People’s Assembly builds momentum for struggle

Momentum is building for a People’s Assembly on Sept. 25 at Hostos College in the Bronx. Co-sponsors are the South Bronx Community Congress, the Freedom Party, Million Worker March Movement, People’s Organization for Progress, the Independent Workers Movement, Operation POWER, Latin American Workers Project, May 1 Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights, and the Bail Out the People Movement.

People’s attorney Ramon Jimenez, the Freedom Party candidate for New York attorney general and a founder of the South Bronx Community Congress, told Workers World that the event will build on the Congress’ inaugural session of June 5, which also took place at Hostos. It will help strengthen Bronx community organizations and struggles, he said, and help link them to citywide and national struggles.

Jimenez and other Freedom Party leaders will be featured speakers at the assembly, which will spotlight their vital campaign.

A member of the Band of Brothers — Bronx cemetery workers who are fighting racist abuse on the job — said that the People’s Assembly will help them organize their next action on Oct. 9 to “Bury Racism at Woodlawn Cemetery.”

Larry Hales, a national organizer of the Coalition to Defend Public Education and FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together), sees the assembly as a springboard for a march in Harlem on Oct. 7. The march targets the massive and racist attack on public education, which is deceptively branded as a “race to the top,” but aims to dismantle public schools and teachers’ unions in favor of charter schools.

Ligia Guallpa, director of the Latin American Workers Project, who works with day laborers in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, plans to attend the assembly. Through hiring halls and street corner organizing, 300 day laborers (jornaleros) work with LAWP in each of these boroughs.

Other groups that are part of the May 1 Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights are also mobilizing. Immigrant and workers’ rights will be a central part of the assembly’s agenda.

Brenda Stokely, a MWMM leader, explained that the call for People’s Assemblies came out of the May 8 March for Jobs in Washington, and was echoed at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit.

The campaign to Take Back Our Transit System, which is spearheaded by members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, is also participating. They aim to highlight the fight against New York transit fare hikes in the midst of service cuts and massive layoffs.

Campaign organizer Gavrielle Gemma said the same attacks on public transit are taking place nationally. “It’s really another wage cut in disguise. However, it hits those who can afford it least, including unemployed workers, students and people on fixed incomes. We can fight it. Affordable transportation is a right, and the subways and buses really belong to the people. We have to take them back from the bankers.”

Larry Holmes, a BOPM leader, said, “This People’s Assembly will be an expression of grassroots democracy: a challenge to the so-called ‘official’ bodies that are supposed to represent poor and working people, from the U.S. Congress down to state legislatures and city councils, which are solidly in the pocket of Wall Street.”

People’s Assembly organizers also see the gathering as a way to help mobilize a Youth-Community-Worker contingent for the Oct. 2 March for Jobs, Justice & Peace in Washington, D.C., and for the March to Defend Public Education in Harlem on Oct. 7.

Outreach for the assembly is taking place throughout New York City. Bilingual flyers and posters are visible throughout the Bronx and are available for download at www.BailoutPeople.org.