Worker Center V-P Raps War in Iraq & War at Home

Speech given at Montpelier Anti- War Demonstration Jan. 20th - rough transcript:

I’m Dawn Stanger. I’m a Teamster who works up at UPS and I’m Vice President of the Vermont Workers’ Center. The Workers’ Center usually struggles locally, trying to gain power for Vermont’s workers, but we can’t ignore global issues. We are an affiliate organization so many unions in Vermont support our work.

In the past the labor movement pretty much supported U.S. wars. But the military consumes half of our tax dollars, and gets our brothers and sisters killed, and we knew that Iraq had nothing to do with the crimes of 9/11. It was obvious that this would have a huge effect on our friends and co-workers who’d be called up. So we joined a group called U.S. Labor Against the War back in January of ‘03’. Shortly thereafter, Vermont’s AFL-CIO also affiliated with USLAW and there’s now hundreds of union locals across the country calling for Troops Out Now.

We tried to stop this war since before the start. We brought union officials from Iraq to tour the U.S. after the invasion, and they stopped in Montpelier and Burlington to talk to Vermonters about their hopes for their country. Saddam suppressed union organizing and killed activists, so they were glad he was gone. Their Iraq, the Iraq they remembered pre-invasion, was secular, religions easily intermarried, women could openly walk the streets and have jobs. Iraq’s labor movement has a long history, like ours, and shares the same fears; healthcare, education, retirement, privatization, poverty - the list goes on. Anyway, USLAW got the national AFL-CIO, the big union kahunas, to pass a resolution at their convention last year calling for the rapid return of our troops, and insisting on their proper care.

Death and violence still hang over Iraq, post-Saddam, and union leaders are still being murdered but their fears have multiplied a hundredfold. They say that they still have a chance to get back to that secular society, if we get out now. They see us as the cause of the sectarian violence. And USLAW sees no choice now but for the Democrats to cut off the funding. Bush is crazy, offering us an escalation. After that election. No way. Not one more life. Not one more dollar, but what it takes to bring them home safely. Iraqis voted for those who promised to get us to withdraw. Yet almost immediately, those they elected were singing a different tune. What happened, they must wonder.

We don’t wonder in the labor movement. Welcome Iraq, to democracy straight from the corporate boardroom. Shameless war profiteering, rampant corruption, millions of tax dollars missing - disappeared, while working families struggle with multiple deployments. More than 3000 deaths, 22,000 injuries, and terrible estrangement. 56,000 soldiers’ marriages have dissolved. Soldiers’ spouses have called our workers’ rights hotline, trying to hang onto jobs while suddenly juggling single parenthood. But there’s no law to cut them a break because U.S. laws protect business, not workers. Where unions are healthy, democracy is healthy. Unions are hurting in Iraq and here.

Congress created a fund to take care of the heroes of 9/11, workers who raced into Ground Zero before and after the EPA said it was safe. Then we discovered the truth; it wasn’t so safe and the EPA knew it. But they wanted Wall Street up and running. 32,000 workers are still suffering serious health effects, and their funds are running out, while we spend billions in Iraq. ¼ of this war’s budget would have fixed Social Security for 75 years. We maintain that Iraqis and us have the same enemy – greed.

And the conclusion is that we all need to struggle together, workers in every country. We need to try to make Reverend King proud of us as we root out racism and classism. We need to figure out a way to fix our democracies before we fly around the globe spreading bs. We’ve got imperial aims and we can’t even take care of ourselves, Katrina being the glaring example. I can’t believe they’re now talking about expanding the military – both parties. No. Not until the corporations get out of our government. They’re about to sign agreements to privatize Iraq’s oil - agreements meant to last 30 years. We‘re building military bases there, one of the things that has been acknowledged by the “terrorists” as a cause of terrorism. And we’re threatening Iran now with air strikes. Madness. Being done because someone, somewhere, sees a profit in it.

Bush is not the problem, though, but the symptom. The real disease is corporatism. A country that’s run by corporations is not one that cares about Vermonters who enlist for schooling, or because they can’t find a decent job. And the biggest risk is the moral and financial bankruptcy of the country. Where is the truth? We need to investigate how we got where we’re at, and pass laws to ensure we don’t get here again.

Individuals need to get active, agitate and talk and learn from each other until we’ve got our democracy fixed, not just the troops home, though that’s our first desire. We should not engage in any foreign ambitions, other than diplomacy for a long, long time, unless attacked, so that we can devote tax dollars and time into fixing the mess that it makes when corporations run our government and run workers into the ground.

We join Iraq’s workers in calling for justice in both countries. We urge you to join the Vermont Workers’ Center and help fight for justice here. The only changes that have happened to better this country have been forced upon the rulers by mass action from the rank and file below. So let’s go. Pass those town resolutions. Talk to your neighbors about it. Call Congress. Head to DC next weekend and just plain agitate ‘til the troops are home and the criminals prosecuted. Peace!