Close to 200 people took to the streets of Milwaukee April 4th to denounce Wisconsin's welfare program, W-2. The march was called by A Job is a Right Campaign to demand an Emergency Moratorium on W-2 Suffering, including loss of income, evictions, heat and light cutoffs and forced foster-care placements resulting from W-2. The demonstrators included African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, whites, students and children. One contingent had traveled in from Madison to participate.
The protest was also a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 30th anniversary of his assassination. When Rev. King was shot down in Memphis on April 4th, 1968, he was in that city to support Black sanitation workers in their struggle against racism and for workers rights.
W-2 was developed under the sponsorship of the arch-racist Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee. It was fully implemented on April 1 and is being promoted as a model for the rest of the country and even other countries. While state officials say they don’t keep records of what has happened to former welfare recipients who have been "sanctioned" off the program or who never signed up for it in the first place, the number of evictions, utility cutoffs and taking of children into the foster care program has skyrocketed since the program was initially phased in last September.
The April 4th protest was co-sponsored by over 50 community organizations and individuals. A statement of solidarity was sent from Workfairness in New York, an organization that organizes workfare workers and defends them against harassment and discrimination. Workfare workers are similar to W2 workers in Wisconsin.
The march, with signs, banners and loudspeakers, began outside the Clinton Rose Senior Center, proceeded down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and ended in a rally outside the offices of the Private Industry Council (PIC) on West Pleasant St. PIC is a public-private partnership agency that oversees the state's contracts with the W-2 agencies in Milwaukee County. Many business leaders on the PIC board are now directly profiting from W-2 labor.
Rally speakers included Milwaukee County Supervisor James White; Brother Gregory Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 2; Lisa Fenner, a W-2 participant representing the homeless advocacy group Repairers of the Breach; Juanita Hych, a W-2 participant representing the Women & Poverty Public Education Initiative; Rev. Thomas B. Moody, Pastor of Solomon Community Temple and Executive Director of Shalom Zone; Armando Gallegos of Education for the People; Sister Sarah Muhammad of the Universal Human Rights Organization; Jeff Rivera of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of Mexico; Pa Vang, a Hmong community outreach worker; Phil Wilayto, coordinator of A Job is a Right Campaign; and Karen Davis, an organizer with the Auckland Unemployed Workers Resource Center in New Zealand. The rally was co-chaired by Janice Thurman of W-2 Workers United and Kate Ludwig, an organizer with A Job is a Right Campaign. Both Thurman and Ludwig are former AFDC mothers.(Special thanks to Casa Maria for providing the flatbed truck for the rally.)
The protest was covered by all three local network news programs, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee Community Journal, UWM Post, Workers World newspaper and Wisconsin Public Radio. It was also featured on the national CBS news program Weekend Report.
Where were the Unions?
On April 4th, close to 200 people marched down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to protest the W-2 "welfare reform program". There were W-2 participants, welfare rights organizations, students, religious leaders and many more.
But where were the Unions?
Since before W-2 was phased in last September -- on Labor Day, no less -- A Job is a Right Campaign has been calling on the Wisconsin labor movement to organize W-2 workers into unions. We started the organization W-2 Workers United to push this idea. We organized a contingent of W-2 workers in last year’s Labor Day Parade -- the only mention of W-2 that day. We have met with union leaders, invited them to speak at our meetings, wrote articles, talked to the media and more.
On April 4th, the unions were out campaigning for a liberal Democrat, trying to stop the Republicans from taking over the state legislature. The Milwaukee labor movement had 120 people out canvassing door-to-door that day. They lost the vote. More importantly, they missed an opportunity to show solidarity with some of the most exploited and oppressed workers in the city. Almost all W-2 workers are women. In Milwaukee County, most are women of color -- the very people the union leadership says it most wants to organize. On April 4th they had an open invitation to march, to speak, to ORGANIZE. We are deeply sorry they chose not to take advantage of that opportunity.
We’ll try again. And again. And again, until a serious W-2 union organizing campaign is opened up in this city.
Meanwhile, here’s a thought to ponder: according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 72% of all W-2 workers in the county -- almost 10,000 workers -- are now "employed" under the Community Service or Transitional job categories. This means they are being "paid" their regular welfare checks while their employers are receiving absolutely free labor. There are only 70,000 union members in the county. How can union workers maintain any bargaining power with 10,000 free workers being forced onto the job market? If the unions can’t organize W-2 workers out of a simple sense of justice, then do it out of sheer self-survival. There is no alternative: it’s Organize or Die.
For our part, we will continue to fight W-2, to support all labor struggles and to fight to build a fighting union movement, because , now more than ever, An Injury to One really is an Injury to All!
For the past year, a small group of racist thugs has been trying to establish a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Wisconsin. Based in the upstate town of Mercer, this crew has announced plans to try and hold recruitment rallies this summer in Milwaukee and Madison.In a move that came as a surprise to many people, Governor Tommy Thompson has instructed the state authorities in Madison not to grant the Klan a permit to rally on state property. The legal handle he is using is the fact that when the Klan held a rally in Beloit on Dec. 6, they tried to incite the crowd of protesters to physical violence. To our knowledge, this is the first time any governor in the country has taken a position of trying to deny the Klan a permit to rally.
What gives? Has Tommy had a change of heart? Is he now an anti-racist fighter? Hardly. The truth is that the state government in Wisconsin is on such a reactionary roll that it doesn’t need the Klan.
The alliance between the Thompson Administration and the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee has been more than successful in carrying out their right-wing program without the help of non-governmental goons. W-2 is a reality and 10,000 women, most of them Black or Latina, are now providing free labor to Milwaukee-area employers. That’s as close a return to slavery as you can find today. The Milwaukee Public School system is in danger of being taken over by the state, while a parallel, anti-union "charter school" system is being developed in Milwaukee under the leadership of the former school district superintendant, now a Bradley-funded functionary. The state university system’s Board of Regents is now headed by Sheldon Lubar, a member of Bradley’s Board of Directors. This past year UWM actually paid Charles Murray, author of the arch-racist book The Bell Curve, $7,000 to speak on the subject of affirmative action. The recent proposal by the Bradley-funded Wisconsin Policy Research Institute to eliminate parole in the state prison system has just been passed by the state legislature, a move that is likely to triple the state’s prison population. Meanwhile, the Thompson-dominated state legislature is passing draconian, police state-type laws that make the Deep South seem positively liberal by comparison.
The Klan has always functioned as an ally of government, a sort of human pit bull that can be set loose on intended victims when it’s awkward to use the police directly, or leashed in the backyard when it isn’t needed. During and after Reconstruction in the South, the Klan was used by local political establishments to try and terrorize Blacks from using their newly-won political rights. In the Twenties, the Klan helped employers break union organizing efforts. In the Sixties, they were used by state and local governments in the South to attack the Civil Rights movement. But at other times, when it wasn’t in its interest to allow a violent racist movement to develop, the government has acted to curtail Klan activities.
The Thompson/Bradley Machine is so reactionary that Klan activists have evidently gotten the impression Wisconsin would be fertile ground for recruitment. But the governor is telling the pit bull to get back in the yard -- it isn’t needed just yet.
The state government would be right to deny the Klan a permit -- but not because the Klan flipped the bird to some anti-Klan protesters. The Klan should be outlawed because it is a paramilitary, white supremacist organization whose sole purpose is to promote racist genocide. They hold recruitment rallies to win new members to this program. As such, they have no right to exist as an organization and that is the reason why their rallies should be banned.
But don’t expect Tommy Thompson to take that position. The government can never be relied on to stop the development of a racist, fascist movement. Only a united, militant, anti-racist, working class movement can do that. And that’s what we have to build.
A Job is a Right Campaign is working with other anti-racist forces in the city to build a movement to stop the Klan in Wisconsin. Please read our Open Letter to the People of Milwaukee. Ask your union, community group, religious organization or student group to pass resolutions condemning the Klan. Help us put pressure on the City and County to deny a rally permit to the Klan. Build the anti-racist movement!
A delegation of 80 anti-war activists has just successfully challenged the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq. The group, led by Ramsey Clark, director of the International Action Center; Rev. Lucius Walker, founder of Pastors for Peace; and Auxiliary Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, brought almost $4 million work of medicine in defiance of U.S./U.N. imposed sanctions. According to the World Health Organization, the sanctions have resulted in the deaths of over 1.5 million people since the end of the Persian Gulf War. Nearly a third of those who died were children under the age of five. AJRC is planning on sponsoring a member of the delegation to come and report on the trip. For more information, contact the International Action Center, 39 W. 14th St., #206, NY, NY 10011. Phone: (212) 633-6646.