Category: Action

Labor Movement Mourns Death of Harris County AFL-CIO President E. Dale Wortham

worker | May 13, 2016 | 8:53 pm | Action | Comments closed

Dale Wortham, President of Harris County AFL-CIO

HOUSTON — Across the state of Texas, working people are mourning the passing of E. Dale Wortham, a long-time leader of the labor movement in Harris County.

An electrician by trade, Dale Wortham joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Local 716 in his youth. He became an Organizer and served as a Vice President of Local 716. In 1995 he was elected President of the Harris County Labor Council, now the Harris County Labor Assembly, a position he held until he died. He also served as a Vice President of the Texas AFL-CIO.

In 1998 Dale was nominated to serve on the Harris County Hospital District Board of Managers, now Harris Health System, and did so until April, 2016. He was the longest serving Labor Representative on the Board of Managers.

Richard Shaw, recently retired Secretary Treasurer of the Harris County Labor Council, said, “From the day we were elected together in 1995, Dale and I worked closely together on many issues facing workers. Dale was the consummate Union Organizer. Together, we made it our business to assist Unions in their organizing efforts and to speak out in the news media, the Justice Bus, on the picket lines and demonstrations whenever and wherever possible to shine a light on then many injustices that workers suffered. Dale advocated for all workers and he led our efforts to reach out and assist immigrant workers. Dale believed that an injury to one was an injury to all and that organized Labor represented every worker. There was no better Trade Unionist than Dale Wortham. Rest in peace, Dale. The ‘shit-storm’ (one of his many colorful expressions) is now behind you.”

John E. Easton, Jr., Business Manager and Financial Secretary of IBEW, Local 716, said “It’s a very sad day in the labor movement. We lost a great friend and brother. It’s times like these that really make us reflect on our actions and decisions in life. The work of those with the passion and desire to help elevate the lives of others by working hard for the labor movement seems thankless at times, but there is no better feeling than empowering others. Brother Wortham did just that, sacrificing everything for the good of working families. We cannot choose when or how we die, but we can choose how we live. Dale Wortham lived.”

The Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO is an umbrella organization coordinating the political, community, and educational programs of 74 unions in 13 Gulf Coast counties representing 50,000 workers in the building trades, service, manufacturing, transportation and communication, & public sectors.

March against Unemployment

worker | April 10, 2016 | 9:53 pm | Action, class struggle, Communist Party Greece (KKE), Labor, PAME, political struggle | Comments closed

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March Against Unemployment, from Patras to Athens: The beginning of new peoples’ struggles

Photo source: 902.gr.

With a massive demonstration in front of the Greek Parliament, in Syntagma Square, labour unions, working class associations, youth and women organisations welcomed the participants in the Great March Against Unemployment. After 7 days and covering a distance of 220 km, the march which began from the city of Patras arrived in Athens on Sunday afternoon. The KKE-backed mayor of Patras, Kostas Peletidis, whose initiative was the March against unemployment, was the major speaker in the rally.

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Close all US military bases overseas!

worker | March 23, 2016 | 8:08 pm | Action | Comments closed

Please support this effort:

http://community.sumofus.org/petitions/close-all-u-s-military-bases-overseas

End discrimination against communists!

worker | March 2, 2016 | 8:51 pm | Action, Discrimination against communists, political struggle | Comments closed

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/revise-title-vii-remove

Revise Title VII: Remove the paragraph allowing discrimination against communists

Petition by Pat Thompson

To be delivered to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Barack Obama

Petition Statement

Title VII, the federal law which prohibits employers from engaging in discriminatory employment practices, exempts members of the Communist Party from protection. In effect, it allows employers to freely discriminate against and/or harass employees who are members of the Communist Party or affiliated organizations. The clause which allows discrimination against communists needs to be removed since it is discriminatory, unconstitutional, outdated and is a violation of human rights.

A discussion of Michael Morre’s new film – Where to invade next?

worker | February 20, 2016 | 6:26 pm | Action, Analysis, political struggle | Comments closed

What does it mean to be a progressive in the US?

worker | February 6, 2016 | 1:57 pm | Action, political struggle | Comments closed

By Tara McKelvey White House reporter, BBC News

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35467470

US Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders shake hands before participating in the MSNBC Democratic Candidates Debate at the University of New Hampshire in Durham — Image caption During the campaign, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have argued over who is a progressive

Two Democratic candidates for the US presidency, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, are fighting over the term “progressive”. But what does the word really mean?

In a CNN town hall on 3 February in New Hampshire Mr Sanders and Mrs. Clinton argued over what the word “progressive” means and who has the right to describe themselves in this way.

Mr Sanders said she’s not a liberal when it comes to foreign policy and other issues. She disagreed with him, saying that she’s “a progressive who likes to get things done”. She added that she was “amused” that he’d “set himself up as the gatekeeper of who gets to be a progressive”.

So what is a progressive?

Politicians, activists and others disagree about what the word means. Historians concede that there’s no precise definition. Still they say that in general a progressive fits certain criteria.

A progressive is someone who wants to see more economic and social equality – and hopes to see more gains in feminism and gay rights. They’re also supportive of social programmes directed by the state – and they’d like social movements have more power in the US.

This file photo taken on 19 January 2015 shows men holding signs reading — Image caption Protesters in Black Lives Matter – shown in Los Angeles – and other activists belong to the progressive movement

Within the realm of progressive, however, there are different, warring factions, explains David Greenberg, the author of a book called Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency.

One group is dominated by activists from social movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, he says, and the other is led by those who belong to the left wing of the Democratic Party (and aren’t part of a social movement or cause).

Pretty much all of of these progressives “view politics as a bottom-up progress”, says Julian Zelizer, an historian at Princeton, and they support the fight for social change. (Though not everybody is on the streets, clamouring for it.)

They also believe that the government can help people, and they look back fondly at Roosevelt’s New Deal jobs programs, which relieved suffering in the 1930s.

For these reasons they see the world and its problems in a similar way, but they often have different ideas about how to fix them. Nearly all progressives agree that banks should be regulated, for example, though they argue about how it should be done. Some believe the regulation should be aggressive – and dramatically change things.

Bernie Sanders, says Greenberg. “wants to break up the banks”.

US President Barack Obama speaks on the economy in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House on 5 February 2016 in Washington — Image caption The left has gone through a revival under President Barack Obama, say US historians

Others are more moderate in their views. Mrs Clinton agrees with him in principle, says Greenberg, “but she doesn’t want to do it willy-nilly”.

But regardless of how they see the issue of banking, they’re proud to call themselves progressive. For Democrats it’s a coveted term. But it wasn’t always that way.

Conservatives attacked a Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, for being too lefty in the 1980s and tagged him with the word “liberal” . “It was seen as a dirty word,” says Zelizer.

Afterwards Democrats tried to distance themselves from the term. When Bill Clinton ran for president in the 1990s, he tried hard to avoid the world “liberal”.

During his campaign he cited economic research from a think-tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, and in this way he could promote “liberal economics without calling it liberal”, says Greenberg.

In recent years Democrats have seen the notion of progressive politics in a different light.

The left has gone through a revival under President Barack Obama, says Michael Kazin, who teaches history at Georgetown University in Washington. explaining that “the Democratic Party has become a progressive party”.

The fact that Democratic candidates are now fighting to show how progressive they are shows the way things have changed. As Zelizer says: “It signals that there is more room for the left in American politics than there’s been for a while.”

We Charge Genocide!

worker | April 14, 2015 | 10:01 pm | Action, African American history, police terrorism, political struggle, Struggle for African American equality | Comments closed

We Charge Genocide!

By James Thompson and A. Shaw

Workers in the United States and around the world unite to renew the 1951 petition â€œWe Charge Genocideâ€ submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations by the Civil Rights Congress and others. The 1951 petition opposed the genocidal violence towards African-Americans in the United States at that time. This renewal opposes the contemporary genocidal violence towards African-Americans in the United States and it is a plea for relief from the United Nations.

The United Nations declared that genocide imperils world peace. The opening statement of the 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide” reads “The responsibility is particularly grave when citizens must charge their own government with mass murder of its own nationals, with institutionalized oppression and persistent slaughter of the Negro people in the United States on a basis of ‘race,’ a crime abhorred by mankind and prohibited by the conscience of the world as expressed in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948.”

The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.

Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:

1) the mental element, meaning the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, and

2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called “genocide.”

Article III described five punishable forms of the crime of genocide: genocide; conspiracy, incitement, attempt and complicity.

64 years after the original petition “We Charge Genocide” was filed, the people of the United States continue to be subjected to the most violent terrorism by the government. One sector of the population, African-Americans, has borne and continues to bear the brunt of this terrorism. The terrorism is multifaceted and includes murders of individuals by the police, mass incarceration, unbearably high unemployment rates, homelessness, lack of access to healthcare and education, drug infestation, soaring crime rates, endless wars and capital punishment.

According to the NAACP, 76 “unarmed men and women of color” were murdered by police officers between 1999 and 2014.

The 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide” points out that violence on our shores leads to violence against other countries and this insight is just as true today as it was then.

We demand that the genocidal violence against African-Americans in the United States end immediately. The recent increase in police murders of African-Americans in the United States must cease immediately. If these senseless murders continue, it will become readily apparent to all that these acts may be a result of some deranged national policy. Similarly, we will not tolerate mass incarceration and astronomical unemployment rates any longer. The lack of affordable housing, and diminishing access to healthcare and education leads to drug infestation and soaring crime rates and this must be reversed if we are to continue as a civilized society.

The lack of opportunity for young black people in the USA propels them towards either mass incarceration or military service. Mass incarceration and military service are modern day forms of slavery. We demand that young African-Americans have opportunities to be productive members of society and fulfill their potentials.

The death penalty must be stopped on a national level. It has been disproportionately administered to African-Americans in the USA. It is inherently cruel and unusual punishment. It is an egregious violation of human rights. It is genocidal.

Please join the fight for justice in the USA and to end the genocidal practices against African-Americans. Do this to honor Michael Brown, James Byrd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Eric Courtney Harris and many others.

Please click on the link to sign the petition:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/we-charge-genocide-1?source=c.em&r_by=8638452