Woodfin Permit Revocation (video and photos)
A spirited and festive crowd descended upon Emeryville's posh Woodfin Hotel Saturday morning, September 15, 2007. The crowd gathered to announce and symbolically enforce the revocation of the hotel's permit, claiming that the hotel had failed to meet its conditional operating permit by refusing to pay $250,000 in back wages to workers, and a $50,000 fine to the City of Emeryville, the culmination of a lengthy and successful campaign waged by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE).
The crowd, carrying many colorful signs with clear messages such as, "Pay Your Workers, Not Your Lawyers," marched to the hotel's main entrance chanting, "Boycott the Woodfin!"
Lead by a woman wearing a large paper lock and chains, the group symbolically locked the front doors of the Woodfin.
Hotel manager Hugh MacIntosh immediately came through the doors and began tearing down signs and paper chains which had been taped there. Some demonstrators held bicycle locks in the air to symbolize truly locking the doors. Berkeley City Councilperson Kriss Worthington was present and interceded between hotel representatives and demonstrators as the demonstrators left the entrance, still chanting.
Macintosh told reporters that the demonstrators were, "Insane."
Claiming Measure C was put to the voters as a wage ordinance when "in fact it's a union contract," MacIntosh went on to say, "The city should not be involved in controlling any private businesses in the City of Emeryville."
"There is nothing like this anywhere in the entire country, probably not in the entire world, and we are disputing the constitutionality of the whole of Measure C."
While many passing motorists honked and cheered support for the demonstrators' enforcement of the voter-passed initiative, one motorist in an expensive sports car chided, "Only hippies complain about their wages. Come on, get back to work!"
A Woodfin representative muscled into the demonstrators and wrestled to take signs away from two women. The signs were announcing the permit revocation and the closure of the hotel. After taking their "CLOSED" sign, he tore it up before police.
Demonstrators then picketed on the sidewalk, continuing to make noise with a diverse array of chants. The successful demonstration was organized by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE).
The EBASE homepage for their Woodfin Suites Campaign is:
http://workingeastbay.org/article.php?list=type&type=44
The Woodfin website did not appear to address the controversy:
http://www.woodfinsuitehotels.com/emeryville/
Controversies and corruption have marked the Hotel's campaign to resist compliance with the popularly adopted law. Urban Habitat reported on the history of the EBASE campaign exposing corruption:
http://urbanhabitat.org/node/986
Thanks, but no thanks. Please publish your videos directly to the indybay server. As Indymedia activist, we should be working to develop the digital infrastructure, and to increase the independence of the network by not relying on proprietary software and services like YouTube.
Use of youtube has some merits, including:
1) Quickly plays without having to download
2) Is thus indexed two places, thus more likely to be found (more public exposure)
The corporate approach to the internet commons includes infiltrating, disrupting, spinning, disinformation-ing and sabotaging independent media.
To censor one's self from posting to corporate sites may to some degree allow that to be a one-way push against independent media, against the free exchange of ideas, and thus may effectively concede large venues.
Shouldn't all spaces be viewed as the commons and engaged and addressed? Isn't it ghettoizing and preaching to the converted to not engage the corporate sites at all? It thus seems important to engage the corporate sites and post things there as well. This is certainly no simple issue.
Is it supporting corporate advertising to post to those sites? Is it endorsing their existence? Is it a net detriment to a true commons and true exchange of ideas, detrimental to truly evolving collective self-determination? This reminds me of the debate over whether anarchists should vote...strong views exist...
Meanwhile, is there an open source/public domain/free software solution to provide an instant-viewing video window interface on this site? Does anyone want to work on that?
Jason
p.s. The file didn't post for the second time. Turns out it's 67.4 MB, a bit too large for the current limit. Sorry.
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