News and Observer reports that today, the Southern Workers Assembly is picketing the Raleigh courthouse in support of the Moral Monday arrestees on trial.

A labor organization is planning to hold protests Friday in half a dozen Southern cities to demand charges be dropped against the more than 900 people arrested in “Moral Monday” protests at the North Carolina legislature this year.

The Southern Workers Assembly plans to picket in front of the county courthouse in Raleigh at noon. The protest continues in Goldsboro and Charlotte that afternoon. Additional picketing is planned in Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina and in San Antonio, Texas the same day.

The organization – a network of local unions and organizing committees – is specifically rallying around Saladin Muhammad, a labor leader who is the first Moral Monday protester to be convicted. His attorney, Al McSurely of Chapel Hill, says the conviction will be appealed to superior court.

– Source: N&O

Southern Workers Assembly’s page goes into detail about Saladin Muhammad who is very invested in unions:

Muhammad, a founding member of Black Workers For Justice, led the organizing as an organizer of the national United Electrical Workers Union (UE) that formed the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union-UE Local 150, which has been a leader in the campaign to repeal the N.C. state ban on collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

Mr. Mohammad is also invested in Socialism:

That’s Mohammad to the far right. More information on the “Southern Regional Conference on Socialism” can be found here. There is also a slide show of other attendees including a poetry jam by a FIST (Fight Imperialism Stand Together) member on that page.

More about Southern Workers Assembly

There is also a petition to drop the charges against the Moral Monday protests, who I will remind you all volunteered to be arrested.  The ‘workers rights are human rights” tagline is also at the SWA’s site.  Flashback to 2011:

 
I scanned further down the SWA site and confirmed what I suspect, this is tied to the AFL CIO’s Organize the South or Die campaign:

Sign online petitions and send letters to the N.C. governor, President Obama and the N.C. District Court demanding that the charges be dropped against Saladin Muhammad and all of the Moral Mondays arrestees.

End the legislative attacks on labor and worker rights

Apply the ruling of the ILO by repealing the ban on public sector collective bargaining.

Carry out of the AFL-CIO 2013 national convention resolution to organize labor in the South.

Set up union and community meetings for labor rights’ arrestees to speak and help spread the struggle.

Wear yellow wristbands as an act of solidarity with the struggles for labor rights in North Carolina.

This was also confirmed by visiting the Southern Worker Assembly Facebook page.

Southern Workers Assembly’s site is registered to Paul Teitelbaum of IAC Tuscon. International Action Center looks like an anti-war site. Reading the mission statement, IAC is described as:

• The International Action Center is committed to the building broad-based grassroots coalitions to oppose to U.S. wars abroad while fighting against racism and economic exploitation of workers here at home.
• IAC defines itself as an “anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist” organization.
• We also believe that best way to fight U.S. imperialism abroad is to wage an all out assault against the centuries-old war on people of color living within U.S. borders.
• Since our founding in 1992, opposing the first war on Iraq, The IAC has been at the forefront against the U.S. conspiracy to re-colonize the Middle East.

Strange that an anti-war activism site run by a computer guy in Arizona set up the website for a union group in North Carolina.