All Branches

When miners get tired of being buried alive for them, the few.

When keyboard pounders get tired of wearing their hands out for them, the few.

When the truckers get tired of the weariness of driving endlessly for them, the few.

When fast food workers get tired of producing large quantities of food quickly at near starvation wages for them, the few.

When women workers get tired of being paid less and used as sex objects for them, the few.

When farm workers get tired of picking the food for all to eat while being poisoned and not having enough to eat themselves for them, the few.

When workers of color get tired of racism and having to labor in the worst jobs for them, the few.

When hospital workers get tired of working for the profit of the bosses, caring for the sick and injured for long hours for them, the few.

When construction workers get tired of building the homes and buildings of society under dangerous conditions for them, the few.

When child workers get tired of producing the latest fashion statements of the rich while having their childhoods robbed by them, the few.

When ship workers get tired of long hours in hot, miserable conditions and having to be far from home for them, the few.

Your General Defense Committee is proud to be co-sponsoring this event again this year. Please visit www.OCTOBER22.org and represent your union at a local event. Please report back, with photos and short narratives, to miller.kennethalan@gmail.com

The Call for the 15th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation October 22, 2010: UNITE TO FIGHT!

Hundreds of people from around the country marched in Detroit to express their pain and outrage at the police shooting of seven-year old Aiyana Jones, killed during a police raid while she was sleeping in her home. Hundreds more will march on the Department of Justice in Washington DC on September 25th for the Redeem Aiyana’s Dream March, coordinated on the same day with the Mothers Taking a Stand Against Police Brutality and Gun Violence rally taking place in Oakland, CA for Aiyana Jones and Oscar Grant.

This article originally appeared here

Dear New Socialist Group,

A friend recently sent me issue 60 of New Socialist. I enjoyed reading it, especially the discussions of unions and union organizers. I plan to read a lot more of your writings as soon as I'm able.

In this letter I'd like to pose some respectful questions and criticisms. I also want to think out some issues I am unclear about and have been having conversations about with some close friends and comrades. Just so we're clear, and since electronic communication makes it much easier to come off polemical when that's not my intention, I mean these as a sort of "can think about this together?" rather than an attempt at the sort of point scoring that sometimes stands in for political discussion. I've only read some of your publications - I plan to read more of them - so if you deal with my questions elsewhere I would love to know. I should also say, I'm a member of the small radical union the Industrial Workers of the World and the small political organization the Workers Solidarity Alliance. My experiences in those organization shape my views, but I write in a personal capacity.

I liked the piece on the comrade who worked for SEIU. It did well in getting at some of the limits of AFL-CIO and CtW unionism. I would like to know, however, if she learned anything positive from doing that work. Perhaps she didn't. My experience working as an organizer had a lot of the negative components that that comrade described and others too, which is why I no longer do that kind of work. I ran into iterations of the same problems when I worked as a community organizer too.)

That said, as much as working as an organizer was a lousy job, I learned a ton doing that job. As much as the bosses were jerks, I learned a lot from following their orders and from the training they provided. I learned stuff which set me up to go on to organize at my own workplaces in the jobs I worked afterward, and this has enriched my IWW activity too, in my opinion. I'd like to know if NSG has anything to say about working as organizers in order to learn things for a while - not as a career path but as an educational detour. Personally, I think more radicals should so then come back to the shop floor.