Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 07:10:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: The Organizer <theorganizer-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: MIM replies to Matt on burger-flippers


This is interesting but shows a tremendous amount foolishness on part 
of this MIM thing. MIM seems to have never visited Pittsburgh PA where 
thousands, tens of thousands of Allegany county residents, most of whom 
are white in their 50s, working at K-Mart and "flipping burgers" after 
giving their lives to LTV or US Steel Corporation. They're not going 
ANYWHERE up and ladder. Its clear MIM members don't work in manufacturing.

Where I work, surely a priveldge sector of the working class, in a 
power plant in San Francisco, most Black workers are high seniority and 
have more secure jobs than the lower paid lower seniority white 
workers. This is certainly an exception to the working class in the US 
in general but is not unheard of. This is a victory for 
pro-affirmitive action workers in the union.

My only point is that the white workers I work with have NO expectations
of "moving up" into a white collor job, especially the bosses in the US 
for the past 15 or so years have gone after aristocracy of the labor 
movement as much as the oppressed sector. This attitude by MIM that a 
white worker could "resonably expect" to move up into a white collor 
job shows that the MIMites have had their eyes closed for the last 20 
years about what is going on in this country.

It is also important to point out that independent and class struggle 
unions in developing countries, the major victims of US imperialism, 
IDENTIFY 100% with workers in this country seeing their struggle 
against the IMF and World Bank as the SAME as our struggle in the US. I 
could get lists of hundreds of unions from Bangledesh to Mexico who 
support the struggle of workers in the US (and visa-a-versa) and who 
REJECT the anti-working class "third worldists" of the MIM (not that they've 
ever heard of a MIM or anyone like them).

David Walters,
IBEW 1245



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