America Needs Warriors for Justice

It is beyond doubt that we are living in a period of potentially great historical change in the United States.

Just a year ago we trade unionists, progressives, and Americans of good will made history with the election of an African-American President--something many of us never thought possible -- and large majorities of pro-working family Democrats in both Houses of Congress.

With the implosion of our financial services sector and the consequent economic crisis and recession, it has become abundantly clear that unregulated, unfettered free market capitalism doesn't work for anyone. We now have irrefutable proof that greed is not good, that the markets don't by themselves work for the common good in the nation's interest, that if all the money and resources go to the top, the middle and the bottom are starved. And speaking of the middle, we now know that the middle class is in peril -- endangered by the policies of free market economics -- unfettered corporate-driven globalization, illegal and immoral union busting, contracting out, working rat, privatization, benefit busting, wage thievery -- all the policies that have made up the 30 year assault on working families and unions. While some may have doubted these truths two or four or more years ago, these truths are beyond doubt today.

Those who once held themselves up to be leaders of our society and government are now scorned -- Wall St, Bush, Cheney, AIG. The recipients of the governments bailouts continue to shovel obscene amounts of our money to executives without a clue while we suffer 10 percent unemployment, continued loss of health care, and declining wages and a consequent declining standard of living, and a potentially frightening future for our kids and grandkids and beyond.

Most importantly, our people are ready for and even demanding change. By significant majorities, Americans want a public healthcare plan included in the larger health care reform package, and Americans want the Employee Free Choice Act to be passed to once again allow American workers to freely form unions and bargain collectively.

America is ready for change.

Why then is change so hard to achieve?

Those who've prosecuted and benefited from the 30 year financial assault on America's working families refuse to let go, to give up what they've come to see as theirs -- the insurance companies, the union busters, the ABC, the Comcasts, the Walmarts, Wall St and manipulators of our finances, the Radical Rightwing including Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and Dick Armey and the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.

It is clear that if we are to win the change we voted for last fall and many of us have worked for for years, we are gonna have to fight, fight hard, and fight outside the normal Washington lobbying box.

Washington politics and lobbying does not work for workers and working families.

We cannot forget that we've gotten to the verge of passing the Employee Free Choice Act by running the largest national grassroots legislative campaign in the history of the American labor movement. Over the six year course of this campaign we've put literally hundreds of thousands of people on the street and more than a million workers in motion. We delivered one and a half million signatures to the Congress, sent half a million emails, wrote 300,000 handwritten letters and made 200,000 phone calls to Senators.

That's a ton of good work. But it is more than clear that we have to do more of it.

While the Employee Free Choice Act has not yet passed, we have realized many benefits -- more than a dozen states have passed new public employee collective bargaining laws including majority authorization. Public officials from town and county commissions to city councils to state assemblies to governors and mayors to the Congress to the President of the United States now realize what hell workers go through when they try to organize and bargain for a better life. More public officials than ever have weighed in to support workers trying to organize.

We have got to ramp up our grassroots lobbying by our members.

But just as importantly, we have to ramp up our effort to engage and organize workers who don't have a union, to make use of the progress and allies we've made and enlist unorganized workers in the struggle to organize their workplaces and to fight and struggle in the public policy fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Every organizing campaign is a direct and clear reason to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is not enough to wait for the Employee Free Choice Act to pass. We have to demonstrate its necessity with struggle--old fashioned struggle right now, today not tomorrow. And by their actions, unorganized workers have to demonstrate the necessity for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is not enough to wait on the law to change.

History is not made and humanity is not advanced by those who accept the status quo. History is made and the human condition is advanced by warriors willing to struggle for a better life for their kids and grandkids, warriors who understand what they have was won by the blood and tears and sacrifice of our forebears.

America today needs warriors -- warriors to organize and struggle, to fight for change, to fight the Radical Right and corporate domination, to organize and struggle, to dare the rat bastards to stop us, to refuse to lose, to challenge the status quo, to tell those who've run our country and too many lives into the ditch that change is now, that we will fight in Washington but that we will also fight all across America.

The future is ours. Let's take it.

 

 

Comments

[AlanMaki]

I was hoping others might comment on other aspects of Stewart Acuff's self-serving, hypocritical drivel about "we need Warriors for Justice."

First of all, there is not one single mention here of single-payer universal health care... by far the most popular health care reform proposal supported by working people who as "Warriors for Justice" have taken up this struggle by bringing the struggle for single-payer universal health care directly from the mines, mills, factories and working class communities where they work and live right onto the floor of the national AFL-CIO convention where Mr. Acuff did not even support their resolution... and the resolution passed in spite of opposition from the "leaders" of the AFL-CIO who did not want to embarass President Barack Obama who has become an insurance salesman rather than the advocate for the needs of working people as Mr. Acuff and those at the helm of the AFL-CIO claim him to be.

Why hasn't the AFL-CIO divested all of its investments--- including the union health care plans and pension funds--- from the health insurance companies?

Why hasn't the leadership of the AFL-CIO "led" the way by becoming, themselves, "Warriors for Justice" on this and so many other fronts... including the fight for peace and the reordering of this country's priorities away from war and military spending?

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

[JusticiaParaTodos]

I am afraid that brother Acuff must acknowledge that the Democratic Party has indeed sold out to the corporate monsters! Just look at what is going on with the so-called heatlhcare reform, the fight for cleaner environment and the Employee Free Choice Act.

So long as the democrats continue to accept the legal bribes from the corporations, workers and their families will not see the needed changes so sorely needed! We cannot match what the bosses bribe the politicians and we never will.

We must abandon the idea of depending on the democrats for change! We must take our concerns, our needs, our demands to the streets! Workers in France, England, Italy and Germany use this tactic and usually win or succeed in slowing down attacks against their standard of living. We must learn from these tactics as well.

I for one look forward to the development of a pro worker political party as well as more confrontational tactics to back up our demands! Chit chatting with sell out politicians is a waste of time!

[AlanMaki]

Your insinuation that we have a Congress composed of those sympathetic to working people demonstrates just how out of touch you are with reality.

Congress is dominated over by Wall Street's coupon clippers and Barack Obama is anything but progressive.

You talk about organizing the unorganized yet the AFL-CIO has sat in silence as over two-million American workers are forced to work in the Indian Gaming Industry's smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws as the direct result of your Democratic Party partners creating the "Compacts" which brought this dispicable casino industry into existance without one iota of concern or respect for the human rights of the working people who you knew would be employed in this industry just so the Democratic Party could reap huge political contributions fromthe mobsters controlling these casino operations.

The AFL-CIO has a back-bone about as stiff as a wet noodle; organize a political party like workers have in the New Democratic Party in Canada... a party for socialism not afraid to stand up for the rights of working people.

No mention of the need to enforce state and federal affirmative action guidelines in hiring policies when it comes to billions of dollars spent through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects leaving people of color and women in a lurch having to fend off poverty and discrimination by themselves.


Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

[plaidsportcoat]

As I read this, I feel it is already out of date. There are currently about 16 percent of Americans out of work - or MORE.
Anyone writing about the EFCA needs to show how you now factor in the reality that there are many fewer people WORKING, and tell how that is affecting the availability of people to ramp up any effort. Because we know that the unions have been decimated the last 20 years, to begin with. Now, they have been even more decimated because of the car industry disappearing. So, how do you plan to get millions of people working for ANYTHING besides MORE JOBS (of any kind, beggars aren't choosy) and HEALTH CARE (since almost nobody can actually AFFORD it now)?
I mean, it seems that right now, unions are simply fighting for basic survival. How can they ramp anything up to the necessary degree? I guess it just means ALL middle and low income people need to work together - whether it be through union-organized events, or do we actually need a much larger, SIMPLY economic-c­lass-based group to defend poor and midsters?

[carlosinhp]

amen