Direct Action // Current TV

Occupy Obama's Fundraisers

Obama's biggest campaign contributors are Wall Street. Here's a quick way... more

asherp
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Holiday Inn Austin Midtown Built with Stolen Wages!

On Thursday, August 4th at Holiday Inn Midtown (6000 Middle Fiskville Rd, Austin TX) a dozen construction workers will lead a protest to reclaim over $10,000 in wages from a recent remodel at the hotel.

"It's just not right that we worked hard and didn't get paid" said Quirino Juarez, a construction worker who performed framing and drywall work at the Holiday Inn Midtown. Juarez along with 11 other workers worked under Mely's Construction, a San Antonio-based sub-contractor, in January and February of 2011. Over thirty workers are owed wages for work on the hotel, although only 12 have come forward so far.

WDP has attempted to negotiate a fair settlement with the general contractor and Holiday Inn management. However, all parties have avoided responsibility, promising to pay numerous times but never following through. "The job is done, the rooms look really great. They raised their rates and are benefitting from the remodel but we've received nothing", said Heladio Liborio who is owed two weeks of wages for drywall work at the Holiday Inn project. "It's been hard to pay my rent, bills and take care of my family."

According to Bloomberg News, InterContinental Hotel Group, owner of the Holiday Inn franchise, saw a 38% increase in profits in 2010 due mostly to remodels like that done by these workers1. The worldwide makeover has given the company a fresh new image and a higher level of revenue. Meanwhile the workers who helped remodel Holiday Inn Midtown in Austin have yet to receive payment for their work.

"Holiday Inn has an opportunity to be a leader in corporate responsibility by ensuring that those that work so hard to make it one of the nations most profitable hotel chains are compensated for their work" stated Patricia Zavala, Workplace Justice Coordinator at WDP.

A ZGraphix Video Production.
http://zgraphix.org

Video produced for Austin Indymedia by Jeff Zavala
http://austin.indymedia.org

Photography by Jason Cato

Learn more about Workers Defense Project/Proyecto Defensa Laboral: http://workersdefense.orgOn Thursday, August 4th at Holiday Inn Midtown (6000 Middle Fiskville Rd, Austin TX) a... more

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Caffrey pledges civil disobedience in Congress for pot legalization

From my new Caffrey For Congress web site's blog.... more

Andy_Caffrey
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Labor Express: Direct Action - Labor Beat - blip.tv

Panel discussion on direct action and the labor movement

mollymew
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Direct Action and CUPW Winnipeg Local 856

Radio interview with postal workers in Winnipeg about their tactics in the struggle... more

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Weekly Mulch: Want to Combat Climate Change? Ignore Congress.

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger Congress comes back into session next... more

MediaConsortium
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Protesters Scale 20 Stories To Stop Immigration Law

Four protesters brought downtown Phoenix to a standstill on July 29th after scaling a... more

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The Photohumourist - Mixed Messages

Huge anthropological street photography tome on modern, urban living and human... more

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The End of the Tuna Fish?

From the NY Times Magazine (June 21, 2010)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27Tuna-t.html

Tuna's End

In the international waters south of Malta, the Greenpeace vessels Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise deployed eight inflatable Zodiacs and skiffs into the azure surface of the Mediterranean. Protesters aboard donned helmets and took up DayGlo flags and plywood shields. With the organization’s observation helicopter hovering above, the pilots of the tiny boats hit their throttles, hurtling the fleet forward to stop what they viewed as an egregious environmental crime. It was a high-octane updating of a familiar tableau, one that anyone who has followed Greenpeace’s Save the Whales adventures of the last 35 years would have recognized. But in the waters off Malta there was not a whale to be seen.

What was in the water that day was a congregation of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a fish that when prepared as sushi is one of the most valuable forms of seafood in the world. It’s also a fish that regularly journeys between America and Europe and whose two populations, or “stocks,” have both been catastrophically overexploited. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of only two known Atlantic bluefin spawning grounds, has only intensified the crisis. By some estimates, there may be only 9,000 of the most ecologically vital megabreeders left in the fish’s North American stock, enough for the entire population of New York to have a final bite (or two) of high-grade otoro sushi. The Mediterranean stock of bluefin, historically a larger population than the North American one, has declined drastically as well. Indeed, most Mediterranean bluefin fishing consists of netting or “seining” young wild fish for “outgrowing” on tuna “ranches.” Which was why the Greenpeace craft had just deployed off Malta: a French fishing boat was about to legally catch an entire school of tuna, many of them undoubtedly juveniles.

Oliver Knowles, a 34-year-old Briton who was coordinating the intervention, had told me a few days earlier via telephone what the strategy was going to be. “These fishing operations consist of a huge purse-seining vessel and a small skiff that’s quite fast,” Knowles said. A “purse seine” is a type of net used by industrial fishing fleets, called this because of the way it draws closed around a school of fish in the manner of an old-fashioned purse cinching up around a pile of coins. “The skiff takes one end of the net around the tuna and sort of closes the circle on them,” Knowles explained. “That’s the key intervention point. That’s where we have the strong moral mandate.”

But as the Zodiacs approached the French tuna-fishing boat Jean-Marie Christian VI, confusion engulfed the scene. As anticipated, the French seiner launched its skiffs and started to draw a net closed around the tuna school. Upon seeing the Greenpeace Zodiacs zooming in, the captain of the Jean-Marie Christian VI issued a call. “Mayday!” he shouted over the radio. “Pirate attack!” Other tuna boats responded to the alert and arrived to help. The Greenpeace activists identified themselves over the VHF, announcing they were staging a “peaceful action.”

Aboard one Zodiac, Frank Hewetson, a 20-year Greenpeace veteran who in his salad days as a protester scaled the first BP deepwater oil rigs off Scotland, tried to direct his pilot toward the net so that he could throw a daisy chain of sandbags over its floating edge and allow the bluefin to escape. But before Hewetson could deploy his gear, a French fishing skiff rammed his Zodiac. A moment later Hewetson was dragged by the leg toward the bow. “At first I thought I’d been lassoed,” Hewetson later told me from his hospital bed in London. “But then I looked down. ” A fisherman trying to puncture the Zodiac had swung a three-pronged grappling hook attached to a rope into the boat and snagged Hewetson clean through his leg between the bone and the calf muscle. (Using the old language of whale protests, Greenpeace would later report to Agence France-Presse that Hewetson had been “harpooned.”)

“Ma jambe! Ma jambe!” Hewetson cried out in French, trying to signal to the fisherman to slack off on the rope. The fisherman, according to Hewetson, first loosened it and then reconsidered and pulled it tight again. Eventually Hewetson was able to get enough give in the rope to yank the hook free. Elsewhere, fishermen armed with gaffs and sticks sank another Zodiac and, according to Greenpeace’s Knowles, fired a flare at the observation helicopter. At a certain point, the protesters made the decision to break off the engagement. “We have currently pulled back from the seining fleet,” Knowles e-mailed me shortly afterward, “to regroup and develop next steps.” Bertrand Wendling, the executive director of the tuna-fishing cooperative of which the Jean-Marie Christian VI was a part, called the Greenpeace protest “without doubt an act of provocation” in which “valuable work tools” were damaged.

(This story is much, much longer and continues at the link!)From the NY Times Magazine (June 21, 2010)... more

captainplanet71
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2 years ago
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Boycott ULTA for Selling AHAVA: Protesting Israeli Cosmetics Made in Occupied Palestine

Austin Activists Protest Material Support of Genocide in Palestine: Ahava cosmetics... more

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3 years ago
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The Whitewashing of War Crimes & The Reclaiming of Public Space

On Saturday, thousands of people converged at the White House for the March 20th March... more

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3 years ago
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Smash EDO Protest - Brighton January 2010

18 January 2010: Black-clad anti-militarist protestors marched yet again on the... more

JasonNParkinson
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3 years ago
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Workers Defense Project - Action Against Centex/Pulte Homes for Unpaid Wages in Austin

Workers Defense Project and community supporters gathered at the Central Texas... more

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resist 2010

Resist 2010: 8 Reasons to Oppose the 2010 Winter Olympics, is a short, fast-paced... more

donkeyfly69
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3 years ago
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Write a to letter to Senator Joe LIeberman Demanding the passage of the public option

Dear the Honorable Joesph Lieberman You have very clearly expressed your... more

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3 years ago
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Produce Brand Uses Barcodes and Transparency to Promote Social Change

We limit the combined total dollar amount of item-labeled produce that any single... more

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Climate Campers

Concerned to avert global disaster, the pressure group Climate Campers meet in the... more

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Workers Defense Project Protests Cobra Studios/Cobalt Co. Remix

Workers Defense Project and community supporters gathered outside Cobra Studios in... more

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3 years ago
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The Workers Defense Project Helps Build a Better Austin!

Gov. Rick Perry and employees within the state insurance building did not meet the... more

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3 years ago
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SINGLE PAYER-TAKEOVER of the MoveOn.org Photo Petition

MoveOn.org is hosting a photo petition where they want you to use their materials.... more

asherp
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3 years ago
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