S.F. Labor Council hears socialist mayoral candidate

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Supporters of Joni Jacobs picket League of Women Voters candidates night, Sept. 26, to protest exclusion of socialist candidate from the televised debate.

... Women's rights 4 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1991 The following is a speech given by Joni Jacobs, Socialist Action candidate for mayor of San Francisco, to the San Francisco Labor Council (AFL-CIO) during its candidates night Sept. 4, 1991.

My name is Joni Jacobs. I'll be listed on the November 5 ballot as a Socialist Action pro-choice activist. I recognize many faces from the various picket lines I've walked on over the past few years, including ones for Local 1100 (Retail Clerks), Arveys, the auto mechanics, Local 2 Hotel and Restaurant Workers, and the Eastern Airlines machinists.

My organizing skills and leadership abilities have been developed in the women's movement. I've been a central figure in San Francisco for the past three years defending our family planning clinics against Operation Rescue.

We've been tremendously successful in beating back these anti-choice terrorists in our city. And I'm proud to say the reason why is because we've incorporated the tactics of the labor movement, that is, physical defense of the right to choose. In San Francisco, we don't rely on the courts or the police; we rely on ourselves. We put our bodies on the line to stop the anti-choice scabs from closing the clinics. And it works.

Both the women's movement and the labor movement are under severe attack. In Wichita, President Bush has given Operation Rescue the green light to bust women's right to choose, just like President Reagan gave the green light to union busting in the 1981 PATCO A recent example of the continuing anti-labor agenda of the government is the recent railroad strike. Within 24 hours of the strike, Congress voted to impose an unfair contract on the rail workers. In the Senate, they did it by unanimous acclamation. In the House, only five voted against it; one of them was a "socialist." This was an historic, bipartisan attack on the working class. A Democratic Party-controlled Congress denied workers the right to strike, or negotiate, or even vote for a contract.

Working people, whether they're union members or not, look to unions and the Labor Council for leadership. Women Voters and the S.F. Labor Council to Socialist Action) has been assembled under the aegis of the S.F. Area Pro-Choice Coalition to support the Oct. 5 pro-choice demonstration. But the S.F. NOW leadership waited until one week before the action to grant its endorsement.

Meanwhile S.F. NOW's two main leaders have been working to elect Angela Alioto, a Democrat, as mayor of San Francisco.

This policy harms the women's movement at a time when broad unity in action (like the Oct. 5 demonstration) is desperately needed. By denying their support until it was too late for the chapter to help build the action, the NOW leaders have prevented the mobilization of the full number possible. (See the article on the Chicago pro-choice demonstration for another example of this problem.) Real leadership won't try to decide which of these big-money, pro-business candidates somehow represents our agenda. Real leadership will challenge working people to stop playing the bosses' game, to stop voting for their candidates, and to stand up for our own interests with our own candidates.

I wish all of you could have been here last month when Brother Tony Mazzocchi of OCAW [Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union] talked about Labor Party Advocates [LPA] and the need for working people to have their own party. Joining LPA is a more important political expression of labor's power than backing one of these bosses' candidates.

But since that's what we're here for tonight, let me say that I believe, in all modesty, that I am labor's best candidate. I stand on a platform which expresses our interests-housing, jobs, healthcare, democracy. I believe we have the resources to fund a more humane city if we make the political commitment to put human needs before profits. I understand the power of working people mobilized to fight for their interests. I've seen that power work in the women's movement and on union picket lines.

But if the Labor Council is too constricted by a sense of misguided pragmatism to endorse me, then the best message to send the city's working people is to not endorse any of these candidates, and to join Labor Party Advocates.

More and more, young, poor and working people don't vote because they won't be fooled. You can't pick apples trom orange trees, and working people can't get justice at the bosses' City Hall.

When we pull together as unionists, working people, women, and people of color to put forward our agenda, to fight for our needs, we will win. But we will win only when we mobilize ourselves in the streets, and get organized in a politically independent movement. We can take a first step down the road of political independence by endorsing a truly working class candidate for mayor of our city. Thank you brothers and sisters for your attention.

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