Stop Business.

News Release
April, 2008

Montpelier, Vermont –The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their “unequivocal” support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq. The strike, being organized by the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), will seek to shutdown all west coast ports for a period of 24 hours on May 1st 2008. The Vermont AFL-CIO is the first state labor federation to publicly back the Longshoremen; other state federations are expected to follow. 

The resolution, among other things, calls the war in Iraq “immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary”, states that the vast majority of working Vermonters oppose the war, and contends that the war will only be brought to an end by “the direct actions of working people.” Many other Vermont labor unions and organizations, including the Vermont Workers’ Center, have also made official statements condemning the war.

The resolution also calls on working Vermonters to “discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008.”

“Workers in Vermont and all across this nation are against this war. We have already demanded that the government end it, but they have consistently failed to heed our words. Therefore working people are beginning to take concrete steps to make our resistance known. If the war does not immediately end we, the unions and working people of Vermont, will also be compelled to take appropriate action,” said David Van Deusen, District Vice President of the Washington-Lamoille-Orange County AFL-CIO.

Traven Leyshon, President of the Washington, Lamoille & Orange County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said, “Vermont labor has long called for an end to this war. The untold billions being spent on the war could instead be used to address our domestic needs. It is working people who pay the cost of the war – in some cases with our lives, but always with our sacrifices.”

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Vermont AFL-CIO Resolution
In Solidarity With Longshoremen’s
West Coast Strike Against War
April, 2008

Whereas the war in Iraq is immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary,

Whereas this unjust war is opposed by the great majority of Americans & Vermonters, the bulk of organized labor, and by thousands of enlisted military personal,

Whereas this unjust war has already resulted in over 4000 American dead (including a disproportionate number of brave Vermonters), and tens of thousands of service men & woman being wounded,

Whereas this unjust war has further resulted in untold number of Iraqi deaths, 

Whereas the Federal Government has not made any constructive moves towards the ending of this war and the full removal of US troops, and instead has taken the course of escalation and indefinite occupation,

Whereas the government of Vermont, and especially Governor Jim Douglas, have failed to find ways to bring Vermont National Guard troops home from Iraq,

Whereas this war will only be brought to an end by the direct actions of working people,

Therefore, Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO continues to stand in firm opposition to this war, and unequivocally supports the decision of the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) to shutdown the west coast ports for a period of 24 hours, beginning on May 1st, 2008, as a means of resistance.

Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO stands in full solidarity with the New York Metro National Association of Letter Carriers who have resolved to conduct two minute periods of silence on May 1st, 2008, at 1PM, 5PM & 9PM in protest of the war and in support of the Longshoremen.

Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO encourages all Vermont workers to stand in solidarity with the historic actions being taken by the Longshoremen & other labor unions to end this war.

Let It Be Further Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO calls for all Vermont workers to discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008 as a means of resistance against this unjust war.

Talking to some people who hadn’t seen footage from the LA police riot last mayday, so here’s a really cheesey video but you get the point. 

from the PSP website (palestinesolidarityproject.org)

This morning, Friday April 11, at 4 am Israeli security forces (Shabak) raided the home of Mousa Abu Maria and kidnapped him. Mousa co-founded the Palestine Solidarity Project and has been a supporter of non-violence for several years. Mousa was last in the custody of the Shabak in 1999 when he was held for more than 3 months and tortured after which he spent more than a week in the hospital. His current location is not known but we will send updates as soon as new information is available. Please consider making a donation to PSP to cover his anticipated legal costs.

Last night I saw Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad, a documentary on Oaxaca 2006-2007 which is produced by Jill Irene Friedberg who made Granito de Arenas about the history of Oaxaca teachers strikes, and This is What Democracy Looks Like about the WTO 1999. Friedberg spoke after the screening. More later. 

On the plane I read some of Angela Davis’ book Are Prisons Obsolete? Here’s some stuff I learned (some direct quotes, some summary): 

Stats. 

• More than two million people out of a world total of nine million now inhabit U.S. prisons, jails, youth facilities, and immigrant detention centers. In the late 1960s there were close to 200,000 people in prison in the United States. In three decades, ten times as many people are now locked away in cages The U.S. population in general is less than 5% of the world’s total, whereas more than 20% of the world’s combined prison population can be claimed by the United States. Short of major wars, mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social program of our time. 
• In 2002, there were 157,979 people incarcerated in the state of California alone, including approximately 20,000 people whom the state holds for immigration violations. 
• In 1990, a study of U.S. prison populations was published which concluded that 1 in 4 black men between the ages of 21-29 were in prison and jail and on parole or probation. Five years later, a second study revealed that this percentage had soared to almost 1 in 3. More than 1 in 10 Latino men of the same age were in jail or prison, or on probation or parole. The second study also revealed that the group experiencing the greatest increase was black women, whose imprisonment increased by 78%. 
• “In the late nineteenth century, coal companies wished to keep their skilled prison laborers for as long as they could, leading to denials of ’short time.’ Today, a slightly different economic incentive can lead to similar consequences. CCA [Corrections Corporation of America] is paid per prisoner. IF the supply dries up, or too many are released too early, their profits are affected… Longer prison terms mean greater profits, but the larger point is that the profit motive promotes the expansion of imprisonment.” 
• “Racism surrpetitiously defines social and economic structures in ways that are difficult to identify and thus are much more damaging. In some states, for example, more than one third of black men have been labeled felons. In Alabama and FLorida, once a felon, always a felon, which entails the loss of status as a rights-bearing citizen.”

• “The prison functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting undersirables those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs–it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.” 
• “Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison.” 
• “While public discourse has become more flexible, the emphasis is almost inevitably on generating the changes that will produce a better prison system…As important as some reforms may be–the elimination of sexual abuse and medical neglect in women’s prison, for example–frameworks that rely exclusively on reforms help to produce the stultifying idea that nothing lies beyond the prison.”
• The penitentiary arose in late 18th century America, and was then considered to be a more humanitarian system of punishment. “In many ways the penitentiary was a vast improvement over the many forms of capital and corporal punishment inherited form the English. However, the contention that prisoners would refashion themselves if only given the opportunity to reflect and labor in solitude an silence disregarded the impact of authoritarian regimes of living and work.”
• “There are aspects of our history that we need to interrogate and rethink, the recognition of which may help us to adopt more complicated, critical postures toward the present and the future.” 
• “There is even more compelling evidence about the damage wrought by the expansion of the prison system in the schools located in poor communities of color that replicate the structures and regimes of the prison. When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.” 
• “In the nineteenth century, antislavery activists insisted that as long as slavery continued, the future of democracy was bleak indeed. In the twenty-first century, antiprison activists insist that a fundamental requirement for the revitalization of democracy is the long-overdue abolition of the prison system.”

Everyone’s probably already seen this stuff, but whatever.