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Showing posts with label Civil disobedience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil disobedience. Show all posts

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Citing armed protesters, BLM returns seized cattle to Nevada rancher

Today's post about "worker safety" is shared from the LA Times.
After spending a week whisking away nearly 400 cattle they said were illegally grazing on federal land in the Nevada desert, officials facing a battalion of protesters with horses and guns decided to free those cattle in a stunning reversal Saturday afternoon.
A line of cattle calmly filtered out of a federal holding area at about 3 p.m. as protesters and law enforcement watched from alongside Interstate 15 near the Nevada-Arizona state line.
"Due to escalating tensions, the cattle have been released from the enclosures in order to avoid violence and help restore order," the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said in a short statement.
Federal officials have failed for 21 years to compel rancher Cliven Bundy to pay the fee required to let privately owned cattle use public land.
The government has said the cattle roundup was a “last resort” to enforce court orders ruling that Bundy had failed to pay more than $1 million in fees since 1993. Forcing him either to pay or to give up his cattle is a matter of fairness to the 16,000 ranchers who do follow the rules, U.S. officials said.
Two weeks ago, the BLM and the National Park Service began mobilizing helicopters, trucks, cowboys and rangers to seize Bundy’s 900 cattle. 
The agencies moved nearly 400 to the holding area before suddenly announcing Saturday morning that the operation would end because of "grave concerns" about worker safety.
Bundy received nationwide support from people frustrated by...
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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Walmart Protests Promised To Be Even Bigger This Black Friday

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.huffingtonpost.com

black friday protests
Walmart workers and their supporters are planning to kick off this year's holiday shopping season with protests at 1,500 Walmart stores around the country on Nov. 29. Advocates for Walmart workers hope to use Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, to draw attention to what they describe as low wages and retaliation against employees who criticize the company.
Protestors are hoping for an even better turnout than last year, when hundreds of Walmart workers walked off the job in 46 states on Black Friday, according to OUR Walmart, a group advocating for Walmart workers. Protests have already occurred in multiple cities this month -- most notably in Los Angeles, where more than 50 Walmart workers and supporters were arrested in what organizers described as the largest single act of civil disobedience in the retailer’s history.
"We do expect [the protests] to be larger than last year because we have so many more members and so much more community support,” said Dan Schadelman, campaign director for Making a Change at Walmart, another advocacy group focusing on the rights of Walmart workers, in a conference call Thursday. "We're at an exciting moment, the movement of low-wage workers has taken off in 2013."
Making a Change at Walmart is seeking an end to alleged retaliation against workers, as well as to win full-time work and $25,000 per year for those who seek it.
Walmart, which made $17 billion in profit last year, is facing...
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Saturday, November 9, 2013

Largest Civil Disobedience In Walmart History Leads To More Than 50 Arrests

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.huffingtonpost.com

Surrounded by about 100 police officers in riot gear and a helicopter circling above, more than 50 Walmart workers and supporters were arrested in downtown Los Angeles Thursday night as they sat in the street protesting what they called the retailer's "poverty wages."
Organizers said it was the largest single act of civil disobedience in Walmart's 50-year history. The 54 arrestees, with about 500 protesting Walmart workers, clergy and supporters, demonstrated outside LA's Chinatown Walmart. Those who refused police orders to clear the street after their permit expired were arrested without incident. Those who fail to post $5,000 bail would be jailed overnight, Detective Gus Villanueva, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, told The Huffington Post.
Their primary demand to Walmart: pay every full-time worker at least $25,000 a year.
One of the protesting Walmart workers, Anthony Goytia, a 31-year-old father of two, said he believes he will make about $12,000 this year. It's a daily struggle, he said, "to make sure my family doesn't go hungry."
"The power went out at my house yesterday because I couldn't afford the bill," Goytia told HuffPost. "I had to run around and get two payday loans to pay for my rent from the first" of the month. "Yesterday we went to a food bank."
To make ends meet, Goytia said he sometimes participates in clinical trials and sells his blood plasma. He has been asking his managers for full-time employment for a year and a half. Instead, he said,...
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