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Over the last seven years, hundreds of organizations have built stronger social movement infrastructure through the US Social Forum process. 15,000 people participated in Atlanta in 2007, and 20,000 people participated in Detroit in 2010.
Today, comprehensive waves of assault on the public sector and on people (workers and unemployed) are part of larger national neoliberal strategies to dismantle all public infrastructure that supports the potential for social and economic democracy (collective bargaining, social security, libraries, public education, radio & internet communication, reproductive health options, protest and dissent, etc.)
Now is the time to respond to the Right Wing, the Tea Party, the manufactured budget crises, and the attacks on our families. Our movement forces are fighting back, from Wisconsin to Egypt. Another world is happening.
The US Social Forums have been significant expressions of our growing movements. Hundreds and thousands have been a part of the Peoples Movement Assembly process before, during, and after the USSF. Let’s utilize our many resources to build stronger movements in this critical moment.
This MOVEMENT ACTION LIST is a resource for us to connect and to activate our diverse communities. You are invited, as a participant in the US Social Forum, to receive a few emails a month that announce actions and action plans. The list is a no-reply list and will be moderated. You can unsubscribe from this list.
April 4 - Call to Action:
On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone to stand with sanitation workers demanding their dream: the right to bargain collectively for a voice at work and a better life. The workers were trying to form a union with AFSCME.
On April 4, 2011, join union members, community activists, people of faith, students, youth, LGBTQ, civil rights, and immigrant rights allies to stand in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and dozens of other states where well-funded, right-wing corporate politicians are trying to take away the rights Dr. King gave his life for: the freedom to bargain, to vote, to afford a college education and justice for all workers, immigrant and native-born. It’s a day to show movement with actions, teach-ins, worksite discussions, vigils, faith events – a day to be creative, but clear: We are one.
Visit www.we-r-1.org to find a local event or add your own event to the growing list of activities. Jobs with Justice also has resources on their website at www.jwj.org/solidarity.
Some ideas for action:
• Organize discussions, teach-ins, or a screening of “At the River I Stand”, which tells the story of the Memphis sanitation workers and Dr. King’s support of their struggle.
• Organize a prayer vigil in front of a symbol that represents Dr. King’s vision of a better world.
• Organize an action with students who are fighting budget battles around education and make links to attacks on workers in the public sector.
It’s time to come together to curb unchecked corporate power. Who will control our communities: working people or corporations?
In Dr. King’s words: I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
May 1st Call to Action - Adopted as an International Day of Action at the US Social Forum in Detroit in June 2010, at the Social Forum of the Americas in Paraguay in August, at the Social Forum on Migration in Quito in November, and at the Global Forum on the Rights of Migrants – the people have called for May 1st to be a day of struggle for the workers and all people under attack.
MOVEMENT ASSEMBLIES & COMMUNITY ACTIONS: Communities are using the Peoples Movement Assemblies (PMAs) to gather and converge our forces, create long-term visions for our communities, integrate our movements, and make collective commitments for action.
- April 28th PMA in Detroit - click here for more info
- Formerly Incarcerated People’s Movement - click here for more info
- More organized action plans are happening in the Southeast, the Southwest, among community-based healers, youth, educators, LGBTQ coalitions, and local collectives across the country.
Check out www.pma2010.org for more information, resources to organize assemblies, and short videos from the National PMA Strategy Session held in Atlanta in February 2011.
The Peoples Movement Assembly has been an organized process integrated into the open space of the US Social Forum to provide clear mechanisms to establish political positions, integrate our work, and coordinate our local, regional, and national action plans. The PMA offers the ‘bottom-up’ opportunity to build our social movement power and advance a shared economic and social agenda.
In solidarity,
PMA Coordination Team in consultation with members of the National Planning Committee for the US Social Forum
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