On April 4th we will be marching to demand that the state government pass an Emergency Moratorium to Stop W-2 Suffering. We will demand an immediate end to W-2 "sanctions" !We will demand a halt to all evictions! We will demand an end to cutting off people’s lights, gas, heat, water or phone! And we will demand that not one more child be taken from their parents or grandparents because of W-2! Poor people in every neighborhood -- but particularly in the communities of color -- are facing an emergency situation and we are demanding emergency relief!
Saturday, April 4th will be the 30th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. On that day in 1968, Rev. King was in Memphis to show his support for striking sanitation workers. What more fitting way could we pay tribute to his memory than to come out that day and march in support of the women who have been forced into the W-2 program of modern-day slavery?
On April 4, at 1:00 pm, we will gather outside the Clinton Rose Senior Center at 3045 No. Martin Luther King Drive. We are asking you to join us. March for the mothers who have had their checks cut off. March for the families evicted from their homes. March for the children in apartments with no heat or lights. March for the grandparents being told to put their own flesh and blood into foster care. March for the unemployed men collecting cardboard and cans to survive. March for the youth who have no hope for the future. March for the elderly afraid they will lose their homes. March for the students forced to leave college for lack of money. March for the mother who can’t afford to give her kids any of what they want and hardly any of what they need.March because it’s time to stand up and say NO!
On Feb. 26, AJRC and W-2 Workers United sponsored a Community Forum on W-2. The following are excerpts from a talk given by W2WU organizer Angie Lewis. Angie is a single working mother and the daughter of a W-2 worker.
In 1987, when Gov. Tommy Thompson first took office, there were 98,296 families on welfare in Wisconsin. By July of last year there were 35,853, down two-thirds. Thompson calls this a success, but he doesn’t say what happened to the people.On January 23rd, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on a study conducted by the Employment and Training Institute of UWM. This study found that only 1 in 6 families that left welfare in Milwaukee County in 1996 were earning more than poverty-level wages three months later. More than a third were working full-time at minimum wage jobs. More than a third showed no earnings at all. Some of these people may have left that state, but what about the rest? Thousands of them lost everything they had, including their homes.
Back in 1988, there were 1,337 evictions carried out by the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department. Last year there were 3,251 -- an increase of 243%. Nearly four times that many left under court order without police escort. Most evictions are in the central city, but they are happening across Milwaukee County. According to Sheriff's Department detectives quoted in the January 18th Journal Sentinel, many more people are doubled and tripled up in apartments meant for one family. They call these crowded apartments "W-2 stacks" and attribute them to the effects of W-2. We say housing is a right and no one should be evicted!
On October 28th, three little brothers, Marquis, Dwight, and Travis Allen, died in a tragic fire in their home on North 6th Street. The house was heated with a space heater because Wisconsin Gas had shut off their gas. There were 11 people living in the house. Their mother was in the W-2 program. In Wisconsin the law says the gas company can’t cut you off in the middle of winter, but these people had already had their gas cut off. There should be a law that no one gets their gas cut off, their lights, their water.
According to the Institute for Wisconsin's Future, last September there were 123,377 people in Wisconsin looking for low skill jobs but there were only 40,790 jobs available in the state. That means that two out of every three workers won’t find a job. In northern rural Wisconsin, and in Racine and Kenosha, three out of four won’t find work. In Milwaukee, only one out of seven people looking for work will find a job. Of those who do find work, 83% will earn only poverty-level wages. A single parent with two kids would have to earn $25,907 a year to be considered earning a living wage. There are very few of these kinds of jobs in this state and there will be between 44 and 73 people competing for each one of them. This fierce competition helps to drive down the wages of all workers, especially the working poor. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, the working poor will see their wages drop by about 7% to 10% as a result of so-called "welfare reform". What about job training and education? According to the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, of the 15 fastest growing occupations in Wisconsin, all but four require substantial training or work experience. Those that don’t require much training pay the lowest wages, such as child care and nursing aides.
The state legislature had approved funding in the 1998-99 state budget for education and training for W-2 participants, but Tommy Thompson vetoed this provision in October. Now participants cannot finish their GED, complete specific job related training or receive technical training as part of their work time. As a result of W-2, thousands of women who were taking courses at UWM, MATC, Waukesha Technical or other schools have had to leave school because of W-2. Instead of being able to learn the kinds of skills that would help them find decent, family supporting jobs, they are being locked into low-wage, dead end jobs that only make money for their employers. In fact, state officials admit that over half the people on W-2 will only get jobs in the so-called "community service" category, where they are just working for their regular welfare check while their employer gets their labor for free. This is slave labor, pure and simple. And that’s really the purpose of W-2: to make big money for the bosses and agencies that hire W-2 workers. That’s why some of the biggest businesses in the County have representatives on the board of the Private Industry Council that oversees W-2 -- companies like the Marcus Corporation, Aurora Health Care and the 175 businesses represented in the Greater Milwaukee Committee. In addition, a lot of W-2 workers are going to wind up working for the government, replacing regular union workers. Milwaukee County is supposed to come up with 2,000 community service jobs. Which county workers will be replaced with this free labor? And how many of them will themselves wind up on W-2? W-2 was developed as a means of supplying cheap labor for Wisconsin businesses. And now W-2 is being exported to the rest of the country and even beyond.
What can we do about all this?
We can fight back. We need your help. And W-2 workers need all of us
On March 8th, women members and friends of AJRC and W-2 Workers United co-sponsored a celebration of International Women’s Day. Chaired by Janice Thurman of W2WU and held at the Milwaukee Enterprise Center, the event featured presentations on various women’s struggles both today and in the past.
Kate Ludwig explained the history of the holiday, how it grew out of a march by women textile workers in New York City in 1907. The march was attacked by the police and a year later, on March 8th, another march was held to commemorate the struggle of these women workers. In 1910, the Second Socialist Women’s International Conference, meeting in Copenhagen, chose March 8th as an "Annual Women’s Day" to mark the struggles of all working women. From there, it grew to an event celebrated all over the world.
Janice Thurman’s talk was entitled "The Struggles of Black Women, from Yesterday to Today". In addition to relating historical struggles of women like Sojourner Truth, she also read a moving poem by her daughter Latasha about the struggle of Black women today for dignity and respect.
Betsy Perrin, a long-time solidarity activist, related experiences from her recent visit to Chiapas, Mexico. She told of the many difficulties facing the predominantly Indian women of the region and how they are playing critical roles in the people’s movement for justice.
Angela Koenen, a young Native women from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, read a personal message to the meeting from Mahtowin, co-leader of the United American Indians of New England. The meeting ended with a presentation of the video "If They Come for Me in the Morning", an account of the November 1997 attack against Native Americans and their supporters during the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Mass. Mahtowin was one of the 25 people arrested during that attack.Despite severe winter weather, the meeting drew a good crowd of activists and friends and was very favorably covered that night on Channel 6 news. While the male members of AJRC supported the event in a number of ways, this was the first AJRC meeting organized and led entirely by women members and marks an important step forward in our development.
Special Thanks...... to the Milwaukee bands FREE STYLE and RECONSTRUCTION, who donated their talents January 23rd for an AJRC fundraiser. The event was held at The Tasting Room and raised some badly needed funds. We hope to be holding a similar event in the near future, so watch for fliers. And be sure to try and catch these great bands when they play their regular gigs in town. You won’t be disappointed.
Since January 1 of 1995, the people of Chiapas, Mexico, most of them Indian peasants, have been waging a struggle for economic justice, dignity and self-determination.Here in Milwaukee, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of Mexico has been organizing support for their struggle. The Committee’s members are all young Latinos committed to the liberation of their people. They hold meetings, fundraisers, protests and travel to Chiapas as international observers to the actions of the Mexican government. They also support the struggles of people here in the U.S.
The Committee can be reached at: PO Box 04533, Milwaukee, WI 53204. Phone: (414) 389-1341.
AJRC took part in a march in downtown Milwaukee Feb. 28th to oppose the threat of a new bombing war against Iraq. The event was sponsored by Peace Action/Milwaukee, Pledge of Resistance, Casa Maria Community and many other groups. It coincided with a national day of actions initiated by the International Action Center of New York. AJRC had also been participating in weekly Wednesday vigils held by Peace Action, the Pledge and others.
Since the U.S.-led Gulf War ended seven years ago, over one-and-a-half million people in Iraq have died. According to various international bodies, including UNESCO, these deaths were due to the murderous sanctions imposed at the instigation of the U.S. after the war. Half of those who died were children under the age of five. It is these sanctions that are the real "instruments of mass destruction."
AJRC believes that neither the U.S. nor Great Britain, its closest ally and the former colonial power in the region, has any right at all to dictate to the people of Iraq what they should do with their oil, who their leaders should be or how they should conduct their affairs. There is no legitimate role for the U.S in the Middle East. In the event of any renewed bombing of Iraq -- or any U.S. military action anywhere in the world -- Milwaukee peace activists will gather the following day at 4 pm outside the Federal Building at 3rd and Wisconsin. We urge all our members and friends to join them. We need money for jobs, not for war!