LOCAL 207 ORGANIZER

On Thursday September 25, when the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) shutdown the schools and rallied by the thousands in Lansing they delivered a left uppercut to privatization. The Lansing rally was aimed at Governor Granholm and her fellow back-stabbing Democrats. The backroom deal hatched by the Republicans, Granholm and Mayor Kilpatrick would have allowed 15 new charter schools in Detroit (150 more statewide) and give Kilpatrick all the real power over the Detroit Public School Board. That plan is now on the ropes.

K.O. Punch. Today we can K.O. this plan to privatize and further degrade our kids’ public education. Charter schools are another takeover/privatization scheme. The DFT and AFSCME Local 345 (Detroit public school janitors and cafeteria workers) have called another rally – pointed directly at our privatizing Mayor Kilpatrick for his continuing roll in this attempted sellout. This rally is endorsed by the City of Detroit AFSCME Presidents. We can stop privatization by linking all the struggles against it, just as we did when we defeated Minergy. The school unions have rightly said that they are fighting against “separate and unequal” education. And city workers’ fight against our jobs being given away to suburban contractors making more money than us is a fight against unequal working conditions for Detroit city workers – it’s the fight for equal pay and equipment with the contractors, equal parks, schools roads, public transportation, and housing in Detroit, and all major cities. It is the fight for civil rights, inseparable from the fight for real integration and real equality.

Defend Civil Rights. Local 207 has played the leadership role among organized labor in the birth of the new civil rights movement, and the victorious 50,000-strong April 1^st Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C. to defend affirmative action. There is no dividing line between fighting for our jobs and for civil rights. The same right-wing, racist Republican state politicians who tried to take over the Water Department have teamed up with California businessman Ward Connerly. Together they are trying to get a referendum on the ballot in Michigan to outlaw affirmative action in education, employment and contracting. We can and must defend our historic Supreme Court civil rights victory for affirmative action by stopping these resegreationists before they get enough signatures to put their measure on the ballot. If we are successful, we will go into our next contract negotiations in eighteen months recognized as the leading union in Detroit, and greatly increasing our chances of winning a decent contract.

Unite to Win. City workers need to come to the Monday rally. Let Kilpatrick know that we are building an alliance with our fellow AFSCME school workers, the teachers, the community and anyone else who truly gives a damn about Detroit’s future. It is this alliance which can defeat all privatization, from charter schools, to Minergy, to Maintenance & Repair, to Service Guards, and set a new course for our city. By standing together with all those who are fighting privatization in its many forms, by taking bold job actions like the teachers did, and by showing that this is a fight for a better quality of life for Detroiters, we become an unbeatable force. This is something YOU can and must do to save your job. COME TO THE RALLY!

Kilpatrick Can Be Beaten. Last Thursday’s events blew away that dusty old lie that says “we can’t win, so why fight” – a lie spread constantly by AFSCME Council 25 and the whole union bureaucracy in this country. Last Thursday proved that if we fight we win. If city workers had actually mobilized around our contract and did staged a strike, the Mayor would have given us a better deal, just as he was forced capitulate to the DFT.

We Are the Voice of the Community. The teachers’ strength is that they represent more than the fight for their jobs. They were standing up for the whole community, particularly Detroit’s youth, our city’s living future, like they did in their 1999 strike. When we fight against privatization and contracting out of city jobs, we too are fighting for our city. And those politicians who would give our city away piece-by-piece are enemies of Detroit. That obviously includes the Republicans, but more and more clearly includes the Democrats as well. Our unions must mobilize independently of these two political party millstones that are dragging us into poverty and increasing real-life segregation every day. Today’s rally is just such an independent mobilization for Detroit’s future. BE THERE!