Defend workers’ rights, build People’s Assembly

A score of enthusiastic union members and community organizers belonging to the Labor-Community Forum met here in the South Bronx on Oct. 13 at the Church of the Resurrection to prepare for an ambitious series of mobilizing activities.

Supporters with Woodlawn Cemetery workers. Photo: Les Casey

On the agenda were a rally and press conference by workers at Woodlawn Cemetery; a march against poverty and violence through the South Bronx on Oct. 29; a People’s Assembly at Hostos College on Nov. 5; a rally at Woodlawn Cemetery on Nov. 12; and a march for jobs in the Bronx on Nov. 17, following a citywide jobs march in downtown Manhattan planned for Nov. 15.

The group pledged to “take the lead” in a campaign to save 17 Bronx post offices threatened with closing. These include four South Bronx post offices in the immediate organizing area of the South Bronx Community Congress, the parent group of the Labor-Community Forum.

The group will also reach out to residents in Co-op City in the northeast Bronx — a largely African-American community of 55,000 mainly retired union people — where both post offices are to be closed. Hearings are scheduled for Nov. 1 and 2.

Maxi Rivera, former steward of the Amalgamated Postal Workers Union at the main Bronx post office at 149th Street and Grand Concourse, proposed a steward-led mobilization for marches through the communities to generate support to stop the post office closings.

Charlie Twist, a letter carrier and assistant steward for the National Association of Letter Carriers, who works at a postal station in the northwest Bronx, reported on decisions to mobilize for a national action of postal workers, made unanimously at Council of Presidents meetings of both NALC and APWU earlier this month. The group plans to help the unions mobilize communities for this national action.

A key aspect of the Bronx effort to stop the postal closings will be outreach to the large immigrant communities in numerous Bronx neighborhoods. These communities will be badly impacted if their post offices close, since they depend on the postal service to send packages home. The composition of the postal workforce will help, since it is a mix of African-American, Latino/a, Asian and white. Activities are planned to forge ties between the communities and union members.

In addition to Woodlawn Cemetery workers and postal union activists, the meeting included parent association leaders from Bronx School District 12; an organizer for the New York Civic Participation Project, which is affiliated with Service Employees Local 32BJ; the Bronx Latino coordinator of Local 32BJ; a leader of Parents to Improve School Transportation; a representative of the New York Central Labor Council; and others.

Woodlawn Cemetery struggle

Alex Coss and Todd Brown, leaders of Teamsters Local 808 at Woodlawn Cemetery, gave background on a campaign to expose a conspiracy by cemetery management to isolate, threaten and violently intimidate them while systematically laying off union supporters in the work force. They announced a demonstration at the cemetery’s main gate on Nov. 12.

Two days after the Labor-Community Forum, the cemetery workers’ leaders announced at a press conference that a tape recording existed in which the president of the cemetery called for a violent campaign against them. They also showed injuries they sustained from this conspiracy.

Rick Coss, a Local 808 union steward, told Workers World that the Woodlawn management “is an extension of Wall Street — and the struggle of the Woodlawn workers is part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

Ed Figueroa, Bronx Latino coordinator for SEIU Local 32BJ, said the conspiracy against the Woodlawn workers is part of the general attack on all workers across the country, waged on the orders of the banks and Wall Street investors. “An injury to one is an injury to all,” he said, “and we’re committed to joining the Woodlawn workers in a determined counterattack.”

People’s Assembly on Nov. 5

The plan for a People’s Assembly in the Bronx on Nov. 5 focused on making it a launching pad for broadening and deepening all these battles. Building a genuine movement for people’s assemblies could provide a means for poor and oppressed people’s voices to be heard in the growing movement to “Occupy Everything” — including the post offices. Plans were made to reach out to other community groups to get them involved: school parents’ associations, tenants groups and unionists. Immediate attention will be focused on the Oct. 29 march against poverty and violence in the South Bronx.

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