Korean/U. S. Free Trade Agreement

This speech was delivered on Sept 6 in downtown Seattle at a protest of the Korean-U.S. free trade agreement negotiations. It is significant in part because there were 75 union activists from South Korea in the demonstration with speakers from the Korean labor movement and farmers' organization. In July we sent organizers and activists to Seoul for a similar demonstration. It represents a more intentional working together across national boundaries. We have great respect for the Korean labor movement, which i hope was reflected in the text. We also realize that we have to move globally on restoring the right to organize.

Thanks so much for your welcome! This is a great day in Seattle! First, I want to thank our brothers and sisters from Korea. Thank you for your solidarity. When we joined you in Seoul, we watched how you stood up 4,000 police and we admire your militancy. We want to learn more from your militancy, solidarity, and your deepest held trade-union values. We stand with you against a Korean-U.S. trade deal that does not protect the environment or workers' rights.

Today, we signal with our presence and words to transnational capital, and to the governments that they control, that our fight is on! We signal to the elites who have crushed human rights, who have destroyed any effective right of workers to organize unions around the world. To the elites, their corporations and their governments, who have used rotten trade deals to lower our standard of living, steal our benefits, and mortgage the future of future generations - we're fighting back and we're fighting back together.

Today, we begin the sometimes difficult, but absolutely critical, work of reaching around the world to workers- their unions, federations, and allied organizations, to build a movement to reassert workers' rights. To fight trade deals that protect the rights of the wealthy and that protect intellectual property rights but ignore the rights of men and women to make a living. These are the same deals that don't protect the freedom to form a union, or protect children from predatory employers, and that value the obscene wealth of a few - over the dignity of humankind.

They have waged class war on us. It is time for our class to fight back. It's time for us to reach out to one another to fight for the right to organize, to fight corporations that would fight us, to demand that trade agreements protect workers and workers' rights, children, our environment, and our quality of life, and to fight for human dignity.

The bosses have too long divided us. They divided us by political ideology, racism, xenophobia, militarism and fear! It is time to break down every thing that divides workers from one another. Now is the time to knock down every wall and every barrier that the bosses have erected to divide us. It is time to begin the hard work to create a foundation of a movement to build workers' power, to create real workers' rights, to reap the just rewards of our labor, to secure our children's futures, to contribute our part to the ultimate struggle of our species, and to advance human dignity!

Let us be clear - corporate fueled free-trade without workers' rights or environmental protections, the destruction of our right to organize and bargain collectively, and growing privatization, are all part of the corporate agenda to steal the fruit of our labor. This is why wages in the U. S. have been flat for 25 years, why we suffer a retirement and healthcare crisis, why we have a minimum wage set at rock bottom level, and why we see increasing poverty. We have to fight them all and we have to fight them together!

We know we have to grow our labor movement and rebuild union density to regain bargaining power. We know we have to restore the right to organize and bargain collectively. We need to do that in the context of a global struggle instead of one country at a time.

What do we want? We only want what is just and fair!

• We want the right to organize and to compete with capital collectively.

• We want to build worker power.

• We want access to quality healthcare.

• We want to reap the just rewards of our labor, to have a voice at work, and a say in the quality of our lives.

• We want to leave our kids a better quality of life than what was to left us.

• We want to leave our children a cleaner environment and a safer world.

• We want enlivened democracy.

• We want to honor the memory of every trade unionist shot down, clubbed, beaten, fired, or abused while fighting for justice and a just workplace.

• We want to end the occupation of Iraq

• We want to take our place in the ages - the old struggle for human dignity that our Holy Scriptures and Ancient Wisdom teach us is our responsibility!

Today we say we will fight nonviolently for what is just, noble, and good. Some would suggest a more accommodating approach- that we need to partner more with multinational corporations. Some would say we should accept the terms of neoliberalism. We in the AFL-CIO firmly and emphatically reject that! Workers need more power and corporations need less. While still in the dawn of a new century, workers, environmentalists, students, people of faith, human rights activists, peace activists, and all who struggle to be heard need a new global strategy.

Together, we will develop and unfold that strategy. You will see part of it when trade unionists and people of conscience join thousands of immigrant workers in the streets of America to demand a just and fair immigration policy! We believe any person that comes across any border to find food for their family and that work to secure it is not illegal!

You see that global strategy developing in South Korea, and the Zocalo of Mexico City. We see that strategy developing in Chile and in Brazil - and everywhere that workers struggle for democracy and justice in their workplaces and their governments. You'll see it as we develop a strategy with our brothers and sisters in Columbia to stop the slaughter of trade union brothers and sisters in that country. You'll see it on December 8 and 9 when the AFL-CIO holds an Organizing Summit in Washington, D.C. to make these words real. You'll see elements of this new strategy on December 10, International Human Rights Day, when we go to Columbia to say we cannot secure the rights of workers in the U. S. until we've secured the rights and lives of workers in Columbia.

My brothers and sisters, we have much to do! But we cannot ignore our domestic work! That is why we must work as hard as possible over these next two months to end this right wing Republican domination of our government. The radical right wing does not reflect our values. We will say that resoundingly on Election Day.

My brothers and sisters, we have much to do! This is not the first time we have had to fight and the odds seemed great. The odds were against Tom Paine in 1776. The odds were against Frederick Douglass in 1835. The odds were against Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The odds were against A. Philip Randolph and Eugene V. Debs in 1921. The odds were against W. E. B. DuBois. The odds were against Walter Reuther and John L. Lewis in 1955. The odds were against E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks and Dr. King in Montgomery. The odds were against Cesar Chavez. They taught us that if we struggled we would win. So we will struggle! We will struggle because we refuse to be the first generation in the history of American to leave our children and our grandchildren a lower standard of living that was left to us.

So, brothers and sisters, we have much to do, but the fight is on!