Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Rick Haglund - Thursday, February 14, 2008, Grand Rapids Press, Detroit Bureau

For over ten years the IWW.ORG project has been helping workers around the world learn, communicate and organize. This web page is about how you can help the IWW.ORG project.

Together we provide the following services to IWW members and to workers everywhere:

• We maintain these websites, including static content, news, forums, and RSS feeds.
• We've signed up hundreds of new IWW members online.
• We provide e-mail lists and email accounts to IWW members.

By Eric Lee - Industrial Worker, February 2007; originally published here.

Several years ago, shortly after it was launched I looked into Google's keyword-based online advertising as a tool for trade union campaigns. I thought it seemed a really good idea, tested it, and promoted its use to unions.

Today, I think that more and more unions and campaigning organizations recognize that by using Google ads, we can send out a subversive message about corporations at a very low price to a very large audience.

Do Internet campaigns work? Can solidarity be successful? Are the old time values expressed by members of the Industrial Workers of the Word-- "An Injury To One Is An Injury To All"-- still applicable in this era of globalization?

There is a school of thought that the Internet "isn't real life," and therefore, isn't nearly as vital as face to face organizing. While this assessment retains much validity, events this past week in Colorado and, in a sense, all over the world suggest that using the Internet can have a significant impact on the lives of working people. Online activists from Israel, Canada, Turkey, Sweden, Australia, the UK, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Russia joined Americans to "write" a wrong committed against two American workers, using Internet messaging as their favorite solidarity tool.

On the way to the annual Rainbow Family Gathering near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Giles Charle of Somersworth, New Hampshire and David Siller of Wayne, Pennsylvania went dumpster diving in the heart of the popular ski resort. Police detained them with a few fruits and vegetables liberated from the trash at Sweet Pea Produce, and promptly jailed them. They bonded out after three days to await trial.

The Rainbow Family has a very mixed reputation among the citizenry in upscale Steamboat Springs. The so-called "neo-hippies" are viewed as outsiders, and the fine citizens of middle America tend to be uncomfortable with alternative lifestyles. The Rainbow Family also routinely thumbs its collective nose at authority by ignoring forest service requirements for camping permits. Some clashes with authorities were reported at this gathering, as in the past, so the Assistant District Attorney prosecuting the dumpster diving case wanted to "make examples" in order to "send a message to the community." Under the circumstances, defense lawyers advised the two men to accept a misdemeanor plea bargain with a six month jail sentence, in order to avoid much more serious felony charges resulting from a reported, but non-existent burglary.

Individuals from the Rainbow Family were incensed with the penalty and began to deluge city officials and the Steamboat Springs newspaper with emails and phone calls. The Drudge Report linked to the community newspaper's website, which momentarily crashed as thirty thousand people tried to read the story. Meanwhile, one of the co-owners of the produce establishment spoke out in support of the two men, and against their sentence.

Yet the Routt County District Attorney's office aggressively defended their actions. On Tuesday District Attorney Bonnie Roesink and her assistant met before county commissioners and appeared pathologically obsessed with the idea that the only "true" facts in a prosecution case are those described in the initial police report. The D.A. also decried the media attention, calling it misguided and ill-informed, and lashed out at the owners of Sweet Pea Produce for not supporting the lengthy sentence after having (mistakenly) reported a burglary.

There seemed to be every indication the D.A. planned to stick by the outcome of the case. But more than anything else, that September 6 presentation to the county commissioners called into question the accuracy of a police report riddled with false allegations.

Fellow Worker Richard Myers has never been to a Rainbow Family event, but his awareness of this year's gathering was heightened when he performed some bindery work for the group's membership guide at an IWW print shop in Denver.  An experienced graphic designer and denizen of the Internet, he elected to play a role in this drama. Myers believed that in order to be successful, the protest needed to go well beyond the Rainbow Family, so he launched an Internet campaign to free the two from jail. On Sunday afternoon, two days before the District Attorney's office went public, Myers set up an online petition, created a web page calling for action, and bombarded cyberspace with hundreds of emails, initially circulating the alarm on nearly fifty email lists. FW Myers reports having spent several eighteen hour days at the keyboard to get the word out. Wobblies, peace and justice folks, SDS'ers, Food Not Bombs, and many other activists joined the Rainbow Family protest, responding to the simple declaration that "Hunger Is Not A Crime!"

In Tuesday's Steamboat Pilot, ski resort spokeswoman Riley Polumbus alluded to the industry's growing concerns about a possible boycott. On Wednesday morning Rocky Mountain News Columnist Bill Johnson picked up on the protest campaign and observed that "something's rotten in the story of the 'stolen' trash," and "somewhere, somehow, someone is flat lying their face off." Also on Wednesday, the Steamboat Pilot editorially recommended reversing the plea agreement. Steamboat Springs residents and a couple of city council members had become vociferous in their criticism, and the Pilot reported that "several community members have started a group to recall District Attorney Bonnie Roesink."

Under intense public pressure, the district attorney volunteered to set up a citizen's oversight committee to watch over her department's activities. On Wednesday afternoon the Assistant D.A. finally caved to the outcry and released the two young men, citing "what the public believes" as partial justification for his decision. Altogether, the pair served just ten days of their 180 day sentence.

FW Myers has since met David and Giles and describes them as polite, thoughtful and articulate. They're interested in careers in social work and teaching, but their thoughts are also turning with interest to this world of solidarity and activism that helped to spring them from jail. Meanwhile  the struggle to free them is recounted on the webpage used to rally the Internet campaign:

http://www.rebelgraphics.org/coloradofreedom.html

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.

LABOR DAY PICKET and SPEAK-OUT at KPFA Radio.

SI SE PUEDE! - A statement by Riva Enteen

Disclaimer - This is neither an official campaign of the Bay Area IWW General Membership Branch, nor is it a campaign of the IWW as awhole.  This appeal is published in solidarity with the volunteers of the KPFA Labor Collective:

On March 8, 2006, the KPFA Program Council and the management of KFPA banned any further labor programming proposals from the KPFA Labor Collective for one year. This is even longer than the anti-labor Taft-Hartley which prevents strikes and lock-outs for 90 days.

The KFPA Labor Collective has produced labor programming for many years on Labor Day, May Day, MLK day and on Workers Memorial Day.

The Program Council instituted this ban without allowing the KFPA Labor Collective the opportunity to refute false charges against us.

At the same time more than 60% of the programming on KFPA is by music programmers while many of the working class issues that people face every day are kept off the air.

The KFPA Labor Collective has members from many unions including SEIU 616, NALC 214, IBT Local 70, SEIU UHW, IUOE 39, SEIU 1000. It has also received support from the San Francisco Labor Council, the Contra Costa Labor Council and many other trade unionists for a regular weekly one hour program.

Unfortunately, the KPFA management and some of the staff are not
interested in more community programming at KFPA. Some programmers have had their time slots for 20 and 30 years and they have many hours every week while labor and other community programmers are prevented from having regular programming.

The latest statement from Acting Manager Lemlem Rijio again supports the illegal banning by the Program Council and states that managment supports it despite the fact that there have been no hearings on the reason for the banning and no transparency on this flagrant act of censorship and intimidation. This will not stand.

KFPA is an important community resource for all the people of the bay area. It has the potential of reaching 6 to 7 million people in our
region and it is critical that it provide regular labor programming.

The banning for "disruption" and taking too much "time" to review labor programming proposals from the KPFA Labor Collective is unacceptable and an attack on labor free speech rights. It was also outside the rights of the Program Council and has been challenged by many members of the Local Station Board

We call for supporters of more labor programming to attend the
upcoming KPFA Local Station Board meeting on Saturday August 19, 2006 at 11:00 AM at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley1111 Addison/San Pablo near University Ave in Berkeley

We also call on all supporters of more labor programming on KFPA to
send letters.
Please go to the http://www.kpfa.org and email:
KPFA Local Station Board
Acting KPFA Manager Lemlem Rijio at 1929 MLK Bld Berkeley, CA
Pacifica Executive Director Greg Guma greg [at] pacifica.org
Please send a copy to http://www.kpfalaborcollective.org

Ms. Rijio's letter:

KPFA Acting Manager Lemlem Rijio
To: KPFA Local Station Board
From: Interim General Manager, Lemlem Rijio
Date: July 16, 2006

Administration

Program Council---The station management agrees with members of the LSB that the KPFA program council does not have any authority in personnel matters. However, the council¹s decision to ask a group of producers to hold-off submitting proposals for a year based on its own working relationship (or lack of) with the group of producers seems well within the authority of the program council.

I have asked our HR consultant to investigate whether there are any
personnel matters that require resolution. I expect a follow up report
from him in a few weeks. 

The Industrial Workers of the World uses the Internet extensively to get the word out about its projects, including organizing Starbucks employees. “We find the Internet has been a wonderful tool for outreach, education, and information,” says Mark Damron, general secretary and treasurer of the IWW. “In the U.S., a shop cannot disallow organizing activity, but the Internet provides a good anonymous way for someone who is worried their workplace may frown upon union-organizing work.”

Todd Jordan could have taken to the streets to air his grievances with America’s bankrupt giant automotive parts maker, Delphi. But he’s got a better place to picket—online.

Mr. Jordan, a 29-year-old, third-generation autoworker, runs a blog called Futureoftheunion.com to keep rank and file Delphi employees informed about the latest developments in the company. The site is run by Mr. Jordan out of an office plastered with Che Guevara posters in Kokomo, Indiana.

Apart from serving as a rallying point for Delphi workers, the site calls for sweeping change within the United Auto Workers union. “It allows people not only to keep up to date on things important to them, but also enables workers to connect with each other who would otherwise not be able to,” says Mr. Jordan, a card-carrying UAW man who worked at Delphi’s Kokomo plant for nearly seven years. Mr. Jordan, who uses his blog to press for greater worker control of the union, says in a posting that he has “made a few enemies.”

PR WATCH - The new industry-funded front group from lobbyist Rick Berman, the Center for Union Facts, has launched its first TV ad campaign. The 30-second spot, running on Fox News and local markets, has "actors posing as workers" saying "sarcastically what they 'love' about unions," like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles," and discrimination against minorities. The ad campaign cost $3 million, which was raised "from companies, foundations and individuals that Mr. Berman won't identify."

Another TV ad will be filmed in June. Labor and economics professor Harley Shaiken said the effort "to create an anti-union atmosphere" more generally, as opposed to business-funded ads against a particular union organizing drive or strike, "is a new wrinkle."