Triangle Unity May Day Coalition and People’s Assembly: All Out for May Day, International Workers Day – May 1, 2017
DEFEND IMMIGRANT, UNDOCUMENTED, BLACK, MUSLIM & ALL WORKERS!
SCHEDULE OF ACTIONS:
1 de MAYO: ¡Huelga y Resistencia! Strike & Resist! – Raleigh
Reunión/Rally: 10am Moore Square Park, 201 S. Blount St., Raleigh
Marcha/March: 12pm to General Assembly, 16 W. Jones St.
Reunión/Rally: 1pm, Halifax Mall behind General Assembly, Raleigh
Lunch: 1:30pm at NCAE building (700 S Salisbury St, Raleigh)
Forum on Islamphobia: 2pm at Ar-Razzaq Mosque, 1009 W Chapel Hill St, Durham (lunch provided) — event details here
May Day: Strike! No Work, No School – Durham
Reunión/Rally: 5pm, 602 East Main Street, Durham
Reunión/Rally: 6pm, Durham County Jail, 219 S Mangum, Durham
Reunión/Rally: 7pm City Hall during Council meeting, 101 City Hall Plaza, Durham
We call on all people of conscience, people who love their families and their communities, people who believe that every worker deserves dignity and respect:
Mass Action & Resistance on May Day, International Workers Day!
President Trump’s regime has shown in its first 100 days what they are all about: attacks on working people’s healthcare, raids and deportations, and the Muslim ban. In the first 100 days of 2017 we’ve seen increased attacks on women, LGBTQ people, workers, Muslims, Black and Latinx people.
WE STRIKE FOR:
- An end raids and deportations! Stop all check-points!
- ICE out of everywhere – Sanctuary cities, schools, neighborhoods!
- An end to racist police murders and brutality – Police out of our neighborhoods and schools! End excessive funding for police and prisons! Police accountability and community oversight!
- $15/hr, a union and collective bargaining rights for all workers
- An end to Islamophobia and the racist travel ban
- Independent People’s Investigation into the Durham Co. jail.
- An end to wars abroad! Cut funding for Pentagon and NATO to fund the people’s needs!
- Full repeal of House Bill 2 – No compromise with hate! No to Homophobia and transphobia
- Fully funded public jobs program and all public services! NO budget cuts!
- An end to rape culture & violence against women and LGBTQ people
- Environments free from all pollutants such as dumpsites, hog farms and destructive pipelines.
- Free and appropriate healthcare including reproductive and mental healthcare for all.
- Fully funded public schools including full-time teacher assistants, nurses and social workers as well as specialized art, music, world language and P.E. educators
- An end to the school to prison pipeline and a funded implementation of restorative discipline practices
- The right to build political & people’s power in the streets and at the ballot box
We invite others to join this call!
We call on our community to organize resistance in your workplace, school, or neighborhood and encourage a multitude of actions! In these 100 days we’ve also seen massive resistance – from the 3.5 million strong Women’s March in January to the powerful Day Without an Immigrant/Un Dia Sin Inmigrante — and now May Day can be the next day of resistance – both in the US and around the world!
A GLOBAL STRIKE?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us, the triple evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. We must fight them all at once on a global basis. It is no longer possible for the workers and the oppressed to conduct our struggles on a solely local basis. The changes in global capitalism have made it both necessary and far more possible for the struggle to be waged on a globally coordinated scale.
Massive cuts to State and Federal budgets loom on the horizon, gutting vital social service programs, while increasing the tax burden of working people to increase Pentagon and military spending. Our transgender kindred face legal discrimination in their workplaces and communities while ICE raids terrorize immigrant families. The Trump administration continues to promote the devastating Keystone XL, Dakota Access and Atlantic Coast pipelines, one of which cuts through our own state, while also threatening to totally gut the EPA and its environmental protections. Sexual violence continues to happen at epidemic levels in the U.S., and women and people who are Black, Latinx, indigenous, queer, and transgender are at highest risk.
Take Action: Walk-ins, walk-out’s, disrupt business as usual, hold teach-ins, drop banners, wear red – join with others through affinity groups and organize actions that uplift the dignity of working people and make demands for justice and equity.
We invite all working people, students, immigrants, Muslims, mothers, trans and queer workers to unite in action on May Day!
We pledge to defend any worker who takes action on May Day
Triangle Unity May Day Coalition pledges to defend any worker or student who faces reprisals for taking action on May Day. Through boycott, picket lines, and legal defense, we will defend those face consequences when they strike, call in sick, or attend a political activity on May Day. We support the calls for unity and action between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Fight for $15. With them, we call for a mass strike, no matter if you are in unions, have a job or, like so many workers, are forced to take low-wage, part-time or temporary jobs. Students and youths all over the world are walking out of schools. In united action we have the power to bring much of society and the economy to a halt.
ORGANIZE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLIES- BUILD FOR MAY DAY
Assemblies can take many forms, including people’s and workers’ assemblies, women’s assemblies, LGBTQ assemblies, neighborhood assemblies, student and youth assemblies, etc. Assemblies could bring in tens of thousands to identify and support local demands, as well as uplift the demands of workers and marginalized communities under attack from the Trump regime.
We must go deeper into our workplaces, communities and schools to organize and galvanize new people to join the Triangle People’s Assembly and the mass action on May Day.
DEFEND IMMIGRANT, BLACK, AND MUSLIM WORKERS
In order to win all our demands, we must unify under the old labor slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all!”
- In the past 100 days, nearly 700 immigrants were detained in ICE raids, including many in the Triangle and 8 anti-immigrant bills were introduced to N.C. General Assembly.
- Muslims from 7 countries have been banned from entering the country, even with a green card – but mass struggle helped turn this around.
- In Durham, the police and highway patrol have shot and killed three young Black men since the election of Trump in November – Frank Clark, Kenneth Bailey Jr., and Willard Scott Jr.
- In recent weeks, two 17 year-olds have been found dead in jail cells, one Black young woman in Durham,Uniece Fennel, and the other a Latino teenager in Raleigh, Jose Humberto Lara-Pineda.
- The extremely unqualified Betsy DeVos is confirmed as Secretary of Education with the promise to further school choice which, in NC, has promoted the divestment, privatization and resegregation of our schools.
We build for May Day by rallying to the political and physical defense of those who are the first targets of Trump: those whose existences are criminalized, who capitalism considered disposable or easy fodder for prison slave labor.
We will raise up and center the movements for Black Lives Matter, immigrants and Muslims, Latinx and Indigenous rights, which Standing Rock represents, and all the struggles of the most oppressed, including women, LGBTQ communities and people with disabilities.
The right-wing wants people to think that centering the fight against racism, sexism and LGBTQ oppression is “identity politics.” This mistake ruptures the necessary solidarity between the workers and oppressed people.
The war against Black and Brown America has been going on for a long time. Trump has only unmasked it. We pledge to defend our sisters, brothers and kindred against attacks from the state, white-supremacists and neo-fascists.
We welcome mass protests against Trump, racism and sexism, and encourage mass action to support workers, immigrants, Muslims, women, queer and trans folks. These mass protests are a sign that millions are becoming woke. We support building an independent resistance led by workers and the oppressed of the planet. We commit to building together with all independent progressive forces to face down global capitalism and imperialism and rid the world of poverty, hate, and oppression once and for all.
On to the May Day Global Strike! Shut It Down! Join Us!