Interview with Clarence Thomas on the MWM
'There is a war at home as well as abroad'
Clarence Thomas of the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union Local 10 on the West Coast, is a co-convener of
the Million Worker March, set for Oct. 17 in Washington, D.C.
In late July, while Thomas was in Boston for demonstrations at
the Democratic National Convention, he spoke to WW corre
spondent Bryan G. Pfeifer about the conditions leading up to
the decision
to call the MWM.
CLARENCE THOMAS: A resolution was passed at the
beginning of the year 2004 by the ILWU Local 10 executive
board. That resolution was introduced and passed because
working people are under unprecedented attack. It's an attack
that has not just started with the Bush administration but it's
the culmination of decades of policies that basically have been
about putting profits before people.
If you look at the Reagan years, you probably could pinpoint
that as an era when there was intensification of policies that
had to do with off-shoring jobs, creating tax breaks for the
rich, increasing Social Security taxation on working people.
But, more importantly, it's an era that brings to mind
constructive engagement, when the Bush/Reagan administration
defined that as the policy of the United States with regards to
South Africa. And many people in the labor movement really do
not understand that the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s
was a reflection of the stake that American workers had in the
off-shoring issue. Because at that time there were a number of
jobs that were being off-shored to South Africa. Auto plants
were being shut down here in the United States and they were
being opened in South Africa.
And so it is for that reason that ILWU Local 10 boycotted a
ship by the name of the Nedloyd Kimberly in 1984 for several
days. And that set into motion the very intense labor
solidarity around the Free South Africa movement.
But I bring that up because I think that many people put too
much focus on what is happening with the Bush administration.
What's going on right now is not only a neoconservative agenda
but it is also an agenda that is supported by both the
Republican and Democratic Party. Congress has been complicit in
everything that the Bush administration is doing and all we
have to do is look at the record.
To make a long story short, the reason for the Million
Worker March is that we are organizing the march in our own
name because of the fact that the only time that working people
gain any concessions from the system is when we organize
independently from the Demo cratic and Republican Party. If you
look at the Civil Rights movement, it was organized outside the
scope of the Demo cratic and Republican Party. And Black people
did not get to vote by voting. Black people got to vote by
organizing in their own name. You look at the anti-war movement
of the 1960s as well as the anti-war movement of today. The
same thing could be said of that, as well as the women's
movement.
So this is long overdue. This is about workers coming
together, putting forth an agenda that speaks directly to our
needs: national health care, cutting the military budget. There
is no way we can have guns and butter. In other words, if
there's going to be any change in terms of the domestic
policies of the United States government, that military budget
has to be cut because that's where the money to pay for the
needed social services and the rebuilding of the infrastructure
of the United States is going to come from--from that military
budget.
The other thing is no matter what the expectations are of
people towards the national elections, we have to hold all
elected officials accountable. And that means that this Million
Worker March isn't going to stop after the march is over. Those
demands mean something and we want action taken on those
things. The Democratic Party for a number of years has enjoyed
support from the Black community, even though they are not
representing the Black community. And so we think that there
has to be a decision made on the part of working people to
support the status quo or to support those issues and programs
that are in their best interests.
There's been a tremendous amount of opposition to the
Million Worker March by business unionists throughout the
country who believe that the Democratic Party is the party of
working people, which it is not. And they also think that there
should not be any movement to empower working people before the
election. In my opinion, I think they believe that to be the
case even after the election.
So when we look at the elections of Bill Clinton in his
first and second terms, people who are defined as being liberal
said let's give Bill a chance. Well, Bill had his chance--two
terms--and what did we get? We got NAFTA. We got GATT. We got
welfare reform. We received the WTO and just an endless number
of examples that show his actual contempt for working people,
even though he was a very able campaigner who, because of his
working-class origins, was able to translate that into a great
deal of admiration, especially from the Black community. But
the reality of the situation is that Bill Clinton's years were
years that were very damaging to working people.
If you look at the Carter years, for example, when Carter
came into office he increased the military budget. Carter also
gave tax breaks for the rich on capital gains and he increased
the Social Security tax on working people. He bailed out
Chrysler, which set into motion a whole trend of concessionary
bargaining on the part of unions. Not only that, but he invoked
Taft-Hartley on the miners, who struck from 1977 to 1978.
So those are just some of the examples from recent history
of the kinds of adverse policies that have been implemented
during a Democratic administration.
So we say the reason for that is because the Democratic
Party does not represent the interests of working people. They
represent the corporate agenda. The rhetoric may be somewhat
different but the policies are the same. ...
I was in Iraq as part of an international labor delegation
in October 2003 organized through U.S. Labor Against the War.
But I can tell you that there is a war at home as well as the
war abroad. When you look at the companies that are benefiting
from the war in Iraq, companies such as the Stevedoring
Services of America, which is one of our employers, they were
one of the most belligerent segments of the Pacific Maritime
Association during our contract negotiations and they have
received the contract to operate the port of Umpasa.
The kinds of policies that have been enacted upon Iraqi
workers since the invasion are such that ... Iraqi workers
don't have the right to organize because they're enforcing laws
passed by Saddam Hussein which prohibit the organizing of
workers in the so-called public sector. Those are the workers
that were employed by the state.
But I think that the bottom line is that the war on Iraq and
the war on working people in America are connected and it's
very important that we come together, the anti-war movement and
the labor movement, to oppose the war, bring the troops home
now and push for a workers' agenda.
Reprinted from the Sept. 30, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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