Posted on 10/18/2011 4:27:24 PM PDT by mdittmar
The United States continues to suffer from a raging jobs crisis. The national economy is stagnating. Some 25 million people in America who want to work cannot find full-time jobs. Governors in many states are punishing public employees and undermining their collective bargaining rights while enacting measures to suppress youth voter turnout and limiting access to higher education. Students leaving college are saddled with crushing debt.
America wants to work, and a new movement of students and young people is growing to demand that our leaders get to work creating good jobs. As part of that movement, we are organizing a National Teach-In at the University of California Washington Center on Oct. 12 that will be webcast live across the country. Frances Fox Piven, other featured speakers and student activists will discuss the roots of the jobs crisis and how unions, students and community groups are fighting back to defend the core values of our country. You can join by organizing a teach-in on your campus that tunes into the live webcast and then continues to discuss local and state issues and campaigns. The National Teach-In is part of a nationwide campaign that week to impress upon our political leaders and corporate power-brokers: Now is the time for big, bold action to put America back to work, retain good jobs and rebuild the U.S. economy.
The teach-in will examine the disaster caused by corporate control of our economic and political system. Americans are working harder than ever today while earning less – as corporate profits soar. The big banks are stripping away the wealth of consumers, homeowners, students and young workers. Meanwhile, our infrastructure erodes and corporations offshore millions of jobs overseas – while hoarding more than $1.3 trillion in cash that could be used to create jobs. Schools, day care centers, senior citizen facilities, health clinics, parks and firehouses are starved for funds so corporations and the wealthy can get billions of dollars in tax breaks.
The corporate-funded assault on working people has been carried out with manufacturing policies that impose fiscal austerity on all levels of government. We are told that there is no more money for critical human services, the care of children, better public schools or to help lower the cost of a college education. The reality is that big banks and large corporations are shielding much of their profits from taxation and using tax loopholes to bankrupt our communities.
Unions, student organizations and community groups are fighting back against these abuses of corporate power and the efforts of the right wing to reduce wages, maintain tax breaks for the wealthy and eliminate social safety net programs. In Wisconsin, students and workers joined together to protect the rights of public-sector workers to bargain collectively. In August 2011, more than 700 corporate accountability events – rallies, town hall meetings and demonstrations at congressional offices – were held in 48 states to tell political leaders to stop protecting tax breaks for the wealthy and focus on putting America back to work. In California and Maryland, students and their coalition partners won passage of Dream Act laws that allow undocumented young people to receive college financial aid. On many campuses, students have waged solidarity campaigns to help college hourly workers organize unions and improve their working conditions. At Rutgers and other universities, students have rallied to limit tuition increases. Student organizations have hundreds of ongoing campaigns to support workers’ rights, make corporations pay their fair share and resist state budget cuts.
We are on the cusp of a new social movement to resist and roll back the corporate domination of political and economic systems by the banks, big corporations and Wall Street profiteers. Please join the National Teach-In: Students Rising for Jobs and Economic Justice to be part of this movement.
Dr. Zhivago 2.0
Economic Justice is redistribution of wealth.
As far as I can tell, this letter is one big admission that the AFL-CIO are losers.
But a revolution to "correct" that problem is being led by the very Third Way, progressive, "free trade", world federalist, Marxist, whatever "Bring it all down, man" ideologues that caused the problem -- with help from useful idiot corporations. IMO.
Last spring We Are One was giving out pledge forms to college and high school teachers to hand to their students. They were asked to support unionization, collective bargaining rights etc.
AFL-CIO leaders are losers,union members that I meet every day are good people.
All should go and see how they worship at Piven’s alter and how they blame of course, the Congress for no jobs. Their petition has no room for comments but 23 thous have signed it so far. This is the evil now of the union thugs and not the Reagan Dems who were union workers in times past. These people are also using twitter to flood Facebook et al with their socialist demands and support of OWS. The nation is in real jeopardy and unless the GOP unites with many other voter streams, the Bamaites could win this election and without Fla. or Ohio. Today, some say now NC and Va. are in play for him. I cannot believe it. But one must never underestimate the stupidity of the American lemming.
I’d imagine the teachers’ unions are proponents of this crap as well; here in NJ a lot of them are losing their jobs due to budget cuts (as corporations and taxpayers flee, leaving an unaffordable bureaucracy falling apart). On top of the cuts (which even reach the tenured teachers with the least seniority), the bloated costs of the more senior teachers prevent the hiring of any recent graduates - people who really thought they’d bleed the taxpayers dry themselves in a job they’re entitled to. Add the police and fire unions, “suffering” for the same reasons, and you have a very grim outlook for those groups (as we in the provate sector have had for years - this is only new to them). When Camden NJ lays off 1/3 of its police, in a state where NO departments are looking to hire, what are those people to do with the “skills” they have?
I was AFL-CIO myself once and I agree. The rural members were conservative and the urban members were rock solid union ideologues.
My neighbor is UAW and he and I ride to our little local tea party breakfasts together.
corporate profits are soaring huh?
TO the communist dominated AFL-CIO, Eat shit and die you red bastards!
In fact, it looks like Comrade Trumka has eaten other union members. Humans, the other white meat!
A “teach in”. How original. At least these won’t glorify Uncle Ho. What? Uncle O?
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