Skip to content

Had Enough? ¡Basta Ya! All-Purpose May 1 Brochure

On May 1 this year millions of people all over the world who work for a living will show that we have . . . had enough!

We’ve had enough of manipulated markets, phony inflated prices, lost savings, stolen pensions, and worthless or foreclosed homes.

We’ve had enough of healthcare we can’t afford, of being one major illness or injury away from bankruptcy.

We’ve had enough of being priced out of education, while our teachers and other public workers are blamed for the problems.

We’ve had enough of endless wars . . . [Read more here]


March 28: We’ve modified the brochure so it

  • points readers to the website for unfolding events
  • mentions Occupy-Denver-sponsored 12 noon rally, 12:30 march, and afternoon fair @ Civic Center
  • has a space for you to write your own contact info

Download the complete brochure in English and Spanish here.

It is designed to be folded in a “Z” and is suitable for taking door-to-door, meetings, etc. This version does not include P&L Printing’s union bug. If you need some with the bug, visit the P&L Press Infoshop, 11 am – 7 pm, Tue – Sat, 2727 W. 27th Ave., Unit C.

The Infoshop, where we’ve been holding our Tuesday meetings, is a great resource. For more on it, see:

“A Verb, Not a Noun”: Can Occupy pull off a general strike?

Occupy May Day TreeOn Leap Day, Natasha Lennard, who covers the Occupy movement for Salon.com, looked at some of the challenges facing calls for a nationwide general strike on May 1. In the course of this brief glance she raises a provocative question or two: How does a service-based workforce compare with an industrial workforce vis-à-vis the general strike, historically, and internationally? What about the people who already have ceased production—the unemployed—how do they strike?

Read the article here. Caveat lector, however, when she mentions Occupy’s role in “the ILWU contract victory” with EGT in late January. A Local 21 rank-and-filer calls the contract “worse than concessionary.”

The primary reason for pointing to the article is that Lennard ends it by reminding that “strike is a verb, not a noun,” going on to draw from Georges Sorel, the French philosopher who applied his thesis of the power of myth to the general strike—an aspiration as well as an action.

Protected: 3/13 Committee Meeting Minutes

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Solidarity with Postal Workers!

Save Our Postal Service photo imageDownload the flyer in English and Spanish here. Spanish version is below.

In New York City, a city-wide coalition, the Community-Labor United for Postal Jobs and Services, is mobilizing nationally for a March 17 rally and march to stop the privatization of the U.S. Post Office. This action is to commemorate a victorious postal strike of 1970, which halted the union-busting austerity program of the Nixon administration. The 1970 postal strike victory led to jobs, benefits, and services and won respect for the postal workers.

Today, postal workers are facing similar attacks with government plans to privatize trillions of dollars of public property, including the Post Office System. We oppose this and say no to:

  • Outsourcing that threatens 200,000 postal jobs and 3,600 post offices, and processing and distribution centers.
  • USPS’ annual payments to the Federal Government that limits its ability to maintain retiree health benefits.
  • The May 15 expiration of the “temporary moratorium” that will result in the loss of 34,000 postal jobs.
  • Postmaster Donahue’s lack of creative solutions when he resorts to “right-sizing” by eliminating living-wage jobs.

We stand in solidarity with postal workers and support the March 17 rally and march in NYC against this threat. Our communities and lives are increasingly threatened by governmental, financial, and corporate schemes to cut wages, jobs, and social services. While capitalism insures record corporate profits on Wall Street, the recession deepens with massive unemployment and under-employment, rampant home foreclosures, and attacks on our lives at every level.

Along with over 60 U.S. cities and numerous cities globally, the people of Denver will engage in general strike activities on May 1, 2012—International Workers’ Day. Now is the time for our community, school, and work groups to begin to organize together against a system that has stolen from us for too long, and to start building a new system based on grassroots power and community control. As long as we continue to be attacked and deprived of our rights as the people who do the work, we will not allow for business as usual. We support independent efforts of people to claim control over our workplaces, schools, and communities as the beginning stage of reclaiming our lives. On May 1, join us as we occupy our streets, workplaces, neighborhoods, and other common places, and let us start to build a new world in the shell of this world of injustice and inequality.

—Denver General Strike Coordinating Committee, denvergeneralstrike.org


¡Solidaridad Con Los Trabajadores Postales!

En la ciudad de Nueva York, una coalición de ámbito ciudadano, la Unión de Comunidad yTrabajo por los Servicios y Trabajadores Postales, se movilizará a nivel nacional el 17 de Marzo en una concentración y manifestación con el objetivo de parar la privatización de el Servicio Postal de los Estados Unidos. Esta acción es para conmemorar la victoriosa huelga del Servicio Postal de 1970, que abortó el programa de austeridad y desmantelamiento del sindicato que inició la administración de Nixon. La victoria de la huelga del Servicio Postal de 1970 redundó en puestos de trabajo, beneficios y servicios y conquistó el respeto para los trabajadores postales. Hoy los trabajadores postales se enfrentan a un ataque similar, con el gobierno proyectando la privatización de propiedad pública por valor de trillones de dólares, incluyendo el mismo Servicio Postal. Nosotros nos oponemos y declaramos un no rotundo a:

  • El plan de externalización de costos que amenaza a 200.000 trabajos postales y 3.600 oficinas de correos, centros de procesamiento y distribución.
  • Los pagos anuales de USPS al Gobierno Federal, que limitan la capacidad de mantener los planes de pensiones.
  • La terminación, el 15 de Mayo, de la “moratoria provisional,” lo cual resultará en la pérdida de 34.000 trabajos postales.
  • La ausencia de propuestas de soluciones creativas por el Director General Donahue que recurre a “ajustes de volumen” eliminado trabajos que sustentan familias.

Manifestamos nuestra solidaridad con los trabajadores postales y nuestro apoyo a la concentración y manifestación del 17 de Marzo en la ciudad de Nueva York en contra de éstas amenazas. Nuestras comunidades y nuestras existencias se encuentran progresivamente amenazadas por las iniciativas del gobierno, finanzas y corporaciones para recortar nuestros salarios, trabajos y servicios sociales. Al tiempo que el capitalismo garantiza beneficios sin precedentes a las corporaciones en Wall Street, la recesión profundiza con desempleo y subempleo masivo, desgarradoras pérdidas de vivienda y hogares familiares, y ataques a nuestras vidas a todos los niveles.

Junto con otras 60 ciudades de los Estados Unidos y numerosas ciudades del mundo, el pueblo de Denver se unirá en Huelga General a las acciones del Primero de Mayo del 2012, Día Internacional de los Trabajadores. Ahora es el momento para que nuestras comunidades, escuelas y grupos de trabajo comiencen a organizarse contra un sistema que nos ha estado robando por demasiado tiempo, y empezar a edificar un sistema nuevo basado en el poder de las organizaciones locales y bajo el control comunitario. Mientras que sigamos bajo ataque y privados de nuestros derechos como trabajadores no permitiremos que continúe la normalidad vigente. Apoyaremos todos los esfuerzos independientes del pueblo para reclamar el control de nuestros lugares de trabajo, escuelas y comunidades como el primer paso para reclamar el control de nuestras vidas. El Primero de Mayo, únete a nosotros en la ocupación de nuestras calles, lugares de trabajo, barrios y espacios populares. Comencemos a construir un mundo nuevo a partir de éste mundo de injusticias y desigualdades.

—Comité de la Huelga General de Denver, denvergeneralstrike.org

General Strike France 1968

General Strike France 1968 cover imageAfter this week’s Coordinating Committee meeting, Lowell showed us a pamphlet that was published by the Sojourner Truth Organization a year after the general strike in France in the spring of 1968. See “General Strike France 1968: A factory-by-factory account,” by Andrée Hoyles.

The Introduction by Sojourner Truth Organization:

In May of 1968, France was shaken by the boldest, most widespread and most promising wave of mass struggle that Western Europe had witnessed in several decades. The struggles reached into every corner of French life, and set in motion a train of events which led to the toppling of President De Gaulle. To many people, the French events demonstrated for the first time the real possibility of revolution in advanced industrial countries.

In the U.S. the commercial newspaper reports of the French events focused on the activities of the students, which were often quite daring and dramatic. They paid very little attention to what was going on in the factories, mills and offices where the largest part of the French population carried out the chores of daily life.

The left-wing press was, if anything, less informative than the commercial press. Every little radical group seized upon the French upheaval as an occasion to produce long analytical articles advancing its particular “line” on how to make a revolution.

To our knowledge, no one has yet published, in this country, any real account of what the French workers were doing during the great days of May ’68. To fill this void, we are publishing this pamphlet. It first appeared as a chapter in the 1969 edition of the Trade Union Register, published by the Institute for Workers’ Control, of London.

One special feature of French life, not explained in the pamphlet, must be d[ealt] with in order for American readers to derive the full benefit of it. In France unlike the situation in basic industry here, union membership is not compulsory and no union has a monopoly on the workers in any enterprise. There are three major union federations, which compete for members in every large factory. All workers, whether or not they are members of any union, have the right to vote for delegates on the joint slate which represents them in negotiations with management.

Protected: 3/6 Committee Meeting Minutes

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Committee Listed on FindProgress.org

Our committee and meetings are now listed on FindProgress.org, a website that lists events and websites for a number of Colorado organizations.

FindProgress bills itself as “an one-stop-shop for Progressive Activist Groups, Political Parties & other entities.”

FindProgress.org screenshot image

May Day Teach-in – This Thursday, March 8

Ric Urrutia (who at our 2/25 consulta passed around a photograph of May Day 2006 in Denver) will speak on the origins of International Workers’ Day, labor theory/history, and the May 1, 2006 immigrant workers general strike in the U.S.  He is a local artist, and former union researcher and organizer.

Note that Ric’s teach-in is a substitution for the previously scheduled teach-in that was posted earlier on the Occupy Denver website (Occupy Economics series).
 
Where: Deerpile space (above City O’ City) at 206 East 13th Ave., Denver.
When: 5:30-6:45 pm, Thursday, March 8th.

Protected: Consulta and 2/28 Cmte Mtg Minutes – Updated 3/5

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Chicago Workers Occupy, Gain 90-Day “Window”

Republic Windows and Doors Workers photo image

In 2008, Republic Windows and Doors workers occupied the Chicago plant for six days before gaining concessions.

The worker occupation of Serious Energy on 2/23 led to an agreement with corporate bosses to postpone closing the Chicago plant for 90 days while the union, UE, considers buying the plant. The plant—formerly Republic Windows and Doors, which was occupied in 2008—was to shut down and “consolidate manufacturing” in Boulder, Colorado (see map here) and Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, eliminating “about 46 union and non-union positions” (Associated Press). The UE press release follows.

You can sign up for UE’s updates here. See the UE website here.

Workers Strike a Deal to Try and Save Jobs

For Immediate Release
Contact: Leah Fried, UE Organizer 773-550-3022, leahfried@gmail.com

The worker occupation of Serious Energy has ended and an agreement has been reached to keep the plant in operation for 90 days while union members and the company work together to find new ownership to keep the plant open. After 12 hours the occupation has ended with a hopeful workforce.

After being told by local management this morning that the Serious Energy window factory would close effective immediately, workers at the former Republic Windows and Doors plant had one demand: time to save these jobs by finding a buyer for the business. Local management refused and in response, workers voted to occupy for the second time with their union the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, UE. In 2008, UE members at the same factory, then owned by Republic Windows and Doors, occupied and won $1.75 million in wages and benefits owed from Bank of America.

After the occupation began, Serious Energy’s corporate leaders stepped in and immediately began talks to resolve the situation. Workers and the company were able to strike a deal in the early morning hours in Chicago.

“We started the morning with the plant closing and ended the day with work and a chance to save our jobs.” said Armando Robles, President of UE Local 1110, “We are committed to finding a new buyer for the plant or if we can, buy the place ourselves and run it. Either way, we are hopeful.”

–Originally posted 2/24/12, here.