Hi all,
For UFTers who are still (sigh) teaching online for another week, you might
not be able to make it at the start time of the Juneteenth demonstration.
You can catch up with us in the afternoon at Cadman Plaza, just look for
our contingent's signs.
I just heard that Cuomo has declared that June 19th will be a NY State
employees' holiday. I haven't heard from De Blasio, so I guess teachers
will be working.
If you haven't checked in with us, please let us know your availability.
Because this coincides with the ILWU shutdown of the West Coast ports
California coast-wide "against police brutality and systemic racism" , we
are calling for the biggest contingent we can build here in support.
There is a new article-leaflet, it should be online later tonight.
--Marjorie
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Marjorie Stamberg <marjoriestamberg@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 4:10 PM
Subject: Announcement of Internationalist contingent in NYC Juneteenth
marches
To: cs_edworkers <cs_edworkers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi All, here is the announcement for our contingent on Juneteenth. We will
be marching the same day that the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down all 29 West Coast ports
on Juneteenth, to protest police brutality and systemic racism.
Here the details:
*All Out for Juneteenth!*
*Worker/Black/Immigrant Action Against Racist Police Terror*
*Internationalist contingent to meet at Brooklyn Museum, Friday, June 19,
11:30 a.m. For more info and to indicate your availability, call (347)
**302-9748
or (929) 230-8415.*
*This Friday, June 19, join the revolutionary contingent* marching in New
York City against racist police terror and in memory of George Floyd and so
many others. The Internationalist Group, Revolutionary Internationalist
Youth, CUNY Internationalist Clubs, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas
and Class Struggle Education Workers and others in the contingent will
raise chants, signs and banners putting forward the program for socialist
revolution, the only way to put an end once and for all to the racist
oppression that the police enforce.
Juneteenth celebrates the day – 19 June 1865 – that slavery was formally
abolished in Texas, the last of the Confederate slave states to be occupied
by the Union Army, bringing the Civil War to a close. This year, as massive
protests against racist repression have spread across the country to
denounce the cop murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis – along with Breonna
Taylor and David McAtee in Louisville, and now Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta,
as well as hundreds of others, year in and year out – this day takes on
particular significance. In every state and large city as well as hundreds
of small towns, demonstrators have marched day and night, in the hundreds,
thousands and tens of thousands, for the last three weeks. Yet the
Democratic Party, whose mayors and governors ordered the brutal repression
of protests by police and National Guard, is attempting to coopt the
protests’ amorphous demands, such as “defund the police.”
If the Democrats succeed, it will mean that this massive upheaval could be
frittered away in toothless “reforms” … and more deadly repression, as
happened after the 2014-15 Black Lives Matter protests. But we can fight
this. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) – probably the
strongest union in the country, with a proud history of fighting police
terror – has announced that it will shut down all 29 West Coast ports on
Juneteenth, to protest police brutality and systemic racism. This can be a
great step forward, pointing to the need for a *class* mobilization of
working people, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, immigrants and all the
oppressed against the deadly racist repression that has marked U.S.
capitalism from its birth until today, and will continue to do so until it
is overthrown.
The Internationalist Group has called from the outset for mass workers
mobilization against racist police terror, and to break with the Democrats
and all capitalist parties and politicians. The IG and RIY will be marching
in New York on Friday, June 19, behind a banner proclaiming:
Democrats Are Bosses of Racist Killer Cops
THE POLICE CAN’T BE “REFORMED”
BLACK LIBERATION THROUGH SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
The Internationalist contingent will participate in the march beginning at
the Brooklyn Museum at 12 noon Friday (2 or 3 train to Eastern Pkwy/BK
Museum; 4 train to Grand Army Plaza). *Important: meet the IG/RIY
contingent at the Museum steps at 11:30 a.m.* We will then march to Cadman
Plaza in downtown Brooklyn. For those who can only join later in the day,
please *meet the IG/RIY contingent at Cadman Plaza at 3:30 p.m.* to
continue on an anticipated march over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan.
SPREAD THE WORD. BRING YOUR FRIENDS. *JOIN US!*
For more information and to indicate your availability, please call Jon at
(347) 302-9748 or Kaitlan at (929) 230-8415.
