AUSTIN, Texas — Israel and Honduras announced a new security agreement this month in which Israel will supply weapons and training to the Honduran military.
Honduras is ruled by an oppressive and murderous regime that took power after a 2009 coup, and the agreement marks just the latest chapter in Israel’s long, bloody history of arming Central American despots.
The deal, inked on Aug. 20, would dramatically upgrade the Honduran regime’s offensive capabilities.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) affiliated unions, namely the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU), the Police Prisons and Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) and the Chemical Energy Print Paper and Allied Workers Union (CEPPWAWU) will be jointly hosting the 17th World Trade Union Congress as from Wednesday, 5th October 2016 – until – Friday 07 October 2016 at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Durban, KZN. The congress will be convened under the theme “Struggle, Internationalism and Unity For the attainment of the contemporary workers needs, Against poverty and wars generated by capitalist barbarism”.
This congress of WFTU will be attended by more than 70 trade unions formations, representing the four corners of the world, namely Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The 17th World Trade Union Congress comes at a time of persistent economic downturn of global capitalism that began in 2008 and is projected to now last more than a decade. This has also seen the progressive and left forces scattered all over divided and defocused by their petty sectarian squabbles.
The congress will conclude with a mass workers rally at the Curries Fountain stadium on the 08 October 2016. As part of the closing ceremony, a workers memorial plague will be unveiled at the Curries Fountain stadium.
The class orientated and revolutionary trade union movement under the banner of WFTU will use this opportunity to reflect and come out with responses to the challenges facing the working class all around the world and also to consolidate and strengthen the principles of working class internationalism and universalism.
Hosting the 17th world trade union congress of the WFTU, will be an acknowledgement of the role that the South African workers continue to play in the arena of the global working class struggles. It will also strengthen the position of the South African trade union movement in the international trade union arena.
The congress will also afford the workers an opportunity to pay the greatest homage to the foundational figures of the South African trade union movement such as Moses Mabhida, JB Marks, John Nkadimeng, Eric ‘Stalin’ Mtshali, John Taolo Gaetsewe, Billy Nair, Wilton Mkwayi, Mark Shope, Joe Molokeng, Ray Alexander, Stephen Dlamini, Leslie Masina, Leon Levy and many others who pioneered COSATU’s predecessor SACTU.
The Congress will be addressed by the leadership of WFTU and the Alliance:
COSATU Cde Sdumo Dlamini
SACP Cde Blade Nzimande
ANC Cde Jacob Zuma
Members of the media are invited to send their applications for accreditation to lchilwane@num.org.za or a mamabolor@popcru.org.za.
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Workers World article: http://bit.ly/2cAcBXO
Make a contribution for U.S delegation: http://bit.ly/2cAb3Nw
SIGN PETITION: http://chn.ge/2cZvAcP
[When signing, please list trade union and/or other affiliation in the comment box]
Urgent Call on the AFL-CIO: Reverse Support for the Dakota Access Pipeline
Labor for Palestine, September 17, 2016
As trade unionists and social justice activists, we urgently call on the AFL-CIO to reverse its disgraceful support for the Dakota Access Pipeline.
DAPL continues more than 500 years of settler-colonialism, dispossession, and genocide against indigenous people in the Americas, who are defending the Earth’s vital resources against the same corporate greed, state violence, and repression that violate workers’ rights on a daily basis.
Like the Black and Brown Lives, Immigrant Rights, Palestinian, and other freedom struggles, the courageous Sioux resistance at Standing Rock has become a worldwide beacon for all who fight injustice.
In solidarity, numerous trade union bodies, including the Amalgamated Transit Union, California Faculty Association, Communications Workers of America, Industrial Workers of the World, National Nurses United, New York State Nurses Association, National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981, United Electrical Workers, SEIU 503 OPEU, #StandWithStandingRock.
Workers’ rights are inseparable from indigenous rights. We need decent union jobs that protect, rather than destroy, the Earth — there are no jobs on a dead planet.
An injury to one is an injury to all: #NoDAPL!
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Labor for Palestine Co-Conveners:
Suzanne Adely, U.S.-MENA Global Labor Solidarity Network; Former Staff, Global Organizing Institute, UAW
Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325
Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired)
Jaime Veve, Transport Workers Union Local 100, NYC (retired)
We will gather in the large meeting room of the Center Street Library to discuss prisoner resistance happening, in and beyond Wisconsin. We will collectively participate in mass mailings to aid in outreach and co-ordination between prsioner networks. There will also be an opportunity for replying to or initiating individual correspondence with individual people. Wherever there is exploitation, let’s grind it to a halt. See you Monday.
If you can’t make it at this time but are interested in helping the work around please comment, and IWW members will follow up with you individually to connect you with this movement.Prisoner Strike Support
“Greeting Sisters and Brothers:
I have been asked to write a SOLIDARITY statement to everyone about the Camp of the Sacred Stones on Standing Rock. Thank you for this great honor. I must admit it is very difficult for me to even begin this statement as my eyes get so blurred from tears and my heart swells with pride, as chills run up and down my neck and back. I’m so proud of all of you young people and others there.
I am grateful to have survived to see the rebirth of the united and undefeated Sioux Nation at Standing Rock in the resistance to the poisonous pipeline that threatens the life source of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It is an honor to have been alive to see this happen with you young people. You are nothing but awesome in my eyes…”
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Doksha
Leonard Peltier
Find out more about Leonard Peltier and how to help his quest for clemency here.
The struggle to stop the Dakota Access pipeline has grown to involve thousands of First Nation tribes and their supporters despite a corporate media blackout. For defying the blackout and bringing some coverage to the heroic fight-back, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and other journalists have had warrants issued for their arrest!
On September 15, a unanimous vote of the National Writers Union Chapter Chairs passed the following resolutions:
Resolution in Support of the Struggle to Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock
The National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981 (NWU), stands in solidarity with the actions by the Sioux Tribe and over 100 First Nations Tribes and their supporters, gathered at Standing Rock North Dakota to stop the Dakota Access pipeline. The pipeline endangers water resources, desecrates First Nations burial lands, ignores reservation treaty rights and would permanently place a scar across the US, from the Canadian Border to Texas, defacing the land.
The NWU deplores this $3.8 billion project, by dirty oil to move toxic crude oil from Canada to Texas for dirty profits, and the misuse of the Army Corp of Engineers for such private, for-profit, and ecologically damaging projects. The NWU calls upon the CEO and board members of Citi Bank and other banks, including foreign banks, and their share holders to desist in consideration of the irreversible damage that can be done to First Nations Peoples, to their sacred places, to the environment, to mother earth and to all of America by the irresponsible drive for profits by companies such as Dakota Access LLC, a joint venture of Phillips 66 and Sunoco Logistics, and others like Marathon Oil a part of Energy Transfer Partners, who are some of the interlocking companies involved in this dangerous, profit driven, shameless effort.
Resolution Defending All Journalists Threatened for Covering the Struggle at Standing Rock
The National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981 stands in solidarity with our journalist colleagues, who have been singled out for retribution because of doing their jobs, including those reporting the monumental struggle of First Nation peoples at Standing Rock who are protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. The National Writers Union, as an affiliate of the International Federation of Journalists, objects to the persecution of, or violence toward journalist of all types by law enforcement, private enforcement security companies or others. The NWU stands behind the human and professional right of people to seek and share information through the press.
Community meeting with Monica Moorehead, Workers World Party Presidential candidate
1-3 p.m., Villager Mall, 2300 S Park St., Madison. Free and open to the public
Community Conversation with Monica Moorehead, Presidential Candidate for Workers World Party
6:30 – 8:30 p.m., 3020 W Vliet (African American Women’s Center). Free and open to the public
Monica Moorehead has been an activist and organizer for more than four decades. Moorehead has long been a supporter of people’s struggles in Wisconsin including the 2011 people’s occupation of the state capitol in Madison to fight for union rights, the struggle for justice for Tony Robinson and Dontre Hamilton and others killed by cops, joining protests against the right-wing Bradley Foundation, supporting the latest Milwaukee rebellion by Black youth and defending Black Lives Matter organizations such as the Coalition For Justice and Young Gifted and Black. Moorehead and her Vice Presidential candidate Lamont Lilly are on the 2016 presidential ballot in Wisconsin.
A member of Workers World Party since 1975, Moorehead now sits on the Party’s national secretariat and is a managing editor of Workers World newspaper. She was WWP’s candidate for president of the United States in 1996 and 2000; in 1996 and 2016 she sought the nomination of the Peace & Freedom Party in California.
Born in Alabama during segregation, Moorehead became politically active as a teenager in Hampton, Va., distributing the Black Panther Party newspaper. She was banned from her high school band for refusing to play the racist song “Dixie.” A graduate of Hampton Institute [now University], Moorehead is a former kindergarten teacher.
She is a founding member of Millions for Mumia of the International Action Center—an anti-death-penalty project—and she co-chaired the historic May 7, 2000 rally of 6,000 people in Madison Square Garden Theater demanding freedom for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Moorehead has written extensively on the prison-industrial complex and anti-racist issues. She co-authored “Mumia Speaks– An Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal.” She wrote the pamphlet “South Africa—Which Road to Liberation?” and the essay “What Is a Nation?” in the book “A Voice from Harper’s Ferry.” She edited the 2007 book “Marxism, Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle.”
She is a co-coordinator of the International Working Women’s Day Coalition in New York City. She is also an executive board member of the International Women’s Alliance—a global network of women organizers and women’s organizations that fight imperialism, racism, sexism and all forms of oppression.
Moorehead has represented Workers World Party on many international solidarity trips including South Africa, Iraq, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, South Korea, France the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and the U.S. internal colonies of Puerto Rico and Hawai’i. From the movements against racism, police killings and mass incarceration; to the struggle against imperialist war and neocolonialism; to solidarity with Cuba, Palestine, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, the DPRK, and all peoples struggling for self-determination and sovereignty; to the struggles for women’s and LGBTQ liberation; to battles for union rights, disability rights, environmental justice—from local struggles to international movements, Monica Moorehead has devoted her entire life to the great cause of building a better world.
