Blue Ridge IWW

To all worker-tenants in the Blue Ridge community,

We are announcing the merger of the New River and Roanoke tenant unions into one organization to be now known as the Blue Ridge Tenants Union. We are merging the two groups to have greater coordination and centralization between the valleys as well as merging the Blue Ridge Tenants Union under the umbrella of the Blue Ridge IWW labor union. Henceforth, the Blue Ridge Tenants Union will be a project of the Blue Ridge IWW. The struggle for working class families to secure safe housing is inherently linked to the struggle to secure living wage jobs and the construction of working class power in general. 

Over the years, the tenant unions have been seen by many in the community as just another nonprofit organization based on a service-client model. This has never been the intention of the tenant unions, which have always been a political project to help working families through acts of solidarity while encouraging tenant-workers to organize with their fellow worker-tenants on the housing front, just as they need to organize on the labor front.

It has been our experience that when worker-tenants reach out to our tenant unions their level of interest generally begins and ends with their individual problems with a given landlord. These housing issues — from increased rent costs, evictions, to unsafe living conditions, and homelessness — cannot be solved by the tenant union as a service organization to parachute in and fix the problems of individual worker-tenants. These issues can only be resolved through collective action by tenant-workers against landlords as one class versus another.

Moving forward, we will assist worker-tenants with their specific housing issues as best as we can as fellow worker-tenants volunteering our limited time and limited resources. Our ability to transform housing in favor of working families hinges on the financial support and labor of fellow worker-tenants. We encourage all working people to join the Blue Ridge IWW to better help us in this endeavor as we build solidarity across the Blue Ridge.

Worker-tenants only have limited options under current Virginia housing law to have their grievances addressed. Virginia housing law is written by and for landlords and subsequently favors landlords. As such, the tenant assertion remains the highest legal power any worker-tenant has in securing repairs or having an injunction placed on a given landlord for abusive behavior. This will always be the answer when worker-tenants reach out asking for help to get repairs or address other issues related to landlord negligence. If worker-tenants desire more legal recourse this will require a concerted effort to push for reforms to current Virginia housing law, which we welcome.

Beyond this, the tenant union can inform worker-tenants of their limited legal rights, their best practices to ensure better results when going through the courts, how to build public pressure campaigns on specific landlords for failure to comply with current Virginia housing law, as well as help facilitate the organization of tenant councils within given housing units.

Again, in order to drastically improve housing for worker-tenants it will require a movement and collective effort by worker-tenants acting in solidarity through organization and becoming members of a working class democratic association where all involved regularly contribute funds/dues and labor. There is no other way around this; the nonprofit industry will not fix the housing issue, and politicians will not fix it either. Only independent working class organization will. That means us, and no one else is coming to save us. No one else will do this for us. We are all on our own and must support one another as we face landlords and bosses who have a legal system and economic system which favors them over us. It’s time to get organized.

FOR WORKER POWER

FOR TENANT POWER

Since December 26th, 2023, political prisoner Rashid Johnson and 14 other prisoners at Red Onion State Prison located in the southwest Virginia town of Pound have been sustaining a hunger strike over the human rights violation of long term solitary confinement.

Under the United Nations’ Mandela Rules, solitary confinement amounts to torture. Torture was prohibited under the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture. Despite the recent passage of House Bill 2487 — which was meant to restrict the use of solitary confinement — the Virginia Department of Corrections has continued on with the practice unabated, renaming it “restorative housing.”

The hunger strikers have sought legal recourse prior to the strike to address these issues with no resolution. Having exhausted all options, they have been forced to engage in the hunger strike as a last resort. Their demands are as follows:

• Release prisoners from “restorative housing”
• Restore visitation rights of prisoners so families may check on them
• Access for families to inspect conditions of prisoners
• The transfer of Rashid Johnson back to Sussex I prison for proper medical treatment for cancer and congestive heart failure

The Blue Ridge IWW stands in solidarity with the Red Onion prisoners on hunger strike. We call on the Virginia Department of Corrections and the Youngkin administration to meet their demands and to stop the use of torture as defined by the United Nations.

We call on all supporting organizations and individuals to endorse this statement and sign this petition asking for the Red Onion hunger strikers’ demands to be met by the state of Virginia. 

Supporters are also encouraged to contact the following officials to meet the strikers’ demands:

–  David Robinson, VADOC Central Administration, 804-887-8078, david.robinson@vadoc.virginia.gov

–  Virginia DOC Director Chadwick S Dotson, 804-674-3081, Chadwick.Dotson@vadoc.virginia.gov

–  Rose L. Durbin, VADOC Central Administration, 804-887-7921, Rose.Durbin@vadoc.virgina.gov

–  Beth Cabell, Division of Institutions, 804-834-9967, beth.cabell@vadoc

–  Gov. Glenn Youngkin, 804-786-2211, glenn.youngkin@governor.virginia.gov

ROANOKE, VA: The Blue Ridge Industrial Workers of the World General Membership Branch resolutely stands in solidarity with Bridges Starbucks Workers in Roanoke, Virginia against Starbucks Corporation and their store management who refuse to negotiate with Starbucks workers over fair scheduling and hours. 

The struggle for fair scheduling by Bridges Starbucks workers is a universal issue for all workers across the service sector who are expected to tolerate unstable scheduling and fluctuating hours which result in unstable pay and precarious living standards.

All workers deserve living wages, stable schedules, and workplace democracy in our everyday lives. All power to Bridges Starbucks workers and all power to workers of the world! Organize and fight for worker power, worker control, and worker democracy!

In Solidarity,

The Blue Ridge Industrial Workers of the World General Membership Branch