Buffalo Class Action Participates in Class Struggle Anarchist Conference

In Detroit, on October 24-25, the organized North American anarchist movement met at the 2009 Class Struggle Anarchist Conference. The second annual conference brought together 9 different anarchist organizations that work to engage within mass movements to help provide a revolutionary anarchist perspective. In part, the conference was a space for these organizations to talk about the possibilities of a future unified anarchist organization throughout North America that could help to broaden a struggle against capitalism and for a world where every day people control the resources in their community and workers control their workplaces.

Members from Buffalo’s local anarchist-communist organization, Buffalo Class Action, participated in the conversations. They attended with an interest in learning from some of the longer-lasting anarchist organizations, their successes and challenges. These local anarchists also went with the purpose of spreading the idea of City Wide Tenants’ Unions beyond their efforts to organize such a group here in Buffalo.

At the conference they met members of many other anarchist organizations. Those organizations involved in planning the conference were: Solidarity and Defense (Michigan), Common Action (Pacific Northwest), Common Cause (Ontario), Four Star Anarchist Organization (Chicago), Miami Autonomy and Solidarity, Michigan-Minnesota Group, Northeast Federation of Anarchist Communists, and the Worker Solidarity Alliance.

There were many discussions about the future of movements of marginalized peoples in North America, and how anarchists can constructively work within those movements to help develop genuine, long-term peoples’ power. Some of the specific workshops were: Anarchists in the Struggle for Housing Justice, Worker Center Movements, Building Anarchist Groups, Intersectional Class Struggle Anarchism, Anarchists & the Workplace, Queer Anarchism, Internal Education, and the questions of Re-grouping the North American anarchist movement.

After the conference, it has become clear that there are now great ties growing between these different organizations and their efforts. There was great hope at the conference that this type of gathering can really help to bring together the organized, class struggle-oriented anarchist movement to spread their ideas, increase the influence of anarchist ideas within North American social movements, and develop a solid alternative to the regular injustices poor and marginalized people face in today’s world.

Buffalo Indymedia Center Has Returned!

With hopes of rebuilding a community-based, social justice media outlet in Buffalo a public forum for the rebirth of Buffalo Indymedia was recently organized. A panel discussion with presenters from Rochester Indymedia, a former Bay Area Indymedia editor, and Buffalo activists began a powerful conversation about the possibilities and challenges that lie in the road ahead for local media activists.

Hannah Dobbz, from Pittsburgh, spoke about her involvement in the Bay Area Indymedia newspaper Fault Lines and the importance it had in garnering attention to local activist efforts. Andy Dillon and Ted Forsyth from Rochester Indymedia shared their experiences with Indy TV and a their work on distributing a print version of much of their website content. Local activists Joe Schmidbauer and Colin O'Malley talked of their inspiration to re-build local Indymedia in a way that would challenge the official story of those in power and help to build the voice of everyday people and their movements.

In coming years, Buffalo Indymedia hopes to build that voice in the region and report those stories that effect people's lives in huge ways that are often left unreported by local and national corporate media outlets. There was some discussion about the possibilities of not only maintaining the website, but also working on radio, print, and film efforts for Buffalo IMC. If you'd like to get involved in Buffalo IMC, you can register and begin writing and commenting on stories immediately on this site. To get further involved, or to inform the organizing group of an important story, please contact them at BuffaloIMC@gmail.com

Tenants' Union: Fight your landlord and win

Decent housing should be an absolute right for all people. But, we continue to live in a world that homelessness, evictions of the poor, and degrading housing conditions are all too common. At the same time, we see abandoned housing left to rot. This should convince us that our housing problems come not from a lack of resources, but from a poor distribution of those resources. As is the problem with so many facets of our lives, housing is organized for private profit and not for people’s common needs. The only way for us to change these problems is to organize together and demand it. But, who do we organize and how? And, who is the enemy?

Who is the landlord?

For most working class people, owning our home isn’t a possibility and we’re often forced into a housing market with large landlords. Just as often, the tenants and the landlords have conflicting sets of interests. While we’re simply trying to hold onto a basic necessity of life, landlords hope to gain a profit from us. Sadly, the interests of the landlords are usually dominant, thanks to a system of legal and government support rarely enjoyed by tenants.

Supposedly, we have a choice. We can live wherever we’d like – if we can afford it. So the “choice” offered to those of us that live in or near poverty is between a variety of bad housing situations and homelessness. This is obviously not a choice, but a threat. Where can you go to leave an unfair housing market? Our life experiences repeatedly tell us: “You will take whatever horrible standards your income can afford, or you will have nothing.”

Not all working class people are renters and many in poor cities, have managed to buy their own home. While at times, we may rent out a room or floor of our house, we generally have more in common with tenants than the large landlords. Homeowners are very often tenants themselves of the largest of landlords – the banks. Even if the mortgage has been paid, working class homeowners occupy a very small and isolated part of the housing market, where much larger landlords have real control. These homeowners may be in a more comfortable immediate position. But, they’re also in a very precarious situation and could easily lose their home in any number of ways.

On the other hand large landlords own apartment buildings or dozens of houses throughout the city. They use our basic need for housing as a tool to create profits, often massive, for themselves. Their interest is to make the greatest possible profit for themselves. That means keeping repairs to a minimum and charging as much rent as they believe they can.

Having little power individually, renters are often on the losing end of this conflict. Homelessness, evictions, and poor living standards are clear signs of our current weak position.

Tenant Power

The beauty of our situation, is that collectively we have far greater power than our landlords. Our rent is the source of their wealth. For them to continue their life of luxury without work they need us to continue living in their apartments, continue paying their rent, and keep accepting the living conditions that they choose for us. Our landlords are absolutely reliant upon us. They rely on the hope that we will never understand our true strength.

The power of the working class has the same limits in the struggle for decent and affordable housing as it does in the workplace – it’s collective. When we struggle alone in isolation the landlord has nearly absolute power. Our power is only real power when we get together with others in similar situations and organize for justice.

Tenants Union

Just as we would organize in our workplace against exploitative bosses, we propose the organization of a Citywide Tenants’ Union to organize our power to assert that decent, affordable housing is a right for all people. A City Wide Tenants’ Union should commit itself to organize all tenants of the large landlords in our city to aggressively demand our necessary rights to good quality housing. The tools of a serious Tenants’ Union are incredibly powerful:

Public Pressure: Through rallies, media events, and public meetings we can hurt the image of our landlords. A bad public image can hurt their ability to find new renters and force public demand for investigations of the conditions in their properties.
Eviction Blockades: In the case that any of the members of the tenants’ union are being unjustly evicted or evicted in retaliation for their organizing efforts, other members of the union should organize a blockade of that member’s house or apartment. With the tenants’ union, the normally disempowering experience of being evicted becomes a show of the power of solidarity. The act that we usually suffer in isolation becomes a moment of true community as serious attention is brought to the eviction.
Direct Action: In the case that our organized public pressure doesn’t solve the problems that we are having with our landlords, we could target them more aggressively by actively disrupting their ability to continue business. Occupation of company offices and disrupting the visits of new tenants are a couple of possibilities that may force our landlords to listen our demands.
Rent Strike: The greatest source of our power with landlords is actually one of the easiest for us to use. A collective refusal to pay rent until demands are met should bring even the most abusive landlords to the table. If an individual were to refuse to pay rent, the landlord would have an easy time fighting back. But when all of their tenants refuse to pay rent, they quickly find themselves outmatched.
Solidarity: An injury to one is an injury to all. When we begin to fight our landlords, we have to know that we aren’t doing so alone, and this is the purpose of our union. Having a Tenant Union would mean that none of us struggle in isolation. Just because one group of tenants has won a fight against their landlord doesn’t mean that they are no longer part of the struggle. They will provide resources, experience, and volunteers to the effort of organizing other renters throughout the city.

Landlords Need Us, We Don’t Need Them

In the struggle against our landlords, there is one important realization. Our landlords don’t do anything for us that we aren’t capable of doing for ourselves. We are more than capable of organizing ourselves to make repairs and maintain the buildings where we live. There are cooperative housing associations throughout the world that show us proof of our ability to live without landlords. So, if we can organize ourselves to maintain our housing needs, what do landlords do? That is exactly the point. Landlords exist purely to take rent from us.

As we develop true power as renters, we will realize that the real battle is for a system of housing that recognizes our right to decent, affordable place to live no matter what. This means getting rid of a world of for-profit housing. No one should exploit a system of vulgar inequality to create massive profits from our need to survive. We know that these inequalities will only exist as long as we permit them. So let’s begin the struggle for just housing today!

Poverty: The Struggle for Justice

As the working class and unemployed, we are the victims of theft everyday. We continually live on the edge of survival, hoping that we may someday, through hard work and perseverance, achieve the simple dignity of security. At the same time, a few elites enjoy a life of luxury without worry for themselves or their children. It’s a vulgar arrangement that we all know to be unjust in which they gain their wealth. We spend precious hours of our lives working to produce all of the wealth of the world only to see it stolen with a pitiful portion returned to us in the form of wages. Poverty forced on the unemployed and homeless is needed by those in power to threaten working people into accepting this terrible deal.

This bleak state isn’t one that we have to endure forever. The incredible truth is that those of us that are the victims of this theft have much greater power than the thieves, if only we’d learn how to use it. Let’s begin by better understanding the tools of the elite so that we can build our power to create genuine change - our only real hope for a life that is more than meager survival.

The Great Theft

Many of us know the system that allows the rich to rob the poor – its capitalism! Capitalism is the foolish system that puts profit before people and promotes the ridiculous belief that if we compete against one another, it will create the greatest outcome for us all. Under this system, just a few people control massive amounts of property and wealth that make up our economy. These people own the factories, hotels, banks, shopping malls, etc. where we work. Unfortunately for them, simply owning a workplace doesn’t produce any wealth. People are needed to labor in that workplace. This group, the working class, is in a desperate situation- they have nothing but their labor to sell. Property owners use this desperation to make their money; and in order to survive, the worker will produce wealth for their new boss instead of themselves. As we work, we can see the real wealth we create. Service workers will put huge stacks of money into a register. Factory workers watch as the product of their labor is sold. Then, the boss will return a very small portion of the wealth we produced for him and call it our wage. The larger portion is kept and used to buy and control more property to create more wealth to steal from more workers and so on. This repulsive cycle maintains the power of the wealthy and forces more working people into wage slavery, where the great potential of our lives is lost.

Robbery Requires Threat

As all workers understand, working isn’t a choice. We are forced into working by a lifetime of constant threat. This threat is the “choice” between poverty, starvation and homelessness or wasting our days creating wealth for those at the top. And we know it isn’t an empty threat. We see crushing and brutal poverty around us all the time. These threats come from hundreds of fronts and we are constantly shown the reality of such threats. Will we be able to feed our children? Can we go to a hospital when we need? Could we end up homeless? How can we afford heating in winter? Can we educate ourselves and our children? These questions beat us like the waves of an incoming hurricane. We watch as our brothers and sisters get pulled under and drown until even those in the middle class are forced into constant fear that they may fall into the coming surge.

If the rich are to hold onto their armies of poor ready to work for their crumbs, this threat must be maintained. A certain level of poverty is required of any capitalist society. While we have won some advances to soften the blow of poverty, politicians and businessmen have worked together to ensure that services available for the poor don’t actually rid the world of poverty. We are purposefully deprived of the tools to empower ourselves and our communities to solve our own problems. Fearing independence from their system of theft, we are kept in a stasis of lifelong struggle.

Hope Begins Within

How long will this inequality exist for us? The answer is the same as it has always been: for as long as we permit it. We as common people throughout the world have a power of spirit that is anything but common. Facing a callous onslaught of insult and corruption from bankers, bosses and government lackeys, we still maintain pride and courage that brings us into the next day. Despite the forces of oppression that surround us, we fight to raise our families with optimism to see better days. In our dance, music, art, families, and friendships we see the great force of our common spirit.

If we ever hope to achieve a life of true equality, we need to understand that spirit alone will not move us forward. Common purpose and collective action are the foundations of social change. We as working people must realize individuals acting alone will not solve problems of poverty and exploitation. It’s working together in a common struggle that will free us all. Those of us in work need to organize ourselves into a labor movement, joining and actively participating in our unions. Those of us that are unemployed need to form our own organizations capable of truly destroying poverty. We need to join or form community organizations that will guarantee us quality housing, transportation, health care, education, and all of the other rights of a liberated people.

There is undeniable power in the hands of organized people. Especially, when those organizations are run democratically and aggressively pursue an uncompromising goal of absolute freedom and equality. These are the realistic first steps that we have to take on the course to future free from the theft of the bosses and the oppressive state that grants them power. As has always been the case, we will win what we are willing to fight for!

Resistance and Recovery Speaking Tour comes to Buffalo

In the most stirring recent victory of the US labor movement, workers at the Chicago Republic Windows and Doors militantly fought the company as it closed. On the last day of scheduled work, these members of UE Local 1110 chose a tactic from a different era of labor and occupied the factory. In six days they won an agreement with the company and its financier, Bank of America, which gave the workers $1.75 million in severance and vacation pay. In these six days the Republic workers provided an inspiring example of how organized workers can respond to the layoffs and cutbacks forced upon them in a recession. Since this victory, they’ve organized a speaking tour to share their story with activists and workers throughout the country.

The UE Comes Home

On February 12^th this tour made a stop in Buffalo. Organized by the Coalition for Economic Justice, the event had around 100 people in attendance with people from People United for Sustainable Housing, United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, Buffalo Class Action, and University at Buffalo Students Against Sweatshops.

It was Emanuel Fried who started the night off. Fried is an activist and playwright from the Buffalo area and former organizer with the UE that had once been forced to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. He reminded each of us of Buffalo’s legacy as the birthplace of the militant and member-run UE. Fried spoke about the important role the UE has consistently played in reminding the US labor movement that their role is to take powerful and daring collective action to win the demands of their members rather than treat their members like clients of a service organization.

Chicago Shows Us How It’s Done

After screening a brief documentary about their experiences, Ron Bender, a Republic worker spoke about the UE’s most recent reminder that a real labor union is one that fights. He spoke of his experiences organizing the occupation with other rank and file members, how workers maintained a 24-hour watch over the factory equipment, and how the community came out to support their efforts. Through his words and actions we were reminded that it’s in uncompromisingly and courageously asserting our demands with a willingness to take aggressive action that will assure the broader working class the victories that we need. In the first days of negotiations the Bank of America made it clear that they were a business that needed to make money and that the Republic workers were not their concern. However, in only a couple of days Bank of America had completely different priorities, even saying that the well-being of the Republic workers was a primary concern. This change in priorities comes from a change in power dynamic, as more people came out to fight alongside the UE local.

This fighting mentality didn’t appear from nowhere. It is no coincidence that the first union to act this boldly in the interest of its members is a union clearly controlled by its rank-and-file. As Ron said, “The UE really is the rank-and-file union.” Strategic decisions leading up to and throughout the occupation were made democratically by members on the shop floor. This ownership of the organization that members feel is an essential ingredient in the militancy that followed, empowering workers to take greater risks than they normally would and allowing them to trust that their actions wouldn’t be used to sell them out at any point in the struggle.

Moving Forward as a Movement

Throughout the evening it was repeatedly stressed that the importance of the Republic workers victory is not simply to a single factory, but an example to an entire movement. We are in a critical moment for working people throughout the world and we need to act with the serious urgency that these moments deserve. Spreading their story now becomes an essential task. Every militant throughout the country should know the story of UE Local 1110. In our organizations we should be organizing discussions of the struggle at Republic, distributing their documentary outside of workplaces threatened with layoffs, and organizing rank-and-file resistance groups within our workplaces. UE Local 1110 workers have offered an inspiration to us that can help to unify the left and thrust existing worker discontent into a commanding movement of aggressive collective action. Now, the responsibility falls on the rest of us to continue the struggle that they have so powerfully pushed forward.

How Republic Workers Occupied Their Plant

By Leah Fried, UE Organizer. From Labor Notes

December 5 was to be the last day of work at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. But managers soon realized that workers would not go quietly: they had voted to occupy the factory.

Members of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1110, they’d made plans to scatter throughout the plant, chain themselves to machines, and risk arrest. This is the story of how they did it.

The occupation that won workers their back pay and the admiration of union members around the world didn’t happen out of the blue. It was the culmination of years of struggle to build a democratic, fighting union able to take on the boss.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION

In early 2004 workers at Republic suffered under a gangster “union” that represented the boss more than the workers. Chicago is one of the last bastions of these old-school outfits that help companies keep workers down.

Workers had their wages frozen at $8 an hour for three years and had seen hundreds of their co-workers fired for no good reason. Discrimination, unfair treatment, and low wages were the hallmark of their former union, Novelty and Production Workers Local 16. So workers sought a change.

First they approached several worker centers, which arranged a meeting with UE organizers. Workers were impressed with UE’s record of democratic, aggressive unionism. In November 2004 they organized an election, joined UE, and went on to win their best contract ever.

In the contract fight of 2005, workers regularly wore UE buttons and stickers with contract demands. They organized marches to the boss’s office, practiced picketing, and voted and publicly vowed to strike if necessary. A contract was won on the eve of the planned strike, with raises of $1.75 immediately and improvements to working conditions and benefits. This struggle set the tone for years to come.

Unity, however, wasn’t automatic. Democratic unionism doesn’t exist without some growing pains.

Republic workers are a diverse workforce: 80 percent Latino, 20 percent Black, and 25 percent women. Hotly contested elections for stewards and officers, intense debate, divisions based on race or gender—all took place in this local.

Leaders had to work hard to build black-brown unity, overcome factionalism, and be willing to lose some debates (such as one over a dues increase) in order to create a local in which all the workers felt ownership.

Some leaders of the occupation had campaigned against each other in elections and each had their own following. But in the end, the workers were able to come together every time they needed to fight the boss.

UE had also been dedicated to building alliances in the community and the labor movement. Years of work to forge links with worker centers, religious groups, community organizations, and immigrants rights organizations laid the base for solidarity.

Rank-and-file members’ longstanding participation in solidarity activities, Jobs with Justice, and immigrant rights marches in Chicago helped local leaders get to know UE better. And regular participation in national political action helped lawmakers know UE as well.

PLANNING AHEAD

UE began planning for a possible plant occupation in November, when machinery started disappearing from the plant. Local leaders were prepared for the worst-case scenarios.

We bought chains with locks and organized a core group committed to civil disobedience if necessary. We knew it might come down to getting arrested. Workers understood they had to keep the company’s assets from leaving the factory.

As workers met again and again to talk over what might happen and organize for a fight, we developed a strategy that focused on Bank of America. The bank, which had just received $25 billion in bailout funds, would decide whether Republic would continue to receive financing.

UE reached out to allies and elected officials to mobilize public pressure on the bank, including a big picket of its offices in Chicago two days before the occupation. Members of Congress, most significantly Representative Luis Gutierrez, pressed the bank to negotiate with the union.

The occupation was launched after the company didn’t show up to a meeting with the bank and UE. Workers came to their last day of work and decided unanimously not to leave until their demands were met: vacation pay, 60 days’ severance as the law required, and two months’ health insurance.

The company was informed of the workers’ vote to occupy the factory. They knew they faced more than 200 angry and organized workers who were not about to leave quietly.

Management called the police, but at the same time our longstanding allies mobilized hundreds of supporters, via urgent alerts and phone calls, to come to the plant.

By this time the press had become a steady presence. The idea of the whole world seeing 200 workers dragged out by the cops in front of a supportive crowd rallying outside the factory—it all helped the company decide not to fight the union.

The police left, and the chains stayed in their bags. The workers had taken the plant.

As word of the factory takeover spread, solidarity started pouring in, from unions and community, religious, immigrant rights, and civil rights organizations. The messages visitors left on posters in the plant lobby, the donations, and letters from all over the world were key in strengthening the workers’ resolve.

But most important was the unity of the workers, who despite their differences, rose to the occasion and showed incredible strength.

The day the occupation began the local executive board and stewards organized their co-workers into three shifts, round the clock. UE organizers also took shifts (although those tended to last 20 hours).

Rules were agreed upon and posted in the cafeteria: No alcohol, smoking, or drugs. Non-UE members, unless immediate family, were not allowed onto the factory floor.

Committees for welcoming and security at the door, clean-up, food, and patrols to keep the assets safe were staffed in eight-hour shifts. At the beginning of each shift all the workers and organizers would meet to give updates, take volunteers for each committee, and review what would happen that day.

Workers kept busy with rallies and press interviews outside the plant in addition to their committee responsibilities. Children accompanied their parents, doing homework and playing amid the adults’ work. Donated food, blankets, and two TVs (one for news, the other for sports) were shared equally by all.

After six long days, the lead committee made up of shop leaders and UE reps came back with a settlement that workers voted enthusiastically to accept. We had won all our demands and then some.

Now, we are working to reopen the factory with all the workers back on the job. But we know that something beyond jobs or money owed has been won. We have inspired millions to know that the world is what we fight to make it, that we can win.