IWW International Solidarity Commission in solidarity with the CGT-Barcelona and Laura Gómez

May 1st in the Twin Cities
By Elijah Marks - The Organizer May 16, 2012

The celebration of International Workers’ Day in the Twin Cities brought together many groups organizing around various struggles. The resurgent Occupy movement has injected new energy into the holiday.

Local organizing coalesced in an Occupy May 1st Twin Cities group, planning for a day of action around ‘no work, no school’ and a ‘day without the 99%’ For months leading up to the action, they met weekly at the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)’s office to coordinate with other groups, plan events for the day, and make and spread posters and leaflets.

The mutual aid ethos of the wider Occupy movement was demonstrated through Occuprint, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, who helped with May 1st publicity in the Twin Cities—and other cities across the country—by distributing hundreds of high-quality, large-format posters and newspapers. Additionally, local designers created their own innovative designs, such as the following poster:

Read More at  http://www.iww.org/en/content/may-1st-twin-cities

We are meeting this Thursday at the Gypsy Coffee House, @6pm

Can Labor Strike Back?

America’s unions must find a way to circumvent restrictive federal laws.

BY Bhaskar Sunkara

On May Day, tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets. Invoking labor’s militant past, Occupiers in many cities called it a “general strike.” But few have asked why even the traditional strike has become almost an anachronism for America’s labor movement. In 1974, there were 424 major work stoppages, each involving at least 1,000 workers. By 2009, only five such stoppages occurred.

Read More At.. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13194/can_labor_strike_back1/

There will be a meeting tomorrow night at the Gypsy Coffee House At 6pm

We will be meeting thursday at 6pm, at the gypsy coffee house

IWW Shops Hold May Day Rally

By John Reimann

The boss was sweating bullets. The IWW was in the house, his workers were about to stop work for May Day, and he wasn’t happy about it at all. But there was nothing he could do about it since all his workers were IWW members and they support the union. This was at Buy Back recycling in Berkeley, which functions under an IWW contract as does Curbside Pickups, the work place next door, whose workers were also about to stop work for May Day, 2012.

IWW organizers and union members on the job had been organizing a stop-work rally for the previous two weeks and here it was.

To read more, click here
http://www.iww.org/en/content/iww-shops-hold-may-day-rally

Tomorrow night at the Gypsy @6pm

Some Objections To Occupy May 1st

By Juan Conatz - April 23, 2012

By now you’ve probably heard about how in various cities Occupy has called for a general strike on May 1. The call seemed to originate from a number of different circles, although the most influential circle seems to have been a group of people involved in several anarchist organizations and/or the IWW. Their influence can be seen in how widely the call was circulated, in the websites set up for Occupy May 1st, and in some of the decent looking posters and images they put out.

Regardless of the source of the call, it has been taken up in a variety of ways by Occupy groups in New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, Minneapolis, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Long Beach, Detroit, and Oklahoma City, among other places. The media has been reporting on it and it’s probably fair to say that this could be the biggest May Day since the immigration protests of 2006.

Read More at
http://www.iww.org/en/history/library/Conatz/May1