Bail Out the People Movement

2009-12-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

Videos of Police Repression at G20 in Pittsburgh

2009-09-26T17:23:00.001-07:00

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

Day 6 - Sept 25 - G20 protests

2009-09-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

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

Day 5 - September 24

2009-09-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

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.

###

Resistance continues as police attack G20 protesters

2009-09-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

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

Interview with Clarence Thomas, ILWU

2009-09-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

Tent City Day 4 -- Wed. Sept 23 -- 100's attend UE Peoples Voices forum and Honduras briefing by Lucius Walker

2009-09-24T17:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Bail Out the People Movement and Rev. Tom Smith from Monumental Baptist Church initiated a demonstration to demand a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. An emergency press conference was held the day before to announce the action. The protesters, mainly residents at the Tent City on the Hill, gathered at the historic Freedom Corner and were joined there by antiwar activist, Cindy Sheehan. The march passed by the Mellon Arena until reaching the Mellon Corporation HQ in downtown Pittsburgh, where the protesters formed a picket line and rallied. Many passersby stopped to listen to the message of the protesters, some of them homeless, linking the struggle for jobs with the struggle for housing and other human needs.

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

2009-09-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Thursday: Police attack protesters

2009-09-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday march from Tent City to Mellon Bank 1

2009-09-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesday march from Tent City to Mellon Bank Part 2

2009-09-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Tuesday march from Tent City to Mellon Bank Part 3

2009-09-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Tuesday march from Tent City to Mellon Bank Part 4

2009-09-24T08:31:00.005-07:00

2009-09-24T08:30:00.001-07:00

2009-09-24T08:26:00.001-07:00

Howard Zinn: "Come to Pittsburgh"

2009-09-24T08:25:00.001-07:00

For continuous updates on G20 protests

2009-09-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

G-Infinity: http://indypgh.org/g20/#k-d2032883ddd6d8c7

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article: Tent City Continues to Grow

2009-09-24T08:05:00.001-07:00

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

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

2009-09-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

TENT CITY IN PITTSBURGH IN SOLIDARITY WITH UNEMPLOYED GROWING DAILY

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

Pittsburgh looking to steel limelight with G-20 summit

2009-09-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

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

Banner Drop in Pittsburgh

2009-09-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Struggle for jobs comes to G-20

2009-09-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

By Brenda Sandburg
Pittsburgh

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.

slideshow photos by LeiLani Dowell, Brenda Sandburg, Dante Strobino and G. Dunkel

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.

2009-09-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

Anti-G20 activists accuse Pittsburgh police of harassment

2009-09-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

Anti-G20 activists accuse Pittsburgh police of harassment

(AFP) – 1 day ago

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.

G20 Third Day of Protests

2009-09-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sept 20 March for Jobs Report with full Picture Gallery

www.BailOutPeople.org

Bail Out the People Home | Updates and Schedule of Events | Donate

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

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A tale of two cities in Pittsburgh

2009-09-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

By Larry Hales
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.

Photos from Today's March for Jobs in Pittsburgh

2009-09-20T21:40:00.000-07:00

All photos: LeiLani Dowell

AS UNEMPLOYMENT RISES: Momentum grows for national jobs march in Pittsburgh

2009-09-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

“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.

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

2009-09-14T11:02:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-09-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

The March 4 Jobs before the G20 Summit is Growing!

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?

2009-09-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

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

Photos from Block Party in Pittsburgh

2009-08-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

G-20 activists want emphasis back on the economy

2009-08-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-12T17:16:00.000-07:00

Youth jobless stats “beyond scary; they’re catastrophic,” says NY Times Columnist Bob Herbert
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; and

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)

The 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.

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"

2009-08-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

Unemployment "by far, the nation's biggest problem and should be it's No. 1 priority"

A Scary Reality
By BOB HERBERT

But 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

2009-08-09T16:14:00.002-07:00

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

2009-07-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

A Call for a Global Mobilization
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

2009-06-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

By Kris Hamel
Tent City, Detroit

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.

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.

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’

2009-06-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

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

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.”

-30-

BOPM protest targets foreclosure auction

2009-06-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

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:

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

2009-06-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

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.

NATIONAL People’s summit and tent city – DETROIT

2009-06-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

(All events take place at Grand Circus Park, Woodward at E. Adams, unless otherwise noted.)

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB7fshPvt9M

Updated 06/06/09

Four Days of Active Resistance, Political Discussion and Strategizing for a
“People's Stimulus Plans” and an “Economic Bill of Rights”
for Working People and the Poor

JOIN the TENT CITY near the NATIONAL BIG-BUSINESS GATHERING at the Renaissance Center

NATIONAL People’s summit and tent city – DETROIT

On June 15-17, 2009, the National Business Summit, sponsored by the Detroit Economic Club, will take place at the Renaissance Center, General Motors Corporate Headquarters. Millionaire capitalists like the heads of Conoco-Phillips, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Chrysler, Humana Inc., Ascension Health, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, BNSF Railway Co., and PVS Chemicals, and well as the presidents of the National Council on Competitiveness and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, will gather at this summit. President Barack Obama and cabinet members have been invited.

These wealthy businesspeople will put their greedy heads together to discuss “innovation and policy ideas in technology, energy, environment and manufacturing.” In other words, they will be strategizing on how to further increase their profits at the expense of the ever-shrinking middle class, the vast working class and the growing millions living in utter poverty.

The National Business Summit will be held in a city with record-high unemployment and poverty rates, lay-offs, budget cuts, school closings, utility cost hikes and shut-offs and massive home foreclosures. With a registration fee of $1,495, it is unlikely that any victims of foreclosures and evictions, let alone laid-off workers, will be able to attend the National Business Summit. No one at this event will be speaking in the interests of those most affected by the economic collapse.

The People’s Summit will be a dynamic event. During the People’s Summit, organizers will implement a moratorium on foreclosure evictions by going into the neighborhoods and supporting homeowners who are willing to confront the bailiffs. If there is a strike, demonstration or sit in, the People’s Summit will join it. The People’s Summit will confront the big-business CEOs and politicians gathering next door. Join us!

Sunday, June 14
Opening Theme: We declare a State of Emergency! Fight back! No business as usual!
12:00 noon – Set-up of Tent City and People’s Summit begins
2:00-4:00 p.m. – Pride and Devastation Tour of Detroit
1:30-3:00 p.m. – Special session: 2004 Opel/GM Strike in Bochum, Germany
3:00 p.m. – Prayer march organized by Joan Gist for City Council
3:00-5:00 p.m. – Special sessions: 1-FIST/Youth Struggle; 2-Immigrant Rights Struggle
5:30 p.m. – Dinner
6:30-8:00 p.m. – State of Emergency Fightback Rally
8:00 p.m. – Concert and cultural program

Monday, June 15
Theme: Detroit’s crisis as a symbol of the country and the planet
8:30 a.m.– “Know Your Rights” leaflet distribution for homeowners and renters at 36th District Court
10:00 a.m.-12 noon: Special session: Organizing for Sept. 24-25 G20 protests in Pittsburgh and 2010 U.S. Social Forum in Detroit
12:30-1:30 p.m. – 36th District Court Street Rally for Moratorium to Stop Foreclosures & Evictions
1:30-3:30 p.m. – Corporate/Banker Devastation Tour of Detroit
1:30-3:30 p.m. – Special sessions: 1- Education crisis; 2- Fighting Foreclosures
4:00 p.m. – Mass March to Confront the CEOs – Gather at Grand Circus Park
4:30 p.m. – March begins down Woodward to GM Renaissance Center
5:00-6:00 p.m. – Demonstration at GM headquarters/site of big-business summit
6:30 p.m. – Dinner
7:30 p.m. – Youth Concert and Rally to Stop the “War on Drugs” and Police Brutality

Tuesday, June 16
Theme: Stop the war on the workers and poor – feed the people not the Pentagon!
10:00 a.m. – Disability Rights Demonstration at Detroit People Mover, Grand Circus Park Station
12:00-1:30 p.m. – Mass Demonstration and Rally for Jobs at GM Renaissance Center
3:00-5:00 p.m. – Special Session: Workers Fighting Back Against Layoffs, Plant Closings & More
5:30 p.m. – Dinner
6:30 p.m. – Rally to Stop the War at Home and Abroad and Cultural Program

Wednesday, June 17
Theme: Confronting the corporate agenda: human rights for all
10:00 a.m.-12 noon – Special Strategy Session to Carry Struggles Forward
12:00 p.m. – Take down begins

THROUGHOUT THE PEOPLE’S SUMMIT & TENT CITY: ●Videotaped testimony and people’s speak-outs on how the crisis affects you ●Discussions and submissions for the People’s Stimulus Plan and Economic Bill of Rights

RAISE YOUR VOICES TO DEMAND:

* Bailout the people!

* Jobs, healthcare, housing and education for all

* Moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs – housing is a right

* Stop budget cuts and restore social services funding

* Stop tuition hikes and school closings

* Moratorium on layoffs, plant closings, pension thefts and union busting – A job at a living wage is a right

* End racism, sexism and anti-LGBT attacks – equality now!

* Stop attacks on immigrants

* Full rights for disabled people

* Bailout youth and students

* No more police brutality

* Jobs not Jails - For prisoners and ex-prisoners' rights

* Save the natural environment and stop climate change

* U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan

* Money for jobs and human needs, not war

* And more – bring your own demands!

People's Economic Summit in New York City

2009-05-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

Endorse the Call | Volunteer | Become a Local Organizer | Donate | Contact Us

Another world is urgently necessary - but we must fight for it.

Sunday May 31--11 a.m.

Inside tents in DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD PLAZA, 47th St. & 1st Ave.

(in conjunction with the UN Summit on the World Economic Crisis, June 1-3 in NYC)

Two meetings on the world economic crisis are taking place in NYC in less than a month.

One of the meetings is the June 1 - 3 UN General Assembly's International Conference on the Global Economic and Financial Crisis. On Sunday, May 31, the day before the UN meeting, the People's Economic Summit will take place directly across the street from the UN building, under tents in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza. The theme of the Peoples Economic Summit is "A NEW WORLD IS URGENTLY NECESSARY–BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT."

It remains to be seen whether these important meetings will get the same kind of attention that the U.S. and world corporate media give to a meeting of the G20--the Group of Twenty finance ministers and central bank governors. This is because in different ways, these meetings are a challenge to the domination of the world economy by the economic system and governments of the G20, especially the U.S. and the other longstanding imperialist powers that still comprise the so-called G7 nations. World events have forced these imperialist powers to incorporate the major developing countries into a broader framework that is now the G20.

The UN conference on the economic crisis, which some are referring to as the G192 Summit--for the 192 member nations of the UN--is, at its most elementary level, a response to exclusionary character of the G20 meetings. On another level, the UN meeting is an attempt by some of the more progressive governments to challenge both the hegemony of the major imperialist powers over the world economy, as well as the capitalist system.

After recently meeting in Cumaná in the Venezuelan state of Sucre, representatives of several governments including Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua issued the April 21 Declaration of Cumaná. Wasting no time to get to its central point, the Cumaná statement begins: "Capitalism is leading humanity and the planet to extinction. What we are experiencing is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural nature, not another cyclic crisis."

The statement asserts: "It is necessary to develop and model an alternative to the capitalist system. A system based on: solidarity and complementarity, not competition; a system in harmony with our mother earth and not plundering of human resources; a system of cultural diversity and not cultural destruction and imposition of cultural values and lifestyles alien to the realities of our countries; a system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist policies and wars; in summary, a system that recovers the human condition of our societies and peoples and does not reduce them to mere consumers or merchandise."

In anticipation of the UN meeting, the statement affirms: "The solutions to the global economic crisis and the definition of a new international financial scheme should be adopted with the participation of the 192 countries that will meet in the United Nations Conference on the International Financial Crisis to be held on June 1-3 to propose the creation of a new international economic order."

Because of the unique nature of the June UN conference, a broad coalition of forces is coming together to hold a Peoples Economic Summit in conjunction with the UN General Assembly Conference on the World Financial and Economic crisis. The goal of the one-day People's Economic Summit is to bring together activists, organizers and leaders from the various movements and struggles most impacted by the devastating global crisis around the region, the country, and some from around the world--the people who are loosing their homes, livelihoods, healthcare, education and futures. These are the voices that must be heard by all the governments.

The biggest worldwide economic crisis since the 1930 has re-raised, with even greater urgency, the need for people in the U.S. and people everywhere to liberate them selves from the grasp of the capitalist system, for the sake of self-defense and self-preservation.

One of the panels during the People's Economic Summit, entitled "Another World is Urgently Necessary," will examine the roots of the financial and economic crisis, as well as the case for alternatives to capitalism and imperialism. Another panel, entitled "But We Must Fight For It," will take up the critical discussion of building the mass movement/s and formulating a program and strategy essential to the task of bringing into being a serious mass struggle for jobs, an end to foreclosures and evictions, and new rights for working and poor people.

Along with these and other panels there will be workshops on "Resisting Imperialist War and Occupation," including the central importance of the Palestinian liberation struggle. A major session of the People's Economic Summit will be dedicated to planning major protest at the Next G20 Summit, which is being planned for NYC in late September.

Representatives of progressive governments participating in the UN conference are being invited to participate in the People's Economic Summit.

The views of the governments that signed the Cumaná statement represent the interests of the overwhelming population of the planet, but it may not represent many of the 192 member governments of the UN. Some governments want to limit the UN conference to a discussion of merely reforming the world financial system. A few imperialist super-powers are threatened by any challenge to their global domination. It is not clear whether the U.S. government will attend the UN economic crisis conference, or boycott it as they did the recent UN conference on racism in Geneva.

The main importance of this UN conference is that it is a forum for widening the political struggle against imperialist global hegemony. Our hope is that the May 31 People's Economic Summit will amplify the struggle inside the UN, strengthen it and make it relevant to the struggle in the streets.

What you can do:

1) Endorse

2) Spread the word - forward this message to friends, fellow activists, community organizers, trade unionists, and student organizations. Ask them to endorse and participate.

3) Donate to help with organizing expenses

4) Volunteer

5) Become a local organizer

Undo the Coup at WBAI!

2009-05-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

Whose Station? Our Station!
Pacifica National Removes General Manager - Program Director Next?
Gag Rule Imposed on Programmers Who Dissent from National Takeover

* Attend a Public Forum on the WBAI Crisis - Tues., May 12, 7:00 PM at Dist. 1707, 75 Varick St. (n. of Canal St.), 14th Fl., Manhattan (A or 1 train to Canal St.) Sponsor: Ad Hoc Community Activist Coalition on WBAI - for info on this event & those below, call 212-561-7231.

* Attend CEMOTAP's Great Debate: Is the Bloomberg Administration Good for Black People? - Sun., May 17, 6 - 9 PM- Bernard White speaks re WBAI, 7:30 PM - Salem United Methodist Church, 129th & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., Harlem

* Speak out at the WBAI Local Station Board mtg., Wed., May 20, 7 PM - place TBA.

************************************************

Fight Back! VOICE YOUR PROTEST * BECOME A WBAI VOTING MEMBER!

* Send an email to the Pacifica National Board at pnb@pacifica.org - which reaches each board member individually, including Grace Aaron. Please send a cc to info@justiceunity.org. Demand Hands Off WBAI Management! Maintain local control of programming!

* Also call Grace Aaron at (310) 286-1011 or (310) 402-4087 with the same message.

* Sign a petition to RECALL Local Station Board members Steve Brown, Mitch Cohen, James Ross, and Carolyn Birden, leaders of the attack on WBAI management.

* At this point, IT IS URGENT THAT YOU JOIN THE STATION (by donating $25 or more or 3 hours of volunteer work) so that you have the right to vote for Justice & Unity board candidates and to recall destructive board members. Call the station's pledge line at (212) 209-2950 - ask them to note on the card that you oppose removal of local management. Or pledge at www.wbai.org.

* Copy and distribute the "Undo the Coup" flyer to get the word out.

Stay updated with: THE WBAI JUSTICE & UNITY CAMPAIGN
(212) 591-2111 * www.justiceunity.org (join our email list there) * info@justiceunity.org

*****************

BACKGROUND ON THE ISSUES AT WBAI:

WBAI is under attack from Pacifica's Interim Executive Director, Grace Aaron of Los Angeles, as well as from the Pacifica National Board majority and the WBAI Local Station Board majority. Exploiting a very real financial crisis at the station, they want to impose their own brand of programming - removing what some label "racial divisiveness and balkanization," meaning community self-determination programs, particularly those by and for the Black community.

On May 6, Aaron removed WBAI's progressive Black General Manager, Tony Riddle, and replaced him with LaVarn Williams, Pacifica's Interim Chief Financial Officer, from Berkeley, Cal. Another progressive Black manager, Program Director Bernard White, has been harshly attacked by majority board members locally and nationally; he is likely to be fired soon. The Local Station Board reportedly held an "executive session" on April 20 at which the majority did a snap "evaluation" of these 2 managers (over strong minority objections), which initiated the process of firing them. No data was collected and they were given no chance to respond. Riddle had served as manager for 13 months. White, a 30-year station veteran, has recently resumed work after major surgery.

These actions follow Riddle's and White's vocal and written protests about the recently revealed attempt by Aaron to hijack the station by changing the locks on the station's broadcast transmitter room and installing equipment for remote control of programming - all without notifying manager Riddle.

Meanwhile, Aaron has imposed a gag rule threatening any programmer who discusses matters on air that she deems a "risk" to Pacifica will be removed from the air. Already, Wakeup Call programmers Don DeBar and Errol Maitland, who have dissented on the air, have been disciplined.

All these steps are reminiscent of the Christmas Coup of December 2000, when Pacifica changed locks, fired local managers, and purged dissenting programmers & other staff, with the goal of mainstreaming BAI - until a mass movement of listeners and staff fought back and won back control of the station and network.

People's Summits & G20 protest

2009-05-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION ACTIVISTS AND ORGANIZERS!
The Bail Out the People Movement is announcing three important projects:

FIRST:

PROTEST THE G20 SUMMIT IN NEW YORK CITY!
Saturday, September. 19 & Sunday, September 20, 2009
(tentative dates)
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE–
BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT!

Bail Out People - Not Banks
Money for Social Needs - Not War and Greed
Jobs, Housing, Healthcare & Education are a Right
Organize - Mobilize - Resist - Unite - Fight Back!

The third G20 summit is going to be in NYC on or around September 20, 2009. 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 in London and throughout Europe.
Now that the G20 is coming to the U.S., it is up to activists and organizations here to take up the challenge of uniting and working together to organize the widest protests possible. BOPM urges activists and organizations to endorse the call for protest at the G20 Summit in the fall, and to begin organizing for it. The potential for mass mobilization in September is truly infinite. So let’s begin the work required to realize that powerful potential.

SECOND:

THE BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE MOVEMENT INVITES YOU TO A
PEOPLE’S ECONOMIC SUMMIT IN NEW YORK CITY - SUNDAY MAY 31

(In conjunction with the UN Summit on the World Economic Crisis, June 1-3 in New York City)

People's Economic Summit
Starting Time - 11:00 am (tentative)
Inside the People's Summit Tent
in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th St. & 1st Ave.

>From June 1–3, The General Assembly of the UN will hold a summit on the world economic crisis in NYC. The UN is holding its own economic summit out of the concern that the 192 member nations of the UN are being marginalized by the G20 summit meetings.

In conjunction with this meeting, on Sunday May 31, the Bail Out the People Movement will hold a people’s summit on
the world economic crisis in NYC outside the UN under a large tent in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

Come to the PEOPLE’S ECONOMIC SUMMIT–Share information and insight on how the economic is affecting poor and working people all over the U.S. and all over the world. Participate in panels and workshops. Help formulate a vision for a future free of social and economic inequality and injustice. Help plan the fight to make that vision a reality.

Planning for the G20 summit meeting in NYC in September, and forming the structures that will make organizing for the G20 inclusive and effective, will be high on the list of priorities at the People’s Economic Summit.

THIRD:

Come to the:
PEOPLE’S SUMMIT & TENT CITY:
PROTEST THE “NATIONAL BIG BUSINESS SUMMIT”

JUNE 14-17, 2009
GRAND CIRCUS PARK, DETROIT, MICHIGAN

Four Days of Active Resistance, Political Discussion and Strategizing for a “People's Stimulus Plans” and an “Economic Bill of Rights” for Working People and the Poor

On June 15-17, 2009, the National Business Summit, sponsored by the Detroit Economic Club, will take place at Ford Field. Millionaire capitalists like the heads of Conoco-Phillips, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Chrysler, Humana Inc., Ascension Health, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, BNSF Railway Co., and PVS Chemicals, as well as the presidents of the National Council on Competitiveness and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, will gather at this summit. President Barack Obama and cabinet members have been invited.

These wealthy businessmen (yes, almost all of them are rich white men) will put their greedy heads together to discuss “innovation and policy ideas in technology, energy, environment and manufacturing.” In other words, they will be strategizing on how to further increase their profits at the expense of the ever-shrinking middle class, the vast working class and the growing millions living in utter poverty.

The National Business Summit will be held in a city with record-high unemployment and poverty rates, lay-offs, budget cuts, school closings, utility rate hikes and shut-offs and massive home foreclosures. With a registration fee of $1,495, it is unlikely that any victims of foreclosures and evictions, let alone laid-off workers, will be able to attend the National Business Summit. No one at this event will be speaking in the interests of those most affected by the economic collapse.

The People’s Summit will be a dynamic event. During the People’s Summit, organizers will implement a moratorium on
foreclosure evictions by going into the neighborhoods and supporting homeowners who are willing to confront the bailiffs. If there is a strike, demonstration or sit-in, the People’s Summit will join it. The People’s Summit will confront the big-business CEOs and politicians gathering next door. Join us!

RAISE YOUR VOICES TO DEMAND:
• Bail out the people!
• Jobs, healthcare, housing and education for all
• Moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility
shutoffs; housing is a right!
• Stop budget cuts and restore social services funding
• Stop tuition hikes and school closings
• Moratorium on layoffs, plant closings, pension thefts and union-busting; A job at a living wage is a right!
• End racism, sexism and anti-LGBT attacks
• Stop attacks on immigrants
. Bail out youth and students
• No more police brutality
• U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan
• Money for jobs and human needs, not war

Here's how you can help:

1) Endorse the call to action: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/peoplessummitendorse.shtml

2) Become an organizer: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/g20-peoplessummitsvolorgcents.shtml

3) Donate to help with organizing: http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml

4) Spread the word!

Press Conference/Picket Line - PROTEST THE RACIST CAMPAIGN AGAINST IMMIGRANTS

2009-04-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

Press Conference/Picket Line

PROTEST THE RACIST CAMPAIGN AGAINST IMMIGRANTS
Outside of Forum featuring anti-immigrant bigot
Stop the Raids and Deportations
Support Worker and Immigrant Rights
March on Mayday 2009

4:30pm, Thursday April 23
Outside of a Forum “ Intelligent Immigration Reform” at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street in Manhattan

On Thursday April 23 at 4:30pm, activists, students, trade unionist, and community organizers will hold a Press Conference and Picket Line in front of the“Intelligent Immigration Reform” forum at the New School For Social Research Tishman Auditorium. The Press Conference and Picket Line is being called by the Bail Out The People Movement and the May 1 Coalition For Workers and Immigrant Rights.

New School President Bob Kerrey, who recently ordered the NYPD to send in riot police to brutally crush a peaceful protest of New School students, has invited Mark Krikorian, executive director of the “The Center For Immigration Studies” and one of the most prominent leaders of the anti-immigrant campaign to participate in the forum. Other Forum participants include Michael Aytes, deputy director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security.

4:30 pm - 6:00 pm: Picket/Press Conference
6:00 pm: Bail Out the People Movement Organizers and Activists Meeting - 55 W. 17th St. 5th Floor, in Manhattan between 5th and 6th Avenues

Report from April 3 & 4

2009-04-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

April 3 & 4: People Need Jobs!
Protesters March on Wall Street Demanding: Bail Out People, NOT Banks!

In an early sign of what promises to be a growing movement, 1,000 people defied a torrential downpour to rally on Wall Street on Friday, April 3 in response to a national call from the Bail Out the People Movement. The central demands of the demonstration were: 1) a real jobs program; and 2) an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.

The protest began with a rally began at Wall Street and Broadway, the center of the financial district, at 1 p.m. on a busy Friday. Participants included unions, community groups, youth and students from Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Buffalo and dozens of organizing centers throughout the country.

Larry Holmes, a leader of the Bail out the People Movement and a co-chair of the rally, said, “This is the opening of a serious nationwide struggle for a jobs program.” The Bail Out the People Movement is calling for a jobs program similar to the Work Projects Administration of the 1930’s, which employed millions of people.

Speakers repeatedly denounced the $10 trillion that has been given to banks over the past year.

While the government has given banks trillions of dollars, 4.4 million people have lost their jobs since the economic downturn began in December 2007, more than half of them in the last five months. Thousands have lost their homes in foreclosures and evictions.

As the rain began to let up about halfway through the rally, several members of the youth group FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) began walking down Broadway. The police wanted to keep everyone off Wall Street, but members of FIST were determined to march through the financial nerve center. The police converged on them and pushed them onto the sidewalk. Four youth were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. One of them was pushed around by the cops and also charged with resisting arrest. He was held in jail for nine-and-a-half hours while the others were released after three hours.

Meanwhile, the police ignored the real criminals, who were in the boardrooms and executive offices overlooking the streets. One speaker at the rally, New York City Council Member Charles Barron, said that the crooks who have received $10 trillion that has been given to banks over the past year, “should be looking for bail money to get out of jail.”

LeiLani Dowell, a member of FIST and a rally co-chair, described how the economic crisis was hurting youth and explained that the hardships they face are inherent to the system itself. The other rally co-chairs were Brenda Stokely, a leader of the Million Worker March Movement, and Sara Flounders, co-coordinator of the International Action Center.

Other speakers included Chris Silvera, secretary –treasurer of Local 808 International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Charles Jenkins, Local 10 Transport Workers Union; a representative of the Stella D’oro strikers campaign; Sandra Hines, of Detroit’s Moratorium Now! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures & Evictions; and Monica Moorehead, of Workers World Party.

Following the rally, the Bail Out the People Movement took their message directly to the banks, marching down Pine Street to AIG, which has received a total of $170 billion in bailout money, chanting “Jobs for All” and “Jail ‘Em, Don’t Bail ‘Em.” Protesters marched through the narrow streets of the financial district, confronting financial giants like Citigroup, Fidelity, AIG, American Express, the Federal Reserve and the New York Stock Exchange. They then proceeded on to Water Street, stopping at another AIG building, and then went under the Brooklyn Bridge to Foley Square for a closing rally.

Organized labor came out in full force marching behind their banners. There were contingents from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; District 37 Locals 375 and 768; Teamsters Local 808; United Federation of Teachers Local 2; UFT Local 37-901; striking Stella D’oro workers; BCT Local 50 from the Bronx; and New York City Labor Against the War. Others on the march included members of District 1199 New England; Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers/AFSCME; United Autoworkers Local 100 of Detroit; and Transit Workers Union of NYC.

The April 3 march was held on the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., who called for a right to a job or income for all. The following day, the United for Peace and Justice Coalition held another march on Wall Street which went down Broadway and ended at Battery Park. The Bail Out the People Movement held a brief rally overlooking the New York Stock Exchange and joined the march as it went by.

Media Coverage of April 3& 4

VIDEOS

NY1 News video report on Friday's Bail Out the People protest:
http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/96834/protesters-march-against-bailouts-on-wall-street/Default.aspx

NY1 News video report on Saturday's march:
http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/politics/96842/protesters-hold-second-day-s-march-on-wall-street/Default.aspx

MSNBC video report on Friday's action:
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=312173

CNN en espanol
http://www.cnnexpansion.com/actualidad/2009/04/03/protestan-en-wall-street-por-la-crisis

Video from allthingsharlem.com
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-239515

NBC4: Rally on Wall Street to 'Bailout the People'
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Rally-on-Wall-Street-to-Bailout-the-People.html

Activists protest bailouts near Wall Street on April 3, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVB4WeCvgzw

Wall Street Demostration on April 3, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUMMS35za4

Wall Street Demostration Part 2, on April 3, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wazQd-DjthM

Wall St Demo April 3, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkCNWLljGAA

PRINT & ONLINE MEDIA

Reuters:Activists protest bailouts near Wall Street
http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN0335443120090403

Los Angeles IAC report on LA action:
http://www.iacenter.org/actions/lademo0509/

AP: NYC protesters ask US to 'bail out the people' http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jPati7jbLo532dVb5D55XbX9T3bgD97B5NF81

The Indypendent: Hundreds Rally on Wall St., Demanding Action to Combat Economic Crisis
http://www.indypendent.org/2009/04/03/hundreds-rally-on-wall-st/

NYC protesters urge government to bail out people, not banks
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/04/content_11129335.htm

Photos from Xinhua.net
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/04/content_11131514_2.htm

Daily Finance.com: Protesters arrested at Wall Street rally
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/04/03/protestors-arrested-at-wall-street-march/

NBC4: Rally on Wall Street to 'Bailout the People'
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Rally-on-Wall-Street-to-Bailout-the-People.html

UPCOMING ACTIONS - CHECK OFTEN FOR UPDATES

May Day in NYC, LA and cities across the U.S.
http://www.may1.info/

Detroit People’s Summit at Grand Circus Park from June 14-17
http://www.moratorium-mi.org

Bring the message of the G20 Protests to Wall Street April 3 & 4 'Bail Out the People, Not the Banks!'

2009-04-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Friday April 3 - While Wall Street is open
Rally 1:00 pm at Wall St .& Broadway, followed by a march to AIG

Saturday April 4 - Rally at 12:00 pm at Williams & Nassau (near Wall St.) Then march

APRIL 3: 1pm Rally on Wall Street & march to AIG
APRIL 4: 12 noon - Rally on Wall Street followed by march

Friday, April 3 Rally

Gather at 1pm on Wall Street at Broadway (map)
Rally on Broadway from Wall Street south to Exchange and block further South to the 'Bull'. There will be contingents of youth, women, worker and immigrant rights, and more. Check back for details over the next few days!

MARCH on AIG

We will march through the narrow streets of the New York Financial District - Major financial institutions are all along Broadway and within one block of Rally - Chase, Fidelity, American Express, the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve, and more.

We will march east on Pine to the AIG Buildings at 70 Pine and 80 Pine and then to the AIG Building on Water St.

Then, we will march north on Water Street, which becomes Pearl Street, then becomes St James Place, turn west on Worth Street at Chatham Square in Chinatown to Centre Street, for an ending rally at 5:15 in Foley Square.

March route is only 1.2 miles total through busy office and housing areas at rush hour.

Public Transportation to Wall St: (map)

2, 4, or 5 to Wall Street

R or W to Rector Street

J, M or Z to Broad Street

M1, M6 or M15 to Broadway-Nassau/Fulton Street

NJ PATH trains to World Trade Center and 5 minute walk.

Public Transportation from Foley Square after ending rally (map)

J,M, Z, 4, 5, 6, at Foley Square

2, 3, at Park Place and Broadway

A, C, at Chambers and Church St

1, 2, 3, at Chambers & West Broadway

NJ PATH trains to World Trade Center- a 7 minute walk

Bus Drop Off:
on Broadway at Wall Street on west side of street

Bus Parking and Pick Up:
On Church Street between Worth and Leonard.
>From Foley Square go 2 blocks North on Worth Street to Church Street.

Saturday, April 4

RALLY
Gather with chanting, drumming and music: 12 Noon to 1:00pm on Nassau between Wall Street and Pine – over looking NY Stock Exchange and in front of the Federal Reserve and Chase Bank (map) Enter area at Pine and Broadway go East one SHORT block to Nassau This is just a block from the Friday Rally site.

We will join United for Peace and Justice as they come by at Pine and Broadway, about 1:00pm. One block further at Wall and Broadway the whole march will turn Left down Wall Street, turn Right at Broad Street and the NY Stock Exchange, then turn Right on Exchange and go back to Broadway. From there the march will proceed South to Battery Park.

Bail Out People will have a table, displays and literature at Battery Park, along Eisenhower Way, going West toward Castle Clinton. Be sure to come by our table.

SATURDAY Bus Drop-off:
Broadway, between Wall and Pine on the West Side of street (map)

SATURDAY Bus Parking and Pick-up
Water Street between Broad Street and Old Slip
This is about 3 blocks EAST of the ending site at Battery Park

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED for FRIDAY and SATURDAY RALLIES

and for WORK SESSIONS on Wed and Thurs at 55 W. 17th St 2 to 9pm

On FRIDAY volunteers should be at Wall Street and Broadway by 11:30 to help set up sound, tables, banners etc.

At END Rally at Foley Square we need help in packing the truck for the next day’s March and Rally and picking up ALL trash, signs, papers in Foley Square.

We have to post and large clean-up bond and insurance with the NYC Parks Department. This bond is only returned if we leave the Foley Park area clean.

On SATURDAY volunteers should be at Pine and Broadway or a block down at Nassau between Pine and Wall Street by 11:00am.

Again we will need help on set-up and sound for the Rally

A few VOLUNTEERS will still be needed at Bail Out People site at Nassau between Pine and Wall to pack up materials and direct latecomers to the day's events at Battery Park.

Marching on Wall St. to Fulfill King’s Dream: A Jobs Program

2009-04-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

By New York City Council Member Charles Barron and Chris Silvera, Secretary-Treasurer, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 808; past President of the Teamsters National Black Caucus

We will be amongst the many speakers at the “Bail Out People, Not Banks” rally on Wall St. on Friday, April 3.

On Friday morning, just a few hours before the Wall St. rally, the bureau of labor statistics is going to announce that another two-thirds of a million workers got laid off in March.

This is one of the reasons why we intend to use the time allotted us to speak, to call for the creation of a massive jobs program. We are going to call it the “Fulfill King’s Dream Jobs Program” in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We have four reasons for associating King’s name with the jobs program. The first reason is that April 4 will mark the 41st anniversary of Dr. King’s martyrdom. The second reason is that King devoted the final months of his life to launching a movement for the right of all to either a job or an income.

King saw the struggle for the right to a job or an income as nothing less than the second phase of the civil rights movement. Securing a job at a living wage for all was the central demand of the poor people's campaign that King initiated in late 1967.

The third reason is that at no time in our lifetime has the need for the massive jobs program that King dreamed about been more urgently needed. Depression-level layoffs and home foreclosures are populating new tent cities from coast to coast. Whole families are living under bridges and in parks on the outskirts of cities.

The real unemployment rate, if you count those who want full-time jobs but can only find part-time or temporary work, is upwards of 15 percent. Everyone from the World Bank to the National Urban League says that the jobless rate is only going to get worse.

The latest “State of Black America” report, issued by the National Urban League, confirms what everyone already knows. While very few, regardless of race and gender, are not harmed or threatened by the biggest worldwide economic collapse since the 1930s, it is the Black and Latin@ communities that are the most devastated by the crisis--especially Black and Latin@ youth. Jail is not the jobs program for young people that King dreamed about; it is his and should be our worst nightmare.

The unemployment crisis demands a real jobs program, something equal to the size and scope of the Work Projects Administration created by Congress in 1935 to put millions of jobless people to work.

In its first year the WPA created more than 3.4 million jobs (the equivalent of about 10 million jobs today). Under the WPA, workers were paid the prevailing wage in the industry or vocation they worked in.

The stimulus legislation passed by Congress in February may help ease the suffering of some, but it’s not going to reverse or even halt the soaring jobless rate. There is no jobs program currently in effect or even under serious consideration by the government that comes even close to the seriousness and size of the WPA.

Where do we get the money for such a jobs program? When the government is prepared to pump trillions of dollars into the banking system, the question is not where will the money come from, but rather what need should it be devoted to. The $200 billion that the government has given AIG alone could have created anywhere between 3 to 4 million jobs that pay a living wage.

There is another important point that makes the WPA jobs program relevant to today’s crisis. The WPA should have started at an earlier stage of the U.S. and global depression 75 years ago. However, the government delayed putting a serious jobs program in place until it was painfully clear that waiting for the banks to be fixed before putting the jobless back to work was a huge mistake. We must not make the same mistake again.

We don’t think King believed that meeting the needs of the poor and the unemployed must be contingent upon the solvency of JP Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, etc.; or contingent on the power of these big banks to turn the economy on and off depending on what makes them richer.

The belief that until the banks are fixed, there can be no jobs, no economy and nothing but layoffs, evictions, cutbacks, fare hikes, tuition increases, etc., is not some commandment decreed by heaven; it’s a rule made down here on Earth to protect the interest of the few against that of the many.

We refuse to accept the rules that say that the only good way to do things is the way that makes rich capitalists happy and leaves the rest of us at their mercy. Such rules must be changed. The only certain thing is that nothing will change unless people demand it.

Here’s our fourth reason for naming the jobs program after Dr. King. The election of an African-American president is without a doubt the realization of a part of King’s dream. But a president is not a substitute for a mass movement for social justice.

King knew that the captains of industry were not going to suddenly wake up one morning believing that the cause of economic and social justice was superior to their profit motive and thus create good paying jobs for the poor. King knew that it would take a mass social movement to get the job done.

It is a mistake--and a dangerous one--for those of us who are still rejoicing over how we made history last November to simply sit on the sidelines and wait to see how things turn out, instead of raising hell. King served the interests of the downtrodden and oppressed. Obama must serve all sides. To the extent that Obama wants to do things that directly bail out poor and working people, don’t forget that there are powerful people in Washington and on Wall St. who are dedicated to stopping him. Those powerful people will prevail unless they see and hear the angry masses marching in the streets below their ivory towers.

The popular outrage over the bailout of the banks is a precious and powerful force. It should not--it must not--be wasted. Let’s focus that anger into the struggle for the things that we need.

We’ll be on Wall St. on Friday, April 3 demanding that the unemployed be bailed out with a real jobs program. We invite you to join us.

March on Wall Street & AIG on APRIL 3: Bail Out People, Not Banks!

2009-03-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

Bail Out the People Movement Statement on AIG and the Latest Bailout Plan
Information about the April 3 March on Wall Street

Main focus of March:

* The need for a real jobs program
* A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions

The April 3 March on Wall Street will begin with an opening rally at 1:00 PM at Wall Street and Broadway, followed by a march to AIG at 70 Pine St. (see details below)

Statement on Latest Bailout Plan

The new plan still bails out banks, not people
AIG outrage must fuel a struggle for a real jobs program

On Friday, April 3, the Bail Out the People Movement, a growing coalition of hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists, will march on Wall Street and AIG. Protesters on April 3 will bring demands for a real jobs program, a moratorium on foreclosures, and other necessary programs for bailing out the people, not banks and Wall Street financial institutions.

The growing anger over the AIG bonus bonanza, outrageous as it is, is really about the fact that trillions of dollars are being deployed to rescue the wealthiest on Wall Street, while the unemployment and foreclosure rates continue to head towards depression levels.

The mass anger at Wall Street will be wasted unless it is used to focus on the real crisis.

At the April 3 March on Wall Street, the Bail Out The People Movement will open a nationwide petition campaign for an emergency jobs program on the scale of the Work Projects Administration of the 1930s. The stimulus legislation is far too little to make even a dent in the estimated 20 million people who are jobless or underemployed. The unemployed need a real jobs program, and they need it now.

The April 3 Wall Street march will also focus attention on the need for an immediate national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Such a moratorium should have been put in place two years ago. It is unacceptable and scandalous, considering the historically unprecedented level of government interventions and control of the mortgage industry and the banks, that the government has failed to order an end to evictions

Taxing multimillion dollar bonuses, putting a cap on corporate pay, and new regulations on the banks may be good ideas, but they are no substitute for a jobs program of sufficient scope and size to stop and reverse the unemployment crisis.

Moreover, the measures being proposed in Washington are no substitute for a vitally necessary single-payer health care program for all or the need for the passage and signing into law of the Employee Free Choice Act, so that working people will be better able to organize and defend themselves against the robber barons of Wall Street.

The new so-called public/private bank bailout plan is a thinly veiled attempt to make it appear as though private investors will share the burden of bailed out banks. With the new plan, 90 percent of bailout funds, or at least one trillion dollars, will come from the government.

The new plan is premised on exact same rational as the last bank bail out plan. The government will continue to pump trillions of dollars in to the banks until the banks are declared fixed. In the meantime, the lives of tens of millions more people are going to slide into life-threatening poverty.

The time has come for this rationale to be rejected. The idea that some banks are too big to fail but untold millions of peoples' lives can be devastated, or that profits must come before the welfare of the people, are not commandments from heaven but rules made down here on earth to protect the interest of the few against that of the many.

Henceforth, the fight must be about reversing the flow of government money away from the banks and into social needs.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated the last year of his life to trying to open up what he considered the second phase of the civil rights movement: the fight for economic justice. King's main focus in the few months of 1968, before being gunned down on April 4, was to win public support for the right of all to either a job or an income.

As King planned the poor peoples' march on Washington in those final weeks, nowhere did he ever mention that the need and the right to a job or an income must be based on the solvency of JP Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, etc. and their power to turn the economy on and off depending on what makes them richer.

The message that thousands of marchers will bring to Wall St. on Friday April 3, the day before the 41st anniversary of King's death, is that society can no longer allow for jobs, housing, healthcare and all that people need to be held hostage to the arrogance, greed and power of bankers.

In addition to the need for a real jobs program and a moratorium on evictions, some of the other issues that the April 3 march on Wall St. will be drawing attention to include:

* The need for an immediate moratorium on layoffs and cuts in social programs
* Opposition to tuition hikes and public transportation fare hikes
* Single payer health care for ALL
* Support the Employee Free Choice Act
* Support the rights of immigrant workers
* An end to wars and occupations

*** Building a national march requires printing tens of thousands of leaflets, posters, and stickers, as well as preparing placards and banners and providing sound for the rally and march. Please consider making a contribution to help with organizing expenses at http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml.

March on Wall Street Information

Gather at 1pm on Wall Street at Broadway (map)

Rally on Broadway from Wall Street south to Exchange and block further South to the 'Bull'.

MARCH on AIG
We will march through the narrow streets of the New York Financial District - Major financial institutions are all along Broadway and within one block of Rally - Chase, Fidelity, American Express, the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve, and more.

We will march east on Pine to the AIG Buildings at 70 Pine and 80 Pine and then to the AIG Building at 125 Water St.
Then, we will march north on Water Street to Foley Square, for an ending rally at 5:15 at Foley Square

Public Transportation: (map)
2, 4, or 5 to Wall Street
R or W to Rector Street
J, M or Z to Broad Street
M1, M6 or M15 to Broadway-Nassau/Fulton Street
NJ PATH trains to World Trade Center and 5 minute walk.

Bus Drop Off: on Broadway at Wall Street
Bus Pick up: at Foley Square

2009-03-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

STOP THE WAR AT HOME AND ABROAD
FROM WASHINGTON D.C. – TO BALTIMORE – TO WALL STREET

WASHINGTON D.C.
Saturday, March 21
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR—
MARCH ON THE PENTAGON

March to stop the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Bring the troops home now!

Join the Bailout the People Movement in Washington D.C. Look for our banners on that day or for more information call our national office at 212-633-6646. See our website: www.BailoutPeople.org

BALTIMORE
Sunday, March 22

STOP THE WAR ON THE WORKERS & THE POOR
STOP FORECLOSURES & EVICTIONS

The people of Baltimore have won a resounding victory when City Council members introduced a bill that would require a 365 day notice before foreclosed home owners can be evicted. But now the banks are doing everything possible to stop the passage of this precedent setting bill. You can help stop the bankers from killing the bill!

The Network to Stop Foreclosures and the Bailout the People Movement are calling on anti-war activists to come to Baltimore on Sunday following the Washington D.C. protest to mobilize to stop foreclosures and evictions. A crucial City Council hearing will be held on Tuesday, March 24. It needs to be packed with people and you can help make it possible.

Bring your energy! Be a part of community outreach brigades! Housing provided.
Call 410-218-4835 or email apcbaltimore@pipeline.com

AND ONTO

WALL STREET NYC

CONFRONT THE BANKERS WHEN WALL STREET IS OPEN

FRIDAY, APRIL 3 continuing to April 4

BAILOUT THE PEOPLE-NOT THE BANKS!
TRILLIONS HAVE BEEN HANDED TO THE BANKERS — WHILE THE PEOPLE GET PENNIES!
LET’S TURN IT AROUND -- STOP BUSINESS AS USUAL!

Volunteers & Funds needed. If you can come to New York before April 3 to help mobilize, please call 212-633-6646.

Go to the Bailout the People Movement website and get information on how you can volunteer or endorse the March on Wall Street or for transportation from your area - www.BailoutPeople.org

Protest a Region-Wide Foreclosed Home Auction!

2009-03-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

Sunday March 8, 10:00 am
At The Jacob Javits Convention Center Entrance
Between 35th St and 36th St. and 11th Ave. in Manhattan

Stop the Auction! Sign the Petition at: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/nonycauction.shtml

No more foreclosed home auctions!
No more foreclosures and evictions!
Demand a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions!

Please join us on Sunday morning at 10:00 am sharp at a demonstration against the biggest auction of foreclosed homes ever in New York City.

The Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC), the biggest private auctioneer of foreclosed homes in the country, is auctioning more than 375 foreclosed homes at the Jacob Javits Convention center. This is the biggest auction ever held in NYC. The houses being sold to the highest bidder are the homes of poor and working people who lived in places like Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Newark, Long Island, upstate New York, and Pennslyvania who were forced out of their homes by Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan-Chase and other banks. These same bankers have received hundreds of billions of dollars of bail out money while they're throwing working people out of their homes. These foreclosures are illegal.

At a time when an estimated 15,000 families are being evicted from their homes each day and the number of job layoffs per month in the U.S. is rapidly approaching one million a month, we cannot and must not be indifferent about the ugly spectacle of the auctioning of the homes of displaced families.

In the biggest economic crisis since the depression of the 30’s, these auctions should not be taking place; they are a symptom of the cruel and criminal mass eviction campaign that will continue to grow until people unite and say 'No More!'

Today, the Obama administration announced a $75 billion plan for the federal government to essentially take over the failed mortgage industry. Mortgage companies now have a duty to modify virtually every housing loan before foreclosing. Until this plan is completely in place and people have a chance to take make use of the process, every single foreclosure now taking place is in violation of Federal Law - 12 USC 5219 and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA).

But we know that the only force that will stop foreclosures is mass grassroots mobilization. Join us on March 8 to demand an end to the auction. And then, help us build for the National March on Wall Street on April 3 - when Wall Street is open, continuing on April 4 to demand "Bail Out the People - Not the Banks!" (See http://www.BailOutPeople.org to find out how you can get involved.)

We call upon the City of New York to stop the March 8 auction and we demand an immediate stop to call foreclosures and evictions.
We call upon the Jacob Javits Center and the Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) to cancel the auction, set up to allow financial predators to profit from throwing people out on the street.
Sign the petition at: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/nonycauction.shtml

Support the nationwide campaign for a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions. Join us at the Javits center on Sunday March 8 to say:

No more foreclosed home auctions!
No more foreclosures and evictions!
Immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions!

Stop the Auction! Sign the Petition at: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/nonycauction.shtml

Support Kimmel Building Occupiers:

2009-02-20T14:24:00.000-08:00

from the Take Back NYU! Website:

NYU is taking immediate steps against protesters, at risk of its public image and the wellbeing of its students. Right now, several protesters in university housing are being evicted from their residences. This is not OK. Dissent should not displace people. Please contact NYU Housing to insist they allow students to stay in their dorm:

Phone: 212-998-4600

email: housing@nyu.edu

Stop the Fare Hike

2009-01-23T14:24:00.000-08:00

STOP THE FARE HIKE!
ROCK THE MTA’S BROOKLYN “PUBLIC HEARING”

BAIL OUT RIDERS, NOT THE BANKS!

Wednesday, January 28 – 5 PM
New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge
333 Adams Street between Fulton & Johnson

DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE
THEN DEMONSTRATE INSIDE

The MTA is bringing its panel of bankers and billionaires to Brooklyn -- its very own Farehike-apolooza -- next Wednesday night for another so-called public hearing.

Like last week, the Bail Out the People Movement will be there to confront the Wall Street executives and rally the people who come out to the hearing. On January 14, BOPM turned the sidewalk in front of the Hilton into a “People’s Public Hearing,” where transit workers, students and activists rallied 100 people against the MTA. The entire demonstration then marched en masse into the hearing (see YouTube coverage below).

On Wednesday, the demonstration will also continue inside the hearing, with dozens of placards demanding that the MTA scrap its plans to make workers bear the brunt of its debt crisis.

The Times said yesterday that this year 1 out of 6 people will be unemployed this year, a figure which does not take into account the number among immigrant workers and others. Bank of America just got $20 billion more.

Now is not the time to be raising fares and cutting services. Now’s the time for the banks to use the billions they’ve sucked out of mass transit, the treasury and our labor -- and BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE.

NO FARE HIKES -- NO LAYOFFS
NO SERVICE CUTS -- NO BRIDGE TOLLS

Wednesday, January 28 – 5 PM
New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge
333 Adams Street between Fulton & Johnson

A,C, TO BOROUGH HALL -- M,R TO LAWRENCE STREET
2,3,4,5 TO BOROUGH HALL

ON YOUTUBE

Realizing the Fightback – Some Perspective and Plans

2009-01-22T14:26:00.000-08:00

FIGHTBACK CONFERENCE
Draft Working Paper

Realizing the Fightback – Some Perspective and Plans

Download PDF

The following was adopted at the Jan. 17 Fightback Conference in NYC. It is a work in progress.

In many ways, the U.S.-financed genocidal siege of Gaza that many of us have been demonstrating against in recent weeks is a harbinger of the widening war against the workers and oppressed peoples of the planet that is sure to intensify this year. In 2009, more and more lives are going to be devastated by the biggest global economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s.

This crisis is the challenge of a lifetime for those of us who have made a commitment to fighting for the rights of people. What we do or fail to do will prove decisive in the coming battle over whose interests in society shall prevail.

The election of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, realizes a measure of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. But depression-level joblessness, evictions and foreclosures made worse by cutbacks, war, bigotry and racism are not a dream but a nightmare. This is a time of many contradictions. Many people feel that the new president will bring progressive change but at the same time, there are Black youth being summarily executed by police; Proposition 8; new attacks on reproductive justice; one of the biggest bigots presiding over the inauguration ceremony, the prospects of a widening war in Afghanistan and much more.

Part of the legacy of Dr. King is the understanding that no election or president--however historical and inspiring--can be a substitute for a mass movement in the struggle against war or for social and economic rights. There are signs that the workers understand this.

This past December the bankers and bosses got hit with a one-two punch. The workers at the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago occupied their plant to win some measure of their rights. One day after the workers victory in Chicago, the Smithfield meat processing workers in Tar Heel, North Carolina finally won their right to a union after a long and bitter struggle. These battles are part of the first chapter of the Fightback that must and will grow. How can we help the development of the Fightback?

There can be no honest discussion about fighting without posing the inevitable question--Is it not time to terminate the capitalist system that appears only capable of trapping the people of the world in a nightmare of endless chaos, violence, misery, suffering, inequality, oppression, environmental destruction and other crises all in the interests of the super rich? How can this question not become the burning question as the absurd rules of capitalism mandate that no effort can be spared to bailout the barons of capitalist finance even while much of the population is pushed into life-threatening poverty? No doubt this unavoidable question will be an essential and welcome part of our discussion during the conference. Even if the question is not openly addressed, it will be the subtext of our deliberations.

However, though its direction is most definitely radical, it is not the intention of this document to unite conference participants around a comprehensive ideological position. Nor does it attempt to analyze the capitalist crisis, or address many issues of importance to all of us. This document is a framework for planning action.

The question this working document poses is more limited. In order to actually do something meaningful about the crisis in the coming weeks and months, can we unite ourselves and other forces around some understanding of what is most important at this moment along with an evolving, flexible plan of action?

High on the list of the important things to understand is that:

• Ultimately there must be a Fightback that is proportional in size, scope, organization and militancy to the threat that the crisis poses to the social conditions of the working class. Such a Fightback is not possible without perspective and plan for the mass organization of working and poor people on a scale unprecedented since the defining labor battles of the 1930s.

• The Fightback movement must be prepared to utilize a wide range of tactics in the struggle including mass mobilizations, demonstrations, direct actions, sit-ins, occupations, strikes, boycotts, encampments and most importantly, organizing.

• As part and parcel of the Fightback struggle, the level of political and class consciousness of an expanding percentage of the working class must grow qualitatively in order for the Fightback to continue and grow. It’s going to take a high level of consciousness for the Fightback to defend itself against efforts from the other side of the class barricade to derail it. And it’s going to take a high level of consciousness to forge solidarity in the large, complex, multi-national working class in the U.S., much of which has experienced mostly fragmentation in recent history.

• The Fightback is set back when racism is not pushed back. The Fightback is set back when trade unions don’t come to the defense of immigrant workers who are being dragged out the work place in chains and bused to jails, left to languish there. Solidarity that transcends all geographical boundaries, local and international, will be the key to the success of the Fightback.

Moving Forward: Challenging Obama’s Stimulus Plan

There are potentially two overlapping yet distinct motives behind the incoming administration’s “stimulus” proposal. One motive is to jump start the economy by infusing another $800 billion dollars, 40 percent of it is tax breaks primarily for corporations, along with some limited extension of unemployment benefits.

The stimulus plan also provides for some aid to states and a large part of the stimulus budget is supposed to be allotted to various projects. Ninety percent of these projects are to be administered by the private sector. The stated goal of the stimulus plan is to either save or create between three and four million jobs over the next two years or three years. This won’t make much of a dent in the rising unemployment rate and it won’t jumpstart the economy.

If the more than eight trillion dollars that the government has either given to or made available to the big banks in order to bribe them to invest money into the economy hasn’t worked, neither will the hundreds of billions of dollars more that the government is planning to fork over to the banks. The big banks are going to sit on all the money they’ve been given until the crisis is over. The problem is that the economic crisis is only getting worse and may never be over.

The other potential motive for big government expenditures during a time of grave economic crisis like during the 1930s is the motive that’s of most interest to us. That motive is fear of workers rebelling. At the point that mass anger, organization and struggle has reached the critical point, stimulating the economy takes a back seat to trying to stop a revolution.

The government and the class interests that it represents have reasons for doing whatever it does; so should the working class. In the context of this economic crisis, it is not in the interests of the poor and working people to wait around jobless, homeless and starving for the big banks to decide that it’s profitable to start up the economy and create jobs. The only rationale that reflects the interests of the working class is to demand that their interests come first before fixing the capitalist economy. Thus, government programs should not have as their objective “stimulating” a crisis ridden economy, but rather protecting people from such a disastrous economy by insuring that social needs come first.

There’s only one sure way for the people to force the government to put their interests before profits, and that’s to put the fear of rebellion in their hearts through mass, militant struggle.

An Outline for the Fightback in Three Phases

One way of looking at our task in the coming months is to break up the rest of the year in three phases based on anticipating how the political, economic and social situation might evolve and how this might affect both the preparation and conditions for the fight back. Of course speculation about what may happen in the future and how that will affect the Fightback is at best schematic and useful only as an outline to measure real developments against.

Phase One: Establishing a Fightback Program

From now through the spring, there will be a great deal of focus on the negotiations between the incoming administration, Congress and Wall St over the details of the stimulus proposal as well as how the remaining $350 billion left over from the $700 billion Wall St. bailout money will be used.

As the politicians, bankers and corporate media dominate and distort the crisis and most importantly, keep the masses of out of the decision-making process, some will wait to see to what extent any of the measures that the branches of government ultimately agree to alleviate the worsening social crisis.

During this time, the Fightback’s priorities would be to plan activities and strategies that establish a people first, programmatic alternative to the government’s stimulus proposal including:

• Opening up the first stage is a national unemployed people’s organizing campaign, together with the effort to recruit an army of volunteer organizers;
• Establishing as broad of a coalition as possible around organizing for mass mobilizations across the country (and the world) on May 1st--International Workers Day--around a program that is centered on the struggle of immigrant workers rights, but broadens the program to include the demand for jobs or income and all of the other issues and demands that reflect the needs of the workers and the poor, including opposition to the wars and;
• Organizing mobilizations around dates such as the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or International Women’s Day, will help build the fight back.

Phase Two: May Day—a possible turning point in the Fightback

As bad as things are today, by mid-to-late spring, unemployment, and foreclosures will be immeasurably worse. It will become evident that the stimulus legislation is not going to have any effect on the crisis. More people will become desperate, angry and ready to stop waiting and start fighting.

If we have done whatever was necessary to forge the kind of alliances and do the kind of grassroots mass organizing around May Day mobilizations, it’s possible that the May 1st mobilizations could be the beginning of the second phase. If we have raised the organizational level of the Fightback and attracted a wider mass base amongst the various sectors of the working class, conditions may be ripe to project more ambitious mobilizations and struggles after May 1st.

Phase Three: March on Washington, D.C. for Jobs/Convening a People’s Assembly

With worsening social conditions, the summer is not likely to be quiet. The combination of the economic crisis and police repression--which is epidemic and deadly all year round but tends to peak during the summer--could spark rebellions that spread beyond the locality of an incident that provoked the rebellion. The late spring and summer could be a time of intensive organizing and planning for a mass march on Washington, D.C. for jobs and other demands.

If there is wide enough agreement, the convening of a National People’s Assembly in Washington, D.C. in the fall in conjunction with others could help consolidate the base and work of the Fightback, become the meeting where everything is assessed and where the direction and next course of action is set.

Proposed Campaigns**Mobilizations**Draft Fightback Program

1. Campaigns

A. Organizing the Unemployed on a Mass Basis

The time has come to launch a national campaign to organize the unemployed as part of the fight for jobs or an income. Every sector of the working class is vital to the Fightback. Mass organizing of the rapidly swelling ranks of the unemployed must be central to a fightback strategy. As the economic crisis deepens, more and more of the crisis will be defined by the depression-level unemployment rate and the fight for jobs or income. Even Wall St. economists now admit that the real unemployment rate is about 14 percent. The unemployment rate for African Americans is twice as high and even higher for young Black people. There may already be as many as 20 million unemployed workers looking for jobs. At the frenzied and accelerating pace that workers are being laid off, by late spring there may be a million layoffs a month for the rest of the year. The unemployment crisis makes every other crisis worse. If you lose your job, you are more likely to lose your home, healthcare, childcare, pension, ability to go to school, and other social necessities. Massive unemployment also tends to strengthen the position of employers against employed workers and union organizing campaigns. No challenge is more urgent than laying the basis for organizing the unemployed. It will take time, commitment, and hard work but it can be done. The first step is to establish an unemployed workers organizing campaign.

Some tactics that may help:

• Calling local or national level “WE NEED JOBS” demonstrations. Another tactic that might be compelling to youth would be to organize demonstrations or other events under around the slogan “JOBS NOT JAILS”.

• Anything that is done, whether ambitious or modest in scope that helps to bring the unemployed out of isolation and helps to give them a voice would contribute to building this campaign.

B. A People’s Assembly

A grass roots people’s assembly movement has already been launched by progressive activists in the South, and the idea of people’s assemblies is being picked up by activists in other parts of the country. People’s assemblies can serve a number of needs in the Fightback including providing a public hearing for people to talk about the impact that the crisis is having on communities and what emergency measures are necessary to deal with the problems people are facing. Moreover, implicit in the concept of people’s assemblies is the realization that the legislative part of government--both at the local, state and national levels--have failed to represent the interests of poor and working people. This failure, particularly in a time of crisis, has made it necessary for people to form their own independent power structures for the purpose of determining what needs to be done in their interests as well as the plan of action necessary to fight for their interests. Right now, people’s assemblies are being organized on a local base. In the near future the Fightback may require the convening of a national people’s assembly perhaps in Washington D.C., possibly in conjunction with a national march for jobs.

C. Support and Expand the Moratorium Now! Campaign

Considering the unprecedented intervention that the government has made to rescue the financial system that created the housing crisis, it is incomprehensible that a simple moratorium on foreclosures and evictions has yet to be enacted. On top of the millions of workers who have already lost their homes, as much as 25 percent of the population--including those who pay mortgages as well as those who pay rent--could be thrown out of their homes over the next two years. There’s has been a lot of debate over what to do about foreclosures and evictions in Washington D.C. There have been countless meetings between politicians and bankers about stemming the wave of foreclosures. Legislation has been passed, reports written, assistance programs set up, web pages set up all with the intent of stopping foreclosures.

All of these measures have two things in common; one, they all involve persuading bankers to find some ways to slow down the evictions instead of forcing them to stop evictions and two, none of these measures has put a dent in the head-spinning rate of foreclosures. The Moratorium Now! Campaign is fighting to force the government at every level to declare a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. The Moratorium Now! movement is growing. It has already made significant inroads in Michigan, Maryland, California and other states. The moratorium movement must be strengthened and expanded. Some organizers are also beginning to demand that the sheriffs and marshals who carry out evictions be ordered by local governments not to carry out evictions. More and more, neighbors and activists are rallying to prevent bankers and police from carrying out evictions on the spot. This kind of grassroots, militant solidarity must and will grow and we should do everything to help it grow.

D. Solidarity with Immigrant Workers

The war on immigrant workers is a war on the working class. The motive behind the mass raids, jailings and deportations is not only to terrorize immigrant workers so as to make it easier to super-exploit their labor; it is also meant to divide workers. Dividing workers is one of the principal weapons that bosses employ, especially during hard times. The Fightback will be imperiled if it cannot in some meaningful way unite all sections of the working class and progressive forces around the active defense of immigrant workers’ rights. This challenge must be an important part of our discussion.

E. Recruiting an Army of Volunteer Organizers

The Fightback must recruit an army of volunteer organizers. Without an army of volunteer organizers, we will not be able to accomplish much. The Fightback needs both veteran activists with experience and skills as well as new people with the time and willingness to help. Most importantly, the Fightback needs volunteers who are able to work collectively, who are respectful of others and who are both capable and committed to interacting with working and poor people of all nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and ages in a manner that is patient, dignified, and devoid of negative presumptions.

2. Mobilizations

a. International Women’s Day
Sat., March 7 and March 8 (International Women's Day)--Organize demonstrations, protests, speak-outs and other forms of actions focused on the impact of the economic and political crises on all poor and working-class women. These actions have the potential of winning more women to the ranks of the army of organizers as well as building for May Day 2009 and beyond.

b. Sat., March 21: March on the Pentagon
On the 6th Anniversary of Iraq War demand: U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan! Stop the Siege of Gaza!

c. April 3 and 4: March on Wall St.—Jobs, Not War!
Anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination

d. May 1st—International Workers Day

e. Fall 2009: Mass March on Washington, D.C. for Jobs or Income now; a National People’s Assembly

3. Draft Emergency Bail Out the People Program

The following draft program is a work in progress. It does not address every issue and concern.
Like the Fightback – it will grow.

• A Real Jobs Program that guarantees either a union wage job or income to all; to be established immediately with the involvement of community and labor organizations, including prisoners, organized in such a way that it’s is accessible to all who are in need.

• An Immediate Moratorium on Foreclosures, Evictions, Layoffs, Untility Shutoffs, and Prison Construction

• An Indefinite Extension of Unemployment Benefits; Expand Unemployment Insurance to All Who are Unemployed.

• No Cutbacks in Social Programs, including Tuition Hikes and Public Transportation Fare Hikes.

• Healthcare for All! No privatization!

• Stop all Federal Raids, Arrests, and Deportations of Undocumented Workers.

• Reconstruction in the Gulf Coast; Fight for right to return for Katrina/RIta survivors guided by a people's elected reconstruction authority.

• Prosecute Racist Killer Police; Set up civilian police accountability boards.

• A Clean Up Now of communities impacted by environmental racism; establish elected environmental control authorities.

• Support Anti-War GIs & Veterans Organizations' Demands, including those for healthcare, benefits, and jobs.

Fightback Conference

2009-01-01T14:27:00.000-08:00

To Pre-Register - Endorse - See list of Endorsers: Go to www.bailoutpeople.org

Bail out the People – Not the Bankers
FIGHTBACK CONFERENCE

Sat. January 17 –NYC In Commemoration of the 80th
Anniversary of Martin Luther King’s Birthday

12 p.m. to 6 p.m. - Public School 41, 116 West 11 St., NYC
-------------------

West Coast FIGHTBACK Conference
Sat. Jan. 24
1 pm to 7 pm - SEIU Local 721, 500 S. Virgil Ave.
Bail Out the People Movement - 111 N. La Brea Ave., Suite 408
Inglewood, CA 90301 - 310–677–6407
Go to www.bailoutpeople.org for information on the L.A. conference.

---------------

Dear activists and organizers,

In many ways, the genocidal siege of Gaza that many of us have been demonstrating against in recent weeks is a harbinger of the widening war against the workers and oppressed peoples of the planet that is sure to intensify this year. In 2009, more and more lives are going to be devastated by the biggest global economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s. So far it’s only the biggest banks that have been bailed out. This crisis is the challenge of a lifetime to those of us who have made a commitment to fighting for the rights of people. What we do or fail to do will prove decisive to the coming battle over whose interest in society shall prevail; the needs of the people or the greed of the relatively few who insist that their profits always come first.

The Bail Out the People Movement invites you to come together in N.Y.C. on Sat., Jan. 17, 2009 and help plan the fight back.
That Barack Obama will become president on Jan. 20 realizes a measure of King’s dream. But depression level joblessness, evictions and foreclosures made worse by cutbacks, war, bigotry and racism are not a dream but a nightmare. This is a time of many contradictions. Many people feel that the new president will bring progressive change but at the same time, there are Black youth being summarily executed by police; Proposition 8; new attacks on reproductive justice; one of the biggest bigots presiding over the inauguration ceremony and the prospects of a widening war in Afghanistan. Part of the legacy of Dr. King is the understanding that no election or president--however historical and inspiring--can be a substitute for a mass movement in the struggle against war or for social and economic rights. Let’s come together and determine what we can do to help give birth to a desperately needed united fightback.

ORGANIZATIONS PARTICIPATING IN PANELS AND WORKSHOPS INCLUDE:

Al –AWDA--Palestinian Right To Return Coalition, BAYAN USA, Black Workers For Justice, N.Y. City Council Member Charles Barron, Fight Imperialism-Stand Together (FIST), Guyanese Workers Association, Harlem Tenants Council, Health Care – NOW, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Labor/Community Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions, May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights, Million Worker March Movement, Moratorium Now! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions, Nat’l. Network Against Foreclosures and Evictions, New York City Labor Against The War, North Carolina Public Service Workers Union-UE Local 150, Pakistan-USA Freedom Forum, Striking Stella Doro Workers, Stonewall Warriors, Students For a Democratic Society, Take Back Our Union, United Students Against Sweatshops, Women’s Fightback Network

QUESTIONS, CHALLENGES & ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN UP AT THE CONFERENCE INCLUDE:

* GAZA – ITS MEANING FOR THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

* AN ANALYSIS OF OBAMA’S STIMULUS PROPOSAL – WHY IT’S NOT ENOUGH

* UNITING BEHIND AN ALTERNATIVE PROGRAM THAT PUTS PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS

* A STRATEGY FOR MASS ORGANIZATION, MOBILIZATION AND ACTION

* THE NEXT PHASE OF THE FIGHT VS FORECLOSURES, EVICTIONS, LAYOFFS & CUTBACKS

* DR. KING’S LAST DREAM: OPENING THE FIGHT FOR JOBS OR INCOME NOW

* THE CONCEPT OF A PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY

* CAN AN ARMY OF ORGANIZERS BE RECRUITED?

* APRIL 3 & 4 – A TIME FOR MASS ACTION (anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination)

Activists are already planning peace mobilizations for NYC, possibly on Wall St. This is a good idea. An even better idea is to mobilize for two days including Fri., April 3 when the stock exchange, businesses and banks are open and workers are there.

* MAY 1, INTERNATIONAL WORKERS DAY 2009: CAN IT BE A TURNING POINT?

Mass mobilization for immigrant and all worker’s rights; How can we strengthen participation and solidarity – especially now?

* MARCH ON PENTAGON – SAT., MARCH 21 (6th anniversary of the Iraq war)

* WORKSHOPS AND BREAKOUTS (TENTATIVE LIST)

* YOUTHS AND STUDENTS RESISTANCE

* UNITING THE COMMUNITY STRUGGLES AGAINST RACISM & FOR SOCIAL NEEDS

* UNITING THE STRUGGLES AGAINST THE WARS AT HOME AND ABROAD

* WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY: LESSONS FROM THE 1930S AND OTHER PERIODS:

Organizing workers, Solidarity with Immigrant workers – Towards a radicalized labor movement

See at the conference,

Bail Out the People Movement 212 633 - 6646

Bail Out the People Movement

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People's Summits & G20 protest

Press Conference/Picket Line - PROTEST THE RACIST CAMPAIGN AGAINST IMMIGRANTS

Report from April 3 & 4

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APRIL 3: 1pm Rally on Wall Street & march to AIGAPRIL 4: 12 noon - Rally on Wall Street followed by march

Saturday, April 4

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED for FRIDAY and SATURDAY RALLIES

Marching on Wall St. to Fulfill King’s Dream: A Jobs Program

March on Wall Street & AIG on APRIL 3: Bail Out People, Not Banks!

Protest a Region-Wide Foreclosed Home Auction!

Support Kimmel Building Occupiers:

Stop the Fare Hike

Realizing the Fightback – Some Perspective and Plans

Fightback Conference

APRIL 3: 1pm Rally on Wall Street & march to AIG
APRIL 4: 12 noon - Rally on Wall Street followed by march