GLOBAL GENERAL STRIKE
Open Assembly and Potluck BBQ Social
On 04, Aug 2012 | No Comments | In Uncategorized | By strikeeverywhere.net
September is rapidly approaching, bringing with it the anniversary of OWS. There are many projects underway and being planned in NYC. On Sunday, August, 26, 2012 from 2:00pm until 5:30pm come to an Open Assembly and Potluck BBQ Social in Prospect Park. Please come out and tell others about the projects you or your group are working on or come out and hear about what other people are working on, plug in, connect with groups and individuals, and make new friends. Details below:
The Potluck BBQ Social will start at 2pm.
The Potluck BBQ Social is an unstructured social space for building community and making new friends. Please bring food to grill and share, drinks to share, picnic blankets to sit on, sunscreen, and friends!
Open Assembly will begin at 3pm.
Description: The Open Assembly is a forum for reporting back about recent projects, announcing current and future projects, and inviting others to collaborate on those projects via breakout groups at the end of the meeting.
Meeting Goal: to bring together individuals and groups to meet, discuss, and coordinate projects.
Call: Groups and individuals working on a projects, please email a brief outline of what you’re working on and if you are interested in having a break-out group to help keep the agenda and break out groups more focused and effective.
Draft Agenda:
-report-backs
-proposals and announcements from groups working on existing and future projects
-break-out groups around proposed and announced projects
–Draft/continuing break-out groups: September 17th anniversary, FTP, Todos Somos Japon, Con-ed / Labor discussion, and SE. Other groups are encouraged and welcome!
Location: Near the Picnic House which is located at Prospect Park West at 5th Street. Walk up and through the Lichtfield Villa parking lot to the Park Drive. The Picnic House is right across the drive. Look for the Red and Black balloons.
Subways accessing the area are the F or G train to 7th Avenue (front of train) or 15th Street – Prospect Park. You can also take the 2 or 3 train to Grand Army Plaza, or the Q or B to Seventh Avenue.
Motivation:
Large assemblies have difficulties acting as decision making bodies, but enable large numbers to come together and cooperate. These decision making challenges have contributed in fragmenting of the large assemblies. By removing the decision making process and bringing together working groups the assembly can continue to serve as a space for people to plug into projects and coordinate on projects.
Basic Principles of the Open Assembly:
-This is not a space to try to control how other people and groups plan to participate or how their actions should take place.
-This is not a forum for politicians and political parties.
-Project details and information shared should be done so with the expectation that someone from law enforcement is present (of course, we hope they will not be).
https://www.facebook.com/events/271597596283212
If you are interested in helping setup/cleanup/etc or have questions, please send an email to info@strikeeverywhere.net. Thank you!
BOSSES CALL FOR A GENERAL LOCKOUT
On 12, Jul 2012 | No Comments | In COMMUNIQUE | By secontent
via Business Wire (press release)
CALL FOR A WORLDWIDE GENERAL LOCKOUT
As a rising tide of austerity sweeps the globe, we, as bosses, refuse to be left behind. Never again will we make the mistake of negotiating contracts that raise wages, protect pensions, or provide adequate health insurance for workers and their families. We will no longer be bullied into reducing our massive profits for the sake of workers’ livelihoods. Direct action must be taken to protect our freedoms. We call upon our colleagues to lock out all workers in all industries until we get what we want.
While we’ve been making big gains in our campaign to de-unionize all workplaces, it’s no longer enough to kill the union; we must also kill the solidarity. Sympathy strikes will be met with sympathy lockouts. Work slowdowns will be punished with benefit slowdowns. Are you plagued by employees who engage in workplace sabotage? Wait until they feel the effects of what we call “homeplace sabotage.” We’ll keep their wages stagnant and cut their benefits, forcing them to take up second and third jobs just to make ends meet. We’ll make sure that they’re so worried about paying their rent, their bills, their mortgages, that their free time will be anything but. We will sabotage workers’ very ability to live.
We have the momentum. At long last, we’ve finally got the public’s attention. We’ve leaped into the popular imagination and seized the headlines in an unprecedented way. We must now make our voices heard with a global show of force that won’t be soon forgotten. Now is the time for bold action. Now is the time for a worldwide general lockout.
Ride the wave of austerity!
—BUMMer (Bosses United by Mergers & Merchandising)
As Lightning Strikes, Eight Thousand Fires Burn
On 07, Jul 2012 | No Comments | In Uncategorized | By secontent
Management of Consolidated Edison demonstrated complete contempt for its workforce, locking out 8,500 members of the Utility Workers Union of America the morning of Sunday July 1st. The lockout continues, now 6 days later. Managers have opted to do the work themselves, in a full take-over of the utility, already resulting in a number of injuries of scabs on the job.
In a dispute over wages, pensions, health insurance, and other benefits, Local 1-2 of the UWUA refused to extend its contract past the June 30th deadline. One of the conditions for the extension was that there would be no strike, something threatened earlier in the negotiations, and authorized within the union.
ConEd is an investor-owned utility, a private enterprise. The utility serves 3.2 million customers in the New York metropolitan area, and earns billions in annual revenues.
City politicians seem to have mostly taken the side of the locked-out employees, but the reality is that they’ve taken the side of services not being interrupted, production not stopping, daily life in New York continuing as usual. For workers to make any gains, this conformist mentality, reinforcing the normality of business as usual, will have to be disposed of.
Last summer, 45,000 members of the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers went on strike against Verizon, the largest strike in 5 years. Verizon is pushing for a pension freeze, fewer sick days, an end to job security provisions, less responsibility toward health coverage, and the ability to expand its outsourcing. This August 7th will mark a year since the workers have had no contract, though the strike itself was called off after only two weeks to return to negotiations, which drag on, no end in sight.
Since January 15th, 34,000 members of the Transit Workers Union are working without a contract, though their struggle has had few pickets, rallies, or any apparent visibility. In December 2005, the TWU went out on a 3-day strike during the holiday season, one of the boldest moves in recent labor history. The union admirably ignored the strike’s illegality under the draconian Taylor Law of 1967—where New York state public employees are prohibited from going on strike, ever, under any circumstance—but was severely attacked in its aftermath, leadership jailed, fined in the millions, and automatic due deduction was removed, crippling the TWU.
Typically the withdrawal of labor is seen as one of the most militant actions that can be taken by workers. Now it is the employers occupying that militancy, as lockouts are seen with increasing frequency. It’s the same logic of the strike—asserting one’s control over production—but reversed.
It should be noted that neither the Communication Workers of America, nor the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, nor the Transit Workers Union, nor the Utility Workers Union of America participated in the May Day General Strike, promoted widely throughout the Occupy movement. It is going to take such bold mass actions of militancy and solidarity in order to move beyond trying to win this or that concession, in this or that contract, for this or that union, at this or that time.
As more workers are without a contract, or a union, or collective bargaining, or even a wage, it becomes clear that our own self-organization, our own solidarity to each other as a class, is our only option in struggle. Political, secondary, solidarity, sympathy strikes—themselves illegal since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act—are no longer a possibility, as every worker, in every workplace, in every union, in every contract, has reason to strike. We must strike for ourselves, together, as a class, towards the total concession. The Utility Workers will not win until they are joined by Transit Workers, who will not win until they are joined by the Communication Workers, the Electrical Workers, and all the rest.
A picket should not be a welcoming committee for scabs, but rather a line prepared to prevent workers’ labor from being performed by traitors. During any strike, or indeed any lockout, we witness our enemies: management, retirees lured back to fuck over their replacements, professional opportunists traveling the country for such moments, all in the service of those that own and control our utilities, communications, transportation, cities, states. It is this we have to disrupt, obstruct, so business cannot continue.
This July marks the 35th anniversary of the New York City blackout of 1977, caused by a series of lightning strikes on the night of July 13th. As soon as the power went out, people spontaneously organized their own wildcat strike. Amidst another of capital’s financial crises, which hit New York especially hard, neighborhoods all over the city took to the streets, a thousand stores were looted, a thousand fires lit. The blackout showed that given the opportunity, given the spark, we will respond to our misery in the ways that we can.
At the time the lightning strikes were called an “act of God” by ConEd. We must now introduce our own state of emergency, divine, ignoring all boundaries, ignoring all laws, a strike without warning: the proletarian general strike.
Agitate at any of the following picket locations, currently running 24/7:
Headquarters, 4 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003
125th Street Office, 360 West 125th Street, New York, NY 10027
110th St Yard, 2141 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10029
The Learning Center, 43-82 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, NY 11101
Astoria Yard, 31-01 20th Avenue, Astoria, NY 11105
30 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217
3rd Ave Yard, 222 1st Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Netpune Yard, 1201 Neptune Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11224
College Point Yard, 124-15 31st Avenue, Queens, NY 11354
Hillside office, 88-11 165th Street, Jamaica, NY 11432
Fordham Yard, 448 East Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458
Van Nest Yard, 1601 Bronxdale Avenue, Bronx, NY 10462
Related Links: www.conedripoff.com
7 July 2012
Committee of Public Safety
Open Assembly and BBQ Social
On 05, Jul 2012 | No Comments | In EVENTS | By strikeeverywhere.net
Summer is here and there are many projects underway and being planned in NYC. On Sunday, July 22, 2012 from 3:30pm until 7:30pm come to an Open Assembly and BBQ Social in Prospect Park. Please come out and tell others about the projects you or your group are working on or come out and hear about what other people are working on, plug in, connect with groups and individuals, and make new friends. Details below:
Open Assembly.
Time: 4-5:30pm
Description: The Open Assembly is a forum for reporting back about recent projects, announcing current and future projects, and inviting others to collaborate on those projects via breakout groups at the end of the meeting.
Meeting Goal: to bring together individuals and groups to meet, discuss, and coordinate projects.
Proposed Agenda:
-(5 mins) introduction facilitator/stack taker
-(15 mins) report-backs
-(45 mins) discussion of developments/acheivements (15), concerns/what didn’t work out (15), hopes/direction(15)
-(10 mins) proposals and announcements from groups working on existing and future projects
-(15 mins) break-out groups around proposed and announced projects
The BBQ Social will start after the assembly.
Time: 6-7:30pm
Description: The BBQ Social is an unstructured social space for
building community and making new friends. Please bring drinks and food to grill and share.
BBQ Goal: to bring individuals and groups together socially to build connections, understanding, and cooperation; to stabilize and energize the movement.
Location: Prospect Park. Please come to red X indicated on the map to be directed to where people will be. (Prospect Park West at 5th Street. Walk up and through the Lichtfield Villa parking lot to the Park Drive.) Subways accessing the area are the F or G train to 7th Avenue (front of train) or 15th Street – Prospect Park. You can also take the 2 or 3 train to Grand Army Plaza, or the Q or B to Seventh Avenue.
Motivation:
Large assemblies have difficulties acting as decision making bodies, but enable large numbers to come together and cooperate. These decision making challenges have contributed in fragmenting of the large assemblies. By removing the decision making process and bringing together working groups the assembly can continue to serve as a space for people to plug into projects and coordinate on projects.
Basic Principles of the Open Assembly:
-This is not a space to try to control how other people and groups plan to participate or how their actions should take place.
-This is not a forum for politicians and political parties.
-Project details and information shared should be done so with the expectation that someone from law enforcement is present (of course, we hope they will not be).
If you are interested in helping setup/cleanup/
SAIKADOH HANTAI (no to resumption of nukes) Hunger Strike & Demo in NY!
On 27, Jun 2012 | No Comments | In No Nukes | By strikeeverywhere.net
大飯原発再稼働断固反対ハンスト&デモ in NY!
Convergence at Friday June 29 at 5PM
@Consulate of Japan in NY: 299 Park Avenue (at 48th Street) NYC [Map]
Japan announced that Kansai Electric (HQ:Osaka) will restart the Ooi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui on July 1st. Japan has now been enjoying nuke-free time for the first time since 40 years ago. On May 5th (Children’s Day in Japan) this year, when all the nuclear reactors stopped, Japan was able to prove itself that nuclear energy isn’t about energy needs. It is, as it has always been, an enbodyment of economic and political interests. We have never needed it! So we can still stop the restart!
45,000 people gathered in front of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s residence in Tokyo last Friday to protest his decision to restart the two nuclear reactors. This Friday, there will be even more people on the streets throughout Japan. We are going to begin a hunger strike in solidarity and to stop the restart. Please join us, even if you don’t fast with us, come and raise your voice! -The Hydrangea Revolution has begun.
再稼働絶対反対！
７月１日に大飯原発が稼働開始、と発表されました。
先週、
「あじさい革命が始まった。」
http://www.jfissures.org/
Twitter: @TwitNoNukesNYC
Efforts of the General Strike Public Redcoration Committee
