Joanna
From: "dmacdonald94591" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 00:42:41 -0000 Subject: million worker march Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please Join Us in a Million Worker March
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10, recently passed a resolution proposing a million worker march on Washington in 2004. Mid October has been chosen for the march with an exact date to be determined in the coming weeks. This mobilization is being proposed in response to the attacks upon working families in America and the millions of jobs lost during the Bush administration and with the complicity of Congress. The working class has not suffered such hardships since the Great Depression.
We are encouraging everyone to have the attached resolution adopted by your membership or organization. We are also asking that your organization start a Million Workers March Committee to mobilize organized/unorganized labor and our community and religious allies in your area, ultimately merging with a National Committee to be formed at a later date. Finally, we are asking for a financial contribution from your organization to be sent to the address below until a national Committee is created.
The Bush Administration and Congress's focus of placing the acquisition of capital and the quest for profits above the needs of working people is undermining the economic security of working people and the nation as a whole.
Now is the time for organized/unorganized labor, the interfaith and community organizations to show solidarity and demand that all elected officials address the needs of working people. As working class people, we know more than any others the difficulties and limitations we face both in our communities and workplaces. We shall therefore be representing ourselves during this march, independent from all politicians, while putting forward to the entire country, our program for the betterment of America's majority working population.
While we are in the early stages of planning this action, we are urging organizations to join us in making this march a reality. We need you and your organizations help. The crises we face is severe. By mobilizing and uniting organized and unorganized labor with our community and religious allies we will be able to more effectively stop the attack on working people and improve our living and working conditions
Please contact:
MILLION WORKER MARCH COMMITTEE ILWU, Local 10 400 North Point San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 441-0610 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RESOLUTION PROPOSING A MILLION WORKER MARCH ON WASHINGTON DC
Whereas: Our ancestors fought tirelessly in this country for the right to organize unions and ensure that our government recognized this right because it is a cornerstone of democracy, and
Whereas: that because of unions and solidarity among working people we have been able to win basic human rights, including employer paid healthcare, social security and retirement benefits, safe working conditions, decent hours and wages, education for our children, social services for the disadvantaged, civil liberties, and most important the right to political influence over our nations foreign and domestic policies, and
Whereas: Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address in 1944 acknowledged our rights, saying, " We have come to the realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." And
Whereas: the current administration with the complicity of Congress, has cooperated with big business in attacking our rights, using legislation such as the Patriot Acts I and II, denying the right of hundreds of thousands of Federal employees to belong to unions and bargain, forcing longshore workers to work under a Taft-Hartley Act injunction and threats of Federal intervention, and
Whereas: the administration with the complicity of Congress has negotiated trade agreements costing the jobs of hundreds of thousands of US workers, calling this a move towards a healthy economy, while promoting other economic policies, such as privatization and deregulation, which have resulted in the loss of over 3 million jobs since taking office, and
Whereas: the administration with the complicity of Congress has excused all these policies by using the terrible events of September 11 to label any opposition unpatriotic and a threat to national security, has taken our country into an unjust war under the false assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, costing the lives of hundreds of US service members and innocent Iraqi civilians, and is whipping up fear and hysteria even further to try and stampede the public into giving them another term in office,
Be it therefore resolved: that Local 10 of the ILWU calls on unions and working people generally to go to Washington DC for a Million Worker March, to demand that politicians and the administration listen to the people who pay their salaries, rather than the voices of big business and the rich and
Be it further resolved: that this resolution be forwarded to unions, labor councils and labor organizations, as well as other organizations to which workers belong, whether organized or not, so that they can take similar action to organize this march as soon as possible.
Be it finally resolved: that this event coincide with all labor organized voter registration drives planned for the next election.
