It's Not Too Late to Turn Things Around!

One year ago, after Obama's victory in the presidential election, millions of workers and young people could not contain their tears of joy as they celebrated in the streets, particularly in Black and Latino communities. Their hopes were raised high by Obama's promise to end the war in Iraq, provide papers for the undocumented, and enact real healthcare reform, a jobs programs to put the entire nation back to work, and the Employee Free Choice Act.

One year later, however, those tears of joy have been transformed into cries of anguish.

There are officially 16 million unemployed workers today, with 9.3 million more working part-time even though they want and need a full-time job. These are the official statistics. The AFL-CIO estimates that the real unemployment rates are up to 5% higher, given the large and growing number of workers who have been dropped from the unemployment rolls and cannot find a job.

While $4 trillion have been given to Wall Street and the banks, little to nothing has been done for Main Street. A "jobless recovery"? For most people this is nothing but a cruel joke. Eight million jobs have been lost since the latest recession began. And the job losses continue to mount.

The number of foreclosed homes, mostly among Black and Latino workers, is still on the rise, while the healthcare crisis, with more than 50 million people uninsured and tens of millions more woefully under-insured, remains unresolved. Deportations of immigrant workers run rampant.

In the meantime, the war in Afghanistan is escalating (with no end in sight to the war in Iraq), and the war budget continues to skyrocket.

No One Should Be Surprised

The continuous backtracking by Obama on his campaign pledges has fueled growing anger and discontent among working people in this country. Not surprisingly, this has led to the widespread abstention in the electoral arena that produced Republican victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections last fall and that resulted, on January 20, in the upset victory of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

A whole slew of Democrats, following in the footsteps of Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, explain that the loss of Democratic candidate Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Senate race was due more to bumbling campaign gaffes than anything else. They are sticking their heads in the sand.

As Boston Labor Council President Jeff Crosby noted in a posting on the AFL-CIO blog, the number of votes for Republican Scott Brown was only slightly higher than the vote totals for John McCain in 2008, while the number of votes for Democratic candidate Martha Coakley was 850,000 lower than vote totals for Barack Obama. In a nutshell, 40% of the working class and Black voters who had supported Obama in 2008 did not turn out for Coakley on January 20, 2010.

Jeff Crosby wrote:

"Obama's support for the benefits tax [on union's so-called 'Cadillac' plan] exploded among union members. ... For a year and a half, we campaigned against the tax on our healthcare benefits. We trudged through neighboring New Hampshire with fliers explaining that Sen. John McCain wanted to fund healthcare expansion by a benefits tax. ...

"But the tax wasn't the only issue that demobilized Democratic support. A shrinking healthcare plan, Obama's support for charter schools, the Afghanistan escalation, the Honduras coup, massive E-Verify firings of undocumented workers, the disappearance of the Employee Free Choice Act, criticisms from the Black caucus for ignoring economic issues — all contributed."

And Crosby concluded:

"There was no outpouring for a right-wing agenda in Massachusetts. ... The Republican based remained energized. The Democratic base and independent supporters stayed home."

AFL-CIO Bears Major Responsibility

Over a year ago, a large number of trade union leaders who had campaign for Obama explained loudly that it would be necessary for labor to now hold Obama's feet to the fire to ensure that our demands as working people would be met.

But this didn't happen. The leadership of the trade unions has refused to fight in the public arena — particularly in the streets — for the burning demands of the working-class majority.

Had the AFL-CIO done what Michael Moore proposed at the September 2009 AFL-CIO national convention — that is, organize a mass labor-led national demonstration in DC for single-payer healthcare prior to the votes in the House and Senate — you can be sure that the final bills would not look like the pathetic pro-healthcare industry bills they are today. This is true for all issues.

The labor officialdom has refused to challenge Obama to respect the mandate that the American people entrusted him with on November 4, 2008. The labor leadership has forfeited the streets of this country to the Tea Party wackos, whose white-supremacist rightwing "populism" (including their call on Obama not to bail out the banks or cut Medicare for the elderly) is getting a hearing only to the extent that labor is silent and is accompanying — albeit grudgingly — every single retreat by the administration. The labor leadership has refused to exert its independent political muscle.

Lessons from Massachusetts

Immediately after the victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a statement that begins to draw some of the key lessons from this election. He wrote:

"What happened Tuesday in Massachusetts was a wake-up call to all of us. It was a working class revolt — a signal that in this economic crisis, the American people demand jobs, healthcare and an economy that works for them now — not political business as usual.

"It was a loud and clear message that our elected leaders — and our labor movement — must do more for working people, do it fast and do it smarter.

"For the union movement and activists, the message was also clear: It's not time to leave it to any political party to take care of us once we put them in office. It's time to organize and mobilize as never before to make every elected or aspiring leader PROVE he or she will create the jobs we need in an economy we need with the health care we need.

"I am not discouraged by Tuesday's election results. Actually, I'm energized and I want you to be, too. Working America is demanding major change NOW-not timid, go-slow, partial solutions.

"I know we are the people who can mobilize a massive army to force elected leaders to deliver.

"Let's do it-starting NOW."

This is a strong statement, but if it's to become a real call to action and not just a lot of hot air, it needs to be concretized in a call for a National Day of Action for Jobs, Peace and Justice some time before the summer break, preferably on May First.

Likewise, there is an urgent need for the unions, together with organizations of young people and the oppressed, to organize fightbacks on a local and statewide level. The inspiring example of the movement to defend public education in California and the March 4 Strike and Day of Action must be spread.

It is not too late to turn things around in favor of the interests of working people. But time is running out. "Mobilizing a massive army," as Trumka summons, needs an immediate and urgent call to action in support of labor's own demands — jobs for all, no bailing out the banks, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) with card check, full healthcare reform (which can only be single-payer healthcare), affordable housing for all, and an end to funding for wars and occupation.

Obama and the politicians in Washington won't listen to these admonitions and demands unless they are forced to do so by hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. We need to make heard the voice of the millions of people who voted for Obama and gave him a mandate for REAL CHANGE.

For a Solidarity Day III March in D.C.!

In early 2009, The Organizer newspaper joined together with leading unionists and activists to launch the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign (WERC). The initial 10-point list of demands of the WERC includes: not one penny for war and for bank bailouts, an immediate halt to all layoffs and cuts in public services, single-payer healthcare, funds for a WPA-type public works program to put all the unemployed back to work, and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More recently, the 21-member Interim National Committee of WERC issued a call upon the labor movement and its community allies to join together to organize a Solidarity Day III demonstration in Washington in the spring of 2010 for jobs, peace and justice — to demand that the mandate of November 4 be heeded!

This campaign has now been endorsed by central labor councils, local unions, and community organizations across the country.

"It is necessary to reclaim the streets and to push our labor and community demands," said Nancy Wohlforth, a member of the national executive committee of the AFL-CIO and member of the leadership of the WER Campaign.

"We must take to the streets, mobilize in huge numbers and make Obama do the right thing," Wohlforth continued. "The only way we can make any progress is to put Obama's feet to the fire, and do what we did in the 1930s, when we made Franklin D. Roosevelt enact the WPA, or what we did in the 1960s, when we organized the Poor People's March for Civil Rights in Washington and forced Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Rights Act."

We urge our readers to support the WER Campaign [see center section inside] and to promote widely the call for labor to organize a massive march on Washington this spring for jobs, peace and justice!

— The Editors