A ship carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip sent out a distress signal overnight after it was bombed by drones in international waters near Malta. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the organizer of the voyage, is blaming Israel for the attack, which set the ship on fire, punched a substantial breach in its hull and cut off communication with those aboard. “We are dealing with a brutal attack on an innocent ship,” retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, who was in Malta waiting to board the flotilla, tells Democracy Now! “While we cannot yet identify the source of the drones, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a history of violence that has been directed toward the flotillas from the state of Israel.”

The climate activist Greta Thunberg was also set to join the flotilla and said in an online video that activists would “continue to do everything in our power to do our part to demand a free Palestine and demand the opening of a humanitarian corridor.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This is not just symbolic violence. It has very real effects on people’s ability to receive healthcare, get education, cross borders, work or learn in a safe environment, and more.

As I argue in my new book, Youth Organizing for Reproductive Justice: A Guide for Liberation, we can learn a lot about what this moment demands of us by looking to youth-led social movements for reproductive justice. Youth activists understand how systems of oppression such as racism, xenophobia, and transphobia are interlocking, or deeply interwoven and dependent on each other. Focusing on interlocking systems of oppression enables us to see, for instance, how executive orders banning youth from receiving gender-affirming healthcare and those targeting researchers studying racial inequities are part of the same strategy to deny marginalized groups bodily autonomy and self-determination.

Youth Organizing for Reproductive Justice surveys youth organizing in the United States from the past 25 years. Here are some lessons from the book that help us understand our current political movement and how to fight back:

1. Resisting criminalization is key to promoting bodily autonomy

Making it a crime to receive or provide medical care or to teach accurately about the history of white supremacy is a bold-faced attempt to prevent people from exercising bodily autonomy and self-determination, values at the core of reproductive justice. Criminalization isn’t just about what is considered “illegal.” It’s also a process by which some people and some bodies are seen as dangerous and unworthy of human dignity. Building our movements’ capacities to resist criminalization is key to promoting bodily autonomy for both youth and adults.

2. The importance of youth-adult solidarity 

As adults, it’s important to be accomplices to youth without also diminishing or fetishizing their activism. Adults often have access to resources that youth do not, such as transportation to get an abortion or gender-affirming care or the years of wisdom to know how to pick your battles. We can also support youth simply by showing up, as hundreds of adults did when a New York City health organization abruptly canceled care for trans youth  against the recommendation of the state attorney general.

3. Who is considered a “youth” is all about power

Historians have pointed out that the meaning of youth has varied by time and place. Policymaking and political discourse use the flexible category of youth to serve various political goals. When politicians use the argument of “protecting children,” they don’t mean the protection of youth who aren’t white, abled-bodied, normatively gendered, and economically privileged. Undocumented youth can’t expect to be protected from ICE raids in public schools, and the category of “trans youth” was conveniently expanded to include 18 year old legal adults. We must stay vigilant to the shifting category of “youth” and how it’s used to cause harm.

4. We need each other to survive 

As scholars and activists have argued, marginalized people cannot turn to the law for protection, as the law has never made us safer. Mutual aid became a household term during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has long been a tactic of radical social movements, including among youth activists. Mutual aid is a form of collectively meeting each other’s needs when existing systems aren’t going to meet them. Whether it’s fundraising for healthcare or teaching each other how to resist state repression, mutual aid is what’s going to get us through these times, and beyond.

This post was originally published on the University of California Press blog and is reprinted here with permission.

The post Lessons From Youth Organizers for this Political Moment appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Chris Barcelos.

The new documentary film Union, premiering this week, follows Amazon workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island as they formed the first-ever U.S. Amazon union in 2022. Co-directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story, the film follows “the invisible working class” as they face an uphill battle against the notoriously anti-labor corporation, says Maing, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss the film. We also speak with Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1’s president, Connor Spence, who shares his experience organizing the “most surveilled workforce anywhere” and explains what’s next as the union moves to organize Amazon on a national scale with the Teamsters.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Vice President Kamala Harris made history Thursday as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to be nominated to lead a major party’s presidential ticket. There are now just two-and-a-half months left before the November 5 election, when she will face Republican nominee Donald Trump at the polls. For more, we speak with two political organizers — Maurice Mitchell, national director for the Working Families Party, and Mohammed Khader, manager of policy and advocacy campaigns at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights — and with historian and activist Barbara Ransby.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In Arizona, Republican lawmakers have blocked efforts by Democrats to repeal an 1864 law — first written before women had the right to vote and recently revived by the state’s Supreme Cour — that bans nearly all abortions under threat of criminal penalties including jail time. To respond, we host a trio of reproductive justice advocates in Arizona. Dr. DeShawn Taylor, an OB-GYN physician, abortion provider and the CEO of the only Black woman-operated abortion clinic in Arizona, emphasizes that her practice “will continue to provide abortions until we are made to stop,” but warns that in the future “abortions likely will not happen in Arizona because of those criminal penalties.” Meanwhile, organizers like Chris Love and Alejandra Pablos are fighting back. Love is a spokesperson for Arizona for Abortion Access, a coalition of reproductive rights organizations working to put a constitutional amendment on abortion on the state’s upcoming November ballot. The petition for the proposed ballot measure is still collecting signatures. “We know what we want: We want people to have the care that they need,” concludes Pablos, who organizes for reproductive, racial and immigrant’ rights.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Rights groups slammed the detention as the latest bid by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP, to eliminate its political rivals. They say the CPP has used other tactics – including onerous bureaucracy, legal technicalities, and intimidation – to keep would-be competitors off of the country’s ballots and maintain its grip on power.

Police arrested Banteay Meanchey province CLP leaders Sin Vatha, Tep Sambath Vathano, Long Lavi, Tuot Veasna, Chhum Sinath Van Siw and 17 others on Sept. 8 and 9 in connection with a rally they held to collect enough people’s fingerprints to register a new opposition party, former Banteay Meanchey Provincial CLP Secretary Suon Khemrin told RFA Khmer.

Authorities detained the rally’s organizers despite having obtained authorization from the Ministry of Interior to form the new Panha Tumnerp – or Intellectual Modern – Party, said Suon Khemrin. 

The former CLP secretary, who was among those arrested, was released along with 16 others on the afternoon of Sept. 10, after more than 30 hours in custody, he said.

Suon Khemrin said that while in detention, police asked him who was behind the new party, but he told them he had only had seen an Aug. 18 letter from the Ministry of Interior granting Im Sognet the right to form the Tumnerp Party and requiring him to collect enough fingerprints to register the party within 180 days, according to the country’s political party law.

He told RFA that the six men who remain in detention were being held at the Banteay Meanchey Provincial Police Station “for further questioning.”

“Before I was released, the police told me to sign a document that was noticeably vague in its wording,” he said.

Attempts by RFA to contact Banteay Meanchey Provincial Police Chief Sithi Loh for comment on the arrests went unanswered.

‘Violation of political rights’

Seung Senkaruna, the spokesperson for local NGO the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, or ADHOC, told RFA that the arrests are a violation of citizens’ political rights.

He said that the formation of a new party is a “legitimate political action,” and that authorities should facilitate such actions.

“[The authorities] have been doing this to the opposition party and its members for some time now, but it only draws more criticism and can be seen as politically motivated,” he said. “It only proves that the oppositions’ accusation of persecution is real.”

According to the Law on Political Parties, any Cambodian citizen who is aged 18 or older and is a permanent resident of the country has the right to form a political party simply by notifying the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior must reply in writing that it has received the notification within 15 days.

The law states that in order to be valid, political parties must apply for registration with at least 4,000 members, depending on the province where the party is based.

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ken Klippenstein.

This house in the Edgewood neighborhood is where police arrested three key organizers who have been aiding protesters against the city’s proposed police training center on May 31, 2023, in Atlanta.

Photo: Kate Brumback/AP

On Wednesday morning, a heavily armed Atlanta Police Department SWAT team raided a house in Atlanta and arrested three of its residents. Their crime? Organizing legal support and bail funds for protesters and activists who have faced indiscriminate arrest and overreaching charges in the struggle to stop the construction of a vast police training facility — dubbed Cop City — atop a forest in Atlanta.

In a joint operation with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or GBI, Atlanta cops charged Marlon Scott Kautz, Adele Maclean, and Savannah Patterson — all board members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund — with “money laundering” and “charity fraud.”

The arrests are an unprecedented attack on bail funds and legal support organizations, a long-standing facet of social justice movements, according to Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

“This is the first bail fund to be attacked in this way,” Regan, whose organization has worked to ensure legal support for people resisting Cop City, told me. “And there is absolutely not a scintilla of fact or evidence that anything illegal has ever transpired with regard to Atlanta fundraising for bail support.”

While the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been a crucial resource for activists facing harsh repression for their involvement in Stop Cop City, the nonprofit predates the movement and has been providing bail funds, jail support, and assistance with legal representation for Atlanta activists since the 2020 Black liberation uprisings.

The fund, a project of the registered nonprofit Network for Strong Communities, has also provided grants to support an array of anti-repression work in Atlanta, including to groups working with unhoused trans youth, Black worker-owned cooperatives, and abolitionist community builders.

“Providing mutual aid to people exercising their constitutionally protected rights to protest and dissent is not a crime.”

“What happened this morning is a terrifying escalation by the state, and a chillingly direct attack on the First Amendment. This is fascist political repression,” Hannah Riley, an Atlanta-based organizer, told me. “Providing mutual aid to people exercising their constitutionally protected rights to protest and dissent is not a crime.”

A public statement from the GBI said that “[a]gents and officers executed a search warrant and found evidence linking the three suspects to the financial crimes.” The warrants for all three arrestees cite “records and reports of certain currency transactions” and “fraudulent, misrepresenting, or misleading activities regarding charitable solitations.” (“Solitations” is, of course, not a word, but the apparent misspelling of the word “solicitations” appears on all three arrestees’ warrants.)

A more detailed arrest warrant for Patterson notes that the alleged “money laundering” charge relates to reimbursements made from the nonprofit to Patterson’s personal PayPal account for minor expenses including “gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, covid rapid tests, media, yard signs and other miscellaneous expenses.” Targeting the organizers with a militarized SWAT raid based on such expenditures only clarifies the desperation of law enforcement agencies in going after the movement.

According to the GBI statement, “All three charged will be booked into a local jail and will have a bond hearing scheduled soon.”

Wednesday’s arrests are just the latest in extreme law enforcement persecution of the popular Stop Cop City movement. A total of 42 activists are currently facing state domestic terror charges on the flimsiest of police claims, while three others face hefty felony intimidation charges for distributing flyers that named a police officer connected to the brutal police killing of 26-year-old forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán.

Kautz, one of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers arrested on Wednesday, had previously shared numerous reflections with The Intercept on the Atlanta cops’ extreme repressive tactics. He noted that the indiscriminate arrests and use of state domestic terrorism charges against protesters represented “an unprecedented level of repression” and a “strategy of blatant malicious prosecution.”

It is a vile irony that for his own role in legal support work and rightful criticism of police violence, Kautz is now part of this same pattern of apparent prosecutorial abuse.

In targeting the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, police and prosecutors are attempting to further the groundless narrative that the multifaceted movement against Cop City is a “criminal organization,” enabling profoundly unconstitutional arrests based on no more than association with a resilient anti-racist, environmentalist movement.

Politicians keen to see Cop City built in Atlanta have doubled down on the pernicious line, none more so than Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. “These criminals facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism,” said Kemp in a statement responding to Wednesday’s arrests, despite the fact that no one has been convicted in the weak domestic terrorism cases.

Organizing bail funds and legal support for protesters facing charges, however serious, is a decades-old social justice movement practice. As the Atlanta Community Press Collective noted on Twitter, “When Dr. King was held in Birmingham Jail, churches and community groups including the NAACP came together to fund his $4000 bail – the equivalent of $39,000 today.”

Like the overreaching domestic terrorism charges, if any established legal standards and precedents are upheld in these cases, no financial crimes or money-laundering charges will stick. Yet even unsuccessful malicious prosecutions exact a painful toll on movements, especially when a resource hub like the Atlanta Solidarity Fund is targeted.

“They are trying to drain our morale and trying to drain our resources. These arrests send a message.”

“They are trying to drain our morale and trying to drain our resources,” another person associated with the fund told me, withholding their name for fear of police persecution following their associates’ arrests. “These arrests send a message that if you run a nonprofit that they find to be at odds with their colonial project, they will target you.”

The charges indeed risk setting a dangerous precedent in criminalizing bail funds and legal support networks. “Bailing out protestors who exercise their constitutionally protected rights is simply not a crime. In fact, it is a historically grounded tradition in the very same social and political movements that the city of Atlanta prides itself on,” said Regan, the attorney, in a separate press statement. “Someone had to bail out civil rights activists in the 60’s–I think we can all agree that community support isn’t a crime.”

Wednesday’s arrests come just days after it was revealed by reporters that Atlanta officials have known for some time that the cost of building Cop City to the city of Atlanta would amount to at least $51 million in public funds, instead of the $30 million that city officials promised since 2021.

Local opposition to the project has been strong, with hundreds of people attending a recent city council meeting to speak out against Cop City during a public hearing. The city council will vote on whether to approve the growing cost of the vast militarized policing facility on June 5. “The charges against organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund come as the public becomes increasingly aware of the corporate funding and interests backing the Cop City project and the Atlanta Police Foundation non-profit,” Nora Scholl from the Atlanta Community Press Collective told me. “Law enforcement agencies are using force and imprisonment against protestors to buffer them from widespread opposition to the project.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

The post A New Generation of Organizers Are Building Union Power in the South appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

In at least four incidents since February 5, journalists and their family members in various cities across Kazakhstan have faced attacks and harassment, in a continued pattern of incidents targeting independent and critical journalists since the fall of 2022.

Kazakh police said in a February 21 statement that they had detained 18 individuals accused of carrying out attacks on six journalists and bloggers, as well as one associated individual, since September. The statement did not mention any individuals who may have ordered those attacks. 

On February 23, Marat Kozhayev, the deputy minister of Internal Affairs, told reporters that “practically all” perpetrators of recent attacks on journalists have been arrested but that it’s “too early to talk” about orders and incentives for the attacks.

“Although the arrest of 18 suspects accused of perpetrating attacks on the press in Kazakhstan is encouraging, the very fact that these attacks are continuing underscores the urgent need to apprehend—and prosecute—those who are organizing and ordering them,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Kazakh authorities should know that their reputation is on the line should they fail to conduct a full and convincing investigation into all recent crimes against journalists.”

The four attacks since February 5 were: 

• On the evening of February 5, an unidentified man pointed a gun at Adi Zhilakauskas, the son of independent journalist Dinara Yegeubayeva, outside his home until he ran away, according to news reports and local free speech organization Adil Soz. Zhilakauskas was not harmed in the attack. Yegeubayeva, a political activist and parliamentary candidate, told reporters she believes the attack is related to her political activity and journalistic posts on Instagram and YouTube, where she has a combined 94,000 followers and covered allegations of rights abuses of authorities during the 2022 mass protests in Kazakhstan. Yegeubayeva was targeted on January 13, when her car was set on fire, and previously reported having her car vandalized and receiving bomb threats.
• On February 8, unidentified individuals sent a box containing offal and family photos of Samal Ibrayeva, the chief editor of independent news website Ulysmedia, and her children to the outlet’s offices in the capital, Astana, according to local news reports and Adil Soz. Last month, hackers infiltrated Ulysmedia’s website and uploaded Ibrayeva and her family’s data online, and she received online threats from unidentified users. Ulysmedia’s website has been subjected to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since July 2022.
• In the early hours of February 20, an unidentified person set fire to two cars belonging to Roman Yegorov, a camera operator for independent journalist Vadim Boreiko’s YouTube channel Giperborei, according to news reports and Facebook posts by Boreiko, who told CPJ by messaging app that police have arrested one suspect over the attack. Giperborei covered topics including the 2022 protests and upcoming parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan and has about 250,000 subscribers. Previously, on January 19, attackers injected construction foam around the door of Boreiko’s apartment in Almaty and graffitied the name of his YouTube channel.
• On the morning of February 22, an unidentified man wearing a surgical mask jumped out at freelance journalist Daniyar Moldabekov as he climbed the stairwell of his apartment building in Almaty, punched him in the face, and shouted, “Don’t f— around!,” according to media reports and Facebook posts by the journalist, which said that he was knocked to the ground and sustained a bruised cheek. Moldabekov told CPJ by messaging app that he “has no doubt” that the attack is linked to his work, as he has frequently written about the 2022 protests for various outlets and is expected to publish a book on the topic. On February 15, he published an article on crypto-mining operations allegedly linked to former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Boreiko told CPJ that the assault on Moldabekov on February 22, the day after the police statement, demonstrated the “sense of impunity” of those behind the attacks. He said he believed law enforcement agencies’ apparent failure to identify those ordering the attacks is a sign they are not truly interested in solving the cases.

CPJ’s email to the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Nearly two dozen individuals behind a unionization drive at Starbucks locations in Buffalo and Rochester, New York, were ordered to turn over their communications with journalists by a federal judge on Sept. 23, 2022.

The ruling came as part of a complaint the National Labor Relations Board filed against Starbucks in June 2022, accusing the Seattle-based coffee giant of union-busting activities. Starbucks denies any wrongdoing.

According to court records reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, organizers and current and former Starbucks employees were ordered in early September to turn over all documents concerning getting in contact with any media outlet about the unionization efforts and any resulting communications.

The Washington Post reported that the order would likely pertain to thousands of messages with journalists, and that the Post, The New York Times, Vice, Fox News, Al Jazeera, The Guardian and Buffalo News have extensively covered the organizing campaign.

NLRB filed a motion to quash the subpoenas or issue a protective order. Workers United, a labor union working to organize the New York stores, also received a subpoena and filed two motions to quash: one on its own behalf and one on behalf of the subpoenaed Starbucks employees.

On Sept. 23, District Judge John Sinatra Jr. issued his ruling quashing some requests in the subpoenas, but holding that communications and any recordings of conversations with the media would have to be produced.

According to the Post, it is unusual for a judge to approve a request that so blatantly targets communications with journalists, which would be protected under New York’s Shield Law if the journalists had been issued the subpoenas instead.

For subpoenas issued directly to journalists or news organizations, and information about how we document those legal orders, explore the Tracker’s Subpoena/Legal Order category.

A Starbucks spokesperson, Andrew Trull, defended the judge’s order in a statement to the Post alleging that the media received false information.

“This is about getting to the truth and uncovering misinformation that [union-supporting workers] have disseminated to both our partners and the public,” Trull said.

No documents were produced by the court-imposed deadline of Oct. 14. On Oct. 27, Starbucks filed a motion for the court to hold the union and the individuals subpoenaed in contempt and impose sanctions on them. That same day, Workers United notified the court of its intention to file an appeal of the judge’s ruling with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sinatra has placed all proceedings — including ruling on the motion for sanctions — on hold until the appeal is resolved. As of publication, the appeal has not yet been filed.

The president of The NewsGuild, one of the largest journalist labor unions, told the Buffalo News that the order chips away at free press protections and creates a chilling effect for both journalists and their sources.

"Clearly, Starbucks is violating the First Amendment of our country by trying to get access to information that is part of the news gathering process," Jon Schleuss said. "The federal government has no place in restricting the freedom of press.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Organizers in New Mexico this week are making a final push to ensure the passage of Amendment 1, a ballot measure which would make the state the first in the nation to guarantee the constitutional right to early childhood education and would make significant investments in childcare across the state.

Next Tuesday, voters will vote on the Funding for Early Childhood Programs Amendment, which would enable the state to withdraw funds annually from New Mexico's Land Grant Permanent Fund.

The sovereign wealth fund was established in 1912 and is financed by oil and gas revenue, with a current value of nearly $26 billion. Five percent of the fund is already withdrawn annually to help fund hospitals, public schools, and universities.

"Whether it's poverty, whether it's access to resources, even down the road, things like crime and homelessness—all of those challenges are predicated on early childhood development."

If Amendment 1 passes, the government would be authorized to annually withdraw an additional 1.25% of the fund's five-year average of year-end market values to support education, with roughly $150 million going to early childhood education programs.

If voters approve the amendment, lawmakers will determine how exactly the money will be spent each year, and organizers from groups including Olé New Mexico and the Vote Yes for Kids coalition are hoping the Legislature prioritizes increasing wages for childcare employees. Workers in the field earn as little as $11.50 per hour—the state's minimum wage—in New Mexico.

"We're in a situation where the market can't support the wages that attract the qualified professionals that we rely on to educate and nurture our children during their most important developmental years," Elizabeth Groginsky, who leads the state's Early Childhood Education and Care Department, set up by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishamin 2020, told the Albuquerque Journal last month.

As Common Dreams reported in May, Grisham used the state's Early Childhood Education and Care Fund—also established in 2020—to begin a pilot program making childcare free for about 30,000 low- and middle-income families across the state for more than a year. The fund used for the program is also financed from the state's oil and gas production, and is expected to be worth $4.3 billion by 2025.

For more than a decade, advocates in New Mexico have been pushing lawmakers to put a question to voters regarding whether the Land Grant Permanent Fund should partially be used to fund early childhood education and childcare.

According to Vox, conservative Democrats have long stood in the way, arguing that withdrawing more money from the fund will reduce opportunities for the state's investments to grow.

"Year after year, they either didn't give it a hearing or killed it in the Senate Finance Committee," Andrea Serrano, executive director of Olé, told Vox last month.

Recent polls suggest New Mexico voters are happy to have the question on the ballot this year, with 69% of respondents to an August poll saying they supported the amendment, including 70% of Independents and 56% of Republicans.

Another survey by Public Policy Polling last month found that 51% of voters were supportive of Amendment 1 while 26% were opposed.

The push for greater investment in young children's education and well-being comes nearly a year after the expanded child tax credit—which was credited with reducing childhood poverty by 30% and helping 35 million families pay for childcare, school expenses, and other essentials in 2021—expired due to right-wing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) opposition.

Nearly $400 billion in childcare investments were also cut from the Inflation Reduction Act, which Manchin helped craft, before it passed in August.

On Wednesday, Grisham and organizers with Olé New Mexico and the Vote Yes for Kids coalition spoke to more than 100 people at a get-out-the-vote rally in Albuquerque about Amendment 1.

"It is the one thing we can do at the ballot box that will change, over time, everyone's lives," said Democratic Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller. "Whether it's poverty, whether it's access to resources, even down the road, things like crime and homelessness—all of those challenges are predicated on early childhood development."

"This is the single best investment that we can make in our entire state," he added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Labor advocates on Tuesday cheered a U.S. federal judge's order compelling Starbucks to reinstate seven employees who were illegally fired from their Memphis store earlier this year for leading a unionization campaign.

"We hope this ruling brings comfort to our partners in the Memphis area and shows them the power they can have in a union."

U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman ordered Starbucks to rehire the so-called "Memphis Seven" within five days, writing that their firing "supports an inference of discriminatory motive" by the Seattle-based coffee giant. In May, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a motion to reinstate the workers, accusing Starbucks of directing "a wide variety of coercive measures" in its union-busting bid.

The seven workers at Starbucks' Poplar and Highland location were terminated in February during the early months of what has become a nationwide unionization wave in which employees at more than 200 of the company's stores have now voted to form unions.

While Starbucks officials claimed the seven were fired for violations including allowing at least one reporter inside the store to conduct an after-hours interview, the group accused the company of retaliating against the workers for organizing. In June, Poplar and Highland employees voted overwhelmingly to form a union.

"Today's federal court decision ordering Starbucks to reinstate the seven unlawfully fired Starbucks workers in Memphis is a crucial step in ensuring that these workers, and all Starbucks workers, can freely exercise their right to join together to improve their working conditions and form a union," NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said in a statement following the ruling.

"Starbucks, and other employers, should take note that the NLRB will continue to vigorously protect workers' right to organize without interference from their employer," she added.

Members of the Memphis Seven celebrated the ruling, with Nabretta Hardin saying in a statement that "we're beyond thankful the federal court ruled in our favor, and this just goes to show that Starbucks will do everything in their power to silence us."

"Memphis is a union town. We remain the only store to have organized in Memphis for fear of workers being fired like we were," she continued. "We hope this ruling brings comfort to our partners in the Memphis area and shows them the power they can have in a union."

"There is no need to fear retaliation because the NLRB will protect them as they have protected us," Hardin added.

Nikki Taylor, another member of the group, said following the decision that "it was a ruling in favor of what's right. We knew from day one that we were going to win this, it just took time."

Beto Sanchez, also of the Memphis Seven, told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that "it still feels unreal right now, but it took a moment for me to process all the work that we've done for the past months, they finally met its resolution."

"I still have a lot of tears right now," added Sanchez, "but honestly it's such a great feeling."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The post Can Workers Overseas Provide: Tips for U.S. Labor Organizers? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Steve Early.

Amid seemingly intractable legislative inertia after the latest of thousands of U.S. mass shootings, youth-led activists are set to reprise the 2018 March for Our Lives protest against gun violence and congressional inaction with events in Washington, D.C. and hundreds of cities and towns in the United States and abroad this Saturday, June 11.

"The 'solutions' of arming teachers, bulletproof doors, all that stuff: It's nonsense."

Swiftly organized in the wake of last month's mass murder of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and the racist massacre of 10 people at a Buffalo, New York supermarket, the second iteration of March for Our Lives is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including at least 50,000 to the main protest at the Washington Monument on the National Mall.

"We're putting our foot down, and we're saying we had enough of it. The 'solutions' of arming teachers, bulletproof doors, all that stuff: It's nonsense," March for Our Lives national coordinator Serena Rodrigues, 23, told The Washington Post. "It's time for lawmakers to step up or get out of the way."

Speakers at Saturday's Washington, D.C. demonstration will include March for Our Lives co-founders David Hogg and X González, who survived the 2018 massacre of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; the son of a victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting; Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.); American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten; and Yolanda King, the granddaughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., according to a statement from event organizers.

Now a student at Harvard University, Hogg—who's faced right-wing harassment, includingby Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who called Parkland and other mass shootings false-flag operations by gun-grabbing Democrats—said he's spending his college summer break meeting with lawmakers to press for gun law reform. 

"I'm tired of being here. I want to be a college student," he said during Wednesday's U.S. House Oversight Committee gun violence hearing. "I want to go out and have fun and do my job and be a young person that's enjoying my life and not having to be doing the job of what our senators should be doing right now."

In the four years since the first March for Our Lives, there have been more than 100 school shootings and over 170,000 firearm deaths in the United States.

It is estimated that at least one million people in the United States and around the world took part in the March 24, 2018 March For Our Lives, including up to 800,000 demonstrators who attended the main protest in Washington, D.C.

To find a nearby March for Our Lives, click here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The tally of unionized Starbucks locations is continuing to swell, with the latest additions coming after pro-unionization votes late last week in Seattle and Birmingham, Alabama.

The coffee giant's CEO "Howard Schultz and Starbucks are getting creamed in union vote after union vote," labor journalist Steven Greenhouse tweeted Saturday.

By the union's count, there are now 100 stores across the nation that have unionized.

The milestone was achieved after successful votes Friday at two stores in Seattle.

The Eastlake store employees won their effort to collectively bargain in a landslide 12-0 vote, while the Union Station store voted 6-3 in favor, local KOMO News reported.

A day earlier, the store on Birmingham's 20th Street South became Alabama's first Starbucks to back unionization after a 27-1 vote Thursday.

Kadarius Perkin, a shift supervisor at that store, declared after the vote, "Our voices will be heard," according to AL.com.

"Starbucks has until later this week to file any objections with the National Labor Relations Board," The Associated Press reported Sunday.

Workers at hundreds of Starbucks stores have filed to unionize since the first successful union drive in Buffalo, New York late last year.

According to Matt Bruenig, founder of People's Policy Project, "a trickle of election filings" that started last year "has built to a wave—and Starbucks workers are winning in location after location."

Bruenig analyzed data from the National Labor Relations Board, writing in an op-ed published last week at Jacobin that out of 89 union elections that had taken place at Starbucks, the union prevailed in 77 locations—87%—of them.

Those wins, he noted, came despite "a fierce campaign against the union, prompting a torrent of unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against the company."

John Logan, a professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, also pointed to that campaign in a recent op-ed at Jacobin in which he described Starbucks as worthy of the title "worst worker rights violator."

Contributing to the "union-busting lawlessness," wrote Logan, is the company's firing of over 20 union activists and announcement of a benefit increase to stores that have not unionized.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has previously boosted Starbucks workers' unionization efforts and told Schultz as he resumed his position as CEO this year, "If Starbucks can afford to spend $20 billion on stock buybacks and dividends and provide a $20 million compensation package to its CEO, it can afford a unionized workforce that can collectively bargain for better wages, better benefits, safer working conditions and reliable schedule."

"Please respect the Constitution of the United States and do not illegally hamper the efforts of your employees to unionize," Sanders wrote in a March letter to the billionaire executive.

Sanders reiterated that message in a tweet on Friday.

"Congratulations to Starbucks Workers United for winning the 100th union election at Starbucks coffee shops all over America," he wrote.

"I say to Howard Schultz: Stop the union-busting," he continued. "Obey the law. Negotiate a fair contract with your workers now—no more delays. Enough is enough."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Andrea Germanos.