May Day: South Unites and Marches for Universal Worker and Migrant Rights !


May 1, 2014
International Workers Day

The South Unites for Worker and Migrant Rights

Join a march near you, Thursday, May 1:

San Antonio, Texas - 6pm, Milam Park, 500 W Houston St, San Antonio, Texas 78207. Contact Southwest Workers Union, Joaquin Abrego at 210-413-8978 or joaquin@swunion.org

Raleigh, North Carolina - 6:00pm, Wake County Courthouse, 316 Fayetteville St. the march to NC Budget Office and closing rally at State Capitol building. Hosted by Farm Labor Organizing Committee(AFL-CIO), NC Raise Up, UE local 150-NC Public Service Workers Union, NC Justice Center and others. For more information call 919-539-2051 or email info@southernworker.org

Knoxville, Tennessee - 6pm, starts in Market Square and we'll march to Vine Middle School on MLK Blvd and end at Harriet Tubman Park for a BBQ and celebration! Hosted by the Put the People First Coalition. Contact Jared Story, United Campus Workers (CWA) at jaredtstory@gmail.com or 423-794-8629.

Charleston, South Carolina - time TBA. Panel discussion held at the International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422 union hall, 1142 Morrison Drive. Contact Leonard Riley at 843-830-4471 for more information.

Other actions TBA in Chattanooga, Memphis and elsewhere.

May Day was born over 120 years ago commemorating the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886 when police shot workers who were striking to establish the eight-hour workday and the right to organize and prohibit child labor. The US-South revived and regenerated Mayday commemorations during the 2006 general strike, which was fueled by migrants.

The US South unites youth, women, men, immigrants, Indigenous Peoples, labor unions, LGBTQ, human rights organizations, farm workers, environmentalists, workers and social movements with the rest of the US and the world to regenerate our struggles for Liberation in the 21st century and to do away with Borders, Respect Human Rights, and for full Rights for all workers of the planet and our right to migrate anywhere on earth.

The South forms and represents working class struggles. The South demands Living Wages, the Right to organize and Migrant Rights for all. We demand Legalization for all.

The South demands the criminal charges against all Moral Monday arrestees be dropped including Saladin Mohammed Leader of Southern Workers Assembly in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The South forms part of a social movement that denounces the neo liberal politics of government and its political parties. President Obama promotes imperialist wars in Afghanistan and other parts of the world to steal natural resources. We say End US-EU-NATO wars in the Middle East and Africa. US hands off Venezuela and Ukraine, no more wars for natural resources. The South demands stop the war and bring the troops home.

The South denounces the economic crisis of the capitalist system that was forced onto the people by the super rich, transnational corporations and the banks that the people bailed out only to make the rich more rich and the poor more poor. The crisis of mass unemployment continues as over 30 million workers remain unemployed and over 20% of those employed remain underemployed, the vast majority in low-wage, dead end jobs. Unemployment for Black, Brown and Native workers is more than double that of white workers. We demand a Federally-funded public works jobs program and full employment now!

The South denounces the failure of the neo liberal model of the free trade agreements like Nafta, Cafta and the current Trans Pacific Partnership which President Obama wants to fast track. This agreement will set new rules on food safety and medicine prices. The free trade agreements exploit workers and displace communities over Mexico, Central and South America and the world with poverty wages, without the right to organize unions, bad working and social conditions.

The South denounces and demands the abolishment of the “Taft Hartley Act” and section 14B that prohibits the right of workers to organize unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. We demand comprehensive labor change.

The South denounces the militarization of the US/Mexico Border that is racist and criminalizes immigrants takes them to their death, provokes division and violence among communities along the US Mexico Border.

The South denounces raids and deportation that divides immigrant families and treats them as if they were terrorists. We denounce the ICE commandos and the mistreatment of immigrant families. We demand laws that recognize basic rights for all immigrants, social services and immigration laws that recognize the principal of universal citizenship.

The South denounces the attack on Public Schools by conservative right wing politicians, which has caused loss of jobs, a loss of billions of dollars and a second class education due to privatization of education throughout the south.

The South denounces the increased New Jim Crow activities and white supremacy and racist laws such as the stand your ground law which has resulted in the death of young Black and Brown people such as Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis and other people of color and indigenous people. We demand an end to police terror, police murders, brutality, racial profiling and the school-to-prison pipeline. We demand a decolonization process to end death and violence.

The South commits to supports efforts of youth in their forms of expression and commit to be at their service in the initiatives of the right to education and their right to form and create organizations.

The South commits to look for and implement alternatives of ALBA (Alternative Bolivariana de las Americas) towards globalization, war, capitalism, neoliberalism and the inequality between poor and rich.

The South commits to free political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Imam Jamil Al-Amin and others jailed for activism, and those in Puerto Rico in their struggle for independence and discontinue being a colony of the US. We demand an end to the Cuban Economic Blockade and the liberation of the Cuban heroes prisoners in US jails.

The South commits to organize and participate this May 1, 2014. With everything that we do, with everything that we are, with everything that we dream we have the security and faith of constructing a better world for all and all the human races.

Another South, Another US and Another World is Possible!

** SUBMIT YOUR ACTION !!
If you are organizing an event in your area and would like it listed on the Southern Workers Assembly press release, website and information leaflets, please submit the information to info@southernworker.org


Southern Workers Assembly
www.southernworker.org

info@southernworker.org
252-314-2363

Our mailing address is:
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Thousands of demonstrators in Athens, Thessalonica, and in dozens of other Greek cities participated in the strike rallies on May 1st organized by the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME).

PAME held its rally in Athens in the city’s central square, Syntagma, outside the Parliament.

In the central speech Giorgos Perros, member of the Executive Secretariat of PAME, denounced the Turkish government, which attacked the May 1st rally of workers in Istanbul.

G. Perros in his speech made reference to the 15 year anniversary of PAME”s establishment. As he said “Its establishment lent strength, combativeness, hope to the life and activity of the trade union movement. It assisted in the formation of the class-oriented labour movement and to become a pole for rallying and allying with all those who suffer from the yoke of the monopolies, the European Union and the parties that consider the EU and the capitalist development path to be the only way.” He added that “it contributed to joint response and activity of all those who were negatively affected by the anti-people political line in order to strengthen the social alliance of workers, poor self-employed and tradesmen, the small-medium farmers, the youth, women.”

Giorgos Perros clarifies that “the measures that have been taken and have smashed wages and pensions, social-security, working time etc are aimed at reinforcing the profits of the plutocracy in the phase of development after the crisis, for this reason they are not temporary. They are here to stay.”

He revealed that this political line is not mistaken, but it is the only way for capitalism to overcome its crises. He made it clear that the path for the return of capitalist development, competitiveness and the profitability of capital demands even greater sacrifices from the working class so that it can be stabilized.

“We must not allow the workers to be fooled by the fairytales if the government that the sacrifices have ended or those of the official opposition that all that is needed for the wolves to turn into sheep is a change of government.” He added that “The path of the struggle to repel and overturn these policies, which are determined by the EU and big capital, is the only way and demands a decisive, strong, capable movement. It is imperative to wage this struggle and of course in the run up to the EU parliamentary elections these policies must be the criteria for the vote to condemn all the parties that support the EU”

Giorgos Perros called on the working class to realize that it can change the situation, that it has the strength and that it can rely on the forces of PAME, PASEVE for the self-employed, PASY for the farmers, MAS for the students, OGE for our people’s women.

In reference to the elections on the 18th and 25th of May, he stressed that “our interest is for the forces that support the organization of the working class, its struggles, the effort to form the People’s Alliance to emerge even stronger. And they will continue stand side by side all those who are struggling.” He warned that “if this does not happen, and the workers are scattered left and right amongst the various traps that have been set up for them, things will be worse. Tomorrow they will have to face these traps. The plutocracy will receive the breathing space it needs in order to regroup and renew its political staff and will strengthen its offensive at the expense of our lives and prospects. It will increase disillusionment and fatalism amongst sections of the workers.”

Highlighting the way out, he mentioned amongst other things that today there are all the necessary material conditions for permanent stable work, for reduced working time and the increase of free time, for exclusively public and free provisions in healthcare, education, popular housing, culture and sports, even more free time, for salaries and pensions which will correspond to the extent of the people’s needs today. We can live in a world that corresponds to our effort, our labour, our expectations. In a world that is not scourged by wars, unemployment, drugs, stress and insecurity. Wherever we will live peacefully, humanely, without the exploitation of man by man, without oppression and the barbarity of the system we are living in.”

Statement of the GS of the CC of the KKE

A large delegation of the KKE, headed by the GS of the CC of the KKE, headed by the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas.

In his statement he stressed the following: “We address a message for the strengthening of the workers’-people’s struggles, the regroupment of the labour-people’s movement from the May 1st rally here in Syntagma. We address a call for the people to join forces with the KKE, to strengthen the KKE, so that the people can become strong, in order for us to create the thing that the people and the country need today. A strong workers’-people’s opposition that will pave the way, with the people’s alliance, to finally smash the shackles of the EU, the monopolies, in order to open a new path with the people truly in power.”

Earlier, the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, at the head of the delegation of the party laid a wreath at the Shooting range in Kaisariani, in honour of the 200 communists executed there on May 1st 1944 by the Nazis.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Red-May-1st-Labour-in-the-frontline/