March for Abortion Rights

We will NOT silently accept a right-wing attack on abortion that opens the door to attacks on the rights of all women, LGBTQs, Black and Brown people, and working-class people.

In from the Gay Liberation Network of Chicago

Andy Thayer of the Gay Liberation Network speaks at 25:42. Words that the LGBTQI+ community must hear. 

Defend Roe and extend abortion rights and access!

in the May Day March for Labor and Immigration.

The right to choose abortion is hanging by a thread.
 This spring the Supreme Court threatens to further gut or possibly overturn the Roe v. Wade court decision legalizing abortion.  At a time when mass movements in Latin America and elsewhere have forged international solidarity and won greater freedom for women and gender-nonconforming people to control their own bodies, the U.S. threatens to do the opposite—force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or seek illegal and dangerous abortions.  If we lose the right to safe and legal abortions, the enemies of women won’t stop there. The same forces opposing abortion oppose birth control and support for families with children; they attack LGBTQ rights, unions, and #BlackLivesMatter while approving vicious treatment of immigrants and refugees.  

They must not win! So please join us on Sunday, May 1st! Assemble: 10 am, Union Park, corner of Randolph St & Ashland Ave, Chicago (just south of the “Ashland” Green & Pink lines El station)

Rally before March  March! 11:30 AM (please note the updated time) Initiated by Chicago For Abortion Rights.

Ourstories continued Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. Queens Against Society.

Yes let’s continue in exploring ourstories for this the LGBTQI+ Ourstory month. With this posting we are introducing our readers to an important document a collection of Sylvia Rivera and one by Marsha P Johnson speeches and articles. Gathered together under the title of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle published by Untorelli Press with an introduction, Queens Against Society by Eng Nothing. This work is not only a welcomed resource for anyone who wants to learn more about Sylvia and Marsha and what they believed in but a wonderful walk down memory land for many of us. Many of us older folks know that what was talked about and fought for then is still needed to be talked about, and fought for now.

Let us note right here, we do not use the term history. Since our feminist days we have tried and many time succeed in putting his story in his place. We use the term ourstories as his is far too confining and one of the main problems that we face today. As we rip down the statues of his-story we cheer. We say smash them. Beat those old Joes into plowshares or what ever else is useful. We support 100 % the removal of tyrants, warmongers, and the like from our town squares and city parks. As we are sure that our dear comrade Sylvia would be standing with us today as we go about this process. We must continue to disrupt what ever way is necessary and at our disposal this patriarchy, but remember we must go further than that we must as disrupt and abolish, as Dorothy Day said, this “Dirty rotten system.”

Late winter of 1973 my then boyfriend and I moved from San Francisco to New York City. We got a 4 room flat on third street cheaply, bathtub in the kitchen and all seemed right in our world. Miguel a more political animal than I joined the Gay Activist Alliance and I was content with the artists and street folks that I met. I had heard the stories of NYC the Stonewall rebellion, the forming of the GAA by a walk out group of gays who were concerned with only gay rights. My understanding of politicks were from the least of these on up. I didn’t really care if the white middle class had their rights as that is where I had escaped from. I just didn’t fit with these folks. Yeah they all looked hip, you know long hair, beads around their necks and all other other trapping of the uniforms of revolt but I questioned their thinking of only working for Gay Rights. Neither Miguel or I had met Sylvia or Marsha but we heard tales of both of them but saw Sylvia in action at the 1973 Pride in Washington Square Park. I was taken aback by the anger, the expressions of hate towards this woman as displayed by many in the audience. She talked of our people who were jailed and how the community did nothing for them. We had heard of the thinking of women like Jean O’Leary and neither of us supported her or her views. When we heard the booing all we could do was yell out “Let her speak.” I knew then as I know now that I have nothing in common with the one issue crowd. I bet many of those who were there that day have their tongues up the ass of the Capitalist’s system and just want to be just like the straights, to fit in, to be normal to love the cops and say they do nothing wrong. 

Years later I had the honor to introduce Sylvia at a Stonewall Foundation Congress meeting. We had a great day a small group of us outside smoking, laughing and having a grand old time. There is a video floating around somewhere in the community. In 1999 we were in Hartford Ct. facing more of the same old shit. Members of the L and G community attacking drag queens and bisexuals asking what if anything they had to do with the movement. It was October, Ourstories month and speak out I did. I was honored to have Sylvia and her family sitting in the audience to listen to what I had to say about HRC, Barney Frank, Donna Redwing and the whole bunch of folks who still hadn’t gotten the message. Some told me later I shouldn’t have spoken the way I did but I answered, Sitting here is a woman who has been scorned, with all sorts of indignities thrown at her, almost causing her to kill herself  and I am suppose to keep my mouth shut? I am suppose to keep my mouth shut when the same is happening to members of our community today?  Fuck that and the pig that they ride upon. 

Here is the link to the article that I hope all of our young readers will consider for LGBTQI+ Ourstories month. Or lets not confine ourselves to one month. There are lessons that we must learn every month of the year. We know that the study of ourstories can help to prepare us for any future that comes down the road. Let us learn from them and let us go further than our people have gone before. We owe it to them and we owe it to ourselves and our generations to come. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!

For a complete reading of Street Transvestites’ Action Revolutionaries, and please pay attention to the introduction go to HERE. 

 

Weekend Music Series. The Banks are made of marble.

The Banks are made of marble. Sung by Pete Seeger.

 

No Pride In Detention

End Trans Detention go to HERE. 

For a Video go to HERE. 

Anyone ready to fight back? Let’s hope so.

• 
  Four states are cutting off stimulus jobless aid on Saturday.
• The cuts in Mississippi, Missouri, Alaska, and Iowa yanks aid from 340,000 workers.
• The Biden administration is very unlikely to step in and prevent the unemployment aid losses.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

For nearly 340,000 workers on Saturday, a steady flow of federal assistance will abruptly end.

Mississippi, Missouri, Alaska, and Iowa are the first four Republican-led states to scrap their federal unemployment insurance programs. They include the $300 federal supplement to unemployment checks, along with a pair of federal programs that expanded government assistance to gig-workers, freelancers, and the long-term unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

No extra federal assistance will be going out the door in those states after this weekend. That means the level of wage replacement with regular unemployment aid will not amount to half of workers’ past income, per data from Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow and jobless policy expert at the left-leaning Century Foundation.

Some 22 million US jobs were lost last year because of the pandemic, many of them low-wage positions.

Twenty-five GOP-led states are pulling the plug on unemployment insurance programs over the summer, imperiling aid for nearly four million people, according to Stettner. Republican governors argue that the federal aid is keeping people from re-entering the workforce, slowing the economic recovery.

National Poor People’s Assembly

On June 21, 2021, poor people, low wage workers, moral and faith leaders and advocates will gather online from across the nation simultaneously with a socially-distant rally in Raleigh, NC at the state legislature for a mass assembly.

The hybrid online/in-person National Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly will raise a chorus of voices demanding a moral revolution that puts the suffering of the 140 million+ and low-income people in the U.S. at the center of every policy debate.

RSVP Here to Join Us

On June 21, 2021 at 5:30 pm ET/ 2:30pm PT we will gather online from all 50 U.S. states and territories, and from across the world. Many of us in North Carolina and from the nearby region will join in person for a socially distant rally at the General Assembly in Raleigh, but wherever you are, we need you to be a part of this historic event!

 One year after the largest ever online gathering of poor and low-income people in this nation’s history, the Poor People’s Campaign will launch our organizing drive towards a massive and generationally-transformative in-person Moral March on Washington on June 18, 2022, where we will flood the streets of DC and create a national stage for the voices and leadership of people directly impacted by poverty, racism and their interlocking injustices.

The event comes one month after the introduction of a congressional resolution for a Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty and Low-Wages from the Bottom Up. Emerging from the pain and organizing power of the 140 million people living in poverty or with low wages in this nation, the congressional resolution reflects an omnibus vision for a fundamental restructuring of society that lifts from the bottom. This newest congressional effort comes as a response to years of movement-building to create the collective resolve necessary to implement real and transformational legislative action.

Join us for this powerful launch event on June 21, 2021, commit to joining us in D.C. in June 2022, and take part as we build our campaign to realize a Third Reconstruction.

Forward together, not one step back!

Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis

Co-Chairs, Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

The 2021 Queer Liberation March Is A GO!

TO: Queer siblings & cousins, 

            agencies & organizations of the LGBTQIA2S+ communities, 

 The 2021 Queer Liberation March 

in NYC is a go!  

 After giving due consideration to the challenges presented by the pandemic and the needs of our communities in relation to it, the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) has decided that our People’s March must take place this year on Pride Sunday, June 27, 2021.  

 Since December of 2020, our core volunteer teams began again organizing around our 3rd Annual Queer Liberation March (QLM#3).  Later this week, we plan to announce our starting point and route for this year’s March. As part of RPC’s  Coalition — YOU, plus community members and colleagues from across the Queer spectrum — are invited to help give your community and our people a voice. We will be Marching in the streets and our online stream will broadcast the event along with issue based segments and interviews on the last Sunday of June 2021.

In 2021, we demand to be heard! 

Spilling into 2021, the pandemic, the election campaign, and the racial reckoning laid bare a host of struggles, challenges, and wounds affecting our LGBTQIA2S+ family and those we love. No single issue or even set of issues could adequately represent the needs of our incredibly diverse communities. Suffice to say,  RPC holds fast to the necessity for every issue to have a place for a voice.

 https://ReclaimPrideNYC.org/join-us

“Join Us!” or “Welcome Back!”…as the case may be. 

Queer Liberation March, Sunday 27 June 2021

We look forward to a season of Pride that lifts up our people by giving them a voice. 

The Queer Liberation March is both a political statement and a forum where we gather as one large community, with a diversity of needs, desires and demands. We want all of our community members to join as we reclaim our place is a society that would otherwise silence & erase us.

In solidarity, and toward Liberation For All! 
Reclaim Pride Coalition

Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) is a New York City-based group of LGBTQIA2S+ activists in alliance with dozens of grassroots community groups, nationally and internationally. RPC’s primary work is organizing the Queer Liberation March. In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, RPC mobilized more than 45,000 people to recreate the original 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day March route uptown from Stonewall to Central Park. In 2020, under the darkness of the global pandemic, RPC held the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality. The QLM is the annual people’s protest march without corporate funding; corporate floats; politicians’ grandstanding; or police control or involvement.   For Reclaim Pride Coalition’s complete statements of purpose:

 RPC March – Why We March 

&

RPC 2020 March – Demands & Safety Info

Website:

https://ReclaimPrideNYC.org

Facebook: @QueerMarch         Twitter: @QueerMarch

Instagram: @QueerMarch        Tik Tok: @QueerMarch

Furbirdsqueerly folks will of course join this march again.

          

A letter in the mail sets off a new essay. No I didn’t become a famous artist.

Sometimes I like today and sometimes I don’t. It seems anyone can find another person unless that person of course is a hermit living way out in the woods and not bothering with anyone except on the rare occasion of going into town for a few supplies. I wish I could unregister myself from all the finding sites that there are. The other day I got a letter from a classmate of mine from high school no less. A classmate that was wondering how I was, what I was doing and if I became a famous artist. I thought to myself, a famous artist too much work. A nice enough chap to say the least but stuck in the past to say the most. Me I never hung out with him The only picture in my mind of him is standing naked in the shower room after gym class and his long, let me say long dick hanging down. He was in one class and I in another. So real were the class distinctions back then even in high school. He was bound for college and me, heavens know probably a early death  from my type of lifestyle that was developing. Class the old divide. There was the college group, the business group and at the bottom of the heap were the shop group of boys who were going to be the mechanics, the carpenters, the plumbers, the workers of the world. The boys who stayed mostly in their class. 

The letter spoke of the hope that we all could get vaccinated in time for our 55th class reunion and all get together. I had to laugh, 55 yrs out of that hell hole and and invitation to go back, to revisit with folks I hadn’t thought about in years, what would we talk about? “Oh he is still tall and handsome, man she still has big boobs, what are you doing now, you haven’t retired what, why not?” You know shit things, things that don’t matter. One of them would say to me, so did you become a famous artist? I wonder why folks think that is a goal. I suppose everyone wants and craves attention, everyone wants to be top dog, everyone wants to be better than the next gal and have something more. Famous writer, famous musician, famous actress, famous singer, famous painter all are part of the old world not the new. Are we to bring parts, parts of the old world with us into the new? You know it is true about one bad apple. Try it sometime in your fruit bowl. So why would we want to bring bad apple ideas into the new world? Not me for sure. I don’t even want something so small as the old world’s sleepy seed to come into the new world. I have rallied against this system since my days in high school. Remember me as a revolutionary, as a anarchist socialist not as someone who wants to and celebrates the system of oppression and certainly not one to cozy with the enemies of the people, the rich. 

No I didn’t become a famous artist. 

Karl Marx had something very interesting to say on this subject Let’s take a look at it and then think about what he is implying here. We read from a well recommended essay, Marx’s Vision of Communism, by Bertell Ollman found at Dialectical Marxism these words:

“Besides contributing to production, each individual also participates in cultural and scientific life, and not just as a consumer of other people’s products but as a creator. We have met communist men and women as workers, farmers, hunters and critics, and Marx now introduces us to the same persons as artists: “The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in some individuals and its suppression in the grand mass which springs from this, is a consequence of the division of labor…In a communist society, there are no painters, but men who among other things do painting. Being a painter is to be subjected to the division of labor as much as it one only did weaving. every person in communist society is relieved of the burden of narrowness which plagued his or her ancestors, weavers and painters alike, and given the opportunity to express him or herself in all possible ways.”

“We read further on these thoughts: Marx not only ascribes a world of activities to the communist person, but believes they will be proficient in their performance. To achieve this is the aim of communist education. At the same time, Marx recognizes that not all people will be equally good in everything they try. As regards painting for example, he admits that only a few will rise to the level of Raphael. On the other hand, the quality of other people’s work will be extremely high; and he maintains all paintings will be original. By original means that each person’s creative efforts will be a true expression of his/her unique qualities. Marx would probably be willing to make a similar distinction between average and exceptional ability in science, farming, material production, etc., always with the proviso that those who lag behind are still extraordinarily good.”

No I didn’t become a famous artist I had better things to do.

I gave up art after awhile so I could devote myself full time to the Queer Left and the hope that someday in the not so distance future we would truly bring about the day that had been foretold in the lines, From the ashes of the old world a better world is in birth. You know dear classmates all of you who seem to be so in love with this system, myself at 74 still believe in that line and will until the day I die. As Clara Fraser said in a May Day speech in 1960, “What better fate can a person carve out than participation in the emancipation of humanity? What better use to make of one’s life…? We look toward a time when we shall have ceased to mourn martyrs. A time when we are no longer occupied with explaining defeats and rising above betrayals. Not because we will have forgotten the past, but simply because we are so engrossed and fulfilled in the role of creating a world rich with freedom, plenty, humane relations between people, and the joy of living.”

So let me just say Happy New Year, may all be well in the coming year.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled, we should treat these Republicans like the fascists they are.

Excellent article we want to share written by Dartagman a community contributor team member of Daily Kos for December 11, 2020. Just a bit long winded for us telling us what we all know. But we must take this lesson with us and not sit back and take it from these wanna be fascists. We reprint the article here for our readers around the world, if only to let folks know where we stand. (as if anyone needs that lesson) Always remember that the least fascist among us is still a fascist.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled, we should treat these Republicans like the fascists they are. by Dartagman.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled on Texas’ ridiculous suit against four other states, perhaps we can take stock of what’s happened over the past few weeks.

Imagine a world where over one-half of the members in the Republican House of Representatives, including the top Republican in that caucus, sign on to a clumsy, thoroughly bogus attempt to overturn a national election based on contrived lies that add up to nothing except the fact that their man lost. Not just “lost,” mind you, but was soundly beaten. Had his ass kicked, in fact, both in the popular vote and the electoral college tally.

And imagine a Republican Senate Majority equally contemptuous of the winner of that election, wielding the power to hold hostage many of the new President’s first official actions—such as the basic function of picking a Cabinet. That Senate uses the excuse that the election was still being “litigated” to stall even scheduling hearings on his Cabinet nominations.

Imagine the outgoing, losing president, doing his level best to sabotage and hamstring the man who beat him in the election, alternatively whining and threatening elected Republican officials, demanding a list of those opposed to him, so that he could single them out for punishment.

And imagine all of this occurring against the backdrop of the worst public health crisis, combined with an equally virulent economic calamity, to hit this country in over a century.

If you really want to appreciate the insanity of what we’re witnessing right now, just play the alternative scenario in your head.

Had President Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney in 2012 by over seven million votes, suffered a 306-232 Electoral college shellacking, yet insisted he was the rightful winner, accusing the Republican Party of a massive and fraudulent campaign to undermine him, all while refusing to concede the election, you don’t really need to think too hard to comprehend how this whole sorry episode in our country’s history would have played out.

If something so ridiculous and far-fetched ever occurred, Democrats wouldn’t have waited to remove him, they would have done it themselves. They wouldn’t have waited for the Republican Party to cry and scream about it. He would have been banished from political life and never spoken of again.

So despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, wiping out this latest attempt by the GOP to subvert and destroy our country, there’s really something unspeakably terrible about this moment. It’s bad enough as it is, but it’s actually getting worse, Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding.

By now many people have put their finger on what’s going on here. Basically, the Republican Party has shown its true colors. In a way, perhaps, we should thank Donald Trump for bringing this out in the cold light, for all to see.

Workers And Just Transition: A Global View

REGISTER NOW
For Saturday, December 5, 2020

For our next webinar, we’re going International!

With the election of a President who acknowledges the threats of climate change and of ongoing economic devastation for working people, we have an opportunity to seriously address how to make a transition to a climate-safe, socially-just, worker-friendly society. The primary objective of the Just Transition Listening Project (JTLP) is to ensure workers and community voices are central to the conversation of a Green New Deal and other climate policies.

On Saturday, Dec. 5 at 12 p.m. Eastern, the Labor Network for Sustainability and the Just Transition Listening Project Organizing Committee will bring together labor and policy leaders to share perspectives, stories, and strategies from the frontlines of the struggle for a just transition globally. This will be the sixth webinar in the JTLP series. In addition to the webinar series we conducted interviews with more than 100 community leaders and workers to learn of their experiences and perspectives on Just Transition. Our report from these interviews will be available in January.

From the experiences of metalworkers in South Africa to the coal miners in Spain, to workers across sectors in Latin America and across the world, the struggle for a just transition is truly global. In order to effectively address the worldwide transitions we are facing in our jobs, environments, and homes, we must demand a worldwide response. Join us on Saturday, Dec. 5, as we learn from each other and set the stage for finalizing and distributing our report to help us win the struggle to protect jobs, communities and the right to thrive as we work toward a society that is ecologically sustainable and just.

Workers and Just Transition: A Global View

Worldwide Transitions Deserve Worldwide Response

Moderator

Richard Lipsitz
President, Western New York Area Labor Federation

Saturday, December 5, 2020
12 p.m. Eastern | 11 a.m. Central | 10 a.m. Mountain and Mexican Pacific Standard Time | 9 a.m. Pacific
9 p.m. GMT+2 | 8 p.m. GMT+1 |

75 minutes in length 

Please note special time to encourage worldwide participation.

This webinar is the 6th in a series of the Just Transition Listening Project hosted by LNS and the Just Transition Listening Project Organizing Committee.

REGISTER NOW >