Via Boston General Membership Branch: 7/20 9 AM, PACK THE COURT, DONATE!

Liverpool IWW

Support IWW member Jason, facing Trial on phony charges. Jason goes on Trial Monday July 20, starting at 9 am, at 4040 Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford, a short walk from the Wellington Orange Line MBTA Station. Please help pack the court! The bogus charges (for allegedly assaulting a cop), date from a November 2013 police attack on an IWW picket at Cambridge’s Insomnia Cookies, where workers joined the IWW and went on strike over denial of breaks and poverty pay.* Twenty months after being attacked by the cops, Jason finally gets his day in court July 20.

Also July 20 at 9 am, former Insomnia Cookies striker Jonathan faces a hearing on his own trumped-up charges, at Suffolk Superior Court, at Three Pemberton Square Boston. Jonathan recently spent 3 months in jail despite the police having absolutely no evidence that he was involved in alleged illegal activity by roommates…

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CALLOUT: MR. BIELA, START THE REPAIRS!

Join Bristol Solidarity Network’s fight against a slum landlord and for decent housing.

Mr Ernie Biela, of 58 ETHELBERT ROAD, MARGATE, KENT, CT9 1SB is a slum landlord intent on maximum profit and minimum responsibility. A family living in one of his properties in Easton, Bristol have repeatedly asked him for much needed repairs to their home. After 8 years of ignoring his tenant’s requests for a livable home, Mr. Biela recently tried to evict them rather than do the right thing and do the repairs. He has arrogantly flouted the law and disregarded council improvement notices served on him. In phone calls to the tenants he claims to understand what life is like for immigrants and low income families. He is very quick to chase rent, claiming he will use it for repairs, but not as good at fixing the house. He agrees to send builders round to carry out work but instead sends an eviction notice which we found to be invalid. The family has suffered a great deal of stress and anxiety facing the threat of being made homeless.

The house is in an appalling state of disrepair, with a seriously leaky roof, huge cracks in walls and ceilings, broken doors, rotting window frames and intolerable mould, cold and damp. According to the council there is a class 1 hazard of mould. Four family members, including three children, have developed asthma as a result of these conditions they have been forced to live in by the landlord’s neglect.

We will not allow this absentee landlord to bully and threaten this family into keeping quiet about the state of their home. Neither will we let Mr Biela ignore his responsibility to provide a decent home and safe environment for this family.

It’s time to put the pressure on. Please take some time to support this family and make a stand against this bad landlord.

From Tuesday 21st July we are calling for an ongoing communications blockade and constant phone and email reminders for Mr. Biela.
Call and email this slum landlord to add your voice to the calls to stop the stalling and start the repairs. For calls from outside the UK add 0044 instead of the first zero of the phone numbers:

Mr Ernie Biela: Tel. 07917 570624 Email ernie.biela1@btopenworld.com

Mr Biela is the registered director and sole shareholder of 5 companies:

LVG Canterbury Ltd Tel. 01227 714715
Westbere Garage / Canterbury Recovery Services Ltd Tel. 01227 712381
Hedgend Motors Ltd
Mot 4 U Ltd
1 Stop Property Services Uk Ltd

All of these companies are registered here:

6-7 Cecil Square, Margate, Kent, CT9 1BD
Tel. 01843 280004

Striving For Revolution, Let’s Bring The Bastards Down

the void

If you take a step back for a while then the view is grotesque.  Next week a Government led by people born into vast wealth will introduce new laws that will plunge many of the UK’s poorest children into desperate poverty and imminent risk of homelessness.  Other legislation will mean that those who are assessed as currently too sick to work, but might have the possibility of working in the future, will now be abandoned to survive on just a few pounds a day.  Not only that, but they will be forced to cope with endless Jobcentre harassment intended to bully them into constantly looking for and applying for jobs that even the Jobcentre themselves admit they are not well enough to do.  And this is being called help.

Sick and disabled people in this group can even be sent on workfare, usually for a so-called charity.  If they fail…

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Four Deaths Since The Start of June

Calais Migrant Solidarity

Four people have died trying to cross the border into the UK in the last month. All of them appear to be a direct result of attempts to cross.

The most recent happened yesterday, on the 7th July, when a body was found in the Channel Tunnel, during an inspection of a freight shuttle. At the moment, it is believed he died from head injuries.

On the night of the 29th June Zebiba a 23 year old women from Eritrea was found dead on the side of the A16 between Calais and Marck. She had been staying the in the Women’s House in Jules Ferry.

On the 26th of June, GetenetLegeseYacob, a 32 year old man from Ethiopia was killed attempting to board a shuttle service in the Eurotunnel.

1st June at 4am, a man was hit by a car on the A16 and was killed.

Unlike…

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Save SCBU and Kingfisher at DCH Demo at Vespasian house, Dorchester 15th July .

If if you can

Wessex Solidarity

Family-friendly demo outside meeting of Clinical Commissioning Group, 15th July at 14:00 Vespasian House Barrack Road, DT1 1TG Dorchester, Dorset, to save paediatric services at Dorset County Hospital. Get there if you can.

Facebook event

If you can’t Email CCG   Phone: 01305 368900

Working class kids’ lives matter!

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Support Steven Bennett and Linus Soinjoki

Cautiously pessimistic

It’s a measure of how shockingly under-reported the Irish water charges revolt is that I’ve only just learned of the imprisonment of Steven Bennett, who’s been held in prison since May for protesting against the installation of water meters. In his own words:

“To my Friends, Comrades and to the Irish Water movement

I send this message of solidarity from my cell in Cloverhill prison, where i have been since May 20th.

The Irish state prevents me from my right to protest. While the high court has granted me restrictive bail, it would be at the cost of surrendering my Fundamental, Political and Civil rights. I can not accept this as it would kill my revolutionary spirit, so i am forced to stay here in prison until i can appeal the bail, or until my hearing at the Criminal Court of Justice on the 22nd of July in Dublin City.

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Greece IWW: ‘In any case NO! We do not stop, We continue.’

The struggle for human emancipation, is a struggle against capitalism and every institution or policy assignment and split representation.The recent NO should not be left as a referendum victory of the “Greeks”, but to mark the re-start of workers to continue and strengthen self-organization. The class struggle is the basic and sufficient condition not only to stop the capitalist attacks, but also the cohesive element that allows us to recall, the basic values of our class such as solidarity, direct action and companionship. In this context, on the occasion of 110 years since the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) we invite you to the event discussion: “The working class and the employer class have nothing in common!” Timeliness of revolutionary syndicalism on July 18th, 8pm at Eutopia Workshop, Leonidou 62 & Thermopylae, Kerameikos. Not to sigh for the history. But to learn from the past in order to organize the present, to emancipate the future.

8/7/2015
Industrial Workers of the Word (IWW) -Greece, Regional Organizing Commitee (GreROC) Contact

Some post budget reflections…

IWW at Tolpuddle festival 17th-19th July 2015

Dorset GMB will be responsible for the IWW stall at the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival this year, we will also be supporting the Radical Workers’ Bloc on Sunday’s march. Why not stop by for a chat?

I’ve got a wage for you if you were born in the 80s: some scattered thoughts on the new “living wage” from a low-waged worker

Cautiously pessimistic

These notes aren’t really about the budget as a whole, so I’m sure I’m missing lots of important stuff about the changes to the benefits system, more an attempt to think through some of the implications of the new “living wage” for over-25s.

I think the language being used is important here. The term living wage hasn’t been chosen by accident: the real living wage (£9.15 an hour in London, £7.85 outside it) has been a key demand of some determined workers’ struggles recently, at a time when open struggles are rare, and the redefinition of the living wage as a government-sponsored minimum wage at a lower rate seems likely to make things harder for current and future living wage campaigns: how can you demand the living wage when you’re already being paid it?

The fate of the words “living wage” is also a useful example for those who hold…

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