Public works program NOW!

WW photo: Mike Eilenfeldt

Chants of “Jobs, not war!” echoed off the buildings at Broad and Market streets in downtown Newark, N.J., on Dec. 19. Activists withstood freezing cold to demand a massive public works program with direct government employment at prevailing wages. In the face of 16 percent unemployment in the Black community (well over 20 percent when part-time and discouraged workers are included), the marchers said a jobs program should “cut class size in half in our schools, provide low-cost housing for all, dramatically expand mass transit, develop and build cheap, clean, safe energy,” and much more.

Organizers, led by the People’s Organization for Progress and the New Jersey May 1st Coalition, said the program should be paid for “by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and by taxing the rich and the corporations who created the crisis.”

Rally flyers emphasized that the jobs program must include “all who live here, immigrant and native, prison record or no prison record.” It read: “The monopoly capitalist system, led by U.S. imperialism, drives immigrants from their homelands; oppresses and exploits African Americans and pits us against each other in a downward spiral of poverty and oppression.” The closing demands were: No one denied work; legalization for all; united we stand — divided we fall; we demand jobs for all!