Meeting points and times for day of action in Denver

1PM: Students at Hinkley High School held an occupation / sit-in, then they walked out of school and about 100 students have taken to the streets. They are reporting that all of the students who walked out have been suspended.

Denver, CO, April 3, 2011 – College students, union members, organization leaders, community activists and others will join together on Monday, April 4, 2011, to commemorate the 43rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s march for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, followed by his famous last “Promised Land” speech, and assassination on April 4th, 1968.

A Justice for Janitors (SEIU) march will begin at 17th and California streets at 11:30 and will conclude at Tivoli Square (SW corner of Tivoli between the King Center and the Plaza Building) in Denver for a “Teach-in”. An anti-capitalist radical workers’ bloc has been called for the march.

From 12:15 – 2:00pm, a panel of community leaders representing labor, immigration, education, civil rights, the inter-faith community, and other areas will speak about worker’s rights and social justice.

The Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) have coordinated a student “walk-out” to attend the events on campus, and to send a message of solidarity with workers.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) will also hold a rally from 1:00-3:00 pm at 17th and Esplanade in City Park, near the MLK statue, to protest the Dex Corporation outsourcing American jobs.

An evening Rally and Candlelight Vigil to honor workers, organized by Colorado AFL-CIO, will begin at 5:30pm at City Park Band Shell, on the east side of Ferrell Lake (near E. 17th and Steele Street entrance). An anti-capitalist radical workers’ bloc has been called for the rally/vigil.

Meanwhile, similar events will be held in Colorado Springs and other cities.

Call for anti-capitalist contingent at April 4th Denver labor actions

The following is a statement issued by the Denver General Membership Branch of the IWW calling anti-capitalists to converge on the April 4th labor actions in Denver. There will be an anti-capitalist and radical worker’s bloc participating in the march beginning at 11:30am at 17th and California as well as a presence at the later rally and vigil.

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NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO COMPROMISE

SEIZE THE TIME!

The uprisings in Europe, then North Africa and the Mideast, and in the United States are not a coincidence. They are, at least in part, a common rebellion against a common enemy that threatens to make working people pay for its plunder and failures: the neo-liberal policies of unregulated capitalism, croney government, and phoney “banking”. We believe the best of what workers have spoken so far is not reforming a crippled and crippling capitalist system, but for the working class to step in as replacements for bundling bankers and bungling politicians.
WE HAVE A CHOICE TO MAKE: WE CAN LET OUR MOVEMENT BE CHANNELED TO WEAK REFORM AND ELECTORAL MEASURES OR WE CAN PUSH ONWARD NOT JUST FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN THE OLD SYSTEM BUT FOR WORKERS’ POWER to control our own work, our wealth, our well being. Early in the last century the newpaper The Messenger, founded by A. Philip Randolph, called for mass strikes and workers’ control as “the antidote for capitalist poisons”.

Pissed-off worker kills bosses in Boulder

A disgruntled employee of a Boulder flooring and fireplace store confronted the company’s owners Monday and shot them several times before apparently killing himself, Boulder Police said today.

Police Chief Mark Beckner said Robert Montgomery is the suspect in the shooting deaths of Boulder Stove and Flooring owners Staci and Sean Griffin. Montgomery worked at the business as a hearth-products specialist.

The Griffins and Montgomery were found dead in the back of the store shortly after 11 a.m. The Griffins suffered several gunshot wounds while Montgomery had one gunshot wound, Beckner said.

Police found a Smith & Wesson handgun in Montgomery’s right hand and 13 spent shellcasings. There was also one live round in Boulthe weapon’s chamber, Beckner said.

A journal found at Montgomery’s residence indicated he was angry at a change in sales compensation at the business.

A friend of Montgomery’s, who has known him since the 1980s, described him as even-tempered and slow to anger but said he was upset about work.

Co-worker Jason Arthur said the change in the company’s compensation involved requiring employees to reach sales goals in order to earn bonuses.

Class War Now: banner drop in Boulder

Anonymous communique:

On Thursday, March 4th, a banner was dropped from the rooftop of the University Memorial Center at the University of Colorado, in solidarity with the student uprising in California, and with resisters of the capitalist state everywhere. The banner read:

Free the Debt Slaves
Usurp the Profiteer
Free University Today!
Class War Now

Fire to the managers of class struggle

Ouch.  This shit is so fucked up. Doesn’t it just make you want to say “fuck the unions, let’s self-organize to fire all the bosses, company and union alike”?

for social war without mediation, –us.

Ousted union leaders take vehicles, political cash with them

The family members that run one of Colorado’s most powerful labor unions are being forced out of power, but not before they receive parting gifts paid for with union dues.

Ernie Duran, Jr., the longtime president of UFCW Local 7, will receive his union-issued vehicle, a 2007 Ford F350 pickup, as a retirement gift.

The vehicle was purchased with union dues paid by the union’s 23,000 members, grocery workers at Safeway, King Soopers and Albertsons. Union members are voting on last, best and final contract offers from Safeway and King Soopers. Their mail-in ballots must be received by Monday.

Gangs and Insurrection // on the occasion of the mass arrests in Denver

We don’t usually do much commentary, instead letting people’s actions speak for themselves, but there are some news stories that we absolutely cannot let go reported in the way the media would have it. This is one such story.  The following piece is not as complete and thought-out as we want; it’s a piece we’ve worked on for about a week since the news hit the press, but we’d like to work on it more.  Look for a better version in the next issue of ’til it breaks.

Last week the Denver Police Department made a mass arrest of 34 black youth and it seems like nobody has blinked an eye.

The 34 suspects were rounded up because, according to the cops, they are suspects in a series of downtown muggings.

Last we heard, 30 of those individuals have been charged with things like assault and robbery–many of them felony charges.  The police did not make it clear how they identified and rounded up the suspects, but “most of [them] told police they were associated with either the Rollin’ 60s Crips gang or the Black Gangster Disciples gang.”  The police keep dossiers on gang members; apparently they used their lists to round up individuals, throw them in jail, and begin interrogations.

All this ought to raise some kind of resistance from radicals who are also tracked by the police.

Anarchists, especially, should take notice when this shit goes down, cause we’re in gangs ourselves.  It’s true.  All it takes is a crew of folks who have each others’ backs to be a gang.  Our forms of social organization are atypical, and they are our greatest strength.

Even if you don’t think you’re a gangster, the cops already do.  The police in Denver have been using their Gang Units to track anarchists for years.  To them, we’re gangs.

Grocery workers reject offer, strike imminent

Grocery store workers for Safeway, King Soopers and City Market on the Western Slope have overwhelmingly voted to reject the companies’ offers and ask for a return to the bargaining table.

Safeway workers also voted to reauthorize a strike.

Meanwhile, the Denver Post is reporting that some shoppers are ready to betray class solidarity and cross picket lines…

Yeah, it’s hard to find a grocery store in Denver that isn’t a Safeway or King Soopers.  But you don’t have to be a traitor to get your food…

If you dodge the picket lines, dodge the checkout lines!

What better way for working-class folks to support the strike while improving their own material conditions?

UPDATE:  Okay, ‘imminent’ was an exaggeration. The fucking union is dragging this out as long as possible, giving the managers as long as they need to find scabs. Latest word: back to the negotiation table October 20th.

Boulder teachers set to strike

School District attempts to turn parents against union

A letter sent to Boulder Valley School District parents telling them of steps officials will take should there be a teacher strike was not meant to influence negotiations, a district spokesman said.

But Melissa Tingley, head of the teachers union, said the letter is trying to get parents to take sides in the conflict between the Boulder Valley Education Association and the district.

“It’s a shame that the district is trying to create unnecessary fear with the parent community,” Tingley said.

Mediation between the district and the 1,500-member teacher union collapsed Sept. 17, and the association filed notice with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment of a possible strike.

The union wants changes to the professional salary schedule that will move pay higher more quickly. The district says it can’t afford the changes this year.

Read the full story at the Denver Post

Colorado grocery workers set to strike

The union representing 17,000 workers at three of Colorado’s largest grocery chains has set strike votes for the next 2½ weeks across the state.

Both King Soopers and Safeway made final contract offers Sept. 9 to the union after five months of negotiations that have failed to produce an agreement with the union. The union’s bargaining committee voted to reject both offers.

A strike has been sanctioned by the union’s international leadership in Washington, D.C., but can’t begin until voting concludes Oct. 6, if the membership votes to strike. Local 7’s 200-person bargaining committee would vote afterward whether to strike one or both chains.

“Our goal from the first day of negotiations has been to avoid a strike or lockout. The corporations have been unwilling to meet workers halfway,” said Crisanta Duran, Local 7’s associate counsel.

Any strike would be the first Local 7 since the union staged a 42-day strike against King Soopers in 1996, triggering a lockout of union members by Safeway. Both chains have agreed to lock out workers if the union goes on strike against the other and have been advertising for temporary replacement workers who would be hired only if the union calls a strike.

Union officials say the offer is little changed from the initial offers from the chains and would require cuts in future pension accruals by up to 62 percent, raise the minimum retirement age for Local 7 members from 50 to 55 and end a $200-a-month supplemental payment for retirees age 60 to 62.

from the Colorado Springs Gazette

* The contract offer also gives no pay raises to workers who are lower on the pay scale and who need it the most.  This is of course an attempt to divide and conquer the workers based on internal divisions.