This will put a smile on your face for Thursday morning! Workers at San Francisco’s Westin St Francis Hotel have been locked in dispute with managment over their contract and healthcare provision, and things have gotten so bad, that they’ve come to the drastic step of calling for a boycott of their own employer until the situation improves.
Here are San Francisco LGBT activist group Havoq & Pride at Work staging a fantastic flashmob in the hotel lobby, aimed at highlighting the boycott to the thousands flocking to SF (and needing a hotel room) for the annual pride march. (more…)
Quick & dirty vid of today’s flashmob at in Westminster, in protest at our favourite media barons’ attempts to swing the election to suit themselves, and get themselves out of the mess a hung parliament might land them in.
Nice to see so many people there (including from Avaaz, 38Degrees, and Liberal Conspiracy), and a chance to meet some new faces, and get thumped by them with a roll of paper. If you weren’t there, don’t forget the 38degrees petition.
Are you in London this lunchtime? Then I guess I’ll see you at a location soon to be divulged for a newspaper swordfight. The coverage from the partisan press has been pretty shameful this time round – Clegg and Brown have had the same dumping on that Kinnock faced, as Murdoch scrabbles to make sure he’s backed the winning side in the election. (more…)
Friday is the unions’ global protest day in solidarity with our colleagues in Iran. Free trades unionists there have been harshly repressed in recent years, with many in prison for organising unions outside the approved ‘puppet union’ structures, or for daring to hold May Day celebrations.
I’ll be outside the Iranian embassy on Friday with colleagues from the TUC, ITF and UK unions. There’s more information on the demo at the TUC site, if you’re able to come along (12:30-13:30 at SW7 1PT). (more…)
Just back from a lovely May Day march in the sun in central London, celebrating International Workers’ Day 2009 in the company of unionists, socialists and assorted lefties. (more…)
A nice and serendipitous link between my last two posts – Having written about ‘Guthrie2.0‘ Jonathan Mann, I stumbled across an older song of his, ‘Interesting Time’ on Blip.fm, and it could have been written for tomorrow’s Put People First G20 march and rally – a slice of pure Guthrism:
“Ours is an interesting time. We’re so close and yet so divided.
The framework has been provided, but we carry too much on our shoulders.
Yes and ours is an interesting time, when we’re running out of water,
and the world is getting hotter, but everyone I know seems colder.
Let’s move, brothers, move, and we’ll all move together,
through our interesting times, we’ll move towards a better future.
Let’s move, brothers, move.”
Okay – I’ve succumbed to the inexplicable Twitter frenzy that everyone seems to be afflicted by of late, and will be tweeting away at the Put People First G20 march and rally in London this weekend. It could actually be fun to see how well a crowd of activists are able to report live from a big event like this. (more…)
Should be big enough a coalition to send a real signal to the G20 as they prepare to meet. But there’s stuff to be done before then if we’re to turn out enough people. Please do add your own message at putpeoplefirst.org.uk or on this here widget, and then get spreading the word with all the lovely social network tools on the campaign site.
Writers’ Guild of Great Britain members (though outnumbered in this pic 2:1 by NUJ members) were out in force yesterday, to mark an international day of solidarity with the striking screenwriters of the Writers’ Guild of America. I managed to pop by for the end of it, after an exciting (no, really) team away day morning a few streets over. (more…)
A most unexpected burst of sunshine made Saturday’s demo for the NHS into a pretty enjoyable way to spend a few hours. It wasn’t your run-of-the-(trouble-at)-mill union demonstration either – the attendance of a whole bunch of carnival artists really jolted people out of the traditional slump you’re likely to get halfway round a march. It’s hard not to be jolly when you’re walking next to a couple of giant lobsters on stilts.
