Sunday, March 8th, 2020

5 to 9 pm, 37 S. Ashland Avenue

Join us to celebrate International Women’s Day with women and gender-oppressed speakers, artists, performers, and vendors!

5-6 pm, 8-9 pm: Vendors Market & Gallery

6-8 pm: Speaker & Performer program

For over 100 years, International Women’s Day has celebrated the struggle for women’s liberation. Join us this year on International Women’s Day to speak out against the oppression and exploitation of women and gender oppressed people today.

We live under an economic system that is organized around exploitation and a political system that is ruled by the rich. Cuts to entitlement programs, attacks on public sector unions, and threats to public education hit women hardest, especially women of color. Politicians – from Trump and Pence, to many state legislatures – are pushing to enact laws that pose a real danger to our rights, our reproductive freedom and our lives. Working women of all nationalities are leading the movements to defend the public sector, unions, reproductive freedom, and more.

The fight against sexual assault and harassment is reaching new heights, as every day brings news of more women breaking their silence and naming their attackers, bringing down powerful men from Hollywood to Capitol Hill. While some try to hold back progress, we need to seize this moment, and take the fight to every workplace, every school, everywhere there are working and oppressed women.

International Women’s Day was established by women who sought to overthrow the system of exploitation and inequality. This is our same fight today.

Speakers to include:

President Dian Palmer, SEIU Local 73 and Christel Williams-Hayes, CTU Recording Secretary

The Chicago Public School strike of 35,000 teachers and workers against the Chicago School Board was a strike mostly of women and led mainly by women. Two of those women will be among our guest speakers: Dian Palmer, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 73, and Christel Williams-Hayes, recording secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Sarah Risheq, U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)

USPCN as an organization of Palestinians in exile has helped lead the struggle here for an end to Zionist occupation and colonization of Palestine. They are well known for leading the fight against the U.S. government attack on Rasmea Odeh. Sarah has also been a leader in Students for Justice in Palestine.

Nerissa Allegretti, Gabriela USA

Gabriela is a grassroots alliance of women in the Philippines struggling for the liberation of all oppressed women and the rest of the Filipino people. They organize for women’s rights, reproductive rights, and against gender discrimination, violence against women but also on economic and political issues that affects women. GABRIELA USA brought the Filipino women’s mass movement to the United States.

Poetry by Anna McColgan

Vendors include:

Sweets Shop Soaps, run by Ida Dolce.

Soy Viva Pop Up Restaurant

Cash Bar

Literature tables

Donations Requested

https://www.facebook.com/events/178213173440787/

http://www.fightbacknews.org

http://www.frso.org

Note: The venue is the UE Hall, an historic union with a proud tradition of militant trade unionism and support for social movements. The building is not currently wheelchair accessible.

Demand Parole Release Rally!

Wisconsin’s parole commission is a disintegrating disaster.

Volunteers, organizers and supporters of people sentenced under the old law (and thus eligible for parole) have been attending the monthly meetings of the parole commission since last August. There we have seen evidence of active efforts to sabotage and obstruct the long overdue releases of our loved ones.

The racism and signs of manipulation we witnessed at January’s meeting were particularly intolerable. We will not sit and watch this injustice any longer. From now on we will follow the monthly meetings with a rally supporting reform and releases.

We’re asking you to join us on February 5 and on the first Wednesday of every month thereafter until they LET OUR PEOPLE GO!

Agenda

9:30 am- attend the public portion of the parole commission meeting. Public is not welcomed to speak during the meeting, but the more people we have bearing witness, the more pressure for reform will be felt.

Unknown- the meeting will go to closed session and we will have to leave the room, but will gather outside near the staff parking lot on the south side of the building.
12:00- rally and press conference, outside the DOC building on the south rise. We will have speeches, signs and chants demanding release of our loved ones as the parole commissioners leave the building.

Speakers include:

Talib Akbar- survivor of Wisconsin prison system, sentenced under the old law and released in 2013. Organizer with MOSES.

Davina Jones- fiance and advocate for Anton C. Hudson, currently trapped in Wisconsin prison under the old law.

More TBA

If you cannot attend, please support this effort by signing and sharing our petition demanding accelerated releases and reformed criteria.

The Tyendinaga are expecting an OPP raid on their blockade any hour now. When this happens Toronto will respond shortly after with a solidarity rail blockade action. As we don’t know when this will be yet, we ask you to be ready to respond with us. When the raid happens check the event link for updates on where and when we will meet.

BACKGROUND:
The Mohawks of Tyendinaga and their supporters have been blockading a CN mainline through their territory for nearly two weeks now in support of the Wet’suwet’en. Two weeks ago, militarized RCMP invaded Wet’suwet’en territory to arrest land defenders, who were reclaiming their territories and impeding the Coastal Gas Link project. While the invasion of Wet’suwet’en lands seems particularly atrocious because their lands are unceded and unsurrendered, the truth is that Canada has long since voided its treaty with every Indigenous Nation. It is time to stand up and shut things down; for Tyendinaga, for the Wet’suwet’en, for the Sipekne’katik and for every Indigenous Nation fighting to protect the land & water.”

#SHUTDOWNCANADA

WANT TO RESPOND IN YOUR CITY?
FIND AN EDITABLE GRAPHIC FOR SHARING HERE:
https://north-shore.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wetsusoligrphc-editable.cleaned.pdf

No Class is an op-ed column by writer and radical organizer Kim Kelly that connects worker struggles and the current state of the American labor movement with its storied — and sometimes bloodied — past.

Though it has only just begun, 2020 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year for the labor movement, including a group of workers in Santa Cruz, CA, that started the (academic) year off with a bang. Graduate students at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) have been on strike since February 10, after months of contentious conversations with the school administration. Unlike many of their peers across the country who have been shut out of organizing, the UCSC cohort are members of United Auto Workers Local 2865, a union that has long represented graduate students in the UC system. Their current contract, which was approved by others in the UC system, was ratified in 2018, but it was initially rejected by nearly 83% of UCSC graduate students. They have been organizing to try and get a better deal ever since.

Their biggest issue? The rent is too damn high, and their wages are far too low to be able to afford to live in the pricey Santa Cruz area. According to one of the strike’s organizers, Jane Komori, the vast majority of graduate student workers at UCSC spend more than 50% — and often 60 or 70% — of their wages on rent. As a result, the UCSC Graduate Student Association has been lobbying the university administration for a cost of living adjustment (COLA) of $1,412 per month since November. Those demands were unmet, so they decided to escalate: December was the beginning of a grading strike in which grad students withheld 12,000 grades at the end of the fall quarter; after they say the administration refused to meet with them, the workers decided to continue withholding grades through the entire winter semester. The Pay Us More UCSC movement was heating up….

UC Student Workers UAW 2865 Santa Cruz

https://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/mumia/struggle-uc-grad-students-221-mumia-abu-jamal

UC Student Workers UAW 2865 Santa Cruz

all natural

by Lamont Lilly / February 16th, 2020

i like the kind of hair
that will stand up for its rights
the kind that kicks
screams and protests
the kind that resists
and boycotts with every coil
the kind that fights
riots and rebels
the kind that won’t
be quiet for nobody
the kind that won’t
be anything but black
the kind that refuses
to relax

• Third of four poems in honour of Black History month (February 2020)

https://dissidentvoice.org/

Weekly Climate Strike

Youth Climate Activists – Fox Valley‎

Every Friday, 111 W College Avenue, Houdini Plaza, Appleton, 5 P.M.

Stand for a Livable Climate