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Faith, Civil Rights Groups to Stand With Workers on April 4
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Faith communities across the nation will stand alongside working people, civil rights groups, students and immigrants on the days around April 4 to tell hard-working families under attack that “We Are One.”
In a telephone press conference this afternoon, prominent African American and evangelical faith leaders joined with civil rights and labor leaders to announce coordinated actions this weekend and on April 4 in support of working families.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told the reporters that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s power grab reignited a huge movement of people standing up for human dignity and human rights. Holt Baker, who also is a member of the Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) national board, said:
We’re standing together to make our country better for all working people. We honor Dr. King with our determination to stand up and build the future our children deserve. These attacks on the middle class aren’t about the economy or the state budget. It’s about politics and payback.
IWJ has produced a set of resources for the We Are One mobilization–prayers, sermons, a bulletin insert, and pieces on what congregations, students, and worker centers can do.
Rev. Nelson Rivers, vice president of the NAACP, said the right-wing is engaged in a “gigantic effort to turn the clock back.” He said the NAACP will hold a major national event in Nashville, Tenn., April 4 featuring a teach-in with three historically black colleges in that city.
“We know that God is concerned about workers, who are consistently vulnerable to exploitation if they aren’t protected. When workers are treated badly, that matters to us, no matter what faith tradition we come from—including the evangelical community,” said Rev. Troy Jackson, pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati.
IWJ is coordinating with dozens of groups holding prayer vigils in multiple locations across the country, using the same prayer for workers (available here) around the We Are One faith events happening April 1-4 and into the coming weeks. Events include:
- A rally and candlelight vigil with Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders and a choir at Denver City Park from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on April 4.
- An April 4 rally and press conference at the Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King Memorial Plaza on the campus of the University of Maine.
- Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice will hold a theatrical reenactment of biblical passages around worker justice in San Diego on April 4.
- Detroit Interfaith Worker Justice will hold a prayer vigil in concert with labor union rallies on April 4.
You can also find out how to take action on April 4 or write a message of solidarity to workers at the “We Are One” Facebook page. Follow the action on Twitter with the hashtags #statesSOS, #notmywi, #StandUpOH, #wiunion and get the latest updates at www.aflcio.org/blog.
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2 Comments
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PLEASE FORWARD AND CIRCULATE THIS PROPOSAL!
Comment: The following was posted on the AFL-CIO NOW BLOG article Los Angeles Workers Set to Rally for Communities, Jobs by James Parks, Mar 24, 2011. The first paragraph text prompted the comment. This post was my belated attempt to create a leaflet to be distributed during the rally to present a socialist perspective. – Jeremy Wells
On Saturday, March 26, tens of thousands of working people, students, community activists and religious and political leaders will join in a massive march and rally in Los Angeles to protect workers’ rights and protect the middle class.
JerryWells on 25.03.2011 at 23:52 (Reply)
Organize All Working People into the SOLIDARITY PARTY now!
This “massive march and rally in Los Angeles” for Saturday, March 26, is supposedly called “to protect workers’ rights and protect the “middle class.”, This extreme “framing”, or limiting the rally focus, deliberately ignores and trivializes the enormity of the many crises that has motivated millions of working people nationwide “into the streets”. The focus on the “middle class” further divides working class solidarity, essential to building a powerful political movement, to bring about economic justice for all working people, not just “middle class” workers.
Since the 1970s, wages for U.S. working people have not kept up with inflation. Millions of jobs have gone overseas due to “Globalization”, as profits maximized to multi-national corporations by using cheap “slave-wage” labor overseas. Heavy manufacturing in auto, steel, aircraft, etc. disappeared from Southern California, the lack of “living wage” jobs compounded the racism already experienced by African-Americans. The emergence of gangs such as the “Crips” and the “Bloods” in LA was the now documented result.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, resulted in the U.S. becoming the world’s most powerful military “super-power”. War become the new “profit center” for the “military-industrial” complex. Both Republican Bush and Democratic Obama administrations, generously corrupted by war industries and the military, have heavily promoted a “bi-partisan” foreign policy of unending profitable wars (undeclared war on Libya), The costs of militarism and war has had devastating economic consequences to working people.
Obama, after giving trillions to corrupt Wall Street bankers, after billions for war, has “no money left” to bail out the states to stop the destruction of public sector jobs of teachers, state and local government employees, closing down of public health, library, schools essential to working people.
What has been the response of the AFL-CIO and the “leadership” of organized labor to these economic events that are now impoverishing us all? The AFL-CIO, with the UAW, gave Obama and the Democratic Party in the 2008 and 2010 election campaigns over 200 million dollars! AFL-CIO President Trumka, who ignored the unanimous Pittsburgh convention vote to support of “single-payer” massively supported Obama’s corporate “Health Care Reform”.
We, as working people, trade union labor and unorganized working people, must demand that the AFL-CIO break with the Democratic Party! The Democratic Party, just as the Republican Party, just as the Tea Party, is completely controlled by corporate money and agendas, and is anti-labor!
Working people of America, trade unionists and unorganized working people, public sector and private sector, “Middle Class” workers, students, seniors, disabled people. WE ALL NEED A NEW POLITICAL PARTY TO REPRESENT THE ECONOMIC NEEDS OF ALL WORKING PEOPLE!
We must call for a new political party NOW!
THE SOLIDARITY PARTY.
To JerryWells: Your premise is noted. Your politics, however, is also noted as DIVISIVE. Your plea for the “Unions to break with the Democratic Party” is straight out of a TEABAGGERS MOUTH. WE ARE NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR PHILOSOPHY. Workers of America, ALL people of America, the Unions are intertwined in DEMOCRAT philosophy. They are here BECAUSE of the Democrats. You are so far off base it’s nauseating and destructive. Don’t try to fool the people, it’s been tried before and you will Lose. Come clean with your TRUE ideology. Goodbye and Good riddence to the JerryWells’ of this country.