Dear Friend,
It’s official – our national conversation has changed in the past month. From endless droning about deficits and austerity measures, now the talk is about the real target: Corporate Greed. The reason we have high unemployment? Corporate Greed. The reason working class wages have stagnated while the top 1% incomes continue to rise? Corporate Greed. The reason the Pentagon budget gets a boost every year while the social safety net gets cut? Corporate Greed. We have the Occupy Movement to thank for changing the conversation in our country. Now it’s up to us to take action to make change happen.
Action #1 – Continue Unemployment Benefits Half In Ten, the campaign to cut poverty in half in ten years, has this online action to urge members of Congress to protect jobless benefits. For insight on organizing the unemployed, check out this People’s World article: Chicago unemployment activist’s message of hope.
Action #2 – Repair and Modernize America’s Schools All students are entitled to a safe and healthy learning environment. We need immediate action to turn crumbling schools into healthy, high-performing learning environments for students and educators. Please sign this petition to President Obama from the American Federation of Teachers.
Action #3 – Support S. 1769, the Rebuild America Jobs Act The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has set up an action to get your senator on board to support S.1769 to put $58 billion dollars of infrastructure spending in areas such as roads, bridges, transit, and aviation.
Action #4 – No Cuts to Social Security or Medicare Progressives United has an online tool that allows you to tell super committee Democrats to say no to any deal that cuts Social Security or Medicare.
We Are the 99%! The AFL-CIO has taken another step to embrace the Occupy Movement by creating their own We Are the 99% website. Also, CPUSA Chair Sam Webb has an article on the movement at the People’s World: Occupy: embrace the new, build the movement.
Economic Indicators Anyone who wants to understand the enduring nature of Occupy Wall Street protests across the country need only look at the first official data on 2010 paychecks, which the U.S. government posted online last month.
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Scott Marshall is a vice chair of the Communist Party and chair of its Labor Commission. Scott grew up in Virginia where he first became active in the civil rights movement in high school, working on voter registration and anti-Klan projects in rural Southern Virginia and Tennessee. He was also active against the war in Vietnam.
Scott has been a life long trade unionist and was active in rank and file reform movements in the Teamsters, Machinists and Steelworkers unions in the 1970s and '80s. He was co-chair of the Save Our Jobs committee of USWA local 1834 at Pullman Standard in Chicago and active in nationwide organizing against plant shutdowns and layoffs. He was a founder of the unemployed organization Jobs or Income Now (Join), in Chicago, and the National Congress of Unemployed Organizations in the 1980s.
Scott has worked for the Communist Party since 1987 when he became the district organizer for the party in Illinois, a post he held until he was elected chair of the National Labor Commission in 1997. Scott remains active in SOAR (Steelworkers Active Organized Retirees). He lives in Chicago.
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