Anti-racist, anti-capitalist meeting highlights struggle agenda

By Bryan G. Pfeifer & Gerry Scoppettuolo
Milwaukee

Last February, thousands of Wisconsin unionists and supporters, inspired by the Egyptian people’s uprising, occupied the state Capitol for weeks in a militant fightback against Wall Street’s union-busting campaign against public employees and other austerity measures. This mass tactic of resistance has been followed by Occupy Wall Street actions from coast to coast and internationally.

Dec. 3 program participants, supporters. WW photo: Bryan G. Pfeifer

Just as the Recall [Wisconsin Gov. Scott] Walker campaign is shifting into high gear, 75 leaders and organizers — representing communities of color, unionists, youth and students, anti-war and internationalist activists, and community organizers — met for a Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement and Occupy 4 Jobs Network “People’s Organizing Meeting” in Milwaukee on Dec. 3.

Participants came from Madison and Green Bay, Wis., and throughout Metro Milwaukee; Rockford, Ill., and Chicago, Detroit, Boston and New Jersey. The gathering was held at the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 union hall and was opened by co-chair Angela Walker, legislative director of the union.

The meeting was dedicated to the memory of Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia on Sept. 21, and his recently deceased sister, Martina Davis-Correia; Mumia Abu-Jamal; Leonard Peltier; and all political prisoners. The meeting began with the poem, “Georgia Has Blood On Its Hands,” by people’s poet Eric Disambwa.

Al Simonis, president of ATU Local 998, then welcomed the assembly to the union’s meeting hall, with its walls adorned with banners and placards from many decades of struggles.

Meeting co-chair Bryan G. Pfeifer, a WI BOPM organizer, gave a political overview of current struggles in Wisconsin and introduced the chair of the opening Labor-Community panel, Gerry Scoppettuolo, a co-founder of Boston’s Pride At Work and a BOPM organizer.

Thus began an afternoon of more than 25 invited speakers and other meeting participants raising labor-community-student issues and anti-racist, anti-capitalist themes.

Speakers on the “Labor-Community” panel were Terence Tyler of Africans On The Move, who gave a talk, “The Need to Build Local Coalitions and the Barriers Between the Workers and the Poor”; Jerry Goldberg of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition from Detroit, who spoke on the need for a national moratorium on foreclosures and a federal WPA-style jobs program; Carolina Soza-Gonzalez, an immigrant and prisoner rights activist, who demanded an end to the raids and deportations of immigrants; Gilbert Johnson, president of AFSCME Local 82 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who talked about the need for labor-community-student unity and solidarity; Babette Grunow from the Latin American Solidarity Network, who said while she was in Honduras last spring the people’s movement there expressed their solidarity with the occupation in Madison; and Lamonte Harris, longtime labor-community activist and a member of Occupy The Hood, who called for unions to take up more seriously the issues of people of color.

The meeting’s “Expand Occupy Wall Street: Occupy The World!” panel was chaired by Salvatore Cipriano of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) in Detroit and a participant in Occupy Detroit. Lydia LeVieux of Occupy Milwaukee, Daniel Benoit of Occupy Green Bay, Khalil Coleman and Angie Jones of Occupy The Hood and Chance Zombor of Decolonize The Hood, spoke on this panel. A major focus was on the need for white workers to respect the leading roles and issues of people of color in this and other movements.

The closing panel, “The Peoples Global Fightback and Occupy 4 Jobs,” included Larry Hales, a national organizer for BOPM, who talked about the new Occupy 4 Jobs campaign and gave a stirring account of the blockade and shutdown of the Oakland, Calif., port by 30,000 poor and working people on Nov. 2. Doreatha Mbalia of the Pan African Revolutionary Socialist Party spoke on the topic “Anti-Capitalism, Pan-Africanism and the Obstacles that Impede the Achievement of Both,” while Abayomi Azikiwe of the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice and the Pan African Newswire gave an anti-imperialist talk calling on workers in the United States to oppose imperialist war especially in Africa.

Discussion took place after each panel and many in the multinational audience reported on struggles they are engaged in. Special comments were made to support the postal workers under siege and the Milwaukee Transit Riders Union gave a report on their fightback campaign against transit cuts.

For updates and information on WI BOPM activities and other struggles, go to www.wibailoutpeople.org.