------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 19, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
A NEW MOVEMENT MILLION WORKER MARCH TO SAY: "WE NEED JOBS--NOT WAR"
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
Organizers for the Million Worker March, to be held in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 17, are calling for an end to the war in Iraq--and an end to the war on working people in the United States.
Fliers for the MWM, now being widely distributed, bear the headline: "We Need Jobs--Not War!"
International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 in San Francisco initiated the march. The members of Local 10, the home union of the 1934 general strike, have in recent years refused to unload ships to protest apartheid, police brutality and U.S. war drives.
There is a tremendous groundswell of support for the MWM, including a recent endorsement by Roger Toussaint, president of powerful Local 10 of the Transit Workers Union in New York City.
In a "president's message" to the TWU, Toussaint states the battle cry of this fighting union: "The words of Frederick Dou glass ... are no less true today: 'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will.'"
Sharon Black Ceci, coordinator for the Baltimore/Washington MWM region, said: "Workers from all walks of life are coming together to create not just a march, but a movement for an end to the war on workers everywhere, at home and abroad. People are joining from all communities and regions--immigrants and women, hip-hop youth and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people--from Northern California to North Carolina."
She stressed that undocumented immigrant workers are key to this struggle, since their status makes them more vulnerable to exploitation by employers and harassment by the state. She also noted that the high numbers of women, particularly women of color, now employed in lower- paying service jobs means that this Million Worker March will also be a women workers' march.
Endorsing and joining in the organizing are a wide range of organizations, including the Farm Labor Organizing Com mittee, the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Women's Equity Agenda Project and the International Action Center.
Other endorsers are the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the South Carolina International Longshoremen's Associ a tion, California State Association of Letter Carriers and the Harlem Unemployment League, as well as locals of the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, California Plumbers Union, United Food and Commercial Workers and National Writers Union.
GRASSROOTS SUPPORT
The growing support for the march includes Council 92 of Region #2 of the State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). This council, which comprises all of metropolitan Washington, Balti more and surrounding counties, has endor sed along with many other AFSCME locals.
By doing so they are defying a letter issued by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney in which he discouraged locals from supporting the march. However, at the grassroots level excitement over the march is building. Donna Dewitt, president of the South Carolina State Fede ration of Labor, AFL-CIO, has also endorsed.
And the 2.7 million-member National Education Association endorsed at its July convention.
Brenda Stokely, president of AFSCME District Council 1707--which represents 23,000 workers, mostly women and people of color working in home health and day care--is a co-convener of the MWM in New York City, along with Chris Silvera, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Joint Council 808 and president of the Black Caucus of the Teamsters.
At a July 25 anti-war protest march at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Stokely said, "The Million Worker March is all about what Malcolm X said, 'Break the chains off of your mind' ... fight for your interests."
She continued, "Why do we have to beg the U.S., the richest country on earth, for health care when Cuba, after all the years of being embargoed, can provide free health care?"
OPPOSE WAR AT HOME AND ABROAD
Larry Holmes, a national coordinator of the International Action Center and member of the ANSWER steering committee, said: "It is crucial that the anti-war movement support the Million Worker March, not only because the MWM is explicitly an anti-war march--one of its main demands is 'bring the troops home now'--but also because this bold project, initiated by some of the most dynamic and militant leaders in the labor movement, needs the full support of all progressive forces."
The MWM organizers' statement, "Why We Are Marching," says: "Thirty-six years ago Martin Luther King Jr. summoned working people across America to a Poor Peoples' March on Washington to inaugurate 'a war on poverty at home.' He proclaimed: 'The United States government is one of the greatest purveyors of violence in the world.'
"The crisis facing working people today is even more acute. Under the cover of systematic lies and deception, wars of devastation have been launched at the expense of working people everywhere.
"In our name, a handful of the rich and powerful corporations have usurped our government. A corporate and banking oligarchy changes hats and occupies public office to wage class war on working people. ... The vast majority of working Americans are under siege."
The march's key demands include universal health care "from cradle to grave," a national living wage, guaranteed pensions, and a crackdown on the military budget for a recovery of the "trillions of dollars stolen from our labor to enrich the corporations that profit from war."
The MWM statement also calls for "an army of teachers" to combat illiteracy, an end to "the criminalization of poverty and the prison- industrial complex" through training programs, as well as amnesty for undocumented workers, and an end to "the pitting of workers against each other across national boundaries in a mad race to the bottom."
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
