Soon we became active in the anti-war movement. Ideologically we became an explicitly anarchist group.

Over the years we organized a large number of rallies, marches, pickets, forums, picnics, and propaganda campaigns. Some of our activities have been singular events, some were part of larger campaigns (most notably our anti-military recruitment campaign). The issues we have dealt with have varied greatly, as have our approaches. More than a hundred people have cycled through the group as members over a 9-year period and thus our group took on different flavors at different times. We got some things right and also made many mistakes. Many of our efforts have been analyzed, evaluated and documented in our semi-annual magazine, the Steel City Revolt, and in reports and communiqués through the years.

In 2009 our group began tentative discussions on disbanding. And then the White House announced that the G-20 summit was going to be held in Pittsburgh later that fall. Given our particular activities over the years, communication resources, and familiarity with dealing with the police and state repression, it made sense to us to aid that mobilization.

After the G-20 a large number of new people began, and continue to, express interest in getting involved in the group. It is difficult to adequately address the many issues that initially led to sentiments of disbanding – issues that persist —when there are continually new folks getting involved who are excited to jump into organizing.

In 2011 it is clear to the ten of us who currently comprise POG that the local and global terrain has changed while we have not been able to develop new approaches that justify our existence as an organization.

Social movements have shifted, as has the context in which we organize. We do not need to serve as an initial entry point for people becoming interested in anarchism because there are now a variety of other anarchist projects, initiatives, and scenes within Pittsburgh that can fill this role. Recent turnover suggests to us that people are joining our group because of our past rather than our current activities. We are not breaking new ground or initiating interesting efforts. The fact that we have not been a means through which to effectively respond to the priorities individual members have often articulated is indicative of the fact we lack the common ground required to collectively organize.

We do not want to fall into the trap of perpetuating our organization simply for the sake of its own existence, a path that is quite seductive when you still have ample members and supporters, and an easy comfort with organizing semi-regular events. Rather than continuing to tweak our structure, as we have over the years, we want to let POG go in order to make the space for ourselves to continue experiments with other projects and, for some, other structures. Members of our group are involved in a variety of projects outside of POG, as we’ve always been. The lessons we have learned over the past decade of organizing will inform the challenges we will continue to face in our work.

Projects such as the Steel City Revolt that fill a specific and worthwhile niche locally may or may not continue as a separate collective, dependent on discussions among the members who were bottom-lining the publication. The cultural events we organized, such as the annual anarchist ball and annual anarchist picnic, may or may not continue without POG.

We send our goodbye salutations to all those we have worked with over the years, all those in prison, all those continuing or beginning to fight. We maintain, as we always have, hope in the future and belief in the necessity of continual action and reflection.

Sponsored the Pittsburgh Organizing Group and Human Rights Coalition-Fed Up.

In June 1985, Diana and her two-week old son and five companions – all of them active in the struggle for Puerto Rican independence – fled L.A. after finding a surveillance device in their car. Her recent memoir explores this history, linking her personal experiences of escaping from the FBI and raising two children while underground with the politics of solidarity and feminism which framed her political choices. Arm the Spirit brings a feminist perspective to a subject typically dominated by heroic, male discourse and offers unique insights into the radical politics and culture of the 1970’s.  Since returning to public life in 1995, Diana has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area where she has worked extensively with women and transgender prisoners.

For more information on the book, go to www.armthespirit.com or contact Diana@armthespirit.com

High Noon!

EQT Plaza, (6^th St. and Liberty Ave)

Over the past few months the rich have escalated their war on working people, poor people, students and the unemployed.  They started in Wisconsin with a devastating budget law that cut public services and aimed at crushing public workers union rights.  Then they moved to Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and now they’re coming after us here in Pennsylvania.

They built up a house of cards on Wall Street.  They packaged loans and traded them, they took our houses and threw us on the street, they forced us to borrow tens of thousands to go to school, they sent us to die in their wars and they got very, very rich.

But that house of cards came tumbling down.  The markets collapsed and we got laid off while the CEO’s took golden parachute buyouts; we lost our houses while speculators bought new vacation homes; and our sisters and brothers died in Iraq and Afghanistan while the defense contractors made a killing.

Now they want us to pay for their financial crisis.  They want us to give up our busses, our schools, our healthcare, our jobs and even our unions so the executives and the financiers and the speculators can keep getting richer.

We’re not particularly interested in sacrificing to prop up their system.  We won’t pay for their wars, for their police or their prisons.  We want to use our resources for education, healthcare, housing and to make sure everyone has enough to eat.  They say cut back and we say FUCK THAT.

On April 4^th working people, poor people students and the unemployed across the country will be taking action.  Some will be calling in sick from work; others will be showing up at rallies or marches.  Some local unions have called strikes; others are taking action in their workplaces.

On April 4^th join the Pittsburgh Organizing Group at the ‘We Are One’ rally organized by unions and community groups at noon at EQT Plaza (6^th St. and Liberty Ave.).  Bring your flags, signs, banners and your outrage!

Because we did not organize this event POG is encouraging our friends and supporters to respect the tone and tactics that the organizers of the rally have put forward.

…This annual all-ages dance is open to all friends of Pittsburgh Organizing Group. Everyone welcome!

Thursday, April 7th

Artist Image Resources (AIR): 518 Foreland St. on the North Side
8:00pm-11:00pm
$5-10 donation goes towards publication of the Steel City Revolt! and other POG activities. No one turned away.

Refreshments will be served. Snacks from countries in revolt! Cookies! Etc! Awesome Raffle Drawing at 10pm.

There is no dress code. Wear your fanciest costume and masks! Or don’t! Dance the night away in reckless anonymity or relax with strange people and good friends!

Bring a date or wait for fate! You can come by yourself, with friends, bring one date or ten, whatever social arrangement you prefer.

This is a sober space and a kid friendly event!

Why?!

Port Authority CEO Steve Bland and County Executive Dan Onorato (the guys who promised us that their drink tax would save our buses) say that cuts are needed because of a $47 million budget shortfall.  But that budget shortfall didn’t come out of thin air.  Our bus system will always be struggling for two reasons:

1.) We haven’t made transit a priority. There is still no sustainable, predictable, dedicated public funding for our public transit system.  Other communities fund their transit system by dedicating money from tolls, lotteries, or some small tax.  Instead, our public transit system operates off of fares and whatever other money the transit system is able to scrape together.

2.) Onarato and Bland have failed to set aside the money they owe drivers for their pensions and retiree healthcare**. Instead of taking their full pay, bus drivers let Port Authority hold onto some of the money they were saving for retirement.  Port Authority got the advantage of being allowed to stock the money away when it was financially convenient.  But Port Authority didn’t save the money; they lost it on Wall St.  So now the drivers’ pension fund is dramatically underfunded and we’re going to be forced to contribute tens of millions extra every year just to avoid defaulting on the obligations.

The Cuts Don’t Need to Happen

Despite Bland and Onorato’s stunning incompetence, the State has stepped in to provide emergency funding to keep our buses running.  But rather than using the money to keep our buses running, they decided to try to teach us a lesson about financial responsibility and impose the cuts anyway!

Stand Up, Fight Back

This transit crisis isn’t our fault but we’re the ones who are going to be forced to pay.  In the short term, the busses CAN run and the drivers CAN keep their jobs and pensions if we force Onorato and Bland to give in and spend the emergency funds to address the emergency.  In the long term we need to make a serious investment in public transit and fund the drivers pensions so we can have a stable and sustainable public transit system for years to come.

**Woah there Teabagger—Before you start complaining about how we need to take away the drivers’ pensions, think a little bit.  We CAN’T take away retired drivers pensions—they’ve already earned the money, it’s theirs not PAT’s.   Cutting pensions for current drivers might do a little to cut costs, but the big problem isn’t future pension liability, it’s pension liability that’s already been accrued.

TransitFlyerFinalpdf-2

Shadow Lounge
5972 Baum Blvd.
Pittsburgh, PA

Featuring: Mike Stout, Jake and Clara (of Jake and the Infernal Machine), more TBA

The 900 members of United Steelworkers Local 1005 are fighting back against US Steel’s attack on workers’ pensions and retirement security. US Steel has demanded that current workers sell the next generation short by submitting to a two-tiered pension scheme under which new workers would be permanently locked into a less secure pension program. On November 8th, when workers refused to agree to the cuts, US Steel lock the 900 Steelworkers out of their jobs.

Here in the Steel City, US Steel’s hometown, the Pittsburgh Organizing Group is organizing to support the locked out workers. Join POG for a benefit show at the Shadow Lounge on February 19th. All proceeds will be donated to Local 1005’s strike and defense fund to help the locked out families buy food and keep their heat on through the lockout.

For more information on POG, visit www.SteelCityRevolt.org
For more information on Local 1005’s fight against US Steel, visit www.usw1005.ca

Issue #5 is out! It includes: reports on the Big Ben “Consent is Not a Game” counter-tailgate, East End Mutual Aid’s Share Faires, Landslide Community Farm, Marcellus Shale organizing for climate justice, the Free Skool, and the Jordan Miles police brutality mobilization; a detailed story on David Japenga’s conviction following the Pittsburgh G-20, as well as an examination of strategies in the Pittsburgh Pro-Choice Movement; a feature on the rebirth and fall of the Thomas Merton Center; a zine review of “Letters to the Man,” a zine about patriarchy, and book review of “We, the Anarchists! A study of the Iberian Anarchist Organization”; opinion pieces on reformism, chants and weekends; a report on labor struggles from the Steel City and beyond; and poetry, recipes, Nietzsche interpretations and more…

Sounds exciting, right? Order a single issue or become a subscriber and have them mailed to your doorstep! (http://www.steelcityrevolt.org/?page_id=18) Issues come out roughly twice a year. Or, pick one up the next time POG tables an event.

“Steel City Revolt!” is a print publication of the Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG). Its purpose is to act as an organizing and communication tool for POG members and supporters while helping to build the local anarchist movement. We publish anarchist-related articles on events, theory, history, analysis and culture deemed of interest to our members, supporters and readers.

Winter is here and the Holidays are nearly upon us! Join members and friends of Pittsburgh Organizing Group in spreading the word of anti-capitalism, working class cheer, and the joy of No Gods & No Masters through RADICAL HOLIDAY CAROLING up and down the streets of Shadyside’s business district.

When: Thursday, December 23^rd 2010

Place: The Corner of Aiken and Walnut in Shadyside

Time: 7PM

What: RADICAL CAROLING!!!

***Bring your singing voices, smiling faces, and of course your holiday cheer!***

***This is a family friendly event, so bring your kids!!!***

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a community-based organization of mainly Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida.  Over the past two decades, through grass roots on-the-ground organizing, combined with dynamic alliance building and sophisticated corporate campaigning, the CIW has systematically campaigned to increase wages and stop slave labor practices in South Florida’s tomato industry.

In 2005 the CIW surged to the national scene winning a historic boycott campaign against Taco Bell and in 2007 the CIW went on to win a settlement agreement with McDonalds.  Over the past three years the CIW has brought Burger King, Subway, Whole Foods, Sodexo, Aramark, and Compass to the bargaining table.  The wage increases only cost consumers a penny a pound but for farm workers, that penny has been the difference between desolate poverty and a reasonable standard of living.

Join the Pittsburgh Organizing Group as we welcome the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to Pittsburgh.  Hear about the CIW’s exciting work in south Florida and some upcoming actions to here in Pittsburgh to support their latest boycott against Trader Joe’s.

Resistance Lives On!

The current financial crisis has again exposed the true face of a system bent on total destruction. Everyday, capitalism exploits, demeans and murders people in this city and around the world. It ravages the environment and all life. When the G20 came to town last September, our opportunity came to fight back. The G20 is an organization of capitalist world leaders, dedicated to saving the system that causes these crises. Fixing problems within capitalism can never bring about meaningful change because capitalism itself is the problem.

When this system is attacked in an effective way, the state must find a scapegoat to avoid acknowledging actual challenges to its monopoly on power. In Seattle eleven years ago, when the city rose up to shut down the WTO, a small group of anarchists were blamed for actions that were the work of tens of thousands. Today, in Pittsburgh, David Japenga has been in jail or under house arrest for over 14 months for a series of actions that no one thinks he could have done, convicted on lies and weak circumstantial evidence. In Toronto, Chile, Greece, Russia and elsewhere, anarchists are being viciously targeted by the state for daring to resist.

On November 30th, POG will come to the streets of Oakland once more with supporters of David Japenga and all those who are dedicated to resisting the state and capital. Meet at the corner of Fifth and Bigelow at 7:30 for a gathering near the local manifestations of corporate globalization, which were attacked last fall. Pittsburgh has been under siege by the forces of neoliberalism since the Second World War; we must fight back. Resistance lives on!