Critical Resistance Halloween Haunted House this weekend!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO FRIENDS, ALLIES & SUPPORTERS:

CRITICAL RESISTANCE IS HOSTING A HALLOWEEN HAUNTED HOUSE, FRIDAY & SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30 & 31, 6:30 pm-9:30 pm

$2.00 PER PERSON (FUNDRAISER FOR CRITICAL RESISTANCE)

@ DOTS FASHION CENTER
2903 ORLEANS AVE
(N. DUPRE AND ORLEANS)

FOOD AND DRINKS FOR SALE!!!!!!!!

BRING THE KIDS AND HAVE A SPOOKY GOOD TIME WITH C.R.

FROM ALL OF US AT CRITICAL
RESISTANCE, NEW ORLEANS

PROTEST! New time! Keep the heat on wage-stealing TONY MORAN'S ! Time to escalate!

NEW TIME!

Meet up Thursday, October 29th at/outside Tira Misu 55, a bar at 123 Carondelet, at seven thirty P.M. to organize and plan. From there, we'll march over to the location of the protest: TONY MORAN'S "Italian" restaurant on Bourbon st. near the corner of Bourbon & Conti.

Tony Moran's management have been demanding workers do hours of prep while off the clock, have CONSISTENTLY STOLEN TIPS, and have withheld, bounced, and fiddled paychecks, often hiring people for catering jobs and then just refusing to pay them.

This behavior will continue-- more hard-working restaurant employees will be fucked over-- unless we send them a strong message that this behavior is unacceptable!

New Orleans restaurant workers are NOT interchangeable or disposable. All employees deserve fair pay, honest treatment, and dignity-- NOT bullying, discrimination and theft.

Attendees of the last protest got a chance to meet arch-villain Jobert Salem, the owner of (among other things) Tony Moran's and a world-class charmer : he was out there slapping at cameras, attempting to bully and shove protesters, press and passers-by, cussing, threatening, calling the cops, dancing with rage like a tantrum-throwing sweater-wearing child.

Have you or anyone you know had an abusive, bullying boss? Have you been underpaid or maltreated by your employer? This is a chance to stand in solidarity with others, united and strong, and say: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We must send an unmistakeable message to Jobert and bosses like him: Treat your workers fairly.

This protest is being organized by ROC-NOLA, Restaurant Opportunities Center of New Orleans on behalf of its members who've been cheated and robbed by Tony Moran's.

All of us must KEEP THE PRESSURE ON this restaurant until management agrees to sit down and negotiate. It is vital that all New Orleanians concerned with social justice join in this effort. Last week, ROC's initial protest, went well, but let's bump the turnout up and let Jobert Salem and fat cats like him know the era of screwing over workers has ENDED.

Our city is overdue for some social justice victory... let's take a stand for our fellow restaurant workers! Please join in this important action, please invite friends and associates, please help spread publicity, and together, we'll stand strong against worker exploitation!

Thanks... and we'll see ya on the picket line!!!

Blog Updated with New Links

The links on the right side of the blog have been updated and revised.

We've added some new organizations to the list. Some we just forgot to list, and some are new groups:
-common ground health clinic
-nola bookfair
-restaurant workers organization (ROC)
-staylocal.org
-v.o.t.e. nola

Check them out.

And check out the video of the first ROC protest, on Bourbon St.

B the change you wan2 C in the Rail

What? You don't like the Rail lately? Hey, me neither! It's gotten way too full of whatever it is you dislike. I totally agree.

But...  rather than abandoning the Rail to become even more full of whatever it is you dislike, why don't we work together to put more of what you like into the Rail?

That way, quality folks such as yourself will be drawn like shy volunteer-minded hummingbirds to the sweet nectar of whatever it is you like, and the goblins who thrive on the bitter ichor of whatever it is you dislike will move on to more ichorous pastures.

Everyone wins!

<3 <3 <3

PUT DOWN THE CAMERA, PICK UP A BRICK

From windows, I see lights flashing
and maybe
somebody's takin pictures...

HEY LISTEN... do you have photographic imagez of or pertaining to thee Iron Rail? Newer? Older? Whenever? Us (derrick) tabling? The outside of the space? The inside of the space? The big Kimya Dawson love-in? The Rail defiantly open during police curfew? Something expecially clever written on the open-door chalkboard?

Please make such photographic materials available via a link in the comments, and/or e-mail it to nolabookcollective@hotmail.com . We'd like to put it on our website, and we will give you a credit & link if ya want...

Thanks! 

p.s. FNOPD

Sample Questions for Obama

****

for immediate release:

While some celebrated and some sulked over President Obama's dazzling-fast Big Easy swing-through, STUDENTS FOR CHANGE, a New Orleans pressure group, sought to engage the president in meaningful dialogue.

Hundreds of people waited in line at UNO this morning for the privilege and honor of being granted an audience with the president. STUDENTS FOR CHANGE was there, its reps canvassing the line, passing out over 500 flyers with potential questions for El Presidente. Will he be asked these questions? Will he answer them? Only time will tell!

Perhaps YOU will encounter the elusive Obama as he slips between meetings with Goldman Sachs lobbyists and feelgood smile-for-the-camera photo ops. If you do, be sure and ask him something important. Attached is the STUDENTS FOR CHANGE list of suggested questions; hope this helps!

***

SOME SAMPLE QUESTIONS YOU COULD ASK PRESIDENT OBAMA

"I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."
- Franklin Roosevelt regarding changes demanded by middle-class Americans during the Great Depression

ON THE ECONOMY:
Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, has shown that since the 1960s middle class families have gone from needing a single earner in the household to needing 2 workers in a household, and have gone from savings accounts to living with piles of mounting debt, while the top 0.01% has increased its share of wealth by 600% during that time. How are you going to stop this destruction of the middle class in America?

Each serious recession in the last 100 years has taken longer than the one before it to restore jobs to pre-recession levels. Our “jobless recovery” is no recovery at all. When will you ignore corporate interests and restructure the banking system so that we can begin a real recovery?


CAMPAIGN REFORM:
How are you going to get corporate money out of politics so that politicians once again have to listen to voters instead of political funders? When money equals power, our democracy has become a joke. I know you have to go to a fundraiser in San Francisco after this, but I wish you had more time to spend with voters here whose voices should matter just as much as those fundraisers do.

Will you ban corporate lobbyists from lobbying the government to restore the principal of one man, one voice that is essential to democracy?


PRISONS:
MIT Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the most highly-regarded intellectuals of this century, and is the 8th most cited author in all of history. So why was Noam Chomsky’s book Interventions banned from Guantanamo Bay?

Prisons in America have become a huge business. The crime rate in the US has declined by 25% in the past 20 years, yet the incarcerated population has grown from 858,600 to 2,293,000 people. Will you end private prisons, which give prison companies a financial incentive to lobby for longer sentences, and end prison labor for private companies, in which corporations can pay inmates pennies an hour, taking away jobs from other Americans by using what is essentially a form of slave labor?


EDUCATION:
FDR said “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” We can see the effect of cuts in education with the rise of Fox News in the US, so if education is the most important part of democracy, why are colleges in the U.S. not free like they are in parts of Europe? Also, will you pass a student loan amnesty bill that would free our generation from a lifetime spent paying off debt?

---
Contact STUDENTS FOR CHANGE: neworleansstudents@gmail.com

Ladies' Night Back with a Vengeance

Ladies' Night at the Iron Rail is starting back up this week for the Fall and we have a new format. Bring a drink, bring a project, bring yourself. Our goal is to create a space where rad ladies can meet and scheme.

Every Thursday from 7:30 to 10:30. Come and go as you please. Only folks who feel like ladies are invited but, they are invited really hard.

Holla.

ladiesnight.ironrail@gmail.com

Another Irregular Yet Charming Update

*Check out our re-designed website homepage at http://www.ironrail.org

*We have the new 2010 Slingshot Organizers.
They come in small and large, for $6 and $10 respectively. We have lots of colors available. These make great gifts for x-mas, birthdays, etc...

*We got in the new Rolling Thunder magazines, issue #8, which includes looks at anarchism in Chile and San Fransisco, as well as in-depth articles on insurrectionary anarchism and perpetrator accountability, along with the usual beautiful photos and graphics that accompany every issue.
Rolling Thunder #7 was sold out, but we got a few more copies in if you missed it. The issue focuses on the greek anarchist rebellion last December.
They are $5.

*We have Iron Rail and other radical pins for $1.00 now.

As always, the Iron Rail is full of awesome radical books, zines, music, and art. We want to highlight that we have Palestinian kuffiyehs from Palestine available for sale for $12.00.

We also want to highlight that we have New Orleans native Robert King's book "From The Bottom Of The Heap" for below cover price:
"In 1970, a jury convicted Robert Hillary King of a crime he did not commit and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He became a member of the Black Panther Party while in Angola State Penitentiary, successfully organizing prisoners to improve conditions. In return, prison authorities beat him, starved him, and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a six by nine foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free. This is his story."

Another book worthy of highlighting on our shelves is "The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement" about black folks in rural Louisiana (mainly on the Northshore of the lake in the Florida Parishes) and Mississippi who decided they needed to defend themselves from Klan violence long before the Black Panthers made armed resistance famous. This is an inspiring story, part of Louisiana people's history, and an incredible yet little-known chapter in the struggle for racial equality. Available now at the Iron Rail for below
cover price.

Please get involved and help out the Iron Rail!