Occupy WS calls for May Day general strike | May Day 2012 Occupy Wall Street stands in solidarity with the calls for a day without the 99%, a general strike and more!! On May Day, wherever you are, we are calling for: *No Work *No School *No Housework *No Shopping *No Banking TAKE THE STREETS!!!!!
Our most important strike:
Shut down San Onofre forever!
We launch the May Day strike early in San Diego Co. with our protest against dangerous SAN ONOFRE nuclear plant on April 29
The prospect of an Occupy general strike has been circulating for a while already. One of the several Facebook event pages devoted to it has more than 10,000 attendees. Occupy Los Angeles began calling for a May 1 general strike as early as last November, and Occupy Oakland joined at the end of January. Occupy Wall Street's Direct Action group tried to take a strategic approach to the idea; though many of its members had little hesitation about calling for it, they took steps to ensure there was consultation, and therefore buy-in, among some of those whose participation would be vital. Since the beginning of the year, they've been holding twice-weekly meetings' with as many as 150 people crowded into a church or a union-office basement' which included labor organizers, immigrants' rights groups, artists and anarchists.
Occupy Labor Solidarity
Read the LABOR DECLARATION
(1) Support local coalitions mobilizing for May Day 2012 and encourage the forming of local coalitions where plans for May Day actions do not yet exist
2) Encourage workers to take the day off on May Day to join marches in the street – if people can’t take off work, encourage them to join in actions organized in their area when they are not working; for workers who engage in wildcat strikes, provide organizing, legal support and solidarity in the event of retaliation.
3) Demand jobs for all at good union and living wages, full human and labor rights for immigrants and all working people, the right to work, the right to organize and true equality for every worker.
This is a call to join a network of workers, labor unions, community organizations faith-based congregations, and left political parties/organizations to provide support to local coalitions mobilizing on May Day 2012 for social and economic justice for all, for the right to work, for an end to mass deportations, and for an end to discrimination.
We have been inspired by the movements in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in the Middle East that overthrew corrupt autocratic regimes. We witnessed the resistance and mass strikes in Greece, Spain, Italy, Chile, Nigeria and other nations against austerity measures making working people pay for the global economic crisis caused by finance capital. That global resistance came home to the United States, the epicenter of the crisis,with the occupation of the Wisconsin state house to defend collective bargaining rights and the Occupy Wall Street movement. This has shifted the political debate from closing deficits with budget cuts to the social wage and lay-offs and reduced benefits for public employees, to taxing the wealthy and corporations to decrease unemployment and reduceincome inequality. A growing movement protesting the Citizens United ruling of corporate personhood is challenging the corporate takeover of democratic rights.
High unemployment, millions of bank foreclosures on homes and evictions, and growing wealth and income disparities, disproportionately severe for African Americans, Latinos and other communities of color, are depressing the standard of living for all working people. Indefinitely long detentions and deportations of immigrant workers are increasing, while private prison corporations are making enormous profits from massive detentions of immigrants and people of color.
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