IUPAT LOCAL UNION NO. 10: No Support to the Democrats, Republicans, or Any Party of the Bosses

International Union of Painters and Allied Trades
LOCAL UNION NO. 10
11105 N.E. SANDY BLVD.
PORTLAND, OREGON 97220 Website: www.iupatdc5.org
PHONE: (503) 257-0589 ● FAX: (503) 262-5358 ● OOWL: (503) 262-5347
Whereas the bosses have two parties to represent their class while the millions of working people have none, and
Whereas the Democratic president Barack Obama sent the U.S. Coast Guard to enforce scabbing against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union during the 2013-14 lock-out of northwest dock workers, and
Whereas the Democratic governor Kate Brown opposed and undercut the movement for a $15 minimum wage across Oregon, and
Whereas in 2014 Democrats in Congress joined with Republicans to pass a disastrous pension “reform,” allowing the bosses to escape their obligations and cheat our retirees, and
Whereas the two presidencies of the Democrat Barack Obama have been eight years of unending war in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, causing untold human suffering, millions of refugees, and attacks on our democratic rights at home, and
Whereas the Democratic Party in power has deported some 5 million immigrants, a record, and
Whereas across the country, from Oakland to Baltimore, police under Democratic mayors regularly murder black men and women with impunity, and
Whereas the 2016 presidential election offers us the “choice” between a raving, bigoted clown and a career representative of Wall Street, and
Whereas the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Virginia governor Tim Kaine, supports union- busting “right to work” laws, and
Whereas Democrats and Republicans are and have always been strike-breaking, war-making parties of the bosses, and
Whereas so long as the labor movement supports one or another party of the bosses, we will be playing a losing game, therefore be it
Resolved that IUPAT Local 10 does not support the Democrats, Republicans, or any bosses’ parties or politicians, and Resolved that we call on the International Union to repudiate its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, and Resolved that we call on the labor movement to break from the Democratic Party, and build a class- struggle workers party
Approved at the August 17, 2016 Regular Meeting of the Membership

Charlotte Uprising

http://www.charlotteuprising.com/

Charlotte Uprising is a coalition of community members, local and state organizers committed to ensuring the safety of their communities, and advocating for police accountability, transparency and social and economic equity. 

PETITION: http://www.charlotteuprising.com/petition

FREEDOM FIGHTER BOND FUND: http://durhamsolidaritycenter.org/bondfund/

[Photos by WI BOPM taken 9-24-2016 in Charlotte, NC]

AFL-CIO Constituency Groups Stand with Native Americans to Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

http://portside.org/2016-09-22/afl-cio-constituency-groups-stand-native-americans-stop-dakota-access-pipeline

We remain committed to fighting the corporate interests that back this project and name this pipeline “a pipeline of corporate greed.” We challenge the labor movement to strategize on how to better engage and include Native people and other marginalized populations into the labor movement as a whole.
Labor Coalition for Community Action

ALL OUT FOR CHARLOTTE SEPTEMBER 24

On Tuesday, our brother and neighbor Keith Lamont Scott was killed by Charlotte police. He was sitting in his car, reading a book, and waiting for his son to come home on the school bus. We believe he was profiled and killed by police, and that CMPD is not telling the truth about his murder.

Tuesday night, Charlotte police attacked a grieving community with riot police and tear gas. Wednesday night, Charlotte police fired into a crowd, seriously injuring a protestor and inflaming our grief.

Today, our city is occupied by the National Guard and we are in a State of Emergency!

Charlotte, the latest city to be wrecked by police violence against Black people and violence against Black people, is a national crisis. We need to end this epidemic now! Let’s show the nation that we stand against police violence that targets Black people and our communities. Let’s show that Charlotte, and the nation, will no longer tolerate the routine murders of Black people by an unaccountable system of policing.

Come to Charlotte to make a historic stand and to demand dignity and respect for Black lives. Show Up For Charlotte

show-up-for-charlotte-9-24-2016

Abayomi Azikiwe: Election Reflections 2016 – Health Matters, Failed Policies and the Socialist Imperative

Read this analysis by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/ on the recent developments surrounding the national presidential elections in the United States. The report was published by News Ghana based in West Africa. Azikiwe writes on the role of the corporate media in shaping how people view the political distinctions between the Democratic and Republican candidates and the actual convergence of their positions related to national oppression domestically and imperialist militarism around the world.

https://www.newsghana.com.gh/election-reflections-2016-health-matters-failed-policies-and-the-socialist-imperative/

Help Re-House an Evicted Detroit Mom and Her Son!

http://bit.ly/1PyPDQw

On June 3, 2016, after a courageous three-year battle against Thor Real Estate, Jennette Shannon and her sixteen-year-old son were coldly evicted by a small army of bailiff, police, and dumpster-demolition workers. They not only lost their Detroit home, longtime neighborhood, and most of their belongings. Thor cheated Jennette out of over $21,000 in the process.

Thor is a rip-off. It is a serial “vulture investor.” Thor continues to prey on hundreds of other Detroit homeowners, and has done in the same in Cleveland. Jennette is not alone in having her home stolen out from under her by Thor Real Estate. But she is remarkable in her steadfast willingness to fight for what’s right, organizing alongside hundreds of friends and neighbors to resist her eviction.

Let’s not leave her alone now! She and her teenage son are living day-to-day, faced with the stress of uncertainty and having to start over with almost nothing. Let’s all pitch in to re-house them!

For more on Jennette’s story, listen to a radio interview taped just before her eviction: https://itsgoingdown.org/jennette-shannon-detroit-eviction-defense/

jeannette-shannon

BLACK WORKERS FOR JUSTICE STATEMENT ON ROLE OF POLICE & Call for GENERAL STRIKE…BLACK SOLIDARITY DAY

September 22, 2016
It is time for something different.  According to the Charlotte Observer,, the killing of Keith Lamont Scott makes the sixth in Charlotte and with Terence Crutcher, makes the 163rd killing of a Black person in the U.S. in 2016 by law enforcement or sanctioned extra-legal forces .
 
On the one hand, the Black (and Brown) Community is told that the  problem is bad community relations, inadequate training by police to be more “sensitive”, bad equipment and that its a “few bad apples.”  On the other,there is righteous outrage as yet another Black man woman father mother sister daughter son cousin is snuffed out; shot down in the street.  And the  youth escalate the push back — pushing back against institution, symbolic or otherwise, of the exploitation, oppression or occupation of our community.  Then, the sanctioned -so-called leaders are trotted out to “call for calm,” sensitivity training and body cameras for the police.  Then another Black person gets shot down in the street, and the scenario starts all over again.
 
The youth are tired; the elders are tired, the whole community is tired.
There must be a clear shift in the power relations between the Black Community and the police.  The issue is Power and the Role of the Police in this society, in general, and the Power relation to the Black Community specifically.
 
The roots of the police in the U.S., especially in the South, came out of the paddy roller, or slave catcher system during slavery.  It  evolved during uS apartheid (Jim Crow) into the prison, chain gang  system: keeping a captive and suppressed community in check, under control, contained.
 
The Black Community has   the same relationship with “the law” in 2016 as it had during the 1900s as it was during the 1800s.
 
The struggle of Black people is not simply for representation at the table — especially if that table’s agenda is to maintain the suffering and exploitation of the community.  It is to change the nature of the table, the agenda, and the nature of the folks at the table — but while we change the table we must change the agenda and which people come to the table.  The struggle is to change the balance of power in favor of the people; and away from the police and the 1% property owners they swing the clubs for.
 
Police departments, in fact, all community safety — police, fire, first responders, must be accountable to the communities they serve.  This can only happen if they are made to answer to a Community Safety Control Board:  local, independent, elected, with subpoena, hire and fire authority.  And police should live in the neighborhoods, at least the city, where they serve.  
 
Elected, independent, local, Community Safety Control Boards with hire, fire & subpoena power would not be beholden to any police chief, city manager or mayor, but to the district (preferably) or city population that elected them.  With hire, fire and subpoena power, it would not simply “review”  some finding that the SBI, Internal affairs, police chief or commissioner might hand them.  With police forced to live in the district or city, they might think twice before shooting someone down in the street because they would have to answer to the local Community Safety Control Board.
Groups, who have as part of their agenda, working to end police murders and repression, should come together with the efforts to build develop the Freedom Manifesto/ Assembly for Black Liberation   and the various People’s Assemblies    to craft an agenda/ plank and programs to END the War On Black America.  We should consider how to move and engage even more people by stepping up our resistance with a One Day General Strike —BLACK SOLIDARITY DAY…. no school, no shopping, no work — to demonstrate to the powers that be that we want real change NOW!
 
    
Black Workers For Justice • P. O. Box 1863 • Rocky Mount, NC  27802
show-up-for-charlotte-9-24-2016

Full solidarity with the rebellion in Charlotte!

By Monica Moorehead and Lamont Lilly posted on September 22, 2016, http://www.workers.org/

Police and National Guard Out of Charlotte and Black & Brown communities! Full amnesty for all arrestees! Smash racist police terror and the capitalist system into the ground!

Sept. 22 — The revolutionary socialist Workers World Party presidential campaign of Monica Moorehead and Lamont Lilly expresses our full and complete solidarity with the uprising that broke out Sept. 20 in Charlotte, N.C. — the Wall Street of the South.

The heroic Black and Brown youth on the front lines of this tremendous and growing rebellion are inaugurating a new period of heightened struggle against the police war on Black and Brown people and the intolerable conditions imposed on oppressed communities in the belly of the beast. It is right to rebel!

At the time of this writing the rebellion is entering its third day after the city has been rocked by thousands taking to the streets, shutting down highways and expressing the righteous anger in response to the police murder of Keith Lamont Scott.

The uprising in Charlotte comes days after the police execution of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Okla., the tremendous strike against slave labor by prisoners on the 45th anniversary of the Attica rebellion on Sept. 9, three years after the police murder of Jonathan Ferrell by Charlotte cops, and on the heels of rebellions in Milwaukee, Baltimore, Ferguson, and elsewhere.

We urge the rest of the movement to do whatever possible to come to the defense of the uprising in Charlotte in this critical hour as the state is carrying out a full-scale mobilization of all its repressive forces against the rebellion.

During both nights of protest, the state has violently repressed the demonstrators by using chemical weapons, flash bang grenades, rubber bullets and mass arrests in an attempt to shut down the Black community that is in open revolt. The governor of North Carolina has declared a state of emergency in the city and has called in the National Guard and State Highway Patrol.

But the people have so far prevailed.

During protests on the night of Sept. 21, police shot a Black man in the head with a rubber bullet — he is in critical condition in the hospital. The police — in collusion with politicians and the corporate media — have put forward an outrageous lie that this man was shot by another demonstrator.

We must be clear that this lie is an effort by the state to divide and distract from the central issue at hand — the escalating police war on Black and Brown communities that has created the conditions the masses of people are rising up against.

The police are an occupying army in the Black and Brown communities. They are the most parasitic social grouping in society. They play the role of hired mercenaries of the ruling class to keep workers and the oppressed in complete subjugation.

The cops’ job is to protect the class rule of the 1%, the banks and the corporations against the interests of the multinational working class and oppressed people. The police are one of the tools of repression and violence utilized by the 1% against the masses of people, along with the prisons, the courts, the military and the corporate media. We say: ABOLISH THE POLICE!

The irresolvable crisis of the capitalist system at a dead end is to blame for racist state repression whose objective is to divide the working class and imprison and murder Black and Brown and other oppressed people with impunity.

Charlotte is itself caught in a deep contradiction. The city is the second largest financial center in the U.S., home to huge multinational banks and corporations like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Duke Energy. The tremendous wealth of these institutions — the product of wages stolen from the workers — stands in stark contrast to the intolerable conditions imposed on the working class and particularly on Black and Brown communities.

We fight for a revolutionary socialist future that can abolish once and for all the rule of the capitalist class and their many agents of repression and finally rid society of all forms of oppression.

We stand unequivocally on the side of the Black community that is rebelling in Charlotte against police terror! It is right to rebel!

Black Lives Matter!

National Guard Out of Charlotte!

Full Amnesty for All Those Arrested!

Abolish the Police & ICE!

Abolish Capitalism! Fight for Socialism!

http://www.workers.org/wwp/vote-for-socialism/

vote4socialism-org-meme-demonstration