Welcome
Here
are some news, events, and calls to action from
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Occupied News
The
Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates has
unanimously set a strike date for Sept. 10. A
resolution released by CTU reads:
"The strike is necessary to achieve a labor contract
with acceptable wages, benefits and job protections;
and for all other purposes for which a strike is
authorized under law. The strike is also necessary
to protest unfair labor practices committed by CPS
against our membership."
Negotiations between the teachers union and the
Chicago School Board on a new labor deal have been
contentious for months. Lewis said negotiations will
continue in the hopes of avoiding the first teachers
strike in Chicago in 25 years. via Chicagoist
Per
the Neighborhood Touring Occupy Chicago General
Assembly proposal, the General Assembly for the next
two Saturdays (September 8th/15th) at 7PM will be
held at the Bronzeville
Community Garden, 51st St. & Calumet Ave.
Occupy these
Upcoming Events
Join CTU and allies for a Labor Day
Rally for Jobs, Dignity and a Fair Contract!!!
Monday, September 3, 10:30AM-12:30PM
Daley
Plaza. (50 W. Washington)
Chicago Teachers Union delegates
voted to set a strike date of September 10th! The
mayor and his cronies pushed them to this by
threatening to undermine truly public education. Now
more than ever, show your support this Labor Day as
the Chicago Teachers Union and allies rally for a fair
contract and the schools Chicago students deserve!!
The message carried from the Aug. 29th Town Hall
meeting for public education was that parents and the
community are with the CTU in this strike. We see
through the mayor and his appointed board and
administration's lies and tricks.
Come out on Labor Day to stand in solidarity with the
CTU and allies. An attack on one is an attack on all!
Chicago teachers are approaching a showdown with the
mayor and the Chicago Board of Education. The fight
for a fair CTU contract reflects the current climate
of scapegoating union workers in an attempt to force
us all to accept contract givebacks. Public servants
and the services we provide are under attack! Join the
fight for better schools, libraries, parks, decent
wages and public services. Sisters and brothers from
Chicago’s unions and grassroots allies will rally
together. Coalition members are encouraged to dress to
represent their locals or groups. CTU members will
wear our red. Let’s send a message, together, that “An
Injury to One is an Injury to All.”
Monday,
September 3, 12:00-4:00PM
National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St.
The Caravan for Peace
with Justice and Dignity will be arriving in
Chicago, on September 2-4. The Caravan Vision:
Walking together with the victims of the War on
Drugs. The War on drugs produced painful
consequences in both Mexico and the United
States, leaving a trail of death, pain and
corruption in its path.
The war on drugs has made an impact in Chicago
for decades. We need our mothers, grandmothers,
our community organizers, our youth to share
their stories with the 150 caravan members who
themselves have survived and lost members of
their family due to the violence and poverty
that plagues many communities in Mexico. This
caravan is traveling through the United States
putting a face to the stories. Encouraging us to
look and revise the U.S. policies in place that
have impacted many lives in Mexico and here in
our own country.
Monday,
September 3, 5:00-8:00PM
Little Village Arch, 26th St. & Albany
We need to show a
strong presence in is the March for Peace and
Unity that will start off in Little Village and
go through parts of North Lawndale. Bridging the
Latino and African-American communities and
standing in unity and solidarity. This march for
Peace will end at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary
Baptist Church with an opportunity for the
participating communities through out Chicago to
share their stories with the Peace Caravan.
Occupy Obama
Tuesday,
September 4, 5:30PM: Reject
President 1%: End Obama's War On the World's 99%
Jackson & Lasalle (by the Chicago Board of
Trade/Federal Reserve Bank)
Wednesday,
September 5, 5:00PM: Protest
Obama/Fannie&Freddie/Ed Demarco for
Foreclosure/Underwater Mortgage Crisis
Fannie Mae Midwest HQ, 1 S. Wacker Dr.
(Wacker&Madison)
Thursday,
September 6, 6:00PM: #OccupyDemocracy
Obama for America Campaign Headquarters, 130 E.
Randolph St.
The United States is
in need of change, now more than ever, and that
change must come from the people. We can no longer
rely on politicians to save us. Politicians are
bought and sold by the very interests that are
destroying our society, and our president Barack
Obama is no different. After coming into office
under the guise of hope and change we have seen more
of the same policies and actions that brought us to
our current situation. Now more than ever it is time
for a real change.
With the upcoming
presidential election we are going to be given two
sides of the same corporate coin. Without question
we reject the idea that Mitt Romney, the man behind
Bain Capital, can do anything other than gut what
remains of the public sector, destroy what remains
of our social services and empower corporations to
further take over our country.
Barack Obama's agenda
is not so different from that of Mitt Romney's. If
Obama is elected we will continue to see more human
rights abuses, our the rolling back of
constitutional rights, and a continuation of the
silent coup that corporate America is executing on
what remains of our sham of a democracy.
This September Occupy
Chicago will join with activists around Chicago and
take a stand. We will highlight the contradictions
between President Obama's promise of “hope and
change” and his actual policy decisions during a
four day occupation of his campaign headquarters.
Each day will feature actions, teach-ins, and
opportunities to share in community and grow our
movement. Join us!
Reject President 1%,
End Obama's War on The World's 99%
Tuesday,
September 4, 5:30PM
Jackson & Lasalle (by the Chicago Board of
Trade/Federal Reserve Bank)
Occupy Chicago, its
allies and the public will march from Jackson
and LaSalle to Obama’s National Campaign
Headquarters.
While President Obama throws himself a big
commercial during the DNC in North Carolina, we
will be presenting a Bill of Grievances against
his administration at the Obama National
Campaign Headquarters in Chicago.
Some issues highlighted in the Bill of
Grievances:
Across the World
- Obama has escalated
most of George W. Bush’s wars. The US has
troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia,
Yemen, a new American military force on the
African continent. He has continued to arm
Israel while it robs even more Palestinian
lands of life and homes.
- Obama has threatened,
and enacted, new illegal wars on other
nations. He violated the War Powers Act to
launch a sustained war on Libya. He looks the
other way while the brutal Saudi Arabian
dictatorship foments civil war in Syria. He
refuses to rule out war, including use of
nuclear weapons, against Iran.
- Obama supports
dictators and military coups against elected
governments across the world. He recognized
and arms the military coup governments in
Honduras and the Maldives, and the
“constitutional” coup in Paraguay. He arms the
Saudi Arabian monarchy as they brutally
suppress their own people while invading
Bahrain to support that dictatorship’s
crushing of its pro-democracy movement.
- He sends troops to
subjugate countries that don’t want them
there. U.S. troops are an intimidation force
in130 countries, violating the wishes of the
vast majority of most nations.
- Obama’s drone attacks
far exceed those of George W. Bush. Obama’s
“Enemies List” of people to kill abroad and
their subsequent assassinations represent an
escalation on Bush’s “extraordinary
renditions” of people to torture chambers run
by U.S. secret forces and U.S.-allied
dictators.
Across the United States
- Obama neglects the
urgent needs of the 99% at home and abroad
while spending a record amount on the
military. He enthusiastically supports the
world’s largest-ever military alliance, NATO,
while spending 67% of the federal budget on
current and past wars. He spends as much on
the U.S. military as the rest of the world
combined, while half the world’s people live
on less than $2 a day.
- Obama promoted the 1%
in finance and other big businesses, while
barely lifting a finger for the 99%. He and
the Bush administration gave trillions to bail
out Wall Street, and stuffed his
administration full of many of the leading
crooks who precipitated the financial meltdown
in the first place. While he makes campaign
gestures towards the 99% now that his own job
is on the line, where has he been for the last
three-and-a-half years?
- He has silently
watched as Republican governors have attacked
public workers’ rights, and through his
“Education” Secretary, has attacked teachers’
unions more vigorously than any president
before him.
- During the 2008
campaign, he and Secretary of State Clinton
both pledged to at least modify, if not
repeal, NAFTA. In the last three-and-a-half
years, he has not.
- Obama promised to
make it easier for workers to democratically
decide to form unions by signing “card check.
He didn’t.
- Obama has escalated
George Bush’s attacks on civil liberties,
increasing Bush’s surveillance inside the
country, persecuting whistle blowers like
Bradley Manning and his supporters, while
taking a pass on prosecuting Bush
administration officials who ordered torture
and launched wars that killed countless
thousands of people. He has reauthorized the
PATRIOT Act when he pledged to oppose it. He,
as a former constitutional law scholar at the
University of Chicago, has helped destroy
habeas corpus, the right by which people
cannot by imprisoned without charges or
trials, by signing the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA).
- Obama poses as a
friend of immigrants after his administration
has deported more undocumented people from the
United States than any president since Herbert
Hoover.
- Obama’s recent
executive order stopping deportations of
children of the undocumented was an election
year gimmick that offers no path to
citizenship, and was only conceded after doing
far greater harm against immigrants than even
the preceding Bush administration.
- He has used LGBT
rights like a political football, supporting
equal marriage rights early in his career,
then opposing it. After doing nothing to
oppose the anti-gay constitutional amendment
in North Carolina, he endorsed gay marriage,
but at the same time endorsed a bogus “state’s
rights” approach to the issue. But it was the
Democrats who gave us the Defense of Marriage
Act in the first place, which he refused to
repeal when his party held both houses of
Congress. And Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – again a
product of the Democrats – was only repealed
when a gay Log Cabin Republican suit, opposed
by Obama, looked set to overturn the policy.
- By endorsing
corporate attacks on the environment at
practically every turn, Obama has enabled the
Republicans to create even more
anti-environmental policies.
- Cap-and-trade is a
rightwing fantasy under Republican
administrations. To be clear, in
Cap-and-trade systems, also known as
allowance trading, can be best summed up as
“pollution credits.” What happens is that
overall air quality goals are set for an
area (such as the entire nation) and
specific sources of air pollution (such as
power plants, waste incineration facilities,
etc.) are given a certain number of
allowances, which represent the amount of
various pollutants that the organization or
facility is allowed to emit. Facilities that
come in under that allowable limit because
of air pollution control systems can then
sell their leftover allowances to other
facilities and organizations on the open
market. This allows the facilities that buy
up such allowances (pollution credits) to
pollute more, because other facilities are
polluting less. Obama touts cap-and-trade as
mainstream.
- Despite weeks of
high-profile protests, Obama opened the door
to the Keystone oil pipeline, which has
created the Alberta Tar Sands and the
destruction of a boreal forest the size of
Texas.
- Obama’s support of
natural gas drilling, “fracking,” is evident
as its use has expanded greatly under his
EPA. Obama has yet to disclose or require
disclosure of the toxic chemicals utilized.
In Obama’s eagerness to shill for corporate
interests, he’s pushing for the new first
nuclear power plants in a generation
- The BP oil disaster
in the Gulf was preceded just a few weeks
earlier by Obama’s announced opening up of
huge areas of the eastern seaboard to
drilling.
Wednesday,
September 5, 5:00PM
Fannie Mae Midwest HQ, 1 S. Wacker Dr.
(Wacker&Madison)
The United States is in
a state of crisis right now. Almost 100 families
are evicted each day from their homes, by big
Wall Street Banks and the politicians funded by
them. It is a crisis that is killing our most
vulnerable communities: over 35-percent of
African American homes are underwater and over
1.5 million homeowners over the age of 50 have
lost their homes since 2007.
While much of the blame has justifiably been
directed at Wall Street big banks, the Obama
administration has thus far avoided taking any
actual effective action towards helping the 15
million families in the nation that are facing
underwater mortgages and the threat of
foreclosure. Instead he has sought to sell the
public the option of small-scale "mortgage
refinancing" that clearly doesn't go far enough
and in fact often adds further bureaucratic
burdens to families. The answer to the mortgages
crisis has always been clear - a large-scale
mortgage principal writedown on all underwater
mortgages to their current value would create 1
million jobs every year, pump over $70 billion
per year back into communities, save American
families over $500 per month, and solve the
foreclosure crisis once and for all. While Obama
has had the option of forcing the Federal
Housing Finance Agency to engage in large-scale
principal reduction for the 60% of US mortgages
that are owned or backed by them since the
financial crisis back in 2008, he continues to
hide behind Bush-era appointee FHFA director Ed
Demarco whom on multiple occasions has stated
his absolute opposition to any form of principal
write-down.
Occupy Chicago finds this to be absolutely
unacceptable and is calling on supporters to
join us for a rally at Fannie Mae's Midwest
Regional Offices in downtown Chicago on
September 5th at 5PM where families facing the
threat of eviction by Fannie Mae will speak out
about their situation. The rally will then be
followed by a march over to Obama's OFA Campaign
Headquarters where participants will be chained
together to balls that will signify how mortgage
debt is enslaving our communities. At the
headquarters, we will call Obama out on his
hypocrisy in expecting the 15 million families
in the United States to vote for him this year
when he has done nothing to alleviate their
struggles with mortgage debt and threats of
foreclosure.
Thursday,
September 6, 6:00PM
Obama for America Campaign Headquarters, 130 E.
Randolph St.
Every four years we are
asked to step into the ballot box and select a
fellow citizen to represent the United States of
America at home and abroad. Again and again we
are presented with two options whose solutions
for the world fail to address even our most
basic of needs. The situation is so dire that we
are often told to select "the lesser of two
evils" without even the slightest hint of humor,
and this election cycle is no different. We have
been presented with Barack Obama and Mitt
Romney, whose plans for the United States fail
to address the gravity of the global failure of
capitalism. In response, this year we must
refuse to put our future in the hands of any
evil, be it Democrat or Republican.
Join Occupy Chicago in demonstration against the
farce that is the 2012 Presidential Election. On
the final day of the Democratic National
Convention, assemble with us in front of Barack
Obama's campaign headquarters, where we will use
acts of symbolism to display our dissatisfaction
with the democratic and republican parties.
Following the symbolic acts and speak outs, at
Obama's headquarters, we will hold a general
assembly focused on the most important issues of
the day, those which actually affect the lives
of the 99%. As Occupy Chicago rejects the
inadequate and unrepresentative electoral
process, we will put our vision for a direct
democracy on full display.
Occupy
Chicago General Assembly
Saturday, September 8,
7:00PM-9:00PM
Bronzeville Community Gardens, 51st St. &
Calumet Ave.
Per the Neighborhood
Touring Occupy Chicago General Assembly proposal,
the General Assembly for the next two Saturdays
(September 8th/15th) at 7PM will be held at the Bronzeville
Community Garden, 51st St. & Calumet Ave.
Occupy
Chicago General Assembly
Wednesday, September 12,
7:00PM-9:00PM
Congress &
Michigan, by the Bowman/Horse Statue
Occupy
Chicago General Assembly
Saturday, September 15,
7:00PM-9:00PM
Bronzeville Community Gardens, 51st St. &
Calumet Ave.
Per the Neighborhood
Touring Occupy Chicago General Assembly proposal,
the General Assembly for the next two Saturdays
(September 8th/15th) at 7PM will be held at the Bronzeville
Community Garden, 51st St. & Calumet Ave.
Sunday, September 23, 1:00PM
Jackson &
Lasalle (by the Chicago Board of Trade/Federal
Reserve Bank)
Occupy Chicago invites
our friends and allies, and all of the 99%, to join
us in the financial district to celebrate a year of
awakening, and a show of active resistance to the
status quo that has brought so many into a struggle
for a better life, and better world.
On Sunday, September 23rd, we will have a family
friendly event at Jackson and LaSalle, that will
involve scattered music, teach ins, and other
diversions that will be reminiscent of the early
days of the movement.
In spite of efforts to undermine us, downplay our
successes, and silence our message, we are still
here, fighting for a change that we all know will
take time. The wave of realization that we have all
fought for must be honored, and those who have
joined us in the streets must be celebrated. As we
move into the second year of our movement, we must
make sure our presence is felt, and that the world
is reminded that the people, united, will never be
defeated.
Weekly
Neighborhood Occupy Assemblies
Occupy Chicago General Assembly
Wednesdays
Congress & Michigan, by the Bowman/Horse Statue
Saturdays (Rotates every 2 weeks, Check
facebook/website/twitter)
Bronzeville
Community Gardens, 51st St. & Calumet Ave.
(for Sep. 8th/15th)
Sundays 5:00PM-7:00PM
Lunt Beach (East of Lunt&Sheridan)
Tuesdays 6:30PM-7:30PM
Plaza Tenochtitlan, 18th&Blue Island Ave.
Every Other Thursday
7:00pm-9:00pm
Click here for this week's location
Saturdays 1:00pm-2:00pm
Panera Bread, 1700 Sherman Ave, Evanston
Don't know
where to begin?
Want help connecting to specific
groups and projects? Got an idea for a project? Have a
topic you want to discuss? Come to one of our General
Assemblies each Wednesday (Congress &
Michigan, by the Bowman/Horse Statue) and
Saturday (Rotating locations every 2 weeks) from
7:00PM-9:00 PM. In addition to occasionally discussing
and consensing upon proposals, we also have open space
sessions for people to breakout into discussion on
anything they like! It's also a great opportunity to
talk to some people who have been around for a while
and to find out how to get more involved.
Getting in
touch
For frequent updates,
announcements, news, action&meeting
times&locations, text @ochicom to 23559 to sign
up. For email alerts, visit
http://cel.ly/c/ochicom
Expect at most 2-3 texts/day max.
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See you in the streets,
Occupy Chicago
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