The following is a statement from the Bay Area Industrial Workers of the World passed several weeks ago:
The Bay Area General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World enthusiastically welcomes the “Occupation” movement to Oakland and elsewhere in the SF Bay area. The economic crisis that is hitting across the country is nothing new to Oakland, especially within its black and Latino communities. We not only have high unemployment, but we also have police repression and outright murder by police, the closing of schools and libraries, and strikes by workers including nurses and others.
The means of protest of recent decades have been legalistic picket lines and protests. These have not worked. The Occupation movement is taking things to a new level – mass and open disruption and defiance of the system. From the successful strikes of the last century to the revolt of black people in the 1960s, this was what produced the goods.
The Occupation movement is drawing in all sorts of new layers of workers and young people. It is part of a global revolt against the “free” market and the capitalist system. The IWW fights for a world in which production is based on the needs of people and of the Earth itself, not on private profit.
Now is the time to fight back.
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