Million Worker March
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
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 Center 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 agree with many of the aims and issues of
the March, 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)
