Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Please Join Us in a Million Worker March.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10, recently passed a resolution proposing a million worker march on Washington in 2004.

Sunday, October 17, 2004 [updated from the 16th] is the date for this march. This mobilization is being proposed in response to the attacks upon working families in America and the millions of jobs lost during the Bush administration and with the complicity of Congress. The working class has not suffered such hardships since the Great Depression.

We are encouraging everyone to have the attached resolution adopted by your membership or organization. We are also asking that your organization start a Million Workers March Committee to mobilize organized/unorganized labor and our community and religious allies in your area, ultimately merging with a National Committee to be formed at a later date. Finally, we are asking for a financial contribution from your organization to be sent to the address below until a national Committee is created.

The Bush Administration and Congress's focus of placing the acquisition of capital and the quest for profits above the needs of working people is undermining the economic security of working people and the nation as a whole.

Now is the time for organized/unorganized labor, the interfaith and community organizations to show solidarity and demand that all elected officials address the needs of working people. As working class people, we know more than any others the difficulties and limitations we face both in our communities and workplaces. We shall therefore be representing ourselves during this march, independent from all politicians, while putting forward to the entire country, our program for the betterment of America's majority working population.

While we are in the early stages of planning this action, we are urging organizations to join us in making this march a reality. We need you and your organizations help. The crises we face is severe. By mobilizing and uniting organized and unorganized labor with our community and religious allies we will be able to more effectively stop the attack on working people and improve our living and working conditions

Please contact:

MILLION WORKER MARCH COMMITTEE
ILWU, Local 10
400 North Point
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 771-2028
Email: millionworkermarch-AT-comcast.net

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DEMANDS
We Seek to Secure:

- Universal single-care health care from cradle to grave that ends the stranglehold of greedy insurance companies and secures health care as a right of all people in America.

- A national living wage that lifts people permanently out of poverty.

- Protection and enhancement of Social Security immune to privatization.

- Guaranteed pensions that sustain a decent life for all working people.

- The cancellation of all corporate "free" trade agreements, including NAFTA, MAI and FTAA.

- An end to privatization, contracting out, deregulation and the pitting of workers against each other across national boundaries in a mad race to the bottom.

- For workers' right to organize and for a repeal of Taft Hartley and all anti-labor legislation.

- Funding public education in a crash program to restore our decaying and abandoned schools with state of the art school facilities in every community.

- Funding a vast army of teachers to end functional illiteracy in America and unleash the talent and potential of our abandoned children and adults.

- Launching a national training program in skills and capacities that will enlist our people in rebuilding our country and putting an end to both the criminalization of poverty and the prison-industrial complex.

- Rebuilding our decaying inner cities with clean, modern and affordable housing and eliminating homelessness in America with guaranteed housing and jobs for all.

- Progressive taxation that increases taxation on corporations and the rich while providing relief for the working class and poor.

- An end to the poisoning of the atmosphere, soil, water and food supply with a national emergency program to restore the environment, end global warming and preserve our endangered eco-system.

- Creating efficient, modern and free mass transit in every city and town.

- Repeal of the Patriot Act, Anti-Terrorism Act and all such repressive legislation.

- Slash the military budget and recover the trillions of dollars stolen from our labor to enrich the corporations that profit from war.

- Open the books on the secret budgets of the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies in the service of corporations and banks and the pursuit of imperial war on the poor everywhere.

- Extend democracy to our economic structure so that all decisions affecting the lives of our citizens are made by working people who produce all value through their labor.

- An aggressive enforcement of all civil rights and a national education campaign and mobilization against all racist and discriminatory acts in the work place and in our communities.

- Amnesty for all undocumented workers

- Increase in federal funding for the Arts in public schools

- For a democratic media that allow labor and all voices to be heard and oppose monopolization and union busting of media workers.