OLYMPIA COALITION FOR A FAIR BUDGET

April 5th! Enough is enough!

olycoforfairbudget — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 06:13:11 +0000

Why Week of Protests? April 2-8.

olycoforfairbudget — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:34:23 +0000

We are shutting it down! April 5th-8th Washingtonians will rise up to say Enough is Enough! We want a people’s budget and we want it now! We know that it is possible and that there is a huge source of revenue that lawmakers have ignored because they have been serving corporate interests rather than people’s interest.

Current Situation: Washington State is facing an enormous budget deficit, currently slated for $4.6 billion. However, it is not as if we do not have the money. Our elected officials have been put in a box both by the voters and by the power of corporations. Virtually every corporation in the State receives some sort of tax break. If we can close these loopholes, we can have a just budget.

Our Vision: We need to apply large and sustained pressure in Olympia that is bigger than usual rallies. We want a series of events that up the ante, that make legislators and the Governor uncomfortable, and show a groundswell of support for a fair budget. There is only one shot at this and if we do not put everything we have into it, we have to wait two more years.

The Basics of Our Demands (detailed demands are being developed) are:
1) Stop Scapegoating the Poor, People of Color, Immigrants, and Workers
2) Close Corporate Loopholes
3) Stop the Cuts
4) Create Jobs

The people will take back Washington! April 5th Olympia! Meet at the Rafah Sister City Mural Project on State and Capitol 10AM and we will march on the capitol to let lawmakers know: Enough is enough!

We demand a people’s budget! We demand an end to the budget crisis that regressive taxation has created! Tax loopholes in Washington state add up to about 4 billion every 2 years! Guess what our projected deficit is? You got it 4 billion!

This is the start of a week of protests and this is OUR DAY Olympia. This is the day when we go to the capitol with a show of force in the thousands! We do it our way! We bring the noise! We bring the analysis! We bring the action, the DIRECT action!

It’s going to be festive. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be packed with people from all over. There will be dancing in Olympia’s revolution! Oh yes! There will be DANCING!

And who will lead? You will! WHO will lead? YOU will! You will lead by not going to work that day and by coming to the capitol! When you are at the capitol we’ll give you the Microphone! We’ll give you the bullhorn! We won’t let them rest! Nu uh!

on the 5th, Music starts at noon at the capitol steps. We’ve got puppets and plays and people, massive numbers of people. YOU, YOUR friends, EVERYONE you know and everyone you don’t in Olympia, in South Puget Sound and eventually ALL of Washington!

Get ready to stay until your demands are met. Stay until YOUR demands are met! Want to help make this day rock like a little Cairo? Get in touch…

Activities are planned from the 5th of April to the 8th and we are hoping to generate as big and wide a turnout as possible! If you’re tired of politicians giving taxpayers money to the military; If you’re tired of seeing incredibly profitable corporations get off the hook without paying their fair share; If you are concerned about the severe, proposed cuts to social services; If you’re looking to build a large and unified movement to create positive change….then PLEASE CONSIDER JOINING US FOR OUR APRIL WEEK OF ACTION.

So far, we have received endorsements from: Washington Community Action Network (WA-CAN), Washington State Labor Council, Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSME, Radical Woman & Sisters Organizing for Survival, Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights (POWER), Washington Teacher’s Association, Our Economic Future, SEIU and others. We are hoping to build an inclusive, robust, and effective response to budget cuts and extend the invitation to everyone who cares about a fair budget.

We also need your help to agitate, organize, and mobilize! Get involved!

Outreach to groups you are involved in! Let us know!
Contact me! (see phone below!)

In Solidarity,
Nikki Miller
360-259-4554

APRIL 5th! Everyone PRESENT!

olycoforfairbudget — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:50:15 +0000

The March for a Fair Budget and the Coalition’s Capital Action Festival is on Tuesday April 5th. March begins 10AM at Rafah Mural at State and Capital Way. Music starts at noon on Capital steps. Jim Page, the famous folk singer from Seattle, Danny Kelly our local legendary troubadour, the Citizens Band together again, hiphop by Thought Crime Collective, more love from Collective Love Unlimited and fun covers from the Olympia Free Choir. Also political theater! The Backbone’s Wheel of Fortune or Misfortune will let you choose how we spend our taxes and your attendance is required to stop the theatrical marriage ceremony of the corporation and government. Throughout all of this will be short speeches by real people not politicians or pundits on how we can take our government back!

The gloves are off. Don’t let the music and fun fool you. We mean serious business and we want you to come and participate in actions that we hope will begin the long struggle towards a better future for us and our children. Like Wisconsin our state is changing and who comes out on top is either the corporations or the people. We say the people lead and the leaders follow! We need people on the steps and engaged and to keep coming back over and over again! That is how our democracy will regain it’s vibrancy!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=134108203328679

All this is part of a week of action APRIL 2-8. Mark your calendars for these events and make plans to join us as we demand that the bankers and billionaires — and their politician handmaidens in government — stop the attacks on working people and that they share in the sacrifice as our nation struggles to recover from the economic havoc their greed and malfeasance has caused.

SATURDAY, APRIL 2 – 9AM- 1PM — Secret Brunch at Media Island in support of April 5th Day of Action. Buffet! Bring your friends! RSVP http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=202126369811234
– 2 p.m. at Peace Arch Park in Blaine — This International Solidarity Event will bring together unionists, students, activists from Canada, Washington and Oregon to extend hands across the border in solidarity with all workers. This event will be co-sponsored by the British Columbia Federation of Labour; the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO; and the Oregon AFL-CIO. Please email Lori Province from the WSLC about mobilization efforts.

SUNDAY, APRIL 3 – 6:30 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle — Join IATSE Local 15 for Solidarity Night at “Billy Elliott: The Musical.” Living in a coal mining town in Northern England, young Billy Elliot doesn’t take to boxing lessons and is instead drawn to ballet. His father and brother, striking miners, struggle to understand and support his passion for dance. This is a Union production. Actors are members of Actors Equity; stagehands, IATSE Local 15; hair and makeup, IATSE Local 488; and wardrobe, IATSE Local 887; and musicians, AFM 76-493 and other locals. No-host bar begins at 5:30 p.m. and the show starts at 6:30 p.m. Tickets range from $26.30 to $56.90. For tickets or information, contact IATSE Local 15 at 206-441-1515 ext. 225 or stagerep@ia15.org. Tickets at these group rates are limited, so please get in touch now!

MONDAY, APRIL 4 – 5:30 – 7 p.m. at MLK Memorial Park in Seattle — The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. in Memphis, Tenn., where he was standing with sanitation workers demanding their dream of a better life. Today, the right to bargain collectively for a voice at work and a middle-class life are under attack as never before. Join in this National Call to Action on April 4 and stand with other civil and human rights activists, union members and supporters, Latinos, Asians and immigrants, religious supporters, environmental, student and women’s groups against a political agenda that is attacking working families, their human rights and their dignity. This event, sponsored by the Communications Workers of America, will be at 2200 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Seattle.

TUESDAY, APRIL 5TH – March begins 10 am at the Olympia/Rafah Solidarity Mural at State Avenue and Capital Way. Then on the Capital Steps:
11:45-12: Speaker
12-12:30 Danny Kelly
12:30-1 Speaker
1-1:30 Citizens Band
1:30-1:45 Wheel of Fortune
1:45-2:30 Jim Page
2:30-3 Marriage Ceremony between Corporations and Government
3-3:45 Collective Love Unlimited
3:45-4 Open Mic
4-4:30 Thought Crime COLLECTIVE
4:30-5 Speakers
5-6 Olympia Free Choir
6-7 March around the capital campus!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6 — Noon at the Capitol (exact location TBA) — Washington Community Action Network will bring hundreds of community activists and students to Olympia in an attempt to find the sacrifices that the Legislature will make the bankers and billionaires pay to get us out of the economic crisis.

THURSDAY, APRIL 7 — Time/precise location TBA — Health care unions, led by SEIU District 1199NW, will mobilize health care workers in Olympia to demand that the Legislature fix the deficit problems and to look into the faces of the victims.

FRIDAY, APRIL 8 — Noon at the Capitol Steps — This is the big one: a major Labor Rally at the Capitol in Olympia. Washington’s working families are tired of being blamed and punished for the damage done by Wall Street banks and corporations. Join thousands of public- and private-sector workers from all trades as we stand together as one and demand that lawmakers PUT PEOPLE FIRST! We want good jobs, we want our rights, and we want them NOW!
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olycoforfairbudget — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:50:16 +0000

First Annual Fair Budget Fair at The Eagles Hall in Olympia, WA — January 15th and 16th, 2011.

The Fair Budget Fair is a community response to the continuing—and worsening—cuts to jobs, education, health care, and services in the state budget. With this event, we are bringing together artists, musicians, and activists to create a dialog with our greater community about what we can do to save our jobs, schools, and all the public services we need. We have lost faith in both major political parties, who continue to cut *our* programs and use *our* tax dollars at the federal level for wars and bank bailouts instead. *We will have to handle this ourselves.* Ultimately, we think that only bottom-up, democratic control of our own common wealth can ensure that our common needs are met. Come join us for art, music, discussion, education, and preparing for action!

We are under massive reconstruction! Our group is continually being revamped, this website has been out of commission for a bit, but will come back with new info within the next few weeks. If you have questions or want to join email us at olycoforfairbudget@gmail.com.

Thanks!

OCFB Team

As people throughout the country struggle under the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, public education from pre-K to higher and adult education is threatened by budget cuts, layoffs, privatization, tuition and fee increases, and other attacks.

Washington State has the MOST REGRESSIVE tax structure of any state in the U.S. according to The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ITEP (read more in the “Who Pays?” link). This means that the poor pay a higher percentage of their income relative to the rich in taxes, than in any other state in America.

Budget cuts degrade the quality of public education by decreasing student services and increasing class size, while tuition hikes and layoffs force the cost of the recession onto students and teachers and off of the financial institutions that caused the recession in the first place.

If workers, students, teachers, staff and the community are firmly united, organized, and mobilized to win public support, these cuts can be defeated.

Please take a stand in fighting the budget cuts to defend education!