[olympiaworkers] Reminder: Tacoma Wobblyfest this Saturday

Please Post Widely

Tacoma Wobblyfest 2008:                                                A Poor and Working People's Gathering

A Public Gathering of Education and Music

When the union's inspiration through the workers blood shall run There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun---- Solidarity Forever

May 24, 2008

9 AM to 5 PM at: Evergreen State College-Tacoma Campus: 1210 6th Ave, Tacoma, WA

6 PM to 9 PM at: Pitchpipe Infoshop, 621 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Tacoma, WA

ALL PEOPLE ARE WELCOMED!

Workshops 9 AM to 12 Noon: Everegreen State College-Tacoma Campus                                                             

1. Immigrant Workers: Mary Smith.                                     9:00 am to 9:45 am   

This workshop will focus on the reality that most immigrants are working people who are being exploited by employers and politicians. The workshop will include information on resistance to exploitation and union organizing.                                                  

2. Working Class Environmentalism: Leah Coakley:            10 am to 10:45 am  

Working Class Environmentalism Workshop:

The mainstream environmental movement has many challenges, including its predominantly consumer-based strategies, which often exclude the knowledge, struggles, and organizing power of the poor and working classes.  This workshop will serve to introduce the Working Class Environmentalism movement -- its vision, history, and significance.  The ideas of IWW environmental-labor organizers such as Judi Bari will be featured.  Workshop participants will have a chance to participate in an organizing scenario and engage in discussion on working class environmental movement-building and education.

 

3. Joe Hill and IWW Music: Patrick Edelbacher:               11 am to 11:45 am

 

This workshop will focus on the importance of music in labor organizing, specifically the impact of Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie (non-Wobbly), Ralph Chaplin, and other IWW songwriters on the movement. Not only will we revisit  songs that shaped the American labor movement but discover contemporary labor songs and applicable tunes for today's worker. Since the IWW is know as the singing union, it wouldn't be a true IWW workshop without group songs. No signing experience necessary, every voice matters.

FANNING THE FLAMES OF DISCONTENT SPOKEN WORD AND MUSIC 1 PM to 5 PM: Evergreen State College-Tacoma Campus

MC: Marilyn Kimmerling

Openning 1 pm to 1:05 pm

IWW Preamble: Jen Rogue: 1:06 to 1:11

Openning song "Banks of Marble"  1:12 to 1:17:         Patrick Edelbacher & Diane M. Crews

THE IWW, IDEAS, STRUCTURE AND TACTICS:          Arthur J. Miller: 1:20 to 1:45  

TACOMA IWW:                                                           Leah Coakley 1:50 to 2:25

MUSIC FOR REBEL WORKERS:                             

Patrick Edelbacher 2:30 to 3:15  

Diane M. Crews, 3:20 to 4:05

Jess Grant: 4:10 to 4:55

Solidarity Forever 5:55 to 5 pm

TACOMA, LET US ORGANIZE! Workshop on Workplace Organizing:Patrick Edelbacher:  6 PM to 9 PM at: Pitchpipe Infoshop, 621 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Tacoma, WA  

  This workshop will focus a workplace organizing skills, questions on organizing, and possible union organizing in Tacoma

CHILD CARE PROVIDED: Please let us know if you will need Child Care so that we will know what needs to be organized

Complimentary lunch and dinner

We need help getting fliers and posters out. To arrange getting fliers and posters or the get the event flier by e-mail please send a message to: TacIWW@iww.org

This event is organized by:

Tacoma General Membership Branch

Industrial Workers of the World

P.O. Box 5464

Tacoma, WA 98415-0464

E-Mail: TacIWW@iww.org

Web Site: http://tacoma.iww.org/

IWW Web Site: www.iww.org 

The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) was founded over 100 years ago as a labor organization that believes in industrial unionism, industrial organizing, direct action and universal working class solidarity. The I.W.W. has sought to organize workers internationally into a One Big Union for the purpose of carrying on the day-to-day labor struggles from the greatest possible strength that can be organized and to build a new society within the shell of the old where class conflict no longer exists

 

[olympiaworkers] Up-Date: Tacoma Wobblyfest 2008

 

Please Post Widely

Tacoma Wobblyfest 2008:                                                A Poor and Working People's Gathering

A Public Gathering of Education and Music

When the union's inspiration through the workers blood shall run There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun---- Solidarity Forever

May 24, 2008

9 AM to 5 PM at: Evergreen State College-Tacoma Campus: 1210 6th Ave, Tacoma, WA

6 PM to 9 PM at: Pitchpipe Infoshop, 621 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Tacoma, WA

ALL PEOPLE ARE WELCOMED!

Workshops 9 AM to 12 Noon: Everegreen State College-Tacoma Campus                                                             

1. Immigrant Workers: Mary Smith.                                     9:00 am to 9:45 am   

This workshop will focus on the reality that most immigrants are working people who are being exploited by employers and politicians. The workshop will include information on resistance to exploitation and union organizing.                                                  

2. Working Class Environmentalism: Leah Coakley:            10 am to 10:45 am  

Working Class Environmentalism Workshop:

The mainstream environmental movement has many challenges, including its predominantly consumer-based strategies, which often exclude the knowledge, struggles, and organizing power of the poor and working classes.  This workshop will serve to introduce the Working Class Environmentalism movement -- its vision, history, and significance.  The ideas of IWW environmental-labor organizers such as Judi Bari will be featured.  Workshop participants will have a chance to participate in an organizing scenario and engage in discussion on working class environmental movement-building and education.

 

3. Joe Hill and IWW Music: Patrick Edelbacher:               11 am to 11:45 am

 

This workshop will focus on the importance of music in labor organizing, specifically the impact of Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie (non-Wobbly), Ralph Chaplin, and other IWW songwriters on the movement. Not only will we revisit  songs that shaped the American labor movement but discover contemporary labor songs and applicable tunes for today's worker. Since the IWW is know as the singing union, it wouldn't be a true IWW workshop without group songs. No signing experience necessary, every voice matters.

FANNING THE FLAMES OF DISCONTENT SPOKEN WORD AND MUSIC 1 PM to 5 PM: Evergreen State College-Tacoma Campus

MC: Marilyn Kimmerling

Openning 1 pm to 1:05 pm

IWW Preamble: Jen Rogue: 1:06 to 1:11

Openning song "Banks of Marble"  1:12 to 1:17:         Patrick Edelbacher & Diane M. Crews

THE IWW, IDEAS, STRUCTURE AND TACTICS:          Arthur J. Miller: 1:20 to 1:45  

TACOMA IWW:                                                           Leah Coakley 1:50 to 2:25

MUSIC FOR REBEL WORKERS:                             

Patrick Edelbacher 2:30 to 3:15  

Diane M. Crews, 3:20 to 4:05

Jess Grant: 4:10 to 4:55

Solidarity Forever 5:55 to 5 pm

TACOMA, LET US ORGANIZE! Workshop on Workplace Organizing:Patrick Edelbacher:  6 PM to 9 PM at: Pitchpipe Infoshop, 621 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Tacoma, WA  

  This workshop will focus a workplace organizing skills, questions on organizing, and possible union organizing in Tacoma

CHILD CARE PROVIDED: Please let us know if you will need Child Care so that we will know what needs to be organized

Complimentary lunch and dinner

We need help getting fliers and posters out. To arrange getting fliers and posters or the get the event flier by e-mail please send a message to: TacIWW@iww.org

This event is organized by:

Tacoma General Membership Branch

Industrial Workers of the World

P.O. Box 5464

Tacoma, WA 98415-0464

E-Mail: TacIWW@iww.org

Web Site: http://tacoma.iww.org/

IWW Web Site: www.iww.org 

The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) was founded over 100 years ago as a labor organization that believes in industrial unionism, industrial organizing, direct action and universal working class solidarity. The I.W.W. has sought to organize workers internationally into a One Big Union for the purpose of carrying on the day-to-day labor struggles from the greatest possible strength that can be organized and to build a new society within the shell of the old where class conflict no longer exists

[olympiaworkers] Pittsburgh: Solidarity With Locked Out Calgon Workers POG bringsdinner for Mayday-eve potluck in support of Calgon workers

from infoshop news

At midnight on February 29 Calgon Chemical locked out 63 members of United
Steelworkers Local 5032 based at the company's Neville Island facility.
Rather than let work continue under an extension of the previous contract
management locked out the workers, barring them from the plant. Workers
are struggling to maintain affordable family healthcare coverage and
pensions in the face of continual management efforts to cut benefits and
crush the union.

On April 30, a dozen members of Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG) decided
to show their solidarity and support of labor by bringing the workers
dinner and standing with them on another cold night of the camp-out. POG
brought them home cooked meatball sandwiches, pasta, chips, and cake. We
talked with workers, thanked them for their dedication, and discussed some
of our ongoing work.

immersed in conversation 2

Since the lockout began workers have maintained a 24-hour camp outside the
plant gates (there are two main facility entrances.) Private security
goons are also on hand, video-taping, and otherwise seeking to maintain an
intimidating presence. Local police have also made their presence felt,
protecting management and the scab labor being used to operate the plant,
most recently issuing a citation to a steelworker for "swearing." During
the dinner security harassed a member of POG who took a picture of a car
from the sidewalk, demanding to know who he was, refusing to say where the
Calgon property line was, and then stating the local police had been
called.

We live in a world where capital continues its endless march to globalize,
to externalize all costs, and to crush all mechanisms of community
accountability and control. Laws and borders criminalize the movement of
people, while the powerful operate as they please, hidden actors within
mega-corporations.

With a National Labor Relations Board stacked in favor of corporations,
and a legal system that severely limits unions' abilities to confront
employers, these struggles often come down to the question of local
community action and utilization of the main weapon at our disposal,
solidarity.

Solidarity is more than a principle, more than an ethic; it is an
imperative for social change advocates. It is simply recognition that ours
is a collective struggle, and our fates are tied to the fates of others,
and that no one can afford to go it alone. In this interconnected web of
struggle, a defeat for labor at Calgon is a defeat for workers everywhere.
Members of POG may not see eye-to-eye with the United Steelworkers on all
issues, and many of our members likely have differences of political
vision with many Calgon workers, yet we are united in the joint belief
that workers are entitled to be the beneficiaries of their labor and that
they have an unalienable right to organize for the betterment of
themselves and others. We are workers and allies in the struggle.

Stated directly, it is an affront to our group's values and aspirations to
allow the continuation of a situation where locked out workers and their
families suffer while scab labor and management operate with impunity. We
are considering calling attention to those individuals (such as Calgon CEO
John S. Stanik of Venetia) and companies responsible for the current
suffering of workers and their families through the diversity of legal
means at our disposal- protests at Calgon or it's customers and suppliers,
home demonstrations, flyering, petitions, etc. We will be watching this
situation closely.

Pittsburgh was, is, and will always be, a labor town.

In solidarity with the workers at Calgon, and all those experiencing the
class-war that is being waged on workers.

Pittsburgh Organizing Group

www.organizepittsburgh.org