Markin comment:
A general strike only, as witness the latest actions in Greece, poses the question of power. We have to go on from there to take it and create that new society we have all been fighting for so long. Today in Oakland we go on the offensive, praise be, and like I stated in the headline-let's win this one for good this time.
1946: The Oakland General Strike, by Stan Weir
Submitted by libcom on Nov 22 2005 10:53
tags: North AmericaStan WeirUSA1940saccountsCaliforniageneral strikesOaklandstrikesworkplace activity
An account of the General Strike in Oakland, California.
The Oakland (California) General Strike was an extension of the national strike wave. It was not a 'called' strike. Shortly before 5 a.m., Monday, December 3, 1946, the hundreds of workers passing through downtown Oakland on their way to work became witness to the police herding a fleet of scab trucks through the downtown area. The trucks contained commodities to fill the shelves of two major department stores whose clerks (mostly women) had long been on strike. The witnesses, that is, truck drivers, bus and streetcar operators and passengers, got off their vehicles and did not return. The city filled with workers, they milled about in the city's core for several hours and then organised themselves.
By nightfall the strikers had instructed all stores except pharmacies and food markets to shut down, Bars were allowed to stay open, but they could serve only beer and had to put their juke boxes out on the sidewalk to play at full volume and no charge. 'Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay That Pistol Down', the number one hit, echoed off all the buildings. That first 24-hour period of the 54-hour strike had a carnival spirit. A mass of couples danced in the streets. The participants were making history, knew it, and were having fun. By Tuesday morning they had cordoned off the central city and were directing traffic. Anyone could leave, but only those with passports (union cards) could get in. The comment made by a prominent national network newscaster, that 'Oakland is a ghost town tonight,' was a contribution to ignorance. Never before or since had Oakland been so alive and happy for the majority of the population. It was a town of law and order. In that city of over a quarter mil lion, strangers passed each other on the street and did not have fear, but the opposite.
Before the second day of the strike was half over a large group of war veterans among the strikers formed their own squads and went through close-order drills. They then marched on the Tribune Tower, offices of the anti-labour OAKLAND TRIBUNE, and from there marched on City Hall demanding the resignation of the mayor and city council. Sailor's Union of the Pacific (SUP) crews walked off the three ships at the Oakland Army base loaded with military supplies for troops in Japan. By that night the strikers closed some grocery stores in order to conserve dwindling food supplies. In all general strikes the participants are very soon forced by the very nature of events to themselves run the society they have just stopped. The process in the Oakland experiment was beginning to deepen. There was as yet little evidence of official union leadership in the streets. The top local Teamster officials, except one, were not to be found; the exception would be fired five months later for his strike activity. International Teamster President Dave Beck wired orders 'to break the strike' because it was a revolutionary attempt 'to overthrow the government'. He ordered all Teamsters who had left their jobs to return to work. (OAKLAND TRIBUNE, December 5, 1946)
A number of the secondary Oakland and Alameda County union leaders did what they could to create a semblance of straight trade-union organisation. The ranks, unused to leading themselves and having no precedent for this sort of strike in their own experience, wanted the well-known labour leaders in the Bay Area to step forward with expertise, aid, and public legitimisation. The man who was always billed as leader of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, ILWU President Harry Bridges, who was then also State CIO President, refused to become involved,, ,just as he did 18 years later during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement struggles. The rank-and-file longshoremen and warehouse- men who had been drawn to the street strike were out there on their own. No organised contingents from the hundreds available in the warehouse and longshore hiring halls were sent to help, No CIO shops were given the nod to walk out or 'sick-out'. Only through CIO participation could significant numbers of blacks have been drawn into this mainly white strike. The ILWU and other CIO unions would honour picket lines like those around the Tribune Tower or at the Oakland Army Base, but otherwise they minded their own business. Bridges had recently committed himself to a nine-year extension of the wartime no-strike pledge.
The one major leader of the San Francisco General Strike who would come to Oakland was the SUP's Secretary Treasurer, Harry Lundeberg. On the second night of the strike he was the principal speaker at the mass meeting in the overflowing Oakland Auditorium. He had been alerted when the strike was less than three hours old via a call from an old-time member at a pay phone on an Oakland street. By noon there were contingents composed mainly of Hawaiians acting as 'flying squads', patrolling to find any evidence of strike-breaking activity. They enlarged Upon their number by issuing large white buttons to all seamen or persons on the Street that they knew. The buttons contained the words ' Brotherhood of the Sea', They represented the first officially-organised activity on the street, They did not attempt to run the entire strike or take over. It takes a time for seamen to get over the idea that they are somehow outsiders, The feeling is all the stronger among Hawaiian seamen ashore or residing in the States. They limited their activity to trouble-shooting. They won gratitude and respect. When Lundeberg spoke at the meeting, he had no program of action beyond that of the Oakland AFL leaders. But he got a wild response. He did not approach the microphone reluctantly. His demeanour reflected no hesitancy. Unlike the other speakers, he bellowed with outrage against the city council on behalf of the strikers. In a heavy Norwegian accent he accused: 'These finky gazoonies who call themselves city fathers have been taking les sons from Hitler and Stalin. They don't believe in the kind of unions that are free to strike.' All true, but whether he knew it or not, by focusing on the City Council and no more, he was contributing to the undercutting of the strike, Instead of dealing with the anti-labour employers and city officials through the medium of the strike, plans were already being formulated to deal with the crisis in the post-strike period by attacking the City Council through use of the ballot box. The top Alameda County CIO officials were making hourly statements for the record that they could later use to cover up their disloyalty, The AFL officials couldn't get them to come near the strike, but they could be expected to participate in post-strike electoral action.
The strike ended 54 hours old at 11 a.m. on December 5. The people on the street learned of the decision from a sound truck put on the Street by the AFL Central Labour Council. It was the officials' first really decisive act of leadership. They had consulted among themselves and decided to end the strike on the basis of the Oakland City Manager's promise that police would not again be used to bring in scabs. No concessions were gained for the women retail clerks at Kahn's and Hastings Department Stores whose strikes had triggered the General Strike; they were left free to negotiate any settlement they could get on their own. Those women and many other strikers heard the sound truck's message with the form of anger that was close to heartbreak, Numbers of truckers and other workers continued to picket with the women, yelling protests at the truck and appealing to all who could hear that they should stay out. But all strikers other than the clerks had been ordered back to work and no longer had any protection against the disciplinary actions that might be brought against them for strike-caused absences, By noon only a few score of workers were left, wandering disconsolately around the now-barren city, The CIO mass meeting that had been called for that night to discuss strike 'unity' was never held.
In the strike's aftermath every incumbent official in the major Oakland Teamsters Local 70 was voted out of office. A United AFL-CIO Political Action Committee was formed to run candidates in the race for the five open seats on the nine-person City Council. Four of them won, the ballot listed the names of the first four labour challengers on top of each of the incumbents, but reversed the order for the fifth open office, It was felt that the loss was due to this trick and anti-Semitism. The fifth labour candidate's name was Ben Goldfarb. Labour's city councilmen were regularly outvoted by the five incumbents; however, the four winners were by no means outspoken champions of labour. They did not utilise their offices as a tribune for a progressive labour-civic program. They served out their time routinely, and the strike faded to become the nation's major unknown general strike.
The Oakland General Strike was related to the 1946 Strike Wave in time and spirit, and revealed an aspect of the tem per of the nation's industrial-working-class mood at war's end. Labour historians of the immediate post-war period have failed to examine the Oakland Strike, and thus have failed to consider a major event of the period and what it reveals about the mood of that time. In developing their analyses they have focused almost entirely on the economic demands made by the unions that participated in the Strike Wave. These demands were not unimportant. But economic oppression was not the primary wound that had been experienced daily during the war years.
The 'spontaneous' Oakland General Strike was a massive event in a major urban area with a population similar to that of all major World War II defence-industry centres, Thousands had come to the Bay Area from all corners of the nation-rural and urban-in the early war years, and had stayed. Every theatre of war was represented among armed-forces veterans returning to or settling in this largest of Northern California's central city cores. The Oakland General Strike revealed fundamental characteristics of a national and not simply a regional mood. Its events combined to make a statement of working-class awareness that World War II had not been fought for democracy. Or, more pointedly, it was a retaliation for the absence of democracy that the people in industry and the armed forces had experienced while 'fighting to save democracy in a war to end all wars'. The focus of people's lives was still on the war. They hadn't fought what they believed to be 'a war against fascism' to return home and have their strikes broken and unions housebroken.
Emotionally, their war experiences were still very real, and yet they were just far enough away from those experiences to begin playbacks of memory tapes. The post-war period had not yet achieved an experiential identity. The Oakland Key System bus drivers, streetcar conductors, and motormen who played a leading role in the strike wore their Eisenhower jackets as work uniforms, but the overseas bars were still on their sleeves. Like most, they had lost four years of their youth; and while they would never complain about that loss in those terms, there were other related grievances over which resentment could be expressed.
Showing posts with label Oakland Genral Strike 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oakland Genral Strike 2011. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Solidarity Statements In Support Of The Oakland General Strike-November 2, 2011
You are browsing the archive for Solidarity Statements - Occupy Oakland.
by Liberate Oakland
U.C. UAW Local Support of General Strike
October 31, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
UAW 2865 Resolution in Support of Occupy Oakland General Strike
Whereas UAW 2865 witnesses firsthand how the 1% (in the form of UC Regents and top UC executives) conspire to steal ever more from students and workers through repeated tuition hikes, reduced services, layoffs, increased workloads, outsourcing and other austerity measures; and
Whereas we stand for the rights of all people to living wage jobs with affordable health care, quality education, a voice on the job, fair housing and a well-funded public sector, and
WHEREAS: Unemployment is the highest it has been since the Great Depression, and people are staying unemployed longer now than in the Great Depression, 1/3 of California homes are underwater, 1/5 of the foreclosures nation-wide are in California, and San Franciscans alone have lost almost $6 billion in home value costing their city over $74 million, and
WHEREAS: Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and the Wisconsin protests earlier this year, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future, and
WHEREAS: the Occupy Wall Street has galvanized public sentiment and a broad-based movement protesting the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations, and
WHEREAS: the National AFL-CIO and Change to Win coalitions have endorsed Occupy Wall Street, a growing number of trade union activists have joined this movement, both as individual workers, and as part of an increasing number of International and Local union contingents connecting their own fights to the larger demands of the movement for economic justice and fairness, and
WHEREAS: Union and Community organizations together have been working in coalition since the crash of the economy to force Banks to pay for public services and to renegotiate predatory loans with home owners, governments, and non-profit agencies, and
WHEREAS: public safety officers have used excessive force against peaceful protesters at Oscar Grant (Frank Ogawa) Plaza and violated their first amendment rights when more than 500 public safety officers with firearms aimed at the occupiers, tore down their tents in a predawn raid on October 25; and
WHEREAS: public safety officers on the evening of Oct. 25 again used excessive force injuring and endangering the lives of demonstrators when they marched on the evening of October 25th to protest the violence against the occupiers that morning;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this union will encourage its members and allies to act in support of Nov. 2 actions and honors as a “Sanctioned Union Strike Line” OccupyOakland and Occupy Wall Street, encourages union members and Local unions to participate in the movement, will actively support any unionized or non-unionized worker who refuses to break up, “raid,” or confiscate the belongings of protesters, and calls on unions representing DPW workers to not participate in such activity, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this union and its allies stand with our sisters and brothers of Occupy Wall Street, OccupyOakland, and cities and towns across the country who are fed up with an unfair economy that works for 1% of Americans while the vast majority of people struggle to pay the bills, get an education, and raise their families, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UAW 2865 recognizes that protest movements, like strike lines and organizing campaigns, do not have curfews, are not 9-5 activities, and in doing so UAW 2865 recognizes and will work to protect the right for OccupyOakland to protest 24 hours a day, on-site and with proper protection including food, medical supplies, water, and tents, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UAW 2865 has endorsed and will continue to endorse and turn-out members to OccupyOakland rallies and events, to provide in-kind donations like tents and food, and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that UAW 2865 joins its sister unions in the UC Berkeley Labor Coalition in forwarding this resolution for adoption to other local unions and central labor bodies.
No Comments »
by Bruce Paul
Alameda Central Labor Council endorses Nov 2
October 31, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
Sisters & Brothers,
Excitement is continuing to build nationally and worldwide for the “Occupy Movement”! Workers, students, unemployed, homeless, seniors, those who have lost their homes to foreclosures and those who have lost their jobs — the 99% — are standing up and fighting back against the 1%!
We are experiencing the results of a failed economy and inability of the richest nation in the world to provide for the 99%. We know that the 1% is only getting greedier and richer. But, things are changing and this movement is catching fire.
Inspired by the spirit of the fight against Wall Street, the Alameda Labor Council urges all union members and your families to join us as we stand in solidarity with Occupy Oakland on Wednesday, November 2. This Day of Action on November 2 will be a public demonstration of support for the right to peaceably assemble without interference, and against the growing wealth and income inequality created by Wall Street and the actions of the richest 1%.
Individual unions and your members are encouraged to express solidarity in whatever form you find appropriate. These are some options for Nov. 2:
1. At your worksite. Before work or during lunch, come together to talk about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Wear We are the 99% stickers.
2. Noon Bank action. Meet at Oakland City Hall and join a Wells Fargo Bank action.
3. Mobilization at 5 pm. Labor’s focus will be to turn out for this mobilization. We will converge at the Frank Ogawa Plaza at City Hall to join with Occupy Oakland.
Wear your union shirts and be visible so Occupy Oakland knows that labor is standing with them.
At 7 pm the Alameda Labor Council with our affiliates will be hosting a “cook out” and serving dinner to all in attendance.
What can your union do to support this effort?
Contribute to the “cook out”. We expect to feed 1,000s at 7 pm on November 2. A detailed budget will be sent out tonight. Volunteer monitors needed for 5 pm mobilization. If your local can round up 4-10 monitors, that would be great. Contribute to fund a lead “occupy” organizer. The occupy movement requires experience, time and commitment to build good relationships. We will be setting up a dedicated fund to resource this level of organizing. If your local has staff you can reassign to this effort, let’s talk.
Please see the labor flyer attached and spread the word to all your families, friends and networks! To donate and/or volunteer, call 510-632-4242 x226 OR email: weareone@alamedalabor.org.
We are the 99%!
Josie Camacho
Executive Secretary-Treasurer
Alameda Labor Council
29 21share51
No Comments »
by Liberate Oakland
Phillipine Airline Workers Back Oakland General Strike Call of Occupy Oakland
October 31, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
PALEA Backs Oakland General Strike Call of Occupy Oakland
Letter From Philippine Airline Employees Association
To the Occupy Oakland protesters:
We express our solidarity with the Oakland general strike planned on November 2
especially the blockade of the Port of Oakland. The general strike and port blockade will reveal the truth that the 99% creates the wealth that the 1% now monopolizes. Such forms of mass actions will also show the way forward for the occupy protest movement now surging in the US and other countries.
We likewise salute the Occupy Oakland protesters who bravely faced violent eviction last
October 25 even as we condemn the police for their brutal attack.
The Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA), the union of the ground staff
of Philippine Airlines, stands shoulder to shoulder with the Occupy Oakland protesters. We too struggle against corporate greed and capitalist globalization with its destructive impact on the workers and the youth. Truly the movement against corporate greed and capitalist globalization is international in scope.
More than a thousand PALEA members are presently occupying areas outside the
international airports of Manila and Cebu, the two biggest cities in the Philippines, for a month
reposted from: http://transportworkers.org/
38 1share39
No Comments »
by Liberate Oakland
Berkeley Federation of Teachers Calls On Teachers to participate in the Wednesday, November 2nd Day of Action
October 30, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
BFT Calls on All Members to Mobilize November 2nd at Occupy Oakland
BFT stands in solidarity with Occupy Oakland and its advocacy on behalf of the 99%. Occupy Oakland and the Worldwide Occupy Movement are fighting to restore sanity to our economy and to oppose growing wealth inequality.
We call upon all BFT members to participate in the November 2nd Day of Action at Occupy Oakland. It is incredibly important that teachers and union members take part in this historic mobilization.
We are encouraging our members to participate in the Wednesday, November 2nd Day of Action in the following ways:
1) Wear your BFT t-shirt on Wednesday in solidarity with Occupy Oakland. Wear the “We Are the 99%” sticker that you will be offered by your site rep.
2) Attend the Occupy Oakland late afternoon action. We are asking BFT members to meet between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. at the State Building at 1515 Clay Street. Bring signs and wear your BFT t-shirt. If you come after 5:00 p.m. please look for the BFT banner and join our group.
3) Look for ways to incorporate information and activities about the history of organizing efforts against economic injustice into your lessons on Wednesday. If possible, also look for ways members can come together on this day, maybe at lunch, to talk about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
4) Attend the solidarity barbecue hosted by the Alameda Labor Council at 7:00 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza.
BFT is aware that Occupy Oakland has called for a General Strike, as well as a Day of Action, on November 2nd. We have a no strike clause in our contract, so BFT is attempting to reach an agreement with BUSD to allow members to use personal leave, as long as there is adequate sub coverage, to attend ALL Occupy Oakland events on November 2nd. We will update members and site reps as soon as we have news on that effort.
Please note that the Occupy movement is very fluid. We will do our best to keep members updated.
If you need a BFT t-shirt (or button) please call the BFT office at 549-2307 and we will get one to you.
In Unity,
Cathy Campbell
President, Berkeley Federation of Teachers
Cathy Campbell
President, Berkeley Federation of Teachers
2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite A
Berkeley, CA 94702
31 2share33
Comments Off
by Liberate Oakland
Oakland Teachers Union OEA Executive Board endorsed Occupy Oakland’s November 2 “General Strike/Mass Day of Action”
October 30, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
Occupy Oakland General Strike November 2, 2011
In a unanimous vote on 10/28/11, the OEA Executive Board endorsed Occupy Oakland’s November 2 “General Strike/Mass Day of Action” and is urging members to participate in a variety of ways, including taking personal leave to join actions at Frank Ogawa Plaza, doing informational picketing at school sites, and holding teach-ins on the history of general strikes and organizing for economic justice.
Faced with growing class sizes and dwindling resources, school closures, and the ongoing attempts of charter management companies to entice Oakland schools to convert to charters, it is critical that we link our struggles with those of the 99% of Americans fighting for social and economic justice. It is simply wrong that banks and corporations are bailed out and continue to reap huge profits, while schools and social services suffer.
Join us on November 2nd, in solidarity with Occupy Movements across the globe!
WE ARE THE 99%!
Betty Olson-Jones
OEA President
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FAQ’s- Nov. 2nd strike questions – OEA responses
Thank you to OEA members who responded to the email blast with questions!
MEMO: Won’t the loss of ADA adversely affect our school budget? Children are required to be at school in order to maintain ADA for that day. If parents choose to bring their children to school in the morning and then take them out at some point, that is their choice.
Q: Jennifer Dunn asked: “What is the OEA stance on this (General Strike) right now?”
A: Oakland Education Association supports the General Strike and encourages OEA members to participate in a variety of ways on Nov. 2nd.
Q: Rasheeda Turner asked: “What is the purpose (of the General Strike)?” “What are we hoping will change as a result of this one day strike?”
A: Teachers in Oakland teach the 99%, and are themselves part of the 99%. This is evident in the cuts to education, healthcare, services, home foreclosures, etc. that we witness in Oakland on an ongoing basis. Part of teaching is advocating for our students in the broader context. We hope that linking our struggle to this movement that is getting worldwide attention will force policy changes that will benefit all of us.
Q: Samia Khattab: “Why would we strike? Is it to show solidarity? Is it to protest the heavy handed response from the OPD? Or are we striking because of recent board decision?”
Q: Kamila Weaver: “@ Foster I feel like this is happening very quickly and I don’t fully understand why we would be striking and what we hope to accomplish by it.”
Q: Daniel Crew asked: “I personally think it is quite a pull to get all of us to agree to a strike without it being explicit to our contract. Is it even legal?”
A: Although Oakland Education Association is strike legal, OEA is not calling a strike action against OUSD. OEA is supporting the Occupy Oakland call for a mass action and support this call by encouraging our members to participate.
Q: Dennis asked: “What are potential employment consequences for wildcatters?”
A: Unauthorized striking may result in no pay for that day, and possible discipline. OEA would work through any problems employees encounter with the district. OEA has met with OUSD on this particular action, and OUSD said they will recognize use of personal days to support this action, provided a substitute teacher is secured.
Q: Katie @ Skyline: “How is the message getting to each school so that we have an impact??”
A: In a variety of ways. The message has gone out to OEA site reps via cluster calls. There will be constant contact messages, auto dialer messages, and information will be posted on the website as well as on our Twitter feed.
Q: Tessa Strauss asked: “What do we tell our students’ families? Should they be sending their kids to school that day?”
A: School is in session on Nov. 2nd. Every OEA member who plans to take Personal Leave to participate in the General Strike is responsible to ensure a substitute or alternative classroom coverage to supervise students. OEA members participating in the General Strike should request a sub ASAP, or by the end of the school day on Monday, Oct. 31st. OEA members should inform parents that school is in session on Nov. 2nd and inform parents of your individual plan (have a sub, have another teacher cover your class) and recommend parents make the personal decision whether to send their child to school or not on Nov. 2nd.
Q: Perry asks: “Has OEA talked about putting out a call for teach-ins at all? If the strike doesn’t pass, I think it would be a great way for us to participate on Wednesday.”
A: Yes, there is a tremendous educational opportunity here and by all means it shouldn’t be squandered.
Q: Jennifer Dannenberg: “What precautions against violent action by protestors and/or police can be taken?”
A: OEA has been working with labor council, faith based and community groups and have met with the Mayor and Chief of Police to try to ensure safety. Occupy Oakland protestors have been working to ensure peaceful and productive demonstrations.
Q: Tessa Strauss @ Ascent asks: “I’m wondering what our rights and protections are—I know most contracts have strike clauses. Would we be organizing teachers to take personal days together, have to get our principal on board and have all teachers agree to strike together and take the risk, etc—“
Q: Carrie Anderson asks: What are the technicalities of not being at work? Take a sick day or what? What do we tell our principal?
A: By all means, let your principal know that you intend to take a personal day and assure him or her that you have made arrangements with a substitute teacher. This needs to be put in writing by Monday. As for us having all teachers agree to strike together, we’re happy to hear it.
Every member must make a personal decision about Wednesday. Staff should reach consensus about coverage and site plan.
Q: Alykhan@EOSA: “How do we integrate students? Can they come with us?”
Q: Fatima@EOSA: “Will it be a walk-out for students, or a no-show for students who are participating in the strike?”
A: We can integrate students by educating them about the occupy movements and recent events that have occurred locally and nationally. OEA members cannot and should not take students to the General Strike as a field trip. OEA has not organized with secondary students to implement a student walk-out or student no-show. OEA is not aware of any potential students to organize these types of actions.
Q: I don’t want to use my personal leave, can I take a sick day?
A: NO! THAT IS FRAUD. Take personal leave or leave without pay. Do not take sick leave!
29 2share32
Comments Off
by johnreimann1
Carpenters Local 713 endorses General Strike
October 30, 2011 in Announcements, Open Mic, Solidarity Statements
UBC Local 713 Endorses Call For 11/2 General Strike
Carpenters Local 713 represents 3,000 mostly private sector construction workers in Alameda County, California and passed the following motion tonight (Thurs October 27th,2011) by a standing vote with an overwhelming majority.
Local 713 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters stands in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. We support the right of all working people to organize and peacefully assemble to demand their rights.
We further agree that the 1% should not continue to go untaxed while the 99% face layoffs, pay and benefit cuts, foreclosures and the closing of our children’s schools and our public services.
We further strongly condemn the police brutality used against the Occupy Oakland movement and the devastating injury inflicted on Iraq veteran Scott Olsen.
We further resolve to support the call of the 2,000 Oaklanders at Occupy Oakland for a one-day strike in Oakland for Wednesday November 2nd, 2011, to protest our country’s rising inequality and the brutal actions of the police in the city of Oakland, California.
To be sent to Mayor Jean Quan and the Oakland Police Department
16 2share19
No Comments »
by Liberate Oakland
Week 1 Endorsements
October 29, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
MILLION WORKER MARCH SUPPORTS OCCUPY WALL STREET
October 17, 2011
The Million Worker March (MWM) organizers and activists call upon all workers organized and unorganized and the unemployed to join and defend the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. We extend the call to anti-war, immigration rights, environmental and social justice activists to join this movement which could replicate the “Arab Spring” here at home.
The MWM, initiated by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 on October 17, 2004 at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., advanced the slogan “mobilizing in our own name” independent of the two Wall Street controlled political parties to address the economic crisis of working people in which the vast majority are under siege financially.
All important social movements, which occurred in this country, were started from the bottom up (rank and file/grass roots) and not from the top down. The MWM’s mission statement speaks to how “. . . a handful of the rich and powerful corporations have usurped our government. A corporate and banking oligarchy changes hats and occupies public office to wage class war on working people. They have captured the State in their own interests.” They represent what the OWS activists call the 1%., otherwise known as the ruling class.
Like the MWM, the OWS has emerged at a time when the two corporate controlled political parties are preparing for the presidential election; a smokescreen where billions is spent to promote a top down and false ceremony of democracy.
Like the MWM, the OWS will be criticized for having demands that are too broad. However, after more than 50 years of a corporate assault on working people, social services, jobs, wages, pensions, health care, public education, and housing. The pursuit of endless wars, the lack of a comprehensive immigration policy and the erosion of the environment in pursuit of corporate greed makes it impossible to address all of these issues in a sound bite. Yet one thing is crystal clear, OWS conveys a definite anti-capitalist message. It is being expressed to the entire world at the “temple” of American Capitalism, Wall Street. The OWS, while now a major protest movement against the capitalist elites must continue to deepen, expend and become a direct challenge to corporate power. Class warfare demands fighting on multiple fronts and it all leads back to Wall Street. While the officialdom of labor has given verbal support to OWS, the rank and file possesses the real power of the labor movement. It is only through rank and file unity that labor’s true power can be realized in this OWS movement. Workers can take action at the point of production and service as well as put people in the streets.
We must be mindful of attempts to co-opt this movement. Let us not forget the action of the Democratic Party and it surrogates within AFL-CIO to pressure Wisconsin unions not to initiate any General Strike actions in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s plans to eliminate collective bargaining for State workers. Wisconsin workers were limited to circulating petitions to recall targeted State republican elected officials. This took away labor’s only real power, the ability to withhold its labor in defense of collective bargaining.
ILWU Local 10’s Executive Board has adopted a Resolution to join and defend the OWS and called for other longshore locals to do the same. More importantly, Local 10 is connecting the OWS movement with the Pacific Northwest Dockers struggle with EGT in Longview, Washington. (EGT is an international grain exporter which is attempting to rupture long shore jurisdiction.) The driving force behind EGT is Bunge LTD., a leading agribusiness and food company, which reported $2.4 billion in profits in 2010. This company has strong ties to Wall Street. This is but one example of Wall Street’s corporate attack on union workers.
On October 12th, the vice-president and secretary-treasurer of ILWU Local 21 in Longview, WA, who are engaged in battle with EGT, were allowed to speak by the organizers of “Foreclosure on Wall Street West”. They explained their struggle to several hundred people attending the rally that took place in the San Francisco financial district. This is an important and strategic show of solidarity between labor and OWS.
It was Black trade unionists that conceived and launched the MWM. Black workers and other workers of color should play an integral role in expanding the power and influence of OWS. The Black unemployment rate is 24% and growing. This needs to be a part of the discussion of the peoples’ assemblies as it concerns empowering this peoples’ movement.
Working people need to have a political expression of our own which is an alternative to the U.S. corporate sector that both the Democrats and the Republicans represent. The timing of the MWM in Washington was to prepare the beginning of a fight-back precisely because the agendas of two political parties, acting as one, the corporate agenda of permanent war, destruction of all social services, Jim Crow and a relentless assault upon working people.
This is an opportune moment for rank and file working people to forge a mass movement for fundamental change. Rarely has the importance of unity in struggle been more compelling along an axis of class independence.
Only by our own independent mobilization of working people (99%) across America, can we open the way to addressing a peoples’ agenda. The MWM and OWS are both about building grass roots and rank and file anti-racist unity “forging the fight-back” on all governmental and corporate policies influenced and or directed by Wall Street.
Let’s take it to the corporate state, Let the 1% take the weight
Clarence Thomas
Leo Robinson
Chris Silvera
ILWU Local 10, Executive Board
ILWU Local 10 Retired
IBT Local 808, Sec-Treasurer
Co-Chair MWM
National Convener
Co-Convener MWM East Coast
Saladin Muhammad
Gabriel Prawl
Black Workers for Justice
ILWU Local 52
Convener MWM Southern Region
Convener MWM Pacific Northwest
Jerry Lawrence
Debby Springfellow
ILWU Local 8
ILWU Local 8
Website: www.millionworkermarch.org
Email: www.east@yahoo.com
10/10/11
Statement of Support for the “Occupy Wall Street” movement:
The Berkeley Federation of Teachers endorses the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Occupy Wall Street, and its local iterations, represent the legitimate response of the 99% of us adversely affected by growing wealth and income inequality in America. The richest one percent of the population has doubled its share of the nation’s income over the past twenty years. Yet during this time the wealthy received massive tax cuts, a major cause of public budget shortfalls that hurt students, make our streets less safe, and harm the health of children and seniors.
Instead of investing its newfound wealth in productive enterprises in the United States, the top 1% moved it offshore or into financial speculation, which ultimately crashed the economy. The 1% also took large amounts of this money and poured it into a public relations effort to blame teachers and other public servants for the economic problems the 1% created.
Occupy Wall Street redirects the attention of the public to the actual causes and parties responsible for the economic crash and recession. The Berkeley Federation of Teachers embraces the call of Occupy Wall Street to restore higher taxes on the rich, to re-regulate the banks, and to enact a financial speculation tax. We encourage our members to participate in the OWS actions in the East Bay. These actions will help restore public budgets for schools and other vital services, and set our state and our country back on the right path.
Cathy Campbell
President, Berkeley Federation of Teachers
2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite A
Berkeley, CA 94702
10/10/2011
Oakland Education Association Backs 4 p.m. City Hall ‘Occupy Oakland’ Rally Demanding Economic Justice
OAKLAND – Oakland Unified educators will join a 4 p.m. “Occupy Oakland” rally at city hall today after the Oakland Education Association Executive Board voted to support the national grass-roots “Occupy Wall Street” movement against corporate greed that began last month in New York.
The OEA has long advocated for a fair tax structure that would require corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share to sustain the society from which they profit,” said Betty Olson-Jones, President of the Oakland Education Association. “Schools, programs for the elderly and disabled, health care for the poor and for children, and other vital public services have all been cut drastically in the past three years. This fight is about economic justice and protecting the poor and middle class. The Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrates that the American public understands how important people like teachers, firefighters and nurses are to society.”
The OEA joins the Occupy Wall Street movement in demanding that those who have not felt the bite of the recession—despite the fact that their actions played a large part in causing it—pay their fair share to fund recovery, Olson-Jones said. “We also believe that corporations should be held accountable. It is wrong that some banks pay little to no income tax while schools and other public services are mercilessly cut. It is unacceptable that oil companies are permitted to take oil out of our ground in California without paying any tax or fee while California ranks 43rd in per-pupil spending and state cuts continue to hurt our students and schools.”
WHAT: Oakland educators will join other unions and other members of the community in a rally against corporate greed to support the national “Occupy Wall Street” grass-roots movement.
WHEN: 4 p.m. today, Monday, Oct. 10.
WHERE: In front of city hall, in Frank Ogawa Plaza at 14th and Broadway, Oakland.
The Oakland Education Association is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3.2 million-member National Education Association
Statement of Support from the SF Bay branch of IWW
10/10/2011
The Bay Area General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World enthusiastically welcomes the “Occupation” movement to Oakland and elsewhere in the SF Bay area. The economic crisis that is hitting across the country is nothing new to Oakland, especially within its black and Latino communities. We not only have high unemployment, but we also have police repression and outright murder by police, the closing of schools and libraries, and strikes by workers including nurses and others.
The means of protest of recent decades have been legalistic picket lines and protests. These have not worked. The Occupation movement is taking things to a new level – mass and open disruption and defiance of the system. From the successful strikes of the last century to the revolt of black people in the 1960s, this was what produced the goods.
The Occupation movement is drawing in all sorts of new layers of workers and young people. It is part of a global revolt against the “free” market and the capitalist system. The IWW fights for a world in which production is based on the needs of people and of the Earth itself, not on private profit.
Now is the time to fight back.
Download the IWW statement on their letterhead
2 0share2
No Comments »
by Torok
Alameda Central Labor Council Supports Occupy Oakland/Wall Street
October 29, 2011 in Announcements, Open Mic, Solidarity Statements
Support the Occupy Wall Street Oakland Movement
ALAMEDA LABOR COUNCIL
RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF OCCUPY WALL STREET AND OCCUPY OAKLAND
Whereas, the Occupy Wall Street protest and its Oakland counterpart is an action opposed to the income inequality, the unfair tax structure, the bank bailouts, and the undue corporate influence and greed that has created America’s current economic malaise, undermined its social contract, and laid to waste its ideals, and;
Whereas, the negative effects of this elemental economic injustice are borne by middle class working families and the poor, while the financial racketeers most responsible for it are not only not held accountable but are allowed to continue to extract outrageous profits from it, and;
Whereas, in a nation where 25 million people are out of work, where 50 million people have no access to health care, and where 1 in 5 children grow up in poverty without adequate access to food, clothing and shelter, where funding for public education is gutted, where infrastructure is left to decay, and where millions of Americans have lost their homes due to a flawed and sometimes fraudulent process of foreclosure, causing misery and hardship and lost tax revenue, and;
Whereas, the salaries and bonuses of corporate executives continue to skyrocket while real wages for most workers have stagnated for the last 30 years during which period the gains in the economy have accrued almost entirely to the top 1% who now control at least 40% of the nation’s wealth, and where the top 400 Americans control more wealth than the bottom 180 million, and;
Whereas, in a nation where corporations are treated as people and money as speech, exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission to allow unlimited spending on elections to vault corporate influence to a new extreme and gaining further advantage over an already tilted political system, a system which now threatens to reduce the voice of the people to irrelevance, and;
Whereas, the rights of working people have been routinely attacked by the same unfair corporate power structure that led to new era of robber baron income inequality. Such attacks include illegal interference with right to form or join a union and have used the economic crisis in both the public and private sectors as a pretext for rolling back benefits, cutting wages, and limiting the rights of unions, and;
Whereas, the Alameda Labor Council has for more than 100 years supported the rights of workers and protesters to peaceably assemble and engage in non-violent demonstrations to expose economic and social injustice and attempt to adjust inequality and discrimination in any form, now;
Therefore be it resolved, that the Alameda Labor Council shares the outrage, frustration and resolve of the protesters, commits to the fight, and goes on record in support of the Occupy Oakland and the entire Occupy Wall Street movement, and;
Therefore be it further resolved, that the Alameda Labor Council supports the right of the protesters to peaceably assemble and opposes any effort to unreasonably evict protesters based on unsupported claims of public safety, and, in light of last night’s eviction calls on the City of Oakland to release the arrested, drop the charges, restore the occupation or otherwise reverse the silencing of the voice of the majority of Americans by providing continuous forum for this message and;
Therefore be it further resolved, that Mayor Quan and the City Council are on the wrong side of history. It is clear that what occurred in Snow Park and Frank Ogawa Plaza this morning is nothing but silencing the voices and stomping out the rights of Americans. Participants of Occupy Wall Street are now in their ninth week of declaring that “we are the 99%” because our system is desperately, decisively out of whack—the top 1% is pocketing massive profits and dominating our politics while everyone else struggles to make ends meet. It is shocking that Mayor Quan and the City Council feel that this is a message that needs to be silenced. The Alameda Labor Council stands with Occupy Wall Street and the 99% of Americans just trying to level the massively unequal playing field.
Therefore be it finally resolved
, that the Alameda Labor Council supports the non-violent efforts of the protesters to seek a more democratic and equitable society and repeats the demand for an economy that works for all Americans.
_______________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Alameda Labor Council
Where: Sixth and Washington, Oakland CA
When: 11:30 am, Oct. 25th, 2011
The Alameda Labor Council condemns the eviction of the Occupy Oakland protesters
Early this morning hundreds of police from all over the Bay Area surrounded Frank Ogawa Plaza in an unprovoked raid on peaceful protesters. Police then evicted protesters at Snow Park. In a nation where 25 million people are out of work, where 50 million people have no access to health care, and where 1 in 5 children grow up in poverty without adequate access to food, clothing and shelter, where funding for public education is gutted, where infrastructure is left to decay, and where millions of Americans have lost their homes due to foreclosure, this outrageous act to silence the voices of the protesters puts Mayor Quan and the City Council on the wrong side of history. At a time when resources are stretched in Oakland it is shameful that City funds are expended to silence the voices of the people. The Alameda Labor Council stands with the 99% in supporting the right of the protesters to peaceably assemble. We oppose the eviction and call on the City of Oakland to release the arrested, drop the charges, restore the occupation or otherwise reverse this silencing of the voice of the majority of Americans.
Contact: Josie Camacho, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, 510 632 4242 office, 510 502 1454, cell. Jean Cohen, Political Director, 408-206-6880 cell.
by Liberate Oakland
U.C. UAW Local Support of General Strike
October 31, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
UAW 2865 Resolution in Support of Occupy Oakland General Strike
Whereas UAW 2865 witnesses firsthand how the 1% (in the form of UC Regents and top UC executives) conspire to steal ever more from students and workers through repeated tuition hikes, reduced services, layoffs, increased workloads, outsourcing and other austerity measures; and
Whereas we stand for the rights of all people to living wage jobs with affordable health care, quality education, a voice on the job, fair housing and a well-funded public sector, and
WHEREAS: Unemployment is the highest it has been since the Great Depression, and people are staying unemployed longer now than in the Great Depression, 1/3 of California homes are underwater, 1/5 of the foreclosures nation-wide are in California, and San Franciscans alone have lost almost $6 billion in home value costing their city over $74 million, and
WHEREAS: Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and the Wisconsin protests earlier this year, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future, and
WHEREAS: the Occupy Wall Street has galvanized public sentiment and a broad-based movement protesting the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations, and
WHEREAS: the National AFL-CIO and Change to Win coalitions have endorsed Occupy Wall Street, a growing number of trade union activists have joined this movement, both as individual workers, and as part of an increasing number of International and Local union contingents connecting their own fights to the larger demands of the movement for economic justice and fairness, and
WHEREAS: Union and Community organizations together have been working in coalition since the crash of the economy to force Banks to pay for public services and to renegotiate predatory loans with home owners, governments, and non-profit agencies, and
WHEREAS: public safety officers have used excessive force against peaceful protesters at Oscar Grant (Frank Ogawa) Plaza and violated their first amendment rights when more than 500 public safety officers with firearms aimed at the occupiers, tore down their tents in a predawn raid on October 25; and
WHEREAS: public safety officers on the evening of Oct. 25 again used excessive force injuring and endangering the lives of demonstrators when they marched on the evening of October 25th to protest the violence against the occupiers that morning;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this union will encourage its members and allies to act in support of Nov. 2 actions and honors as a “Sanctioned Union Strike Line” OccupyOakland and Occupy Wall Street, encourages union members and Local unions to participate in the movement, will actively support any unionized or non-unionized worker who refuses to break up, “raid,” or confiscate the belongings of protesters, and calls on unions representing DPW workers to not participate in such activity, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this union and its allies stand with our sisters and brothers of Occupy Wall Street, OccupyOakland, and cities and towns across the country who are fed up with an unfair economy that works for 1% of Americans while the vast majority of people struggle to pay the bills, get an education, and raise their families, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UAW 2865 recognizes that protest movements, like strike lines and organizing campaigns, do not have curfews, are not 9-5 activities, and in doing so UAW 2865 recognizes and will work to protect the right for OccupyOakland to protest 24 hours a day, on-site and with proper protection including food, medical supplies, water, and tents, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UAW 2865 has endorsed and will continue to endorse and turn-out members to OccupyOakland rallies and events, to provide in-kind donations like tents and food, and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that UAW 2865 joins its sister unions in the UC Berkeley Labor Coalition in forwarding this resolution for adoption to other local unions and central labor bodies.
No Comments »
by Bruce Paul
Alameda Central Labor Council endorses Nov 2
October 31, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
Sisters & Brothers,
Excitement is continuing to build nationally and worldwide for the “Occupy Movement”! Workers, students, unemployed, homeless, seniors, those who have lost their homes to foreclosures and those who have lost their jobs — the 99% — are standing up and fighting back against the 1%!
We are experiencing the results of a failed economy and inability of the richest nation in the world to provide for the 99%. We know that the 1% is only getting greedier and richer. But, things are changing and this movement is catching fire.
Inspired by the spirit of the fight against Wall Street, the Alameda Labor Council urges all union members and your families to join us as we stand in solidarity with Occupy Oakland on Wednesday, November 2. This Day of Action on November 2 will be a public demonstration of support for the right to peaceably assemble without interference, and against the growing wealth and income inequality created by Wall Street and the actions of the richest 1%.
Individual unions and your members are encouraged to express solidarity in whatever form you find appropriate. These are some options for Nov. 2:
1. At your worksite. Before work or during lunch, come together to talk about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Wear We are the 99% stickers.
2. Noon Bank action. Meet at Oakland City Hall and join a Wells Fargo Bank action.
3. Mobilization at 5 pm. Labor’s focus will be to turn out for this mobilization. We will converge at the Frank Ogawa Plaza at City Hall to join with Occupy Oakland.
Wear your union shirts and be visible so Occupy Oakland knows that labor is standing with them.
At 7 pm the Alameda Labor Council with our affiliates will be hosting a “cook out” and serving dinner to all in attendance.
What can your union do to support this effort?
Contribute to the “cook out”. We expect to feed 1,000s at 7 pm on November 2. A detailed budget will be sent out tonight. Volunteer monitors needed for 5 pm mobilization. If your local can round up 4-10 monitors, that would be great. Contribute to fund a lead “occupy” organizer. The occupy movement requires experience, time and commitment to build good relationships. We will be setting up a dedicated fund to resource this level of organizing. If your local has staff you can reassign to this effort, let’s talk.
Please see the labor flyer attached and spread the word to all your families, friends and networks! To donate and/or volunteer, call 510-632-4242 x226 OR email: weareone@alamedalabor.org.
We are the 99%!
Josie Camacho
Executive Secretary-Treasurer
Alameda Labor Council
29 21share51
No Comments »
by Liberate Oakland
Phillipine Airline Workers Back Oakland General Strike Call of Occupy Oakland
October 31, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
PALEA Backs Oakland General Strike Call of Occupy Oakland
Letter From Philippine Airline Employees Association
To the Occupy Oakland protesters:
We express our solidarity with the Oakland general strike planned on November 2
especially the blockade of the Port of Oakland. The general strike and port blockade will reveal the truth that the 99% creates the wealth that the 1% now monopolizes. Such forms of mass actions will also show the way forward for the occupy protest movement now surging in the US and other countries.
We likewise salute the Occupy Oakland protesters who bravely faced violent eviction last
October 25 even as we condemn the police for their brutal attack.
The Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA), the union of the ground staff
of Philippine Airlines, stands shoulder to shoulder with the Occupy Oakland protesters. We too struggle against corporate greed and capitalist globalization with its destructive impact on the workers and the youth. Truly the movement against corporate greed and capitalist globalization is international in scope.
More than a thousand PALEA members are presently occupying areas outside the
international airports of Manila and Cebu, the two biggest cities in the Philippines, for a month
reposted from: http://transportworkers.org/
38 1share39
No Comments »
by Liberate Oakland
Berkeley Federation of Teachers Calls On Teachers to participate in the Wednesday, November 2nd Day of Action
October 30, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
BFT Calls on All Members to Mobilize November 2nd at Occupy Oakland
BFT stands in solidarity with Occupy Oakland and its advocacy on behalf of the 99%. Occupy Oakland and the Worldwide Occupy Movement are fighting to restore sanity to our economy and to oppose growing wealth inequality.
We call upon all BFT members to participate in the November 2nd Day of Action at Occupy Oakland. It is incredibly important that teachers and union members take part in this historic mobilization.
We are encouraging our members to participate in the Wednesday, November 2nd Day of Action in the following ways:
1) Wear your BFT t-shirt on Wednesday in solidarity with Occupy Oakland. Wear the “We Are the 99%” sticker that you will be offered by your site rep.
2) Attend the Occupy Oakland late afternoon action. We are asking BFT members to meet between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. at the State Building at 1515 Clay Street. Bring signs and wear your BFT t-shirt. If you come after 5:00 p.m. please look for the BFT banner and join our group.
3) Look for ways to incorporate information and activities about the history of organizing efforts against economic injustice into your lessons on Wednesday. If possible, also look for ways members can come together on this day, maybe at lunch, to talk about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
4) Attend the solidarity barbecue hosted by the Alameda Labor Council at 7:00 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza.
BFT is aware that Occupy Oakland has called for a General Strike, as well as a Day of Action, on November 2nd. We have a no strike clause in our contract, so BFT is attempting to reach an agreement with BUSD to allow members to use personal leave, as long as there is adequate sub coverage, to attend ALL Occupy Oakland events on November 2nd. We will update members and site reps as soon as we have news on that effort.
Please note that the Occupy movement is very fluid. We will do our best to keep members updated.
If you need a BFT t-shirt (or button) please call the BFT office at 549-2307 and we will get one to you.
In Unity,
Cathy Campbell
President, Berkeley Federation of Teachers
Cathy Campbell
President, Berkeley Federation of Teachers
2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite A
Berkeley, CA 94702
31 2share33
Comments Off
by Liberate Oakland
Oakland Teachers Union OEA Executive Board endorsed Occupy Oakland’s November 2 “General Strike/Mass Day of Action”
October 30, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
Occupy Oakland General Strike November 2, 2011
In a unanimous vote on 10/28/11, the OEA Executive Board endorsed Occupy Oakland’s November 2 “General Strike/Mass Day of Action” and is urging members to participate in a variety of ways, including taking personal leave to join actions at Frank Ogawa Plaza, doing informational picketing at school sites, and holding teach-ins on the history of general strikes and organizing for economic justice.
Faced with growing class sizes and dwindling resources, school closures, and the ongoing attempts of charter management companies to entice Oakland schools to convert to charters, it is critical that we link our struggles with those of the 99% of Americans fighting for social and economic justice. It is simply wrong that banks and corporations are bailed out and continue to reap huge profits, while schools and social services suffer.
Join us on November 2nd, in solidarity with Occupy Movements across the globe!
WE ARE THE 99%!
Betty Olson-Jones
OEA President
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FAQ’s- Nov. 2nd strike questions – OEA responses
Thank you to OEA members who responded to the email blast with questions!
MEMO: Won’t the loss of ADA adversely affect our school budget? Children are required to be at school in order to maintain ADA for that day. If parents choose to bring their children to school in the morning and then take them out at some point, that is their choice.
Q: Jennifer Dunn asked: “What is the OEA stance on this (General Strike) right now?”
A: Oakland Education Association supports the General Strike and encourages OEA members to participate in a variety of ways on Nov. 2nd.
Q: Rasheeda Turner asked: “What is the purpose (of the General Strike)?” “What are we hoping will change as a result of this one day strike?”
A: Teachers in Oakland teach the 99%, and are themselves part of the 99%. This is evident in the cuts to education, healthcare, services, home foreclosures, etc. that we witness in Oakland on an ongoing basis. Part of teaching is advocating for our students in the broader context. We hope that linking our struggle to this movement that is getting worldwide attention will force policy changes that will benefit all of us.
Q: Samia Khattab: “Why would we strike? Is it to show solidarity? Is it to protest the heavy handed response from the OPD? Or are we striking because of recent board decision?”
Q: Kamila Weaver: “@ Foster I feel like this is happening very quickly and I don’t fully understand why we would be striking and what we hope to accomplish by it.”
Q: Daniel Crew asked: “I personally think it is quite a pull to get all of us to agree to a strike without it being explicit to our contract. Is it even legal?”
A: Although Oakland Education Association is strike legal, OEA is not calling a strike action against OUSD. OEA is supporting the Occupy Oakland call for a mass action and support this call by encouraging our members to participate.
Q: Dennis asked: “What are potential employment consequences for wildcatters?”
A: Unauthorized striking may result in no pay for that day, and possible discipline. OEA would work through any problems employees encounter with the district. OEA has met with OUSD on this particular action, and OUSD said they will recognize use of personal days to support this action, provided a substitute teacher is secured.
Q: Katie @ Skyline: “How is the message getting to each school so that we have an impact??”
A: In a variety of ways. The message has gone out to OEA site reps via cluster calls. There will be constant contact messages, auto dialer messages, and information will be posted on the website as well as on our Twitter feed.
Q: Tessa Strauss asked: “What do we tell our students’ families? Should they be sending their kids to school that day?”
A: School is in session on Nov. 2nd. Every OEA member who plans to take Personal Leave to participate in the General Strike is responsible to ensure a substitute or alternative classroom coverage to supervise students. OEA members participating in the General Strike should request a sub ASAP, or by the end of the school day on Monday, Oct. 31st. OEA members should inform parents that school is in session on Nov. 2nd and inform parents of your individual plan (have a sub, have another teacher cover your class) and recommend parents make the personal decision whether to send their child to school or not on Nov. 2nd.
Q: Perry asks: “Has OEA talked about putting out a call for teach-ins at all? If the strike doesn’t pass, I think it would be a great way for us to participate on Wednesday.”
A: Yes, there is a tremendous educational opportunity here and by all means it shouldn’t be squandered.
Q: Jennifer Dannenberg: “What precautions against violent action by protestors and/or police can be taken?”
A: OEA has been working with labor council, faith based and community groups and have met with the Mayor and Chief of Police to try to ensure safety. Occupy Oakland protestors have been working to ensure peaceful and productive demonstrations.
Q: Tessa Strauss @ Ascent asks: “I’m wondering what our rights and protections are—I know most contracts have strike clauses. Would we be organizing teachers to take personal days together, have to get our principal on board and have all teachers agree to strike together and take the risk, etc—“
Q: Carrie Anderson asks: What are the technicalities of not being at work? Take a sick day or what? What do we tell our principal?
A: By all means, let your principal know that you intend to take a personal day and assure him or her that you have made arrangements with a substitute teacher. This needs to be put in writing by Monday. As for us having all teachers agree to strike together, we’re happy to hear it.
Every member must make a personal decision about Wednesday. Staff should reach consensus about coverage and site plan.
Q: Alykhan@EOSA: “How do we integrate students? Can they come with us?”
Q: Fatima@EOSA: “Will it be a walk-out for students, or a no-show for students who are participating in the strike?”
A: We can integrate students by educating them about the occupy movements and recent events that have occurred locally and nationally. OEA members cannot and should not take students to the General Strike as a field trip. OEA has not organized with secondary students to implement a student walk-out or student no-show. OEA is not aware of any potential students to organize these types of actions.
Q: I don’t want to use my personal leave, can I take a sick day?
A: NO! THAT IS FRAUD. Take personal leave or leave without pay. Do not take sick leave!
29 2share32
Comments Off
by johnreimann1
Carpenters Local 713 endorses General Strike
October 30, 2011 in Announcements, Open Mic, Solidarity Statements
UBC Local 713 Endorses Call For 11/2 General Strike
Carpenters Local 713 represents 3,000 mostly private sector construction workers in Alameda County, California and passed the following motion tonight (Thurs October 27th,2011) by a standing vote with an overwhelming majority.
Local 713 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters stands in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. We support the right of all working people to organize and peacefully assemble to demand their rights.
We further agree that the 1% should not continue to go untaxed while the 99% face layoffs, pay and benefit cuts, foreclosures and the closing of our children’s schools and our public services.
We further strongly condemn the police brutality used against the Occupy Oakland movement and the devastating injury inflicted on Iraq veteran Scott Olsen.
We further resolve to support the call of the 2,000 Oaklanders at Occupy Oakland for a one-day strike in Oakland for Wednesday November 2nd, 2011, to protest our country’s rising inequality and the brutal actions of the police in the city of Oakland, California.
To be sent to Mayor Jean Quan and the Oakland Police Department
16 2share19
No Comments »
by Liberate Oakland
Week 1 Endorsements
October 29, 2011 in Solidarity Statements
MILLION WORKER MARCH SUPPORTS OCCUPY WALL STREET
October 17, 2011
The Million Worker March (MWM) organizers and activists call upon all workers organized and unorganized and the unemployed to join and defend the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. We extend the call to anti-war, immigration rights, environmental and social justice activists to join this movement which could replicate the “Arab Spring” here at home.
The MWM, initiated by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 on October 17, 2004 at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., advanced the slogan “mobilizing in our own name” independent of the two Wall Street controlled political parties to address the economic crisis of working people in which the vast majority are under siege financially.
All important social movements, which occurred in this country, were started from the bottom up (rank and file/grass roots) and not from the top down. The MWM’s mission statement speaks to how “. . . a handful of the rich and powerful corporations have usurped our government. A corporate and banking oligarchy changes hats and occupies public office to wage class war on working people. They have captured the State in their own interests.” They represent what the OWS activists call the 1%., otherwise known as the ruling class.
Like the MWM, the OWS has emerged at a time when the two corporate controlled political parties are preparing for the presidential election; a smokescreen where billions is spent to promote a top down and false ceremony of democracy.
Like the MWM, the OWS will be criticized for having demands that are too broad. However, after more than 50 years of a corporate assault on working people, social services, jobs, wages, pensions, health care, public education, and housing. The pursuit of endless wars, the lack of a comprehensive immigration policy and the erosion of the environment in pursuit of corporate greed makes it impossible to address all of these issues in a sound bite. Yet one thing is crystal clear, OWS conveys a definite anti-capitalist message. It is being expressed to the entire world at the “temple” of American Capitalism, Wall Street. The OWS, while now a major protest movement against the capitalist elites must continue to deepen, expend and become a direct challenge to corporate power. Class warfare demands fighting on multiple fronts and it all leads back to Wall Street. While the officialdom of labor has given verbal support to OWS, the rank and file possesses the real power of the labor movement. It is only through rank and file unity that labor’s true power can be realized in this OWS movement. Workers can take action at the point of production and service as well as put people in the streets.
We must be mindful of attempts to co-opt this movement. Let us not forget the action of the Democratic Party and it surrogates within AFL-CIO to pressure Wisconsin unions not to initiate any General Strike actions in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s plans to eliminate collective bargaining for State workers. Wisconsin workers were limited to circulating petitions to recall targeted State republican elected officials. This took away labor’s only real power, the ability to withhold its labor in defense of collective bargaining.
ILWU Local 10’s Executive Board has adopted a Resolution to join and defend the OWS and called for other longshore locals to do the same. More importantly, Local 10 is connecting the OWS movement with the Pacific Northwest Dockers struggle with EGT in Longview, Washington. (EGT is an international grain exporter which is attempting to rupture long shore jurisdiction.) The driving force behind EGT is Bunge LTD., a leading agribusiness and food company, which reported $2.4 billion in profits in 2010. This company has strong ties to Wall Street. This is but one example of Wall Street’s corporate attack on union workers.
On October 12th, the vice-president and secretary-treasurer of ILWU Local 21 in Longview, WA, who are engaged in battle with EGT, were allowed to speak by the organizers of “Foreclosure on Wall Street West”. They explained their struggle to several hundred people attending the rally that took place in the San Francisco financial district. This is an important and strategic show of solidarity between labor and OWS.
It was Black trade unionists that conceived and launched the MWM. Black workers and other workers of color should play an integral role in expanding the power and influence of OWS. The Black unemployment rate is 24% and growing. This needs to be a part of the discussion of the peoples’ assemblies as it concerns empowering this peoples’ movement.
Working people need to have a political expression of our own which is an alternative to the U.S. corporate sector that both the Democrats and the Republicans represent. The timing of the MWM in Washington was to prepare the beginning of a fight-back precisely because the agendas of two political parties, acting as one, the corporate agenda of permanent war, destruction of all social services, Jim Crow and a relentless assault upon working people.
This is an opportune moment for rank and file working people to forge a mass movement for fundamental change. Rarely has the importance of unity in struggle been more compelling along an axis of class independence.
Only by our own independent mobilization of working people (99%) across America, can we open the way to addressing a peoples’ agenda. The MWM and OWS are both about building grass roots and rank and file anti-racist unity “forging the fight-back” on all governmental and corporate policies influenced and or directed by Wall Street.
Let’s take it to the corporate state, Let the 1% take the weight
Clarence Thomas
Leo Robinson
Chris Silvera
ILWU Local 10, Executive Board
ILWU Local 10 Retired
IBT Local 808, Sec-Treasurer
Co-Chair MWM
National Convener
Co-Convener MWM East Coast
Saladin Muhammad
Gabriel Prawl
Black Workers for Justice
ILWU Local 52
Convener MWM Southern Region
Convener MWM Pacific Northwest
Jerry Lawrence
Debby Springfellow
ILWU Local 8
ILWU Local 8
Website: www.millionworkermarch.org
Email: www.east@yahoo.com
10/10/11
Statement of Support for the “Occupy Wall Street” movement:
The Berkeley Federation of Teachers endorses the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Occupy Wall Street, and its local iterations, represent the legitimate response of the 99% of us adversely affected by growing wealth and income inequality in America. The richest one percent of the population has doubled its share of the nation’s income over the past twenty years. Yet during this time the wealthy received massive tax cuts, a major cause of public budget shortfalls that hurt students, make our streets less safe, and harm the health of children and seniors.
Instead of investing its newfound wealth in productive enterprises in the United States, the top 1% moved it offshore or into financial speculation, which ultimately crashed the economy. The 1% also took large amounts of this money and poured it into a public relations effort to blame teachers and other public servants for the economic problems the 1% created.
Occupy Wall Street redirects the attention of the public to the actual causes and parties responsible for the economic crash and recession. The Berkeley Federation of Teachers embraces the call of Occupy Wall Street to restore higher taxes on the rich, to re-regulate the banks, and to enact a financial speculation tax. We encourage our members to participate in the OWS actions in the East Bay. These actions will help restore public budgets for schools and other vital services, and set our state and our country back on the right path.
Cathy Campbell
President, Berkeley Federation of Teachers
2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite A
Berkeley, CA 94702
10/10/2011
Oakland Education Association Backs 4 p.m. City Hall ‘Occupy Oakland’ Rally Demanding Economic Justice
OAKLAND – Oakland Unified educators will join a 4 p.m. “Occupy Oakland” rally at city hall today after the Oakland Education Association Executive Board voted to support the national grass-roots “Occupy Wall Street” movement against corporate greed that began last month in New York.
The OEA has long advocated for a fair tax structure that would require corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share to sustain the society from which they profit,” said Betty Olson-Jones, President of the Oakland Education Association. “Schools, programs for the elderly and disabled, health care for the poor and for children, and other vital public services have all been cut drastically in the past three years. This fight is about economic justice and protecting the poor and middle class. The Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrates that the American public understands how important people like teachers, firefighters and nurses are to society.”
The OEA joins the Occupy Wall Street movement in demanding that those who have not felt the bite of the recession—despite the fact that their actions played a large part in causing it—pay their fair share to fund recovery, Olson-Jones said. “We also believe that corporations should be held accountable. It is wrong that some banks pay little to no income tax while schools and other public services are mercilessly cut. It is unacceptable that oil companies are permitted to take oil out of our ground in California without paying any tax or fee while California ranks 43rd in per-pupil spending and state cuts continue to hurt our students and schools.”
WHAT: Oakland educators will join other unions and other members of the community in a rally against corporate greed to support the national “Occupy Wall Street” grass-roots movement.
WHEN: 4 p.m. today, Monday, Oct. 10.
WHERE: In front of city hall, in Frank Ogawa Plaza at 14th and Broadway, Oakland.
The Oakland Education Association is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3.2 million-member National Education Association
Statement of Support from the SF Bay branch of IWW
10/10/2011
The Bay Area General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World enthusiastically welcomes the “Occupation” movement to Oakland and elsewhere in the SF Bay area. The economic crisis that is hitting across the country is nothing new to Oakland, especially within its black and Latino communities. We not only have high unemployment, but we also have police repression and outright murder by police, the closing of schools and libraries, and strikes by workers including nurses and others.
The means of protest of recent decades have been legalistic picket lines and protests. These have not worked. The Occupation movement is taking things to a new level – mass and open disruption and defiance of the system. From the successful strikes of the last century to the revolt of black people in the 1960s, this was what produced the goods.
The Occupation movement is drawing in all sorts of new layers of workers and young people. It is part of a global revolt against the “free” market and the capitalist system. The IWW fights for a world in which production is based on the needs of people and of the Earth itself, not on private profit.
Now is the time to fight back.
Download the IWW statement on their letterhead
2 0share2
No Comments »
by Torok
Alameda Central Labor Council Supports Occupy Oakland/Wall Street
October 29, 2011 in Announcements, Open Mic, Solidarity Statements
Support the Occupy Wall Street Oakland Movement
ALAMEDA LABOR COUNCIL
RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF OCCUPY WALL STREET AND OCCUPY OAKLAND
Whereas, the Occupy Wall Street protest and its Oakland counterpart is an action opposed to the income inequality, the unfair tax structure, the bank bailouts, and the undue corporate influence and greed that has created America’s current economic malaise, undermined its social contract, and laid to waste its ideals, and;
Whereas, the negative effects of this elemental economic injustice are borne by middle class working families and the poor, while the financial racketeers most responsible for it are not only not held accountable but are allowed to continue to extract outrageous profits from it, and;
Whereas, in a nation where 25 million people are out of work, where 50 million people have no access to health care, and where 1 in 5 children grow up in poverty without adequate access to food, clothing and shelter, where funding for public education is gutted, where infrastructure is left to decay, and where millions of Americans have lost their homes due to a flawed and sometimes fraudulent process of foreclosure, causing misery and hardship and lost tax revenue, and;
Whereas, the salaries and bonuses of corporate executives continue to skyrocket while real wages for most workers have stagnated for the last 30 years during which period the gains in the economy have accrued almost entirely to the top 1% who now control at least 40% of the nation’s wealth, and where the top 400 Americans control more wealth than the bottom 180 million, and;
Whereas, in a nation where corporations are treated as people and money as speech, exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission to allow unlimited spending on elections to vault corporate influence to a new extreme and gaining further advantage over an already tilted political system, a system which now threatens to reduce the voice of the people to irrelevance, and;
Whereas, the rights of working people have been routinely attacked by the same unfair corporate power structure that led to new era of robber baron income inequality. Such attacks include illegal interference with right to form or join a union and have used the economic crisis in both the public and private sectors as a pretext for rolling back benefits, cutting wages, and limiting the rights of unions, and;
Whereas, the Alameda Labor Council has for more than 100 years supported the rights of workers and protesters to peaceably assemble and engage in non-violent demonstrations to expose economic and social injustice and attempt to adjust inequality and discrimination in any form, now;
Therefore be it resolved, that the Alameda Labor Council shares the outrage, frustration and resolve of the protesters, commits to the fight, and goes on record in support of the Occupy Oakland and the entire Occupy Wall Street movement, and;
Therefore be it further resolved, that the Alameda Labor Council supports the right of the protesters to peaceably assemble and opposes any effort to unreasonably evict protesters based on unsupported claims of public safety, and, in light of last night’s eviction calls on the City of Oakland to release the arrested, drop the charges, restore the occupation or otherwise reverse the silencing of the voice of the majority of Americans by providing continuous forum for this message and;
Therefore be it further resolved, that Mayor Quan and the City Council are on the wrong side of history. It is clear that what occurred in Snow Park and Frank Ogawa Plaza this morning is nothing but silencing the voices and stomping out the rights of Americans. Participants of Occupy Wall Street are now in their ninth week of declaring that “we are the 99%” because our system is desperately, decisively out of whack—the top 1% is pocketing massive profits and dominating our politics while everyone else struggles to make ends meet. It is shocking that Mayor Quan and the City Council feel that this is a message that needs to be silenced. The Alameda Labor Council stands with Occupy Wall Street and the 99% of Americans just trying to level the massively unequal playing field.
Therefore be it finally resolved
, that the Alameda Labor Council supports the non-violent efforts of the protesters to seek a more democratic and equitable society and repeats the demand for an economy that works for all Americans.
_______________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Alameda Labor Council
Where: Sixth and Washington, Oakland CA
When: 11:30 am, Oct. 25th, 2011
The Alameda Labor Council condemns the eviction of the Occupy Oakland protesters
Early this morning hundreds of police from all over the Bay Area surrounded Frank Ogawa Plaza in an unprovoked raid on peaceful protesters. Police then evicted protesters at Snow Park. In a nation where 25 million people are out of work, where 50 million people have no access to health care, and where 1 in 5 children grow up in poverty without adequate access to food, clothing and shelter, where funding for public education is gutted, where infrastructure is left to decay, and where millions of Americans have lost their homes due to foreclosure, this outrageous act to silence the voices of the protesters puts Mayor Quan and the City Council on the wrong side of history. At a time when resources are stretched in Oakland it is shameful that City funds are expended to silence the voices of the people. The Alameda Labor Council stands with the 99% in supporting the right of the protesters to peaceably assemble. We oppose the eviction and call on the City of Oakland to release the arrested, drop the charges, restore the occupation or otherwise reverse this silencing of the voice of the majority of Americans.
Contact: Josie Camacho, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, 510 632 4242 office, 510 502 1454, cell. Jean Cohen, Political Director, 408-206-6880 cell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)