Southern Coordinating Committee News

Immigrant Rights Are Workers Rights

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 14:43:48 GMT

Huntsville, Alabama

Tonight I want to connect the absence of protections for workers both here and abroad with the concentration camps currently being run at our border. I think by the end you will see that this is part of a long history of our country terrorizing workers domestically and internationally in the service of capital interests and to the detriment of workers everywhere — and that includes US-born workers.

What is important to note about these concentration camps is that they are only one link in a chain of exploitation. In These Times ran a cover story on immigration by Brianna Rennix a while back, and she summed this chain up nicely:

"The United States pays Mexico to stop some people before they get to the border, then menaces and detains the subset that U.S. Border Patrol apprehends in the act of crossing, and then sends Immigration and Customs Enforcement to round up and deport some of those who get through. These brutal policies keep the unofficial workforce stable, at around 8 million over the past 10 years, and keep undocumented and guest workers fearful."

But even this is only part of the story — it’s worth asking, why are so many coming? Why are the nations of the global south in such disarray? The United States has her part to play in this too. Time after time below our southern border, the people of a country will elect a leader to represent their interests on the world stage and resist exploitation by imperial powers. As you can imagine, this does not sit well with the imperial powers. So the United States has aided myriad military coups in some way or another to overthrow democratically elected leaders and install right wing fascistic yes-men for capital. This is invariably followed by political repression, the economic destruction of the country, a rolling back of workers protections and social services.

In 1964 the CIA supported a coup in Brazil that sparked 20 years of brutal military dictatorship, a dictatorship that the current president of Brazil was a part of and remembers fondly. It’s worth mentioning— in 1970 the US supported the takeover of Chile by military dictator Augusto Pinochet, a ruler infamous for his brutality and whose name has recently been invoked positively by right wing talk personalities. In 2009, a violent coup of the Honduran government led to the wholesale slaughter of union organizers, journalists, and political opponents. The United States were not supporting the union organizers.

This is only a small sample. There is a long history behind why people are fleeing these places — and this history is largely caused by the United States, because our government wanted southern neighbors more subservient to capital.

This is one of the fundamental injustices of our immigration system. So many of these people wouldn’t even be here but for the destruction of their country by ours, and then our leaders have the nerve to pull up the ladder that their own ancestors used. It so greatly illustrates the fundamental sociopathy and lack of human empathy by our ruling class. Not only do they destroy countries for their own selfish wants but then they pay governments to terrorize people fleeing these places so the ones that get here are so brutalized they won’t fight exploitation.

Know that they want to divide us up so they can better exploit all of us.

And then once they get here they’re still not safe. They face tyranny from the government and they face marginalization from a public that’s been fed a steady media diet of nativist propaganda created by the billionaire class.

We must remember the elites are not simply benevolently advising the working class on the most efficient means by which to extract higher wages from them. They have created a calculated propaganda campaign and, unfortunately thus far, quite a successful one, meant to divide us up, to make immigrant workers fearful of violent deportation and fearful of their employers and fellow workers, meant to push us to point our anger towards each other instead of locking arms and looking up to where the source of our problem really lies.

Because while it is true that migrant workers can sometimes drive down wages — though it is important to note that the extent to which this happens is blown far out of proportion — and this downward pressure is not from migrants but from the boss exploiting the migrants, this downward pressure on wages is absolutely dwarfed when we compare them to the downward pressure created by having a divided and unorganized working class. States where union membership is the strongest have much higher wages than places like Alabama, where people are only unionized in the single digit percents. In fact, some countries have unionization rates of 80 percent or more and in these countries they have no need of a minimum wage because they can secure higher wages for themselves than a paternalistic government edict could ever provide. Fast food workers, unionized in other countries, make more than $20 an hour. There are skilled tradesman here in America that make less than that because we are unorganized.

That’s the point here. The problem with stagnant wages among US-born workers is not immigration. It is because we aren’t organized and we aren’t organized to a large extent because we have allowed the elites to divide us up.

The IWW, seeing through the propaganda and steadfast in their dedication to solidarity, was the only major labor organization to come out in opposition to restrictions on immigration as they were first being proposed and has remained steadfast in its dedication to the rights of all workers, born on this side of the line or that. It has continued on this ideological path that we can see clearly laid out by an IWW founder and national political figure Eugene Debs in his letter disapproving of one of the first restrictions on immigration:

“The plea that certain races are to be excluded because of tactical expediency should have no place in a proletariat gathering under the auspices of an international movement calling on the oppressed and exploited workers of the world to unite for their emancipation. Away with the “tactics” which require the exclusion of the oppressed and suffering slaves who seek these shores with hopes of bettering their wretched condition… These poor slaves have just as good a right to enter here as those who seek to exclude them…Upon this vital principle I would take my stand against the world and no specious arguments of subtle and sophistical defenders of the civic federation unionism, who do not hesitate to sacrifice principle for numbers and jeopardize ultimate success for immediate gain, could move me to turn my back upon the brutalized and despairing victims of the old world, who are lured to these shores by some faint glimmer of hope that here their crushing burdens may be lightened, and some start of promise rise in their darkened sky.”

We must not allow the monied elites to continue dividing the working class, rather we must begin the work of uniting ourselves in solidarity with each other and in opposition to the tricks of the elite and limitations on migratory rights. The amount of wealth that’s been redistributed upwards because of the criminalization of migration and the division of the working class is likely incalculable. You have far more in common with the Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican, and Syrian immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees than you ever will with the Koch brothers or Betsy Devos. Know that they want to divide us up so that they can better exploit all of us. Know that this has been the trick of the elites forever because they’ve always known that a divided working class is one that cannot resist their exploitation. If we affirm not only the political and workplace rights of immigrants but their basic right to live here in the United States (in fact we cannot effectively do one without the other), their lives will obviously be better but it will be good for the whole body of the working class. Without fear of violent deportation and concentration camps, without fear or retribution for their existence, we can embolden our immigrant brothers and sisters to rise up against their workplace exploitation and assert their rights to the full fruits of their labor, to assert their rights to dignity and respect.

We can link arms with the entirety of the working class and say together in one voice that we know our worth and none of us are getting it. This is how we improve the conditions of American workers, not by turning them on foreigners residing in this land but by connecting us all in solidarity and moving forward towards a brighter future together.

Immigrant rights are workers rights. Workers rights are immigrant rights.

Solidarity forever, fellow workers.

West Virginia GMB Joins the SCC!

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 14:50:32 GMT

Wheeling, West Virginia

Say hello to our newest member, the West Virginia General Membership Branch!

The West Virginia GMB is the newest branch of the IWW, covering all of West Virginia and some counties in Maryland and Ohio. They formed as a result of the 2018 education walkouts, which brought together Wobblies from across the state to help teachers demand better working conditions. Since then, they’ve been committed to building the One Big Union by focusing on community assistance with free clothing drives, building regional density where membership is largest, and assisting the education fight with the most militant organizers inside West Virginia Educators Association and American Federation of Teachers.

“We wanted to join the SCC because of the ability to connect with other Wobblies across the South and Appalachia who might be able to help us organize certain industries and create deeper ties between our branch and more established branches and networks.”

The 2019 Southern Regional Organizing Assembly

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 14:02:09 GMT

Richmond, Virginia

It takes thirteen hours to drive from Tampa to Richmond. It’s not until we were approaching Gainesville that I remembered I get claustrophobic and panicky during car rides. We still had eleven hours to go.

Between the occasional break for restrooms, gas, and snacks, we listened to music and podcasts and sometimes put the audio on pause to talk about whatever four Wobblies in the South decide is interesting — the disgusting symbols of slavery or the high quality of the Revolutions podcast, for example. And I learned something important on that drive: if you want to put a carload of people to sleep, just play a podcast about Marxist political economy.

We arrived in Richmond at about 10:30pm and slid out of the car like four Vienna sausages: tired and soft and gross. Luckily, there was a large crew of people waiting to greet us in the lobby so our weekend started the moment we walked through the front door.

The first thing you should know about the Southern Regional Organizing Assembly is that we did the entire thing in a large hostel. It was a compound, really. All of our sleeping, eating, socializing, and meeting needs were met in one confined but well-furnished space. We probably should’ve been given matching jumpsuits but the Southern Coordinating Committee — the voluntary IWW organization that put this event on — just doesn’t have that kind of budget.

From what we saw of it, Richmond is a gorgeous city, and the Richmond General Membership Branch was equally beautiful — a super-positive, outgoing bunch of Wobblies who were highly coordinated and on top of every detail. Jumpsuits aside, there wasn’t anything we wanted that the GMB didn’t provide. Someone was always staffing the registration/lit table, the food was awesome, and the space was great. The Richmond Wobblies can’t get enough praise for being fantastic hosts.

Much of the weekend was spent talking about how to organize ourselves. The presentations were largely interrelated and about how we can make our spaces safer, more accountable, and open to diverse opinions. Just like in real life, we had to get those pieces in place first before we could talk about organizing the working class.

Press Officer Liss Waters Hyde and I gave the first presentation Saturday morning, though it became less of a presentation and more of an informal chat about union communication strategies. Our goal was to establish the three most important things to know about the IWW and how we get that message out there. The discussion naturally featured a lot of general media tips like how to best utilize the various social media platforms, the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, when and how to write a press release, and how to encourage media coverage of our events.

This led into the next presentation where a journalist/organizer talked to us about the new Freelance Journalists Union. We watched an excellent video about the FJU and talked about the nature of forming a union across a wide geographical range among workers who don’t share a physical workspace. If you’re interested in learning more about the FJU, check out the interview with FJU organizers , published by IW.

Lunchtime, and the four Vienna sausages (one of whom insists on noting that he is soy-based) found ourselves walking up to our room at the same moment, with the same intention: sleep.

After this wonderful bit of respite, we ventured out, finished the remnants from lunch, and sat for Accountability and Survivor Support, our next discussion. The presenter told us this is typically done over a much longer time period than the two hours allotted, which makes a lot of sense considering the amount of information to unpack and digest. Support and accountability are vital issues to discuss and every branch should hold a training on the subject because the reality of the world we live in is that many men commit gendered harm or sexual violence.

After a break, the last presentation of the day was on the Sex Workers Solidarity Network of Hamilton, Ontario, which included general information about sex work, its legal struggles, and its revolutionary potential. It’s a tough subject as it’s upsetting to hear stories of violence against sex workers, but a necessary one to address and it definitely galvanized the audience into thinking about how we can help sex workers and build our own solidarity networks.

With the day officially over, the mood following these last few presentations was pretty down, so it was a great relief when someone suggested we take the fifteen-minute walk down to the James River. This trip was by far the highlight of my weekend, an all-around beautiful experience. I know most IWW events result in everyone retiring to the nearest bar but I think from now on we should hold all post-event parties in the nearest swimmable location. For team building, of course. Though after that some of us still went to a bar.

The next morning I successfully convinced myself I wasn’t hungover and we proceeded to try to cram all of the official SCC business into an hour. We ended up going forty minutes over but passed extensive bylaws revisions and I was elected Secretary-Treasurer (yay!). The bylaws revisions are a bit complicated, of course — not to mention boring — but we basically streamlined the decision-making body, creating a steering committee of delegates from GMBs and GDC/IWOC Locals and eliminated most officer positions, replacing them with chairs of committees who are allowed voice but not vote in official business. This will improve our ability to achieve quorum, makes the decision-making more representative, and frees committees to spend more time on their specific tasks rather than deliberating motions that might not apply to them. We also established a mechanism to declare vacancy of office and the election of new delegates or the appointment of a new Secretary-Treasurer. Lastly, we opened up the opportunity to make bylaws amendments outside our biennial gatherings, eliminating the two-year wait to make changes under the previous bylaws.

The last two presentations were on toxic masculinity and navigating conflict, subjects that seemed to complement each other naturally. These were detailed presentations, making them difficult to summarize, but the toxic masculinity talk first detailed what toxic masculinity is — how manhood is understood and communicated between men, and is typically defined by violence, sex, status, aggression, and socially-enforced stereotypes inflicted from birth. This was followed up with how to recognize toxic behavior among cis-men and how to prevent and confront it. These tactics include active inclusion, using progressive stack, the WAIT method (Why Am I Talking?), and the need to respect and center survivors. If your branch or local has the chance to take this training, do it now. I can’t recommend it enough.

Sam from the Richmond branch, a doctoral candidate in social psychology, followed this talk with a presentation on navigating conflict in the union. Like most of the presentations, this one is best experienced in-person, since it details complex subjects that aren’t easy to summarize. Sam explained that conflicts aren’t something innate to the IWW and that we can mitigate these conflicts by outlining short-term goals we all share, understanding our own cognitive biases, avoiding text-based platforms (where possible), not using absolutes like “always” or “never”, and knowing when to take a step back and not respond to someone right away.

Finally, we broke out into our Industrial Union groups and spent the rest of the day plotting against the bosses. I can’t speak for the other groups, but the education workers did some very thorough and detailed plotting. We developed a solid plan for how to begin organizing ourselves and our workplaces. I left feeling confident about organizing where I work and how to get specific demands from my bosses.

And that was the weekend. The observing delegation from the NYC GMB invited us to another swimming after-event — this time at a pool — but my fellow weiners out-voted me and so the Tampa Bay group began our thirteen-hour overnight hell-ride back to swampsville.

(Note to my Fellow Workers: I will always be mad about missing a pool party and I plan to hold on to this aquatic grudge forever. Some conflicts just can’t be navigated.)

2019 Southern Regional Organizing Assembly Schedule

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 14:58:54 GMT

Richmond, Virginia

June 28-30 in Richmond, VA

All IWW, GDC, and IWOC members are invited and encouraged to attend the Southern Regional Organizing Assembly, a biennial gathering hosted by the Southern Coordinating Committee. We particularly encourage members from around the South to come, as well as members who are actively organizing or who face structural oppression. Other rebel workers, prison abolitionists, and community defenders are also welcome, but please let us know to expect you, and understand that space can fill up. In that case, preference will be given to members.

Event/housing details will be emailed to all registered participants. To register, please go here.

Friday, June 28th

Check-in anytime after 3PM

Refreshments at 6:30PM

Saturday, June 29th

8-9AM: Breakfast

9-10AM: Welcome and Introduction

10-11:30: Communication: Best Practices for Branches and Locals

11:30-11:45: Break

11:45AM-1PM: Freelance Journalists Union Campaign

1-2PM: Lunch

2-4PM: Accountability and Survivor Support

4-4:15PM: Break

4:30-6PM: Nothing About Us Without Us: The (Sex) Workers Left Behind

6PM: Dinner

Sunday, June 30th

8-9AM: Breakfast

9-11AM: Discussion and Vote on Revision to SCC Bylaws, Nomination and Election of SCC Officer(s)

11-11:15AM: Break, Sign-up for Lightning Talks**

11:15-11:45: Lightning Talks

11:45-1PM: Two concurrent workshops:

Addressing Toxic Masculinity
Navigating Conflict in the OBU

1-2PM: Lunch

2-2:30PM: Check-out

2:30-5PM: Organizing Discussions – Breakout Groups by Industry

** Lightning talks are 5-10 minute presentations on any relevant topic that a fellow worker would like to speak about.

The Southern Regional Organizing Assembly is Happening!

Mon, 13 May 2019 15:37:35 GMT

Richmond, Virginia

The second biennial Southern Regional Organizing Assembly, hosted by the Southern Coordinating Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World, will convene in Richmond, Virginia on June 29th and 30th. IWW, General Defense Committee, and Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee members in the southeast are meeting up to host a series of panels and workshops on a variety of topics, including (but not limited to): media and communication strategies, education worker organizing, food service worker organizing, addressing toxic masculinity, and security culture.

Registration

If you’ve already registered, please submit your registration fee — $15/$30/$50, according to what you can afford. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, email us at southerniww@protonmail.com if you’re unable to pay the fee.

Want to attend but not yet registered? Go here !

Donations

Not attending but still want to help us fund the assembly? We need your help to continue to build on our mission to abolish the wage system. Pay a registration fee to sponsor a member or donate another amount of your choosing.

What is the Southern Coordinating Committee? The SCC is a voluntary coordinating and decision-making body that unites branches and locals of the IWW, General Defense Committee, and Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee in the Southeastern United States. Founded in 2017, the SCC helps to coordinate work and fosters local initiatives to organize workplaces, incarcerated workers, and our communities.

For any questions regarding the SCC, SROA, signing up, or donating, please email southerniww@protonmail.com .

DeKalb Bus Drivers Unite

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 15:44:03 GMT

DeKalb County, Georgia

On April 18th, 2018, over half of the nine hundred school bus drivers in the DeKalb County, GA School District called in sick for the first day of a three-day sickout.

This was the culmination of years of effort, the result of a long list of ignored complaints and broken promises. This sickout was remarkable because Georgia state law prohibits public employees from even advocating for any work stoppages, much less participating in them. Furthermore, there was no union involved behind the scenes. The drivers took a huge, risky step with their own power, a direct result of their own organizing.

“What’s outrageous is that (the administration) acted like they had no idea all this stuff is going on.” Sheila Bennett, president of the bus driver’s advisory committee, said. “The bus drivers are sick and tired of being sick and tired… I don’t care if you’re Bill Gates driving a school bus you should get paid for what you’re worth.”

That Friday, after the first day of the sick-out, the district administration sent police to the homes of seven drivers, including Bennett, to issue a notice of termination. This was a clear move to scare drivers from continuing with the sickout.

That Saturday, drivers held a mass meeting, inviting members of the Atlanta General Defense Committee to participate. Drivers had been organizing in a variety of ways since 2005, but things had changed. “We were a force to be reckoned with when they saw that all of a sudden we had 500 drivers, little bit more, that could shut this thing down,” Bennet said.

Of course, there were politicians at this meeting and at many after it, coming out of the woodwork attracted by the activity of the drivers. These politicians were publicly siding with the drivers while hoping for votes. “What they often were circling around and doing, ” Kei — a member of the Atlanta GDC — said, ”was offering to help set up closed-door meetings. [They said] ‘We’re people with power, there’s other people with power like the board of education, the superintendent, and we can broker a closed-door meeting with you and the board of education because that’s how things get done’”. “The drivers have been struggling since 2005 so they’ve been in closed-door meetings over and over and over and nothing’s come of it”.

Besides the politicians, other unions were interested in the drivers. Over the last decade, several unions have tried and failed to organize them: the National Education Association (through their local affiliate, the Organization of DeKalb Employees, which explicitly states that it is “not a union”), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and the Teamsters. In each case, the drivers have felt that these unions have either abandoned them or just didn’t respect them. For example, drivers made a big effort to organize through AFSCME in 2011, but AFSCME’s primary goal was to get an agreement with the county to have dues automatically deducted from the driver’s paychecks. When the county would not agree to this, AFSCME disappeared and left the drivers in the lurch.

When the group from the Atlanta GDC first began working with the drivers, the goal was to help the drivers recognize their power and the level of organization they had already achieved, to recognize that they didn’t need any outside saviors to help them and, in fact, will never be able to rely on any outsiders who claim to be saviors — including the GDC or the IWW. The original goal was not to sell the IWW as “the right union” for the drivers but to help the drivers build on what they had already achieved. The IWW was discussed at several points and never hidden but the focus was on building the independent capacity of the drivers. As part of this, they worked with the drivers to develop an independent identity as “DeKalb Drivers United”, giving a name to an idea that would not require any outside group to make it legitimate.

In the aftermath of the sickout and the firings, the primary goal became to win reinstatement for the drivers through collective action and public pressure. As long as the county had the power to fire leaders with impunity, it would be difficult to make any other progress. Over the course of several months, several complementary tactics were used. Press conferences were held in front of the school board offices. There was a rally at the state capitol. Parents organized a petition to support the drivers. People spoke at school board meetings to make it clear that this issue was not going away. All of this was organized by the drivers, and the Atlanta GDC was clear that one of its goals was help the drivers build up their skills and confidence to organize these kinds of actions as much as possible.

In the course of this organizing, the Amalgamated Transit Union also approached the drivers. ATU is one of the oldest unions in Atlanta, with a collective bargaining agreement at MARTA, the regional transit system. Because the drivers already had begun to think of themselves as DeKalb Drivers United, they didn’t feel initially reliant on the ATU but saw them as more of a coalition partner. The GDC didn’t discourage the drivers from engaging with the ATU because they thought it was important for the drivers to have the chance to make their own decision about what kind of union to organize with.

As a result of the campaign, the county said in July that the drivers would be rehired but they made no move to actually bring them back on the job. Around that time, a district-wide meeting was held. This was a meeting for all the school bus drivers in the district to assemble in one place, to orient themselves for the new school year. The drivers decided to use this as an opportunity to hold a large press conference and agitate on behalf of the fired drivers, handing out flyers and speaking with everyone who came to the meeting. “The county was scared”, Kei said. A few days later, the drivers were fully reinstated and back on the job.

After the drivers were rehired, it wasn’t clear what the next organizing steps were and without a clear strategy for a path forward, energy faded and meetings petered out. In October, the IWW members who had been working with the drivers decided to check in with social leaders and, at the very least, continue what had been a productive relationship. This led to deeper conversations about what had happened with previous unions, what made the IWW different, and why we had focused on supporting the driver’s organizing rather than just getting them to sign up into the IWW right away. This led to a small committee of drivers re-forming and deciding that they wanted to move forward on organizing a union with the IWW and push forward on all of their continuing grievances.

By early January, the school board had begun to talk about “step raises” for all employees, though what they meant by that was unclear. This was one of the biggest things that drivers had been fighting for: prior to 2008, DeKalb County School employees, including the drivers, had received step raises, which gave clear pay increases based on years of service. Another big demand is for itemized paychecks —exactly how the drivers are compensated is a mystery to the drivers and anyone who’s viewed their pay stubs. The drivers are told they’re compensated at an hourly rate, but they simply receive a check every other week, with no hours or any other details listed. Nothing ever seems to add up right. A driver might be told their hourly rate is $19/hour, but after a year of working 40+ hour weeks, their take-home pay might only be $21,000, even though $19/hour for full-time work should come out to around $39,000 — almost double what they actually earn!

Eventually, the county came out with a plan to pay all school employees a higher rate beginning January 15th. When the 15th passed and drivers didn’t see a change to their paychecks they were understandably upset, as were teachers and other support staff. The county tried to claim it was an honest mistake and drivers should understand, but not all of them were buying it. “They had an emergency meeting of the board members”, Bennet said, “guess who’s not getting any money? The bus drivers.”

The drivers were agitated and called for meetings with a focus on taking action and building unity with teachers and other district workers.

On Friday, February 15th, the drivers met to discuss affiliating with the IWW. By this time, those present had been working with the union for ten months and knew quite a bit about our organizing philosophy and tactics but it was the first formal consideration and the first pitch by the organizing committee for why they should join.

“The biggest thing was that direct unionism means you guys are the union,” Kei said, “no one’s coming in from the outside to save you. There’s no paid staffers so if we’re doing this it’s going to be you guys leading it and we’re here to advise and support … but it won’t look like what you’re used to”.

They were well-received. “I like the union because it’s for the people, by the people,” Bennet said, “and I like that because at least you know whatever you put in, that’s what you’re gonna get.”

The drivers present at the meeting voted to form a union through the IWW, which would be open to all school employees. Many of the drivers present took out red cards on the spot, and several filled out delegate applications, excited about the promise of running their own union. “With the union, they are able to sustain organizing in a way they haven’t been able to do before,” Kei said. Since then, more drivers have continued to join, and the union has also made inroads with other DeKalb County School employees.

DeKalb County School employees have an uphill battle, but one that’s uniquely suited to the direct action tactics of the IWW. The standard bureaucratic-contractualist model that most unions rely on is simply unworkable in Georgia, especially for public sector employees. “Right-to-work” means that the standard model of dues check-off and mandatory union membership aren’t going to work. There are additional restrictions imposed on public sector workers, restrictions which conservative unions such as AFSCME or AFT have been unwilling to organize against or challenge in any way. The next step is to push the district to negotiate solely with the union and not through the advisory committees who are half-elected by the bosses. A tactic they’re using to help with this is the creation and distribution of anonymous surveys for the drivers and other school employees, so they can better discern grievances and use them to create a case for why the union is a better representation of school employees’ interests. Having a fighting union in public education is a new thing for Georgia, although it’s part of a broader movement, with the United Campus Workers simultaneously organizing at the University System of Georgia, and the ongoing nationwide waves of strikes among public education workers (including bus drivers and other support staff). This is a beginning. There is much more to come.

“People don’t realize,” Bennet said, “bus drivers have a very important job to do, people don’t think a bus driver’s job is to educate a child but it is, many people think that driving the bus is simply taking the kids to and from school but of course that’s not the case. As a driver, your responsibility is for the well-being of the children. And then we are governed by the federal department of transportation, which means we have a specialized job to do and we are professionals. We don’t only transport children to and from school we have to be a nurse, a psychologist, a custodian, a referee, a parent, and at the same time make sure your bus is safe, make sure you’re driving safe.”

International Women’s Day: Atlanta

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 18:09:33 GMT

Atlanta, Georgia

On February 28, 1909 the very first International Women’s Day was celebrated in New York City after a suggestion by activist Theresa Malkiel and was organized by the Socialist Party of America. The following year, women attending the International Socialist Women’s Conference proposed the establishment of a Women’s Day and in 1910, over one million people gathered globally to celebrate International Working Women’s Day.

As with many radical left-wing movements, International Women’s Day has seen itself co-opted by the establishment and has become divorced from its working class roots. This year, however, as a show of solidarity with movements and strikes around the world being organized and supported by our fellow anti-capitalist unions in the International Confederation of Labor (ICL) , the Atlanta General Defense Committee sought to reclaim this holiday.

Rape culture is a pervasive, destructive part of our patriarchal culture and its impact on the women and non-binary people of Atlanta is no exception. For IWD 2019, we decided to hold a Midnight March down Edgewood Avenue, targeting one of the city’s most popular bar and nightlife scenes. We were there to be loud, be disruptive, and to make a statement that we will not sit quietly while people in our city are targeted by and victimized by rape culture.

Planning for the event deliberately centered the women and non-binary people in our GDC and relegated men to acting exclusively in support roles. We contacted dozens of feminist and women’s groups operating on local college campuses, rape crisis centers, Women on the Rise , and the Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP) . Our goal was to create a space that was inclusive of all women and non-binary people, especially those who face additional marginalization due to race, non-cis/heteronormative identities, differences in abilities, immigration status, or occupation as a sex worker.

We gathered shortly before midnight at Krog Street Market, a few blocks from Edgewood, to gather, distribute signs, and to hear from one of the organizers, who read a few words to inform the crowd of why we were gathered there that night:

“Thank y’all for being here. It makes a strong statement to see everyone’s faces out here so late at night. When the General Defense Committee started talking about plans for women’s day, we had a lot of options in front of us. We decided to settle on rape culture because it’s one of the most dangerous and disgusting issues our society faces today. I do wanna keep this brief, but keep in mind as I’m speaking, at least six people will have been sexually assaulted in the United States. But always, where there’s oppression, there’s resistance. We’re gathered here today because we are pissed the fuck off. Our statement tonight isn’t that we’re here to play nice. We won’t negotiate with rapists. We won’t ask nicely. We are here tonight to demand our rightful place in these streets. We’re here to take back these streets; this is our time, this is our night. We’re here to get rowdy. We’re here to make noise. We’re here to terrify abusers. We’re here to cause a disruption and if we disrupt even one sexual assault, we will have done our job. Lets fucking do this.”

Shortly after midnight, we began to make our way to our targeted area on Edgewood. People chanted, played drums, and carried signs and banners to deliver our message. We handed out a zine that had been created by the organizers that included statistics on sexual violence as it affected various marginalized communities, including incarcerated women, immigrants, and people of color. The zine also contained information about resources for people who had experienced sexual assault and alternatives for contacting the police.

We marched up and down the street for around an hour, completely shutting down vehicle traffic along that stretch, stopping occasionally to hear remarks given through a megaphone. The drumming and chanting continued and some members of the march lit flares or set off purple smoke grenades to draw attention. The police were ever-present and blocked the road to prevent cars from coming through. At one point, they informed us that they were going to be reopening the road and that we needed to get out of the street. However, we were not done. We continued with our action.

The only real low point of the night, however, occurred near the end of the march when a driver who was apparently fed up with us blocking the road, leaned on their horn while a trans woman was trying to deliver a statement. One man watching from the sidewalk encouraged the driver to drive through our march and repeatedly misgendered and insulted the woman speaking. Members of the march moved in to respond, at which point they were rebuked by another attendee who implored them to ignore the man, relying on the rhetoric of “Love beats hate.” We still managed to hold the space until the speaker was done with her remarks before we moved on. Outside of this incident, our action was largely a success.

Going forward, our GDC certainly needs to have a discussion on how better to communicate our expectations to attendees, notably that we do not support or encourage individuals to “peace police” the actions of others and how they respond to agitators on the sidelines.

Overall, however, the event was a victory. We mobilized around 100 people to take the streets of the city at midnight on a Friday, disrupting one of the nightlife areas of the city. We held our space until we decided that we were done, resisting attempts by police and civilians to interfere. We were loud. We were seen. We were heard.

See you next year for IWD 2020!

“Rock Stone Mountain 2”: Major Blow for Far-right Organizing in the South, Big Victory for Mass Anti-fascism

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 19:00:23 GMT

Atlanta GDC

Next to Stone Mountain Park, the site of the KKK’s refoundation in 1916, and where a beautiful and sacred mountain lies vandalized with carvings of white supremacists, is the town of Stone Mountain, a small, working class, largely black suburb of Atlanta, in DeKalb county. On February 2, when there was supposed to be a white supremacist rally in the park, that rally did not happen. Instead there was a well-organized, rowdy, and joyful anti-fascist victory parade in the town. Town residents were overwhelmingly supportive. The white supremacists were a complete no-show. We held our parade, and left with no arrests or other repression.

Our primary goal was to stop the Klan from marching on Stone Mountain, which was completely successful. This strategy of preventing fascists from being able to organize or act openly is called ‘deplatforming’ because we are denying them a platform. It has been a goal for most militant anti-fascist mobilizations in the past three years to do this, and some of them have been pretty successful as confronting fascists to the point where they have to retreat, but as far as we know, this is the first case where the pressure on the fascists has been big enough to prevent them from even showing up in the first place. This is a huge success, and it is going to have significant ramifications on the confidence of any far-right groups to try to organize openly in the South. We’re also not aware of many times recently where we’ve been able to have open, organized, and rowdy anti-fascist victory parades in isolated suburbs. (One notable exception was the failed Klan rally in Danville, Virginia in December 2016, where anti-fascists did hold a victory parade in Danville after the collapse of the planned Klan rally.) Our mass anti-fascism was joyful, exciting, and we were clearly and visibly the winning side, the side that has momentum. This was all quite different from recent anti-fascists mobilizations in Georgia (Newnan last year and Stone Mountain the year before ), which we will get into.

Of course, none of this happened in a larger social vacuum. Notably, the actions by TSA workers and air traffic controllers just a week before the rally were a very public and forceful rebuke of Trumpism, and likely contributed to the demoralization of the right. Additionally, with the government still recovering from the shut down, and Georgia already stretched thin with preparations for the Super Bowl the next day, this may have contributed to the decision to close the park altogether; it could also have led to a level of disorganization or lack of confidence on the part of the state that made them less ready to engage in the forceful repression that they had used in Newnan last year.

If we compare “Rock Stone Mountain 2” with the original, we can see that we’ve made a lot of progress. Our mobilization in 2016 was overwhelmingly successful, so the differences will be illuminating about how much more successful we were in 2019.

In 2016, the fascists had a permit and police protection. They were considered ‘legitimate’. One of the goals of the All Out Atlanta coalition at that time was to force a crisis in that ‘legitimacy’ so that they would not be able to organize so openly in the future. We did successfully create that crisis in legitimacy, although it was a hard fight. In 2019, one of our first victories happened when the Park denied a permit to the fascists for their rally. That wouldn’t have happened without the militancy and rowdiness of the 2016 mobilization.

In 2016, the police aggressively targeted and attacked anyone wearing a mask, as well as many others. We were not organized to make this difficult for them, or to defend ourselves. In 2019, we held an unpermitted march at which many people wore masks, and we faced no repression. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen something like that.

One of the visible differences is that we can see a huge uptick in radical organizing in the South over the last 3 years, which includes much stronger regional coordination, networking, and mutual support. Although the turnout in 2019 was not noticeably larger than in 2016, a lot of people ended up not coming due to the cancellation by the white supremacists, as well as the last minute decision to close the park. If either or both of those had not happened, there would have been a much, much larger turnout. Given the confusion over the announced park closure the nigh before the event, we are very happy with the large turnout that we still saw.

With regards to the growth of the left that we have seen across the South, we can speak best to the growth of the IWW and the General Defense Committee. Other groups or milieus will have to speak for themselves, although we think growth has been across the board, whether looking at autonomous or anarchist milieus on the one hand, or groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Redneck Revolt on the other.

In 2016, we had a tiny IWW group in Atlanta, and maybe 2-3 similarly tiny groups across the entire South, with no regional coordination. We don’t think there were IWW’s from other cities at the mobilization in 2016 (and the fact that we don’t even know also says a lot!).

In 2019, we have a vibrant branch in Atlanta, we have very active branches and groups in over a dozen other Southern cities, and we are very tightly coordinated across the region. We had a visible IWW bloc in the march with members from multiple states. Many of these members (in Atlanta and elsewhere) are also actively participating in workplace organizing campaigns – contrary to those who say that these things contradict each other, we see a clear reinforcement in practice. We also think that our participation in organizing around this has energized our branch as well as others from the region who participated. In the aftermath of this, we organized a very successful workplace Organizer Training (much of the organizing for which was done by people who joined in the process of the Stone Mountain organizing) which gave a boost to a new workplace committee; as well as a large and rowdy “Midnight March to End Rape Culture” for International Women’s Day on March 8. The energy and momentum coming out of February 2nd directly contributed to both of these things.

Although we are very happy overall with how everything went, we believe there are some things that could be improved for next time. FLOWER was intended to function as a coalition, but more could have been done to broaden that coalition. There are at least two gaps here:

Stronger intentional efforts should have been made to build ties with Black-led organizations and movements in Atlanta and suburban DeKalb county. This would have meant not just asking these movements and organizations to show up for Stone Mountain, but also showing up for existing struggles, such as the efforts to hold the police accountable for the 2015 murder of Anthony Hill in Chamblee (another city in DeKalb County). Of course, a lot of this development of trust through solidarity is something that is developed slowly and over time, and can’t be rushed through the period of months that we had to organize around Stone Mountain. Nevertheless, there could have been more intentional efforts in this direction.
As the IWW in particular, we also should have done more to try to involve union members in Atlanta. We should have gone to meetings of union locals to talk about the importance of strong community organizing against fascism and white supremacy. Beyond the primary goal of involving more people in the mobilization, this would have had at least two other goals:

It also could have contributed towards developing a trend that members of different unions should organize together for things such as confronting white supremacy. This seems to have had some success in the Pacific Northwest that we think is worth emulating. One of the pillars of the existing labor bureaucracy is the separation of members of different unions so that they do not participate in the same struggles. If rank and file union members in a city develop a culture of organizing together against fascism, it is a natural step from there to organize to support each other, and to see working class struggles in general as being linked together, rather than separated.
It would have helped identify more militant members of those unions and possibly heightened contradictions between them and the entrenched bureaucracies who likely would have been skeptical of the anti-fascist mobilization. Finding those members who did want to participate, we could have continued to work with them and help them to articulate a different vision for the labor movement, in the context of their union local.

So, what do we do now that Stone Mountain is over? The answer is of course that we keep doing the work that we’ve been doing all along anyways, but with more momentum, energy, sense of possibility, and deeper ties to local allies. As we mentioned, we’ve already seen this happen with the Organizer Training and the International Women’s Day march. Some of this organizing is of course subterranean and takes time to bear visible fruit, but a lot of it will continue be very visible and vibrant. We’re confident that this is just the first of many exciting things which will shake up Atlanta in the coming years, and that we’re putting down the roots to build a resilient and joyfully militant movement here.

Richmond, VA Educators Stage United Statewide Walkout

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 23:15:58 GMT

Richmond, Virginia

Thousands of education workers from all around the commonwealth of Virginia descended on the capitol city of Richmond in what was the largest single demonstration on the Capitol since 1916. The Richmond IWW was contacted by the lead organizers of this mass action for advice, assistance, and solidarity.

The IWW’s involvement in the action itself, while not irrelevant, was also small in comparison to the efforts put forward by the rank-and-file teachers that built the RedForEd movement in Virginia from the ground up. We are proud to know and have marched beside these brave educators, some of whom are now also wobblies!

Members of the branch were able to interview some of the folks that made this amazing day happen. These educators give their own personal details as to why they got involved, why they marched, and why they need more than VA is willing to give. Please watch this video with a full heart and pass it along to your friends…then take action!

Donate to the VA Educators Solidarity Fund

Visit Virginia Educators United to learn more about this movement!

Watch Virginia Educators United March 1/28/19 from the Richmond IWW :