Robert McEllrath, ILWU President
1188 Franklin Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 775-0533
(415) 775-1302 FAX
Dear Brother McEllrath:
New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) salutes the ILWU's
Pacific Coast May Day Shutdown to Stop the War in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
From the beginning, Bush & Co. have sought to justify this war for oil
and empire with phony claims about "fighting terrorism," finding
"weapons of mass destruction," and spreading "democracy." Despite
overwhelming rejection of its policies at the polls, the
administration has steadily escalated its war in the Middle East.
This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and
Afghanistan, but also arming and financing Israel's war on Lebanon and
its increasingly brutal slow-genocide of the Palestinians, launching a
proxy invasion of Somalia, bombing Pakistan, and threatening to attack
Iran.
As in all such wars, ordinary working people pay the price. In Iraq
and Afghanistan, this war has killed more than a million people,
caused more than 50,000 G.I. casualties, promoted civil war, cost at
least $1.2 trillion and pushed the economy into crisis — with no end
in sight.
At home, the administration continues to attack civil liberties, the
Arab-Muslim community, undocumented immigrants, Katrina refugees,
people of color and labor.
Yet this is a bipartisan war. Congressional Democrats -- including
senators Clinton and Obama -- have given Bush every penny he has asked
for. They have refused to filibuster war spending (which requires only
41 Senate votes) and won't even promise to get out by the end of the
next presidential term in 2013. At most, they call for "redeployment"
to maintain U.S. control of the region.
A generation ago, a war ended when Vietnamese resistance and the Black
freedom movement ignited a grassroots working class mutiny in the
military, auto plants, ghettos and barrios, against what Martin Luther
King Jr. accurately called "the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today . . . my own government."
It will take a similar mutiny to end this war. The ILWU has a proud
tradition of work stoppages to protest South African apartheid and
U.S. death squads in Central America. Your May Day action shows how
workers -- both in and out of uniform -- have the collective power to
end this war, bring the troops home now, and get the U.S. out of the
Middle East.
Issued by NYCLAW Co-Conveners
(Other affiliations listed for identification only):
Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300
Michael Letwin
Former President, UAW Local 2325/Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys
Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; N.E. Regional Coordinator, Million
Worker March Movement