Marching on Wall St. to Fulfill King’s Dream: A Jobs Program

By New York City Council Member Charles Barron and Chris Silvera, Secretary-Treasurer, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 808; past President of the Teamsters National Black Caucus

We will be amongst the many speakers at the “Bail Out People, Not Banks” rally on Wall St. on Friday, April 3.

On Friday morning, just a few hours before the Wall St. rally, the bureau of labor statistics is going to announce that another two-thirds of a million workers got laid off in March.

This is one of the reasons why we intend to use the time allotted us to speak, to call for the creation of a massive jobs program. We are going to call it the “Fulfill King’s Dream Jobs Program” in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We have four reasons for associating King’s name with the jobs program. The first reason is that April 4 will mark the 41st anniversary of Dr. King’s martyrdom. The second reason is that King devoted the final months of his life to launching a movement for the right of all to either a job or an income.

King saw the struggle for the right to a job or an income as nothing less than the second phase of the civil rights movement. Securing a job at a living wage for all was the central demand of the poor people’s campaign that King initiated in late 1967.

The third reason is that at no time in our lifetime has the need for the massive jobs program that King dreamed about been more urgently needed. Depression-level layoffs and home foreclosures are populating new tent cities from coast to coast. Whole families are living under bridges and in parks on the outskirts of cities.

The real unemployment rate, if you count those who want full-time jobs but can only find part-time or temporary work, is upwards of 15 percent. Everyone from the World Bank to the National Urban League says that the jobless rate is only going to get worse.

The latest “State of Black America” report, issued by the National Urban League, confirms what everyone already knows. While very few, regardless of race and gender, are not harmed or threatened by the biggest worldwide economic collapse since the 1930s, it is the Black and Latin@ communities that are the most devastated by the crisis–especially Black and Latin@ youth. Jail is not the jobs program for young people that King dreamed about; it is his and should be our worst nightmare.

The unemployment crisis demands a real jobs program, something equal to the size and scope of the Work Projects Administration created by Congress in 1935 to put millions of jobless people to work.

In its first year the WPA created more than 3.4 million jobs (the equivalent of about 10 million jobs today). Under the WPA, workers were paid the prevailing wage in the industry or vocation they worked in.

The stimulus legislation passed by Congress in February may help ease the suffering of some, but it’s not going to reverse or even halt the soaring jobless rate. There is no jobs program currently in effect or even under serious consideration by the government that comes even close to the seriousness and size of the WPA.

Where do we get the money for such a jobs program? When the government is prepared to pump trillions of dollars into the banking system, the question is not where will the money come from, but rather what need should it be devoted to. The $200 billion that the government has given AIG alone could have created anywhere between 3 to 4 million jobs that pay a living wage.

There is another important point that makes the WPA jobs program relevant to today’s crisis. The WPA should have started at an earlier stage of the U.S. and global depression 75 years ago. However, the government delayed putting a serious jobs program in place until it was painfully clear that waiting for the banks to be fixed before putting the jobless back to work was a huge mistake. We must not make the same mistake again.

We don’t think King believed that meeting the needs of the poor and the unemployed must be contingent upon the solvency of JP Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, etc.; or contingent on the power of these big banks to turn the economy on and off depending on what makes them richer.

The belief that until the banks are fixed, there can be no jobs, no economy and nothing but layoffs, evictions, cutbacks, fare hikes, tuition increases, etc., is not some commandment decreed by heaven; it’s a rule made down here on Earth to protect the interest of the few against that of the many.

We refuse to accept the rules that say that the only good way to do things is the way that makes rich capitalists happy and leaves the rest of us at their mercy. Such rules must be changed. The only certain thing is that nothing will change unless people demand it.

Here’s our fourth reason for naming the jobs program after Dr. King. The election of an African-American president is without a doubt the realization of a part of King’s dream. But a president is not a substitute for a mass movement for social justice.

King knew that the captains of industry were not going to suddenly wake up one morning believing that the cause of economic and social justice was superior to their profit motive and thus create good paying jobs for the poor. King knew that it would take a mass social movement to get the job done.

It is a mistake–and a dangerous one–for those of us who are still rejoicing over how we made history last November to simply sit on the sidelines and wait to see how things turn out, instead of raising hell. King served the interests of the downtrodden and oppressed. Obama must serve all sides. To the extent that Obama wants to do things that directly bail out poor and working people, don’t forget that there are powerful people in Washington and on Wall St. who are dedicated to stopping him. Those powerful people will prevail unless they see and hear the angry masses marching in the streets below their ivory towers.

The popular outrage over the bailout of the banks is a precious and powerful force. It should not–it must not–be wasted. Let’s focus that anger into the struggle for the things that we need.

We’ll be on Wall St. on Friday, April 3 demanding that the unemployed be bailed out with a real jobs program. We invite you to join us.

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis, Labor solidarity

Support CWA Local 1298

Filed under: Labor solidarity

OECD: double the unemployment rates in wealthy countries in 2010

. . . unemployment in the Group of Seven wealthiest countries [including the U.S. - TGH] will double from its level in mid-2007 ahead of the crisis to peak at around 36 million in late 2010, the OECD said.

As the first quarter of 2009 closes, that’s the word from the economists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the think tank for the world’s wealthiest nations.

For the U.S., it appears that would mean 12% official unemployment.  If it is accompanied by another 12% underemployment – people who are either discouraged from looking for work but are no longer eligible for benefits plus people who are working part time but need full time work – then about a quarter of the U.S. workforce will be unemployed or partially unemployed a year and a half from now.

Even these numbers do not reflect the true severity of the OECD’s prediction.  Urban unemployment and unemployment in communities of color already far exceeds the official numbers.  Detroit’s unemployment rate exceeds 20%.  At the beginning of the year, when the national unemployment figures were more than a percentage point lower than they are now, unemployment in the City of Hartford stood at 19.1%.  Will doubling the official rates mean that as many as a third of people living in these cities will be without jobs?

The article does not indicate for how long these conditions would be likely to persist.  Many mainstream economists have pointed out that the worst unemployment occurs after an economic recovery is  well under way.  Some others have begun to predict that this recession will yield permanent job losses and may simply set the stage for another recession that equals or exceeds this one in severity.  If there is one thing that the global economic crisis should have taught us, though, it is that the capitalists and their experts are whistling in the dark: they may be able to say realistically how bad it will get in the next year or so, but they are unable to control the system they have created.

Filed under: Economic crisis

Cancellation: April 1 meeting in Hartford with Larry Hales

The April 1 meeting with Larry Hales of the Bail Out the People Movement  has been cancelled.  It will be re-scheduled for another time.  Sorry for any inconvenience!

Filed under: Uncategorized

China rides out the recession, threatens U.S. economic supremacy

Can it really be only months ago that the United States was still regarded as the sole, world super-power?  Confirming the axiom that in times of crisis change is measured in days and weeks instead of years and decades, the Peoples Republic of China has called for the replacement of the U.S. dollar as the world’s most important currency.  According to Business Week:

People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, in a paper released on the bank’s Web site on Mar. 23, called for a new “super-sovereign reserve currency” to replace the current reliance on the dollar. The goal, Zhou writes, is to “create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run.”

Meanwhile, as the leaders of the European Union squabbled over whether Barack Obama’s emergency stimulus package was a critical element of global capitalist stabilization or “‘a way to hell’ that will ‘undermine the stability of the global financial market,’” it appears that China has succeeded in stabilizing its own national economy against the most severe effects of the deepening recession.

Among socialists and communists, there exists a wide range of opinion as to whether China, which underwent a massive social revolution in 1949, remains a socialist country in spite of the opening of its markets to capitalist market mechanisms.  Even some who say that China’s Communist Party has effectively abandoned socialism, however, acknowledge that what remains of its planned economy is a growing powerhouse in the 21st century.  Whatever its mistakes, it appears that the advances begun in 1949 are capable of insulating China’s population from the extreme dislocation, destabilization and impoverishment that is ravaging the “more advanced” western world, including the heretofore all-powerful United States.

Filed under: Economic crisis

Larry Hales from Bail Out the People Movement in Hartford on April 1

Larry Hales of Recreate 68 tells off Denver police at DNC

On Wednesday, April 1 at 6pm, Please join us for an informal conversation with Larry Hales.

Larry Hales is a community activist and fighter. While living in Denver, Larry was one of the founders of Colorado United Communities Against Police Brutality, and an organizer of the Recreate 68 Coalition, organized to protest last year’s Democratic National Convention.

In November 2007, Denver police broke into Hales’ house and arrested him on false charges arising from his giving shelter to a victim of police brutality who was out on parole. Months later and after a strong people’s campaign, the charges against Larry were finally dropped. Presently, Larry Hales is an organizer for the Bail Out the People Movement and the youth group Fight Imperialism Stand Together (F.I.S.T.), and a contributing editor with Workers World newspaper.

This meeting is intended as a conversation with Larry and local activists about the development of the Bail Out the People Movement nationally, the economic crisis, and the tasks ahead.  The meeting will be held at the Hartford Metropolitan Community Church, 155 Wyllys Street, Hartford.

(Hartford MCC is located on the campus of Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, in the Parish House).

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis, Fighting oppression

Connecticut’s immigrant rights movement needs a wake-up call

On Friday, Elisa Villa, a public defender in Bristol, was arrested for attempting to stop federal ICE agents from taking a client, Anselmo Antonio-Valerian, into custody who had come to court to face a motor vehicle charge.

I’m not going to waste more than a sentence on the people who think that Elisa’s arrest this a good thing: hard working people who come to this country so that they can make a life for themselves and their families are in my view more entitled to be called “citizens” than the scumbag UTC executive and his wife who are squabbling over how to divide up their millions in a divorce battle.

But as I read this very short article about Elisa’s arrest and Anselmo’s seizure by ICE, I could clearly picture the two different-but-the-same reactions that many of my friends in the immigrant rights movement will have:

One group – the liberals – will tut-tut and shake their heads and say something like “I agree with the sentiment, but none of us can take the law into our own hands!”

The other group – the radicals – will turn red in the face and blurt out “Her arrest is an outrage, but individual actions won’t change things, we need organized protest!”

What it seems no one will say is the uncomfortable truth: We, the well-meaning people who make up the backbone of the immigrant rights movement here in Connecticut, both the liberals and the radicals, both the activists who organize and the supporters who turn out and write letters and sign petitions, have failed Elisa and Anselmo.

Liberal immigration activists are nodding politely over tea with our congressional representatives – the ones who will tell us privately how deeply moved they are by the stories of suffering of immigrants, while publicly putting “Secure the border” at the top of their immigration policy wishlists, as if immigrants were an evil, invading army.

Radical immigration activists are organizing yet another picket line. Because if we can get 25 people to a picket today, then we can have a public meeting denouncing ICE next week and get 50 people there. And maybe next time we can get 50 people to a picket and then 100 people to the next public meeting.

Meanwhile, in virtually every discussion with people in Connecticut who are undocumented, I hear the same litany of needs recited:

1. I need identification, and especially I need to be able to get a driver’s license. In Connecticut, you have to be able to drive to work, and if I drive, then the police can stop me and arrest me. That’s how a lot of people end up being detained by ICE.

2. I’m afraid of the police because they stop us and question us even when we’re not doing anything wrong, and that’s when people end up getting arrested for minor charges, and then are turned over to ICE in court or in jail.

3. My employer and my landlord take advantage of me because they say that if I complain about not getting paid for my work or if I insist that they do something about the heat not working in the winter, then they will report me to ICE, or they will call the police on me and when they find out I have no papers, they will turn me over to ICE.

It would be wonderful to build a movement that could force elected officials to take up the issue of federal immigration reform. It would be wonderful to have a movement strong enough to demand that ICE raids stop. And we can do those things. But I say we can do them only if we first build a movement, made up of both immigrants and non-immigrant supporters, that fights for the needs of the people here and now.

The rudiments of this movement exist. In New Haven and Hartford, activists have passed ordinances that help to protect immigrants from police harassment, that open the doors for them to bring their concerns to local government agencies and local officials. We need to organize to pass similar ordinances in Waterbury and Stamford and Bridgeport, as well as smaller cities like Meriden and New London and New Britain. And when we have fought those battles and raised more public consciousness about who Connecticut’s undocumented immigrants are and what they need, then there’s the big fight for access to state drivers licenses.

Similarly, there are people working in Stamford and New Haven and Hartford and Bridgeport to help immigrant workers get paid for their work when their employers cheat them, and to target sleazy landlords who rent rat–infested and unsafe apartments to people who are undocumented. But we need to take these fights out of the courtrooms and out of the health department offices and housing offices and into the streets. When an employer tells a group of ten workers that he isn’t going to pay them for the last month’s work, there should be one hundred people picketing his house and his jobsite the next day.

On some level, we all know that these things are needed. But breaking out of the pattern of politely urging reforms or loudly demanding change is hard. Better to keep on doing what we’re comfortable with or good at, right? But in the meantime, people like Anselmo will be detained and deported for minor traffic violations, and courageous people like Elisa will put themselves on the line to fight for them. And things will not change.

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Immigrant rights

Israeli soldiers were ordered to kill civilians in Gaza

[updated 3/20/09 2:00pm]

When Palestinians, or medical workers, or humanitarian aid workers, or human rights activists say it, it’s propaganda and a lie . . . but what about when Israeli soldiers who were there in the thick of the assault on Gaza are the ones claiming that they were given orders to kill civilians indiscriminately?

According to the L.A. Times today, soldiers who participated in the Israeli assault on Gaza, an attak that was condemned by millions of people all over the world, are beginning to speak about what they were ordered to do there and did.  The stories are remarkably consistent with many of the worst stories that had been told by Palestinians – the stories that Israeli officials and apologists for zionism in the U.S. repeatedly told us could not be true:

One squad leader said he argued with his commander over rules of engagement that allowed the army to clear out houses by shooting the residents without warning.

“When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up story by story,” he was quoted as saying. “Each story, if we identify a person, we shoot them. I asked myself: ‘How is this reasonable?’ “

In a response to these accusations that can only be characterized as either pathological self-deception or cynical hypocrisy, “Defense Minister Ehud Barak repeated Israel’s traditional description of its armed forces as ‘the most moral in the world.’”

No doubt that phrase will be repeated ad nauseam by U.S. politicians while holding their hands over their ears so that they cannot hear the truth about the brutal regime that the U.S. funds.

UPDATE

In an article titled “Further accounts of Gaza killings released” published by the International Herald Tribune, there is also this:

Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army’s conduct in Gaza. On Thursday, the military’s chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier’s account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.

When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: “What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, ‘Maybe he’s a terrorist.’ What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood.”

Filed under: Fighting oppression, International solidarity

Sarkozy fears revolt as two million march across France

Protesters denounce M. Sarkozy’s economic strategy in Paris yesterday

REUTERS

By John Lichfield in Paris

President Nicolas Sarkozy was facing the prospect of a deepening social and political revolt yesterday after more than two million people took to the streets to protest against his handling of the global recession.

French trades unions succeeded in mobilising even more protesters than for their previous, impressive show of strength in late January. A day of strikes in the public and private sectors did not bring the country to a halt but disrupted transport, schools and government offices, newspapers and radio stations and some factories.

M. Sarkozy is known to be worried that a lingering and hot-tempered dispute over university reforms could merge with the anger generated by the recession to create the kind of April-May street revolt that France has known in the past, notably in 1968.

Yesterday’s protests in 200 towns and cities, including a raucous march by about 350,000 people in Paris, passed off peacefully apart from the usual end-of-demo vandalism and missile-throwing by a minority. Police made 300 arrests last night after running battles with hooded youths.

Judging by the faces and voices in the Paris march, the challenge to M. Sarkozy is coming not just from a hot-headed fringe, or from the usual suspects of the left, but from a groundswell of anger and fear among ordinary people. Nathalie Brisac, 48, a teacher training instructor, said: “I have never attended a demonstration before. There is no point in protesting against the recession, but we can demand fairness in the way the government responds to it: less money for bankers and more for ordinary people.”

A poll suggested the protests were supported by 74 per cent of French voters. With unemployment over two million, the unions want M. Sarkozy to protect jobs, boost wages and scrap his 50 per cent tax “ceiling”.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Labor solidarity

Is real unemployment already at record levels?

I’ve written on this blog before about the underestimation of real unemployment that is reflected in the official rates to which we have been treated every month.  Others commenting on the real impact of the economic crisis have commented on this as well.  Presently, we are told that the unemployment rate is 8.1%.  We know that the unemployment rate in Connecticut’s urban areas is much higher.  And we know that the official rate masks the fact that rates are drastically higher for people of color in general and higher still for men of color in particular.  Also, we know that the official rate reflects only that portion of the population who are unemployed and looking for full time work; it does not include “discouraged workers” (aren’t we all?) who have given up looking for work, nor does it include people who want full time work but are taking part time work because that’s all they can get (often referred to as the “underemployed”).

Now comes yet another report showing the inadequacy of the official unemployment statistics, or at least pointing out an inadequacy in how those statistics are used.  The Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) has just released a report titled “Is the U.S. Unemployment Rate Today Already as High as It Was in 1982?”  The authors of the report, John  Schmitt and Dean Baker, argue that comparing the present unemployment rate of 8.1% to the post-World War II high of 9.7%, set in 1982, does not give a true picture:

The   official   unemployment   rate,   however,   masks   two   important   differences   between   the unemployment rate in 1982 and today. The first is demographic. In 1982, the US population was substantially younger than it is today. Even in an otherwise identical economy, we would expect a younger  population  to  have  a  higher  unemployment  rate  than  an  older  population  would.  The second  difference  is  statistical.  The  main  government  survey  used  to  measure  the  unemployment rate – the Current Population Survey (CPS) – reaches a smaller share of the population today than it did in 1982, and is especially likely to miss people who are not employed. As a result, the official unemployment rate understates the unemployment rate today relative to 1982.

When these factors are considered, Schmitt and Baker say, the result is an adjusted unemployment rate of 9.5%, smaller by only a fraction than the official rate in the depths of the recession that existed in the record-breaking year 1982.

Of course, since virtually everyone predicts that unemployment rates will continue to rise, that means that when adjusted in this manner, the old record is about to be broken . . .

Filed under: Economic crisis