Labor-NAACP march on Washington: ‘One nation’ is not ‘working together’
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A tremendous outpouring of working people will assemble at the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 2. They are protesting because they are the victims of an anti-social system, capitalism, which has destroyed 9 million jobs and foreclosed 2.3 million homes during the present Great Recession.
They are protesting because that system has gifted $16 trillion to bail out the banks, insurance companies, and corporate plunderers while destroying union contracts and eliminating a half century and more of social gains. And they are protesting because they increasingly understand that the capitalist system has neither the ability nor intention of changing gears to provide any relief from the bipartisan government and corporate attacks that have ruined the lives of millions of Americans.
Were it not for these attacks on every aspect of social life, on the broad trade-union movement, on Blacks, Latinos and other oppressed nationalities, on immigrants, and on civil liberties, few would be marching on capitalism’s seat and symbol of power.
Were it not for the trillions given away yearly to the military-industrial complex to boost already bloated profits and to conquer poor people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the world over—to steal their resources and re-colonize their nations—there would be no antiwar contingents on Oct. 2, like the one organized as part of the Peace Table by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC). The latter contingent will demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops, mercenaries, and war contractors from Iraq and Afghanistan. It will champion the civil liberties of the scapegoated Muslim and immigrant communities, and demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel and an end to U.S. support to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the siege of Gaza.
UNAC is the antiwar committee that organized the highly successful Albany, N.Y., conference of 800 participants in July and is planning a mobilization against the war and regressive social policies to take place in San Francisco and New York City next April 9.
Many workers understand that the present Middle East wars were a fraud from the beginning. Every poll shows that a growing majority opposes Washington’s imperial interventions. They know that there were no “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and that the Iraqi government had no connection to al-Qaida—the now totally refuted twin pretexts for Washington’s murderous wars. They understand that this has been a war for Iraq’s oil, the second largest oil reserve in the world, and a war for U.S. domination of the Middle East more generally.
They understand more than ever that the U.S. government of the rich does not conduct “wars for democracy” abroad while it is smashing democratic rights and civil liberties at home.
Last month’s FBI raids and blanket witch-hunting subpoenas issued across the country to antiwar, union, and social activists tell another story. The Sept. 24 raids on the homes of leading activists in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, California, and elsewhere are a warning that the “terrorist” pretext may well be a prelude to overt government attacks on all social movements that seek to challenge the status quo in the interest of the working class. In Minnesota, those whose homes were broken into, and whose computers and files were confiscated, included union and antiwar activists who participate in because the system has bailed Tony Savino / Socialist Action (Above) Thousands rally in Washington, Aug. 28, to “take back” the spirit of M.L. King’s “Dream” speech and the civil rights movement. Glenn Beck’s right-wing rally took place at the Lincoln Memorial the same day.
and slave master have nothing in common.
Unions were originally organized to defend the interest of the working class against the boss class. But today’s union misleaders see a partnership with the corporate world and its parties as the way forward, at least the way forward to protect their own separate and anti-working-class interests and privileges.
In the name of this “partnership” (the bosses used to say, “what’s good for General Motors is good for America”), today’s union bureaucrats have submitted to and helped orchestrate the most rapid fall in union membership in history. Without a whimper, they have presided over the decline of union membership demanded by the ruling rich to the lowest levels in the past 100 years. And their partnership with the boss class has resulted in the annihilation of the hard-fought union victories that brought a semblance of decency to the lives of millions of American workers.
Canvassing for the Democrats One Nation Working Together’s Oct. 2 theme is to demand, or better plead, for the Democrats to implement the “Change We Voted For.” Their objective, stated repeatedly by the labor bureaucracy and by NAACP President Ben Jealous, is to use the Oct. 2 mass mobilization to form yet another coalition for the midterm elections and then on to 2012. This theme was repeated in the website’s “Call to Action.” There is no union leadership in the country that has organized today to go to Washington, D.C., without an electoral, Democratic Party orientation in mind.
Many of those who stay behind will be organizing door-to-door canvassing activities for the Democrats. The Ohio NAACP is not sending any buses to Washing(continued on page 3, in “WHAT IS SOCIALISM? T once asked what his favorite maxim”)