agreement.) In Oakland, ILWU workers active with Occupy –while acknowledging that not all members supported the shutdowns– still believe that union officers need to recognize the debt they owe the group. « The union leadership didn’t do anything but ride the wave after the rank and file and Occupy did all the dirty work, » says Anthony Leviege, a member of Local 10 who helped organize the shutdowns. « After the negotiations, we should be donating money to Occupy. » * * * There is a tendency on the left to lecture Occupy. Sometimes such lectures are justified : breaking into City Hall and burning an American flag, as occurred in Oakland, may be honoring a « diversity of tactics, » but if the tactic shrinks instead of builds a movement, it’s best discarded. Mostly, though, the professorial stance that some bring to Occupy seems based on the desire to clean up the messiness inherent in a bunch of people with different views getting together and talking so much about so many things. But that’s not likely to change ; and if it did, it would probably mean that Occupy had gotten too small to do anything of real impact. Campaigns can be targeted and relentlessly on message ; social movements of the Occupy variety are far messier. But behind that messiness is energy, something that most unions need a lot more of in their campaigns. That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges facing collaborations between the two groups. Every Occupy is different ; as is each union ; as are locals within a union. Learning to navigate the new territory and relationships is proving to be a long learning process. In Oakland, UNITE HERE 2850 has many good things to say about its work with the labor solidarity committee of Occupy Oakland, but it is not likely to get excited about Occupy’s weekly « Fuck the Police » marches, which advise people that « fires are fun. » As the Washington Post has noted, the relationship between labor and Occupy « does not necessarily make for an easy marriage. » Still, there are plenty of promising signs for the future. The next big challenge and opportunity is May Day. In New York, heeding calls for a general strike that originated with Occupy LA, OWS has been in lengthy meetings with organized labor and a coalition of immigrant groups. It appears that after some initial hiccups –labor didn’t think a general strike was feasible– compromise wording will allow for a day that combines militant Occupy actions with a mass march in the late afternoon, beginning at Union Square and heading to Wall Street. And the ILWU fight, despite all the controversy it stirred, may have also highlighted a new strategy that could, if replicated, have wide repercussions : militant community action. Too often, community support for labor comes in a predictable package. Religious leaders hold a prayer vigil, students deliver a petition, postcards are signed. These can work, of course, but nothing of the sort would have brought a company like EGT to the table. And those actions, at least in my experience, are usually directed in a top-down fashion by unions, as escalation plans that fit into a pre-designed campaign package. That being said, the prospect of truly independent action that disrupts business as usual can be a double-edged sword. Unions would potentially be shielded from liability, but they wouldn’t be able to control the animal, and this could lead to further divisions of the sort that were created in Oakland. If there’s an easy answer, no one I talked with has come up with it. Perhaps the most that can be said is that labor needs Occupy, and Occupy needs labor. And maybe an « uneasy marriage » is precisely what both need. By Gabriel Thompson http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article24726 As the name suggests, there’s a lot to like about Pleasanton. Located thirty miles... http://rebelrabble.org/After-the-General-Strike http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/After-the-General-Strike Sun, 08 Apr 2012 15:08:21 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3163638 By Manuel Garí <img src="http://payload43.cargocollective.com/1/6/212430/3163638/huelgageneral.jpg" width="615" height="410" width_o="615" height_o="410" src_o="http://payload43.cargocollective.com/1/6/212430/3163638/huelgageneral_o.jpg" data-mid="16176556" border="0" align="left"/> The first general strike against the adjustment measures of the Partido Popular government, 100 days after its constitution and the day before the presentation of the 2012 state budget containing spending cuts without precedent in the European Unión, was a success. In the first place because it illuminates and makes possible a change of course in the social movement. The strike of more than10 million workers and the demonstrations in more than 100 cities involving more than a million and a half people indicate a reversal of the downward trend of the workers’ movement, which has meant that in recent years the working class had no adequate means of resistance to the neoliberal attacks initiated with Zapatero and deepened by Rajoy. Secondly because the participants experienced the day of struggle as a success. This perception is a political given of the first order. And it exists independently of the attacks on the strike and the lies on its success from the government and mass media of the right. This subjective factor, the feeling of strength, is of great importance for the future of the movement. Tens of thousands of social and union activists have experienced March 29 as a day on which there was unity on the picket line and on the street with a shared spirit of unity in struggle. The third indicator of success has the active participation of thousands of students in the protests. Young people who have come to see themselves as “veteran” activists of the 15 M, the generation of those in precarious work or unemployed and aged between 25 and 35 years, with different forms of action and relation to the labour movement and, in particular, with the majority unions, have been an element of revitalization of the pickets. In fourth and last place because the government and the employers’ organization CEOE have recognized – despite their denial of the evidence and their negations of reality - the unexpected success of the call to struggle. The words of the employers’ leader, Rosell, are eloquent: “it is necessary to turn the page, it is necessary to forget the general strike”. While the head of news at Telemadrid – which for 24 hours could not broadcast and displayed a test card with a fixed photo of the transmitter building - began March 30 with the announcement that: “The strike has been a failure, normality has reigned in the companies”. This time the battle to disparage the strike after the event was lost - there were too many direct witnesses of what happened. Change of march The labour reform which emerged strongly from the ballot boxes of the last legislative elections that gave the absolute majority to the PP was weakened in the recent Asturian and Andalusian autonomous elections and delegitimized on March 29 to the eyes of the social majority in the workplaces and the streets of the whole country. The threats of the hundreds of employers who blackmailed their employees with the threat of the dismissal if they joined the strike didn’t matter. More than 70% of employees stopped work. Despite fear and precarity, a great majority showed their support for the strike. And, for the first time in many years, they were joined by the important contingent of five million unemployed who cannot strike because they have no job and who made common cause in the streets with those who still have one. The tricks of the employers and administration in relation to minimum services, in many cases where lists of those obliged to work had been drawn up targeting well-known union activists, failed. The strike paralyzed transport as well as education and health to a great extent, while the massive police deployment failed to intimidate marchers. We have lived through an episode of class struggle in its purest form. Each social “actor” has situated themselves in the social confrontation as if in a script. The proponents of financial, economic and labour deregulation, firm defenders of less public intervention and more corporate self-regulation, have suddenly become staunch defenders of the need to regulate strikes and freedom of trade union information, as well as the firm intervention of the forces of public order. Such are the liberals of today. And such are the diktats of the markets. This was not a general strike like that of December 14, 2008. The three million small businesses and self employed workers did not support it. It was more a strike of industry than of services. It was stronger on the Cantabrian coast than elsewhere. All this is true, but unlike the 2010 strike against the Zapatero government, this had the support of the broad majority of working people, its aspirations had reason and legitimacy in the eyes of the social majority. And it involved all economic sectors and all territories from north to south. It was positive that the date chosen by the majority trade union federations who called the strike across the country coincided with the unilateral appeal of the CIGA unions in Galicia, as well as LAB and ELA in Euskadi, for strike action on March 29, the day before the new parliamentary commitment to spending cuts was made in the budget. That allowed for greater support among the nationalities for the strike. The immediate future Now new questions and challenges are opened up for the social movement. The first question to address is what to demand from the government. There are two possibilities – complete and unconditional withdrawal of the draft legislation or persistence in the sterile and equivocal line of “reforming the reform” by including some aspects of the AENC (Acuerdo por el Empleo y la Negociación Colectiva – Agreement for Jobs and Collective Bargaining) which until recently had been forgotten by those who signed it and which is completely unknown to the hundreds of thousands of activists who won the battle of the plazas on March 29. The second question is how to continue the struggle. The government of Rajoy- Merckel- Sarkozy is not going to yield. We have to outsmart it. What happened on March 29 is a first step but the mobilisation should be continued until it is converted into an unbearable pressure for the PP and the CEOE. That implies a full agenda of issues to resolve: forms of sectoral and regional struggle, construction of new forms of participatory organization for workers in the big unions and in the companies themselves, alliances between the labour movement and the social organizations , change of political orientation and economic alternatives on the part of the union leaderships, building of bridges between the culture of 15-M (and in general the alternative world) and the culture of the bulk of the labour movement, identification and recognition of the different sectors which make up the trade union movement itself. We believe that the stakes are too high to continue to ignore all that it is necessary to do. By Manuel Garí The first general strike against the adjustment measures of the Partido Popular government, 100 days after its constitution and the day before... http://rebelrabble.org/The-Portuguese-people-are-not-standing-for-it http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/The-Portuguese-people-are-not-standing-for-it Sun, 08 Apr 2012 15:01:22 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3163597 By Luis Branco and Jorge Costa <img src="http://payload43.cargocollective.com/1/6/212430/3163597/grevegeral.jpg" width="600" height="400" width_o="600" height_o="400" src_o="http://payload43.cargocollective.com/1/6/212430/3163597/grevegeral_o.jpg" data-mid="16176399" border="0" align="left"/> Thegeneral strike on March 22 in Portugal reinforced the struggle against the Troika and the right-wing PSD-CDS government. On March 22, Portuguese workers were called out in the first general strike of the year. Contrary to the previous one, last November, the strike was called only by the CGTP trade union confederation (close to the Communist Party), the UGT (close to the Socialist Party) having this time decided not to support it. The leadership of the UGT thus signed an agreement with the right-wing government and the employers, involving new attacks against wages and social rights. In disagreement with this orientation, nearly twenty trade unions affiliated to the UGT nevertheless called on workers to take part in the strike. Once the strike was called, two months after the congress of the CGTP (during which the general secretary was replaced after 25 years in office), the government and the media did everything to minimize it, characterising it as a symbolic action to affirm the authority of the new leader who had been very recently elected. But its effects were quite real and were felt especially in the port sector and in transport in the big cities. In other sectors, support was not as strong as at the time of the strike in November, but it was sufficient to paralyse several factories and public services. March 22 was marked by more than thirty demonstrations all over the country and by the violence of the police – the images were seen around the world – against demonstrators and journalists in the centre of Lisbon. The same violence had been seen during the strike in November, and images of demonstrators being beaten by the police force were shown on television. But four months later, there is still no result of the “urgent enquiry” promised by the government. Growing austerity With the highest level of unemployment ever seen, more than two million Portuguese are living below the poverty line. The budget cuts also affect social benefits, further increasing the difficulties of households. A big majority of the unemployed simply do not have access to benefits and with the increase in long-term unemployment the situation is going to get worse. In the public services, the situation is no better. In the hospitals, the personnel are already denouncing the lack of basic material and the abnormal peak of mortality in February, which could not be explained simply by influenza and the cold. The other reason is that the government has introduced new barriers to access to public health, for example an increase in the cost – a few days ago we learned that a 60-year old unemployed worker was asked for 160 euros for a biopsy of the prostate in a public hospital – or the ending of help with transport for consultations, which leaves many poor elderly people who live dozens of kilometres from a hospital without the means of getting there. As the effects of the cuts intensify and as speculation increases about the imminence of a future loan from the Troika with prohibitive interest rates, which will lead to even more debt and austerity, the consciousness that this vicious circle of impoverishment is not improving the situation is dawning on more and more people. The Prime Minister can no longer go into the streets without being booed and the President of the Republic has already been forced to flee from demonstrations. But there still lacks the perspective of giving a political expression to this dissatisfaction and mobilizing around an alternative. This general strike was a further step in this direction. By Luis Branco and Jorge Costa Thegeneral strike on March 22 in Portugal reinforced the struggle against the Troika and the right-wing PSD-CDS government. On... http://rebelrabble.org/Mike-Bloomberg-s-New-York-Cops-in-Your-Hallways http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/Mike-Bloomberg-s-New-York-Cops-in-Your-Hallways Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:28:53 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3150012 By Matt Taibbi (Taibblog) source: Rolling Stone An amazing lawsuit was filed in New York last week. It seems Mike Bloomberg’s notorious "stop-and-frisk" policy – known colloquially in these parts by silently-cheering white voters as the "Let’s have cops feel up any nonwhite person caught walking in the wrong neighborhood” policy – isn’t even the most repressive search policy in the NYPD arsenal. Bloomberg, that great crossover Republican, has long been celebrated by the Upper West Side bourgeoisie for his enlightened views on gay rights and the environment, but also targeted for criticism by civil rights activists because of stop-and-frisk, a program that led to a record 684,330 street searches just last year. Now he’s under fire for a program he inherited, which goes by the darkly Bushian name of the "Clean Halls program." In effect since 1991, it allows police to execute so-called "vertical patrols" by going up into private buildings and conducting stop-and-frisk searches in hallways – with the landlord’s permission. According to the NYCLU, which filed the suit, "virtually every private apartment building [in the Bronx] is enrolled in the program," and "in Manhattan alone, there are at least 3,895 Clean Halls Buildings." Referring to the NYPD’s own data, the complaint says police conducted 240,000 "vertical patrols" in the year 2003 alone. If you live in a Clean Halls building, you can’t even go out to take out the trash without carrying an ID – and even that might not be enough. If you go out for any reason, there may be police in the hallways, demanding that you explain yourself, and insisting, in brazenly illegal and unconstitutional fashion, on searches of your person. The easiest way to convey the full insanity of this program is to simply read stories from the complaint. The first account comes from Janean Ligon, a 40 year-old black woman from East 163 St. in the Bronx. She lives with her three sons, J.G., J.A.G., and Jerome, all of whom have been repeatedly stopped and harassed. According to the suit, Mrs. Ligon in August of last year sent her son J.G. to go to the store to get ketchup. He went to the store, got the ketchup, and started home. Just outside the door to his apartment, he was stopped by four policemen, two in uniform and two in plain clothes. They ask him why he’s going into the building. He explains, produces identification, and even shows the police the ketchup in his bag. But that’s not enough. After that: … One officer asked J.G. to identify the apartment in which he lived. J.G. responded, telling the officer his family's apartment number. The officers then rang the bell to Ms. Ligon's apartment. Over the intercom, Ms. Ligon heard a man say that he was a police officer, and he needed her to come down to identify her son. Terrified that J.G. was injured or dead, Ms. Ligon ran out of the apartment to find out what had happened to J.G. As she approached the lobby she saw J.G. standing just outside the vestibule near the mailboxes, surrounded by four officers. She collapsed and began weeping. One officer began laughing, asked Ms. Ligon if J.G. was her son, and handed her the ketchup. In another incident, police stopped three friends of a Bronx resident named Alex Lebron as they were leaving his apartment. Lebron’s mother saw the teenagers being interviewed in the stairwell, approached the police and told them she knew them and everything was okay. She then went to her apartment and told her son that the cops were talking to his friends. Lebron, according to the suit, then races downstairs "to prevent their arrest." Here’s the rest of the story, according to the complaint: Mr. Lebron encountered his handcuffed friends and the two police officers in the lobby of his building. He told the officers that he lived in the building and that the teens had been visiting him. The officers responded that it was "too late" and placed the three young men in a police van…. The arresting officers took W.B., J.G., and their friend to the 44th Precinct, where they were locked in a cell. After approximately two hours, they were given summonses for trespassing and released. The trespassing charges against W.B., J.G., and their friend were later dismissed. This is Michael Bloomberg’s New York – where, in a stirring homage to the underappreciated Wayans Brothers classic Don’t Be a Menace to South Central (While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood), you really can be arrested for "being black on a Friday night." (Okay, the Lebron incident was actually a Wednesday night – June 15 of last year). Stories like this "Clean Halls" program are beginning to make me see that journalists like myself have undersold the white-collar corruption story in recent years by ignoring its flip side. We have two definitely connected phenomena, often treated as separate and unconnected: a growing lawlessness in the financial sector, and an expanding, repressive, increasingly lunatic police apparatus trained at the poor, and especially the nonwhite poor. n recent years, as Wall Street firms turned into veritable felony factories, we had pundits and politicians who cranked out reams of excuses for one white-collar criminal after another and argued, in complete seriousness, that sending a rich banker to jail "wouldn’t solve anything" and in fact we should "tolerate the excesses" of the productive rich, who "channel opportunity" to the rest of us. On the other hand, we’ve had politicians and pundits in budget fights and other controversies railing against the parasitic poor, who are not only not "productive" enough to warrant a break, but assumed to be actively unproductive (they consume our tax money and public services) and therefore sort of guilty in advance. When I read this "Clean Halls" story I immediately thought of the various robosigning scandals. If even one law enforcement official had been able to take just one stroll through, say, the credit card collections office of a Chase or a Bank of America at any time in the last decade, he would have seen rows of cubicles full of entry-level employees whose entire job was to sit around all day long, right out in the open, forging court documents. Whole departments attended to this job for years and years and somehow nobody with a badge ever got a whiff of it. But in New York, we have cops cruising through private buildings, checking bags full of ketchup 200,000 times a year. Makes sense, doesn't it? By Matt Taibbi (Taibblog) source: Rolling Stone An amazing lawsuit was filed in New York last week. It seems Mike Bloomberg’s notorious "stop-and-frisk" policy... http://rebelrabble.org/TWU-Leader-Won-t-Disown-Occupy-for-Fare-Beating http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/TWU-Leader-Won-t-Disown-Occupy-for-Fare-Beating Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:11:43 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3149943 By Sarah Dorsey source: the chief leader John Samuelsen, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, said March 29 he was “not in any way critical” of the illegal actions of Occupy Wall Street members and dissidents in his own union who, without his knowledge, chained open gates at numerous subway stations a day earlier during the morning rush hour, giving straphangers a free ride. By April 2, however, the union leader added, “They could’ve taken more precautions to make sure [Subway Station Agents] weren’t put in harm’s way.” The protesters, who said anonymous Local 100 and Amalgamated Transit Union members calling themselves the “Rank and File Initiative” told them which stations to target and tipped off their co-workers so they didn’t interfere, said they were angry at the lack of funding for transit. ‘Money into Bankers’ Pockets’ “Instead of using our tax money to properly fund transit, Albany and City Hall have intentionally starved transit of public funds for over twenty years,” the activists said in a press release. “The MTA must resort to bonds (loans from Wall Street) to pay for projects and costs,” they added, calling the agency “a virtual ATM for the super-rich.” They pointed out that the MTA spends more than $2 billion a year to pay off its debt. “This means Wall Street bondholders receive a huge share of what we put into the system through the Metrocards we buy and the taxes we pay,” they concluded. Local 100 was the first New York local to officially endorse Occupy Wall Street last fall, and has held several rallies with the movement; Mr. Samuelsen spoke at Zuccotti Park when his members marched there after a November contract rally. When asked if last Wednesday’s actions made him think twice about working with Occupy Wall Street, he initially said not at all. “If these types of actions...bring attention to the injustices that have been doled out to New York State working families, then so be it,” he said. ‘On the Same Page’ While union officials had no prior knowledge of the protests, “we are on the same page with the Occupy movement when it comes to recognizing the facts that the banks are getting rich off of New York’s transit system,” he said, adding that “if it’s true that members of my union are participating in the protests, that’s their business; this is America. They’re not doing it as a member of Local 100.” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz declined to comment on Mr. Samuelsen’s response, but said, “We take Wednesday’s theft-of-service activity very seriously and we are working with the NYPD on ways to prevent it from happening again. If and when an employee is implicated, we will respond appropriately.” A One-Time Stunt? The protesters, who created realistic-looking MTA-style fliers that read, “Free Entry—No Fares Collected” told a Village Voice reporter the events had been planned months in advance, and that they were unlikely to repeat the same tactic in the future, though they’d hold other actions. Ken Margolies, a labor specialist on the extension faculty at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said that although the protests took place during contract negotiations, it was unlikely the union would be punished under the Taylor Law for the actions of a few anonymous members. “They’d have to show that this was being done with the union’s knowledge and that the union could stop it and didn’t,” he said. “It would be hard to enforce. They’d have to show that this was really a ruse.” Mr. Margolies said these kinds of wildcat actions were often “unnerving” for management during negotiations. “It could be a form of pressure on the MTA to settle because to the extent that they think this might spread, they will be looking for ways to prevent it,” he said. “If you know the union is doing this, you can get them to stop. But if there’s an elusive group that you can’t identify...it’s a real wildcard for them.” A California Precedent? He pointed to a December Occupy protest that shut down the port of Oakland, California during International Longshore Workers Union contract negotiations; the union said the action, which it didn’t back, was a ‘critical element’ in getting a favorable pact settled. But conditions in Oakland were much different than they are for a public-sector union in New York right now, where a strong Governor successfully pressured two state-employee unions into accepting three years of wage freezes last year and is now pushing the MTA to follow suit. Local 100 is also bound by the Taylor Law, which limits its options by imposing hefty fines on public-sector unions and their members that strike. By Sarah Dorsey source: the chief leader John Samuelsen, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, said March 29 he was “not in any way critical” of... http://rebelrabble.org/Letter-of-Solidarity-with-the-Davis-Dozen-from-their-UC-Berkeley http://rebelrabble.org/following/rebelrabble.org/Letter-of-Solidarity-with-the-Davis-Dozen-from-their-UC-Berkeley Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:33:29 +0000 rebelrabble.org 3149177 source: UC Chilling Effects Last week, 12 students and professors were notified by the Yolo County District Attorney that they were being charged in relation to the blockade of an on-campus bank at UC Davis. Protesters had blockaded the branch of US Bank in opposition to its exploitation of students at Davis, and the banking industry’s profit-taking through increasing student debt and rising tuition in general. The protests were successful in getting the bank to close its doors and void its contract with UC Davis. Now, almost a month after the protests ended, these 12 are being charged with over 20 misdemeanor counts related to the blockades, and the Yolo County DA has indicated it might seek damages of up to $1 million dollars on behalf of the bank. As the recipients of a similar set of belated charges from the Alameda County DA, brought against us in relations to the events of November 9 at UC Berkeley, when students tried to set up a small “Occupy” encampment there and were viciously beaten by the police, we want to extend our solidarity to the 12 protesters charged. We condemn this opportunism on the behalf of UC Davis police and administration. They are clearly using the Yolo County DA to accomplish repression which they feel they are unable to undertake on their own, after the widespread public outrage at their behavior last fall, when sitting protesters were serially and vindictively pepper-sprayed. That incident, captured on video and viewed millions of times the world over, became an international symbol of the brutality of US police. In a talk given last year, UC Irvine Professor Rei Terada reflected on the fallout from the UC Berkeley and UC Davis incidents by predicting that, in the immediate future, campuses were not likely to resort to “the kind of violence you can photograph.” The developments at Davis and Berkeley have proven her remarks uncannily prescient. Afraid of public outrage and its endangerment of their jobs, UC administrators and police departments have farmed out the job of repressing students to local prosecutors. This allows the campus administrators to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the charges, claiming such matters entirely outside of their jurisdiction, even though in all of these cases charges could not have been brought without the active encouragement and collaboration of campus police. And so we see that, at Berkeley, Chancellor Birgeneau claims that he knew nothing about the charges filed against UC Berkeley protesters, even though his police department had forwarded to the DA specific recommendations to charge all 13 people. Either Birgeneau is not telling the truth or UC police acted, in this matter, without his oversight. Both are evidence of incompetence. At Davis, Chancellor Katehi, who nearly lost her job after the pepper-spray incident, instructed her police department to avoid confrontation and let protesters continuously blockade the US Bank branch for close to eight weeks, without ever arresting any of them. But, wanting to have it both ways, her police then forwarded the cases to the Yolo County DA. The last year has seen a remarkable flourishing of protest and resistance in this country. Hundreds of thousands of people have had the opportunity to experiment with new tactics and ideas. But this has also been a time of experiment and innovation for police forces and the courts, which have used the protests as a chance to deploy new weapons, and practice with new techniques of control and containment, as well as set new legal precedents which allow for greater repressive powers. This recent round of “jail-mail” might seem limited in scope but it sets the precedent for a future world where, based upon omnipresent surveillance, anybody who attends a protest might become the subject of a criminal complaint months or even years later. We understand this development not as the exception to the rule but rather the confirmation of a general trend toward the continuous expansion of the powers of the state, where civil disobedience-style tactics which, in other times and other jurisdictions, might be treated as mere infractions are met with the threat of jail-time and tens of thousands of dollars in fines. We hope that all sane people will stand with us in calling on the Yolo County DA to drop the charges. —written by several of those charged for the events of Nov. 9 source: UC Chilling Effects Last week, 12 students and professors were notified by the Yolo County District Attorney that they were being charged in relation to...