[Marxism] AFL denounces Million Worker March

["andypollack@xxxxxxxx" <andypollack@xxxxxxxx>]

[While the AFL is paranoid and authoritation enough to react to the slightest 
imagined challenge (especially to their ties to the bosses' parties), it's 
possible that this is an indication that the Million Worker March is really 
building.- AP]

------------
The Organizer
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------------------------------------------------

IN THIS MESSAGE:

1) Statement by the Organizing Committee of the Million Worker March on
Washington in Reply to Letter from AFL-CIO National Field Mobilization
Director Marilyn G. Sneiderman (issued June 27, 2004)


2) Letter to all AFL-CIO Affiliates from AFL-CIO National Field
Mobilization Director Marilyn G. Sneiderman Regarding the Million
Worker March on Washington (issued June 23, 2004)


3) Letter from Clarence Thomas, Co-chair of the Million Worker March,
Urging Continued Support for the Million Worker March (issued June 28,
2004)


********************


<bold><bigger><bigger>1) Statement by the Organizing Committee
of the
Million Worker March on Washington in Reply to Letter from AFL-CIO
National Field Mobilization Director Marilyn G. Sneiderman


</bigger></bigger></bold>MILLION WORKER MARCH ON WASHINGTON


ILWU Local 10

Attention: Clarence Thomas

400 North Point Street

San Francisco, CA 94133

www.millionworkermarch.org


On June 23, 2004, at the behest of John Sweeney and the leadership of
the AFL-CIO, Marilyn C. Sneiderman, Director of the Field Mobilization
Department of the AFL-CIO, sent out a Memorandum to "All State
Federations and Central Labor Councils of the AFL-CIO" referencing the
"Million Worker March," and directing them "not to sponsor or
devote
resources to the demonstration in Washington, D.C."


We take note of the fact that this Memorandum was dispatched without
any prior communication with the organizers and official endorsers of
the Million Worker March. These include the entire ILWU Longshore
Division, the National Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), the
South Carolina State AFL-CIO Labor Federation, labor councils across
the United States and national organizations such as the International
Action Committee and Global Exchange.


In effect, the leadership of the AFL-CIO has gone over the heads of
significant sectors of the labor, anti-war, community and inter-faith
organizations in issuing a directive to boycott a labor mobilization in
Washington, D.C.


This is unprecedented and requires us to pose the question: Why would
the leadership of the AFL-CIO feel threatened by a labor mobilization
that confronts the crisis facing working people in America and seeks to
reverse the wholesale attacks on our living standards, social services,
housing, health, and education while challenging the diversion of
trillions of dollars derived from the labor of working people to fund
permanent war over decades and a brutal war for oil and occupation in
Iraq?


The Memorandum from the AFL-CIO states:


"While we may <italic>agree with many of the aims and issues of the
March</italic>, the AFL-CIO is NOT a co-sponsor of this effort and we
will not be devoting resources or energies toward mobilizing
demonstrations this fall. ?


"We think it is absolutely crucial that we commit the efforts of our
labor movement to removing George W. Bush from office.


"We encourage our state federations, area councils and central labor
councils not to sponsor or devote resources to the demonstrations in
Washington, D.C. but instead to remain focused on the election?"


The Million Worker March is organizing working people to put forth our
needs and our agenda independently of politicians and parties.


We say that only by acting in our name can we build a movement that
advances our needs. The very formation of the trade union movement was
the result of independent organizing and mobilizing of working people.
The struggle for industrial unionism, the movement for women's
suffrage, the great movements for civil rights -- all these flowed from
the will to mobilize independently and in our own name.


Our aims, with which the AFL-CIO leadership purports to agree, include
universal single-payer health care from the cradle to the grave -- that
ends the stranglehold of greedy insurance companies.


Will the defeat of George Bush result in this?


Our aims include an end to the corporate trade agreements that pit
workers against each other everywhere in a mad race to the sweatshop
bottom. Will the defeat of George Bush change this, when the Democratic
Party brought us NAFTA, MAI and Fast Track, with Disney and J. C. Penny
paying Haitian workers 21 cents per hour?


Will the defeat of George Bush end privatization and the destruction of
unions in the public sector, when the Democratic Party privatized and
outsourced our jobs under the rubric of "downsizing government?" What
was downsized were our social services, while corporate profits and the
military sucked trillions of dollars taken from the sweat  of prior
collective labor.


Will the defeat of George Bush bring a crash program to restore our
decaying and devastated public schools, replacing them with state of
the art public education in every community in America?


Will the defeat of George Bush result in the rebuilding of our inner
cities with free modern, state of the art housing and an end to
homelessness?


Will that presumptive defeat see the launching of a national training
program in skills and capacities that enlist our people in rebuilding
this country?


Will it end the criminalization of poverty or abolish the
prison-industrial complex that has destroyed generations of Black and
Latino youth?


Will the defeat of George Bush roll back the bipartisan union-busting
and anti-labor legislation, such as Taft-Hartley, that has been on the
books for 67 years?


Will a Bush defeat secure for us a modern, free mass transit system in
every city and town?


John Kerry, outflanking Bush from the far right, has called for an
intensification of the so-called "war on terror" by targeting people
"before they act" -- giving explicit sanction to secret arrests,
detention without trial and the labeling of opponents as
"terrorists."


Will the removal of George Bush preserve the Bill of Rights, repeal the
Patriot Act, Anti-Terrorism Act and all the repressive legislation that
has set the stage for a Police State in America?


Will the defeat of George Bush recover the $4.4 trillion dollars that
disappeared from the Pentagon and the Department of Defense as the
military industrial complex loots and hijacks government in America?


John Kerry, the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party, has
demanded a dramatic increase in the number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and
the extension of U.S. military control in the Middle East and beyond.


Will the defeat of George Bush end the occupation in Iraq and the plans
for greater imperial war?


Will his defeat bring the troops home now or is the plan after the
election, as widely reported, for conscription of working class youth
and an expansion of militarism in America?


On June 25, the United States Senate voted 98-0 to hand the Pentagon
$416 billion. Days earlier, the Senate voted 93 to 4 to increase the
troops in Iraq and shortly before this the Congress approved an initial
military budget of $1 trillion for the next decade.


We take note of the fact that the Department of Defense Accounting
Office acknowledged that $4.4 trillion have disappeared from the
Pentagon's accounts and the books have been cooked for decades.


One trillion dollars represents $1,000 a minute since the birth of
Jesus.


Will the defeat of George Bush recover these looted funds or stop the
perpetual siphoning of trillions of dollars into the arms industry,
leading inevitably to even more drastic cuts in all social services?


Today, 71% of U.S. corporations pay no taxes, but John Kerry's
principal economic adviser is Wall Street's Warren Buffett, who, along
with George Shultz, performs the identical role for Arnold
Schwarzenegger.


Do John McCain, who John Kerry sought as his running mate, or Lee
Iacocca of General Motors and Chrysler, who endorsed Kerry, represent
the interests of labor and working people?


The official leadership of the AFL-CIO, faced with rapidly growing
rank-and-file support for a great mobilization of working people in
America, has ordered organized labor to cease and desist in its support
for the Million Worker March.


The entire labor movement and organized labor has been put on notice to
boycott the call for a Million Worker March on Washington on October
17, 2004.


Working people in America are under siege. The corporate and banking
oligarchy that has power in this society is waging class war against us
all.


In the face of attack after attack, the response of the leaders of the
AFL-CIO has been silence and default


Their voices are stilled. They dare not cry out "Enough Is Enough."
They fail to take note that the two parties are financed by the same
people and their address is Wall Street.


Thirty-six years ago Martin Luther King summoned our people to a great
Poor People's March on Washington to address a system in crisis and to
confront the hijacking of our government and our country by a banking
and corporate oligarchy that has captured the two political parties in
America.


Would the AFL-CIO dare send out a directive to all of labor to boycott
and sabotage the marches and mobilizations of the great civil rights
movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X and Cesar Chavez?


In a very real sense, the labor movement in America is facing a crisis
of its own. The unrelenting class war that has been waged against us
has reduced the number of unionized workers to twelve percent. This is
the result of a conscious campaign by that one percent of the
population that owns and controls ninety percent of the national
wealth.


Labor is under siege because the corporate bosses know that the trade
union movement is the organized expression of all working people and of
the vast majority of the population of the United States.


We are at the point of production and when we mobilize our ranks, we
represent a force that no illicit power, however concentrated, can hold
back.


We have taken the pulse of the rank and file and of unorganized labor.
The overwhelming majority of working people want an end to permanent
war and the hemorrhage of national resources into military production
and war.


Just this past week, AFSCME and SEIU, two of the largest trade unions
in America, passed unanimous resolutions calling for an immediate end
to the war in Iraq, an end to the occupation and a return of all U.S.
troops.


That is why the Million Worker March reaches out to labor. We are proud
that labor councils across America have endorsed the March. We are
inspired by the knowledge that every ILWU local from San Diego to
Anchorage has endorsed. The are energized by the endorsement of the
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, by the Farm Labor Organizing
Committee and by national organizations for immigrant rights.


We are organizing in every trade union in America and drawing upon the
energy and passion of the labor movement wherever people desire
change.


We are summoning working people from every walk of life to mobilize
around a working peoples' agenda, and a vision of an America
transformed


Ours is a March and a Mobilization for all who say "Enough Is
Enough!"
Infant mortality in Harlem is greater than in Bangladesh and in
Bangladesh the same Stevedore Association that sought to break the ILWU
is privatize their ports and imposing starvation wages.


Unemployment in our inner cities has reached catastrophic proportions
with over 60% of black male youth without work while militarized police
units are deployed as an occupation army.


One out of four children in America goes to bed hungry but hundreds of
millions of dollars of our union dues fund politicians who do nothing
about it.


Our labor movement has the opportunity and the obligation to reach out
to hundreds of millions of working people, organized and unorganized.


We need not hand politicians a blank check so they can soft-soap us at
election time and destroy our jobs, benefits and social services all
the time in between.


Join us in standing up for our rights. Join us in advancing our own
agenda. Join us in fighting for our communities and our jobs.


Support  the ILWU workers who shut down the port to protest apartheid
and launched a mobilization against Taft-Hartley and all repressive
anti-labor legislation.


Support the one and quarter of a million women who marched and
mobilized in Washington D.C. for reproductive rights and equal pay for
equal work.


Send a message to all the politicians -- whoever they are and under
whatever banner they parade: We are not for sale; we cannot be
soft-soaped, lied to or taken for granted.


Let them know that we have our own agenda based upon our own
experience, our own needs and our own vision and that we shall hold
everyone's feet to the fire.


We say to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and to all and everyone who has
hopes or expectations of John Kerry or any politician seeking our
support: Do not take us for granted; do not confound silence at the top
for acquiescence at the base.


Labor has issued too many blank checks only to have our pockets picked
and our aspirations ignored.


Let us join together -- everyone in the house of labor.


Every gain we have ever made has been won under the signal banner of
labor: we are working people proud and strong, union strong, and we
fight for our rights with our own voice and in our own name.



Come together, sisters and brothers. Let us tap into our great strength
-- the desire for change and for social justice.


We call on everyone to endorse, build, finance and mobilize the Million
Worker March on Washington, D.C. on October 17 -- a day when we
demonstrate across the United States that labor and working people are
on the march and will no longer be denied.


(statement issued June 27, 2004)


****************************



<bold><bigger><bigger>2) Letter to all AFL-CIO Affiliates from
AFL-CIO
National Field Mobilization Director Marilyn G. Sneiderman Regarding
the Million Worker March on Washington


</bigger></bigger></bold>To:   All State Federations and
Central Labor
Councils

From:   Marilyn G. Sneiderman, Director Field Mobilization Department,
AFL-CIO

Date:   June 23, 2004

Re:    "Million Worker March"



You may have seen a reference to a "million worker march? being called
for by a number of local unions, individuals and organizations in
mid-October



While we may agree with many of the aims and issues of the march,
<bold>the AFL-CIO is NOT a co-sponsor of this effort, and we will not
be devoting resources or energies toward mobilizing for a Washington
demonstration this fall.  </bold>Rather, we are completely focused on
the critical importance of grass roots organizing for the national
elections scheduled for November 2.



We think it is absolutely crucial that we commit the efforts of our
labor movement to removing George W. Bush from office -- and electing
candidates to Congress and at the state and local level who are
committed to working family issues. We believe that the efforts of the
entire labor movement need to be focused on the election.



<bold>We encourage our state federations, area councils and central
labor councils not to sponsor or devote resources to the demonstration
in Washington DC, but instead to remain focused on the election and to
devote all mobilization efforts to the grass-roots political campaign
effort between now and Election Day.



</bold>MGS:tw/opeiu#2


********************



<bold><bigger><bigger>3) Letter from Clarence Thomas, Co-chair
of the
Million Worker March, Urging Continued Support for the Million Worker
March on Washington, October 17, 2004


</bigger></bigger></bold>MILLION WORKER MARCH ON WASHINGTON


ILWU Local 10

Attention: Clarence Thomas

400 North Point Street

San Francisco, CA 94133

www.millionworkermarch.org


June 28, 2004


<bigger>Dear Brothers and Sisters,


</bigger>The Million Worker March Organizing Committee has secured the
Lincoln Memorial for Sunday, October 17, 2004.


In order for us to accomplish the urgent tasks before us in putting
together all the elements of this massive mobilization -- buses, hotel
reservations, security, porta-potties -- all the elements of a
military-scale operation required to coordinate and implement a
mobilization on this scale -- we must generate NOW the necessary funds
to establish the offices, telephones, coordination and implementation
for this collective effort.


Whatever peoples' expectations from the national election, we must hold
everyone's feet to the fire and put front and forward a working
peoples' agenda at a moment of crisis for all of labor.


Like the Poor People's March on Washington and the great civil rights
marches for basic rights, the Million Worker March is our demand for
change, our mobilization to beat back the systemic attacks upon working
families.


In today's <italic>New York Times</italic>, columnist Bob Herbert
writes that of 13 leading industrial countries in the world, the United
States ranks last in health care.


Working people and the poor face a devastating crisis in health care
with drastic consequences in the immediate future.


We are dead last in low birth weight, the worst in neo-natal mortality,
the highest in overall infant mortality and the most afflicted in years
of potential life lost. The greatest increase in mortality arising from
absent health care is among children and the elderly.


"The U.S. has the most expensive health care system on the planet but
millions of Americans without access to care die from illnesses that
could have been successfully treated." The costs of insurance are
shifting from employers to employees and important health care
decisions are made by bureaucrats and pitchmen interested only in
profits<italic>. Elected officials give lip service to health care but
at the end of the campaign day their allegiance goes to the highest
bidders."


</italic>This crisis and the class war being waged against us must be
challenged.


<italic>We ask for a minimum of a $1,000 per endorser -- and more if
possible -- from every organization, group and individual supporter and
endorser of the Million Worker March.


</italic>We ask for a serious commitment not only of essential funds
now, but of services, offices, volunteers and taking responsibility for
arranging buses, transport and any and all the logistical back-up that
you are able to provide.


This is a movement from the bottom up, and we rely upon everyone
committed to building it to step up to the plate. We are looking to
you.


Please help now.


In solidarity,

<bold>Clarence Thomas

</bold>Co-chair,

Million Worker March Organizing Committee
</fontfamily>






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