Support for Fellow Workers arrested during 2016 Olympia Stand

On November 18th, 2016 the Olympia Stand Train Blockade was raided by the police. The blockade was preventing a train carrying fracking sands (proppants) from leaving the port of Olympia.

The sands were bound for North Dakota and the blockade was in support of Standing Rock.

The fight to protect the environment is bound up with the class struggle. It is inevitably the poor and the working class that suffer from the destruction of the ecosystem.

At its 2016 convention the Industrial Workers of the World expressed their solidarity with Standing Rock with the follow statement.

“The International Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World stands in solidarity with the resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline.  We call on the labor movement and working class to take a stand against environmental racism and join the fight for a just transition as our collective future is at stake.  We recognize that the capitalist system that oppresses the working class has always oppressed indigenous people of the world.

Therefore we feel that settlers and indigenous workers should unite to take direct action against colonial industrial capitalism and do everything in our power to restore justice to indigenous people and Mother Earth.  An injury to one is an injury to all.”

And because an injury to one is an injury to all the Membership Committee of the Olympia General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World supports and is giving all proceeds raised by the 2018 Labor Concert in the Park to the legal defense of these fellow workers and members of the working class.