CANADIAN LABOUR-OTTAWA:

THE OTTAWA PANHANDLERS' UNION:

The following is originally from the Ottawa IWW. It comes Molly's way via our local Winnipeg Wobbly Blog. Down Ottawa way, in response to the usual legal harassment, people have formed the 'Ottawa Panhandlers' Union', and the local branch of the IWW is supporting their efforts.

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Please donate to the legal defense of the Ottawa Panhandlers Union:‏

The IWW’s General Defense Committee Local 6 is calling on all GDC and IWW members to pass the hat at meetings and in their community to help us raise CDN $1,500 (US$1,300) to pay for the legal defense of Fellow Worker Andrew Nellis, an organizer of the Ottawa Panhandlers Union. We want to reach this target by November 30.

FW Nellis won the immediate court battle when the City of Ottawa prosecutors dropped the charges against him. They decided to do so when faced with his lawyer’s groundwork for a constitutional challenge to the city’s removal of shelter from the homeless in one of Canada’s coldest cities. FW Nellis had tried to cut a padlocked gate on a fence that was put up to prevent the homeless from sleeping under a downtown underpass as part of May Day 2008 organizing.

To date, Local 6 has raised one-fifth of the funds needed to pay Andrew’s legal bills, so we have about CDN $1,200 to go. Andrew cannot work and is fighting the city for access to disability funding, so he cannot pay these bills on his own. So that is where our funding appeal for donations of all sizes (from $5 to $20 or more) comes in to support his outstanding organizing work and to settle accounts with the lawyer so that he, too, can engage in future defense work.

Please donate now through www.paypal.com by sending your personal gift to gdc6@ottawaiww.org or visit our web page http://ottawaiww.org/?page_id=254 to donate using the Paypal button.

Alternately, please send cheques or money orders in any currency directed to “General Defense Committee”, at PO Box 52003, 298 Dalhousie St., Ottawa, Ontario K1N 1S0.

All donations that exceed our target will be used to establish a dedicated defense fund for the Ottawa Panhandlers’ Union, which is on the frontline of defending the poor and working class in Ottawa and facing weekly police harassment and intimidation for doing it.
In defense of our class,
Peter Moore
Secretary-Treasurer
General Defense Committee Local 6
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
http://ottawaiww.org/?page_id=254