The Vegas Anarchist Cafe is a meet-up for networking, building community, and doing some outreach for anarchists in Las Vegas, which Southern Nevada ALL has been organizing together with unaffiliated local anarchists for the past several months. The main idea is just to give anarchists, anti-statists, and anarchy-curious fellow travelers a place to meet up and talk in an informal setting at a local coffee-house. There isn’t a fixed business agenda; the idea is to give people a place to find each other. Once they’ve found each other, A-Cafe can serve as a springboard for the independent projects that they may want to start.
After some discussions with regular A-Cafers, we’ve decided to start putting on a series of talks, presentations, skill-shares and open mics — tentatively titled the Free Speech Soapbox Series. Last week I gave the first Soapbox talk — an introductory talk on Anarchistic ideas, called What Is Anarchism?
. Turn-out was good, and the discussion was lively. (For those of you wondering about the audio recording — I haven’t yet had the chance to check whether it came out audibly or not. News on that soon.)
This week — specifically, TOMORROW, Wednesday 4 February 2009, fellow Southern Nevada ALLy Kelly Patterson will be giving a talk on labor radicalism, wildcat unionism, and the Industrial Workers of the World, called We Need the Wobblies Now More Than Ever! A Brief History of the Industrial Workers of the World!
This week at the Anarchist Cafe:
We Need the Wobblies Now More Than Ever! A Brief History of the Industrial Workers of the World.
— Kelly Patterson —
Wed., January 28 6:30pm — 7:30pm
— Local artist, activist, and fellow worker
Kelly Patterson will
will give a presentation entitled We Need the Wobblies Now More Than Ever! A
Brief History of the Industrial Workers of the World.
The I.W.W. is a
radical, anti-statist industrial labor union, which organized hundreds of
thousands of workers and became one of the most powerful unions in America
early in the 20th century — until the United States government targeted it
for destruction. In this age of bail-outs, the government and the bosses have
proven themselves incapable of delivering the prosperity that they promised;
workers need a fighting union now more than ever. Kelly’s talk will look at
both the I.W.W.’s storied history, and at signs of hope for a Wobbly resurgence
in the early 21st century.
This week’s presentation is the second in the Free Speech
Soapbox Series, a series of presentations, speeches, programming, and free
speech open mics for the middle 60 minutes of the weekly A-Cafe
(6:30–7:30pm). When we have a Soapbox, the first 30 minutes and the final
30 minutes are devoted to the usual informal meet-up format; the 60 minutes in
between offer information, entertainment, programming, or a chance for A-Cafers
to talk about issues that they care about or projects they are working on.
The schedule of Soapboxes is available online. If there
is something you’d be interested in talking about at the A-Cafe, contact us
to set up for an available time slot.
—from the Vegas Anarchist Cafe website
The Anarchist Cafe meeting will begin at 6:00 PM. Kelly’s talk will begin at 6:30 PM (and should run about an hour or so, including time at the end for Q&A). During the time before and after the talk, A-Cafers are encouraged to check out material from local organizations on our table space, to meet each other, and to chat.
Here are the details on the event:
- WHAT: Talk by Kelly Patterson of Southern Nevada ALL on the history of the Industrial Workers of the World, and why we need a radical, anti-state industrial union now more than ever
- WHEN: Wednesday, 4 February 2009, 6:30 PM.
- WHERE: Weekly Anarchist Cafe @ The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Running Rebel Plaza (across the street from UNLV). 4550 S. Maryland Parkway; we’ll be in the meeting room off to the left of the entrance.
If you’re in the Vegas area (or even if you’re not), it’d be great to see you there. If you know anyone around abouts who might be interested in a talk about Anarchism or radical labor organizing, then please do forward the announcement on to them.
More to come soon; watch this space.
See also:
Click on any of the pictures for the full-size images
ttended the Living Without Borders encuentro sponsored by the United Coalition for Im/migrant Rights (U.C.I.R.), which was held at UNLV. On the final day of the encuerto, we took part in a demonstration against the Chipotle across from campus organized by MEChA de UNLV in support of the Student/Farmworker Alliance (S.F.A.) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (C.I.W.) and other farm workers who often work very long hours for wages that average below the poverty level.
lture suppliers in Florida and throughout the industry. The demonstration was for the most part uneventful and garnered some support from passing cars and bystanders. However, at one point a group of Metro policemen (at least 10) descended upon us to preserve order by demanding to know who our leaders were and arrogantly declaring they were goin
g to "teach us how to protest" so they wouldn't "have to" arrest anyone. Things got a bit tense after we responded that we didn't believe in hierarchies and therefore had no leaders and Paul informed the officer who was trying to tutor us on protesting that we weren't required to walk in a circle, as his lesson plan called for us to do. Not long after, a Metro sergeant arrived, spoke to us briefly, agreed that we didn't need to walk in a circle, wished us luck, and told the other Metro officers to leave. The rest of the morning was once again pretty uneventful and rather fun in general. In addition to displaying signs to passersby, we also provided people entering or exiting Chipotle with printed information about the C.I.W.'s grievances, resulting in several instances where potential customers turned away.
orking in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida. They have been organizing workers in the agriculture industry since1993 to fight for fair wages, better working conditions, and more respect from bosses, among other issues. Since 2001, they have been using targeted boycotts of fast food restaurants, grocery stores, and other large tomato buyers to encourage them to agree to pay one penny per pound more for tomatoes and other produce directly to the workers who picked them. The resulting increase is minimal for the buyers (25 cents/box), but could increa
se the average farmworker's wages by 2/3's of the current approximate salary of $10,000/year. In the recent past, such boycotts have successfully led to agreements with Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, and Whole Foods Markets to participate in C.I.W.'s penny-per-pound program, as well as agreeing to require that their suppliers respect the rights and safety of farmworkers. In spite of marketing themselves as a socially responsible business and promising customers "Food with Integrity," Chipotle has repeatedly refused to sign those same agreements with C.I.W.
