WE SUPPORT STUDENT STRIKES ON MAY DAY!
The Youth Organizing Institute has endorsed the Triangle Unity May Day Coalition and Triangle People’s Assembly’s call to action for May Day (International Workers Day)!
Here’s an excerpt from that call:
WE STRIKE FOR:
- An end raids and deportations! Stop all check-points!
- ICE out of everywhere – Sanctuary cities, schools, neighborhoods!
- An end to racist police murders and brutality – Police out of our neighborhoods and schools!
- End excessive funding for police and prisons! Police accountability and community oversight!
- $15/hr, a union and collective bargaining rights for all workers
- An end to Islamophobia and the racist travel ban
- Independent People’s Investigation into the Durham Co. jail.
- An end to wars abroad! Cut funding for Pentagon and NATO to fund the people’s needs!
- Full repeal of House Bill 2 – No compromise with hate! No to Homophobia and transphobia
- Fully funded public jobs program and all public services! NO budget cuts!
- An end to rape culture & violence against women and LGBTQ people
- Environments free from all pollutants such as dumpsites, hog farms and destructive pipelines.
- Free and appropriate healthcare including reproductive and mental healthcare for all.
- Fully funded public schools including full-time teacher assistants, nurses and social workers as well as specialized art, music, world language and P.E. educators
- An end to the school to prison pipeline and a funded implementation of restorative discipline practices
- The right to build political & people’s power in the streets and at the ballot box
We invite others to join this call!
We call on our community to organize resistance in your workplace, school, or neighborhood and encourage a multitude of actions! In these 100 days we’ve also seen massive resistance – from the 3.5 million strong Women’s arch in January to the powerful Day Without an Immigrant/Un Dia Sin Inmigrante — and now May Day can be the next day of resistance – both in the US and around the world!
The Youth Organizing Institute AMPLIFIES the call to students — particularly high school students — to take action on May Day: to walk out, to disrupt, to fight back against the injustices that show up in our classrooms, neighborhoods, cities, and communities.
We know school buildings to be tremendous sites of power and resistance where students resist through queer-straight alliances, student activist clubs, and other organizing tactics the oppressive powers that be. School buildings can also be terrifying sites of violence and harm where the presence of law enforcement officials like school resource officers make students fear for their safety. We recognize that schools are not immune from the injustices of the world and that often, issues students are facing outside of the school become amplified in classrooms.
On May Day, people across the United States and globe are taking action against racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-immigrant bigotry, islamophobia, sexism, and more. Students, workers, families, parents, and educators are going on strike for living wages and unions, healthcare, public education, housing, freedom from fear, and so much more.
The Youth Organizing Institute encourages and supports high school students who are taking action. We are in solidarity with you and will defend you as we build the youth and student movement together across the Triangle, North Carolina, and the country.