EVENT: FIGHTING FOR OUR FREEDOM: REV. EDWARD AND DOROTHY PINKNEY

WHERE: DE-BUG HEADQUARTERS, 701 LENZEN AVENUE, SAN JOSE, CA 95126

WHEN: THURS, SEPT.29, 2011 7PM

This exclusive San Jose engagement is also sponsored by the San Jose Silicon Valley NAACP, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, and UNITE-HERE Local 19.

The Pinkneys are touring Northern California as national spokespersons against police brutality, courtroom injustice, and corporate dictatorship. They come to us from the impoverished Rust Belt town of Benton Harbor, Michigan, the first American city to be placed under Michigan’s draconian new Emergency Financial Manager law. Rev. Pinkney is President of the Benton Harbor NAACP and has been singled out for political attack because of his years of outspoken criticism of the takeover of his local City government by Whirlpool Corporation. California is now entering the same crisis that has afflicted the Rust Belt for over a decade. With unemployment at 12% and corporate profits at record highs, the State government is actively dismantling services, education, and health care programs for working people it now considers disposable. Here in San Jose, the City Council is trying to declare a “fiscal and public safety state of emergency” in order to loot pensions, slash wages and benefits, and undermine collective bargaining for city employees. The Pinkneys and the Benton Harbor resistance provide concrete evidence of the extent to which the corporations and government have become entwined in America. Their leadership shows the necessity for confronting the entire political system that creates injustice.