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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 3, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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April 27 protest: Campaign to restore welfare rights

By Fred Goldstein

The organizers of the April 27 national demonstration against the Presidents' Summit on America's Future-to be held in Philadelphia-have declared their intention to build a movement to overturn the welfare law passed last year. They will also demand that President Bill Clinton immediately suspend implementing of the law.

"This cruel and inhuman anti-welfare law is about to create an enormous disaster for millions of people across the country" reads a new flier just issued by the April 27 Mobilization. The mobilization consists of a national network of grassroots organizations.

"We demand that President Clinton use the legal powers of executive authority that he uses to deal with floods, hurricanes and other disasters to suspend the application of this vicious law and prevent a national disaster that will inflict poverty on at least 2.6 million people, including 1.1 million children. Nearly 800,000 immigrants are about to lose their Supplementary Social Security Income and their food stamps. Between 100,000 and 200,000 disabled children are also scheduled to lose their SSI. And 11 million families, 8 million of them working families, will lose income averaging $1,300 per family through the application of this law," continued the flier.

"When U.S. investors faced huge losses during a collapse of the Mexican economy, the Clinton administration rounded up a $50-billion emergency bail-out practically overnight, without going to Congress," declared Teresa Gutierrez, a national organizer of the April 27 mobilization. "Government officials and social agencies are now running to Washington demanding delays and changes in the rules because they know that the cut-offs are going to create a massive emergency.

"If Clinton can use his emergency powers to bail out the rich, then we are going to demand that he use those same powers to halt this attack on the poor."

Thousands of protesters will be in Philadelphia to greet President Clinton, ex-President and ex-CIA Director George Bush, Gen. Colin Powell and corporate executives when they attend the summit. They say the summit's purpose is to put a human face on the inhuman cutbacks by promoting "volunteerism" as a way to compensate for dismantling vital social services.

The April 27 protest is "first step in creating a mass movement to overturn both the welfare law and the immigration reform law," said Pat Tucker, welfare-rights activist and spokesperson for the National People's Campaign. She said busloads of demonstrators will go to Philadelphia from Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland and over twenty other cities.

"We're going to tell Clinton and the powers that be that we won't lay down and accept this attack," Tucker said. "Our backs are to the wall and we only have one thing left to do- -fight back.

"And that's what we intend to do."

Larry Holmes, a founder of Workfairness, an organization of workfare workers in New York that has been fighting to win union rights, declared that "this welfare law has nothing to with trying to help people get work. Workfare is just a fraud to create a pool of cheap labor for the employers, to undermine organized labor and to give an excuse to throw unemployed women and their children off the welfare rolls.

"The government would like to see the movement broken up into fragments, fighting at thousands of city halls and the 50 statehouses around the country to limit the damage from this anti-working-class law," continued Holmes. "Every local struggle is important, but the only way to turn this situation around is to look to where the money is-in Washington.

"That's where they cut it and that's where they have to put it back.

"Furthermore, we don't want to settle for the old system of welfare that's organized to keep people in poverty. We want real jobs, at decent wages, with full benefits or guaranteed income for all," he concluded.

The April 27 protesters will also demand an end to racism; jobs not jails; and a new trial and freedom for Mumia Abu- Jamal, Black death-row prisoner in Philadelphia. For information readers can contact the national office at 39 West 14 St., Suite 205, New York, NY, 10011, (212) 633-6646, or the Philadelphia office at (215) 724-1618.

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