'Link the war at home with the war abroad'

Clarence Thomas WW photo

Clarence Thomas, a former ILWU Local 10 official, Central Labor Council of Alameda County member and initiator of the Million Worker March Movement, gave closing remarks during the morning plenary on Oct. 20 at the “Labor Conference to Stop the War” in San Francisco. Below are edited remarks by Thomas who spoke on the need to build unity and to challenge all that is holding the working class back by fighting divisions created by racism.

In 1934 longshore workers went against the shock troops of capitalism, the ship owners, and maintained they would defend socialism because workers wanted to have the right to a union hall like you’re sitting in today. I want to talk a little about a very important question that has not been discussed yet—the question of racism and white supremacy in America. Racism is in the DNA of so-called democracy in this country. Anytime this country wages war on people of color in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places it’s deep in the subconscious and creates chauvinism that allows for apartheid justice and that’s why we have the Jena 6 ...

We must understand that one of the major reasons we cannot end this war in Iraq is because we have to begin to link up the issue of racism in this country. White workers cannot believe they are part of another working class simply because of white-skin privilege, brothers and sisters. And that’s why our Harry Bridges stood out from every other labor leader in this country around the question of race because he understood that discrimination is a tool of the bosses.

We need to take action at the point of production and we have to link the war at home with the war abroad. They go together. Oppression of people of color is directly related to imperialism. What more do we need to see than what we witnessed in New Orleans. ... In order to move forward we must make those links and go back to our respective organizations and must take action at the point of production to call the attention of the Democrats and Republicans, the Bush administration and the multinational corporations that we in the working class aren’t going to take it. ...

Remember the lessons of the civil rights movement that taught us that the right to vote wasn’t won by voting but by organizing in our own name and that’s exactly what the working class must do today to end this war. ...The bottom line is that we must make a date to shut this country down.