Invitational call

September 10, 2009

Brothers and Sisters,

Five years ago on October 17, 2004, an historical gathering took place  on Washington DC’s Lincoln Memorial bringing  together thousands of African American, African, Caribbean, Latino, Asian, Haitian, Indigenous and white working men and women from the United States and around the world.

This mobilization was in response to the call and vision of Brother Trent Willis, a business agent of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 in San Francisco, California. A third generation longshore worker, Brother Willis is a product of the hip-hop generation and member of the most racially diverse longshore local on the West Coast.

Local 10 supported Trent’s  vision by passing a resolution that provided the basis for the Million Worker March (MWM). The ILWU Longshore Division subsequently adopted the resolution calling for the gathering that captured the hearts and minds of rank and file members and leaders across the country and internationally. It was a call for us to stand up and speak in our own voice and in our own name.

The MWM Movement emerged from this Call as a response to the unrestrained attacks on the working class. The day following this gathering, the main organizers met and pledged their commitment to continue building this movement around the demands of our class and to  reaffirm May Day and International Working Women’s Day as the true days reflecting our just struggles as working people.

Today, as in 2004, working people, the unemployed, the never employed, those born on the continental US soil and those who are forced through desperation to leave their homelands and families to work in the US, are still under unrestrained and relentless attacks by corporations and their allies.

Speaking and organizing in our own name is the only way we can build a movement powerful enough to ensure our  demands are won:

1. •Jobs at livable wages
   

2. •Expansion and protection of workers’ rights
   

3. •Universal single payer health care
   

4. •Slashing the military budget and closing U.S. military bases around the world
   

5. •Affordable housing
   

6. •Free quality public education regardless of age
   

7. •Reconstruction of decaying cities
   

8. •Halt the mad race to the sweatshop bottom that pits workers against each other across the world

   

   
   

Although corporate controlled media won’t provide coverage of workers struggles and their victories, we will recognize and honor  them.  The worldwide collapse and crisis of this international, parasitic and exploitative economic system has caused  tremendous hardships,  but working people have persevered and achieved magnificent victories proving  the power of  collective will and action:

1. •Local 10 members, in an act of resistance to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, initiated the action taken by the ILWU Longshore Division to shut-down all West Coast ports on International Workers Day, May Day 2008.
   

2. •The Republic Window workers took over their factory in Chicago and won their demands of severance, vacation, sick pay and the rehiring of all laid off workers.
   

3. •The Stella D’Oro workers maintained a strike for 11 months with no worker crossing the picket line and won their contract demands.
   

4. •Southern farm, food processing workers won union rights and contracts for more than 13,000 workers in North Carolina in the past two years; 2004 brought to an end a 51/2 year boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Company and it resulted in the winning of a historic 3-way agreement between Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), Mt Olive Pickle Co and North Carolina Growers Association; The International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations, issued an unprecedented call for the United States to “promote the establishment of a collective bargaining framework in the public sector in North Carolina,” and called specifically for the repeal of the state law that prohibits public employee collective bargaining.

   

   
   

5. •In October 2005 at the Millions More Movement rally, the Million Worker March called for the blockade of the Gulf Coast if then President Bush did not rescind his suspension of the protection of the construction workers’ right to prevailing wages (Davis-Bacon Act). 11 days later Bush rescinded his suspension of Davis-Bacon.
   

6. •Millions of immigrant workers marched and boycotted their jobs on May Day 2006 across this country defying their bosses and U.S. government’s policies that permit employers to criminalize, exploit and violated the rights of immigrant workers.
   

7. •In 2009, after building a democratic rank and file caucus “Take Back Our Union”, New York City transit workers won a decisive victory in the delegates election for the Transit Workers Union 23rd International Convention — a demonstration of the power of the rank and file.
   

8. •Workers facing foreclosure are taking back their homes and property, and building an anti-foreclosure movement.
   

9. •In January 2009, the entire population on the Island country of Guadeloupe, led by a federation of unions, waged a successful 44 day general strike (joined by workers in Martinique) against their governments’ racist polices, slave wages and cuts in social programs and won all their demands.
   

10. •January 29, 2009 France’s General Confederation of Labor representing 3 million workers demonstrated and struck nation-wide against president Sarkozy’s measures to bail out the banks.
    

11. •Greek workers paralyzed their country on December 10, 2008 by demonstrating and striking in common cause against poverty, cut backs and police brutality.
    

We must claim these victories! One way to honor working people’s recent victories is to commemorate the Million Worker March Movement’s 5th Anniversary with a call for an organizing gathering. Let us come together to examine the valuable lessons from these victories as well as draw on historical lessons of our class.

We are convinced that together we can build an independent workers movement in our own name. This movement will be capable of wrenching the power from those whose only aim is to enslave us all while continuing to enrich themselves totally on the backs of working people, their families and to the demise of our communities.

Let us forge together a social, economic and political movement for working people that will end the secretive and corrupt control of our lives by the rapacious few.

“Let us mobilize together through our unions, labor councils, workplaces, social, and community organizations everywhere. We are on the move and we shall Not be denied.” – Million Worker March Mission Statement, 2004

We ask you and your organization to sign on to this Call and bring your best class fighters to the Million Worker March Movement’s Organizers Conference. It will start on Friday, October 16, 2009 at 6:30 pm and end Sunday, October 18, 2009  at 1pm.

This conference will be held at Local 808 IBT, 22-43 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, New York. Please respond by Monday, September 21, 2009 to Charles Jenkins, Outreach Coordinator, at: 646-523-8484, email:  JJoner22@aol.com

In Solidarity & Struggle,

Clarence Thomas
National MWMM Organizer
ILWU Local 10

Chris Silvera
Co-Northeast MWMM Regional Organizer
Secretary Treasurer, Local 808 IBT

Brenda Stokely
Co-Northeast MWMM Regional Organizer
Former President, DC 1707/AFSCME

Saladin Muhammad
MWMM Southeast Regional Organizer
Black Workers for Justice