Videos of Police Repression at G20 in Pittsburgh
VIDEOS OF POLICE REPRESSION at G20:
college students trapped in stairwell and gassed, attacked
http://celluloidblonde.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/land-of-the-free/
police assault couple in street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlD9QKZdPhE&feature=player_embedded
Police pose while taking picture of arrested student
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-333880
front line of resistance on Thursday afternoon, youth hurl dumpster at cops
http://www.youtube.com/v/ia0wVU3RHkI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1
college students trapped in stairwell and gassed, attacked
http://celluloidblonde.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/land-of-the-free/
police assault couple in street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlD9QKZdPhE&feature=player_embedded
Police pose while taking picture of arrested student
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-333880
front line of resistance on Thursday afternoon, youth hurl dumpster at cops
http://www.youtube.com/v/ia0wVU3RHkI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1
Day 6 - Sept 25 - G20 protests
Day 6—Sept. 25
The permitted People’s March on G-20 attracted an estimated 10,000 people, largely young people. The organizers, the People's Voices coalition, held two rallies during the march.
Following the closing down of the Tent City on the Hill in the morning, the Bail Out the People Movement organized a speak-out and then a contingent at Freedom Corner, which fed into the People’s March.
BOPM’s Larry Holmes spoke at the first rally where he defended the youth who were brutally attacked by the police on Sept. 24 in downtown Pittsburgh. BOPM’s Cheryl LaBash spoke at the second rally on the crisis in Honduras. The March organizers asked the BOPM contingent and its banner, “Message to G-20 - WE NEED JOBS NOW" with photos of Dr. Martin Luther King, to lead the second leg of the march.
Eyewitness report from Dante Strobino:
On Friday night, I was near U. of Pitt around 10:00 when we saw a huge crowd of about over 1000 students, most of which were not political at all and certainly not involved in G-20 protests, gathered in Schenedy Park where there was a concert going on with acoustic and rock bands as part of G-20 protest events. The police began to occupy the park and forcefully removed everyone from the park. As students began to gather around to check it out, the riot police got more hyped up. There were no chants, no signs, no banners, no folks dressed in black and no provocation and the police threw several tear gas and smoke bombs at the crowd again and pushed them further back down commercial streets where there bars and restaurants. They also began chasing people into the huge dormitory towers and attacking students as they left. Students were hanging out the windows, taking pictures in awe.
Forbes St. was blocked off by hundreds of riot cops while surrounding contingents of cops moved in on the other areas of the campus to corral people in. Police brutality had been witnessed -- folks being thrown to the ground and shot with rubber bullets, media being pepper-sprayed and gassed. There have been 48 confirmed arrests (an estimated 175 arrests total) with more reports still coming in. Protesters and students alike are being held in the dorm towers unable to leave in fear of being arrested; other students cannot cross 5th Ave. to get to their residences without being thrown to the ground.
I got a chance to talk to several students who had never seen anything like this in their lives. It was really interesting hearing people say "F_ck the Police", people who you would never expect to hear this from! Even some more conservative students that I talked to, were really angry too and just confused.
What is most striking about being here is seeing the incredible police repression both Thursday and Friday night in Oakland, a neighborhood which houses U. of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University, two universities with mostly white, mostly middle class students. As Larry Holmes commented during our Tent City, at any given normal day the police usually target and harass the Black community, but these two days not only are they (Black people) under normal occupation, but the police are targeting young white folks.
Sept. 25 quotes from students on police violence:
"People have been saying mostly that the violence and any disruption by the protest were small fraction, most protesters were peaceful. It was the police who started the violence and ended up finishing the violence. ... It felt like a war zone. The police became more and violent, taking over more and more of the street. I couldn't get to my house even until 3am on Thursday. I saw there multiple people that needed to have pepper spray washed out of their eyes. The police wouldn't let students cross the street or enter their dorm rooms. I saw violent use of police dogs that were used to intimidate."
- Sean O'Sullivan, senior at University of Pittsburgh
"The night before in the same location there was a mass arrest of people walking by who were thrown to the ground, maced and arrested. We were gathering there because kids in a march earlier were there. We didn’t want to march tonight; we wanted to chill and have a nice night. As we did that, more cops surrounded area…We hopped the fence to get out over the hill... as we were doing that, that police officer was beating down a fence with his nightstick to get over it; a reporter got maced in face and we brought him to steps of chapel and we were distracted. They swarmed around us and arrested the guy who was injured; he could barely breathe, trying to get him away from crowd. As kids tried to run away they picked us off one by one. [The police told a woman] to shut the fuck up and get off the goddamn phone. As she was trying to say goodbye, he grabbed her by head and slammed her head into the ground. They were being way forceful and too aggressive. They put on handcuffs way too tight. They had us sit down for awhile and wouldn't tell us what was going on. They put us in two lines for males and females. From that point they took our photos, held out papers in front of our face with another cop. They searched us, put us in vans and wouldn't tell us what was going on. They wouldn't read us our rights; they only had snarky comments to say to us. We were in transportation vans for about three hours; then we got to the State Correctional Facility where we were in the van for another five hours still with plastic handcuffs on. They turned up the air conditioning to 55 degrees to make us feel as uncomfortable as possible. There were girls on periods that they would not let go to bathroom; there were girls in tears because of how bad they had to pee. You can get urinary tract infection or Toxic Shock Syndrome. We were there until 6:30 in the morning. Then they searched us, had us take off all our jewelry but our hands were swollen from cuffs and they were being real aggressive taking off rings. As soon as we stepped off the bus, a guy was holding my arm and a cop said "Say G-20" and snapped my picture. They didn't tell us where we were going or how long that we would be there. They didn't answer any questions we had."
--Jillian Dowis, sophomore at Ohio University
VIDEOS OF POLICE REPRESSION:
college students trapped in stairwell and gassed, attacked
http://celluloidblonde.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/land-of-the-free/
police assault couple in street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlD9QKZdPhE&feature=player_embedded
Police pose while taking picture of arrested student
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-333880
front line of resistance on Thursday afternoon, youth hurl dumpster at cops
http://www.youtube.com/v/ia0wVU3RHkI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1
The permitted People’s March on G-20 attracted an estimated 10,000 people, largely young people. The organizers, the People's Voices coalition, held two rallies during the march.
Following the closing down of the Tent City on the Hill in the morning, the Bail Out the People Movement organized a speak-out and then a contingent at Freedom Corner, which fed into the People’s March.
BOPM’s Larry Holmes spoke at the first rally where he defended the youth who were brutally attacked by the police on Sept. 24 in downtown Pittsburgh. BOPM’s Cheryl LaBash spoke at the second rally on the crisis in Honduras. The March organizers asked the BOPM contingent and its banner, “Message to G-20 - WE NEED JOBS NOW" with photos of Dr. Martin Luther King, to lead the second leg of the march.
Eyewitness report from Dante Strobino:
On Friday night, I was near U. of Pitt around 10:00 when we saw a huge crowd of about over 1000 students, most of which were not political at all and certainly not involved in G-20 protests, gathered in Schenedy Park where there was a concert going on with acoustic and rock bands as part of G-20 protest events. The police began to occupy the park and forcefully removed everyone from the park. As students began to gather around to check it out, the riot police got more hyped up. There were no chants, no signs, no banners, no folks dressed in black and no provocation and the police threw several tear gas and smoke bombs at the crowd again and pushed them further back down commercial streets where there bars and restaurants. They also began chasing people into the huge dormitory towers and attacking students as they left. Students were hanging out the windows, taking pictures in awe.
Forbes St. was blocked off by hundreds of riot cops while surrounding contingents of cops moved in on the other areas of the campus to corral people in. Police brutality had been witnessed -- folks being thrown to the ground and shot with rubber bullets, media being pepper-sprayed and gassed. There have been 48 confirmed arrests (an estimated 175 arrests total) with more reports still coming in. Protesters and students alike are being held in the dorm towers unable to leave in fear of being arrested; other students cannot cross 5th Ave. to get to their residences without being thrown to the ground.
I got a chance to talk to several students who had never seen anything like this in their lives. It was really interesting hearing people say "F_ck the Police", people who you would never expect to hear this from! Even some more conservative students that I talked to, were really angry too and just confused.
What is most striking about being here is seeing the incredible police repression both Thursday and Friday night in Oakland, a neighborhood which houses U. of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University, two universities with mostly white, mostly middle class students. As Larry Holmes commented during our Tent City, at any given normal day the police usually target and harass the Black community, but these two days not only are they (Black people) under normal occupation, but the police are targeting young white folks.
Sept. 25 quotes from students on police violence:
"People have been saying mostly that the violence and any disruption by the protest were small fraction, most protesters were peaceful. It was the police who started the violence and ended up finishing the violence. ... It felt like a war zone. The police became more and violent, taking over more and more of the street. I couldn't get to my house even until 3am on Thursday. I saw there multiple people that needed to have pepper spray washed out of their eyes. The police wouldn't let students cross the street or enter their dorm rooms. I saw violent use of police dogs that were used to intimidate."
- Sean O'Sullivan, senior at University of Pittsburgh
"The night before in the same location there was a mass arrest of people walking by who were thrown to the ground, maced and arrested. We were gathering there because kids in a march earlier were there. We didn’t want to march tonight; we wanted to chill and have a nice night. As we did that, more cops surrounded area…We hopped the fence to get out over the hill... as we were doing that, that police officer was beating down a fence with his nightstick to get over it; a reporter got maced in face and we brought him to steps of chapel and we were distracted. They swarmed around us and arrested the guy who was injured; he could barely breathe, trying to get him away from crowd. As kids tried to run away they picked us off one by one. [The police told a woman] to shut the fuck up and get off the goddamn phone. As she was trying to say goodbye, he grabbed her by head and slammed her head into the ground. They were being way forceful and too aggressive. They put on handcuffs way too tight. They had us sit down for awhile and wouldn't tell us what was going on. They put us in two lines for males and females. From that point they took our photos, held out papers in front of our face with another cop. They searched us, put us in vans and wouldn't tell us what was going on. They wouldn't read us our rights; they only had snarky comments to say to us. We were in transportation vans for about three hours; then we got to the State Correctional Facility where we were in the van for another five hours still with plastic handcuffs on. They turned up the air conditioning to 55 degrees to make us feel as uncomfortable as possible. There were girls on periods that they would not let go to bathroom; there were girls in tears because of how bad they had to pee. You can get urinary tract infection or Toxic Shock Syndrome. We were there until 6:30 in the morning. Then they searched us, had us take off all our jewelry but our hands were swollen from cuffs and they were being real aggressive taking off rings. As soon as we stepped off the bus, a guy was holding my arm and a cop said "Say G-20" and snapped my picture. They didn't tell us where we were going or how long that we would be there. They didn't answer any questions we had."
--Jillian Dowis, sophomore at Ohio University
VIDEOS OF POLICE REPRESSION:
college students trapped in stairwell and gassed, attacked
http://celluloidblonde.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/land-of-the-free/
police assault couple in street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlD9QKZdPhE&feature=player_embedded
Police pose while taking picture of arrested student
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-333880
front line of resistance on Thursday afternoon, youth hurl dumpster at cops
http://www.youtube.com/v/ia0wVU3RHkI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1
Day 5 - September 24
Day 5-Sept. 24
The following special report was written by Dante Strobino from Raleigh Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) youth group who attended this protest:
Over a thousand people gathered in Arsenal Park in Pittsburgh to resist the G-20 countries meeting in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center downtown. Young activists representing struggles against racism, gentrification, imperialist wars, gender oppression and environmental destruction gathered together in an effort coordinated by the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project. Protesters began their march through a working class neighborhood of Lawrenceville towards a bridge to get into downtown. The march continued down Liberty Avenue in an unpermitted demonstration taking over the streets with banners that read “No Hope in Capitalism”, “No Bailout, No Capitalism” and “No borders, No banks”.
Protesters were eventually stopped at the bottom of the street by police who confronted them with high frequency sound blasts and orders to disperse. Protesters then redoubled back and confronted cops again in the middle of a residential community. As resistance continued to mount up, anarchists grabbed a dumpster on wheels and hauled it down the hill directly into the police barricade, not harming anyone. The police reacted with more violence by attacking the entire neighborhood with several canisters of OC gas, Oleoresin Capsicum, a new police weapon meant to cause temporary blindness and breathing pain. From then on many different groups broke away in different directions and some marched together back towards Oakland, the neighborhood which houses University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.
Police had been bused in from dozens of states including states as far away as Arizona and Florida, along with National Guard and SWAT units. Armed guards with camouflage humvees were stationed at every exit of the beltline around the city, blocking off entry. Most all businesses downtown including cell phone stores, apparel store, banks and restaurants were completely boarded up following Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s suggestions, putting many workers out of work for the two days while the G-20 meets. At the universities and museums all monuments were also boarded up or covered with bags to continue to promote an atmosphere of fear. Police had to be hauled around town in several city and school buses to head off protesters. Department of Homeland Security and police helicopters have been roaring overhead the city since Wednesday night.
On their way back to Oakland through the Birchwood neighborhood a few windows were broken by protesters including a cop car window, a window at a PNC bank, BNY Mellon bank and at a BMW dealership, all of which symbolically represent institutions that are responsible for the economic crisis. A few hundred protesters continued to take the streets and make their voices heard throughout the evening. At one point, the protesters stopped the police with a stream of projectiles. Police responded with brutal blows of bean bags, causing injuries. Protesters defended themselves by blockading the street with a large chain link fence obstructing the road.
At 10 p.m. BASH BACK! organized a protest for LGBTQ liberation in Oakland near Carnegie Mellon University. Nearby at University of Pittsburgh students were gathered close to the bridge to Schenley Park, where Obama had earlier visited Phipps conservatory.
Heavy-handed police repression ensued, including the usual electronic dispersal order and tear gas, but this only attracted more and more protesters and onlookers, and soon the crowd numbered up to 1000. Reports described students with t-shirts wrapped around their faces chanting “beer pong!” and “LET’S GO PITT!”
Through the next couple hours cops were chasing students into their dorms, attacking people leaving the bars and arresting folks who were not earlier participating in protests. By the end of the night more than 60 were arrested.
NLG Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement
National Lawyers Guild Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement
For Immediate Release-September 25, 2009
Contact: Paige Cram, Communications Coordinator, 609-668-0645
Pittsburgh-National Lawyers Guild members witnessed first-hand yesterday the unwarranted display and use of force by police in residential neighborhoods, often far from any protest activity.
Police deployed chemical irritants, including CS gas, and long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) in residential neighborhoods on narrow streets where families and small children were exposed. Scores of riot police formed barricades at many intersections throughout neighborhoods miles away from the downtown area and the David Lawrence Convention Center. Outside the Courtyard Marriott in Shadyside, police deployed smoke bombs in the absence of protest activity, forcing bystanders and hotel residents to flee the area.
Later, while some protests were ending, riot-clad officers surrounded an area at the University of Pittsburgh, creating an ominous spectacle that some described as akin to Kent State. Guild legal observers witnessed police chasing and arresting many uninvolved students.
Among other questionable tactics, officers from dozens of law enforcement agencies lacked easily-identifiable badges, impeding citizens' ability to register complaints.
Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, said: "Accountability and chain of command is virtually impossible to establish given the lack of visible individual identifying badges on officers. The small, paper armband badges that law enforcement are wearing are difficult to read, and many wore black chest coverings with absolutely no identifying information. We've seen many law enforcement personnel, including Pittsburgh Police Department officers, deliberately covering up the arm IDs by rolling their shirt sleeves up over them."
The National Lawyers Guild is a progressive bar association, founded in 1937, with chapters in every state. Its national mass defense program includes education about laws and practices that affect individuals engaging in dissent, criminal defense of protesters and civil litigation to curb unconstitutional police practices, and its legal observing program. Resources detailing police tactics are available on the Guild's website, www.nlg.org, including Punishing Protest and The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent.
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Resistance continues as police attack G20 protesters
For continuous updates, visit:
Bail Out the People Movement blog
Updates, photos and video from the protests and tent city
http://bailoutthepeoplemovement.blogspot.com/
G-Infinity: a project of Pittsburgh Independent Media Center
Real-time field reports, photos, audio, and video recordings
http://indypgh.org/g20/#k-d2032883ddd6d8c7
Bail Out the People Movement blog
Updates, photos and video from the protests and tent city
http://bailoutthepeoplemovement.blogspot.com/
G-Infinity: a project of Pittsburgh Independent Media Center
Real-time field reports, photos, audio, and video recordings
http://indypgh.org/g20/#k-d2032883ddd6d8c7
Tent City Day 4 -- Wed. Sept 23 -- 100's attend UE Peoples Voices forum and Honduras briefing by Lucius Walker
The Tent City is growing. More tents have been pitched and the number of camp participants is now over 100 people, most of them young, who are upset and angry about the G-20 policies. Tent City organizers continue to orient the new comers to the history of Tent City and the importance of respect for the surrounding community.
At the same time, community support has continued to grow. Cars from the surrounding area stop by with donations of water and food and residents on foot have come out to check out what's happening.
Camp organizing was well underway when the "People's Voices" forum organized by the United Electrical Workers and Grassroots Global Justice began in the late afternoon. Close to 500 people packed the church sanctuary.
500 PEOPLE PACK THE CHURCH SANCTUARY
The program included Leo Gerard, Intl. Pres. United Steelworkers; Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate Economist; Emira Wood, Institute for Policy Studies; Berta Caceres, Coordinator, Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indigenas de Honduras; Tammy Bang Liu, Labor/community strategy center & Grassroots Global Justice Alliance; Carl Redwood Jr., Hill District consensus group; and Rev. John Welsh.
Leo Gerard struck a note with the crowd when he proclaimed that the time is NOW for a movement for jobs. Gerard toured the Tent City of unemployed workers and their supporters before speaking at the forum.
LUCIUS WALKER, PASTORS FOR PEACE, BRIEFS TENT CITY PARTICIPANTS ON SITUATION IN HONDURAS
After pouring out of the first forum, participants went to the church hall for dinner. At dinner, Lucius Walker from Pastors for Peace gave the group a briefing on the critical situation in Honduras. As a result of the discussion it was decided that the Tent City would do its best to oppose any attempt by the coup government to move against ousted President Zelaya and his supporters.
Tent City Day 3 -- Tues Sept 22 -- March on Mellon Corporation HQ
Hours before the protest occurred, a discussion took place at the Tent City focused on "Fulfilling King's Dream of a Right to a Job For All" which included the global jobless crisis. Later on in the evening, a discussion was held in the Monumental Baptist Church on the case of Georgia prisoner, Troy Davis, organized by the Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
Tent City Day 2 -- Monday Sept 21 -- Workshops
Three workshops took place in the Tent City on "Global Solidarity: Unions, Communities and Movements Working Together", "Connecting The Issues: Housing Is A Right" and a Student and Youth discussion. Following the dinner break, a documentary, "In Prison My Whole Life" on the case of political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was shown in Monumental Baptist Church. The film was sponsored by the Pittsburgh Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition. Pam Africa from International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal updated the audience on Mumia's case.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article: Tent City Continues to Grow
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW ARTICLE:
Hill District tent city continues to grow as protesters plan demonstrations
By Jason Cato and Margaret Harding
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Hill District tent city continues to grow as protesters plan demonstrations
By Jason Cato and Margaret Harding
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Crews overnight erected crowd-control fences on streets around the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in preparation for the Group of 20 economic summit.
Workers placed tall metal fences along Penn Avenue near the convention center and Grant Street near the Federal Building, Downtown, and around Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland. G-20 meetings begin Thursday.
Across town, a group of protesters in the Hill District said they expected an influx of people to join their temporary tent city before world leaders arrive for the summit.
"We're going to have to rearrange," said Cheryl LaBash, an organizer with Bail Out The People, as she mingled with campers about 2 a.m. Population at the tent city on Wylie Avenue stood about 60 strong, she said.
"I think it's really been terrific," said LaBash, 60, a retired road construction inspector for the city of Detroit. "The reason we're here with all the violence baiting and the G-20 and what they say is to make people remember those without jobs."
Protesters at the camp — who represent several organizations — came from across the country, including California, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina and Washington D.C.
John Parker, 49, drove from Los Angeles to join Bail Out The People and highlight the need for jobs.
"It's important for us to come here," Parker said. "(World leaders are) supposed to make things better, and things have gotten worse. They're enriching themselves."
Representatives from the Minneapolis-based Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign joined the tent city to voice the plight of the homeless. The Rev. Bruce Wright of the Refuge Ministries in Tampa said most of the people in his group are homeless or recently have been, and they came to Pittsburgh to show the world "we're no longer going to be silent."
"What we're trying to do is bring forth our belief that housing, jobs and health care are human rights," Wright said.
Hill District residents have donated water and food and have been supportive of the site, Parker said.
He dismissed worries about upcoming marches becoming violent.
"It's funny, with all these things where folks gather, the authorities put these stories out there that there's going to be violence," Parker said. "They're just trying to scare people from coming out and protesting."
LaBash joked about being considered an "outside agitator."
"I'm 60 years old. I'm retired, and I own a house," she said. "We're not scary. You may not agree with us always, but it's not the way it has been played up."
Some campers participated in a demonstration Tuesday outside BNY Mellon headquarters, Downtown, to protest bank foreclosures. Today, campers will hold a panel discussion at Monumental Baptist Church on Wylie Avenue that will spotlight how G-20 policies affect communities.
Several groups, including Bail Out The People, marched Sunday in the Hill District to demonstrate the need for more jobs.
Another yet-to-be-announced march is planned, and LaBash said her group also would participate in the People's March planned for Friday.
"We're participating in all the events," LaBash said. "We stand in solidarity with others who stand against the G-20 and what it represents."
Tent City In Solidarity with Unemployed Continues to Grow
TENT CITY IN PITTSBURGH IN SOLIDARITY WITH UNEMPLOYED GROWING DAILY
More than 100 residents as of Wednesday, September 23
More than 100 residents as of Wednesday, September 23
The Tent City in Solidarity with the Unemployed erected in Pittsburgh this past Sunday has now grown to over 100 occupants, eating and sleeping in tents through the week of the G20 summit. On Tuesday evening 30 new people with knapsacks, tents and sleeping bags arrived at the Tent City, which is located in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, an African American community that borders on downtown Pittsburgh. 20 of the new arrivals were part of a caravan in solidarity with the homeless that originated in Philadelphia.
Tent City organizers are now rearranging the tent city so it can accommodate more people. In addition to the scores of small tents that people are sleeping in, the Tent City has now set up 2 large tents for people who did not bring their own. The organizers expect between 60 and 100 new people to come to stay in the Tent City today.
All of the occupants of the Tent City are being fed three nutritious meals every day from food donated by local small businesses and food pantries. Hill community residents are constantly driving by to drop off a wide variety of necessities and supplies including food, water, cookies, toothpaste, napkins, and much more.
Yesterday, protesters from the Tent City went to Downtown Pittsburgh to hold a demonstration in front of the Mellon Center, the international headquarters of the Mellon Bank, to demand a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. That demonstration was joined by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who is in Pittsburgh to participate in G20-related protests.
Today at 3:30 PM, the Tent City will host a forum on the G20. Participants in the forum will include Leo Gerard, President of the United Steel Workers International Union. The USW is headquartered in Pittsburgh.
After the G20 forum, the Tent City will host a briefing on the current critical situation in Honduras. The briefing will be given by Rev. Lucius Walker, the leader of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, who has been in constant contact with leaders and groups involved in resisting the coup in Honduras.
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW ARTICLE:
Hill District tent city continues to grow as protesters plan demonstrations
Hill District tent city continues to grow as protesters plan demonstrations
Pittsburgh looking to steel limelight with G-20 summit
Still, protesters could outnumber police by 10 to one if everyone who plans to demonstrate in the city shows up.
That list includes John Parker, of South Central Los Angeles, who rented an SUV last week, loaded it with four friends and drove across the country to Pittsburgh. He arrived Saturday and pitched his tent with a group called Bail Out the People, which plans several marches to demand jobs.
"We have to do it for our own survival," Parker said.
"It's like we have no choice. It's either be depressed and demoralized or fight back." full article here
Struggle for jobs comes to G-20
More than 1,000 protesters marched through the streets here on Sept. 20 demanding a real jobs program, like the public works program the Roosevelt administration enacted during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
It was the first demonstration related to the G-20 summit, a gathering of Treasury officials and central bankers from 20 countries that is to take place in the city later in the week. The goal of the G-20 is to protect bank profits. The goal of the March for Jobs is to revive Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for the right of all to a job. The march was organized by the Bail Out the People Movement and the Rev. Thomas E. Smith, pastor of the Monumental Baptist Church, and endorsed by the United Steelworkers union and the United Electrical Workers.
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The march garnered coverage and interest from major big-business media, both nationally and locally, including the Associated Press, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, the French Press Agency and others. Organizers of the march attributed the media interest to the fact that the march addressed the crisis of joblessness and its devastating impact on the Black community.
People came from cities throughout the country to join a significant number of Pittsburgh area residents for the march. The cities represented included Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Cleveland, Akron, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Miami, New York, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Providence, the North Carolina Triangle area and Boston. Many have been laid off or lost their homes to foreclosures. Despite the crisis, people were spirited, drawing strength from being together and from building a movement.
“In honor of Martin Luther King we are continuing what he started in uniting people together in a poor people’s campaign,” the Rev. Tom Smith, pastor of Monumental Baptist Church and one of the organizers of the march, told the rally. “The G-20 is structuring deals to protect the corporations and not the workers. It’s time for the workers to come together and make a difference.”
People gathered in the morning at Monumental Baptist Church located in the historic African-American Hill district of Pittsburgh. A tent city dedicated to the unemployed had been set up next to the church the day before. Many of the protesters will stay at the tent city throughout the week with more people expected to join as the G-20 summit opens.
An opening rally was held before the march stepped off at about 2:30. People marched carrying hundreds of placards with the image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and chanting, “We got the right! We got the right to a job!” The march ended at Freedom Corner, where in 1963 people got on buses to go to the historic civil rights march in Washington, D.C.
Larry Holmes, an organizer of the Bail Out the People Movement, said the government claims a jobless recovery is on the horizon. He emphasized that this is unacceptable. “A jobless recovery is like a dead patient after a successful operation,” he said.
Monica Moorehead of the organization Millions for Mumia recognized the more than two million people in prison who couldn’t be at the demonstration. She introduced a taped message from political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
At the closing rally, Fred Redmond, United Steelworkers vice president, noted the need for universal health care and affordable education as well as jobs for all. “Enough of our kids are going to school where the rats outnumber the computers,” he said. “We have to assure that every child receives an education to equip them for the 21st century.”
Other speakers at the two rallies included Oscar Hernandez, a participant in the 11-month Stella D’Oro bakery strike in New York City; Clarence Thomas, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 and Million Worker March Movement; Brenda Stokely and Jennifer Jones, NYC Coalition in Solidarity with Katrina/Rita Survivors; Rob Robinson, Picture the Homeless; Rosemary Williams, Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign; Mick Kelly, Coalition for a Peoples Bailout; Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council; John Parker, Bail Out the People Movement organizer in Los Angeles; Sandra Hines, Michigan Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs; Rokhee Devastali, Feminist Students United, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart; Larry Hales, FIST (Fight Imperialism Stand Together); Larry Adams, People’s Organization for Progress; Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Victor Toro, an immigrant facing deportation and member of the May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights; Berna Ellorin, BAYAN-USA; Father Luis Barrios, Pastors for Peace; Kali Akuno, U.S. Human Rights Network; and Pennsylvania state Sen. Jim Ferlo.
Why people came to Pittsburgh
The march was a powerful draw for people, many of whom traveled long distances to be part of the event. Strikers from TRW Automotive, a seatbelt-making plant in Mexico, had been in Detroit speaking out about their struggle when they heard about the protest in Pittsburgh and joined the bus from Detroit. One member of the TRW group, Israel Mouroig of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, said it was necessary to forge alliances at the international level. “Corporations that generate billions of dollars a year produced the crisis in our country,” he said. “There is a lack of jobs because they see the working class as robots, as numbers. We have to appropriate the means of production and be the actors of our own history.”
Several people drove from Los Angeles, including Guy Anthony, who lost his job as an organizer with the Service Employees union in June. Now living in his car, he has traveled around the country writing a blog about his experiences (thedistantdrummer.com). “You can’t talk about joblessness without talking about homelessness,” Anthony said. He met people in Seattle who had set up “a fabulous tent city” on church property. He also stayed with people who set up a homeless community at a roadside stop off of Route 280 south of San Francisco. “You couldn’t want better neighbors,” he said. “Nobody went hungry. It was a beautiful socialist community.” The county recently shut the group down.
A large contingent from the Boston School Bus Drivers union, USW Local 8751, including Gary Murchison, former three-term president of the local, and Frantz Mendes, current president, showed up three days before the march to help organize and build the tent city.
Detroit activists, who organized a hugely successful tent city in June, brought a busload of people to Pittsburgh. “We had to be here,” said Sandra Hines of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition. “We have to mobilize, organize before they take every right we have away from us.” Latonya Lloyd, who was part of the Detroit delegation, recently battled the shut-off of utilities at the Highland Towers apartment building.
Mary Kay Harris came with about 40 other people on a bus from Rhode Island. A member of DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality), Harris said that as soon as they heard about the March for Jobs they decided they had to be there. Rhode Island, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, has a tent city of the homeless. “We feel that solidarity is the most important thing,” she said.
Activists in Cleveland also brought a busload of people, including a large contingent from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. And a group of 18 youth came from North Carolina, including Tracy Gill, a member of FIST who said this was the first big protest she had ever been to.
Members of the Minnesota People’s Bailout Coalition also came to the march. Angel Buechner said the organization had fought for legislation last year that would have provided immediate jobs or income and a moratorium on foreclosures and on the state’s five-year limit on receiving welfare. But Gov. Tim Pawlenty defeated the measure. Despite the setback, Buechner is ready to continue the battle.
At the ending rally at Freedom Corner, Holmes announced—to the approval of the crowd—that the next step is to build a national march for jobs in Washington next April to continue Dr. King’s dream.
Anti-G20 activists accuse Pittsburgh police of harassment
Anti-G20 activists accuse Pittsburgh police of harassment
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — Tensions were running high in this former steel town Tuesday as anti-G20 protesters accused the police of using heavy-handed tactics to discourage them from rallying against this week's summit of world leaders.
A handful of activists were arrested overnight Monday, and volunteer medics, who are in Pittsburgh to provide care to any demonstrators who might be injured during anti-G20 protests on Thursday and Friday, complained of "harassment at the space where they are staying in Polish Hill."
"We've had a couple of reports of people being arrested and given citations on the spot and then being released. And Seeds of Peace, which has a bus on which they cook food (for the demonstrators), had one person arrested," a man called Morgan, who works on a legal hotline set up by ResistG20.org, told AFP.
"It seems pretty clear that the harassment is designed to intimidate people out of exercising their First Amendment rights," said Morgan, who asked not to give his last name.
The first amendment of the United States constitution guarantees free speech and the right to peaceably assemble.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday filed a lawsuit on behalf of Seeds of Peace and the Three Rivers Climate Convergence (3RCC) group against the Pittsburgh police bureau.
The complaint, which was filed in a Pennsylvania district court, accuses the police department and several individual officers of harassing anti-G20 activists in a bid to discourage them from taking part in protests on Thursday and Friday, when world leaders are due to hold talks in this once rough-and-tumble US steel town.
"City of Pittsburgh police have engaged in a pattern of illegal searches, vehicle seizures, raids and detentions of 'Seeds of Peace' members," the suit said.
According to the lawsuit, in the early hours of Monday "more than 30 Pittsburgh police officers with semi-automatic weapons" raided a private property in the Lawrenceville neighborhood where Seeds of Peace had parked its food preparation bus.
After the activists refused to allow the police to search the bus or the property it was on because they did not have a warrant, four Seeds of Peace members were detained for nearly two hours on loitering charges, the suit said.
The four, who were detained while walking to their lodgings, were subsequently released without charge, the complaint said.
No one was available for comment at the Pittsburgh police bureau.
Protesters have said they plan to air their opposition to "the undemocratic way in which the G20 operates and the decisions the group makes, which affect the more than six billion inhabitants of this planet."
Most of the groups taking part in the protests say they will be staging non-violent demonstrations of their opposition to the G20.
But residents, officials and security forces fear that violent demonstrations such as those seen in 1999 in Seattle -- where protesters and riot police faced off for days, disrupting a meeting of the World Trade Organization -- or at the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy in 2001, will mar this week's Pittsburgh summit.
Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has called in 4,000 highly-trained federal police officers to back up local security forces.
To prepare protesters for the summit, the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Group is holding a health and safety workshop on Wednesday, at which activists will learn "how to survive 6,000 riot cops and come out swinging."
Activist groups around Pittsburgh have been organizing housing for the thousands of demonstrators from around the world who are expected to stream into the city for the summit.
On the eve of the summit on Wednesday, workers and environmentalist movements will hold a concert, which 10,000 people are expected to attend, Patrick Young, a member of the anarchist Pittsburgh Organizing Group, told AFP.
The following day around 1,000 people are expected to march towards the summit venue in a protest organized by Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project (PGRP).
"They have not applied for a permit, nor have they pre-emptively been offered one," said Young.
And on Friday, as the summit winds down, protesters have been called to take part in the main anti-G20 event: a mass march on "institutions that pepper the landscape where the G20's worldview manifests... the places that symbolize the kind of world the G20 works to protect and sustain," the PGRP website says.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.G20 Third Day of Protests
Sunday: March for Jobs
Monday: "Organizing the global struggle for jobs & workers rights"
workshop at the Tent City
Occupants of the Bail Out the People Movement Tent City will be marching from Freedom Corner (the intersection of Centre Avenue and Crawford Street) to the Mellon Corporation Headquarters (500 Grant Street) at 4:30 to demand a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Participants in the march will include homeless and unemployed people from across the U.S., trade union activists, community organizers and local residents.
The Tent City kicked off Sunday with a spirited March for Jobs, with more than 1,000 protesters marching through the streets of Pittsburgh in the first G-20-related demonstration. Carrying hundreds of placards bearing the image of Dr. Martin Luther King, and slogans such as “Fight for the right to a job,” the long march was enthusiastically greeted on the streets of Pittsburgh by Sunday worshipers getting out of church, many of whom joined the march.
Rev. Thomas E. Smith, pastor of Monumental Baptist Church and one of the organizers of the march, told the rally, “We must tell the G-20 leaders that we reject the notion of a jobless recovery. An economic recovery that leaves unemployment in the double digits adds insult to injury to all who have lost their jobs and their homes during this terrible economic crisis, both in this country and around the world.”
Buses of protesters came from New York, Rhode Island, Detroit, Cleveland, and other places. Vans and cars and caravans came from literally every part of the country, as far away as Boston, Florida and Los Angeles. Joining the many who came from out of town were a large turnout of Pittsburgh residents, especially those who live in the historic African-American section of Pittsburgh called the Hill district, where the march was mounted from.
The end of the march was Freedom Corner, near downtown Pittsburgh, where there is a monument to Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders and activists. Amongst the many speakers at Sunday's rally were: Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council; Rakhee Devastali, Feminist Students United, UNC-Chapel Hill; Oscar Hernandez, participant in the 11-month Stella D’Oro bakery strike in New York City;Sandra Hines, Mich. Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions; Larry Holmes, Bail Out the People Movement; John Parker, Bail Out the People Movement activist, who brought a van of people from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh; Fred Redmond, vice-president, United Steelworkers; Lynne Stewart, civil rights attorney, target of government repression; Brenda Stokely and Jennifer Jones, NYC Coalition in Solidarity with Katrina/Rita Survivors; Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10, San Francisco and Million Worker March Movement; Victor Toro, an immigrant facing deportation with the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Workers Rights; Rosemary Williams, homeowner fighting foreclosure in Minnesota; and Rev. Bruce Wright, Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign.
After the march and rally, hundreds of protesters returned to the rally’s beginning point, Monumental Baptist Church in the Hill district, and began to prepare their tents to prepare to live in a tent city dedicated to the unemployed of the world that will stand next to the church for the entire week of the G-20 summit.
The tent city is full of tents and hundreds of residents. Organizers expect the population of the tent city to grow as the opening of the G-20summit grows closer. Throughout all three days of the Tent City, local Pittsburgh residents have been coming by to donate food and water and to express their support for the demand for a real jobs program.
A full schedule of the various forums and teach-ins that will take place at the tent city each day is available online at bailoutpeople.org.
Support the March for Jobs & Tent City in Pittsburgh - Donate at http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml
Videos of the Tent City and March for Jobs:
http://kdka.com/local/g20/tent.city.protest.2.1196577.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkUxvX5JNJg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx-n2DrLrJw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-fCmmxZd6Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCnBqnB7j-o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIVoFbILRIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoNtah2Fkcs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjg-FtB5xEY
Slideshow
http://www.examiner.com/x-23318-Pittsburgh-Photojournalist-Examiner~y2009m9d21-G20-protests-begin-in-earnest-with-march-in-Hill-District
Media Coverage
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125348613742626219.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE58J1MR20090920
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09264/999586-482.stm
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_644179.html
A tale of two cities in Pittsburgh
Sept. 16—As the G-20 Summit prepares to descend upon Pittsburgh, the city has been thrust into the spotlight, and is being highlighted for its “commitment to employing new and green technology to further economic recovery and development.” It has been and is being denoted as the city that got it right, where pollution has been eroded, the rivers cleaned, and the jobs in industry have thoroughly been replaced.
But this is farce. The changes are superficial and the most oppressed workers have not recovered from the loss of steel jobs; this fact is most clearly seen in neighborhoods like the Hill District.
While the dignitaries that represent the G-20 countries are shown a “revitalized” downtown Pittsburgh, they will not see the conditions of neighborhoods that surround downtown.
As far as gatherings go, the starkest contrast in Pittsburgh during the G-20 Summit week will be between the glamour and glitz of the summit, the primped and polished downtown hotels where world leaders and finance ministers will stay, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Hill—about a mile away from the G-20 Summit convention—where those protesting unemployment will be sleeping in a tent city.
Following a march for jobs on Sept. 20, protesters will live on the Hill throughout the week until the end of the G-20 Summit. The Hill is one of the oldest, poorest, most renowned and besieged African-American neighborhoods in the country.
Once known for its nightlife and jazz clubs, today the streets of the Hill—where famed playwright August Wilson was born—have more than a few boarded houses and failed restaurants, small businesses and neighborhood stores. Parts of the Hill look more like the poorest neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince or the Gaza Strip than a U.S. city.
Most young people of working age who live on the Hill are not only unemployed, most have never had a job, and there are fewer and fewer low wage jobs available to them. From as far back as the mid-1950s, real estate interests have been working hard to push the native poor and working-class inhabitants out of the Hill to make way for the more well-to-do. While that process is not over, the rich, right now, are winning the war for control of the Hill.
I was not born in Pittsburgh, but in another part of western Pennsylvania—Erie, Pa.—where the conditions are different but similar. I was born in 1976 and spent my first 15 years there. My parents worked in factories, my mother making ceramics and my father still for GE Transportations, where he is anticipating retiring after 40 long years making locomotives and locomotive parts.
Both of my parents migrated to Erie from southern Mississippi. They were in their late teens, and neither had a high school education. During the period when my parents migrated from the South, there were many thousands more Black people who did the same, fleeing the repressive and racist conditions in the South in hopes of better paying jobs and better social relations.
By the time I became cognitively aware, conditions in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio had already begun to change. The well-paying jobs in the factories were beginning to dry up, and working people in what has now become known as the Rust Belt were being cast off from their jobs in the tens of thousands as deindustrialization set in, sweeping the land like a foreboding cloud of doom.
I can recall the looks on the faces of children I attended school with. Their parents would lose their jobs, and though as children we could not completely comprehend the consequences of our parents’ unemployment, the despair on their faces was enough. It’s like a child who falls but looks around for the reaction of the adults before deciding whether to laugh or cry.
I was not aware then—few of the children of factories workers really were—of what was happening in Pittsburgh, the shuttering of steel plants because of technology or outsourcing. Pittsburgh is much larger than Erie, and has a richer history of struggle, but is also a city that had long been under the sway of the Mellons, Carnegies and other super-rich who made their fortunes off of the exploitation of working people, even hiring armed thugs like the Pinkertons to shoot down striking workers.
Pittsburgh, like Erie and most U.S. Midwest cities where 20 percent of the population is Black, is largely segregated. But at least Black people had the Hill. Back in the day, the Hill was the place that Black steelworkers could make a better life for their families than their parents could make for them. The hope of those on the Hill who are trying to hold on to all they have is that the jobs march and tent city will help them even the odds a little against the gentry.
People from as far away as North Carolina, New York, Miami, Detroit, Minneapolis and even California will be meeting on the Hill in front of Monumental Baptist Church at Wylie and Soho Streets at 2 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 20, for the march for jobs. The marchers, who are expected to be in the thousands, will march to Freedom Corner at Crawford and Centre Streets where there is a monument to civil rights activists and leaders.
After Black residents were pushed out of what was once called the lower Hill to make way for the development of a stadium, Freedom Corner is where the Black community rose up and proclaimed that the developers would not be able to push beyond that point. Freedom Corner is where thousands gathered in the summer of 1963 to board buses to travel to the historic civil rights march in Washington, D.C. It is also where angry and shocked people gathered on that terrible day in April 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
There could not be a more appropriate location in Pittsburgh for the jobs march to rally because it was Dr. King’s vision of a second civil rights movement, a movement for the right of all to decent paying jobs, that the civil rights leader dedicated the final weeks of his life to. The goal of the jobs march is to revive that vision. After the rally, many will return to Monumental Baptist Church, the site of the Bail Out the Unemployed Tent City, to get ready for their first night underneath the sky.
Hales is a native of Erie, Pa., a leader of FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together), and a regular contributor to Workers World. Posted just before the G-20 demonstrations, Hales’ commentary can be found on Real Talk Xpress, the International Action Center, fistyouth.wordpress.com and other sites and blogs.
AS UNEMPLOYMENT RISES: Momentum grows for national jobs march in Pittsburgh
“We’ve seen 20 consecutive months of job losses,” said Larry Holmes, a national organizer with the Bail Out the People Movement. “That’s more than any other time since the last Great Depression, and the official number doesn’t count those who are underemployed, incarcerated, or who have just given up looking for work.
With the Sept. 4 announcement that unemployment in the U.S. has hit an official high of 9.7 percent, organizing for the National March for Jobs on Sept. 20 in Pittsburgh and the Tent City in Solidarity with the Unemployed has reached a critical stage. Unemployed workers and their allies will be in Pittsburgh at the same time the G-20 Group of major capitalist countries will be holding their summit in that city.
“The unemployed, the homeless, the hungry and the poor must no longer be invisible and silent. On Sunday, Sept. 20, a National March for Jobs will step off from the historic Hill District in Pittsburgh just prior to the G-20 summit demand a real jobs program. Community activists from across the country are organizing buses, vans and caravans to come to Pittsburgh,” said Holmes.
Below is a sampling of some of the organizing being done around the U.S. to bring poor and working people, including the unemployed, to Pittsburgh for the jobs march and tent city.
www.bailoutpeople.org
With the Sept. 4 announcement that unemployment in the U.S. has hit an official high of 9.7 percent, organizing for the National March for Jobs on Sept. 20 in Pittsburgh and the Tent City in Solidarity with the Unemployed has reached a critical stage. Unemployed workers and their allies will be in Pittsburgh at the same time the G-20 Group of major capitalist countries will be holding their summit in that city.
“The unemployed, the homeless, the hungry and the poor must no longer be invisible and silent. On Sunday, Sept. 20, a National March for Jobs will step off from the historic Hill District in Pittsburgh just prior to the G-20 summit demand a real jobs program. Community activists from across the country are organizing buses, vans and caravans to come to Pittsburgh,” said Holmes.
Below is a sampling of some of the organizing being done around the U.S. to bring poor and working people, including the unemployed, to Pittsburgh for the jobs march and tent city.
California
California activists are busy organizing a bus to Pittsburgh for the Sept. 20 jobs march and tent city.
“Why am I organizing a bus to Pittsburgh? Because we have no choice. It’s a matter of survival,” said one of the many activists building California’s participation in the jobs march at the G-20 Summit. Because California is now reeling from the fourth largest unemployment rate in the country while legislators continue to cut basic services, this enthusiasm and determination is widespread.
In San Francisco, a resolution supporting the demonstration was unanimously passed by the San Francisco Labor Council, as well as by the S.F. Letter Carrier’s union Local 214 and Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse union.
Dave Welsh, a retired letter carrier and organizer for the jobs march, spoke about the sentiments of autoworkers in the northern California town of Fremont. He was at a protest outside a Toyota plant threatened with closure. “We went there with leaflets about the jobs march. There were about 1,000 people out there and this seemed to be the only leaflet being passed out. It got a very good response. People would look and point to it and say, ‘Right on!’’’ said Welsh.
In Los Angeles organizers are receiving calls from Riverside to San Diego asking about the bus to Pittsburgh. John Parker, an organizer with the Bail Out the People Movement, stated: “Although providing transportation to go across the country, especially for unemployed workers, is an expensive venture, we must make it happen. We want to have a delegation of participants who travel great lengths and make stops along the way to highlight California’s growing jobless and homeless plight.
“This is very important since the worsening trend in California’s economy has become a crystal ball showing the bleak future for working people in the entire country and an example of how politicians refuse to address the needs of working and poor people and instead cater to the needs of the superrich monopoly banks and corporations.”
For information about the bus from California to Pittsburgh call 323-306-6240.
Ohio
Activists in the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Akron, Warren and Youngstown are organizing to send a strong delegation to the Sept. 20 March for Jobs. Geographically they are less than a three-hour drive away. Economically they have seen the same devastation wrought by almost three decades of restructuring in steel, auto, rubber and other manufacturing industries. In all of these cities a disproportionate share of the hardship is being borne by the African-American community and all communities of color.
Recently a number of key activists came to meetings organized by the Cleveland Bail Out the People Movement chapter that featured Sharon Black, the national labor outreach coordinator for the jobs march. Attending the meetings were representatives of the New Black Panther Party, the American Friends Service Committee, Cleveland FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) and the Family Connection Center, which advocates for women receiving or losing public assistance. Joining these student and community organizers were members of the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, the Amalgamated Transit union and the American Federation of Government Employees.
The meetings generated tremendous excitement for the march—excitement that proved contagious when Cleveland BOPM distributed leaflets at the annual Labor Day parade sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Contingents of airline workers indicated that they were already aware of the march and members of the United Steelworkers said they had started organizing transportation from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. A Cleveland high school marching band expressed interest in being part of the march.
Detroit
Organizers with the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs have been in the streets and neighborhoods getting out the word about the Sept. 20 jobs march. Activists distributed thousands of leaflets at the African World Festival in downtown Detroit, at citywide protests against cuts in bus services, and at the annual Labor Day parade. Organizers report that interest was high at the Labor Day event, with many unionists expressing interest and enthusiasm. Detroit FIST activists have also been doing outreach to youth and students.
New England
Organizing is going strong in the greater Boston area and in Massachusetts in general and Rhode Island. Buses to the Sept. 20 jobs march in Pittsburgh are being organized from Boston, western Massachusetts and Rhode Island. A strong labor/community coalition is being built. Steelworkers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers union, is a member of the coalition and is subsidizing bus seats for members.
Members of the No Layoffs Campaign at Harvard University, including members of UNITE-HERE Local 26 and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, are participating and organizing. Community organizers from local neighborhood health centers and youth programs are also taking part. The Women’s Fightback Network and Boston FIST are playing a strong role.
Atlanta
A convergence of events has led to a decision to set up a tent city in solidarity with Pittsburgh on Sept. 20 on the grounds of the city hall complex in Atlanta. The Task Force for the Homeless, which has been under an escalating siege by the city administration and major downtown developers and corporations, is bringing a lawsuit against certain officials and business groups, charging them with “tortuous interference” in the financial support for their homeless shelter. Loss of funds has caused the Task Force to have its water cut off and to be on the brink of bankruptcy.
As a result of this lawsuit, they have gotten lots of documentation of collaboration between members of the mayor’s staff and Chamber of Commerce-types about planting false stories in the press, having direct contact with funders to strongly suggest they sever ties with the Task Force, etc. The lawsuit will reveal the behind-the-scenes operations of the power structure that controls Atlanta. The opening day of the lawsuit is Sept. 21.
The Task Force is initiating a tent city to be set up at noon on Sept. 20 in solidarity with the jobs march and tent city in Pittsburgh. It will include an evening cultural event and rally and a march from the tent city to the courthouse the next day for the hearing.
New York-New Jersey
The Peoples Organization for Progress recently hosted a delegation in Newark, N.J., from the Bail Out the People Movement that included Brenda Stokely and Sara Flounders. Names were gathered of POP members that plan to go to Pittsburgh.
The enthusiasm in Newark reflects the growing interest in the region. Because of this, another bus has been ordered. New York groups building for Pittsburgh or new endorsers include Picture the Homeless, the Rebel Diaz hip-hop group, Katrina/Rita survivors, the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Workers and the Iglesia San Romero in the Washington Heights area.
A leader of the Stella D’Oro strike in the Bronx, Mike Filippou, also became a convener of the jobs march and agreed to provide a speaker. Stella D’Oro workers went out on strike in August 2008 and stayed on strike until July 7, when the National Labor Relations Board voted favorably. Now the owners of Stella D’Oro, Brynwood Partners, are threatening to close the plant and move it elsewhere.
Organizers of the Pittsburgh march for jobs hope to elevate the Stella D’Oro struggle to a national level by inviting the workers to participate at events around the G-20.
Dozens of BOPM volunteers blitzed Caribbean Day in Brooklyn to get the word out for Sept. 20. Paste-ups and other visibility activities are going strong. Organizers from BOPM joined the Stella D’Oro contingent on Labor Day in New York City on Sept. 12, when thousands of leaflets were distributed.
www.bailoutpeople.org
G-20 or more G-money
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL FROM DEATH ROW
 Mumia Abu-Jamal |
From an Aug. 18 audio column which will be played at the Sept. 20 jobs march and rally for the unemployed in Pittsburgh.
As the G-20 gathers again, they assemble amidst the wreckage of their own creation.
Representatives of 20 of the alleged developed economies, they are instead representatives of casino capitalism: the use, misuse and grand theft of public wealth to fund the bonuses of financial pirates that have looted the treasury of billions.
A few months ago, as they gathered in London, the nations’ finance ministers talked about tax havens, but few had any real substantial solutions to the economic turmoil roiling in their own countries.
Much has been said about stimulus packages, and even about the enormous amounts of money being allocated for this purpose, but a modest amount has actually been spent, with the lion’s share being devoted to boosting the very banks and businesses that created this disaster.
And while banks and billionaires have been rewarded for their insatiable greed, average people, working people, families struggling in the worst economic environment since the 1930s, are on their own. Millions are jobless. Many are homeless. Many more are helpless.
And while they barely survive day after day, big buck bonuses are back on track at Goldman Sachs and other such entitles in the City.
Politicians, meanwhile, talk of a “jobless recovery.” If there are no jobs, who can really speak of a recovery? Wall Street is recovering—but are you?
Even the French conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said the economic disaster of last fall spelled the end to laissez-faire (French for ‘let it be’) economic theory. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are giving various stimulus packages to banks and businesses that look an awful lot like life support.
If this is free market, then slavery was free labor. Only a bold, unified people’s movement can put the people’s interests before that of big finance. It’s going to take protests—real protests—to break through this vampire’s bite on the wealth of nations.
For Immediate Release:
The first and largest PITTSBURGH G-20 Related protest
March for Jobs in Pittsburgh
Sunday, September 20
to be followed by week-long “Bail Out the Unemployed” Tent City
Thousands of protesters will be arriving in Pittsburgh next weekend to participate in the first and largest protest related to the G-20 summit. The March for Jobs will step off at 2:30 p.m. on Sun., Sept. 20 after an opening rally in front of Monumental Baptist Church at 2228 Wylie St. in the historic African-American Hill district of Pittsburgh. The marchers, coming into the city from every region of the country including as far away as California, will hold an end rally at Freedom Corner at Centre St. and Crawford St. Freedom Corner is a monument to civil rights activists which borders Pittsburgh’s downtown area.
After the rally, many of the marchers will return to a field near Monumental Baptist Church where they will live in a tent city dedicated to the unemployed of the world for the entire week of the G-20 summit. The tent city, which will house unemployed people and their supporters from Sun., Sept. 20 through Fri., Sept. 25, at the “Bail Out The Unemployed “tent city. More details about the tent city below. Speakers at the Jobs march and rally include Fred Redmond, Vice Pres. of the United Steel Workers Union; antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan; Allegheny County Commissioner Bill Robinson; Prof. Cornel West; Rep. John Conyers; Penn. State Sen. Jim Ferlo and Rev. Thomas Smith amongst others.
The central goal of the march for jobs is to revive Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for a second civil rights movement for the right of all to a job.
Before the G-20 countries open their summit, the march for jobs and tent city seeks to dramatize the reality that the unemployment and under-employment level is not only reaching depression level statistics, but that the unusual and unprecedented nature of the current worldwide economic crisis may usher in a new and permanent high unemployment economy.
The jobs march will highlight the need for a massive jobs program on par with the public works program that the Roosevelt Administration enacted during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The tentative schedule of the Bail Out the Unemployed Tent City is as follows:
BAIL OUT THE UNEMPLOYED - TENT CITY
dedicated to the unemployed of the world
Sept 20 – 25, Pittsburgh
Daily Teach-ins – discussion groups, programs, films, music, etc.:
(All times and programs subject to last minute change; lunch and dinner provided daily)
(Note: This work in progress does not include music yet – updated Wed., Sept. 9)
Sun., Sept. 20 – Early meeting @ 10 a.m. to 12/1p.m. (Orientation: “What after Pittsburgh” & breakfast)
Pre-march rally @ 2 p.m. – march 4 Jobs @ 2:30 p.m. – rally @ 3:30 p.m. - 4:30/5p.m.
Sunday Eve TBA
Mon., Sept. 21
GLOBAL SOLIDARITY: Unions, communities & movements working togetheR
(10 a.m. – 12 p.m.)
Organizing the global struggle for jobs & workers rights
Global Solidarity: What does it mean?
Immigrant workers rights & global solidarity
The biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s
What is the G-20?: The roots of the global crisis
(Groups: USW, BAYAN, May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights and others)
Students and Youth Meeting 12 p.m. - 2 p.m.
CONNECTING THE ISSUES: HOUSING IS A RIGHT
Healthcare, Education, War – 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
A Moratorium on Foreclosure and Evictions
The Squatters Movement -The fight back is growing
We Remember Katrina (Groups: Picture the Homeless, Moratorium Now! Coalition Against Foreclosures and Evictions, Poor Peoples Human Rights Campaign, People’s Organization for Progress, NYC Coalition In Solidarity with Katrina/Rita Survivors)
Film on Mumia Abu-Jamal & Solidarity with Leonard Peltier 7 p.m. (Dinner)
(Group: Pittsburgh Mumia Coalition)
Tues., Sept. 22
(All events tentative unless noted otherwise)
Fulfilling King’s Dream: a Right to A job For All 10 a.m. –12 p.m.
The global joblessness crisis: how bad, how long?
What will it take start a jobs movement?
Needed: Jobs that pay a living wage
Needed: Jobs that help reconstruct society (Groups: Bail out the People Campaign, United Steel Workers, others)
Bring The Troops Home! Antiwar RALLY 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Money for jobs and education - not war and occupation
The war at home and abroad – connecting the issues
Fighting the Empire: Honduras, Palestine, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan (groups TBA)
STOP THE EXECUTION OF TROY DAVIS! 7 p.m.
(Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty)
Wed., Sept. 23
the struggle for the right to Healthcare/ discussion group 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. (groups TBA)
PanEl Discussion On the G-20 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Leo Gerard, Int. Pres. United Steel Workers
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate Economist
Emira Wood, Institute for Policy Studies
Berta Caceres, Coordinator, Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indigenas de Honduras
Tammy Bang Liu, Labor/Community Strategy Center & Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Carl Redwood Jr., Hill District consensus group
Rev. John Welsh, PIIN
(UE and Grassroots Global Justice alliance)
Rally for Clean Energy Jobs, Point State Park 6 p.m.
Thurs., Sept 24 (1st Day of G-20 summit)
Discussion groups and protests TBA
Fri.,Sept. 25 – Peoples March on G-20 – 12 p.m. (Tent city meeting other groups at Freedom Corner to march together)
Evening: Final tent city meetings and camp breakdown
The first and largest PITTSBURGH G-20 Related protest
March for Jobs in Pittsburgh
Sunday, September 20
to be followed by week-long “Bail Out the Unemployed” Tent City
Thousands of protesters will be arriving in Pittsburgh next weekend to participate in the first and largest protest related to the G-20 summit. The March for Jobs will step off at 2:30 p.m. on Sun., Sept. 20 after an opening rally in front of Monumental Baptist Church at 2228 Wylie St. in the historic African-American Hill district of Pittsburgh. The marchers, coming into the city from every region of the country including as far away as California, will hold an end rally at Freedom Corner at Centre St. and Crawford St. Freedom Corner is a monument to civil rights activists which borders Pittsburgh’s downtown area.
After the rally, many of the marchers will return to a field near Monumental Baptist Church where they will live in a tent city dedicated to the unemployed of the world for the entire week of the G-20 summit. The tent city, which will house unemployed people and their supporters from Sun., Sept. 20 through Fri., Sept. 25, at the “Bail Out The Unemployed “tent city. More details about the tent city below. Speakers at the Jobs march and rally include Fred Redmond, Vice Pres. of the United Steel Workers Union; antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan; Allegheny County Commissioner Bill Robinson; Prof. Cornel West; Rep. John Conyers; Penn. State Sen. Jim Ferlo and Rev. Thomas Smith amongst others.
The central goal of the march for jobs is to revive Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for a second civil rights movement for the right of all to a job.
Before the G-20 countries open their summit, the march for jobs and tent city seeks to dramatize the reality that the unemployment and under-employment level is not only reaching depression level statistics, but that the unusual and unprecedented nature of the current worldwide economic crisis may usher in a new and permanent high unemployment economy.
The jobs march will highlight the need for a massive jobs program on par with the public works program that the Roosevelt Administration enacted during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The tentative schedule of the Bail Out the Unemployed Tent City is as follows:
BAIL OUT THE UNEMPLOYED - TENT CITY
dedicated to the unemployed of the world
Sept 20 – 25, Pittsburgh
Daily Teach-ins – discussion groups, programs, films, music, etc.:
(All times and programs subject to last minute change; lunch and dinner provided daily)
(Note: This work in progress does not include music yet – updated Wed., Sept. 9)
Sun., Sept. 20 – Early meeting @ 10 a.m. to 12/1p.m. (Orientation: “What after Pittsburgh” & breakfast)
Pre-march rally @ 2 p.m. – march 4 Jobs @ 2:30 p.m. – rally @ 3:30 p.m. - 4:30/5p.m.
Sunday Eve TBA
Mon., Sept. 21
GLOBAL SOLIDARITY: Unions, communities & movements working togetheR
(10 a.m. – 12 p.m.)
Organizing the global struggle for jobs & workers rights
Global Solidarity: What does it mean?
Immigrant workers rights & global solidarity
The biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s
What is the G-20?: The roots of the global crisis
(Groups: USW, BAYAN, May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights and others)
Students and Youth Meeting 12 p.m. - 2 p.m.
CONNECTING THE ISSUES: HOUSING IS A RIGHT
Healthcare, Education, War – 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
A Moratorium on Foreclosure and Evictions
The Squatters Movement -The fight back is growing
We Remember Katrina (Groups: Picture the Homeless, Moratorium Now! Coalition Against Foreclosures and Evictions, Poor Peoples Human Rights Campaign, People’s Organization for Progress, NYC Coalition In Solidarity with Katrina/Rita Survivors)
Film on Mumia Abu-Jamal & Solidarity with Leonard Peltier 7 p.m. (Dinner)
(Group: Pittsburgh Mumia Coalition)
Tues., Sept. 22
(All events tentative unless noted otherwise)
Fulfilling King’s Dream: a Right to A job For All 10 a.m. –12 p.m.
The global joblessness crisis: how bad, how long?
What will it take start a jobs movement?
Needed: Jobs that pay a living wage
Needed: Jobs that help reconstruct society (Groups: Bail out the People Campaign, United Steel Workers, others)
Bring The Troops Home! Antiwar RALLY 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Money for jobs and education - not war and occupation
The war at home and abroad – connecting the issues
Fighting the Empire: Honduras, Palestine, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan (groups TBA)
STOP THE EXECUTION OF TROY DAVIS! 7 p.m.
(Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty)
Wed., Sept. 23
the struggle for the right to Healthcare/ discussion group 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. (groups TBA)
PanEl Discussion On the G-20 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Leo Gerard, Int. Pres. United Steel Workers
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate Economist
Emira Wood, Institute for Policy Studies
Berta Caceres, Coordinator, Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indigenas de Honduras
Tammy Bang Liu, Labor/Community Strategy Center & Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Carl Redwood Jr., Hill District consensus group
Rev. John Welsh, PIIN
(UE and Grassroots Global Justice alliance)
Rally for Clean Energy Jobs, Point State Park 6 p.m.
Thurs., Sept 24 (1st Day of G-20 summit)
Discussion groups and protests TBA
Fri.,Sept. 25 – Peoples March on G-20 – 12 p.m. (Tent city meeting other groups at Freedom Corner to march together)
Evening: Final tent city meetings and camp breakdown
The March 4 Jobs before the G20 Summit is Growing!
Join USW – UE and many, many others on Sunday, Sept 20th, 2 p.m.
In front of Monumental Baptist Church, Soho Street & Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh
If your community, union or student group is not already on board—there is still time to get involved.
VERY IMPORTANT: Please REGISTER for the Tent City.
If you are going to be participating at the ‘Solidarity with the Unemployed’ Tent City following the March 4 Jobs—it’s critical to register to make sure there are resources and space available. Space is limited. Pre-registration is required.
Register at http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20register.shtml
We need your help:
Breaking News Bulletin:
United Steel Workers Union and United Electrical Workers have endorsed and are mobilizing.
These are two powerhouse unions with a long and rich history
with international headquarters in Pittsburgh Pa.
Join USW – UE and many, many others on Sunday, Sept 20th, 2 p.m.
In front of Monumental Baptist Church, Soho Street & Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh
If your community, union or student group is not already on board—there is still time to get involved.
- Endorse – Organize – and Mobilize!
- Distribute flyers and send out email notices.
- Bring a bus, van or car from your city, town or neighborhood – tell us so we can plan parking.
- Donate $ so that those without funds can attend.
VERY IMPORTANT: Please REGISTER for the Tent City.
If you are going to be participating at the ‘Solidarity with the Unemployed’ Tent City following the March 4 Jobs—it’s critical to register to make sure there are resources and space available. Space is limited. Pre-registration is required.
Register at http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20register.shtml
We need your help:
- Funds are urgently needed to help subsidize buses and vans and to assist with organizing costs for the "March for Jobs." - http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml
- Volunteer - http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20volorgcents.shtml
- Download leaflets at http://www.bailoutpeople.org/pdfs/g20leaflecolor.pdf
- Join the BOPM Facebook Group - http://www.facebook.com/business/dashboard/?ref=sb#/pages/Bail-Out-The-People-Movement/112781742929
- Follow BOPM on Twitter - http://twitter.com/bailoutpeoplem
Why are we demanding jobs or income at the G-20 Economic Crisis Meeting in Pittsburgh in September?
30 million people in the U.S. are
unemployed or underemployed – We say NO!
What is the G-20?
It’s a group of Treasury officials and central bankers from 20 countries, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Its goal is to protect bank profits, whatever it costs the people of the world.
The U.S. delegation is led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve System (The Fed). They organized a bailout of the banks, insurance companies and stock brokerages that totals $12.6 trillion--or $42,105 for every adult and child in the U.S.
- How much is a trillion dollars? It is 1,000 billion. And a billion is 1,000 million.
The Federal Reserve controls this money, yet most people have never heard of it. The Fed has seven governors, all bankers, appointed by the U.S. President for 14-year terms. George W. Bush appointed Bernanke Chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors and then head of the Fed. The Fed operates in secrecy, even from Congress, yet makes decisions affecting whether we work, have homes, or eat.
Geithner, the former chief of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, worked with the Fed under the Bush administration to devise the bank bailout. He invented the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and eight other programs to funnel taxpayer money into the banks. His top aide is from Goldman Sachs Bank. He changed bank regulations to prohibit congressional audits of the Federal Reserve.
Who is representing the people at the G20 conference? No one!
Profit recovery for banks –
Jobless ‘recovery’ for workers
The bailout for the banks:
- $12.6 trillion in handouts, loans and guarantees.
- Bonuses: Since the bailout, six banks that got our money are giving $74 billion in bonuses – double last year’s.
- Even TARP chief Neel Kashkari says the bailout is “Rich bankers bailing out rich bankers, using the taxpayer’s credit card.”
- The New York Times said the bailout of banks by taxpayers is a “Partnership in which one partner robs the other.”
- Sen. Dick Durbin said, “We’re facing a banking crisis that many banks created – still they are the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, and they frankly own the place.”
- Representative Alan Grayson, House Financial Services Committee, said of the Fed: “We are seeing a transfer of trillions of dollars of wealth from the taxpayers to the bad banks…. We have become the saps for Wall Street.”
- Who got bailed out: Citigroup, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo. Some have now merged into larger, more powerful monopolies.
- Result: The banks are making huge profits again and concentration of wealth is in fewer hands. Instead of more regulation, they demanded and got less. The UN says just 500 rich people in the world earn more than the 416 million poorest people, and this is getting worse.
- Instead of creating jobs they are demanding speedups. Corporate profits go up; wages go down and jobs or hours decrease.
Bailout money for us:
- $8.2 billion
This is less than one-thousandth of the $12 trillion the banks have received.
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, most of this went to state unemployment insurance programs or job training programs—for JOBS THAT ARE NOT THERE. Just $25 a week went to those receiving unemployment insurance.
- Result for us: 30 million people in the U.S. are unemployed or working involuntary part-time.
Wall Street admits unemployment will be permanently high. Unlike other times when workers were called back, millions of jobs have been terminated. Others have had their hours cut. There are fewer jobs now than in 2001, although 12 million new workers have joined the labor force.
- Fewest young men have jobs in 61 years of record keeping.
- Teenagers age 16-19 suffer 78% unemployment.
- For youth and people of color, this is worse than the Great Depression.
- Foreclosures are continuing at record levels this year.
- People are running out of unemployment benefits.
- Personal bankruptcies are up again.
- Retirees have lost 22% of their benefits, forcing seniors to work--but there are no jobs.
Will going to Pittsburgh make a difference for me or my family?
Yes!
We are demanding a public jobs program and forcing corporations to hire so everyone in need is guaranteed a livable income. Only a mass movement of the people on the march, holding protest meetings and organizing in our communities, schools, unions, and places of worship, can change our lives. We must represent ourselves. It’s not easy, but it can be done.
You can start by bringing friends together in your home. You can invite an organizer from the Bailout the People Movement. Then you can do your block, your neighborhood, your workplace, school or place of worship.
If you have a job now, you can only protect it and your wages and benefits by joining the movement for jobs. With millions out of work your boss will use the competition among workers to get cheaper labor to replace you, make working conditions harder, or lower your wages.
PITTSBURGH IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF THIS MOVEMENT
How can I get there?
We are working hard to raise funds for buses, cars, and vans to caravan to Pittsburgh. You can help. Donate, or have a yard sale, bake sale, raffle or dinner. Even one dollar will help.
WORKERS ARE CONNECTED ALL AROUND THE WORLD
The G-20 bankers come together to make profits off the backs of the world’s people. Our lives are all connected now. Unemployment anywhere in the world is unacceptable. At the time of the G-20 Pittsburgh conference there will be protests in cities worldwide. We can compete against each other and die, or unite and have a better life now and for our children. A job is a right!
Join the March for Jobs, Pittsburgh, September 20!
Bail Out the People Movement
Pittsburgh, 412-780-3813
New York, 212-633-6646
bailoutpeople.org
March4Jobs@gmail.com
G-20 activists want emphasis back on the economy
from http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09235/992692-482.stm
G-20 activists want emphasis back on the economy
Sunday, August 23, 2009
By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
City officials and local media have spent too much time focusing on disputes over protest permits and the possibility of violence during next month's G-20 summit, neglecting the serious economic concerns behind those protests, one group of activists said yesterday in the Hill District.
"We're not interested in all the talk about permits and troublemakers," said Larry Holmes, a spokesman for Bail Out the People and a community organizer from New York City. "People are suffering. They need jobs."
Mr. Holmes spoke with reporters on a grassy lot at the corner of Soho Street and Wylie Avenue in the Hill, where his group plans to launch a "national march for jobs" on Sept. 20, the Sunday before world leaders gather in Pittsburgh.
The site, owned by neighboring Monumental Baptist Church, will also host a tent city for unemployed and homeless people and their supporters from Sept. 20 through the end of the two-day summit, on Sept. 24 and 25.
"We feel that we need to stand up and be vocal," said the Rev. Thomas Smith, the church's pastor. "We need to make sure people have decent jobs to realize the American dream."
On Friday, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said all five groups seeking protest permits around the summit will be given conditional approvals for events in Downtown, the South Side, North Side and the Strip District. The city will also create two protest zones near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown.
Bail Out the People, a national group based in New York that grew from outrage over the billions of dollars in government money given to failing banks last year, has asked for approval for its Hill District march and the use of Allegheny Commons Park on the North Side Sept. 19-25 and Market Square on Sept. 24 and 25.
Organizers are planning to start the march at 2 p.m. on Sept. 20, and it will end at the Hill's Freedom Corner.
Mr. Holmes said he was hoping for an "enormous" gathering, with potentially thousands of marchers, including prominent civil rights and union leaders. There are tentative plans for buses to come from New York City, Detroit, Chicago and other cities.
"We need everybody to know this is going to be a peaceful event. This is going to be an orderly event," Mr. Holmes said.
He and other organizers are concerned that Pittsburgh's heavy emphasis on security -- officials hope to have as many as 4,000 police officers on city streets -- will dissuade some people from participating in protests.
The Wylie Avenue tent city will allow people who can't afford to stay at hotels to be near Downtown during the summit.
"We'll take as many as we can," the Rev. Smith said.
He said the site would have Porta-Johns and water, and the church is seeking volunteers who can donate food or time to help organize the march and the tent city.
Anyone interested in volunteering is asked to call 412-780-3813 or send an e-mail to March4Jobs@gmail.com.
Jerome L. Sherman can be reached at jsherman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1183.
First published on August 23, 2009 at 12:00 am
G-20 activists want emphasis back on the economy
Sunday, August 23, 2009
By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
City officials and local media have spent too much time focusing on disputes over protest permits and the possibility of violence during next month's G-20 summit, neglecting the serious economic concerns behind those protests, one group of activists said yesterday in the Hill District.
"We're not interested in all the talk about permits and troublemakers," said Larry Holmes, a spokesman for Bail Out the People and a community organizer from New York City. "People are suffering. They need jobs."
Mr. Holmes spoke with reporters on a grassy lot at the corner of Soho Street and Wylie Avenue in the Hill, where his group plans to launch a "national march for jobs" on Sept. 20, the Sunday before world leaders gather in Pittsburgh.
The site, owned by neighboring Monumental Baptist Church, will also host a tent city for unemployed and homeless people and their supporters from Sept. 20 through the end of the two-day summit, on Sept. 24 and 25.
"We feel that we need to stand up and be vocal," said the Rev. Thomas Smith, the church's pastor. "We need to make sure people have decent jobs to realize the American dream."
On Friday, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said all five groups seeking protest permits around the summit will be given conditional approvals for events in Downtown, the South Side, North Side and the Strip District. The city will also create two protest zones near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown.
Bail Out the People, a national group based in New York that grew from outrage over the billions of dollars in government money given to failing banks last year, has asked for approval for its Hill District march and the use of Allegheny Commons Park on the North Side Sept. 19-25 and Market Square on Sept. 24 and 25.
Organizers are planning to start the march at 2 p.m. on Sept. 20, and it will end at the Hill's Freedom Corner.
Mr. Holmes said he was hoping for an "enormous" gathering, with potentially thousands of marchers, including prominent civil rights and union leaders. There are tentative plans for buses to come from New York City, Detroit, Chicago and other cities.
"We need everybody to know this is going to be a peaceful event. This is going to be an orderly event," Mr. Holmes said.
He and other organizers are concerned that Pittsburgh's heavy emphasis on security -- officials hope to have as many as 4,000 police officers on city streets -- will dissuade some people from participating in protests.
The Wylie Avenue tent city will allow people who can't afford to stay at hotels to be near Downtown during the summit.
"We'll take as many as we can," the Rev. Smith said.
He said the site would have Porta-Johns and water, and the church is seeking volunteers who can donate food or time to help organize the march and the tent city.
Anyone interested in volunteering is asked to call 412-780-3813 or send an e-mail to March4Jobs@gmail.com.
Jerome L. Sherman can be reached at jsherman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1183.
First published on August 23, 2009 at 12:00 am
Youth jobless stats “beyond scary; they’re catastrophic,” says NY Times Columnist Bob Herbert
Sept. 20 Pittsburgh march for jobs right on time
Sept. 20 Pittsburgh march for jobs right on time
On Sunday, Sept. 20 a National March for Jobs will step off from the historic Hill District in Pittsburgh, PA just prior to the G20 summit declaring that the unemployed, the homeless, the hungry and the poor must no longer be invisible and silent. This is particularly urgent for young workers as highlighted by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert this week. (www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11herbert.html)
Herbert wrote, “Two issues that absolutely undermine any rosy assessment of last week’s employment report are the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed and the crushing levels of joblessness among young” workers. … The plight of young workers, especially young men, is particularly frightening. The percentage of young … men who are actually working is the lowest it has been in the 61 years of record-keeping, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
“Only 65 of every 100 men aged 20 through 24 years old were working on any given day in the first six months of this year. … For male teenagers, the numbers were disastrous: only 28 of every 100 males were employed in the 16 through 19-year-old age group. For minority teenagers, forget about it. The numbers are beyond scary; they’re catastrophic.”
Herbert called the 0.1 percent unemployment drop in July “wildly deceptive,” because the decline was “not because more people found jobs, but because 450,000 people withdrew from the labor market. They stopped looking, so they weren’t counted as unemployed.”
Herbert noted that "The country has lost a crippling 6.7 million jobs since the Great Recession began in December 2007. No one is predicting a recovery in the foreseeable future powerful enough to replace the millions of jobs that have vanished in this historic downturn."
The magnitude of the jobs crisis is giving momentum to the September 20 National March for Jobs. On Monday, August 10, the San Francisco Labor Council unanimously passed a resolution endorsing the march, which reads in part:
"Whereas, there is no recovery in sight from the current economic crisis. Although government measures have enabled Wall Street to pocket hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, still unemployment, foreclosures and poverty continue to soar; andThe ILWU (International Longshore Workers Union) Local 10 and the Letter Carriers Union Local 214 have also passed similar resolutions in support of the March for Jobs.
Whereas, in September the eyes of the world will be on Pittsburgh, where the G20 countries will meet on what to do about the global crisis, and this will be an excellent opportunity for labor and its allies to present OUR workers’ recovery agenda; and...
Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council endorse the March for Jobs in Pittsburgh on September 20, 2009, and the Global Week in Solidarity with the Unemployed, on the occasion of the G20 summit in that city." (read the full resolution at : http://www.bailoutpeople.org/sflc.shtml)
There is much work to be done in the next few weeks. Here's how you can help:
- We need your help! Funds are urgently needed to help subsidize buses and vans and to assist with organizing costs for the "March for Jobs." - http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml
- Become a local organizer - help organize a "Jobs or Income Now" caravan (cars, vans, bus, etc) to Pittsburgh for the G20. http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20volorgcents.shtml
- Volunteer - http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20volorgcents.shtml
- Download leaflets at http://www.bailoutpeople.org/pdfs/g20leaflecolor.pdf
- Join the BOPM Facebook Group - http://www.facebook.com/business/dashboard/?ref=sb#/pages/Bail-Out-The-People-Movement/112781742929
Unemployment "by far, the nation's biggest problem and should be it's No. 1 priority"
Unemployment "by far, the nation's biggest problem and should be it's No. 1 priority"
A Scary Reality
By BOB HERBERTBut for American workers peering anxiously through their family portholes, the economic ship is still sinking. You can put whatever kind of gloss you want on last week’s jobs numbers, but the truth is that while they may have been a bit better than most economists were expecting, they were still bad, bad, bad.
Some 247,000 jobs were lost in July, a number that under ordinary circumstances would send a shudder through the country. It was the smallest monthly loss of jobs since last summer. And for that reason, it was seen as a hopeful sign. The official monthly unemployment rate ticked down from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent.
But behind the official numbers is a scary story that illustrates the single biggest challenge facing the United States today. The American economy does not seem able to provide enough jobs — and nowhere near enough good jobs — to maintain the standard of living that most Americans have come to expect.
The country has lost a crippling 6.7 million jobs since the Great Recession began in December 2007. No one is predicting a recovery in the foreseeable future powerful enough to replace the millions of jobs that have vanished in this historic downturn.
read the full editorial here
A Global Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed
September 20 - 25(During the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh)
Yes to Jobs & Human Needs; No to War & Wall Street Greed
- Sunday, September 20 - Rally & March for a Real Jobs Program
- Building a Tent City in Pittsburgh for the Unemployed & Supporters the weekend before the G-20 Summit
- Organizing Caravans of Unemployed People and Supporters to Converge on Pittsburgh during the week of September 19-26
- Marches, Protests and Events Before and During the G20 Summit addressing demands such as: Bring the Troops Home from Iraq & Afghanistan Now! & Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, World-Renown Political Prisoner, Journalist, Activists and 'Voice of the Voiceless!"
In September the eyes of the world will be on Pittsburgh, where the G20 countries will meet to consider what to do about the biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s. The heads of governments, finance ministers and central bankers that will be in Pittsburgh for the summit hear the concerns of bankers and corporate executives all the time. They need to listen to the voices of the millions of people who have lost their jobs and their homes because of the crisis. The Bail out the People Movement, a coalition of community, labor, religious, and grassroots activists, wants to help dramatize the crisis of joblessness, and the need for action both in the U.S. and worldwide to the G20 summit. It is now clear that the stimulus legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in March has done little to stop the loss of jobs. There is no recovery for the unemployed, the underemployed and the poor; and things are only getting worse. This is why we’re asking you to help make the idea of a Global Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed from September 19 through September 26, the week of the G20 Summit, a reality.
A TENT CITY AND MARCH FOR JOBS On Sunday, Sept. 20, the tent city will open with a rally and march for jobs. The main site for the tent city will be next to the Monumental Baptist Church in an historic section of the African-American community of Pittsburgh called “The Hill.” This location is just a short walk or march from the convention center where the G20 summit will be held, and from the rest of downtown Pittsburgh. Unemployed people and their supporters will inhabit the tent city from Sept 20 through Sept. 25. Additional locations for other encampments in Pittsburgh are being considered as well. This is why we’re asking you to help make the idea of a Global Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed from September 19 through September 26, the week of the G20 Summit, a reality.
IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE – THIS IS A WEEK OF SOLIDARITY WITH YOU The Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed is also a week of solidarity with those who have lost their homes to foreclosures and evictions; those who have been forced to take part-time or temporary jobs because there are no full-time jobs; workers who have seen their wages and hours cut; autoworkers whose plants have been closed; immigrant workers who are fighting for their rights; communities that are fighting gentrification and budget cuts to social programs; students who are being forced out of school because of the debt burden and rising tuition cost; the survivors and displaced victims of the Katrina/Rita hurricanes and the government's criminally negligent response; poor and working people everywhere, especially in poor countries who are bearing the cruel brunt of the economic crisis; workers everywhere fighting for the right to organize and in the U.S. for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act in the U.S.; All who need single payer health care; retirees who need their healthcare & pensions safeguarded; and young people, especially Black and Latina/o youths whom the system has condemned to a jobless future.
IT’S TIME TO BAILOUT THE UNEMPLOYED WITH A REAL JOBS PROGRAM In the days before and during the G20 summit, events and marches will take place to emphasize this central point: More than just another stimulus package is needed. It’s time for a serious, direct and massive jobs program on par with the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. We must fight for a real jobs program for the unemployed and underemployed that pays a living wage performing socially meaningful work; and an income for those unable to work. Any claim that the resources for a serious jobs program are not available must be rejected. If governments, particularly the U.S. government, can make available trillions of dollars for bailing out banks and corporations as well as funding the Pentagon’s endless wars, & Occupations, they can find the resources to bail out the unemployed and underemployed.
THIS IS A GLOBAL CALL BECAUSE JOBLESSNESS IS A GLOBAL CRISIS Mass unemployment is a global phenomenon. The right to a job at a living wage must be a global demand. Instead of being pitted against each other, unemployed and working people across the world can only improve their conditions by working and fighting together for their common interests. Activists and organizations everywhere are encouraged to support the Global Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed and organize events in conjunction with it.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING'S FINAL CAUSE: THE RIGHT OF ALL TO A JOB OR AN INCOME The need and the right of everyone to either a job or a guaranteed income is the cause that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated the last year of his life to. The present global economic depression has made King’s last cause even more urgent today than it was when he was alive. Dr. King also knew that: no matter the magnitude of suffering, governments do not respond if those who are suffering remain invisible and silent. Even a history-making president like Obama is still not a substitute for the mass movement for social justice. During the depression of the 1930’s, President Franklyn Delano Roosevelt once told labor leaders who were asking him to do more to help workers and the poor “I agree with you, know make me do it”. FDR’s advice applies to Pres. Obama to. The purpose of the Global Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed is to make sure that people who are usually ignored are seen and heard.
ORGANIZING CARAVANS OF UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE AND SUPPORTERS TO PITTSBURGH Over the next 10 weeks, organizing will be going on in every region of the country to bring caravans of unemployed people and supporters to Pittsburgh in Sept.
THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:
- Have your Union/Community/Religious or Student Organization.endorse - http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20endorse.shtml
- Donate to help with organizing expenses - http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml
- Organize car/s vans/ trucks & buses from your locality to participate in the caravans to Pittsburgh - http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20volorgcents.shtml
- Have an Organizer address a meeting of your organization - http://bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml
- Volunteer your time to work on this project - http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20volorgcents.shtml
Bail Out the People Movement
Solidarity Center
55 W. 17th St. #5C
New York, NY 10011
212.633.6646
www.BailOutPeople.org
Email: bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml
A Call for a Global Mobilization
A Call for a Global Mobilization
Against the G20 Summit in
Pittsburgh, PA
Against the G20 Summit in
Pittsburgh, PA
September 24-25, 2009
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE – BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT!
BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE
- JOBS & SOCIAL NEEDS--NOT WAR AND GREED
- FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
- SHUTDOWN THE RACIST PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
G20 ORGANIZING MEETING IN PITTSBURGH , SUNDAY, JULY 12
The third G20 summit is going to be in Pittsburgh , Pa. on September 24 and 25, 2009. The challenge before the movements for economic and social justice, as well as the antiwar movement, is that the next meeting of the powers that govern the world economy be met with a powerful mass mobilization demanding that jobs and social needs, not war and greed, prevail--here in the U.S. and across the world.
The G20 summits are taking place in response to the greatest worldwide economic crisis since the 1930s. However, the purpose of these high-level meetings of governments and bankers is not to rescue the people of the world from depression-level unemployment, evictions, homelessness, poverty, social and economic inequality, and war. These summits are about fixing the economic and financial order that puts profits before people--and fixing that system by creating more poverty, misery and suffering.
The last G20 summit, held in London in early April, was met with massive protests both there and throughout Europe. Now that the G20 is coming to the U.S. , it is up to activists and organizations in the U.S. to take up the challenge of uniting and working together to organize a mobilization for Pittsburgh during the summit.
Many had expected New York City to be the location of next G20. Yet once it was confirmed that Pittsburgh would be the summit location, organizers immediately began preliminary logistical planning for a mass mobilization there in September.
Organizing for the G20 summit in Pittsburgh was the central theme of a People’s Economic Summit meeting in New York City on May 31. Consistent with the theme of that summit, “A New World Is Urgently Needed–But We Must Fight For It,” the more than 200 activists and 35 organizations in attendance agreed to work tirelessly over the summer to expand the network of grassroots activists and organizations to bring thousands of protesters to Pittsburgh .
Activists at the People's Economic Summit also agreed that the response to the next G20 should not be confined to the U.S. and that there should be a global response to the summit. Accordingly, activists and organizations across the world will be urged to endorse this call for protest against the G20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh and to organize globally-coordinated protests during the summit in September.
FREE MUMIA AND THE G20
Political activist and journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, possibly the most well-known political prisoner in the world, has resided for almost 27 years on Pennsylvania's death row. For the past 14 years, he has resided in a small cell in the triple-maximum-security, SCI-Greene Unit, about 50 miles away from Pittsburgh . Mumia’s case combines the realities of the systemic racism in the courts and prison system in the U.S., together with police brutality, judicial misconduct and political repression. High on the list of demands of our protest at the G20 must be freedom for Mumia and an end to the racist prison industrial complex that is devouring so many young people of color.
G20 PROTEST PLANNING MEETING – SUNDAY, JULY 12 IN PITTSBURGH
There will be a G20 organizing meeting for activists and groups both in and outside of the Pittsburgh area on Sunday, July 12, 3 p.m. at La Roche College (time and location of meeting subject to confirmation)
The potential for a massive global mobilization in September is truly infinite. Together, let’s begin the work required to realize that powerful potential.
Another world is possible, but we must fight for it.
The Bail Out The People Movement
Facing evictions, repression, no jobs Workers, youth open fightback at Tent City
June 16—Hundreds of poor and working people have gathered at the National People’s Summit
and Tent City in downtown Detroit to put forward the people’s vision of a future with guaranteed jobs and income, universal health care, housing and utilities, and all rights that working class people are currently denied under the capitalist system.
| Tent City marchers in Detroit. WW photo: LeiLani Dowell |
More than 330 people registered for the four-day event. They have come from throughout metro Detroit and Michigan—even workers from the Upper Peninsula are at Tent City. Workers and activists from Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and more are represented.
The People’s Summit and Tent City, based in Grand Circus Park from June 14-17, was called in response to the National Summit of big-business CEOs and executives being held at the General Motors Renaissance Center—GM’s world headquarters.
“They’re going to regret the closing of 14 plants and the laying off of General Motors workers, because the workers are fighting back!” said Frank Hammer, a retired United Auto Workers International representative and leader of the Autoworker Caravan, as he opened the rally after a militant demonstration outside the big-business summit today.
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More than 500 workers, including many from around Michigan and Ohio, marched in front of the GM Renaissance Center demanding jobs and human needs, not corporate greed. “The workers have spoken—keep the plants open!” was one of many chants that thundered from East Jefferson Avenue as dozens of cops and private thugs stood in formation guarding the privately owned Ren Cen.
As the workers marched and rallied for jobs, Richard Dauch, CEO of American Axle and Manufacturing, Inc., addressed the capitalists inside, along with former Michigan Gov. John Engler.
Dauch wrested tremendous concessions from striking UAW workers in 2008, cutting wages and benefits in half. Workers were promised their jobs would be saved, but now Dauch has broken that vow and the American Axle plant in Hamtramck, Mich., located within the city of Detroit, has closed.
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Engler was rewarded for his gutting of welfare and education in Michigan with his appointment as president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers.
The People’s Summit and Tent City opened with a dynamic State of Emergency Fightback Rally on June 14. A host of speakers reiterated the theme that workers and poor people must fight back to reclaim their right to jobs, homes, equal quality education, and social and economic justice. “I declare a state of emergency!” said state Sen. Hansen Clarke, sponsor of a bill in the state legislature for a two-year moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.
Other speakers included Detroit Councilperson JoAnn Watson; the Rev. Ed Rowe of Central United Methodist Church, a base of many struggles for social and economic justice; Maureen
Taylor of Michigan Welfare Rights Organization; Teresa Gutierrez of the May 1 Coalition in New York City; foreclosure-fighting attorney Vanessa Fluker; Sandra Hines of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions; Marguerite Maddox of Paws with Cause, a disability-rights organization; youth and union organizer Dante Strobino of Durham, N.C.; recently- convicted people’s journalist Diane Bukowski, who was charged with felony counts while trying to report on pedestrian deaths resulting from a police chase; and Baldemar Velasquez of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.
Special sessions at the People’s Summit on June 14 discussed the immigrant rights struggle. Organizers with Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), a militant national youth organization, talked about the problems facing students and young workers today. Another special session heard from Dieter Ilius of the German Metalworkers Trade Union.
June 15 started with a mass leafleting outside 36th District Court, three blocks from Tent City. Activists distributed hundreds of “Know Your Rights” leaflets to homeowners and renters facing foreclosures and evictions. 36th District Court is the busiest foreclosure court in the United States. A militant picket line and demonstration demanding a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions took place outside the court at lunchtime.
A “Corporate/Banker Devastation Tour” caravan departed Tent City for the GM Ren Cen to pick up big-business meeting participants who were “cordially invited” to see the real Detroit and what corporate greed has done to the city’s people. None of them had the guts to board the van and face reality. Nevertheless, many out-of-town People’s Summiteers and some media joined the tour and viewed foreclosed homes, abandoned neighborhoods and closed plants.
A special session on organizing mass protests outside the G20 summit to be held in Pittsburgh heard from dozens of people with ideas on how to build a broad-based coalition to challenge the mass meeting of capitalists from the richest countries on Sept. 24-25. Special sessions on the crisis in education and how to fight foreclosures provided an opportunity for activists to exchange ideas on furthering these struggles.
Hundreds of People’s Summiteers marched from Tent City down Woodward Avenue to the GM Ren Cen on June 15. “Bail out the people! Not the banks!” and other chants echoed loudly throughout downtown Detroit as marchers carried banners and signs demanding jobs, health care, education, immigrant rights, jobs not jails for youth, reproductive justice for women, an end to foreclosures and evictions, and many other demands.
In the evening a rally to stop police brutality and killings denounced the many injustices of the criminal injustice system that incarcerates millions of oppressed people. Speakers included Larry Hales of FIST, himself a survivor of police brutality and ongoing harassment; former prisoner Joshua; Kevin Carey and Charlotte Diggs of Detroit People’s Task Force, who are investigating the many irregularities in the Detroit Crime Lab; Ron Scott of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality; and LeiLani Dowell of FIST, who chronicled the police brutality and injustices facing lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.
June 16 began with a militant demonstration led by people with disabilities in front of the Grand Circus Park station of the Detroit People Mover, an elevated rail system that is inaccessible to people in wheelchairs. Participants marched and wheeled down Woodward Avenue to the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, where they spoke out at a session of City Council. Councilwoman JoAnn Watson commissioned the council’s research department to begin an immediate investigation into the lack of elevators at the Detroit People Mover stations so as to implement meeting the needs of Detroiters with disabilities.
Musicians, poets and spoken-word artists have rounded out the days at the Tent City with performances after each evening’s rallies. A delicious dinner has been prepared by volunteer activists and served every evening to more than 300 people at Grand Circus Park.
The People’s Summit and Tent City has received widespread coverage by the big-business-owned media. Every day the people’s struggle has been highlighted on local television, radio and in newspapers.
The strength and success of the People’s Summit and Tent City, the feeling of fightback and solidarity expressed by all its participants, will not end when the final tent is taken down on June 17. There is the sense here that this is the beginning of a mighty struggle to reorder the priorities of society, to demand and fight for jobs and all human needs and to put corporate greed and the profit system into the dustbin of history where they belong.
June 26 United Nations news conference on ‘jobs for all’
Bail Out People Movement: Solidarity Center
55 West 17th St. Suite #5C, New York, NY, 10011
212-633-6646 http://www.bailoutpeople.org/ Email:bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml
55 West 17th St. Suite #5C, New York, NY, 10011
212-633-6646 http://www.bailoutpeople.org/ Email:bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 19, 2009
June 26 United Nations news conference on ‘jobs for all’
To announce Sept. 24 & 25 mass protests at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh
1-2 p.m. at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, First Ave. & 47 St., New York, N.Y.
The Bail Out the People Movement (BOPM) and the Million Worker March Movement, along with labor and community activists will hold a news conference on June 26 at the United Nations to coincide with the final day of the U.N. Conference on the Economic Crisis. Organizers will announce plans for a protest at the next G20 summit scheduled in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24-25, and invite you to endorse this action.
The themes of the June 26 press conference will be “Jobs for All the World’s Unemployed” and “Solidarity, Not Competition.” BOPM activists note that the International Labor Organization counts global unemployment at about 1.6 billion and growing. In the U.S. alone, 25 million people are either unemployed or underemployed.
The U.N. Conference—also known as the G192—had earlier been scheduled for June 1-3. Non-cooperation from the world’s most powerful economic countries, especially the U.S., forced its postponement until June 24-26. This conference, called by the President of the General Assembly Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, is aimed at representing all U.N. members in confronting the worldwide economic crisis and not just the restricted elite powers of the G8 or G20.
The G20 meeting had originally been set for New York in September, but in fear of major protests was later moved to Pittsburgh. The Bail Out the People Movement is making logistical arrangements for a major two-day protest in Pittsburgh Sept. 24-25 and has filed for permits.
"The rescue plans put into effect by Washington and the other world powers are clearly aimed at boosting profits and encouraging global competition of workers," said Larry Holmes, a national organizer with the Bail Out the People Movement. "Permanently high unemployment is acceptable to the bankers and governments, but not to us. Our movements put people before profits. We break with the idea that we must be sacrificed on the altar of profits or that anyone can benefit from that strategy. Only the united struggle of the masses of people will win any improvement in our lives."
"We're inviting representatives from U.S. unions, other worker, community and social organizations to attend and make one-minute presentations," Holmes continued. "We're also asking for statements of solidarity from labor organizations around the world to be read at the press conference.”
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BOPM protest targets foreclosure auction
This last Sunday, Bail Out the People (BOPM) confronted the REDC's foreclosure auction held at the Grand Hyatt, with a hundred people -- more than double the size of the March Javits Center action -- on the sidewalk in front of the auction marching, chanting and condemning the public spectacle organized to profit from the misery of displaced homeowners. While the big-business media portrayed the auction as a chance to “put people who otherwise couldn’t afford it into homes,” BOPM activists interrupted that mortgage industry propaganda – identical to the justification for subprime mortgages – by exposing the auctions as scams and demanding an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures and evictions. “Our position was not against the people who came to find affordable housing,” said Larry Holmes, “but to warn them that the auctions themselves are fraudulent, with most of the properties scooped up, or already taken, by banks and real estate players. Plus, the few who do find deals could end up having their homes auctioned off in a year if they lose their jobs in the layoffs epidemic that is sweeping the nation. Housing is a human right, which is why we’re calling for an end to foreclosures now.”
The protest was covered by local TV news on Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Media coverage of Sunday's demonstration:
The protest was covered by local TV news on Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Media coverage of Sunday's demonstration:
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=6852870
http://wcbstv.com/video/?id=128677@wcbs.dayport.com
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/foreclosed-homes/photo//090607/ids_photos_ts/r2307028844.jpg/
Protest the G20 in Pittsburgh
A CALL FOR A GLOBAL MOBILIZATION
AGAINST THE G20 SUMMIT IN PITTSBURGH, PA., U.S.
SEPTEMBER 24 AND 25, 2009
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE – BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT!
BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE
JOBS & SOCIAL NEEDS--NOT WAR AND GREED
The third G20 summit is going to be in Pittsburgh, Pa., on September 24 and 25, 2009. The challenge before the movements for economic and social justice, as well as the antiwar movement, is that the next meeting of the powers that govern the world economy be met with a powerful mass mobilization demanding that jobs and social needs, and not war and greed, prevail--here in the U.S., and across the world.
AGAINST THE G20 SUMMIT IN PITTSBURGH, PA., U.S.
SEPTEMBER 24 AND 25, 2009
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE – BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT!
BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE
JOBS & SOCIAL NEEDS--NOT WAR AND GREED
The third G20 summit is going to be in Pittsburgh, Pa., on September 24 and 25, 2009. The challenge before the movements for economic and social justice, as well as the antiwar movement, is that the next meeting of the powers that govern the world economy be met with a powerful mass mobilization demanding that jobs and social needs, and not war and greed, prevail--here in the U.S., and across the world.
