Open
World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
Update #1 (April-May 2004)
ARTICLES IN THIS SECTION
1) Join
ILWU Local 10 and Union Activists Across the Country in Building the
Million Worker March in DC! -- Letter from the Co-coordinators of the
Open World Conference
2) "Please
Join Us in a Million Worker March" -- Call issued by Million
Worker March Committee, c/o ILWU Local 10, San Francisco
3) Million Worker
March Mission Statement
4) "Million
Worker March List of Demands on Behalf of Working People in America"
-- by Million Worker March Committee
5) "The
Time Has Come to Re-ignite a Vast Movement of Working People for
Fundamental Social Change in America" -- by Ralph Schoenman,
Member of the Million Worker March Committee
********************
1) Join ILWU Local 10 and Union Activists Across the Country in
Building the Million Worker March in DC!
Dear Unionists and Labor Activists:
During the last two weeks of March an important, and potentially
earth-shaking, initiative was launched in San Francisco by ILWU Local 10,
one of the most combative union locals in the country: the call for a
Million Worker March on Washington, D.C., in mid-October.
The call puts forward the goal of building a mass mobilization of working
people independent of the politicians and their parties. The call states:
"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."
Further on, the Statement of Demands of the Million Worker March
underscores this point: "Only our own independent mobilization of
working people across America can open the way to addressing our needs and
our agenda."
[See the full texts of the Call, Mission Demands, and Resolution Proposing
a Million Worker March in this section.]
Given the unprecedented attacks on our jobs, our working conditions and
our very democratic rights at the hands of the Bush administration - with
the consent of the Democrats in Congress - never before has there been a
greater need to organize a mass mobilization in the streets that
articulates the real agenda of working people and that is genuinely
independent of the parties and politicians of big business.
We call on all unionists and activists across the country to get on board
this movement for a Million Worker March. Help us build it as a genuinely
independent mobilization for and by working people.
- OWC Co-Coordinators
*******************
2) CALL: Please Join Us in a Million Worker March
MILLION WORKER MARCH COMMITTEE
ILWU Local 10
400 North Point
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 441-0610
Email: millionwokermarch@comcast.net
website: www.millionworkermarch.org
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
********************
3) MILLION WORKER MARCH MISSION STATEMENT
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."
"The United States government," he proclaimed, "is one of
the greatest purveyors of violence in the world ŠAmerica is at a
crossroads in history and it is critically important for us as a nation
and society to choose a new path and move on it with resolution and
courage"
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. They have
captured the State in their own interests.
The vast majority of working Americans are under siege. Social services
and essential funding for schools, libraries, affordable housing and
health care are slashed and eliminated.
Decent paying jobs are disappearing through outsourcing and privatization
whose real purpose is to break unions and roll back the gains of one
hundred years of struggle.
Sweat shops and starvation wages are imposed on workers across the world
and deployed against workers at home to undermine our jobs and our
benefits.
This undisguised class war is waged without restraint against working
families and our children, enforced by anti-labor legislation and decrees,
and by courts serving our exploiters.
The aim of repressive legislation such as the Patriot Act is to terrorize
and suppress the struggles of working people for their rights, and to
destroy democratic control of the economy and of society. The pretext of
enemies afar becomes a smoke screen for repression and autocratic rule.
The time has come to mobilize working people for our own agenda. Let us
end subservience to the power of the privileged few and their monopoly of
the political process in America.
Come together, brothers and sisters. Join the Million Worker March on
Washington as we launch a great movement for social change. Let us forge
together a social, economic and political movement for working people. We
are the many .The secretive and corrupt who control our lives are the
rapacious few.
Let us mobilize together through our unions, labor councils, social and
community organizations, friends and neighbors everywhere. We are on the
move and we shall not be denied.
********************
4) MILLION WORKER MARCH LIST OF DEMANDS ON BEHALF OF WORKING PEOPLE IN
AMERICA
We Seek to Secure:
- Universal single-care health care from cradle to grave that ends the
stranglehold of greedy insurance companies and secures health care as a
right of all people in America.
- A national living wage that lifts people permanently out of poverty.
- Protection and enhancement of Social Security immune to privatization.
- Guaranteed pensions that sustain a decent life for all working people.
- The cancellation of all corporate "free" trade agreements,
including NAFTA, MAI and FTAA.
- An end to privatization, contracting out, deregulation and the pitting
of workers against each other across national boundaries in a mad race to
the bottom.
- Amnesty for all undocumented immigrants
- For workers' right to organize and for a repeal of Taft Hartley and all
anti-labor legislation.
- Funding public education in a crash program to restore our decaying and
abandoned schools with state of the art school facilities in every
community.
- Funding a vast army of teachers to end functional illiteracy in America
and unleash the talent and potential of our abandoned children and adults.
- Launching a national training program in skills and capacities that will
enlist our people in rebuilding our country and putting an end to both the
criminalization of poverty and the prison-industrial complex.
- Rebuilding our decaying inner cities with clean, modern and affordable
housing and
eliminating homelessness in America with guaranteed housing and jobs for
all.
- Progressive taxation that increases taxation on corporations and the
rich while providing relief for the working class and poor.
- An end to the poisoning of the atmosphere, soil, water and food supply
with a national emergency program to restore the environment, end global
warming and preserve our endangered eco-system.
- Creating efficient, modern and free mass transit in every city and town.
- End the U.S. war in Iraq!
- Bring the Troops Home Now!
- End the U.S. occupation of Iraq now!
- End all additional funding for this war!
- Repeal of the Patriot Act, Anti-Terrorism Act and all such repressive
legislation.
- Slash the military budget and recover the trillions of dollars stolen
from our labor to enrich the corporations that profit from war.
- Open the books on the secret budgets of the Pentagon and the
intelligence agencies in the service of corporations and banks and the
pursuit of imperial war on the poor everywhere.
- Extend democracy to our economic structure so that all decisions
affecting the lives of our citizens are made by working people who produce
all value through their labor.
- An aggressive enforcement of all civil rights and a national education
campaign and mobilization against all racist and discriminatory acts in
the work place and in our communities.
- For a democratic media that allow labor and all voices to be heard and
oppose monopolization and union busting of media workers.
ONLY OUR OWN INDEPENDENT MOBILIZATION OF WORKING PEOPLE ACROSS AMERICA CAN
OPEN THE WAY TO ADDRESSING OUR NEEDS AND OUR AGENDA.
JOIN US, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, IN A HISTORIC MOVEMENT TO RESTORE OUR
DEMOCRACY, SECURE POWER FOR THE OVERWELMING MAJORITY OF WORKING PEOPLE AND
RESTORE AMERICA.
********************
5) The Time Has Come to Re-ignite a Vast Movement of Working People for
Fundamental Social Change in America
By RALPH SCHOENMAN
Working people - the vast and overwhelming majority of the population
- confront an unprecedented crisis. The government and the State itself
have been captured by a tiny oligarchy of the corporate rich. They have
hijacked our political process in a class war of the privileged few
against the exploited many.
Business Week described this reality in a feature article (December
1, 2003) entitled "Waking Up From The American Dream":
"There has been much talk of the Wal-Martization" of America. Š
But for years, even during the 1990's boom, much of Corporate America had
already embraced stratagems to control labor costs - hiring temps and
part-timers, fighting unions, dismantling career ladders and outsourcing
to lower-paying contractors at home and abroad."
Under the cover of "free trade," the corporate and banking
oligarchy pitted workers against each other in every part of the planet.
In Haiti, K-Mart, J. C. Penny, Disney and corporate giants are paying
slave-labor wages of 8 cents to 21 cents an hour. Workers in America are
pitted against workers in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America
in a mad race to the bottom.
Congressional Budget Office data cited by Paul Krugman in his article 'The
Death of Horatio Alger" (New York Times, December 18, 2003),
established that between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the
bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers went into free fall as the income
of the top one percent of the population rose by 123 percent and income of
the top one-hundredth of 1 percent (0.01%) rose 600 percent. From 2000 to
2004 the disparity escalated.
War was declared on working families and children in America by a cabal in
control of government. Full time jobs have been replaced by temporary
work. Union jobs with a living wage have been outsourced to the sweatshops
of the world. Health benefits have been stripped from workers. Schools and
libraries are closed and public busing suspended.
Budget surpluses have been converted into deficits that will escalate to
trillions of dollars as profits soar. Five hundred billion dollars ($500
billion) are allocated to the Pentagon for crony contracts that benefit a
corrupt handful of corporate directors who switch hats and enter the
Department of Defense and the Intelligence Agencies to hand out billions
of profits to their former companies.
The U.S. publication, Insight On The News, reported on August 10,
2001:
"Every year trillions of dollars go unaccounted by federal agencies.
Robert Lieberman, the Deputy Inspector-General of the Department of
Defense, admitted that 4.4 trillion dollars in the Pentagon's books had to
be cooked to compile financial statements.
"In one year, $1.1 trillion was simply gone and no one can be sure
when, where and to whom the money went. Untold trillions of dollars are
stolen every year and disappear into off-shore numbered accounts, holding
companies and banks without records."
In the year 2000, $855 billion were "lost" by the Pentagon --
more than the $855 billion in individual taxes collected by the IRS in
1999.
On September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, CBS News and its anchor Dan Rather reported that
the Pentagon had 'lost" $2.3 trillion - fully one quarter of its
budget for the decade.
One trillion dollars represents $1,000 a minute since the life of Jesus.
Government in America is in the hands of a kleptocracy that is
cannibalizing the infrastructure of our society. Plunder on this scale is
concealed by lies. Iraq, a small country of 26 million people, has one ten
thousandth of the military capacity of the United States.
A vast lying propaganda campaign was launched in Washington to justify a
war to seize the oil of the people of Iraq. In the process, what was once
an industrial society has been devastated and workers are now earning as
little as 25 cents a day. The anti-union edicts and banning of collective
bargaining imposed by the old regime under U.S. pressure and now enforced
by the occupation - expose the real agenda.
What is true in Iraq applies to every part of the world. The drive for
permanent war benefits the Pentagon, the oil companies, the corporations
and the banks at our expense.
Working people are the cannon fodder for these wars, sent to wage war
against the working poor of other countries. The vast majority of
Americans have no interest in invading and occupying other nations so the
Pentagon can steal trillions of dollars and the corporate masters can
seize the oil and natural resources of other nations.
Workers everywhere have the same interest - to control their own resources
to improve their lives. While countless trillions of dollars have been
vested with the military and the corporations to wage war and make
profits, social services were slashed everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr. summoned a historic Poor Peoples' March on
Washington to declare that the vast arsenal of death unleashed by the
Pentagon was in reality a war on working people at home and abroad. The
time has come to re-ignite a vast movement of working people for
fundamental social change in America. The time has come to build a
genuinely independent Million Worker March in Washington, D.C., in October
2004.
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(Ralph Schoenman is a member of the Million Worker March Committee.)