Black Lives Matter PDX

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Black Lives Matter Portland presents our monthly open meeting and community discussion. Join us for a panel about patriarchy and misogynoir in the Black community. Free food. *BLACK ONLY SPACE*

When: 6:30 PM TONIGHT Where: In Other Words Feminist Community Center, 14 N. Killingsworth Portland, OR 97211

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Street blockade in response to a call for a National Prisoner Strike beginning September 9th (the anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion in 1971). The National Prisoner Strike is led and organized by prisoners in states across America who will be participating in work stoppages and hunger strikes to demand an end to inhumane and exploitative conditions. Prisoners are often forced to work against their will and are typically paid less than 25 cents an hour to do everything from fight wildfires, make telemarketing calls, and sew McDonald’s uniforms. Organizers of the National Prisoner Strike are asking for supporters to demonstrate outside detention facilities and businesses profiting from prison labor to expose and challenge this injustice. Groups leading this effort include the Free Alabama Movement, the Free Texas Movement, IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, and many others across the country.

Blockade organized by Black Lives Matter Portland, All African People’s Revolutionary Party, Showing Up for Racial Justice PDX, Marilyn Buck Abolitionist Collective, and the Portland Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines.

Learn More: http://blmpdx.tumblr.com/post/150152877687/solidarity-with-the-september-9th-national

News coverage: http://koin.com/2016/09/09/protesters-snarl-traffic-block-max-lines-in-portland/

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Solidarity with the September 9th National Prisoner Strike

Slavery Never Ended

Thanks to a loophole in the 13th amendment, prisoners across the US are being forced to work for pennies (or often nothing at all) while being denied food, health care, and even access to basic hygiene. Prisoners who refuse may face punishments like loss of privileges, more prison time, sexual and physical abuse, solitary confinement, torture, and worse. More than 150 years after the end of slavery, there are more black and brown skinned people performing mandatory unpaid hard labor in the US today than there were in the 1800s.

Corporations, governments, prisons, and detention centers are working together to make billions of dollars in profits.

For-profit prison companies like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group maintain deals with government agencies that guarantee a minimum number of filled beds in private prison facilities and immigration detention centers - giving them access to an easily exploited labor force who can't say no and incentivizing racist criminal justice and immigration law.

State and city governments charge prisoners exorbitant prices for things like beds, phone calls to their families, toilet paper, life-saving medical care, and even food - taking as much as 80% of the meager wages prisoners receive for forced labor and making it increasingly common for them to finish their sentences in debt.

Corporations regularly shut down factories and lay off thousands of union employees all over the country in favor of much cheaper prison slave labor.

When prison profiteering is multi-billion dollar per year industry is it any surprise that the U.S. has the largest incarcerated population in the world?

Thanks to the War on Drugs, three strike laws, mandatory minimums, and slashed spending on welfare, food stamps, social security, and other social safety net programs, the American prison population is currently 10 times the size that it was in the 1970s - even though violent crime rates have been steadily decreasing for decades. Today nonviolent offenders - people locked up for things like selling weed or unpaid fines - make up more than 86% of the incarcerated population in the US. Meanwhile, Black folks and Natives are arrested, charged, and convicted at rates much higher than their portion of the population while receiving longer sentences than white offenders for the same crimes.

Far from keeping us safe, the American ‘justice’ system has been designed to systematically strip Black, Native, undocumented, poor, and disabled people of their humanity and connection to society while ensuring greedy corporations have guaranteed access to exploited labor.

Who’s Using Slave Labor Today

AT&T, Microsoft, Nintendo, UPS, Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Well’s Fargo, Autozone, Wal-Mart, and many, many more companies all use prison slave labor.  Wait, did we mention McDonald’s? Cuz yup, McDonald’s uses prison slave labor too. Prisoners are forced to make McDonald’s uniforms, knives and forks, cups, to-go containers, frozen beef patties, milk and poultry products, and more.

How to Help Stop Prison Slavery

Support prisoner resistance! Organize in solidarity with the National Prisoner Strike!

Vote with your dollars! Refuse to buy from corporations - like McDonald’s, AT&T, Victoria’s Secret, and Starbucks - who use slave labor. Here’s a full list. Write letters to their investors and shareholder, picket their storefronts, and shut down their businesses. 

Spread the word! Share articles, news, and graphics about the National Prisoner Strike on social media and distribute flyers at school or work. Use the hashtags #EndPrisonSlavery, #PrisonStrike, and (if you’re in Portland) #September9thPDX. Read It’s Going Down and Support Prisoner Resistance to stay up to date.

Talk to incarcerated friends and loved ones about supporting or joining the National Prisoner Strike

Become an endorsing organization or individual and pledge your support for the National Prisoner Strike publicly.

Commit to help organize support for the strike beyond September 9th - attend a September 9th coalition meeting or share your skills

For more info visit Support Prisoner Resistance and bit.ly/September9thSolidarity.

Strike against prison slavery! Strike against white supremacy! No life in chains! Free em all!

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We got #zines, homie. Read about the politics, work, organizing principles, and membership requirements of Black Lives Matter Portland here: bit.ly/BLMPDXzine #blacklivesmatter #blackliberation #readyforrevolution #BLMPDX

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Read for revolution. #BLMPDX #blackliberation #blacklivesmatter #africanrevolution #buildtheAAPRP

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African #abolitionists. Also check out bit.ly/September9thSolidarity #september9th #atticauprising #prisonersolidarity #noprisons #noborders #nopolice #policeabolition #blacklivesmatter #BLMPDX

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Pan-African Women's Day is a celebration of the militancy, brilliance, and power of the African women, girls, and femmes leading the global struggle for African revolution. Join #AAPRPOregon on Sunday August 27th from 5:30-8pm at In Other Words Bookstore at 14 N. Killingsworth for food, discussion, connection, and a celebration of revolutionary African women and femmes! Childcare will be provided! This event is FREE and open to the public. #buildtheAAPRP #africamustbefree #panafricanism #panafrican #pdxevents #panafricanwomensday #womanism #blackfeminism #africanfeminism #africanrevolution (at In Other Words)

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Unbroken, Black, and Free: A statement on the politics and principles of Black Lives Matter Portland

What We Believe

We understand colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism to be the material basis of Black/African oppression. Our ancestors were the world’s first capital - kidnapped, sold, and forced into chattel slavery to build the foundations of Western empire.  While we labored as slaves, our motherland was raped and looted to fund the violent expansion of European and American settler colonial states. Today, the masses of Black/African people suffer through poverty, terror, genocide, and constant state  terrorism, surveillance, and control wherever we exist in the world. Our lives, land, resources, and futures are stolen to sustain the agents of our oppression and fuel the destruction of the earth.

And yet, we survive. Black/African people have resisted capitalist destruction and annihilation for hundreds of years. The masses of Black/African people living today are heirs to a furious, brilliant, and continuous struggle for justice and liberation. From slave ship mutinies, to plantation uprisings, to Native and African Maroon communities outsmarting and outfighting European military powers, to warrior queens crushing colonizing armies on the continent: our people have organized, fought back, and won throughout history.  Revolution is in our blood.

But even as we recognize and uplift the power of our people, we must also acknowledge the winning strategies of our enemy.  Capitalism and colonialism have adapted in order to manipulate, control, and destroy the resistance of the colonized - from the slave ship to the prison block, from the hangman’s noose to the nightstick and taser, from fields, slave quarters, and plantations to abandoned schools, shanty towns, and crumbling tenements, and from white European agents of colonial and capitalist violence to Black/African ones - this system has expanded and evolved at each step to try and crush our will to fight.

We know that a lie can’t live forever. Capitalism, colonialism and imperialism  can not exist without lands and peoples to exploit - they can not exist without us - and the colonized peoples of the world outnumber our oppressors by a factor of thousands. The odds are with us. Our task now is to unlearn and reject the lies of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism and organize the masses of Black/African people to destroy these systems once and for all. We must reclaim our histories and our future.

We are a Black/African only organization. We see the revolutionary awakening and organization of the masses of Black/African people as our contribution to the worldwide  struggle for the liberation of all life on earth from the theft, murder, and destruction of colonialism and capitalism. We organize and resist in solidarity with all peoples fighting colonialism and capitalism all over the world. We understand that all Black/Africans today exist in a continuum of resistance which began when our ancestors fought back against the first colonizer to set foot on the shores of Africa centuries ago and we fight everyday to honor those ancestors, reclaim our history, heal our people, save our children, and preserve the future of humanity and the planet.

We are femme-centered. Black/African women and femmes, whether they are trans, non-binary, or cis, exist at the bottom of a worldwide hierarchy of capitalist oppression. Black/African femme identity has  been commodified, objectified, marginalized, and cannibalized since the rise of colonialism and capitalism on this planet. We reject a global capitalist culture based upon greed, violence, and blind consumption which claims Black/African femme bodies, wisdom, power, and magic as commodities to be possessed and exploited. Our power and magic belongs to our people and our bodies and minds belong to ourselves. We will not be consumed. We will not be owned. We will not be bought or sold. We resist the oppression of the Black/African femme in all of its forms:

We reject patriarchy - whether it wears a Black, brown, or white mask - as a lie created to violate, suppress, and control the power of the Black/African feminine, twist and poison the power of the Black/African masculine, and manipulate our people into destroying and subjugating  themselves.

We reject cis-heterosexism - we are queer, trans, and non-binary Black/Africans and we struggle beside and for queer, trans, and non-binary Black/Africans. We embrace and fight for the full and free expression of the entire spectrum of Black/African gender, sexuality, and identity.

Freedom Is

We are organizing for the overthrow of colonialism and capitalism. Liberation is not power or representation in a violent, backwards system. Liberation is not slightly more comfortable or tolerable oppression. Liberation is not the ability to exploit other oppressed people for the illusion of safety and a few creature comforts soaked in blood. Liberation is every human of every identity on earth coexisting with safety, self-determination, and a connection to all of humanity, the ancestors, the water, and the land, with free healthcare, free housing, free food, free education, and the warmth and protection of a thriving planet, culture, and community.

How We Organize

All Black Lives Matter Portland events, spaces, and organizing are open to ALL Black folks including: Black trans folks, Black queer folks, Black non-binary folks, hood Black folks, poor Black folks, houseless Black folks, undocumented Black folks, Black femmes, currently and formerly incarcerated Black folks, Black single parents, Black elders, Black Latinx folks, Black Muslims, not yet woke and still getting woke Black folks, Black folks living with mental illness, Black nerds, Black weirdos, Black hoes, differently abled Black folks, anxious as fuck Black folks, Black folks who've never organized a day in their lives, ain't shit but trying to do better Black folks, and more.

We are welcoming and accepting of all intersections within the universe of Black/African identity and all levels of political knowledge and revolutionary consciousness so long as the individual Black/Africans doing this work are engaged in principled struggle, constant learning, and a process of continuous personal and ideological self-criticism, accountability, reflection, and growth.

We, as individuals and as an organization, are accountable to the masses of Black/African people and to our communities, we engage at all times with honesty and respect, we own our shit, make amends, and do better when we do harm or fall short, and we are focused on building the revolutionary consciousness and capacity of ourselves and the masses of our people above all else.

Oppressive, abusive, or reactionary language and behavior of any kind will be interrupted and challenged in all BLMPDX spaces and work. We will respect, embrace, and defend the identities and complexities of all people and all  life. We will not tolerate threats - in any form - to the safety of any member of our organization or any part of the communities we are accountable to. We will  respect the boundaries, consent, and emotional and bodily autonomy of all persons and we will ask about them - we will not assume to know them. We will unequivocally believe and fight for survivors of rape, trauma, and abuse.

Organizers with Black Lives Matter Portland commit to build, learn, grow, and struggle beside each other for revolution and ultimate liberation.  We commit to unlearning, revealing, and rejecting the lies of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism everyday.

Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Donate to support our organizing.

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On September 9th, 2016 - the 45th anniversary of the ‪#‎AtticaUprising‬ - prisoners in the US who have been forced into slavery by corrupt politicians and greedy corporations will begin a strike to shut down prisons and detention centers across the country. Prisoners will not only demand an end to prison slavery, they will end it themselves by ceasing to be slaves. Learn more about National Prison Strike happening September 2016, the shameful truth about prison slavery, and how you can support African and Indigenous organizing behind bars at this link: http://bit.ly/September9thSolidarity Please share widely! ‪ #‎SupportPrisonResistance‬ ‪#‎PrisonerSolidarity‬ ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ ‪#‎NativeLivesMatter‬ ‪#BlackandBrownSolidarity #‎Not1More‬ ‪#‎AllofUsorNoneofUs‬ ‪#‎September9th‬ #Attica #BLMPDX #AAPRPOregon

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All the cool Africans you know are at CIO about to watch #Lemonade with #BLMPDX. Family style with snacks and dogs and crying and laughing. Come through! (at Center for Intercultural Organizing (CIO))

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Next Friday from 3-7pm, join a panel of African and Native revolutionaries for a discussion on the importance of building African and Native solidarity in the 21st century struggle against colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. (Dope poster art by @vanessuhhh) #freefood #blackandbrownunity #buildtheAAPRP #africamustbefree #followthecorn #decolonize (at Smith Memorial Student Union)

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#Portland showing the fuck up on a Friday night for a revolutionary documentary. ❤❤❤ #themurderoffredhampton #BLMPDX (at Q Center)

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The city of #Portland invested in #WellsFargo. Wells Fargo invested in private prisons. City council must divest. (at Holladay City Park)

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#Repost @blmpdx with @repostapp ・・・ Join #BLMPDX during the PSU School of Social Work's Culture & Conversation series for a discussion about race and higher education this Tuesday, 19 April! #cultureandconversation #blacklivesmatter

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Y en espanol tambien! La gente unido jamas sera vencido! #MayDayPDX #aluchar #not1more #workersunite

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Final version of the dope poster for this year's #MayDayPDX celebrating revolutionary, militant motherhood. Rise up, May 1st! #workersunite #internationalworkersday #riseup #PDX (at Shemanski Park)

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May Day 2016 #savethedate flyer, coming soon to a table near you! #maydaypdx #workersunite #flymanicure