THE ORGANIZER

October 2008 • Issue #12.

Wobblies Detained on Train at MOA

August 31st was to be FW Erik Forman's ﬁrst day back at his job at the Starbucks in the Mall of America(MOA), after having been illegally ﬁred for union activ-ity a few weeks prior. To celebrate Erik’s reinstatement,the IWW held a rally at the Lake and Hiawatha LightRail Station. The rally was a great success, with about100 people showing up.

Wobblies and the celebratingworking class were accompanied, however, by a heavypolice presence.

A good dozen Met Council copswere on the Light Rail platform at Lake and Hia-watha as early as noon, and more came over time.There were even two K-9 units present.Before our rally we discussed our plans with policeofﬁcers present. They agreed that there was noproblem as long as we all bought tickets.

Weboarded the train without incident and headedtowards the mall. Everyone was peaceful and or-derly on the journey.

At the ﬁrst station in Bloom-ington there was a heavy police presence and theystopped the train.

Again, we spoke with the policeand made it clear that we were not protesting andwould not be disruptive.

We were simply escort-ing Erik to his job at the mall.

They told us wewould not have any trouble. At 1:45 we all legallyboarded the light rail and headed down to the Mallof America in order to escort our fellow workerback to his ﬁrst shift. We were then allowed toproceed to the MOA stop.We found out later that at the same time we wereboarding the light rail and speaking with police at Lakeand Hiawatha, police began ﬂooding the 'rotunda' areain front of the store. Two Bloomington police came andtold our manager that a large group of people wascoming to protest at Starbucks.At the MOA police in riot gear surrounded the trainand threatened to arrest us if we left the train.

Wewere trapped inside the train for about 20 minutes.

The police even prohibited a woman with a child whoneeded insulin from leaving thetrain, endangering the child’shealth.

We had to plead with thecops to let them off. After about10 minutes, and only after repeat-edly insisting that we had a medi-cal emergency, did the policepermit the woman and child toexit the train. The ofﬁcers’ badgenumbers were mostly covered bytheir gear.After about 20 minutes, the policeordered the train back the way ithad come. Erik Forman and twoother people exited the train atthe Bloomington station and triedto get to work—he was late atthis point, courtesy of the police.This is clearly a violation of ourrights as a union to public picket-ing, our rights as citizens to lawfulassembly, gave proof that the Min-neapolis and Bloomington copsare outright liars, proof that theyprotect and defend corporatecapitalism rather than therights of citizens, and proof once again that our organizedpower is the only “right” thatwe have.While we reserve the rightact in defense of our com-rades and our legal rights toorganize, on this day we hadnothing more than a peacefulwalk to the Mall planned, tocongratulate our fellowworker on a win - he wasrestored to his job after anillegal attempt at union-busting. Even this was toointimidating for the police,who panicked, and showedtheir real colors, and theirreal relationship to corporateinterests.

Update: The IWW has since ﬁled Unfair Labor Practice chargesagainst the Mall of America man-agement, Metro Transit, and theBloomington Police.Reporting by FW Matt May, FW Mike Pudd'n'head, FW Jim McGuire,FW Erik Forman, and FW ErricoHedake

Editorial

Editor Ericco Hedake’sanalysis of the economic collapse and subsequent bailout.

Page 2Women’s Leader-ship Conference

A report back from theUniversity of Minnesota’sconference.

Page 3 & 8 Anti-Capitalist Blocat the RNC: ReportBack

A recounting of theIWW’s involvement inprotesting the RNC.

Pages 4-5The Long Trip tothe 2008 IWW Gen-eral Assembly

Accounts from a Wobbly’srecent trip to the UK, and thoughts on the 2008IWW General Assembly

Page 6Some Lessons fromthe RNC

An anarchist perspectiveon organizing around mass demonstrations.

Pages 7-8

A monthly publication of theTwin Cities General Membership Branch of theIndustrial Workers of the World.The IWW is a union for all workers, dedicated to organizing on the job for better conditionstoday, and a world without bosses tomorrow.You are invited to contact theBranch Secretary-Treasurer or any Delegate listed below for no-pressure conversations about your issues on the job.

Branch Contacts

Twin Cities IWW P.O Box 14111 Minneapolis, MN 55414Tel. (612) 336-1266email. twincities@iww.org web. twincities.iww.org

Branch Secretary-Treasurers

Steve Holmstephanholm@earthlink.net Kieran Knutsonredblack@riseup.net

Editors

Errico Hedake Alexander Graham

Policy

Stories, letters to the editors,and belly-aching can beaddressed totc-organizer@riseup.net Unless otherwise stated, theopinions expressed are not necessarily the ofﬁcial positionof the local branch or the unionas a whole. Many of our members areengaged in active organizing campaigns, and some use analias, occasionally their unioncard number, or ‘x’ number. Weprefer transparency over secrecy whenever possible, but will always honor requests for anonymity .

Editorial:Where’sOur Bail-out?

We have

mortgages, educationaldebt, credit card bills. We're bor-rowing for diapers, not for parties.Meanwhile, Bear Sterns, FannieMae, Freddie Mac, and a host of others get bailed out by the gov-ernment, while the economy col-lapses around our ears.

What do you mean, 'theeconomy is collapsing?'

The primary industries at risk arefinancial servicers. They lendmoney to make money. The high-finance service industry - mort-gages, insurance, and investments -are all different forms of risk man-agement. These are essentiallysecond-order capitalist institu-tions that make money by con-verting time into money. Life in-surance, for instance, makesmoney by calculating how long asucker is likely to live, and thencharging them enough in short-term charges to make the possi-bility that a large settlement tothe sucker's family (after she dies,of course) will be less than themoney they've collected. Thesame is true of all insuranceschemes.Investments in the new capitalmarkets operate on the same 'buylow sell high' basis, convertingtime and the ability to weathershort-term shocks into long-termprofits. Anyone you know run aninsurance company? No? That'sbecause it takes an enormousamount of capital to weatherthese shocks and to make thisform of long-term parasitism prof-itable.Mortgages operate even moredirectly: a bank buys a house andrequires you to 'rent to buy.' Of course, anyone who's ever fallenfor the 'rent to own' scam withfurniture knows that you pay anunbelievable price for this. Butwho has the money to buy ahouse outright? So, if you're luckyenough to play this sort of shellgame with the banks, you gothrough a mortgage broker. Youdon't own a house: you own amortgage, and every month youpay, say, $1800 to the company,only a miniscule amount of whichpays off your loan. The rest isspoils.

A paralyzed housing mar-ket.

While a certain amount of capital-ist rapaciousness is built into thesystem, the system itself rarelyshows real cracks and weakness -a street corner dealer may getthrown in jail, or killed, or retire,but the game remains. But everyonce in awhile, something happensthat pulls the veneer of normalityaway from the screen on whichour fantasies are supposed to play.That started happening withsomething we now call the 'sub-prime mortgage crisis.'The sub-prime crisis is supposedto have emerged as a result of toomany mortgage lenders makingtoo many risky loans, offeringloans - at oftentimes literallycriminal rates and terms that bledthe borrowers dry, and which hitthe black and latino communitiesespecially hard - to people thatcould not reasonably be consid-ered to be able pay them back.This made them 'risky invest-ments,' which the sharks claimed justiﬁed their high interest rates.Now everyone knows it was asham, a sort of ponzi scheme inwhich everybody pays and loses,except the guys at the top, andthe 'sober economists' tell us thereason was 'risky investments.'That's one way to look at it; an-other is to note that people werebeing charged an arm and a leg forﬁnancing, in order to be chargedan arm and a leg for housing. Theresult? Quadriplegia.The sub-prime markets weren'trevealed to the public for thepredatory and racist scams thatthey were until after they hadalready begun to collapse. Giventhe lack of genuine value-

THE ORGANIZER

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producing industries in the United States, the housingindustry's collapse started to look like the 'black swan'- the event that triggers off a cascade of catastrophe -that economists had long been worried about. The bigfinance firms began to collapse: Bear Sterns required amassive infusion of cash from the Federal Reserve(hint: that's the U.S. taxpayers) in order to keep it fromcollapsing under the weight of its bad investments. Then J.P. Morgan Chase bought it.Over the weekend of September 13-14, LehmanBrothers, one of the other giant finance firms, reachedan end of sorts. After a weekend of begging the gov-ernment to bail them out like they'd done with BearSterns, and receiving a straight set of 'no's' for answers,they had to file for bankruptcy.Why would the government bail out Bear Sterns andnot Lehman Brothers? Nobody knows for certain, yet.Perhaps the government is finally hitting a wall; havingspent all our tax money on wars and corporate bail-outs, they no longer have the cash to pull the samerabbit out of the hat twice. Or maybe they're trying tosend a message to their crony brethren about the 'newausterity.'At the same time that Lehman brothers were begging,Merrill Lynch, the firm which popularized the notionthat average Americans should involve themselves inthe stock markets, was bailed out by the largest bank inthe US, Bank of America, the biggest capitalists on thebloc. More and more of the global economy's money isin fewer and fewer hands. Ever heard the one aboutkeeping all your eggs in one basket? The historical par-allels are a bit frightening: When the New York Bank of the United States collapsed in 1930, and the govern-ment was unable or unwilling to bail it out, the result-ing crisis of liquidity cascaded downwards: peoplewithdrew their money, the bank called in loans, andover 300 banks around the country failed inside of amonth.More recent events in Argentina are only slightly morepromising: in 2001, their economic crisis prompted thegovernment to limit the amount of money citizen couldwithdraw from their own accounts. The economy col-lapsed utterly, and new governments were formed, oneafter the other. Each failed. The people responded withmass organization and protest in the streets, chanting"They [the politicians] must all go!" Most importantly,Argentineans began to occupy the factories that hadclosed down, and produce in them - employing them-selves at better wages and with better conditionsthey'd ever encountered before.It remains to be seen where our own economic situa-tion will head. I'm guessing nowhere good, but thatwe'll still be publishing next month. In the meantime,the next time a politician asks you for a vote, ask them,"Where's

bailout?" – FW Ericco Hedake

Women’sLeadershipConferenceReportBack

I recently attended the LeadershipGathering for Women put on bythe U of M Labor Education Serv-ice. While I have no personal in-terest in leading anybody but my-self, the gathering sounded inter-esting so I thought I would give ita go.

What I observed was bothinspiring …and troubling.Once the storytelling and grouptable conversations got going, Iwas struck by a huge disconnectin the views being expressed. Onone hand, women were encourag-ing each other to understand theyhave an innate power withinthemselves—the power to beindividually strong, the power totake on the boss and win, thepower to bring forth changesbased on direct action. But on theother hand, there was a lot of talk about getting the Democratselected so they can “take care of us better.” Once politics enteredthe discussion, any sense of em-powered workers capable of tak-ing care of themselves disap-peared, and in waltzed the ideathat it was a dire necessity to getDemocrats elected to take careof us.

Many women had inspiring per-sonal stories of worker’s strug-gles, of sacriﬁces and the joy of coming together in a spirit of unity to overcome adversity, of the extreme lengths some wentto in order to stay strong with theunion—one woman delivered herbaby on the curbside outside of ahospital because she refused tocross the picket line during anurse’s strike. But when politicscame up, I found myself feelingadrift in an eerie sea of what Ican’t help but refer to as StepfordWives. There was no more talk about empowered union womentaking care of business in thetrenches, but rather a one mindfocus aimed at electing politicianswho would support unions.The coming election was, of course, referred to as the mostimportant election ever. Talk commenced on the necessity of door knocking for politicians,working the phone banks, gettingout the vote for Democrats. An-ger was expressed over Hillarylosing the nomination, Nancy Pe-losi was admired and adored, theGOP was damned, and Bill Clin-ton was fondly remembered (andapparently every rotten thing hedid against labor and the workingclass promptly forgotten).I understand the sentiments ex-pressed. These women have theirhearts in the right place and are just trying to bring forth positivechanges using the methods theydeem best. Once upon a time, Igot involved with the Green Partybecause I bought into the illusionthat utopia could be had if wecould just get the right peopleelected. I found out the Greenswere just as power hungry andslimy as any other political party,and just as apt to betray thegrassroots base.I came to the conclusion thatpeople only have themselves andeach other to depend on and truechange will never be the result of this or that election. No matterwhat enlightened group getselected, the fact remains that whatgovernment giveth, governmentcan taketh away. There is nopower in electing someone elseto do ones bidding and then beingwholly dependent upon thatelected ofﬁcial’s whims and hopingbeyond hope one is not betrayed.

The similarity of roles in modernunions and political activism hitme towards the end of the gath-ering. A question was asked: Whatcan be done about workers seeingunions as third party servicesoutside of themselves? There wasgeneral agreement that this is thecase in most unions—and almost

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THE ORGANIZER

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