SAN FRANCISCO
WWP leaders speak about labor, antiwar struggle
By Brenda Sandburg
San Francisco
What lies ahead for poor and working people?
A reinvigorated, dynamic struggle independent of the
capitalist parties. That's what John Parker and Deirdre
Griswold, leading members of Workers World Party, told a crowd
at a Dec. 4 meeting sponsored by the San Francisco branch of
the party.
"How can the struggle move forward after an election that
seemed to paralyze a sector of the movement?" Griswold asked.
"The question is really whether to retreat before a right-wing
offensive or to organize a truly independent alternative."
Griswold, a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party
and editor of WW newspaper, said the Million Worker March
movement is an example of that alternative.
"It's not a coincidence that the leaders of this emerging
movement are Black trade unionists, because a sea change has
been taking place, both in the composition and the leadership
of the working class," she said. People of color, women and
immigrants now make up the majority of the workforce in this
country and "their consciousness is different from those who
had more privileged positions in society, who didn't face the
same problems."
Their militancy is in response to wage cuts, reduction in
health benefits and worsening working conditions, Griswold
said. The U.S. government is so aggressive against workers now
because it accomplished a counter-revolution in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe.
"It has emboldened the more aggressive elements within the
United States ruling class --the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz
group ing. Their doctrine of global domination whet the
appetites of ExxonMobil, Haliburton and the military-industrial
complex to believe there were no limits to what they could
accom plish once the Soviet Union was gone," Griswold said.
"They could fight two wars at the same time, threaten anyone
who resisted them with preemptive nuclear attack, totally take
over the Middle East, roll back the anti-colonial revolutions
in Iran and Iraq." But instead they ran into growing
resistance.
What is driving this murderous aggression around the world,
John Parker said, is the drive for profit.
"Profit is king and the oil magnates, ban kers and owners of
industry will do whatever is necessary to maintain their
profits, includ ing murdering workers around the world,
poisoning the environment, instituting slave-labor-like
conditions and supporting outright assassinations of union
organizers, as they do in Colombia at the behest of Coca-Cola,"
Parker said. "And like a heroin addict, the need for that
profit fix is primary."
Parker, who is co-coordinator of the Million Worker March
Committee in Los Angeles, talked about the necessity of
fighting racism, poverty and injustice at home as part of
fighting U.S. imperialism and war abroad.
"You have to struggle around the issues slapping working
people here in the face on a daily basis: healthcare, police
brutality, environmental threats, the prison-industrial
complex," Parker said. "We must win our class over to fighting
the anti-imperialist struggle and the only way we can do that
is by engaging in the day-to-day lives of working people.
"How can you mention the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis
without mentioning what class those U.S. soldiers come from and
how racism and the lack of opportunity and jobs made them go
into the military? And likewise, how could we work on a
demonstration against the war without also marching on a picket
line and giving real support to struggles and initiatives of
the Million Worker March?"
Shane Hoff, a member of the Million Worker March Committee
in San Francisco, spoke about the march's success in Wash ing
ton, D.C., on Oct. 17. Initiated by the Inter na tional
Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 in San Francisco, it
called for universal healthcare, amnesty for undocumented
workers, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and to bring the troops
home now.
The national AFL-CIO leadership didn't support the march,
directing their members instead to mobilize for John Kerry's
election. But an AFL-CIO state organization and union locals
from around the country broke ranks and mobilized thousands of
members to go to Washington, Hoff said.
"There are going to be more attacks on poor and working
people because of the debt from the war and deteriorating
economic conditions," Hoff said. "The Million Worker March
movement stands ready to meet these attacks with a powerful
fightback.'
Reprinted from the Dec. 16, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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