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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 8, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Summit protesters say:

You can't paint over poverty

Marchers demand jobs, end to cutbacks

By David Perez in Philadelphia

The April 27-29 "Presidents' Summit for America's Future" received, not unexpectedly, a lot of favorable coverage in the big-business-owned media.

The really newsworthy event, however, was not the three-day extravaganza organized by President Bill Clinton, former President George Bush, Gen. Colin Powell and a rogues' gallery of corporate chiefs.

The real news was that thousands bucked the tide and protested the hoopla. On April 27, some 5,000 people-mostly young and of many nationalities-rallied and marched to oppose the summit.

The summit was organized to extol the virtues of charity and volunteerism. The protest, organized by the National People's Campaign, had another message for Clinton & Co.:

"Stop the attacks on poor and working people!"

As Berta Joubert, a national protest coordinator from West Philadelphia and one of the demonstration's co-chairs, put it: "We are not against volunteer action. Volunteers fill the gap. But this is not a gap.

"The cutbacks and the vicious anti-welfare law have created a complete vacuum."

Imani Henry, a young NPC leader from Boston who opened and co-chaired the rally, put it best when she said: "When they say work for free, we say, 'Show us the money!'"

The crowd roared its approval. That was repeated every time another of the rally's co-chairs-including Olivia Burlingame of the NPC's New York office and Dorsey Nunn of the NPC in the San Francisco Bay area-called on those assembled to fight back against the reactionary political tide.

Protest's significance

The April 27 demonstration brought together activists and organizers from around the country.

Most came from the East Coast. But delegations also came from Michigan and Wisconsin, Texas and California.

The protesters represented various struggles-from the fight against racism, sexism and gay oppression to the struggle for union rights and justice for workfare workers.

Repealing the anti-worker, anti-poor welfare law that Clinton signed last summer was a central focus. That law has the backing of the most reactionary sectors from Washington and Wall Street. And it is driving millions to the point of desperation-and possibly, rebellion.

Larry Holmes, a national NPC leader and the co-founder of the New York workfare organizing group Workfairness, drew sustained cheers when he promised that the struggle against the "anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-poor" welfare law will continue until the law is overturned.

Vondora Jordan and William Mason, the co-chairpeople of Workfairness, also addressed the rally. Jordan said, "Us workfare workers march with the unions because we refuse to be divided and pitted against each other."

Larry Adams, president of Mail Handlers Local 300, also spoke. Carol O'Neal reported on the ongoing fight of the Detroit newspaper workers, and urged everyone to go to Detroit for the national labor solidarity march there June 21.

Another prominent demand was freedom for political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, the Puerto Rican political prisoners, and Geronimo Pratt, a former Black Panther who was framed on murder charges in California.

Above all, though, what infused the protest with dynamism was the many young people who came from campuses and communities across the land.

Their presence bodes well for the future of the class struggle in this country.

Bosses underestimate workers' anger

The protest's significance extends beyond its size, or even its contagious enthusiasm and militancy. It lies in the way it affected and reshaped the bourgeois political propaganda that surrounded the Presidents' Summit.

This effect started before the demonstration even took place.

In February, amid great fanfare, Clinton, Bush and Powell announced plans for an event that, they beamed, would extol the virtues of charity and volunteerism to combat "society's ills."

In lock step, the big-business-owned media cheered-especially for former Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Colin Powell, the Pentagon representative who emerged as political spokesperson for the Olympic-style ceremony.

But then something happened. The NPC called a demonstration.

NPC organizers challenged the planned event as a "cutback and repression summit." And they vowed to bring thousands to Philadelphia to confront the bosses and their politician servants.

At first the media either downplayed the planned protest or ignored it. The demonstration, however, struck a chord. The welfare "reform" law started to take effect.

Worker anger set in. Endorsements for the protest rolled in.

Even some volunteer groups-which number in the thousands and do everything from running soup kitchens to clothing the homeless-were angry about Clinton's hypocritical summit.

In an NPC news release issued the day of the rally, Luz Morales said: "Volunteerism is being used as a way to justify the government's neglect of the poor in the areas of health care, food and other basic needs. This summit is an attempt to manipulate the kindness and humanitarian instincts of people in order to cut government-funded programs."

Frank Alexander of Bridges, a program that collects food for free meal programs, said, "The whole idea that we should have to beg the corporations-whose share of the federal tax burden has shrunk from 40 percent to 10 percent in the past 50 years-for charity is repulsive."

By the time April 27 came around, the media had discovered that most people were not enamored of the lofty Presidents' Summit. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on a poll that showed a majority of people in the "city of Brotherly Love" had a negative attitude toward the presidential event.

Media censorship of the NPC protest lifted, at least partially. NPC organizers and leaders were quoted in the press, particularly in Philadelphia. An opinion piece written by national NPC organizer Brian Becker appeared in the April 25 Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Becker wrote: "The Philadelphia summit is not building a bridge to the next century. This road of charity rather than rights, which are now known disparagingly as `entitlements,' leads straight back to unfettered 19^th century-style capitalism with all its attendant human suffering for working-class people."

Probably feeling a little defensive, Colin Powell said of the summit: "This is not the time to say, `Are you substituting for the government?' This is a time for each and every one of us to look into our own heart."

Quite a statement from an individual who, as Pentagon leader during the Gulf War, was instrumental in the heartless killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis-and in disabling thousands of U.S. troops with a range of illnesses known as Gulf War Syndrome.

The Commerce Bank was a typical participant in the summit over which Powell presided. Commerce Bank plans to train students in the "responsible use of credit cards."

The bankers failed to point out that this new-found responsibility translates into millions of dollars of profits for them in the form of extortionate credit-card interest rates.

The people at the lively April 27 protest had a better way to show responsibility: to fight like hell against the bosses and bankers who have made their lives so miserable.

Unity in struggle

The demonstration was a river of diversity. All were united against the epidemic of government cutbacks, capitalist downsizing and increasing repression.

There were delegations from groups including the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation from New York, the Black Panthers from Milwaukee, the United American Indians of New England, and liberation fighters from the Dominican Republic and Peru.

The lesbian/gay/bi/transgendered community was represented. So were the disabled. Parents of youths killed by racist cops rallied side by side with trade unionists.

Several dozen speakers addressed the crowd. The more militant the talk, the louder the applause seemed to be.

Although the program was designed to present as many important issues as possible and therefore went on too long for some, most people stayed enthusiastic and attentive throughout the day.

As is often the case with demonstrations of this character, marching into the streets was the big highlight. A contingent that joined trade unionists with Workfairness members led the way.

Pumping their fists and chanting, "They say cut back, we say fight back!" protesters marched down from Independence Hall to the Convention Center.

There, a closing rally kept the crowd rapt even as a light rain started to fall.

For many of the young activists who had spent the day in struggle, it was the first time seeing such a diverse group of people united for one common goal. They left with a clearer understanding of how to build "a new mass movement that will challenge the cuts and press forward to win a higher standard of living for all workers and poor people," in the words of an NPC flier.

The next day, even though it was still raining, several hundred people attended a "People's Summit" organized by Henry Nicholas, president of the Pennsylvania 1199 hospital workers' union. Nicholas had also spoken at the April 27 rally.

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