Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 13:36:05 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: Fwd: US Labour Against War website




US Labour Against War, which as formed a couple of
weeks back to focus union opposition to war, now has a
website at http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/ On the
site you can read USLAW's anti-war resolution and the
impressive list of unions that have endorsed it or put
forward their own (ironic that USLAW's resolution is
more radical than the resolution of the supposedly
revolutionary IWW!). 

Reproduced below, as background information, is an
excerpt from a statement produced by Workers Action, a
new US group consisting of supporters of the powerful
Workers Party of Argentina. (NB: I am not a supporter
of Workers Action the Workers Party but I think that
the comments of Workers Action on this subject are
very interesting and probably correct.)


U.S. Labor Against the War 

One important development is the creation of
organization, U.S. Labor Against the War. Comprised of
over 50 trade union activists and leaders, this
important new group promises to bring an important new

element onto the streets to protest this war, the
multi-racial, organized, U.S. working class in trade
unions. This is significant because the even the fake
progressive leadership of the 
AFL-CIO of Sweeny and Trumka are openly supporting the
war along with the Teamsters overseer, Jimmy Hoffa,
Jr. We call on the anti-war movement to engage this
new group and to orient outreach to union 
members, locals, and city and state labor councils. 

The new labor resistance to the war must also start to
break with the coterie of pro-war Democrats who have
been supported and defended for decades by 
the AFL-CIO bureaucracy. We say that the labor
movement must break with Democrats and all parties
which really defend the interests of 
the bosses and begin to make a political party of its
own, beholden to no interest but to the working
people. In addition, a significant and 
growing number of anti-war resolutions have been
passed (SF & LA, Labor Councils, Chicago Teamsters).
These help to embolden labor militants, and provide
the opportunity to push forward toward a class 
struggle approach to unionism. 

Vietnam War: Labor Shackled by Anti-Communist Purges 

During the Vietnam War, unions had just been purged of
communist and left wing activists in the 1950s.
Thousands of anti-imperialist activists were hounded
out of the unions, often out of jobs, and into 
jail, leaving union leadership under the thumb of
ultraconservative strongmen. So right wing was their
agenda that they openly assisted 
the CIA to hamper union activities in Latin America,
and to assist pro-capitalist elements in Eastern
Europe. The unions, led in the 1960s by a vicious
caste of anti-communist bureaucrats, were ill 
prepared to struggle against the slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of Vietnamese by the U.S. with war
atrocities reported in the face of every working class
family with a TV set. These union bureaucrats 
helped to send thousand of young working class
Americans, often black and brown, to their deaths
Vietnam having been lead by a. While not a 
socialist formation or one entirely independent, yet,
of the bosses and the trade union bureaucracy, the
emergence of USLAW is an important crack in the social
chauvinist, pro-imperialist mentality that has been
foisted on the working class for fifty years. 

We must make it clear: The working people have nothing
to gain and everything to lose with this war on the
world. It is the daughters and sons of the working
class who staff the armed services who are forced 
to pay the ultimate sacrifice for oil and empire. We
demand troops out of the Persian Gulf and Mideast. We
say not a penny, not a person to the military. We urge
the USLAW to stage demonstrations in front of 
recruiting stations to halt the draft if is
reintroduced. 

Workers Action Recommends 

This Plan of Action for the Anti-War Movement 

1. Organize workplace committees and trade union
committees against the war. 

2. Labor newspapers against the war should be started
and distributed among rank and file workers and
published particularly in English, Spanish, Arabic,
Korean to mobilize the workers most likely to be 
targeted by the war regime of George Bush. 

3. For a national anti-war conference to be held as
soon as possible, with USLAW and all anti-war groups
which are committed to mass action. This conference
should organize a standing committee to coordinate 
events and actions on a united front basis. This
standing committee should join with international
antiwar bodies build a united response 
against this war, the war against the Palestinians;
and the wars planned against Korea, Syria, Cuba,
Columbia, and Venezuela. 


Workers Action is a Trotskyist group in political
sympathy with the Movement for the Refoundation of the
Fourth International http://www.po.org.ar/. 

To learn more about Workers Action, please contact: 

San Francisco: email sf_adam-AT-rocketmail.com 

Detroit Email: vorps-AT-yahoo.com add your own comments


===="Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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