The LGBT Center of SE Wisconsin
Racine, On The Lake, 12 NOON – 2 P.M.
Come join us for a Prideful Event with Pride Day Speakers at City Hall with Olympia Brown and Sacred Journey.
June 23, 2019: Racine Pride Day
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Author Archives: wibailoutpeople
Madison, May 22, 2019: 60th Annual Bean Feed
South Central Federation of Labor
The South Central Federation of Labor’s Committee on Political Education (COPE) will hold its 60th Annual Bean Feed, the Federation’s annual fundraising event for its political education program, on Wednesday, May 22 from 6:00 PM – 7:15 PM. The Bean Feed will take place at the Madison Labor Temple (1602 S. Park Street) in Room 201.
UW-Milwaukee May 9, 2019: Sanctuary Campus Rally
UW-Milwaukee Spaights Plaza, 2:30 – 3:15 P.M.
It has been a year since YPRC shut down the Faculty Senate to present our demands and our plan for Sanctuary Campus. We were assigned a task force by UW Administration, and we the students have put in several days of work to implement Sanctuary Campus. Our efforts to work with UW Administration for the past year have been completely unproductive, and at this point we are forced to view UW Administration as nothing other than a road block.
The Faculty Senate put forth a resolution to pursue Sanctuary Campus two years ago. While some faculty have been immensely helpful in our efforts, we need more support from the Faculty Senate to have our efforts succeed! We will be rallying to the Faculty Senate to tell our story, and to pressure Chancellor Mone! UW Administration has long served as a road block. It is time the students stand up to demand that the Chancellor works for the students, and not the corrupt Board of Regents! Join our rally to the Faculty Senate and support YPRC!
Milwaukee, May 7, 2019: Green Bay Family Fights to Stop Grandfather’s Deportation After Traffic Stop for Driving Without a License, Sign Petition
Press Conference: Family Fights to Stop Grandpa’s Deportation
Raymundo Martinez-Moreno, center, with his wife and seven of eight grandchildren.
Green Bay Family Fights to Stop Grandfather’s Deportation After Traffic Stop for Driving Without a License
Who: Raymundo Martinez-Moreno and family, Voces de la Frontera
What: Press conference to discuss communiy efforts to stop Mr. Martinez-Moreno’s deportation
When: Tuesday, May 7, 11am CST
Where: Voces de la Frontera, 1027 S 5th St, Milwaukee
On Tuesday, May 7th, a Green Bay grandfather of 8 currently in removal proceedings named Raymundo Martinez-Moreno and his family members will join Voces de la Frontera for a press conference to discuss Mr. Martinez-Moreno’s case and community efforts to prevent his deportation and keep his family together. Voces de la Frontera has launched an online petition at vdlf.org urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use their discretion to not separate Mr. Martinez-Moreno from his family.
In July 2017, Mr. Martinez-Moreno was pulled over for driving without a license while driving home from work. Immigrants who do not have a Social Security Number have not been able to obtain a valid driver license in Wisconsin since 2007. Mr. Martinez-Moreno thought that he just had to pay a fine, but he actually had been assigned a court date. When he did not come to court, the court issued an arrest warrant. In May 2018, he was stopped and taken to jail based on this warrant. From there, deputies handed him over to ICE. Aside from being stopped for driving without a license, Mr. Martinez-Moreno has no criminal record.
Mr. Martinez-Moreno has lived with his wife of 35 years in Green Bay since 2001. The two are members of Voces de la Frontera and have helped to organize community members to travel to Milwaukee and Madison as part of the campaigns against anti-sanctuary legislation and in support of restoring driver licenses for immigrants. Mr. Martinez-Moreno works in landscaping and snow removal. He is active in his church, City of Hope, and has been an usher in this and other churches for the past 12 years.
“I want to stay here with my family and grandchildren,” said Raymundo Martinez-Moreno. “What is happening is unjust. I am not the only person this is happening to. This is why we are fighting for driver licenses.”
“This family’s case shows the urgent need to restore driver licenses for immigrants in Wisconsin,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera. “Families are being traumatized and separated. We join the Martinez-Moreno family in urging ICE to halt this deportation and in urging the legislature to move quickly to restore driver licenses for immigrants. Wisconsin should be a state that protects families and honors people who work hard and make important contributions to our communities.”
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Another charter victory: CTU members sign tentative agreement with charter operator Instituto
For Immediate Release: May 7, 2019
Contact:
Chris Geovanis | 312-329-6250 | chrisgeovanis@ctulocal1.org | Mobile: 312-446-4939
TA ends three day strike and wins smaller classes, wrap-around supports, sanctuary protections for immigrant students, contract protections for special education students and English language learners.
CHICAGO—CTU members at charter schools are reforming the industry one charter operator at a time—and tonight that campaign won better working conditions for educators and better learning conditions for students at two charter schools run by Instituto del Progresso Latino. Teachers and support staff from two schools, Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy and Instituto Justice Leadership Academy, had been on strike against the charter operator since the end of the day on May 1st. The tentative agreement was finalized just before 11PM on May 6.
Strikers won decreases in class sizes, sanctuary language to protect the schools’ overwhelmingly Latinx and immigrant student population, and contract protections for English language learners and special education students. CTU members also won improved wrap-around services for students—including staffing ratios for social workers, counselors, nurses and psychologists. Wages and benefits for strikers will also improve, bringing educators’ earning power close to parity with comparable workers in CPS—in a charter industry that is notorious for low pay and harsh working conditions.
Several low wage clerical staff who had not been represented by the CTU also struck, demanding improved pay, stronger rights on the job—and the right to join the union. The employer recognized the Union for these workers tonight, and they will now be part of CTU.
“Educators’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions, and we’re pushing charter operators to do better by both students and the educators who support them,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey. “Students deserve to have public education dollars invested in their classrooms, not in charter operators’ board rooms or executive salaries. We’re fighting to ensure that operators reverse chronically low wages and inadequate classroom resources. This agreement ensures that public education funds are invested instead where they belong—in our students’ educational needs. This agreement is another victory in the effort to set new, more responsible standards across the industry.”
CTU bargaining with Instituto hinged around four central demands: living wages, smaller class sizes, adequate staffing and more resources for classrooms and student supports. Tonight’s bargaining wins mirror victories in the last six months at charter schools that include the UNO/Acero network, four CICS-controlled schools, Latino Youth High School and ChiArts. The latter two schools went on strike with the Instituto schools, and settled their contracts just days ago. The multi-employer strike that began at the end of the May 1 workday is the first multi-employer charter strike in U.S. history.
Poor pay, harsh working conditions and acute shortages in classroom resources have driven staff turnover rates of upwards of 35 percent since the start of the 2017-18 school year, undermining the stability of the school communities and educational continuity for students. Special education students at both schools were routinely shortchanged of services to which they have a legal right—issues the new contact language is designed to remedy. IJLA has a high percentage of students who confront trauma and both schools serve high-needs, high-poverty student populations. Staffing improvements in social workers, counselors and other critical frontline workers were baked into contract language to ensure that students get the wrap-round supports they need to heal and grow into thriving, engaged lifelong learners.
The tentative agreement forces Instituto to move more of the public education dollars the operator receives into school communities instead of the operator’s non-educational bureaucracy—a broad goal of CTU bargaining and organizing across the charter landscape.
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The Chicago Teachers Union represents more than 25,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in Chicago Public Schools, and by extension, the nearly 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information please visit the CTU website at www.ctulocal1.org.
Aretha Franklin as the Amazing Grace
Film Review
Amazing Grace, the documentary film recently-released having been archived for 47 years, is a treasured masterpiece of historical significance.
During this period of the African American social and cultural trajectory, there were many lessons which were being summed up and pioneering trends initiated.
This concept of Aretha Franklin recording and releasing a double gospel album in 1972 was bold and timely. It turned out to be the largest selling gospel album in United States history.
What many people were not aware of was that the two nights of music with arrangements by the Rev. James Cleveland, Alexander Hamilton the youth director of the Southern California Community Choir and the appearance of the Rev. C.L. Franklin, Aretha’s father and longtime Pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Clara Ward, the renowned gospel legend and her mother, Gertrude Mae Ward, were all captured on film by Warner’s Brothers. The film was recorded at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, located in an area which has striking similarities to the city of Detroit where the Franklin family made their mark during the post-World War II era.
Listening for years to the album Amazing Grace it seems as if this was a gospel concert that was professionally recorded. The film reveals that the Church was turned into a recording studio in which the audience could have been there through invitation only, considering its size. The grand entry of Aretha both nights, and on the second night, Rev. Franklin and Clara Ward, was theatrical in nature.
This was 1972 and many people in the choir and audience wore their hair in the natural style, including Aretha, Rev. Cleveland and director Alexander Hamilton. The discipline of the Southern California Community Choir was notable adding to the atmosphere of a staged drama…. https://bit.ly/2JtAKAq
The Grass is Greener: Mark Foreman of Vets for Peace on VA Privatization
Defending People’s Venezuela! Embassy Protection Collective: We’re Still Here And We’re Staying
The Embassy Protection Collective formed on April 10, the day after the Trump administration manipulated the Organization of American States (OAS) to change the rules so they could recognize their puppet, Juan Guaido, as president of Venezuela. The OAS could not get the required two-thirds vote to recognize a government so they changed the rules to a mere majority and barely got that. By then, the US had allowed their Guaido coup forces to take the Venezuelan military attaché building in Washington, DC and three diplomatic offices in New York City.
The Trump administration is allowing extreme violent right-wing Guaido supporters to blockade the embassy. Despite a standoff in the last week, we had a series of victories over those forces and remain steadfast protectors of the embassy….
5 de mayo statement of the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective: Solidarity with Anti-imperialist and Indigenous Struggles around the World.
From inside the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC, 5 of May, 2019.
As people from the United States, members of The Embassy Protection Collective have been fulfilling our trust as a temporary protectorate of the Embassy of Venezuela, located in Washington DC, for the past several weeks. We are holding strong despite being surrounded by hostile forces working with the United States Government and right-wing forces in Latin America to overthrow the duly-elected and internationally-recognized Venezuelan Government, ruin its economy, and steal its resources.
On this Cinco de Mayo, an anti-imperialist anniversary, we stand in solidarity with Anti-Imperialist and Indigenous Struggles around the World.
On May 5 1862, at the Battle of Puebla the people of Mexico won a heroic victory over French colonial invaders. Mexican forces, many of whom were indigenous, under indigenous President Benito Juarez, defeated the French, who had been expecting an easy win because they out-numbered the Mexicans three to one, and had vastly superior firepower and resources.
This historic battle has numerous parallels with our current anti-imperialist struggle to prevent a US-orchestrated coup in Venezuela:
As with all colonized countries, European colonial powers exploited Mexico unmercifully, applying ferocious economic pressure on the country, a situation not unlike the punishing economic warfare the US is now waging against Venezuela.
France refused to negotiate debt payments with the Juarez Government. Instead, self-proclaimed French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte opted to invade Mexico, subjecting the impoverished Mexican people to six years of war before they finally succeeded in expelling the French.
A hundred and fifty years later, the US persists in its attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s duly elected presidents, first Hugo Chavez and then Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan people, like the Mexican people, continue to hold off these attacks despite tremendous challenges.
Like Native peoples around the globe, the indigenous people of Mexico were decimated but not defeated by colonialism. From Juarez to the Zapatistas, they continue in the forefront, actively defying colonialism and imperialism, as do the Venezuelan people though the ongoing Bolivarian Revolution.
Today, 5 de mayo, is also National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls. We stand in solidarity with Native women in the US and around the world who for centuries, and to this day, have been exploited, dispossessed, and murdered by colonialism and imperialism, in an ongoing genocide that continually targets them as a group and as individuals, including the murdered and missing women in the US, for whom justice is being demanded.
Likewise, on this day we express solidarity and love for migrants seeking refuge in the US, in particular the thousands fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras following the US-backed 2009 coup in that country against the progressive, legally elected government of Manuel Zelaya. It is the tremendous harm of coups such as the one in Honduras, as well as those perpetrated by imperialist US policy all over this hemisphere and the world for more than a century, which we are seeking to prevent and directly challenge, through our being in the Embassy of Venezuela.
A media barrage designed to obscure US actions and intentions is a key part of interventionist actions like this current one against Venezuela, led by Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump. We call on people to closely question this campaign, which twists reality and blames those who resist empire, including ourselves. If you are tempted to believe that the motives of the US and the right-wing extremist opposition in Venezuela are lawful and humanitarian, please consider…
– Numerous times in the past the US has claimed humanitarian concerns as a pretext for interventions that ended up destroying millions of lives. Can we believe that the US Government cares about the Venezuelan people when it constantly produces statements, actions and policies that harm humans in this country and around the world?
– Pretexts for intervention include the oft-repeated issue of Venezuelans fleeing the country to escape the Maduro regime. If this is true, why has there been no mass influx of Venezuelans to the US, not even an orchestrated one like the Marielitos of Cuba or the Vietnamese boat people? This and other attempts to justify intervention must be closely questioned. In fact, the CIA’s own data finds a negative emigration rate for Venezuela.
– People fleeing to the US from the authoritarian dictatorship in Honduras are met by unmitigated harshness, racism and rejection by the same people who claim to care so much about Venezuelans.
We believe that the Venezuelan people, including well-meaning members of the opposition in that country, should be able to develop and follow internal processes of participation in order to choose their path. That is why we are here in the embassy, and why on this Cinco de Mayo we salute all people around the world who are resisting greed, bullying and violent intervention.
No US Imperialist Intervention in Venezuela! No economic war in Venezuela! Not in our name or with our resources!
Wishing a just and peaceful anti-imperialist Cinco de Mayo to all!
Viva la Revolución Bolivariana! Viva la amistad igualitaria del pueblo norteamericano con los pueblos de América Latina y del mundo.
Abajo el imperialismo!!
In solidarity and struggle,
The Embassy Protection Collective
Lawful Tenant-Guests at the Venezuelan Embassy
US: Felony Charges Against Activist Protesting Arms Dealers, “I grew up in Palo Alto, and it’s just embarrassing to have this company in my hometown”
The graffiti of which Bryce Druzin is the author | Photo: San Jose Inside, courtesy of Bryce Druzin.
A man in the United States is facing felony charges for spray painting ‘Yemen’ on the Palo Alto offices of arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin. The act was in protest of the U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, which Lockheed Martin has profited from, through arms sales.
Bryce Druzin has been branded a ‘hero’ by peace activists after spraying ‘Yemen’ in blood red spray paint, on the offices of weapons giant Lockheed Martin. Below that, he also sprayed “8-9-18,” the date when the Saudis dropped a bomb on a school bus that killed 44 children. The 500-pound, laser-guided bomb was manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Druzin then called the police and waited at the office until they arrived, at which point he handed himself in.
Druzin has been following the U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, and told reporters, “I grew up in Palo Alto, and it’s just embarrassing to have this company in my hometown. …We should all be embarrassed. I mean, if we have a neighbor who helped kill tens of thousands of people, I wouldn’t want them in our neighborhood.”
Over 7,000 civilians have been killed by Saudi forces, and 14 million are said to be on the brink of starvation. The war began in 2016 when the Saudi government decided to rid Yemen of it’s Houthi-led government. Since then, the U.S. and the U.K. have been the leading arms exporters to Saudi Arabia’s war effort.
Journalist and peace campaigner Ben Norton said on the matter. “A hero in California spraypainted ‘Yemen’ in blood red on the main sign for the office of death profiteer Lockheed Martin. He added ‘8-9-18,’ the date when Saudi dropped a Lockheed bomb on a school bus, killing 44 children. He faces a *felony* charge now.”
Milwaukee, September 20, 2019: Building Bridges: Celebrating 60 Years of Solidarity with the Milwaukee Area Labor Council (MALC)
Building Bridges: Celebrating 60 Years of Solidarity
SAVE THE DATE! The Milwaukee Area Labor Council is turning 60 this year and we’re having a party!
Milwaukee is a union town, born from a proud industrial past. Mark your calendars for a fun night where we celebrate our history and look towards a bright future.
More information to come!
