[act-ma] 9/20 Two Events: Workers Rights & Rebuilding the City; the Debt Deal & Military Spending (

Fri Sep 16 08:42:26 PDT 2011

Mass. Global Action is helping organize 2 (overlapping) events this coming
Tuesday, September 20, 2011. The first brings together organizers of the New
Lynn Coalition's Workers Center for Economic Justice with activists building
Boston's Downtown Workers Center and the second focuses on the military
budget and its relationship with the debt deal.  Mass. Global Action is an
organizer of the Majority Agenda Project and a partner of the Downtown
Workers Center. Note: the New Lynn event was originally scheduled for July
20, 2011 and postponed to this date due to a request from a community
organizer working on an event with to be addressed by Congressman McGovern.

1. Crosby & McClain - New Lynn, MA: Safe, Decent & Just*Tuesday, September
20, 2011, 7:00 p.m. encuentro 5 *Join organizers Jeff Crosby and Carly
McClain in a conversation about the Workers Center for Economic Justice
organized by the North Shore Labor Council and the New Lynn Coalition. The
coalition’s mission is to organize all sectors of working class people in
the region into a unified permanent, political and economic force that is
union and non-union and transcends racial, linguistic, ethnic, citizenship
and gender boundaries. Together the organizations within the New Lynn
Coalition are identifying goals for regional development which revolve
around social and ecological needs and concerns and where there is a renewed
sense of the public role in social welfare.

Carly McClain is a member of IBEW 2321. She has been working for more than a
decade doing community and union organizing work across Massachusetts. She
lives in Salem, MA and is the mother of 3 kids. She is the organizing
coordinator for The New Lynn Coalition which is comprised of union and
community groups that have a solid base in the community and have a history
of working together to create change.

Jeff Crosby is president of IUE-CWA Local 201 in Lynn. He worked for 30
years as a grinder on aircraft engines for General Electric and is serving
his seventh term as the Local’s president. Previously, he served eight years
as a shop steward. He is also the President of the North Shore Labor
Council, representing 30,000 workers from unions on Boston's North Shore.
Crosby is also a vice-president and member of the state Executive Board of
the Mass. AFL-CIO. He was an active participant in the protests against the
World Trade Organization in Seattle (November, 1999) and against the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec. He visited Colombia in
solidarity delegations to Colombian trade unionists. He has written on the
labor movement for labor journals such as Working USA, New Labor Forum,
Labor Notes, etc.

Background reading: "In an Old City, Building a New Common
Sense<http://labornotes.org/2011/04/old-city-building-new-common-sense>"
by Carly McClain and Jeff Crosby, *Labor Notes*.

This event is organized by the Downtown Workers Center. encuentro 5 is at 33
Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA 02111 <http://www.encuentro5.org>
*2. *The Debt Deal, Entitlements, Taxes, Budgets, and Military
Spending *Training for
Activists* Tuesday, September 20, 2011, 7pm.
Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St., Boston - Copley Square T*[image:
Jo Comerford]Jo Comerford*, Executive Director, National Priorites
Project<http://www.nationalpriorities.org/>
Three years after the onset of the Great Recession, Washington is focused on
cutting deficits instead of on creating jobs. Senator John Kerry is one of
12 members of a Super Committee charged with cutting $1.5 trillion from the
deficit.   Will he stand firm?

Ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, cutting the sprawling military budget,
and restoring reasonable tax rates on the wealthy would free up enough money
to fund job creation, green energy infrastructure, and rehire laid off
teachers, while still saving the $1.5 trillion. The People’s
Budget<http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70> provides
the blueprint. But there is a real danger that the Super Committee will
instead cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs,
while making only token gestures towards military cuts and taxes.

This training seminar will give activists the knowledge they need to explain
the federal budget, the debt deal and the People’s Budget in their
communities and build pressure on Sen. Kerry and our Congressional
delegation to do the right thing.   Specifically, it will build
understanding of:

   - the major components of the federal budget -- Social Security,
   Medicare, Medicaid, the military, human services: how they are funded, what
   the issues are with each, and how the Peoples Budget might be used to
   mobilize people around a real alternative to the present solutions being
   offered.
   - the debt deal
   - the impact that likely spending cuts will have on people in
   Massachusetts
   - how military spending cuts can radically alter the kind of debt deal we
   get and the impacts of such a deal on people