Monday, June 6, 2011

NO to Privatization! Jobs and Justice NOW!

Memphis, TN:

TOMORROW AT 9:00AM! Stand with the workers of AFSCME 1733 as they face the threat of privatization--this is about jobs, dignity, human rights and the local that Dr. King came to Memphis and died for in 1968. There will be a picket beginning at 9:00am at City Hall, 125 N. Main.

TOMORROW AT 3:00PM! Rally to stop our city council from privatizing sanitation, slashing jobs and hours, and repealing the living wage ordinance.

TOMORROW AT 3:30PM! Tell the city council what your priorities are, and that it is inexcusable to make workers and the poor pay for the crises of capitalism!

Friday, May 20, 2011

NO to FBI Repression! END the Third Red Scare!

On May 18, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression released documents the FBI inadvertently left behind at a home during the coordinated raids on peace and international solidarity activists last September.

Among the documents were interrogation questions, which read like part of a Hollywood script parodying the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings:

- Have you ever taken steps to overthrow the United States government?
- Do you own a gun? For what?
- What is your personal view of the FARC?
- When you visited Israel, did you lie to Israelis [sic] authorities about the purpose of your trip?
- What do you think of terrorist groups? Do you support them?
- Do you have a "red" name? What is the purpose of a red name?

These absurd, intrusive questions, along with dozens of questions about the Freedom Road Socialist Organization affiliated with Fight Back! News*—including questions about whether they take notes at meetings, where their members are located, content discussed at meetings, whether they operate front groups, etc.—make it clear that the FBI is cracking down on organized dissent; they are threatened by any ideas that expose the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of U.S. foreign policy.

The day before the planned release of these documents, the FBI and LA Sheriff's Department raided the home of veteran Chicano activist Carlos Montes due to his involvement with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression and FRSO/FB.

Coincidentally, the Memphis International Solidarity Committee is a committee formed from a group of concerned citizens who met in response to an incident of harassment and intimidation from law enforcement. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Shelby County Sheriff's Department and the Memphis Police Department's Tactical Squad disrupted socialists and activists who came together to sign FOIA requests inside the offices of the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center on a national day of action against the coordinated FBI raids. The FBI has claimed that they heard about the meeting (for which a press release was issued) through the Tennessee Fusion Center.

MISC stands in solidarity with FRSO/FB and all revolutionary groups that exercise their right and responsibility to engage in the struggle to develop policies and strategies to end the oppression of poor and working people at home and around the world.

Demonstrating the Obama administration's intensification of the disdain for civil liberties shown by the Bush presidency, the FBI and local law enforcement is constantly being exposed for raiding anarchist collectives, spying on pro-peace religious groups such as the Society of Friends or Catholic Workers, and infiltrating environmentalist or animal rights organizations. The attacks on principled dissent must end now! We STRONGLY condemn the FBI's actions, which amount to a Third Red Scare.

Download the recently released FBI documents left at an activist's home during the September raids...

More information about the document release from the Electronic Intifada...

* Two groups use the name Freedom Road Socialist Organization: Freedom Road Socialist Organization/OrganizaciĆ³n Socialista del Camino para la Libertad and FRSO affiliated with Fight Back! News.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

April 7, 8 & 9: The Cost of War at Home and Abroad


April 7, 2011 -
Film Screening: Budrus, hosted by U of M's Progressive Student Alliance
7:00–10:00pm
Callicott auditorium at Memphis College of Art
1930 Poplar Avenue

from the facebook event page:
Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. Budrus shines a light on people who choose nonviolence to confront a threat. The movie is directed by award-winning filmmaker Julia Bacha (co-writer and editor of Control Room and co-director Encounter Point), and produced by Bacha, Palestinian journalist Rula Salameh, and filmmaker and human rights advocate Ronit Avni (formerly of WITNESS, Director of Encounter Point).

April 8, 2011 -
Teach-In: The Cost of War at Home and Abroad, hosted by MISC
6:00–9:00pm
University of Memphis Journalism Auditorium
3720 Alumni St. (off Patterson, U of M Main Campus)

from the facebook event page:
MISC is hosting a teach-in organized around the causes and effects of western imperialism. An educational evening full of video, speakers, and small group discussions. Guest speakers will include Huffington Post contributor Omar Baddar, and activists involved in the uprisings in Bahrain and Yemen. Admission is free, and all are welcome to attend.

April 9, 2011 -
Funeral March to Defund the Wars and Refund Our Communities, hosted by the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center with MISC, the PSA, and other community groups
noon
National Civil Rights Museum
450 Mulberry

from the facebook event page:
April 9 marks eight years since the fall of Baghdad and a national day of action has been called to take to the streets in opposition to war at home and abroad. Join us in Memphis as thousands across the country call for an end to war and redirection of our time and resources towards building, not destroying. We will have a rally at the National Civil Rights Museum, followed by a funeral march to the river where we will honor all those who have died by sending a casket down the Mississippi.

Co-Sponsored by the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, Progressive Student Alliance at the University of Memphis, Memphis International Solidarity Committee, First Congregational Church, Pax Christi Memphis, Veterans for Peace Memphis, Memphis School of Servant Leadership and a broad coalition of community, faith, and labor groups.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

HOME SWEET HOMELESS



Please join the Mid South Peace & Justice Center, Radical Arts Memphis, the Center for Transforming Communities and MISC on Saturday, April 2 for an educational forum on homelessness.

Discussions will include an analysis of the systemic nature of homelessness and how it is manufactured and reinforced through neoliberal urban policies. A wide range of voices will explore problems surrounding affordable housing, restrictive ordinances, veterans' issues, mental illness and addiction, and the ten-year-plan to end homelessness to be proposed to the city council on April 19 that offers a housing-first approach to ending homelessness. There will also be a panel discussion with our current or formerly homeless brothers and sisters as well as spoken word and performance pieces.

Education is essential to dispel dangerous myths about homelessness, especially the pervasive myth that homelessness is a natural and necessary condition of humanity. While global capitalism ensures that there will always be segments of the population strategically singled out for the harshest segregation from society, we can still combat its effects here at home through appeals to reality--particularly the reality that homelessness exists only because we allow it to exist.

Home Sweet Homeless
April 2, 1:00-3:30pm
@ Center for Transforming Communities
258 N. Merton

RSVP on the facebook event page: Home Sweet Homeless

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Memphis Stands Against Bombing Libya

Demonstrators stood on the corner of Poplar and Highland in protest of United States' military intervention in Libya.

People speak out: