Los Angeles conference calls for grassroots fightback

Following on the heels of a highly successful Fightback Conference that took place in New York City on Jan. 17, the Bail Out the People Movement’s call for a West Coast meeting on Jan. 24 drew over 100 activists to the Service Employees Local 721 union hall in Los Angeles. Participants came from as far away as the San Francisco Bay area and Tucson, Ariz. National and regional organizers of the Bail Out the People Movement were also present.

Rosie Martinez, Local 721 Executive Board member and Latino Caucus chair, welcomed the conference attendees and pointed out that labor in general has a vested interest in the issues taken up at the conference. “We’re ready to fight back to change this country for the better,” she said.

WW photos: Bob McCubbin

Kuusela Hilo of the Filipino group Bayan USA and John Parker of the Los Angeles International Action Center co-chaired the conference.

The first speaker was Larry Holmes, a national organizer for the Bail Out the People Movement. He reported on the New York meeting a week earlier and announced that plans are under way for a Midwest fight-back conference in the near future.

Holmes said the fight-back movement is based on understanding that the present economic crisis will only get worse and that “fixing” the banks is not our problem. What is required of us, he said, is to build a mass movement to get people’s social needs met.

Rosie Martinez

Holmes said mass movements in the 1930s put pressure on President Franklin Roosevelt and that an equally militant movement is needed now to put pressure on the Obama administration. The projected government “stimulus” program now under discussion in Washington is “too little too late,” stated Holmes.

The fight-back alternative includes a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions, solidarity with immigrant workers, and addressing the needs of all the unemployed, including part-time workers who need full-time jobs, unemployed youths and prisoner workers.

Susan Abulhawa

The projected mass mobilizations for marches and rallies will focus on International Women’s Day, the April 4 anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and May Day. Plans for the fall include a national march for jobs and against war, and a national people’s assembly. This all depends on recruiting thousands of volunteers.

Dave Welsh, San Francisco Labor Council member, spoke on the need for organized labor to unite with all communities suffering from the developing economic crisis. There are many issues in these communities that need to be addressed by the fight-back. Deepening our understanding of them and developing struggle strategies can only come from closer contact with the people involved.

Kuusela Hilo

University of California-Santa Barbara student Daniela Rodriguez spoke on the funding cuts that are making education less affordable or accessible for students. Teresa Gutierrez, national organizer for the May 1 Coalition, emphasized the key role that immigrant workers from all over the world are playing in the growing fight-back. She suggested that the recent ruling-class-directed attacks on immigrant workers were motivated by their knowledge that an economic crisis was coming. Needing to direct blame for the crisis away from themselves, they want to scapegoat immigrant workers.

In the New York area organized labor is already playing an important role in building for a May 1 mobilization this year. The goal is for May 1 actions to include all workers, documented and undocumented, union members and nonunionized workers.

John Parker

The San Francisco 8 are a group of community activists, most former members of the Black Panther Party, who have been framed for the 1971 murder of a police officer and an alleged “conspiracy.” Hank Jones, one of the eight, reminded the conference that it is foolish to expect to get justice out of an unjust system. He called for unity and recognition of the rights of all the people on the planet.

Larry Hales, a leader of the youth group FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together—came to the conference directly from Oakland, Calif., where he had stood in solidarity with community residents still seething over the BART police execution of Black youth Oscar Grant. Hales denounced the ongoing national police terror campaign against Black youths. (See Hales’ full report at www.workers.org)

Joy Sison de Guzman, representing Migrante International-IMA and Asia-Pacific Mission for Migrants, spoke on the horrific plight of several hundred million migrant workers forced by economic pressures to leave their home countries. At least 10 million Filipina/o migrant workers are super-exploited in 196 countries.

Hamid Khan from the South Asian Network is a Los Angeles area labor organizer born in Pakistan. He described his participation in a 70-mile Sonoran desert walk, following the route of thousands of Mexican and Central American workers on their way to job opportunities in the U.S. He also described the onerous working conditions of the approximately 5,000 taxi drivers in the Los Angeles area.

A special highlight of the conference was a presentation by Susan Abulhawa, author of “The Scar of David,” a novel that the Palestine Chronicle characterized as “a must read for those who wish to not only understand the catastrophe of the Palestinians with their minds but also with their hearts.” Abulhawa’s account of Israeli atrocities in Gaza with the full backing of the U.S. was followed by another presentation on the crimes of the apartheid settler state by Mazen Almoukdad representing Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

Also speaking on the struggle of the Palestinian people were 10-year-old Sekou Parker and Paul Teitelbaum, an International Action Center organizer based in Tucson, Ariz. All money from a collection taken up at the conference and from sales of Abulhawa’s novel will be donated to the fund to rebuild a Gaza psychiatric hospital destroyed by the Zionist invaders.

Service Employees organizer Charles Doakes provided important information on the foreclosure tsunami now under way in the United States. He characterized it as the greatest robbery since the days of the Jesse James gang. He accused the banks of widespread fraud and pointed out that no one has gone to jail for it.

Eric Boyd, a senior policy advisor for U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson, urged conference attendees to dialog with her. “She’s listening,” he said.

Service Employees activist Morris “Big Money” Griffin pointed to the U.S. corporate obsession with oil profits, and urged an expansion of the grassroots education campaign on Gaza and the Palestinian struggle.

Three workshops—focusing on international solidarity, the economic crisis, and fighting social divisions—allowed the conference attendees to discuss how to implement the conference goals. The final session featured reports from each of the workshops and a moving video about the struggle of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., produced by Habi Arts.