We meet in this time of turmoil and tension. We would be advised by the freedom spiritual, “keep your eyes on the prize.” When winds of hostility and policies of retreat from social justice and shared economic security are blowing, yet we must keep our eyes on the prize.
August 6, the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: this administration will not commit to voting rights act reauthorization, with its enforcement provisions (Sections 203 and 5). And would rather focus on the diversion of so-called voter fraud, rather than voter access and enforcement.
The Voting Rights Act affects us all. When Tom DeLay maneuvers congressional seats in Texas, to bring in more anti-labor, anti-gender equality votes into Congress, it affects us all.
When Perdue in Georgia expands voter barriers and restrictions, and labor suppressing schemes on the working poor, it affects us all. We must keep our eyes on the prize.
We must demand that our government prioritize reinvest in America, and Put America Back to Work, rather than exporting jobs and capital and industry, and importing cheap labor and cheap products.
The 100 largest cities have a majority Black and Latino population. They are working people who need skilled apprenticeship and journeyman training. The trade union movement must have a plan to include and integrate in order to have moral authority.
Wal-Mart exploits the growing anti-union alienation in the cities. We must locate job training and apprenticeship programs in the cities to expand the ranks of our building and construction trade unions.
We must go South. The red states represent the region of hurt and hope and need. The richest soil. The most working poor people with the greatest need for what collective bargaining have to offer.
The Rainbow and Labor must lead initiatives on issues of right to organize, health care, livable wages and job training - - - state by state, a labor and civil rights agenda.
We hope you will pass a resolution at this convention to support Voting Rights Reauthorization and the March on August 6, and make public your commitment to go state by state, with a plan to challenge right to work laws.
I. Today we meet under intense pressure amid heated debate.
The pressure comes at us.
Profits up, wages down. Pressure
A policy of exporting jobs and capital and importing workers to exploit and products to buy. Pressure.
CEO salaries soaring; worker benefits cut. Pressure.
Tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations, job and benefit and service cuts for working families and the poor. Pressure.
50 million without health care. Millions more one illness away from bankruptcy. Costs soaring. Pressure.
A war of choice in Iraq turning into an occupation. $200 billion and rising. 1700 Americans dead, thousands more maimed. A civil war beginning. While states and cities cut education and Medicaid and vital infrastructure. Pressure.
An administration at war on workers. Opposed to minimum wage. Use Labor Department to target workers, not defend them. Turn NLRB to co conspirator in trampling labor laws. Pressure.
Second class schools and first class jails. Pressure
Right to work on the march; right to organize undermined. Pressure.
The heated debate comes from within. We can’t continue doing the same thing and expect a different result. Change is vital. We must change to meet the pressure. Debate is expected and essential.
Pressure and heat.
Pressure in the family home leads to domestic violence, anger, separation, abandonment, and divorce. Pressure in the house of labor can lead in the same direction.
But we can choose to go another way.
Under pressure and heat, workers reshape iron into forms that lead to human progress: Rails and bridges and cars. Under pressure and heat, if there is more alloy than metal, workers can forge something strong, something great.
Under pressure, we must re-shape priorities and increase our determination. We must not crack or come apart and turn on each other. Under pressure, Blacks and Latinos must coalesce and not co-annihilate. We must learn to share power as we are doing in Los Angeles, as we have done in Houston, Denver and Chicago. We must not fight each other over crumbs.
Under pressure, we cannot allow Mexican American immigrants to be used as pawns, and Blacks to be scapegoats. We must turn to each other, not on each other. These groups now constitute the most available source of urban labor in the top 100 markets. Labor at every level - from service unions and to the building trades - must open up to them. These groups are allies, they must not be alienated for lack of inclusion.
Under pressure on labor, you must debate’; you must change. But you must be able to differ and still come together. The Intra-squad struggle must not leave so much blood on the field that you cannot compete in the inter-league games. We must learn to fight internally but coalesce externally against those who would destroy both sides.
We who are supporters of the House of Labor must choose reconciliation and not just choose sides. There are those who say labor must invest more in organizing workers, and go South where there are so many unorganized working poor. They are right. There are those who say we must wage political battles to strengthen workers rights. They are right too.
In 2000-2004 we won the elections but lost the count. If we won and had fraud not corrupted these electoral successes, we would have a different agenda today. If the last two elections had not been determined by voter fraud and manipulation, we would have felt a tail wind behind our back. There would have been a sense of celebration, as opposed to anger and anguish, of the rightness of our cause, the soundness of our institutions, with better days ahead for working people in our country and in our hemisphere. But because of the outcome of these two elections we are now into radical introspection that could lead to disintegration of our strength. Now we must play under pressure and against the clock.
We in civil rights and labor are used to negotiating tough deals. Now we must do a difficult thing and agree to disagree and still negotiate operational unity within our own family. Everyone who cares about progressive reform in America – in civil rights, women’s rights, the environment, worker rights, decent wages, good education, affordable health care, secure retirements, a strong America has a stake in labor growing stronger, not weaker, bolder not broken.
Change isn’t easy. Change requires debate. Debate causes friction. Friction causes sparks. Those sparks can light the way if they do not burn down the house. Strong leadership is vital now.
For the pressure won’t stop until we release new energy to challenge it.
We must be driven by a vision. Unity is not enough. If there is unified blindness, a one eyed man is king in a blind city. Or if there is power, not appropriately applied, we will not get the desired results. We need a vision that makes room for all of us. It must be accompanied by a will to fight, and go public with our pain. The Bible says, “Without vision, the people perish.”
Let us fight about the best way to organize and unite around a common external agenda.
Empower workers and hold corporations accountable. Stop CAFTA and start making sense in our trade policy
Re-Invest in America and Put America Back to Work - don’t subsidize companies to take jobs abroad.
Invest in people, not tax cuts for the few.
Strengthen Social Security and stop the effort to dismantle it. Bush has offered a plan that has only two certain results – more poverty among seniors and more debt for the nation. We must unite to stop this threat to America’s most successful social program.
Affordable health care for all.
An education of equal high quality for all.
Good jobs with good wages – and lift the floor by raising the minimum wage.
Good jobs through investment in energy independence – as called for by the Apollo Alliance that labor leads – not a big oil energy plan that leaves us more dependent on the shifting sands of the Persian Gulf.
Honor the soldiers. Provide them with the equipment they need and bring them home. We fought to bring down a dictator; we should not occupy Iraq nor remain in the middle of a civil and religious war.
Immigration: We need a new hemispheric vision. Immigration is up from 500,000 a year to maybe 2 million. Mexico is not a foreign nation. In reality, Mexico is not back door; it is next door. It is a partner with enormous potential that is now being manipulated with which we must come to grips. Mexico purchases $250 billion in U.S. product a year, more than five European nations combined: Italy, France, Spain, Germany and England.
Regain the basic human right to organize. Maids in New York make $20/hour, and receive health care and retirement benefits. These same maids in Atlanta, without a union, make $8/hour with no benefits. Current labor law puts workers at risk. Progressives of all stripes should join unified labor in demanding passage of the Employee Choice Act.
Our future is to confront the unorganized market, to go south. To challenge workers in the South to choose real economic needs over culture, insecurity and racial division. To find economic common ground that can overcome racial battlegrounds. On this, all of labor can agree.
A fair and independent judiciary that will defend our rights, not attack them. The so-called moderate deal in the Senate was a cave-in from a civil rights and labor point of view, not a compromise. It protected the minority in the Senate. But it did NOT PROTECT minorities and labor OUTSIDE of the Senate.
After confirming three rightwing judges to the Court of Appeal, Bush is now bent on swinging the Supreme Court to the right with his nomination of Roberts. Roberts has the appearance of a velvet glove, but within it is an iron fist. The appointment represents one less woman, one less advocate for women’s, labor and civil rights on the court. And there are still no Hispanics on the Court; this is unacceptable and does not look like America.
Our allies in the Senate must not cozy up to wolf politics in sheep’s clothing.
These right-wing ideologues want to return the constitution to the days when labor unions were illegal as a restraint of trade, when corporations were free to trash the environment and exploit their workers, when apartheid was the law of the land. We must fight with full force and principle the right wings assault on our judiciary, its blatant power grab to stack the courts with radical conservative, anti-civil rights, anti-labor, anti-women, anti-environment, anti-justice Judges. On these principles, we cannot compromise.
When all of the unions and protesting civil rights organizations, and churches, are under IRS audits, when Public Broadcasting is under venomous attack, we must tell it! We have no choice but to fight back.
Atlanta, August 6
Pressure and heat. We must show immediately that we will continue to build through the pressure and the heat. That even as we fight internally we will coalesce against our enemies externally.
So on August 6, 2005, the 40th anniversary of LBJ;s signing of the Voting Rights Act, we will march again. March to Reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. March for workers; right to organize. March for comprehensive immigration reform. March for an end to the war in Iraq. March for equal high quality health care and education for all.
On August 6, 40 years ago, Blacks and Latinos were enfranchised, whites were freed, and labor advanced. Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans were empowered with the language provisions of the Voting Rights Act. We all won. Dr. King’s last campaign in Memphis, he knew that the right to vote and the right to organize, shared economic and health security, go hand in hand. Thus we march in Atlanta for Voting Rights Act reauthorization, end right to work laws, and end the expensive war in Iraq that has gone awry.
When the Georgia state legislature passes a voter ID bill reducing making it harder to register, we have no choice but to fight back. When students at Georgia Tech and University of Georgia can use their student IDs to register to vote, because they are in “state” public schools, but students at Clark, Emory and Morehouse and Spelman cannot; because they are “private” schools, we have no choice but to fight back.
In many parts of the state, seniors and others without transportation must go to the next country to get an ID. This amounts to a poll tax.
We have written to Attorney General Gonzales to discuss voting rights protections. So far, he has not met with us, saying he waiting for instructions from the President. Attorney General Gonzales must ENFORCE the Voting Rights Act, and reject the repressive Georgia voter legislation. Our democracy demands nothing less.
If there is a leak in the inner tube of democracy, it affects the whole tire. No matter where the nail sticks, we all hurt when the tire is punctured. The Native American vote in South Dakota, the Latino vote in the Southwest, Black and Latinos votes in the South advance the fight for workers right to organize, for women’s fight for self-determination. We are all inextricably bound. When fraud is visited upon Black and Brown voters in the South, it disenfranchises workers and human rights everywhere.
August 6 we should all be in Atlanta in big numbers.
Voting Rights Extension.
Workers Right to Organize.
An immoral war gone awry.
Lest we forget, the entire Congress is up for re-election next year, as is 1/3 of the Senate. There are major state races for Governor, and state offices. We must not let our internal fights weaken our cooperation in these vital external fights.
Strategic Adjustment: Third Rail.
Lastly, we must make a strategic adjustment.
I must say today, I am not pleased with Democrats; I am not scared of Republicans. We must frame a new partnership and not be a pawn in the struggle for our dignity and identity. Republicans, with their states’ rights ideology, strongly attack us. Democrats offer a weak defense with a fuzzy ideology. Under their watch, we’ve borne the brunt of NAFTA, and now CAFTA, and 3 strikes.
It is not an accident that the DLC meets in Ohio as labor argues in Chicago. No labor leader is invited there. No civil rights leader. The DLC embraces CAFTA and sells admission to its conference to corporate lobbyists. We do not need one party with two names. The DLC is not a legitimate extension of the Democratic Party; it uses the brand, but it is a privatized interest group of corporate lobbyist. We registered voters. They take credit for victory and become analysts and consultants, and form joint ventures with Republicans in defeat.
We must go on the offensive. We must open up the process, with a third rail liberation mass action.
We must negotiate a new deal with the Democratic Party and change the options of the radical right. We must use litigation, legislation, state referendums and ballot initiatives, demonstrations. We’ve joined the party, but the party must join our movement for fundamental change. We must change the political environment by moving the earth with massive ground action.
Chicago: the elevator train, on the third rail, is where the electricity is, the change agent. In slavery, the liberals said be kind to them; conservatives said they are our property, abolitionists said end the system. The Third Rail: that’s where the heat is, that’s where the juice is.
The women’s struggle for the right to vote was independent, led by neither party. Third rail.
The Labor struggles in the 1930’s were independent. Third rail.
The 1954 Supreme Court battle for equal education was independent. Third rail.
The 1955 bus boycott against segregation was independent. Third rail.
The 1964-65 Civil and Voting Rights Act struggles, were Independent. Third rail.
My 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns: Independent. Third rail. We paved the way for the 1986 Senate victories, and the Clinton 1992 and 96 victories.
It caused the parties to adjust to us. The party must join our struggle for liberation; we cannot join theirs for status quo adjustment, tinkering and managing crisis.
Our future is not going with either party. But rather to create enough legitimate people’s action where both are following us. Our drive is not to project milk toast Democrats or bold anti-civil rights, anti-labor rights Republicans, but rather to create an agenda of interests that requires both of them to deal with the real needs of the people.
Vanity asked the question, is it popular? Politics asked the question, will it work, is it practical? Conscience asked the question, is it right? We must build an independent political struggle that will define priorities and behavior of both parties.
The Bible teachers us to ask. Who is your friend? Who is your neighbor? The Good Samaritan. Man was beaten. The first party was a minister of his own religion. He walked by. The second party was a man of his own ethnic group. He walked by. The third person, an independent, The Good Samaritan, from another culture, religion and country: didn’t even have a green card, he stopped and lifted him to safety.
Jesus said, Who is your neighbor? Whoever stands with you in the time of challenge and takes risks with you, sacrificed for you, is your neighbor.
I say Labor, Civil Rights, must build a strong independent force to realize our dreams. If we do not rise up and organize to protect our interests, who will? It’s good for the healing of our nation. It’s healing time. It’s hope time. It’s time to organize. It’s time to fight back. It’s time to win.
Meet you in Atlanta on August 6: it will be the beginning of the end of voter restrictions and suppression. Let’s rebuild American and put America back to work.
Keep Hope Alive.
