#defenddurham

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Durham, NC: Urgent Action - Housing is a Right!

Friday, June 8 - 4:00 pm

605 W. Chapel Hill Street, Durham, NC

Hosted by Defend Durham

Urgent! Defend the tent encampment at Chapel Hill St and I-147 in #Durham. We need bodies here ASAP to stop the evictions. Cops likely to come to evict residents. Housing is a right! #DefendDurham Come out for a press conference and a rally to hear from residents at the encampment themselves. Call and email NC DOT Secretary James Trogdon, tell him don’t evict the Durham tent encampment! [email protected] 919-707-2800

STATEMENT FROM THE UNITED RESIDENTS OF THE CHAPEL HILL STREET TENT ENCAMPMENT

This is our home. We live here. The state is not using this land. All of us have lived here between 4 months and a year. We have a trusting, strong community of residents. We all support each other in various ways in feeding ourselves and staying safe.

Last Friday, on June 1, we received a letter from Captain Reitz notifying us that we would all be evicted within 7 days. We have nowhere to go. The shelters are full and all have waiting lists. Many of us do not feel safe staying in a shelter. We feel safe living in our tents and wish to remain here until we find more permanent free housing.

There is already a housing and eviction crisis in Durham. Do not add us to that tragic list.

We are demanding the following of the state Department of Transportation and the City of Durham:

1. Do not evict us until we have found permanent, free housing.

2. Do not cut down the trees in our encampment. The trees keep us shaded from the elements, especially the hot sun during the summer, plus they provide us an important environmental buffer from the highway.

3. Provide us with a few trash receptacles and provide us weekly collection service, like all other residencies in Durham, so that we can keep our encampment clean.

4. Transition the old Durham Police headquarters, just across the street from our encampment, into affordable housing and provide us all free housing in the building.

June 8, 2018

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Raleigh-Durham, NC: Marx at 200 - A birthday celebration & political discussion

Saturday, May 5 - 6:00 pm

Lion’s Park,  516 Dennis Ave, Raleigh, North Carolina 27604

Hosted by Workers World Party Durham Branch

“The chief thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings out the historic role of the proletariat as the builder of socialist society. Has the course of events all over the world confirmed this doctrine since it was expounded by Marx?” (Lenin) This May 5 marks the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, the German philosopher and revolutionary socialist whose ideas laid the groundwork for revolutions and liberation movements around the world. Join Workers World Party Durham Branch as we celebrate Marx and learn more about the impact of his legacy on social movements today. Our celebration of Marx is a celebration of countless uprisings here in the U.S. such as Chicago, Oakland, Charlotte, and revolutions and movements from the Soviet Union to Cuba, Venezuela to Viet Nam, South Africa to the Philippines.

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Raleigh, North Carolina: Moral March of Raleigh - Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ), February 20, 2018.

Photos by Dante Strobino

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Roanoke, Virginia: Black Liberation Month event featuring freedom fighter Takiyah Thompson, February 24, 2018.

“Union Jobs, Not Jim Crow white supremacy! Solidarity Forever!”

Photo by Bryan G. Pfeifer

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Trials for Durham Confederate Statue Case Begin Feb 19 

Takiyah Thompson and seven anti-racist activists go to trial in Durham district court on Monday, Feb 19.  They are charged in connection with the toppling of the Confederate monument in Durham on August 14, 2017. Defendants scored a major victory in January when all felony charges against them were dropped.  Three misdemeanor charges remain.

Defendants invite all those who choose to side against racism and white supremacy to come to Durham on February 19 and 20 to pack the courts and show solidarity with the ongoing struggles against monuments to racism.

Call in Day to Drop the Charges: Feb 15

Pack the Courts! Fighting White Supremacy is Not A Crime! Come to Durham Feb 19

Can’t come to Durham? Donate to support mobilization efforts and upcoming Toppling Racism tour

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Help the International Action Center continue its grassroots resistance and solidarity in 2018

Dear friends,

The Trump administration, which contains the most rightwing, racist forces of U.S. imperialism, has changed the political landscape in this country and sent shockwaves around the world. If you believe that people’s movements are the decisive force in pushing back racism, reaction and war — and are the only way to win rights for all working and oppressed people — then we urge you to act decisively. Your assistance matters! Help us continue determined grass roots resistance and solidarity.

This year we have seen the most extreme, neo-fascist forces emboldened by signals from the White House. Attacks have intensified on African-American, Latinx, Arab, Muslim, South Asian peoples and immigrant communities. Government agencies are targeting, detaining and deporting immigrants at unprecedented levels, viciously separating children from their parents. Corporate-appointed government officials are gutting environmental, safety and health regulations. Moreover, a tax scam designed by the superrich 1% will bilk millions of people to enrich corporations, millionaires and billionaires. Future cuts endanger Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration and more.

U.S. missiles are killing civilians in Iraq. The U.S. dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan. Pentagon-backed wars in Syria and Yemen are pushing millions of people towards their death. U.S. nuclear war threatens the Korean peninsula and East Asia and endangers the world’s people. The IAC says “U.S.: Hands off Korea!” Meanwhile, the Pentagon has sent more warships to East Asia. Additionally, U.S. military forces have carried out more than 3,500 military actions in Africa in the past year, and Africom’s presence is growing on the continent. ...

Historic circumstances challenge us. For 26 years the International Action Center has been a national center of antiracist and antiwar organizing. But much more is needed. We have done a lot to oppose the arch-racists in the White House. But now the stakes are even higher. The IAC has counted on your involvement and support to aid us in all of our campaigns and protests since its founding — and we are very grateful for it.

We must turn to you, our supporters, once again in this critical period to ask for your help. Your donations are urgently needed. The IAC is an all-volunteer organizing center. All contributions are used for mobilizing expenses. Help us continue. CLICK HERE.

Sara Flounders East Coast IAC Co-director

Teresa Gutierrez National Director, IAC Latin-America/ Caribbean and Immigration Projects

Terrea Mitchell People’s Power Assembly

Mahtowin Munro Co-leader, United American Indians of New England

John Parker West Coast IAC Co-director

Rev. C.D. Witherspoon President Emeritus of Baltimore Southern Christian Leadership Conference; People’s Power Assembly

Download PDF Brochure

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Tearing Down Monuments of Oppression Is the First Step to Decolonization

Decolonization is about remaking the here and now.

One of the most inspiring and audacious direct actions against a racist statue recently was in August in Durham, North Carolina. A group of more than 100 activists from leftist and anti-capitalist groups, such as the Workers World Party and the Industrial Workers of the World physically tore down the Confederate Soldiers Monument in front of the old Durham County Courthouse while chanting "No cops! No KKK! No fascist USA!" Multiple activists were later arrested and charged with felonies for tearing down the statue, the first of whom was 22-year-old student Takiyah Thompson.

"I think it's important to think about the position of the Confederate statue in front of the old courthouse," Thompson told Truthout. "Even though that courthouse is no longer in use, it's still a government building, and the fact that it's on the courthouse steps makes a very clear statement to Black people, and people of color more generally, about what kind of justice they're going to receive when they enter that courtroom. People are talking about tearing down history, but it's not history. Not when the legacy is still very much alive."

Thompson said that the action started as a response to an uninspiring post-Charlottesville vigil organized by the liberal, pro-Democratic Party group IndivisiblesNC on August 13. According to Q. Wideman -- a Black, queer woman and friend of Thompson's who went to Charlottesville -- when she attempted to speak and criticize the liberal, pacifist rhetoric at that vigil, the Indivisibles organizers stopped her, threatened to call the police and cut the livestream. Right before the livestream was cut, a white man can be seen telling Wideman "You're not going to sabotage this!" and that she "can have another rally" if she wanted to speak. When Wideman was finally given time to speak, it wasn't included on the livestream.

The next day, the Workers World Party organized its own rally which ended with the Confederate statue being torn down and history being made.

"I think it's important that the people struggle to remove the statues themselves because when people struggle for their own liberation, they won't allow others to come in and claim themselves as liberators," Thompson told me. "It's important that this movement be taken up by regular-ass people."

Not long afterwards, with Columbus Day in sight, people began taking direct action against statues of Columbus.