Time for workers to fight?
YES--but not in Bush's war
By Deirdre Griswold
Flight or fight--scientists say those are the two ways we
react to fear.
Run away from danger if you can. Stand and fight if you
can't.
What's the danger facing workers right now? Should we be
running away or standing and fighting?
Bush says that to calm our fears we have to run overseas and
fight Iraq. That anyone who doesn't agree is supporting
terrorism.
He knows that people are afraid, for lots of reasons. This
selected president, buddy of the billionaire oil companies, who
never saw a union he liked, wants to recruit the workers for
his war and thinks that fears of terrorism in this uncertain
world will push us into his corner.
But it's baloney. After yet another war, will the world be
more secure? When there are more grieving families, more
destroyed cities and towns, will the U.S. be more popular
overseas? And how will a war on Iraq exact "venge ance" for the
Sept. 11 attacks? Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on
the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Anyone who knows the least little bit about the Arab world
knows that the Iraqi people and leaders are not allies of
Al-Qaeda or the Islamic fundamentalist movement, even though
they are very angry at the U.S. government for its treatment of
their country.
Not one country in the Middle East--except for the Israeli
settler regime, a U.S. client state--supports this government's
war plans.
War equals more pain and suffering
What the working people here will get out of such a war is
more pain and suffering. More veterans will come home with all
kinds of disabilities. A huge bill for high-tech military
equipment will make the war merchants and their friends in
Washington happy, but will bankrupt what remains of social
programs and plunder our entitlements, like Social
Security.
Inevitably, it will have to be paid for, and the hundreds of
billions of dollars that Bush wants won't be coming from the
rich who profit off war. They've had their lawyers rewrite the
tax laws so that now 99 percent of the burden of paying for the
government's follies rests on the workers and middle class.
Will seniors suddenly be able to afford their overpriced
medications if there's a war? Will the 40 million (and growing)
people without health insurance get
coverage?
Will workers whose cars and homes have been repossessed by
the banks get back their property? Will the hundreds of
thousands laid off over the last year by corporations that put
profits before people get their jobs back? Will there be decent
homes for those now living in trailers or parks--or on the
streets?
Let's be honest. Will a war help lock up the criminal,
greedy corporate executives who have been riding high at the
expense of workers and investors, including employee retirement
plans? Or will it elevate the class of billionaires to new
heights of global power?
Will education suddenly become free, or at least affordable,
for working-class students? Or will they have to shoulder a gun
and be prepared to kill people on the other side of the world
to have access to some training--which may or may not be useful
in civilian life?
Will a war bring down the inflated price of apartments and
houses? Will it help provide good, cheap public transportation
for workers who now spend most of their lives in or paying for
their cars?
Will a war end the very real threat to this planet posed by
global warming? Will a U.S.-British monopoly on the oil in the
Middle East--which is why Tony Blair is the only political
leader backing Bush, against the wishes of most of the people
in Britain--help shift our energy use away from fuels that are
polluting the world with greenhouse gases?
What about communities of color?
More of the troops these days come from oppressed
communities of color. Will putting even more Black and Latino
youth in uniform stop the cops from killing unarmed people in
their neighborhoods? Will a war help Black people win
reparations for the centuries of slavery their ancestors
endured?
Will it help end the scourge of drugs in poor
communities--or will it make it much worse, as happened during
the Vietnam War?
Will a war help reverse this country's shocking rate of
incarceration and find a way back into society for the 3
million people--mostly poor and disproportionately people of
color--whose freedom has been taken away by the cruel system of
prisons and parole?
Will it lessen Arab bashing, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and
other forms of scapegoating, or just make them worse?
Will it make it easier for immigrants to join unions, get
paid a decent wage, and have the basic rights that any worker,
anywhere, is entitled to? Or will it increase the
anti-"foreigner" hatred and fear already whipped up in the
media?
Will a war lessen the discrimination against lesbian, gay,
bi and trans people, or will it demand conformity to a violent
Rambo model of heterosexist male domination?
The fears are real
Workers do have a lot to be afraid of right now. The Wall
Street bubble has burst, and many of the Mickey Mouse jobs
created over the last decade are now evaporating, along with
what had been more secure union jobs.
How many people do you know who are trying to figure out how
to rearrange their lives because the income they need just
isn't there?
How many young people have to stay with their parents--or
parents move in with their children--when they would prefer
their independence? How many women--like the four recently
murdered by soldiers at Fort Bragg--are trapped in abusive
relationships because they can't afford to leave? How many
children are left on their own because there's no help for
working parents?
Wouldn't a war that pulls soldiers and even reservists away
from their families for long periods just make everything
worse?
This year, the number of people suffering from long-term
joblessness rose by 50 percent, according to the Department of
Labor. Almost 3 million people who lost their jobs have been
unemployed for at least 15 weeks, and half of them have not
worked in at least six months.
And just when all these people found they could no longer
pay their bills, Congress passed a law preventing individuals
from getting out of debt through personal bankruptcy.
This level of long-term unemployment is typically seen not
at the end of a recession, which is how the Bush administration
characterizes the present, but in "a period of deep downturn."
(New York Times, Sept. 9)
It's a common myth that wars provide jobs. But it's been
proven that in today's economy schools, parks, libraries,
health facilities and other social services create far more
jobs for the dollar than do high-tech war industries, which are
very automated. Also, these kinds of public service jobs are
much more likely to be unionized and to hire people of diverse
backgrounds. But these jobs are exactly what get cut back when
the military budget eats up civilian services.
Last Iraq war brought unemployment, not jobs
The last war against Iraq, launched in 1991 when Bush Senior
was president, led to such a strong recession that he lost the
1992 election to Bill Clinton. Unemployment was so bad that the
Clinton/Gore campaign slogan in 1992 was "It's the economy,
stupid."
The Economic Policy Institute recently reported that the
income gap is growing again, after having slowed down during
the 1990s boom. Will a war that provides a few jobs for
high-tech specialists in the military industries, while leading
to cutbacks of many more public service jobs, decrease this
growing gap--or make it worse?
The Bush administration has already shown that it means to
discipline labor under the excuse that the right to strike
interferes with "national security." Tom Ridge, the Homeland
Security czar, threatened the West Coast longshore workers that
if they walked out to win a contract, he would call out the
National Guard.
What will happen to labor's rights if Bush is allowed to go
ahead with his plans to militarize this country?
Since Bush became president in January 2001, $94 billion in
pay has disappeared as 110 million workers have seen their
wages stagnate. (Louis Uchitelle in the New York Times, Aug.
11) Bosses are taking larger deductions out of paychecks for
health insurance, and overtime hours are down. In addition, 1.7
million jobs have disappeared since March 2001.
What are workers going to do about all this? Will the
response to the bosses and their chief henchman in Wash ington
be flight or fight?
The war can be stopped
The war is not inevitable. Bush is already having an
extremely difficult time lining up even token support around
the world. The public attitude here is changing all the
time--which is why the administration put on a full-court press
around the Sept. 11 anniversary to shore up its waning
support.
We can refuse to be diverted by war propaganda. We can stand
and fight here for better social services and more public jobs.
We can challenge the bosses' "right" to throw us into the
streets after decades of hard work. We can demand that the
wealth of this society go into workers' wages and benefits and
not into bosses' profits and perks.
We can extend solidarity to our working-class sisters and
brothers, regardless of where they come from or what language
or culture or religion they share. Solidarity is the greatest
weapon of the working class--every worker needs the solidarity
of others, whether to press a simple grievance or to win a
major battle with the bosses.
We can build back our unions--and tell Bush where to put his
union-busting threats.
Working-class heroes belong in the anti-war struggle--at its
very core. The attempts of this big business administration to
link heroism to their violence against the Third World are
nothing but a cynical manipulation of the people's genuine
grief and shock over Sept. 11.
More and more workers know it, too. Even Stephen J. Cassidy,
president of New York's Uniformed Firefighters Association,
said at a recent rally, "I'm tired of politicians coming to our
funerals and telling the widows how sorry they are. Pay us a
living wage."
If even firefighters aren't getting a living wage, you know
things are bad. Now is the time to fight right here at home for
the working class and tell Bush that, if he wants a war on
Iraq, he and the generals and the arms merchants and the oil
billionaires should strap on their desert gear and go play
soldier.
Reprinted from the Sept. 19, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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