Tag: San Francisco General Strike

Early Saturday, Jan. 12, activists and artists gathered in a theater at the historic Redstone Labor Temple to advocate for the preservation of one the largest community centers for justice organizing in San Francisco. The Mission Economic Development Agency placed a bid of $18 million in December to purchase the Redstone and allow the current nonprofits to operate in the area. If the current owner accepts the MEDA bid, the building could be preserved as a place for low-budget nonprofit organizations in the Mission for the foreseeable future.

On July 16, 1934, the four-day San Francisco General Strike began as strikers and National Guard battled for control of the shut-down city. Longshore strike leader Harry Bridges went to Black churches on both sides of San Francisco Bay to beg the congregation to join the strikers on the picket line and promised that when the strike ended, Blacks would work on every dock on the West Coast.

"On April 4, when working people across this country demonstrated in solidarity with the Wisconsin state workers, the longshore workers of Local 10 in San Francisco did what they’ve always done ... the ports of San Francisco and Oakland were shut down in solidarity ... Now the employers’ group ... is trying to put an end to workers’ solidarity actions by intimidating the longshore union through a court suit." - Trent Willis. On Monday, April 25, at 11 a.m., join the mass action to support ILWU Local 10 at the PMA San Francisco headquarters at 555 Market St.

Today’s economic crisis is much worse than the media lets on … a political and economic system that provides trillions of dollars in bailouts for Wall Street and trillions of dollars for war but nothing for large numbers of workers and the poor, who face growing joblessness, foreclosures, evictions, layoffs, low wages, hunger and homelessness.