SIU FACULY STRIKE AND STUDENT SOLIDARITY WALK-OUTS (2011)

Adam Turl, “SIUC Faculty on the Picket Line,” Socialist Worker (November 9, 2011)

By Monday, November 7, protests had grown substantially. Hundreds of students joined a call for a "student strike"--organized largely on Facebook--walked out of class and marched through campus to the different FA picket lines, drawing hundreds more supporters. As the student newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, reported, "Chants of 'We want contracts now,' from faculty members were heard alongside 'We want our teachers back,' from students."

CARBONDALE BLACK PANTHERS (1970)

Angela Aguayo, 778 Bullets (2013)

Short documentary about the violent 1970 police attack on the Carbondale Black Panther house. Click here for full documentary.

THE 1977/78 MINERS STRIKE

Adam Turl, “The Miners’ Strike of 1977/1978,” International Socialist Review #76 (March 2011)

“A mass meeting of striking miners was held in the City Park in West Frankfurt, Illinois. Following the meeting, three hundred miners drove to Metropolis and stormed the terminal, overwhelming the fourteen state and local police guarding it and climbing over a railroad car that terminal operators had placed to block the entrance. The terminal was shut down.”

SOCIALISM

Southern Illinois Democratic Socialists of America (SIDSA)

“Southern Illinois Democratic Socialists of America (SIDSA) supports all working-class struggles and all movements against oppression. We believe capitalism is at the root of the problems facing working-class people and the oppressed. SIDSA meetings are usually held on the first Sunday of each month.“

SIU STUDENT STRIKE (1970)

Allan Keith, SIUC’s Days of Dissent (2007)

A PDF of Keith’s first person historical account of protests and the student strike at Southern Illinois University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

RAINBOW REFUGE (2023-)

Carbondale Assembly for Radical Equity (CARE) + Rainbow Refuge.

In 2023, organizers, activists and community members in Carbondale, Illinois founded the Carbondale Assembly for Radical Equity (CARE) to, in part, help relocate trans and queer persons being turned into refugees by anti-trans and anti-queer oppression in states like Texas and Florida. In July (2023), Tish Turl and Adam Turl spoke to CARE’s Cassandra Coffee and Mattie Stearns on Locust Radio.

Also, see this article by Frances Madeson from TruthOut on how Carbondale passed a bodily autonomy civil rights ordinance (July 26, 2023).

THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE IN CAIRO, ILLINOIS (1967-1973)

For a really good photographic history of the Cairo struggle, check out Preston Ewing, Jr. and Jan Peterson Roddy’s Let My People Go: Cairo, Illinois 1867-1973 (SIU Press, 1996). Unfortunately the book is out of print and somewhat expensive, but should be available at the library. There is also a fairly extensive review here.

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS REPRODUCTION JUSTICE NETWORK (SIRJN - 2022)

SIRJN was organized in the summer of 2022 following the Supreme Court repeal of Roe v. Wade to help protect reproductive freedom and gender affirming care in southern Illinois. Contact SIRJN to find out how to get involved. It’s work has since been largely folded into the work of the CARE project.

STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED AND NEW SO. ILL LABOR ORGANIZING

Carbondale Starbucks Workers Union / Starbucks Workers United.

In 2022, workers at the Carbondale Starbucks successfully organized a union. Before the vote, BALM’s Tish and Adam Turl interviewed Ken LeBlanc, a rank-and-file organizer, about the organizing drive on Locust Radio.

Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) in Carbondale.

EWOC is a project of the United Electrical Workers (UE), begun during the high point of the COVID pandemic. Workers and comrades from the Southern Illinois Democratic Socialists of America are helping organize a chapter of EWOC in southern Illinois to facilitate more labor organizing in the area. Check out the EWOC and SIDSA websites for more information.