From: mtoups@andrew.cmu.edu
Date: Mon Dec 10 2001 - 18:02:40 EST
Tuesday, 12/11, 7:30pm. Major League Baseball anti-sweat Exposition.
You guys probably got the email from Ken.
We will meet at UC turnaround at 7pm or so.
A good chance to get educated on the new campaign
and meet other activists from other schools and around
the city. We can all head back to campus for the
almost midnight breakfast afterwards.
Wednesday, 12/12, 7:00pm. PLANTA, McKenna room.
At 6:30pm will be the last actual pwr-usas meeting,
not a whole lot to do so we can touch base on what's
happening and then see the cool nicaragua presentation
by PLANTA at 7pm.
Saturday, 12/15, 4:00pm. Earth potluck, all are invited. Roselawn 8.
Kim's place. Everyone should attend and hang out one last time
before we all leave town.
below: the Students in Solidarity statement on the
recent living wage events.
--From leftists+@pitt.edu Sat Dec 8 16:29:22 2001 Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 12:37:55 -0500 From: Students in Solidarity <leftists+@pitt.edu> To: leftists+@pitt.edu Subject: DON'T MOURN, ORGANIZE!
Friends and comrades,
Dante placed traitors in the ninth and lowest pit of Hell, where Satan himself -- his corpulent form already engorged with the afflicted souls of the damned -- gnawed grotesquely on the head of Judas Iscariot. Was the Reverend James Simms (D - County Council District 10) contemplating Dante's Inferno when he voted against the Allegheny County Living Wage ordinance on Tuesday? Probably not; more likely, he was satisfied with the thirty pieces of silver recently deposited in his back pocket.
Simms -- who, during his election bid in 1999, signed his name to a pledge supporting comprehensive Living Wage legislation -- had originally been a co-sponsor of the ordinance. On Tuesday night he shamelessly postured as some kind of statesman, claiming -- in Republican fashion -- that the ordinance was an "unfunded mandate" for the non-profit human service agencies. And yet it was Simms himself who, as chair of the council's budget committee, had maneuvered to keep the $1 million Living Wage contingency fund -- which was in last year's budget and would have covered the costs of the first year of implementation -- out of this year's budget.
In case you're wondering, yes, we are indeed calling this practicing Baptist minister a brazen liar and a shameless sellout. The front page of today's Tribune-Review -- a right-wing paper hardly sympathetic to our cause -- has a story on how Simms sold his vote in order to garner Republican support for a bid to make himself County Council president. Most likely he will have the support of another Democrat, Brenda Frazier (D - County Council District 13), recently-elected, who entered a cowardly abstention on the Living Wage vote and who was a "Democrat for Roddey" back in 1999. It's not entirely clear right now whether Jay Jabbour (D - County Council District 9), the spineless soul who also entered an abstention, is also in on the deal. What is clear is that the Republicans -- Ron Francis, Tom Shumaker, Jan Rea, Vince Gastgeb, and Dave Fawcett -- a gaggle of corporate lawyers with a millionaire's wife thrown in for good measure, have accepted Simms as a suitable figleaf for their purposes of furthering the agenda of the rich in this city and region. The final vote on the Living Wage ordinance was 7 yes, 6 no, with 2 abstentions that effectively counted as no votes.
When the incoming Republican councilman Doug Price takes his seat in January, the way will be cleared for Simms to get himself elected council president with the support of the Republicans and Brenda Frazier, and possibly Jay Jabbour as well. So we have a case where people like Jabbour -- who represents the Mon Valley -- and Simms -- who represents nearly all of the low-income majority-African-American regions of the county -- have made common cause with the moneybags of Sewickley and Fox Chapel, all at the expense of their own low-income constituents. James Simms, like a latter-day Faust, has sold his soul to County Executive Jim Roddey and the Duquesne Club in exchange for the accolades of the Republican Party and the fulsome praise of the mainstream newspapers as a visionary and a statesman.
Does this entire sordid deal bother the conscience of this practicing Baptist minister, the pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church in Point Breeze, where he parks his Lexus every Sunday? Probably not; men of the cloth (we would say people of the cloth, but most of them ARE still men, after all) have always been a divided lot, eternally split between the tribunes of the people and the mouthpieces of the powerful.
"The pope," Dante also once wrote, "is still fornicating with the Emperor." So is Jim Simms. You can contact him at (412) 350-6570 or jsimms@county.allegheny.pa.us and let him know what you think of this.
Some of you may be moved to write in and say that we are being harsh. We plead guilty. But Students in Solidarity has always tried to live by Amilcar Cabral's maxim, "Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories," and we promise to tell you not just the truth about victories, but the truth about defeats and betrayals as well. That's the only way movements can grow and succeed.
All of that said, the Western Pennsylvania Living Wage Campaign HAS scored a number of victories. Roddey agreed to raise the wages of full-time direct employees of the county years ago, even without an ordinance, because of our pressure. Numerous social-service and non-profit agencies -- including some churches -- have raised the wages of their own workers. And to top it all off, we have a Living Wage ordinance in the City of Pittsburgh which is scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of January. However, that bill will likely come under attack by Mayor Tom Murphy and his lackeys, so we need to be vigilant.
Students in Solidarity will not let up in its own organizing efforts to build workers' power on this campus and in the city at large. That's why we'd like you to take note of -- and take part in -- the following activities, all of which will happen before the end of this semester.
IMMEDIATELY -- The latest issue of the University of Pittsburgh Living Wage Campaign's newsletter is on the web at
http://www.pitt.edu/~leftists/20011205newsletter.pdf
It's not linked from our website yet, but it will be shortly. Please download copies of it and print as many as you need to distribute in your student organization, to your students, or in your workplace. If you need hardcopies, let us know. If you have a campus mail address and would like to be added to our "snail-mail" list -- or if you know anybody, particularly anybody who works for the University and makes less than $9.12 an hour, who you think we should add to this list, please let us know.
The new issue of the newsletter has stories on our Nov. 14 action in the Cathedral Cafe (where we caught Vice-Chancellor Jerry Cochran on camera); a story on the Nov. 28 Living Wage Teach-In; some tips on organizing in a non-union workplace; and an item on sending a letter to Chancellor Mark Nordenberg.
And on that note, if you haven't yet sent a letter to Nordenberg, download one and sign it with your name, address, and past or present University affiliation, if any:
http://www.pitt.edu/~leftists/20011128nordenbergletter.pdf
IMMEDIATELY -- Workers at the Beverly nursing home in Oakmont have overwhelmingly chosen District 1199P/SEIU as the union to represent them. However, Beverly -- the worst labor-law violator in the country -- is trying to stall the union election. Nursing home workers are facing the usual issues of low pay and understaffing, and five workers at the Oakmont home have been injured on the job this month. Meanwhile, the company is holding mandatory anti-union meetings at the nursing home every Thursday and Friday. The corporate guy who Beverly has in charge of trying to stop this union is named -- and really, we are not making this up -- Jon Fink. Write to him and tell him to recognize the union: Jon Fink, Beverly Enterprises, 300 Penn Center Boulevard, Suite 500, Wilkins Township, PA 15145.
FRIDAY, December 7, 5:00 PM -- Students in Solidarity's Living Wage Committee will hold its final meeting of the semester to make some plans for next semester. This will be an important meeting because we will be attempting to map out a strategy for these politically uncertain times. We need as many people -- with as much of a variety of talents -- as possible for this complicated campaign. Meet us in Second Plate at Posvar Hall/Forbes Quad, and we'll move to another room from there.
MONDAY, December 10, 8:30 PM -- Yes, it's finals week, but Students in Solidarity will still be having its regular weekly business meeting in Room 540 of the William Pitt Union. It's the last of the semester, and we'll take stock of our work this semester (which has been pretty damn good, folks) and brainstorm a bit about what we have coming up for the spring.
WEDNESDAY, December 12, 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM -- The Pittsburgh Hilton hotel is taking advantage of the post-September 11 crisis in the hospitality industry to try to get concessions from their workers and their union, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 57. A defeat for the workers at this hotel -- which would involve cuts in wages, health care coverage, etc. -- would mean that hotels throughout the city would be emboldened to attack their workers, which would mean more poverty and low wages. HERE is calling a demonstration at the Hilton (in Gateway Center Downtown) and will provide music and beverages. It promises to be militant and fun. And it's important.
Organizers in the past have always been diligent, picked themselves up from the ground and dusted themselves off after a defeat. We should do that, too. I'm reminded of a story about the great folk singer Lee Hays (a member of the Weavers along with Pete Seeger), who was sitting with some friends shortly after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. They were all feeling pretty depressed, but he told them: "Don't despair; this, too, shall pass. I know, because I've had gall stones."
Don't mourn, organize!
John Lacny
for
Students in Solidarity leftists+@pitt.edu http://www.pitt.edu/~leftists
"Without struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will."
-- Frederick Douglass
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