It’s now or never. If we stand idly by, the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline will be completed *this month*. By December, it is slated to pump 193 million tons of CO2 into our atmosphere. Every year. For half a century. Its climate impact would be on par with Keystone, or 50 new coal plants. It violates the treaty rights of Indigenous nations and threatens the fresh water of 18 million people in 10 states who rely on the Mighty Mississippi.

So we’re taking direct action in DC.

From Selma, To Serbia, To Standing Rock… mass, civil resistance can shake the public awake and change political reality.

Thousands of bold water protectors have already put their bodies on the line to stop line 3, braving tear gas, rubber bullets, solitary confinement, and other acts of brutality. We must make sure their voices are being heard in DC. We must come together for a nonviolent uprising to Stop Line 3 and compel our politicians to treat the impending climate collapse with the urgency it deserves.

On August 23rd, that’s what we’ll do.

We will engage in direct action in DC to bring the cries of Water Protectors and Mother Earth straight to Biden’s door and demand his administration defend our climate, water, and Indigenous treaty rights.

We’ll tell it like it is: Biden betrayed us.

Our so-called climate president sits back as Enbridge builds the pipeline, violates treaties, and violently assault water protectors with rubber bullets.

Biden’s Army Corps has full authority to cancel the permits — or simply pause them for the needed federal environmental impact study — but has so far failed to do so.

We must put maximum pressure on them to act now, before Enbridge finishes constructing this human rights catastrophe, ecological crisis and climate bomb.

On August 23, we will converge in Washington. We’re done with hollow promises and empty words. We need action.

When we picture the pristine, treaty-protected land of 10,000 lakes in northern Minnesota, here is what we don’t imagine:

Birds flying through wildfire-choked skies. Beavers damming the last drops of water. Endangered mussels baking on the dry riverbed of our once mighty Mississippi, drained to dust by historic drought and Enbridge’s illegal pumping. Sacred wild rice poisoned by toxic frac outs. All so that a Canadian multinational can build the last tar sands pipeline through our precious lands, polluting 40% of our freshwater and poisoning our skies.

This action is in solidarity with the mass action taking place two days later at the Minnesota state Capitol. https://www.facebook.com/events/148731610704832

If you can’t make it to DC or St. Paul please plan a solidarity action in your community, letting President Biden know we will not tolerate completion of Line 3. https://weprotectthewater.org/

Bring your righteous anger. Bring love and solidarity. Bring a sleeping bag – just in case. And if you feel called to the frontlines now, visit this site to plan your trip. https://www.stopline3.org/hub

We need you now

#StopLine3

SIGN UP HERE

In Honor Of Both The Black August 13, 1926 Birthday Of Cuba’s
Revolutionary Leader Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz And; The Black
August 22, 1791 Beginning Of The Great Haitian Revolution……

The Rochester, New York, Black August Organizing Committee presents:

Demanding justice: International resistance against United States imperialism in Cuba, Haiti & Puerto Rico

Register now for this 6:30 pm (Eastern Time) Black August 13, 2021 webinar

bit.ly/BAinternationalresistance

SATURDAY AUG. 14 AT 6 PM EDT – 8 PM EDT
See film Fidel: the Untold Story
Online Event

You must register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEudeiupjgrGd3ss2DMZuwueP-lfzSqlCtR

Fidel: The Untold Story is an inspiring documentary by Estela Bravo. The film features interviews with: Phillip Agee, Muhammad Ali, Harry Belafonte, Ramsey Clark, Angela Davis, Elián González, Nelson Mandela, Gabriel García Márquez, Ted Turner. and Alice Walker. More importantly, it features footage of Fidel and the Cuban revolution.

We are showing this film to celebrate Fidel’s birthday (August 13, 1926) and his remarkable life.

At this pivotal moment when Cuba is under attack during a world pandemic and suffering from a criminal blockade, our understanding of this history is more important than ever.

Join us Saturday via Zoom. We will join in song and following the film Rev Chambers will speak about her face-to-face encounter with Fidel. Bring your snacks and enjoy the film together.

Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/17uVIpTPz

Maracay City, Venezuela — In the worker-controlled Venezuelan Kellogg factory, you see the workers working diligently to make corn flake and sugary cereals in a new package displaying the Venezuelan flag and the words “Together for Venezuela.” They are wearing black caps with red letters that say, “Kellogg made in socialism.”

In May of 2018, the Kellogg bosses told the factory workers that they had the weekend off due to maintenance. When the workers arrived the following working day, they were shocked to see a large sign on the factory, “We closed operations in Venezuela.” The bosses didn’t notify them, in person, of the closure or that hundreds would lose their jobs. The workers also found out that the Kellogg had placed very little severance in their accounts, which didn’t fulfill their union contracts.

“There was no reason for the company to close and leave because all the raw materials were produced in Venezuela, the corn and sugar, etc. The company even left a year’s worth of raw materials within the factory. They closed because of political reasons and not supporting the Maduro’ government. But they committed one mistake: Kellogg left the working class well trained,” says Orlando Contreras, the president of the factory’s union.

The workers and the union hit the ground running to organize so the factory could stay open and the workers wouldn’t lose their jobs.

“The participation of the union was immediate after the factory closed. We called all the workers to tell them what was happening. Then, we made contact with the Confederation of Workers and the state government to receive support in figuring out the steps to reopen the company. The Ministry of Labor helped the workers with contacting the rest of the governmental agencies, the Attorney General and the Defense of the People agency, to gain control of the company,” said Orlando.

A longtime worker and the new factory president Milton Torres says, “It was through the union and the union workers that it was possible to take over the factory. They knew how all the machines worked and how to make quality products.”

“Thanks to us being trained and well-organized, all of us workers reopened the factory and put it into production. We took over the factory to protect the rights of the workers. We enforce the food policies inside our homeland of Simone Bolivar and Chavez. Now, Kellogg’s company here is a socialist enterprise. The basic principles of our socialist enterprise are to dignify the work of our working class, increase the levels of production, guarantee that the equipment is highly maintained, produce good quality products, in a fair price and to be a self-sustainable company to contribute to the economic development of the country,” says Orlando Contreras, beaming with pride.

The workers have increased the production from two cereal types to four. Two week ago, they also contacted the Ministry of Labor to visit the factory and support the workers by increasing sales. The workers asked the Ministry of Labor to prioritize selling their “Socialist Kellogg” cereal and increase the number of places their cereal is sold, since it is all produced in Venezuela, unlike the other imported cereal brands. With more sales, they can increase the production and worker salaries and benefits.

After the takeover, the workers now have an important voice in the company, which they never had before.

“The new ‘Socialist Kellogg’ President Milton Torres and the administration consult with us workers to make important decisions. If the company is doing well, they ask the workers which benefits they want to improve and prioritize. There are currently in discussions around creating a collective board with the union leaders and the administration of the factory,” says Orlando.

Not everyone was happy with this new “Socialist Kellogg,” the staff takeover, or the use of the Kellogg symbol. Kellogg is currently suing the Venezuelan government and the new factory President Milton Torres for $72 million for continuing to use the Kellogg symbol and for using their property.

“If Kellogg returns, we will give the factory back, as long as they keep the same salaries and rights of the workers,” says Orlando.

This worker takeover is an inspiration to the world on how workers and their unions can fight to stop store closings, organize for the rights of the workers, improve their salaries, working conditions and benefits.

Source: FightBack! News

Workers at the Frito-Lay factory in Topeka, Kansas, held their ground and won a favorable union contract after a solid three-week walkout. Frito-Lay is owned by PepsiCo and operates 30 other manufacturing centers throughout the country. The company made $4.2 billion last year. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, to meet rising demand, instead of hiring more workers and paying decent wages, the bosses were imposing 12-hour shifts, separated by only 8 hours off, 7 days a week. 

Lawsuits for racial discrimination, first in June 2020 and again in February 2021, pointed to the company passing over Black employees for promotions, and giving Black employees less training and more demanding jobs. The plant’s workforce is represented by Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 218. 

By early July, after nine months of negotiations hadn’t yielded a fair offer for a new contract,

workers’ frustrations were coming to a head. The punishing shifts and 84-hour workweeks were the straw that broke the camel’s back, but stagnant wages, speedups, and unsafe working conditions were also a major factor in the struggle.

Two workers died on the job

One of the striking workers, Cherie Renfro, wrote an opinion piece in a Topeka newspaper during the walkout that revealed that two workers have died under the harsh conditions being imposed. At the time of one of the deaths, the man collapsed while working and the bosses didn’t even stop the production line. They had workers move the body so that a co-worker could stand in for him and production never stopped.

The company denies that it happened, but her account is backed up by co-worker and union steward Mark McCarter, who told Vice News, “I can tell you that many people have had heart attacks in the heat at Frito-Lay since I’ve been here. One guy died a few years ago and the company had people pick him up, move him over to the side, and put another person in his spot without shutting the business down for two seconds. It seems like I go to one funeral a year for someone who’s had a heart attack at work or someone who went home to their barn and shot themselves in the head or hung themselves.”

Workers also have complained about fire hazards because boxes are packed and stacked up without stopping. People have been working fast out of fear of retaliation, and exits are often blocked up by stacks of boxes.

Although Kansas is less unionized than the national average at less than 9%, Topeka is a union city. A full 26% of workers there are members of unions–well over double the national rate of 10.8%. 

The membership at the Frito-Lay plant voted down an offer on July 3, when bosses offered wage increases that for many workers would have been less than 50 cents an hour. In this unionized city, as prices are increasing and as workers had been working throughout the pandemic and risking their health without even receiving hazard pay, the 50 cents per hour offer was insulting. 

In several other unionized workplaces in Topeka, workers have won annual cost-of-living increases of 77 cents per hour, in addition to regular wage increases fought for and won in contract negotiations. The offer was in fact voted down because the company was trying to get away without adequately addressing the grueling “suicide shifts” as workers called them. 

But the company’s bargaining team still tried to paint a picture of a generous offer being rejected by irresponsible union officers. They pushed the idea that they have a labor shortage, clinging to the corporate line that the Federal Unemployment Supplement established under the CARES Act was erasing incentive for the unemployed to work. 

Frito-Lay’s practice of Amazon-style hyper exploitation shows their difficulty maintaining a workforce is self-inflicted. Union steward McCarter told the Topeka Capital-Journal, “The problem is they hire (new people) and then work them 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and after about a week of that, they go, ‘Oh no’ and don’t show up.”

Picket line solidarity

As pitiful as their July 3 offer was, Frito-Lay bosses still sulked and walked away from the bargaining table after it was rejected. That’s when the workers at the Topeka plant hit the bricks.

When the walkout happened the bosses vowed to continue running the idled plant and sent a welcome message to any workers that cared to cross the picket line. 

The e-mailed statement oozed with the confidence that bosses across the giant U.S. economy have developed during this long 4-decades of anti-union rampage. But 600 workers continued walking the picket line. UAW members from two different locals in Kansas City gathered money donations on Facebook, and food and supplies from small businesses and other union workers and then caravanned the hour-long drive to the picket line for a support rally. 

Soon Frito-Lay snacks started to disappear from grocery store shelves. In just under three weeks the bosses blinked. The new contract bans suicide shifts and puts a cap on hours of 60 per week and at least one day off per week. Workers got a 4% raise over two years, and there will be a team of workers and management to address safety conditions in the plant.

During the first week of August, the National Welfare Rights Union (NWRU) convened in New Orleans. The meeting brought together activists from around the country to study both history and current conditions, as well as to reaffirm their commitment to struggle.

This was a good time for a national meeting on welfare rights, given the extreme situation faced by millions of working-class people in the United States. For many, life has been made bleak by decades of low wages and austerity. The COVID-19 crisis is making things even worse. The country’s largest hunger-relief non-profit, Feeding America, reports that some 50 million people were food insecure during the pandemic. On the eve of this conference, 11 million families were facing eviction or foreclosure. Biden only acted to extend the eviction moratorium after facing popular pushback.

In an address at the onset of the pandemic, NWRU President, Maureen Taylor, spoke of the difficulties caused by the cruelty of this system, but she also stressed the need to envision an alternative. Taylor said: “Working people–can’t we imagine a world where universal healthcare is a right and cannot be tied to a job that may disappear? Working people–can’t we imagine a world where preparation for pandemics are already in place because the next one is anticipated? Working people–can’t we imagine a world where no one goes without food or affordable housing under any circumstances?”

The NWRU was established in 1987, growing out of the work of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). The NWRO was a key part of the Poor People’s Campaign organized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That movement terrified the capitalists. One organizer at this week’s conference said, “The threat of Martin Luther King was that he was uniting the working-class.” Indeed, when King was murdered in 1968, the militancy of the Black liberation struggle was spilling over to all groups fighting for their rights in this society.

The organizers with today’s NWRU are carrying on the radical traditions of the NWRO founders, like George Wiley and Johnnie Tillmon, two giants of the civil rights era. In this week’s discussion, conference-attendees stressed the need of getting back to basics, that is, to struggle led by poor, working-class people, not beholden to granting organizations and professional politicians. Elders shared radical history with the younger activists, while affirming the immense potential of today’s youth, as demonstrated by the 2020 rebellions against white supremacist police terror.

A lively conversation took place about the necessity of basing struggle on revolutionary education and an analysis of changing conditions.

Rev. Annie Chambers of the NWRU, Socialist Unity Party, and other organizations, summed up much of this discussion in the following way: “Facing different conditions today, what else can we do but have revolution? Young people are fighting. But we’ve got to give it direction, to call what we’re in a revolution to change this whole system. Piecemeal change isn’t enough. This whole capitalist system must fall.”

Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

A few days ago, athlete Jasmine Camacho-Quinn won a gold medal for PR in the 100-meter hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics.

You may wonder how, being a colony of the USA, PR has its own Olympic Committee.

The Olympics and politics always go hand in hand and the existence of this Committee exposes the contradictions of a colony where although there are forces that want to turn us into a state of the empire, the cultural and national identity reflected in sports is much stronger.

The origin of our Olympic participation dates back to 1948 in a very complex socio-political context. At that time, a Puerto Rican delegation traveled to London to claim – and win – a place for PR in the Olympics.

Jasmin’s victory in these days of so much anguish also motivated controversies that expose the prejudice that some people in this country suffer about who is truly Puerto Rican. La Altleta was born in the U.S., the daughter of a Puerto Rican and an African American, but the Puerto Rican diaspora in the U.S., whether they were born there or migrated there, is viewed by some with suspicion. The curious thing is that most Puerto Ricans, more than 5 million, live there, while in PR there are only 3.2 million.

But the interesting thing is that although she was not born in PR and does not even speak Spanish, Jasmín feels so Puerto Rican that she refused to represent the US in order to bring the triumph to PR. And as Albizu Campos said, “The nation is represented by those who affirm it, not by those who deny it”.

From Puerto Rico for RADIO CLARIN of Colombia, Berta Joubert-Ceci spoke to you.

Hace unos días la atleta Jasmín Camacho-Quinn ganó una medalla de oro para PR en los 100 metros con valla en las olimpiadas de Tokio.

Se preguntarán cómo siendo una colonia de los EUA, PR tiene su propio Comité Olímpico.

Las olimpíadas y la política siempre van unidas y la existencia de este Comité expone las contradicciones de una colonia donde  aunque haya fuerzas que quieran convertirnos en un estado del imperio, la identidad cultural y nacional reflejada deportivamente es mucho más fuerte.

El origen de nuestra participación olímpica data del 1948 en un contexto sociopolítico muy complejo. En ese entonces, una delegación boricua viajó a Londres para reclamar – y lograr – un puesto para PR en esas olimpíadas.

La victoria de Jasmin en estos días de tanta angustia, motivó también controversias que exponen el prejuicio que padecen algunas personas en este país sobre quien es verdaderamente boricua. La altleta nació en EU, hija de una boricua y un afroamericano, pero la diáspora boricua en EU, ya nacieran o migrado allá, es vista por algunos con recelo. Lo curioso es que la mayor parte de los puertorriqueños, más de 5 millones, viven allá, mientras que en PR solo hay 3.2 millones.

Pero lo interesante del caso es que aunque no nació en PR y ni siquiera habla español, Jasmín se siente tan puertorriqueña que rechazó representar a EU para poder llevar el triunfo a PR. Y como dijo Albizu Campos, “La nación la representan quienes la afirman, no quienes la niegan”.

Desde  Puerto Rico para RADIO CLARIN de Colombia, les habló Berta Joubert-Ceci

Chants of “Housing is a human right!” filled Manhattan’s Third Avenue as more than a hundred angry tenants came to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s local office on Aug. 4. 

They demanded an end to evictions and foreclosures. They want Cuomo, whom the state attorney general’s report has shown to be a sexual predator, to resign. 

Cuomo’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program has been a fiasco. By the end of July only $1.2 million in ERAP money had been distributed out of the $2.7 billion in state and federal funds set aside for the program. 

That’s less than one dollar spent out of every two thousand dollars that was supposed to be used to pay back rent. Hundreds of thousands of tenants and homeowners are facing being thrown in the street once federal and state eviction bans end.

State Sen. Jabari Brisport chaired the rally. Brisport has spoken at rallies for reparations at the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan.

Brisport saluted the courage of Rep. Cori Bush, who staged a sit-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol that forced President Biden to extend the ban on evictions.

Many community organizations came, including Churches United For Fair Housing (CHFFH); the Cooper Square Committee; Crown Heights Tenant Union; the Flatbush Tenant Coalition; Good Old Lower East Side; Make the Road while Walking; New York Communities for Change and Southside United HDFC-Los Sures, of Williamsburg. Everybody’s sick of Cuomo!

The landlords and the entire ruling class want to strip all protections from tenants and homeowners. They don’t care if millions are made homeless.

Today’s rally shows that a fightback must and will be made. Housing is a human right.