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MILLION WORKER MARCH
OPPOSES WAR
by Ralph Schoenman
The Time Has Come to Re-ignite a Vast
Movement of Working People Against War and Occupations and
for Fundamental Social Change in America
Working people--the vast and overwhelming majority of the
population--confront an unprecedented crisis. The government
and the State itself have been captured by a tiny oligarchy
of the corporate rich. They have hijacked our political process
in a class war of the privileged few against the exploited
many.
Business Week described this reality in a feature article
(December 1, 2003) entitled "Waking Up From The American
Dream": "There has been much talk of the Wal-Martization"
of America. But for years, even during the 1990's boom, much
of Corporate America had already embraced stratagems to control
labor costs -hiring temps and part-timers, fighting unions,
dismantling career ladders and outsourcing to lower-paying
contractors at home and abroad."
Under the cover of "free trade," the corporate
and banking oligarchy pitted workers against each other in
every part of the planet. In Haiti, K-Mart, J. C. Penny, Disney
and corporate giants are paying slave-labor wages of 8 cents
to 21 cents an hour. Workers in America are pitted against
workers in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America
in a mad race to the bottom.
Congressional Budget Office data cited by Paul Krugman in
his article "The Death of Horatio Alger" (New York
Times, December 18, 2003), established that between 1973 and
2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American
taxpayers went into free fall as the income of the top one
percent of the population rose by 123 percent and income of
the top one-hundredth of 1 percent (0.01%) rose 600 percent.
From 2000 to 2004 the disparity escalated.
War was declared on working families and children in America
by a cabal in control of government. Full time jobs have been
replaced by temporary work. Union jobs with a living wage
have been outsourced to the sweatshops of the world. Health
benefits have been stripped from workers. Schools and libraries
are closed and public busing suspended.
Budget surpluses have been converted into deficits that will
escalate to trillions of dollars as profits soar. Five hundred
billion dollars ($500 billion) are allocated to the Pentagon
for crony contracts that benefit a corrupt handful of corporate
directors who switch hats and enter the Department of Defense
and the Intelligence Agencies to hand out billions of profits
to their former companies.
The U.S. publication, Insight On The News, reported on August
10, 2001: "Every year trillions of dollars go unaccounted
by federal agencies." Robert Lieberman, the Deputy Inspector-General
of the Department of Defense, admitted that 4.4 trillion dollars
in the Pentagon's books had to be cooked to compile financial
statements.
"In one year, $1.1 trillion was simply gone and no one
can be sure when, where and to whom the money went. Untold
trillions of dollars are stolen every year and disappear into
off-shore numbered accounts, holding companies and banks without
records."
In the year 2000, $855 billion were "lost" by the
Pentagon—more than the $855 billion in individual taxes
collected by the IRS in 1999.
On September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CBS News and its anchor
Dan Rather reported that the Pentagon had 'lost" $2.3
trillion $mdash; fully one quarter of its budget for the decade.
One trillion dollars represents $1,000 a minute since the
life of Jesus.
Government in America is in the hands of a kleptocracy that
is cannibalizing the infrastructure of our society. Plunder
on this scale is concealed by lies. Iraq, a small country
of 26 million people, has one ten thousandth of the military
capacity of the United States.
A vast lying propaganda campaign was launched in Washington
to justify a war to seize the oil of the people of Iraq. In
the process, what was once an industrial society has been
devastated and workers are now earning as little as 25 cents
a day. The anti-union edicts and banning of collective bargaining
imposed by the old regime under U.S. pressure and now enforced
by the occupation—expose the real agenda.
What is true in Iraq applies to every part of the world.
The drive for permanent war benefits the Pentagon, the oil
companies, the corporations and the banks at our expense.
Working people are the cannon fodder for these wars, sent
to wage war against the working poor of other countries. The
vast majority of Americans have no interest in invading and
occupying other nations so the Pentagon can steal trillions
of dollars and the corporate masters can seize the oil and
natural resources of other nations.
Workers everywhere have the same interest--to control their
own resources to improve their lives. While countless trillions
of dollars have been vested with the military and the corporations
to wage war and make profits, social services were slashed
everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr. summoned a historic Poor Peoples'
March on Washington to declare that the vast arsenal of death
unleashed by the Pentagon was in reality a war on working
people at home and abroad. The time has come to re-ignite
a vast movement of working people for fundamental social change
in America. The time has come to build a genuinely independent
Million Worker March in Washington, D.C., in October 2004.
(Ralph Schoenman is a member of the Million Worker March
Committee).
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