UAW 2865 Endorsement of Sept 9th Strike Call and Prison Organizing

Whereas prisoners across the country commemorate the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising and are organizing to end prison slavery and mass incarceration, including 800+ prisoner members of the Industrial Workers of the World’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC),

Whereas prison conditions are daily examples of stunning human rights abuses and torture, with people subjugated to solitary confinement for decades, and deplorable and uninhabitable living conditions including absent or extremely substandard healthcare,

Whereas the interests of workers is in the abolishment of slave wages as it undermines our collective struggle for living wages and destroys the livelihoods of workers’ families and communities, accentuated by the horrific price gouging of the prison industrial complex,

Whereas the school to prison pipeline and investment in repression rather than liberty threaten our economic and political liberation,

Whereas the language of the 13th amendment states - "slavery and involuntary servitude shall be abolished except as punishment for a crime" - which in turn has been reaffirmed within the larger U.S. legal tradition, as witnessed in Ruffin v. Commonwealth, which maintains that prisoners are slaves of the State, meaning that they do not have the legal rights of a citizen and the State can routinely exploit their unfree labor,

Whereas no economy based on oppression and injustice can grant the collective liberation of workers,

Whereas, Free Alabama Movement (FAM), Free Ohio Movement (FOM), Support Prisoner Resistance (SPR), Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), IWW's Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) and others are calling for mass action inside and outside on September 9th, 2016, and organizing until neoslavery is abolished,

Be it resolved that UAW 2865 endorse the September 9th Strike call and prison organizing work, and participate in any local actions in California,

And be it further resolved that UAW 2865 administer an online gofundme campaign and donate $200 to this fundraiser and raise an additional $300 from individual supporters, and the the total amount raised will be divided equally among FAM, FOM, SPR, ABC, IWOC.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/10H3hI7tzFvOEWh_Gz1HcCCGxlShmRTSwO9BB0PkLxK4/mobilebasic

UAW Local 2865 is the Union representing over 12,000 Academic Student Employees (ASEs) – Readers, Tutors, TAs, and others – at the 9 teaching campuses of the University of California.

http://www.uaw2865.org/