THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE CHOREOGRAPHED
SATURDAY, DEC 3rd
Doors open at 9pm, Show Starts at 10pm, Dancing until 2am!
The Pinhook, 117 W Main St, Durham, NC
We all know the crisis is raging, but why aren’t you? Dress to sweat off your capitalist blues, and join FIST in occupying the dance floor for a night of rock and hip hop. We’re raising funds the fun way for the court costs of some young comrades who have been arrested fighting for education, against the banks and for immigrant rights in NC and beyond.
Winter’s got us all worked up, exams coming your way, and occupying your city or school is cold and hard — warm up on the dance floor with our amazing list of boogy-enducing DJ’s & music acts:
TripKnight
Lucky Strikes
And DJ Yammy !
$5 (21+)/$7 (under 21) admission
this is a fundraiser for FIST! be as generous as you can
By Larry Hales, FIST
Oakland, Calif.
‘Shut it down!’ Oakland, Nov. 2.
WW photo: Bill Bowers
The call by Occupy Oakland for a general strike on Nov. 2 came after police from agencies across Alameda County brutally assaulted people trying to return to their encampment on Oct. 25 at Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza) after police had ousted them and ransacked their belongings.
Videos show what resembled a war zone as police attacked demonstrators with pepper gas, “flash-bang” grenades and disabling projectiles. A 24-year-old Marine veteran, Scott Olsen, was severely injured when a projectile launched by police hit him in the face. Dozens of people were arrested and injured and more than 500 cops from 12 different police agencies were involved.
The call for a general strike on Nov. 2 was a bold move.
The attempt to crack down on the occupation in Oakland was not an isolated event. Similar actions by police have occurred in Washington state, Denver, Atlanta and elsewhere.
Each time the state has stepped in, the movement has grown larger and attracted more attention. Its primary target, as evidenced by Occupy Wall Street, has been the banks and financial institutions and the wealthy. Each attack has made it ever clearer that the fundamental function of the state apparatus is to protect the interests of the ruling elite. Continue reading →
Lamont Lilly, New York City, Oct. 8.
WW photo: Rachel Duell
By Lamont Lilly
Occupy Wall Street, N.Y.
The scene was a perfect storm of organized chaos. Here were the young and old, students and workers, immigrants and oppressed, all addressing the failures of capitalism’s current worldwide crisis, outlining the destructive forces of global banking systems and highlighting the lack of communal values in a place that loves to cry patriotism.
Right-wing, conservative press would have you to believe that the only “fanatics” there were Ivy League, white, college kids — the privileged and idle-minded, or simply a cadre of recent graduates who have yet to find jobs after completing master’s degrees. But that wasn’t true at all. The idea of occupying Wall Street may have begun as a young, white thing, but by the time we arrived on the evening of Oct.8, there were participants of all nations, all races and all ages — raising a range of pertinent issues.
There were Haitians from the Bronx who had marched across the George Washington Bridge earlier that day in a show of solidarity. There were domestic and sanitation workers from Queens. There were the unions and labor organizations from all over the country — working-class adults who currently live the effects of capitalism from the front lines; blue-collar folks whose wages have been decimated by the manipulation of global markets, international corporatism and “Third World” exploitation. For this one night, I was living what democracy really looks like: the common masses united in a single front. Continue reading →
94-year-old Cora Baines Tann with
N.C. AFL-CIO President James Andrews.
Photo: James Wrenn
By James Wrenn
Rocky Mount, N.C.
A North Carolina Highway Historical Marker recognizing the 1946 tobacco leaf house workers union campaign was unveiled in Rocky Mount by the Phoenix Historical Society on Sept. 3. The United Electrical Workers union, Local 150 co-sponsored the event.
Entitled “Operation Dixie,” the marker stands on N. Franklin Street at the corner of McDonald Street, across from the Imperial Centre, and denotes the China American Tobacco Company plant on N. Pearl Street, Rocky Mount, N.C. where workers cast the first pro-union vote in the campaign on Sept. 5, 1946.
Most African-American workers cast their first vote ever in this union election, since racist Jim Crow laws denied voting rights to Black people in North Carolina. This leaf house union campaign in 1946 is considered a precursor to the civil rights movement. Continue reading →
Occupy Detroit ended its third week with a spirited demonstration organized by labor in support of the Occupy Detroit movement. More than 500 persons, including many rank-and-file members of organized labor, gathered at the Labor Legacy Monument in Hart Plaza and marched through downtown to the Occupy Detroit camp. During the march, a large banner that called on President Barack Obama to use his executive authority to initiate a massive public jobs program was carried. Signs called for a moratorium on foreclosures, a Works-Progress-Administration-style jobs program, and a bailout of the people — not the banks. Vehicles delivered donations, collected by the unions throughout the week, to the camp. The demonstration ended with a rally that included speakers from the camp as well as young labor organizers. Continue reading →