About the Red and Black
The Red and Black is dedicated to providing delicious, wholesome foods at the lowest prices possible. We use organic, local and seasonal ingredients whenever possible.
We strive to provide a community space that is safe and welcoming to all. We hope this space is used for local voices to bring awareness and education on the issues facing us today. We work to be an example of ethical, non-hierarchal business. The cafe is worker-run and worker-owned. Our space and our community are always growing and changing. We evolve based on the energy, enthusiasm and direction of our fellow workers and our neighborhood in accordance with our ideals.
The Red & Black Cafe is located on SE 12th avenue and SE Oak street in wonderful Portland, Oregon. We have been proudly displaying our colors as a community-minded worker’s collective since 2000 and we’re still going strong. We boast a delicious, ENTIRELY VEGAN seasonally-sensitive menu, fair trade organic coffee, and a changing selection of organic red wines and local microbrews. As of recently, we decided to become a closed IWW shop.
But wait, there’s more. We love good music and good films. If you’re a musician, artist, or group looking to do a lecture or film screening at the cafe, we would love to hear from you! Please contact us at the e-mail address above and let’s talk about it!
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict. IWW membership does not require that one work in a represented workplace, nor does it exclude membership in another labor union.
The IWW contends that all workers should be united as a class and that the wage system should be abolished.[1] They may be best known for the Wobbly Shop model of workplace democracy, in which workers elect recallable delegates, and other norms of grassroots democracy (self-management) are implemented. On January 3, 2010 the IWW GHQ moved its general offices into a new location at 2117 W. Irving Park Rd., Chicago, IL. United States. The origin of the nickname “Wobblies” is uncertain.
The IWW was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States (mainly the Western Federation of Miners) who were opposed to the policies of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The convention, which took place on June 27, 1905, was then referred to as the “Industrial Congress” or the “Industrial Union Convention”—it would later be known as the First Annual Convention of the IWW. It is considered one of the most important events in the history of industrial unionism and of the American labor movement in general
The IWW’s first organizers included William D. (”Big Bill”) Haywood, Daniel De Leon, Eugene V. Debs, Thomas J Hagerty, Lucy Parsons, “Mother” Mary Harris Jones, Frank Bohn, William Trautmann, Vincent Saint John, Ralph Chaplin, and many others.
The IWW’s goal was to promote worker solidarity in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the employing class; its motto was “an injury to one is an injury to all,” which improved upon the 19th century Knights of Labor’s creed, “an injury to one is the concern of all.” In particular, the IWW was organized because of the belief among many unionists, socialists, anarchists and radicals that the AFL not only had failed to effectively organize the U.S. working class, as only about 5% of all workers belonged to unions in 1905, but also was organizing according to narrow craft principles which divided groups of workers. The Wobblies believed that all workers should organize as a class, a philosophy which is still reflected in the Preamble to the current IWW Constitution:
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. ... Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system.’ It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World
Yes I read the whole dang thing already - how else would I know about the 2nd paragraph..... Neither I nor anyone I know who lives in Portland would ever step foot in this place.