Public Employee Press

Marching into 2012 for jobs, justice and voting rights

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS
—with additional reporting by Alfredo Alvarado and Gregory N. Heires

DC 37 activists closed out 2011 and marched toward the New Year in fighting spirit with rallies for jobs, voting rights and economic justice. In coalitions with grassroots activists, civil rights groups, dozens of area unions and the Occupy Wall Street movement, they sent a loud message to politicians nationwide: Stop the war on workers! Stop trying to turn back the clock on the right to vote.

"It's been three years since Wall Street ruined the economy and too little has been accomplished to address the lack of jobs and economic opportunity," DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said Dec. 1 at a Manhattan labor demonstration against unemployment, stagnant wages, economic inequality and political paralysis. "Enough is enough!"

The wave of protests started Dec. 1with a march down Broadway from 34th Street to 14th Street, organized by the Central Labor Council, and expanded to include a Dec. 9 rally in Harlem, coordinated by the National Action Network, and a Dec. 10 demonstration mobilized by the NAACP and unions against efforts to suppress voting by minorities, young people, seniors and immigrants.

The protests underscored the widespread discontent with the growing economic divide between the wealthy 1 percent and working Americans as corporations rake in more profits through tax breaks, subsidies, low wages and privatizing public services while working families - many already living in poverty - fall further behind.

Creating more well-paying jobs and investing in vital public services like education, health care and day care are the paths to the economic growth New York needs, CLC leaders said.

"The mayor is shortsighted: Layoffs are counterproductive. They erode the city's tax base and cost more in the long run because the unemployed have to turn to safety-net services at public expense. That's not how you build a stronger New York," Roberts said. "What we need are real jobs!"

Defending the 99 percent

The economic policies of the last three decades "have left us with 20 percent of the population owning 85 percent of the country's wealth," said CLC President Vinny Alvarez.

"Who built this city? Unions built this city!" "What do we want? Jobs!" chanted the fired-up demonstrators in a noisy march that shopkeepers and pedestrians cheered as it halted rush-hour traffic on Broadway.

On the march was Clerical Associate Olivia Crum, a member of Local 1549. "We have had too many budget cuts and layoffs. With our pensions and health benefits on the line, what will be our future?" she asked. "We fought too hard to get here to give back what we have achieved."

"My school lost Aides and drug counselors to layoffs. We are hurting without them," said Local 372 School Aide June Gregory as she marched down Broadway. In November Mayor Bloomberg laid off 642 public school support workers. DC 37 has filed a lawsuit to win back the jobs.

DC 37 activists also rallied on the evening of Dec. 9 at the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building on 125th Street, focusing their anger on the jobs crisis. NAN President Rev. Al Sharpton organized the protest, one of 25 held simultaneously in cities nationwide, with support from DC 37's parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

On television that night, Sharpton and AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders cited the central importance of public service jobs to minority workers and said the continuing layoffs and cuts in the government workforce were having a disproportionate impact on minority communities.

"DC 37 has been hit hard by the jobs crisis. In recent years 10,000 members have lost jobs to contracting out, conservative public policies and layoffs," DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray told the throng at the Harlem rally. He urged protesters to register and vote for union-backed candidates committed to helping working families.

Demonstrators from as far away as Virginia and Massachusetts joined union and civil rights advocates Dec. 10 at the United Nations to fight what NAACP President Ben Jealous called "the greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow."

In dozens of states, mainly those with Republican-dominated legislatures and Republican governors, new laws and rules would require citizens to present official photo IDs in order to vote. Proponents claim the laws are needed to prevent voter fraud, which in fact is not a major problem in the United States.

Right to VOTE

"Voter ID laws are nothing but reincarnated poll taxes and literacy tests," said Jealous. The laws would disenfranchise African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, immigrants, seniors, students and working women, since these groups are less likely to possess the required ID.

The day of protest began at the Madison Ave. offices of billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, Tea Party founders who have helped finance the national drive for the ID laws, which DC 37 Political Director Wanda Williams said would "prevent millions of Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote."

She said Republicans and the right want the voter suppression laws to prevent a repeat of the historic 2008 election, when a surge of young, old, minority and labor voters helped elect President Barack Obama. Rangel charged that the Republicans were also blocking Obama's jobs initiatives as part of their effort to prevent his reelection.

The members who marched and rallied were strongly motivated.

"We have an unfair economic divide. The rich are getting richer and the middle class is shrinking," said Local 375 member Anthony Manzano, a Construction Project Manager. "It is unfair to vilify city workers and unions and wrongly blame us for the bad economy. We built this city, we make it run every day, but we are being made to work harder with less for less. We have to fight back!"