By Daniel
The Industrial Workers of The World South Sound General Education Union will hold a rally Jan. 17 to share their demands, which call for the school to not hire another police officer and hire two new staff members.
“The picket we are doing tomorrow is to spread information about this union,” said “rank and file” member Elizabeth Flynn. “We can do something about all these cuts that are happening.”
According to an Olympia IWW newsletter, the group was founded last summer, “on the rooftop of a “leftist” shop called Kinoki in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.” This school year the burgeoning union has adopted “points of unity,” held a rally and a phone-in campaign.
“We see these decisions as part of larger series of cuts happening on campus to change the school for the worse, such as the “temporary” closing of the pool,” the group writes in a press release. “We find this to be an insulting and undemocratic use of the budget.”
Representatives from the union — which, like the broader IWW, have embraced the moniker ‘wobblies’ — met with admin at the end of last year, including Vice President for Finance and Operations John Carmichael. Admin argued that the union doesn’t represent the student body.
“We recognize the Geoduck Student Union as the clearinghouse for student voices on campus,” said Evergreen spokesperson Allison Anderson, after the wobblies launched a phone-in campaign.
However, the wobbly press release notes, the Flaming Eggplant “was was not won by the board of trustees decision to finally listen to one of the Geoduck Student Union’s toothless referendums, rather it was the organization of students providing, from the get go, an alternative food service from Aramark.” The Flaming Eggplant posted a picture of a Wobbly flyer to their Instagram story on Jan. 16.
Similarly, Flynn said that “the equity room, for example, doesn’t exist because of the GSU, it exists because of a mass movement that happened in 2017.”
The rally begins at 3 p.m., in front of the Evergreen library.
Editors note: An earlier version of this story called the IWW the “International Workers of the World.” It has been corrected.
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