![Image may contain: 2 people, text that says 'CALL SCRIPT " "Hi [my name is and] I am calling to demand the release and all charges dropped for Adelana Akindes and all others unlawfully arrested during the protests on August 27th."'](https://scontent-msp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p960x960/118214279_152410619837890_8128737581466421052_o.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=9FJM-tNX5OkAX-DEZUk&_nc_ht=scontent-msp1-1.xx&tp=6&oh=22615759a0cba8971c4dec0545167a14&oe=5F6E9021)
Note: Adelana Akindes has been released but Activists Hayden Harwood and others are still locked up. Please call now to demand the release of protesters.
Oshkosh Sun Dial, Oshkosh, WI – 3-7 P.M.
This is a Protest to make noise for the recent attack on Jacob Blake. So join this protest to show Black Lives Matter, and we need justice for the attack of this innocent man and all the other victims of police brutality.
On Tuesday, we did something incredible. Thousands of people took action at hundreds of events across the country.
We raised public awareness, got scores of local news stories and built more pressure on our senators to pass legislation to stop the mail slow down and provide $25 billion emergency funding for the Postal Service.
Tuesday’s action was made possible by thousands of people coming together to support one of our most treasured institutions – the public Postal Service. In unity is strength!
In the spirit of lifting up that work, we asked our event organizers to tell us about their experiences. We had too many replies to include all, but here are a few of their responses:
“… about 35 people rallied in front of the downtown Cary post office (Academy St. Substation) in North Carolina. The group included APWU members, retirees, and community members of all ages. The organizer spoke about the importance of USPS to her mail-order book business, and also to her elderly parents who live in a rural area of Western North Carolina. They get their prescriptions by mail. A private post office would not serve their route well at all.”
Lorri – Cary, NC
“An open mic captured the stories of community residents, including immigrant workers and senior citizens who rely on the Post Office to receive medications and benefits, to pay bills and to communicate with their families all over the world. Several spoke about family members who work at the post office, which provides stable employment and support for their families.”
Elena– Sunset Park, Brooklyn
“More than 50 people participated in our socially-distanced, masked vigil, many wearing “Save Our Postal Service! U.S. Mail Not for Sale!” masks, in front of our downtown Kalamazoo, MI post office. Attendees included current postal workers, postal retirees, officers from postal and other unions, local politicians, and many concerned community members, including people visiting the post office yesterday who joined us!”
David – Kalamazoo, MI
“[We held an] event with speakers and hula hoop hurrahs at the post office in High Falls, NY. The event was organized by Maria Reidelbach and Risa Mickenberg with Hoopers for Humanity.
Speakers included a local high school history teacher, a child who stays in touch with her uncle by mail, a woman whose postal worker mailed her masks when forwarding her mail to Florida, a woman whose goddaughter was unable to speak for years due to trauma and formed her relationships with people entirely through letters until she was able to speak.”
High Falls, NY
“It was an awesome day yesterday! Even though air quality was poor because of smoke from the fires here in California, we were a mighty group of 10! We had two retired postal workers join us from 20 and 30 miles away.
People honked, yelled and waved to show their support. Some people didn’t know the post office was in jeopardy and we were able to make them aware of what’s happening and what is at stake. It was a beautiful day of community, symbolic of what the post office has been doing for centuries: bringing people together!”
Dariece – Vallejo, CA
“I called a contact and asked if they could come out for an hour. Once I had someone with me, I hosted the event. Then people started signing up. It was that simple. I printed up some leaflets and we were ready to go.”
Ken – Malden, MA
We are truly inspired. When ordinary people organize together, it creates something extraordinary!
In Solidarity,
The team at USMailNotForSale.org
St Paul Principles
1.) Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the
plans of other groups.
2.) The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of
time or space.
3.) Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any
public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
4.) We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance,
infiltration, disruption and violence. we agree not to assist law enforcement
actions against activists and others.
“Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. It would be fatal for the 
nation to overlook urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.”
So said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. With jobs and freedom still just a dream for so many Americans, thousands will march again today, 57 years later, to carry on that struggle. The labor contingent is meeting at the United Unions building starting at 7:15a (see below); at 8:45 they’ll march over to the Lincoln Memorial. Unions participating include AFGE, AFSCME, AFT and IUPAT.
March/Rally: Commitment: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks: Fri, August 28, 7:15am – 3:15pm
Labor contingent gathers at United Unions building, 1750 New York Avenue NW, WDC; march heads out at 8:45a.
Hosted by National Action Network and NAACP.
Justice for Jacob | March and Rally
1345 52nd Street, Kenosha, WI – 2 P.M.
Jacob Blake’s family and their supporters invite you to this march and rally in support of #JusticeForJacob. The lead organizers of this event are Justin Blake, Tanya McLean and Alvin Owens.
By Dave Zirin
This is without precedent in the history of sports: The Milwaukee Bucks, arguably the best team in the NBA, have gone on strike, refusing to leave the locker room for game five of their playoff series against the Orlando Magic. Their decision stopped the sports world on a dime, and shortly after the news, the Milwaukee Brewers announced that the team would also skip tonight’s MLB game. The Brewers and Bucks are refusing to play in solidarity with the demand for justice for Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back seven times over the weekend by police in nearby Kenosha.
Immediately, the Bucks’ decision had a catalytic effect on the league. The remainder of the playoff games today, by decision of the players, have been canceled, including the game between LeBron James and the Lakers and the Portland Trailblazers. All NBA players are meeting this evening to discuss whether there will be a season. Call it a wildcat strike, call it an uprising, but whatever you call it, the actions of these athletes have repercussions far beyond sports. When LeBron James tweeted “FUCK THIS MAN!!!! WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT” in support of the Bucks players, he didn’t get love just from NBA fans. Future congressman Jamaal Bowman and Representative Ilhan Omar immediately endorsed his sentiment.
In addition to the police shooting of Blake, protests are calling attention to the white supremacist violence that has occurred in its aftermath. A 17-year-old Trump fanatic named Kyle Rittenhouse drove to Kenosha from Illinois last night and killed two protesters. Police let him roam the streets with an AR-15, only arresting him for first degree murder today.
Many NBA players feared that when they restarted the season in a Covid-free bubble in Orlando the games would distract attention from the nationwide protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd earlier this summer. For the players, after the shooting of Blake, it clearly became too much of a contradiction.
“At the end of the day, if we’re gonna sit here and talk about making change, then at some point we’re gonna have to put our nuts on the line and actually put something up to lose, rather than just money or visibility,” Toronto Raptors guard Fred VanVleet said Tuesday. “We’ve gotta take responsibility as well. Like, what are we willing to give up? Do we actually give a f—about what’s going on, or is it just cool to [have] ‘Black Lives Matter’ on the backdrop, or wear a T-shirt? Like, what does that really mean? Is it really doing anything?” The players were itching to do something, and now they have.
The strike stands in stark contrast to the hypocrisy and authoritarianism on display at the Republican National Convention. Trump’s party wants to push this idea that everything is fine in America, except for “anarchists” who are burning down “Democrat cities,” and a Black “invasion” of the suburbs. The pandemic is in the past and the police are heroes. These are obscene lies, but far too many of us feel helpless to say or do anything except shout into the wind, or try to burn it all down. The NBA players are showing that this is a wretchedly dysfunctional country, whose horrors make even the playing of sports too much for athletes to bear.
These are not the first athletes in history to point out the gap between how Black athletes are loved on the field and how they are treated off of it. The slogan of the 1968 Olympic Project for Human Rights was “Why should we run in Mexico City only to crawl home?” Bill Russell and the Celtics were a part of sitting out a game in Lexington, Ky., along with the St. Louis Hawks in the early 1960s in protest of the city’s treatment of black players.
There are other examples as well. But as the saying goes, in politics timing is everything. The timing of this strike by the Bucks and now the players of the NBA has the potential to turn politics inside out. They are posing the question that all great strikes pose—to political people who hate sports and sports fans who hate politics, and to white fans who love them on the court but are oblivious to Black lives when the final whistle is blown—“Which side are you on?”
It is a question that is now blaring from every corner of the media landscape. It’s a question all of us are going to need to answer.
August 25, thousands of people took action at hundreds of Save The Post Office rallies across the country. #SaveThePostOffice
It was an incredible day. The action was covered in scores of local media outlets and the voices of postal workers and our communities were heard loud and clear.
We now have just a short window of opportunity to make sure that the Senate responds to the pressure we’re building. We need to tell our senators to pass legislation to stop the mail slow down and provide $25 billion emergency funding for the Postal Service during the coronavirus crisis. Will you keep the pressure up by calling your senators?
And if you want to see just how much people care about our public Postal Service, just look at these images – just a few from yesterday’s day of action.
Congratulations to everyone who took action yesterday.
Let’s keep the pressure up. Dial 844-402-1001 or click here to call your senators.
In Union Solidarity,
Mark Dimondstein
President, APWU
2 Days: “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We will will continue to March for Justice in MLK’s legacy #MOW2020
https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm
“…. I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me….”
Spoken: 1953
Publisher: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, Cuba. 1975
Translated: Pedro Álvarez Tabío & Andrew Paul Booth (who rechecked the translation with the Spanish La historia me absolverá, same publisher, in 1981)
Transcription/Markup: Andrew Paul Booth/Brian Baggins
Online Version: 1997, Castro Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2001
