How can we win jobs for all?
2010 2010-10Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 3 →
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Socialist ACTION SPECIAL EDITION Oct. 2, 2010 3 (continued from page 4: “How can we win jobs for all?”) built around stepped up deportations. Instead, we should demand legalization and equal rights and services for all immigrants without documents.
The Oct. 2 organizers pin the blame for job loss on “a handful of senators” who “block urgently needed progress”—ignoring the fact that the Democrats’ hold on the White House and Congress has been used to give trillions to Wall Street. Despite this, says One Nation, “On 11-2-10, we will march again—into the voting booths.”
In an article, “Let’s Have a Real Protest, Not a Democratic Pep Rally, on October 2nd,” Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford wrote: “A Washington rally for jobs, justice and peace that makes no specific demands on President Obama would amount to a capitulation to the status quo on all counts, no matter if half a million attended.”
He cited in contrast the demands voted on at the United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC) held in Albany, N.Y., in late July:
• Trillions for jobs and education, not wars and bank bailouts.
• Bring the troops, mercenaries and war dollars home from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, now!
• Stop government attacks on unions, Muslims, immigrants and people of color. Civil liberties for all.
• End U.S aid to Israel. Billions for jobs, not occupation. End the siege of Gaza. Free Palestine!
And he cited also the demands of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace, and Reparations, which is marching alongside UNAC: an end to the ongoing wars waged against Black people through mass incarceration, police terror, and constant economic aggression against Black communities. Ford also criticized march organizers for saying they want to see money moved “from war to jobs and education,” yet staying silent on Obama’s “rhetoric of open-ended warfare to infinity.” He also called on marchers to lay the blame at Obama’s doorstep for the trillions in bank bailouts.
Brother Ford’s critique of the official Oct. 2 program is on target. And we encourage marchers to read and discuss the demands outlined in our Action Program on page 2 of this newspaper—for demands that start from what workers need, not what ruling-class politicians find acceptable.
What should the next steps be? We think that the unions—together with national organizations for civil rights, peace, and social justice—should call an Emergency Congress of Labor to identify the priorities of U.S. working people and lay out a course of militant action to attain them. And to guide the struggle, working people need their own party—a militant, democratic Labor Party—which is fully independent of the bosses’ parties, the Republicans and Democrats.
Let’s take the spirit of Oct. 2 forward toward a genuinely independent working-class fightback! n
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