End Prison Slavery

Two IWW members will be at Milwaukee Central Library, 814 W. Wisconsin, meeting room 2A, on Monday, July 1, 5:00-6:30 PM. They will be working on some of the activity they regularly do for the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, supporting the campaign against arbitrary regulations at Columbia Correctional, support for hunger strikers, coalition efforts to shutdown the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, and connecting different networks inside prison walls. Our work includes research, writing letters, data entry, and developing ideas for disrupting the horror that is the Wisconsin prison system. Come by if you want to see what’s involved with this organizing, ask questions, and maybe get involved in this. Free coffee and snacks are provided. Let us know if you need a ride to be able to attend. This gathering will be followed by our strategy meeting at 6:30, visitors are welcome to attend this as well.

If you are interested in this event and can’t make this time or location, please post in this event, message us or send an email at iwoc.milwaukee@gmail.com We will schedule the next event to work for your schedule, or followup one-on-one. Also contact us if you would need childcare, translation or other accommodations to be able to attend this event. You can also fill out this online survey to volunteer for specific tasks: https://bit.ly/2vyZam9 You can get more information on Wisconsin prison conditions and resistance to them at our website: https://wisconsinprisonvoices.org/

Close the Camps Protest

12 NOON, 517 E Wisconsin Avenue, Federal Courthouse

Children denied soap and toothbrushes, crowded into unsafe conditions. Separated from their families, subject to cruel treatment that leads to lasting traumas. And some dying in custody—or dying with parents as they cross the Rio Grande. We’ve seen the images and heard the stories coming out of child detention centers. Horrifically, these conditions aren’t an accident. They are the byproduct of an intentional strategy by the Trump administration to terrorize immigrant communities and criminalize immigration—from imprisoning children in inhumane conditions to threatening widespread raids to break up families to covering up reports of immigrants dying in U.S. custody and abuses by ICE and CBP agents. It’s going to take all of us to close the camps. This Tuesday, July 2, while members of Congress are home for the Fourth of July holiday, we will gather at 12 p.m. noon local time at their local offices and other relevant locations in protest. Our demands: Close the camps Not one dollar for family detention Bear witness and reunite families.

No Borders In The Workers’ Struggle! / Photo: WI BOPM

https://bit.ly/2XkklGP

Ten years after the coup d’etat on June 28, 2009, the Peoples Human Rights Observatory expresses its solidarity and support to the brave resistance of the Honduran people. From the Observatory, we recognize that the 2009 coup was not only an attack against the elected president Manuel Zelaya, but also an affront to Honduran democracy, to its sovereignty as an independent country and, furthermore, an attack to the will of a country that has resisted surrendering to the economic, political and military interests of the United States and Canada.

The post-coup governments have displaced Honduras from the path of independence from the US regime to be a servile model to foreign interests in the region. While the government of Manuel Zelaya sought reforms to the minimum wage, to the distribution of the land, in favor of sexual and reproductive rights, in support of LGBTQ communities and to address the poverty and violence that force migration; the right-wing governments -currently represented by the dictatorial regime of Juan Orlando Hernández- have plunged the country into a spiral of violence, marginalization and poverty that are reflected in the high rates of killings, internally displaced people and expelled people from their homeland to seek refuge in other latitudes of the continent.

Currently, Juan Orlando Hernández is the inheritor of the tradition of treason and violence against the Honduran people that has been perpetuated by the national extreme right, the United States and Canada.Examples of the consequences of the 2009 coup include the murder of Berta Cáceres in 2016 and of more than 130 land defenders since 2010; the poverty and extreme poverty rates that affect more than 66 percent of the population; the murder of more than 32 journalists, 1552 students, at least 250 members of the LGBTQ community, as well as attacks against indigenous leaders, lawyers and the general population under the Juan Orlando regime; the electoral fraud of 2017, the repression that left more than 30 people killed by Honduran security forces and the arrest of the political prisoners Edwin Espinal, Raúl Álvarez, Gustavo Cáceres and more recently Rommel Herrera; and the increase in the exodus of Hondurans to the United States….

https://bit.ly/2IPmPE6

Note: These following remarks were made by Abayomi Azikiwe at a public meeting held at the Cass Commons in Midtown on June 19 to celebrate the annual Cuba Caravan which arrived in the city at the invitation of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition. Rev. Dr. Luis Barrios of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organizations (IFCO) and a faculty member at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY), was the featured speaker. 

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154 years ago today in the state of Texas, Africans in this area of the United States were formally notified of their release from chattel enslavement, more than two years after the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by the-then President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863.

Africans were enslaved for 250 years in the areas now known as the United States of America.

The 13^th Amendment to the Constitution was introduced in Congress in January 1865 and ratified by the end of that year. The Civil War between the Confederate States of America (CSA) and the U.S. ended during the early days of April 1865.

The economic system of slavery connects Africans in the U.S. with Cuba, where involuntary servitude flourished for a period beyond what existed in the U.S. Slavery did not end in Cuba until October 1886. Slavery in Cuba had begun under the Spanish Crown in the 16^th century even prior to the advent of British colonization of Virginia beginning in the first decade of the 17^th century.

African people in Cuba and their counterparts in the U.S. have very much in common: a centuries-long struggle against slavery, colonialism, racism and imperialism.

Juneteenth and the Debate over Reparations…. https://bit.ly/2IPmPE6

Haiti Action Committee strongly condemns the Joint Statement by nine members of the House of Representatives claiming “Violent Protests That Have Left Haiti at a Standstill.” Their assertion, “While the frustrations that have prompted the protests are justifiable, the violent acts being used to express them are indefensible” is as backwards a statement as President Trump equating those protesting white supremacy in Charlottesville with the racist demonstrators. It harkens back to the arguments used against the Civil Rights movement in this country, and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Their statement explains nothing about why the overwhelming majority of Haitians are demanding the removal of a hated and corrupt president, imposed on Haiti by the United States and the United Nations, except that their “frustrations” are “justifiable.”

What violent acts?… Rocks wielded in self-defense by unarmed protestors, facing the barrage of automatic gunfire from police and their civilian affiliates? Nowhere does this statement denounce the overwhelmingly disproportionate violence of the government against the Haitian mass movement – arbitrary arrests and police-affiliated death squad killings with impunity, such as in La Saline throughout November 2018, culminating on the 13th and 14th in a massacre of at least 71 people and probably many more. Massacres in Kafou Fey on April 24, 2019, in Village de Dieu on June 17, and on June 24 in downtown Port-au-Prince, killing an estimated 30 people trying to find shelter from the police attacks. Women raped in front of their husbands and children. Murdered bodies disappeared, or cut up and fed to pigs. Demonstrators attacked with water cannon spewing a blue foam that burns the skin . . . The atrocities go on and on, completely ignored by these representatives concerned more with burning tires and broken windows.

We agree that, “one of the key pillars of a democratic society is the freedom to stand up and speak out,” but Haiti is not a democratic society. It is a society under military occupation since 2004, led by governments put into place in four fraudulent and corrupt presidential election cycles, where the majority Fanmi Lavalas Party was either not allowed to run candidates or was prevented from winning through massive fraud and voter suppression. If a Haitian “stands up and speaks out,” that person is likely to be shot dead in the street, or end up in a prison for years without trial, or have death squads show up at their door in the middle of the night. Haitians risk their lives every time they go into the streets to protest.

Yes, Haiti does need international support, but support to rid the country of thieving government and business officials, to force return of $4.2 billion in stolen Petrocaribe money (not to mention stolen earthquake donations), and to hold truly free and fair elections. We ask these representatives to reconsider their statement, condemn the violence of the state against those demonstrating, and support their just demands, starting with the removal of Jovenel Moise as president. The people of Haiti are struggling for freedom, justice, and equality; for dignity, sovereignty, and unity. They are working to build a country. Those who are steeped in corruption are the ones who are failing and destroying the state.

Haiti Action Committee

www.haitisolidarity.net

Emergency Meeting to Close the Concentration Camps

EMERGENCY ORGANIZING MEETING TO CLOSE THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS.

This past weekend, over 30 activists from organizations around the country joined in a call to discuss the inhumane concentration camps and the deplorable conditions that migrants are forced to endure at the U.S. Southern Border. These conditions are traumatizing, injuring, and even killing migrants. We want to stage a mass demonstration through a national day of action on July 12 to demand the closure of these camps and to let those seeking asylum into the country. Please join us to discuss how we in Madison can take part in this national day of action.

If your organization would like to endorse and help build this day of action, send an email to: krabuck@yahoo.com

At ICE building in Milwaukee June 24, 2019 / Photo: WI BOPM

CMRJB Workers United

#shame #mkelabor #1u

Milwaukee June 25, 2019, Milwaukee Area Labor Council

Black, Southeast Asian youths, Queer and Trans, Adults and Elders fighting for police free schools! We demand that our school district divest from the police and invest in the leadership, creativity and wellness of Black youth and other youth of color! #NoCopsInSchool #InvestInYouth#CommunityControl #PoliceFreeSchools

Freedom Inc