Monthly Archives: July 2015

Call NOW: Congress Voting TODAY to Make All VA Employees At-Will

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The House of Representatives is voting today to make all VA employees at-will. In addition to stripping due process rights from 350,000 VA workers, there is a danger of similar efforts spreading to entire federal government.

Please take 5 minutes to call your member of Congress at 855-976-5397. Tell your Representative to vote NO on H.R. 1994.

We have sent you this email because we know we can count on you. You have contacted your lawmakers in the past and you know how important these rights are for government employees. With your help, we can save due process for VA workers.

Please act NOW to stop these bills from becoming law. Call your lawmaker at 855-976-5397 and tell them: protect due process rights for VA workers and vote NO on H.R. 1994!

Thank you for all that you do.

In solidarity,
AFGE, https://www.afge.org/

Detroit, August 29: Stop the War on Detroit – People’s Assembly and Speakout

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Stop the War on Detroit – People’s Assembly and Speakout
NOTICE: 
Come out this coming Mon. Aug. 3 from 7:00-9:00pm for an organizing meeting in preparation for the upcoming Sat. Aug. 29 rally and speak out in downtown Detroit in Grand Circus Park. This meeting will be held at the Moratorium NOW! Coalition offices located at 5920 Second Avenue near Antoinette near the Wayne State University campus in Midtown Detroit.
We are inviting all progressive community organizations, labor unions, youth and professional groups to join us in planning for this event. The issues we are focusing on impact hundreds of thousands of people in the city and its environs.
What we need now are people to distribute some 5,000 flyers announcing the event. Also organizations and individuals are encouraged to endorse the event and provide speakers.
Please come out this coming Monday and bring your ideas and willingness to work in the burgeoning struggle in Detroit.
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From Greece to Puerto Rico to Spain and Across the US workers are fighting back against the austerity being imposed the banks and financial institutions.

Thousands of households face foreclosure and eviction in neighborhoods already devastated by years of predatory mortgage lending by the banks. Some 25,000 families are facing water shutoffs while the banks got paid $537 million on interest rate swindles. Schools are shuttered while property taxes are diverted to pay off debt service to the banks. Youth face joblessness and the school to prison pipeline. If they have a job it does not pay enough to live on.

THE BANKS OWE US FOR DESTROYING OUR COMMUNITIES!

* Stop police killings and brutality – jail killer cops; Black, Brown, Native, LGBTQ lives matter!

* Stop the school to prison pipeline—no to the New Jim Crow

* $15 minimum wage

* Health care for all—single payer now

* Stop tax and mortgage foreclosures – Demand Hardest Hit Homeowners funds be released to keep people in their homes

* Stop mass water shutoffs and theft of Detroit’s water department

* Stop destruction of public schools and Emergency Manager dictatorship

* Protest pension cuts, wage/benefit cuts and union busting

* Protest lack of public lighting

* Demand world class public mass transportation and paratransit services, for people with disabilities!

* Shut down Enbridge’s oil Line 5 under the Great Lakes, no tar sands oil, ban fracking, stop Marathon’s environmental racism—System change not climate change!

* Protest jailing of Benton Harbor’s Rev. Edward Pinkney, victim of a racist frame-up!

* Full employment now. Make the banks pay for a $2 billion program to put our youth to work rebuilding the city!

Partial list of endorsers: Moratorium NOW Coalition (Moratorium-Mi.org); Detroit Active & Retired Employees Association-DAREA; Fight Imperialism, Stand Together-FIST; Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI.org); Wisconsin Bail Out The People Movement, Workers World Party (workers.org); Stand Up Now!.

Members of the National Nurses United march in Detroit July 18, 2014.

Members of the National Nurses United march in Detroit July 18, 2014.

In Defense of Venezuela: Statement from the PFLP in Venezuela

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http://pflp.ps/english/2015/07/26/in-defense-of-venezuela-statement-from-the-pflp-in-venezuela/

“…The relations between the Palestinian and Venezuelan people have very deep historical and political roots and no one can divide them. The only “scammers and swindlers” are the private owners of “El Nacional” newspaper attempting to trade the Palestinian students in Venezuela for its objectives in local elections and to speculate on the Palestinian cause in an electoral climate that is unfavorable to reactionary, right-wing and pro-Zionist forces. We are confident that the attempts of “El Nacional” are doomed to fail and they will face another defeat in the National Assembly elections next 6 December.

Viva la Lucha Antiimperialista – Anti-sionista!
Viva Chávez!
Viva la Amistad entre Palestina y Venezuela!
Patria …. socialismo …. o Muerte!

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – Venezuela Organization

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Brooklyn, NY August 9: 1 Year Commemoration of the Murder of Michael Brown, the Ferguson Rebellion, & the Black Lives Matter uprising.

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1 Year Commemoration of the Murder of Michael Brown, the Ferguson Rebellion, & the Black Lives Matter uprising.

Last August, the execution of another unarmed young Black man, Michael Brown on the streets of Ferguson Mo, ignited a rebellion against racist police violence. That rebellion, which came to be known as Black Lives Matter, spread across the nation and the world. The Black Summer coalition, which includes many of the forces that have been fighting police violence, invites you to commemorate the one year anniversary of Ferguson on Sunday, Aug. 9 at 12 noon in front of the Barclay center in Brooklyn (address). The police war against Black and Brown people must end. All lives will matter, when Black Lives Matter.

August_9_2015_Shut_It_Down_For_Michael_Brown

Charleston, South Carolina, Sept. 5-6: Days Of Grace Mass Protests

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http://www.daysofgracecharleston.org/

September 5, 9am: Mass March & Rally | September 6, Time TBA: Strategy Conference

“It would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again”—President Barack Obama (6/26/15)

In recent weeks, the Mother Emanuel AME Church community and the family of Walter Scott have shown the world the radical possibilities of resilience, love, and forgiveness. However, as the President reminded us at Senator Pinckney’s funeral, real healing will take hard work.

Guns inflicted the fatal wounds of April and June, but racism, poverty and the politics of rancor and discord have long inflicted grave wounds on the state’s poor and most vulnerable people. This Labor Day weekend, people of faith and conscience will come together in Charleston to remember our fallen friends and to reflect on the racism and hatred that lay at the root of their deaths, as well as the violence that tears away at the fabric of our communities.

Specifically, the gathering will call for an end to racist violence and the transformation of our commemorative landscape—our monuments, markers, and historic sites—to fully reflect South Carolina’s traditions of diversity and democracy. We will also come together to honor Clementa Pinckney and to affirm the moral principles that he stood for as pastor and public servant. These include:

An end to discriminatory policing
Expanded voting rights
A living wage and collective bargaining rights for all working people
Affordable healthcare and Medicaid expansion
Quality education as a basic human right
An end to gun violence

Out of this mass gathering and a one-day strategy conference, we will build on the efforts of many grassroots organizations who have worked tirelessly and often thanklessly over the years to bring about a better South Carolina.

If you believe that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and if you understand that what happened at Emanuel AME has implications far beyond Charleston, and if you believe that we can build a movement together to save South Carolina’s soul and the soul of the nation, then join us as we proclaim “Forward Together, Not One Step Back!”

Issued by: International Longshoremen’s Association, Local 1422

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