Texas Labor Against the War

On December 23, 2011, U.S. Labor Against the War sent this solidarity statement to the unions in Iraq.

Dear Comrades in the Iraqi Labor Movement:

U.S. Labor Against the War recognizes that the end to formal U.S. military occupation of Iraq does not end continuing U.S. interference in the internal affairs of Iraq. The Maliki regime has given
permission to the U.S. to continue to operate unarmed Predator drones from Iraqi
bases, purportedly to provide the Turkish government with intelligence on the
activities of PKK fighters operating in the mountains of Iraq. These can be
armed and redeployed elsewhere in Iraq whenever the U.S. desires.

Many thousands of private mercenary security forces will remain and the U.S.
government has constructed the largest embassy in the world to manage and direct
its continuing interference in Iraqi affairs. It may redeploy many of the
departing troops to bases in Kuwait and other areas in the region, positioned to
reenter Iraq on short notice if U.S. interests appear to be threatened.

The Maliki regime is a political creation of the U.S. occupation, not a
legitimate expression of the democratic will of the Iraqi people. Already
parties that had been cobbled together to provide Maliki with a majority in
Parliament have abandoned him as he aggravates sectarian tensions for partisan
advantage. As a predictable outcome of the U.S. divide and conquer policies that
pitted religious, sectarian, ethnic and regional interests against one another,
Iraq will now likely see escalating sectarian conflict. The responsibility for
this belongs first and foremost to the U.S. government.

Predatory multinational corporations have not abandoned their plans to gain control over
Iraq’s abundant oil and gas reserves. Therefore, the struggle by the Iraqi
people to regain full sovereignty over the nation’s natural resources will
continue because the neo-liberal scheme to privatize the Iraqi economy has not
been abandoned.

The struggle to establish human and labor rights will continue because under U.S. occupation, those rights were a fiction, and were and continue to be regularly violated. The Iraqi government has ignored the country’s own constitution, which calls for the adoption of a basic labor rights
law that conforms to international standards, and continues to enforce the 1987
antiunion decree of the dictatorship, adding even more repressive edicts in an
effort to cripple the Iraqi labor movement and suppress the movement for true
democratic rights. In this the U.S. and Maliki regime will fail because the
Iraqi labor movement will not forfeit its rights. The will of the Iraqi people
for a true democracy and Iraqi sovereignty will prove stronger than the schemes
of a corrupt regime that serves as a willing pawn for U.S. interests.

The U.S. debt to Iraqis will not be paid by the withdrawal of U.S. military forces.
We consider it our honor and duty to stand in solidarity with you, to hold our
government to account, to demand that our government abandon its interference in
the internal affairs of Iraq, to struggle in support of your national
sovereignty and human and labor rights, and to demand that reparations without
strings be paid for the horrific damage inflicted on Iraq and its people.

The U.S. military was driven from Iraq by the iron resolve of the Iraqi
people to be free of all foreign domination, supported by the solidarity of U.S.
and other antiwar forces around the world which finally made it politically
untenable for the occupation to continue. The work of U.S. Labor Against the
War, founded nine years ago in January in response to the threat of the illegal
U.S. invasion, does not end with the departure of U.S. troops. The bonds of
solidarity USLAW forged with the Iraqi labor movement through nine years of
struggle will continue.

We extend to you and the courageous labor movement and working people of Iraq our heartfelt wishes for peace, democracy, justice, security and sovereignty in the new year.

Yours in solidarity and struggle,

USLAW Co-convenors: Kathy Black, Gene Bruskin, Bob Muehlenkamp, Brooks Sunkett, Nancy Wohlforth, Michael Zweig

Staff: National Coordinator Michael Eisenscher, National Organizer Tom Gogan, Administrative Coordinator Adrienne Nicosia

On behalf of the Steering Committee and 195 labor organizations affiliated with U.S. Labor Against the War

July 19, 2011

This evening the Austin AFL-CIO Council [Central Labor Council] was privileged to have members of the Fort Hood Operation Recovery team as guests and presenters.  Visitors to the CLC meeting were Aaron Hughes, Scott Kimball, and Sergio Kochergin of Iraq Veterans Against the War; Lori Hurlebaus of the Civilian Soldier Alliance; Alice Embree of the Fort Hood Support Network (who is also a member of the Texas State Employees Union).

Aaron spoke of the need for solidarity among soldiers, veterans, and workers.  Soldiers are workers–they are public employees; and our unions have many veterans as members.  Many soldiers come from union families and go back to unions when discharged.  But the unemployment rate among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is 21% (12% more than the national average).  The rate is even higher among African-American and female veterans–about 30%.

Many soldiers suffer from war trauma and nonetheless are redeployed.  Suicide rates among active-duty troops are twice as high as that of the civilian population, and veterans with PTSD are 6 times more likely to attempt suicide.  20% to 50% of all service members deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  One in 3 women in the military are sexually assaulted.  1 in 3 soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq say they can’t see a mental health professional when they need to, and nearly 20% of service members are taking some kind of psychiatric drug.

Aaron pointed out the huge expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This money is needed at home–and we owe veterans the benefits and health treatment they need.

Most of the CLC delegates signed the pledge of support for Operation Recovery that our visitors passed around.  It states:  “I pledge to support the Operation Recovery campaign to the best of my ability.  In a war where soldiers are being injured faster than the military can treat them, I will work alongside veterans and service members to end the cycles of trauma and abuse.”  The pledge sheet further explains:  “Join Iraq Veterans Against the War and Civilian Soldier Alliance in our effort to stop the deployment of troops suffering from Military Sexual Trauma, Traumatic Brain Injury, and PTSD.  By signing our pledge, you agree to do what you can to help defend the rights of soldiers to heal and to hold accountable those who are responsible for deploying traumatized troops.  As the Operation Recovery campaign unfolds, we will be calling on you to help in a variety of ways.”

There was discussion from the CLC delegates, several of whom are veterans.  A Teamster rep described their program to get members back into jobs when they get home from the military.  A member of AFSCME indicated she has personal experience with veterans’ mental health problems and wants to get a group she works with in touch with Operation Recovery.  There was also interest among the delegates in U.S. Labor Against the War–USLAW brochures were available as well as Operation Recovery literature.

For more TxLAW stories on Fort Hood Operation Recovery, see http://txlaboragainstwar.org/2011/07/08/killeen-ivaw-its-audacious-and-a-little-crazy-what-were-doing-at-ft-hood/, http://txlaboragainstwar.org/2011/05/27/killeen-ivaw-operation-recovery-action-at-ft-hood/, and http://txlaboragainstwar.org/2011/07/17/killeen-under-the-hood-update-july-2011/

For LOTS of information about Operation Recovery, to sign the pledge, and to donate, see http://www.ivaw.org/operation-recovery

Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/operationrecovery
For more on the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, go to http://www.civsol.org/

–Leslie Cunningham, July 21, 2011

New Priorities Meeting, Washington DC, October 3, 2010 from Mike Prokosch on Vimeo.

see also: http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=23246

How can we move our money from the Pentagon to our communities, fund the jobs and services we need?

On October 3 2010, some 26 peace, racial and economic justice organizations came together and founded a network to support the long-term organizing it will take. This video features short statements about challenges we’ll face: breaking down the silos between movements, building power at the grassroots, organizing for the long term, focusing on what matters to our neighbors, connecting the economic pain of today with the ‘justice economy’ that’s possible.

Speakers are: Michael Eisenscher and Michael Zweig, USLAW; Phyllis Bennis, IPS; Alan Charney, US Action; Steve WIlliams, POWER and GGJ; Aaron Hughes, IVAW; Judith Le Blanc, Peace Action; Lisa Savage, Code Pink and Bring Our War $ Home; Joanie Parker, 1199SEIU and the Boston Coalition to Fund Our Coalition – Cut Military Spending 25%; Michael Leon Guerrero, Grassroots Global Justice.

LEARN MORE

Most of you know about the U.S. Social Forum this year.  Many people from San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and other Texas cities are going.  Some are presenting workshops. USSF’s website is http://www.ussf2010.org/ or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1828946493&v=app_2344061033#!/event.php?eid=111695722194402&index=1

U.S. Labor Against the War is sponsoring 2 workshops:  “Building solidarity with working people and unions in Iraq and other U.S. war zones” (Thurs., 6/24, 1 – 3 pm) and “Talking to workers and unions about war, military spending and U.S. foreign policy” (Friday, 6/25, 10 am – 12 noon).

Here’s a small excerpt from the USSF’s statement of beliefs:

Labor writer Steve Early connects a lot of dots, as state workers in Vermont accept layoffs and pay cuts while their family members and friends get shipped out to Afghanistan.

He stays in a Holiday Inn where “Although only in her 30s, [my waitress] had the weary, weighed-down look common among the working poor struggling to survive in northern New England’s low-wage, service economy. Her cousin, the father of three, has been deployed overseas multiple times already. That’s why, she informed me, the war is “a sore personal subject” for her. “It’s ridiculous,” she declared. “We have people living on the street, who’ve lost their jobs, can’t pay for their homes. And now we’re sending more people over there to fight somebody else’s battles?”

Earlier this month, the “People’s Republic of Burlington” had a busy weekend mustering its “troops” for active duty on several fronts, one at home and the other abroad.

On Saturday, Dec. 5, two hundred labor and progressive activists gathered at the University of Vermont to plan more effective resistance to job cuts and contract give-backs demanded by recession-ravaged employers. The title of their conference –“Turning Crisis Into Opportunity: Building Democratic, Fighting Unions and Defending Public Services in Hard Economic Times”–was almost as long as the list of domestic challenges its participants face.

The very next day, on the same UVM campus, another group of working class Vermonters assembled to be fighters and defenders of a different sort. They were the first 298 of nearly 1,500 National Guard members who will be sent from here to Afghanistan between now and March. As reported in the Burlington Free Press, their unit’s largest deployment since World War II was celebrated at an “emotional ceremony,” attended by friends, neighbors, and family members at an indoor tennis court. Flags were waved, speeches were made, a military band played, and “farewells were the order of the day.”  To keep things on an upbeat note, one Guard officer proclaimed, with great enthusiasm and to much applause: “The Green Mountain Boys are coming!”

Similar irrational exuberance, in 1775, led Ethan Allen to attempt a disastrous invasion of Quebec, which remains, to this day, part of a foreign country unoccupied by the U.S. Allen’s Taliban-like frontier home-boys did much better fighting royalist intruders from New York  and, early in the Revolutionary War, seizing Fort Ticonderoga. In the run up to the UVM labor gathering, worker skirmishing with modern-day Tories was not going quite as well on the Vermont-side of Lake Champlain.

Joblessness in the Green Mountain state–while running lower than in the rest of the northeast–has been high enough to leave its unemployment  fund nearly broke. The region’s largest telecom, Fairpoint, just declared bankruptcy, throwing 2,500 workers into an uphill fight to defend their contract and customer service quality. (For the back-story there, see “Broadband Redlining Targets Rural America,” The Nation, May 14, 2007, about the debt-laden Verizon sale to Fairpoint that has, as predicted, landed the latter in Chapter 11.)

And then on Dec. 3, the Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA) tentatively agreed to an unprecedented 3 percent pay cut for its 7,000 members, followed by a salary freeze. (Some VSEAers are currently campaigning for membership rejection of this unpalatable deal.) Already 580 state jobs have been eliminated through lay-offs or attrition, but Republican Gov. Jim Douglas says he still faces a projected $150 million state budget shortfall next year.

In the Free Press, Douglas Administration official Neal Lunderville called the VSEA capitulation “a common sense approach that should serve as a blue-print for teachers, municipal workers, and others who receive a paycheck from tax-payers”—a clear warning that they’re next in line for pay or job cuts too, like their public sector counter-parts all around the country.

At the Dec. 5 UVM conference, rank-and-file militants and campus socialists had a different message for Douglas. Summed up in  the rousing chant that ended the final session, it was: “They say give-back, we say fight-back!” The difficult question that local teamsters, teachers, telephone workers, nurses, and state employees grappled with throughout the day was how to make that standard lefty bargaining position actually stick. Their strategy discussions were aided by Labor Notes, the 30-year old, Detroit-based labor education and research project, which publishes a monthly newsletter for “union troublemakers” of all stripes.

In the fifteen-minute talk I gave to the group, which included many local stalwarts of U.S. Labor Against The War (USLAW) and the Vermont Progressive Party, I  tried to connect some dots, related to the back-to-back events on the same campus. I noted that everyone’s employer is chanting the mantra that times are tough, money is short, and there must be shared national (or local) sacrifice. In Vermont, that apparently means working class people must, in disproportionate numbers, fight and die in Afghanistan, foot the bill, as tax-payers, for a $680 billion a year Pentagon budget (including the soon-to-be-increased $130 billion annual cost of two wars), and endure cuts in the pay, benefits, jobs, or public services that they and their families depend on.

What’s wrong with this picture, I asked? The powers-that-be (or would-be) are saying, in their usual authoritative fashion, “there is no alternative!” But there is, in fact, an alternative. To avoid a 3 per cent pay cut for 7,000 state workers, we could shut down the war in Afghanistan for twenty minutes and, at the current rate of U.S. spending there, raise the $2 million that Jim Douglas seeks from the VSEA that way. To close the governor’s entire fiscal year 2011 budget gap would, of course, require the additional “sacrifice” of diverting 24-hours worth of Afghan war spending to help keep Vermont state government afloat for another year.

The following day, down at the Holiday Inn in South Burlington, where some National Guard families spent the weekend saying private good-byes, the logic of my brilliant anti-war math was not lost on a non-union waitress named Dawna. (For the record, there is no such thing as a “union hotel” in Vermont.) As she brought pancakes and syrup to my table late Sunday morning, everyone but Dawna was transfixed by the big flat-screen TV hanging next to the bar in the restaurant. There, we could watch real-time coverage of the National Guard deployment ceremony being held just up the road at UVM. All the Holiday Inn wait staff could recognize people they had served, in the same room, just a few hours earlier.

Now, these “citizen soldiers” who had been their breakfast buffet and overnight guests were among those standing stiffly at attention, wearing field caps, camo, and combat boots. On the platform in front of them, a parade of local politicians–pro- and anti-war alike, including Douglas, U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy, plus U.S. Rep. Peter Welch—praised their patriotism and devotion to duty. Douglas has been a chicken hawk since his days as a late 1960s Middlebury College classmate of mine, when he was an outspoken, Richard Nixon-loving Young Republican. So from his usual perch, far from the front-lines, the governor assured the soldiers and their families that “while you are doing your duty, I promise you we will do ours, here on the home-front”—presumably by slashing state programs or UI benefits?

Meanwhile, my waitress Dawna was simply disgusted by the whole televised spectacle. “I’m tired of seeing a lot of guys marching around in uniforms,” she confided. “I wish they’d turn that off and go back to the ‘relax your muscles’ show”—a bit of self-help programming for sufferers of lower-back pain that was on the TV when I entered the restaurant. By this point in her Sunday morning shift, Dawna did not seem particularly relaxed herself, in her white shirt, bedraggled tie, and sagging black waitress apron. Although only in her 30s, she had the weary, weighed-down look common among the working poor struggling to survive in northern New England’s low-wage, service economy. Her cousin, the father of three, has been deployed overseas multiple times already. That’s why, she informed me, the war is “a sore personal subject” for her. “It’s ridiculous,” she declared. “We have people living on the street, who’ve lost their jobs, can’t pay for their homes. And now we’re sending more people over there to fight somebody else’s battles?”

Observing the somber family gatherings in the hotel over the weekend had clearly not been easy for some Holiday Inn staff members. Mistaking one mother and daughter in the dining room for a non-military family, Dawna had asked the child how she liked the hotel pool. “I’m here to say goodbye to my Dad,” the little girl sadly informed her.

“I’ll feel better later on, when I get off work,” Dawna assured me, as I paid for my breakfast. “You know—‘out of sight, out of mind, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger?’”

At the same time, she didn’t seem very convinced about the truth of those two oft-repeated but oddly conjoined phrases. And one thing was certain: for some of the guests she had served earlier in the day, America’s troop build-up in Afghanistan will prove fatal, while leaving Dawna’s state, nation, and fellow workers a lot poorer and not any  stronger.

Steve Early worked for the Communications Workers of America in New England for 27 years and, before that, was  Vermont Field Secretary for the American Friends Service Committee. He is a longtime supporter of Labor Notes and author of “Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home” from Monthly Review Press). He can be reached at [email protected]

Call to the Third USLAW National Assembly

December 4-6, 2009 – Wyndham O’Hare Hotel, Chicago, IL

6810 North Mannheim Road, Rosemont, IL 60018

An International Call to Labor for

World Wide Peace with Economic and Social Justice

in a Time of War and Economic Crisis

Featuring:

• Iraqi Oil Worker Union Leaders

• Pakistani Women, Youth & Labor leaders

• Scholars and Policy Experts on Afghanistan

• Antiwar Trade Unionists from Across the US

• Iraq & Afghan War Veterans

We are at a turning point in US History. In 2008 the labor movement had a moment of triumph, playing a critical role in electing Barack Obama and a majority Democratic Congress. In 2009 we find ourselves still in the middle of a devastating economic crisis with wars and militarism standing between working people and the peaceful just world we seek and deserve.

This is a moment of both peril and promise. USLAW is challenged to develop a program and organizing strategy that will expand and deepen the influence and effectiveness of antiwar forces within the labor movement, while continuing to play a leading role within the broader antiwar movement.

This is the context in which USLAW will convene its third National Assembly in Chicago, December 4-6^th.

The Assembly is open to delegates from USLAW affiliates as well as individual associate members. It is the highest decision-making body of USLAW where we debate and adopt resolutions on a range of issues that establish USLAW policy and strategic direction for the next three years. The Assembly will elect the leadership that will guide the organization, and has the authority to make changes in the By-Laws that govern USLAW.

In October 2003 at the historic founding Assembly of USLAW, the delegates adopted a visionary Mission Statement that calls for:

• A just foreign policy
• An end to U.S. occupation of foreign countries,
• Redirecting the nation’s resources from inflated military spending to meeting the needs of working families
• Supporting our troops and their families by bringing the troops home now
• Protecting workers’ rights, civil rights, civil liberties and the rights of immigrants
• Solidarity with workers and their organizations around the world

In the Fall of 2009, the need to organize based on these principles is greater than ever.

IRAQ

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars, more than 4300 US fatalities and an unknown number of Iraqi deaths and personal trauma, the people of Iraq and the US have little to show for it. Violence and economic devastation abound. More than 130,000 US troops and an even greater number of private contractors remain on Iraqi soil. Iraqi workers still have no right to union representation, as the US supported government clings to Saddam’s 1987 anti-union labor law. Global corporations hover over Iraq like vultures waiting for the opportunity to seize control of Iraqi resources

AFGHANISTAN

In Afghanistan, after 8 years of war the US faces another quagmire of death, dollars and destruction, with the added elements of drug lords, massive corruption and untold human dislocation and suffering. This is now President Obama’s war – a war that threatens to undermine both Obama’s and labor’s domestic agenda, much as Vietnam did to LBJ’s.

PAKISTAN

Meanwhile Pakistan, a country with 173 million people ruled by a corrupt regime with a nuclear arsenal, is threatened with dangerous destabilization as the US has turned it into part of a military battlefield in what is now a regional war.

MILITARISM

The giant sucking sound you hear is the US military budget of 2/3 of a trillion dollars that consumes 58 cents of every tax dollar as it drains away precious resources from meeting human needs.

Labor can never have a sustainable full employment economy, healthcare for all, an environmentally responsible energy policy, and humane immigration policy while billions of dollars and countless lives are squandered on unwinnable and unnecessary wars that make us no safer but make a small elite very rich. The Iraq and Afghan wars will distract from and overwhelm any possibility of implementing a progressive agenda.

USLAW has had a powerful effect in the labor movement since its formation in 2003, helping to alter how organized labor views foreign policy. But our mission is far from over. USLAW is the only voice of workers that brings them to the forefront in linking the struggle for a just society to the struggle for a just foreign policy.

U.S. labor needs a larger, more powerful and influential USLAW.

Our challenge is to refocus and re-energize our movement, to more clearly make the connection between the economic crisis, a national economy that operates in service to the military-industrial complex and a militarized foreign policy that puts our country at odds with most of the people of the world. We need to figure out how to make foreign policy a legitimate subject of discussion and an important concern to be addressed by our labor movement – in much the same way concern for the environment and a sustainable economy is now understood to be a legitimate focus for organized labor.

Our task is to expand the vision of the labor movement so that unions serve as more than instruments for reshaping our workplaces. They must become instruments for reshaping our world.

Come to Chicago to help

US Labor Against the War

Chart a Path to Peace with Justice

For registration and hotel reservation information,

Visit www.uslaboragainstwar.org/09Assembly

Tell Hillary Clinton to speak out for labor rights in Iraq.

SIGN THE PETITION

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. and Iraqi governments have continued to enforce Saddam Hussein’s 1987 law that bars unions and collective bargaining in all public sector and enterprise workplaces.

Iraqi unions have organized (at great risk and with great sacrifices) but without the protection of a basic labor law, even though the Iraqi constitution requires one and Iraq is signatory to the International Labor Organization Convention on the right to organize and bargain.

Union leaders and activists have suffered harassment, beatings, detention, torture and even assassination.  Union offices have been raided and vandalized by US and Iraqi troops.  Union bank accounts and assets have been frozen.

Through all this, the U.S. government has remained silent.

U.S. Labor Against the War has posted a petition that calls upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as the principal foreign policy representative of the government, to speak out for labor rights in Iraq and press the Iraqi government to respect and protect the rights of workers and unions.

Please take a moment to add your voice to the international movement in solidarity with the courageous unions and workers of Iraq.

When we strengthen labor rights in Iraq, we also strengthen our fight for labor rights right here in the U.S.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

US Labor Against the War www.uslaboragainstwar.org