Dear Friends,
Here’s wishing you and yours a revolutionary New Year in 2014!
From the vantage point of the window of the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) National Office in Seattle, it would have been hard not to notice the fresh winds of dissent gaining strength
Locally, a series of hopeful events have taken place in recent months. Seattleites chose a Trotskyist socialist for the City Council, Kshama Sawant. Boeing workers voted down a lousy contract that their international union leadership was pushing hard. Just weeks later, Metro Transit employees told management and their own local union president to take a tentative agreement full of concessions and shove it. In the nearby town of SeaTac, low-paid workers won a ballot measure guaranteeing a $15.00 per hour minimum wage. And FSP’s initiative sparked international protests demanding the freedom of Seattle-area resident and indigenous leader Nestora Salgado from a prison in Mexico.
All this warmed the hearts of radicals, feminists, and working-class champions in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
The question is, do these victories signal a stepping-up of broader resistance to the bosses’ attacks in the new year? Are we in for a battle royal with the 1 percent as more and more workers and the downtrodden realize their only option is to fight? Seattle FSPers in the thick of these struggles have reason to be optimistic.
Former FSP National Secretary Henry Noble is a retired Boeing employee and member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). At a recent “Vote No” rally, Noble urged IAM Local 751 members to stand their ground. The workers he talked with were looking past their own paychecks to defend the rights and pensions of future workers. They defied a multi-pronged pressure campaign to accept the contract from the union’s international officers, the governor and the media. All caved in to Boeing’s blackmail: surrender to these concessions, or we will move production out of state. This fight isn’t over by a long shot as the international has forced a second vote on virtually the same offer for January 3.
Linda Averill is a past FSP candidate for Seattle City Council and an organizer of Shop Floor 587 — a rank-and-file caucus of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587. She notes that many Metro Transit workers took inspiration from the Boeing workers in saying no to similar givebacks. Shop Floor 587 Caucus is organizing both to prevent massive cutbacks in service for poor and working folks and to reject dangerous contract provisions that would increase speedup on the job and create working conditions ripe for accidents and injuries.
The effort to free political prisoner and indigenous feminist Nestora Salgado also struck a nerve in the Pacific Northwest, because her fight is about indigenous and working people taking control of their destiny.
Salgado is a U.S. citizen originally from the state of Guerrero in Mexico. When she traveled back to her hometown of Olinalá, a mostly indigenous community, she saw corrupt officials colluding with mining and drug interests to destroy her community. Olinalá residents organized a community police force, as is allowed under federal and state law, and elected Salgado their leader. When they arrested corrupt local officials, Salgado was jailed and the army sent in to smash the movement supporting her.
FSP worked closely with Salgado’s family in Seattle to organize a defense committee. Nearly 100 national organizations and individuals quickly endorsed the campaign and rallied in six cities across the U.S. Actions also took place in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Australia. Strong involvement came from members of the Committee for a Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR), a newly formed regroupment effort between organizations in Latin America and FSP.
The outpouring of support for Salgado is representative of cross-border organizing on many fronts today. Examples are struggles for immigrant rights, justice for farm workers, and quality education and against environmental destruction by energy and mining conglomerates as well as violence and enslavement of women and children.
As the new year begins, the Arab Spring also still needs champions. Together we must find ways to support the brave revolutionaries in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and elsewhere who continue to fight for fundamental change amid civil war, military dictatorships, and forced mass migration.
Political prisoners like whistleblower Chelsea Manning and attorney for the oppressed Lynne Stewart are depending on our support as well. Take a few moments to sign an online petition to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder grant compassionate release for Stewart, who is dying from cancer and mistreatment in a Texas prison. Her only “crime” was defending the right of a jailed client to communicate to the outside world.
From where we sit, the coming year is definitely a time to take radical action! Ahead of us is a world of opportunities, and behind us are the winds of change we’ve felt this past year. There is no better time than now to join the Freedom Socialist Party and become part of the international revolutionary movement for human liberation.
Doug Barnes
National Secretary
Freedom Socialist Party
[email protected]