Feed the cities, starve the Pentagon
By
Cheryl LaBash
Detroit
Published Apr 14, 2005 11:35 PM
The hundreds of billions of
dollars spent by the Pentagon on the illegal war and occupation of Iraq have
meant more poverty, more cutbacks and a plummeting standard of living for the
workers, poor and people of color in the U.S.
Now a national call has
been issued for a broad, multinational, united fightback movement to push back
the White House and the military generals.
This fightback response comes
from Black elected officials as well as trade unionists and community activists,
based mainly here in Detroit. The call is for a national conference to
“Reclaim Our Cities and Fight the Bush Budget that Starves the Cities to
Feed the Pentagon”—to be held this coming fall in Detroit.
The initial endorsers of this call range from unionists to community
leaders to elected officials.
They include Maryann Mahaffey, president of
the Detroit City Council; JoAnn Watson, Detroit City Council member; Marian
Kramer, co-president of the National Welfare Rights Union; Millie Hall,
president of Metro-Detroit Coalition of Labor Union Women; Nathan Head,
president of Metro-Detroit Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; David Sole,
president of UAW Local 2334; Maureen Taylor, chairperson of the Michigan Welfare
Rights Organization and Sylvia Orduno of the same group; Tom Stephens, staff
attorney of the Guild/Sugar Law Center; and Clarence Thomas, national co-chair
of the Million Worker March and a leader of Local 10 of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union.
The call expresses the frustration of so
many who are burdened with the budget cuts:
“Many cities are facing
devastating budget crises. We are tired of accepting further cutbacks, more
layoffs and pressure to privatize. We need a national movement to demand that
the billions wasted on war and the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan be used
instead to meet the needs of the people here at home.
“The new Bush
budget cuts 150 domestic programs while it pushes the spending for war to over
half a trillion dollars a year! Tax breaks for the rich, attacks on our Social
Security, and skyrocketing health care costs (with tens of millions having no
health coverage at all) all add to the crisis. Debts to the big banks strangle
our cities with tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in interest alone each
year.
“It is time to launch a struggle to win our right to health
care, quality education, decent housing, food, utilities and a job. The money is
there to guarantee everyone a decent life. This is the richest country in the
world.”
A May 14 strategy meeting called by the Million Worker March
leadership will take place in Detroit to take up this conference initiative,
among other important issues.
There are plenty of good reasons for holding
an important conference of this kind in large cities and even small towns.
Detroit, once the heartland of the auto industry, has come to symbolize a crisis
that is creating a seething anger from the workers and oppressed population in
many parts of the country.
Black city ready for struggle
For instance, on April 6, Detroit city workers closely watched the
aftermath of a 42-inch water main break on Jefferson Avenue. Round-the-clock
emergency crews swung into action to restore pressure to a hospital, four
schools, residences and the General Motor’s headquarters in the
Renaissance Center. But it wasn’t employees of the city out there—a
private contractor got the job.
Those privately contracted crews were a
sneak peek of what to expect from the 2005-2006 proposed City Budget, to be
announced April 12. City workers and residents will be told to pay for the
budget deficit through layoffs, service cuts, health and pension benefit cuts
and
privatization.
Already, shortened hours at Neigh borhood Services
offices are hurting the homeless and other desperate Detroiters. Layoffs have
robbed almost 1,000 workers of their secure livelihood. The Belle Isle Aquarium,
a 100-year-old cultural institution, has closed down.
City workers and
the community won’t accept the wage and service cuts quietly. Resistance
has already prevented or reduced some of the city administration’s
attempts to balance the budget at the expense of the people.
Reflecting
the mood and concerns of the residents, half the members of the Detroit City
Council question and oppose the proposed budget cuts. That is why the word
“receivership” is appearing more often in the media. Right now
it’s a threat to cool the resistance.
Under receivership, the state
appoints an Emergency Financial Manager to run the city’s financial
affairs in place of the elected representatives.
Some 86 percent of
Detroit’s residents are African American. They remember well the hard and
bloody battles only 40 years ago for the right of Black people to vote. Even
fresher is the memory of thousands of disenfranchised voters in the presidential
elections of 2000 and 2004.
In November 2004, Detroiters refused to
accept a second-class school board any longer, voting down Proposal E by a
two-to-one margin. The vote followed an unrelenting, five-year grassroots
struggle to regain control of the School Board from a state-appointed
“reform” board.
Why should a representative of the bond
traders or banks take over a financially troubled city? Isn’t that the fox
guarding the chicken coop? Why not a community/labor committee to run the
city’s financial affairs instead of a state Emergency Financial Manager?
Wouldn’t the first order of business be to protect and expand city
jobs and services, to implement a policy of no utility shut-offs for households,
to open up vacant public housing units for homeless families and to stop
evictions? What about implementing free universal health care and reducing class
sizes in the schools?
Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick’s
“right-sizing” city government is the public sector version of
industrial restructuring in auto, steel, electric, telephone and the news media.
The result is union busting, lower wages, slashed benefits and a nomadic future
as workers try to cobble together an economically secure life. Only 12 percent
of U.S. workers have union protection. The public sector has the highest rate of
union jobs.
General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and the City of Detroit point
to traditional defined benefit pensions and health care costs as the root of
financial woes. Instead of demanding national health care and better social
security programs to equal their capitalist competitors overseas, their solution
is to attack benefits and shift the financial burden to the working
class.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Workers, who watched their work go
to outside contractors this week, told their union for the first time that they
want to do something to fight back. In the coming weeks, as the class lines and
issues get even clearer, they’ll get their chance to do just
that.
These developments and many more speak to the need for a national
conference that demands “Feed the Cities, Starve the Pentagon.”
For more information about the National Conference to Reclaim Our Cities,
call UAW Local 2334 at (313) 680-5508
or email
national_conference_of_cities
@earthlink.net.
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