A Labor Issue: Fight Police Brutality id WAA29173; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 22:27:53 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the October 16, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- NEW YORK: LABOR, COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS RAISE VOICES VS. RACIST POLICE By John Catalinotto New York Anger over the August police torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima here shows no signs of subsiding. Several marches brought thousands of people into the streets to demand an end to police terror in the Black and Latino communities. Now activists are moving to coalesce forces from the labor movement and the communities in the struggle against police brutality. That effort brought together hundreds of community activists and class-conscious labor unionists to protest racism and police brutality on Oct. 3. A meeting at the Local 1199/Martin Luther King Labor Center drew local union officers and rank-and-file organizers who demanded organized labor take a stand against police brutality. Louima was nearly killed in August when police in Brooklyn's 70th Precinct raped and beat him after arresting him. Trudy Rudnick, president of Teachers Local 3882 representing clerical and technical workers at New York University, co-chaired and opened the meeting. To cheers, she announced that her union had recently won a good contract after a yearlong fight with the NYU bosses. "Unions have a long tradition of fighting for social justice," she said. "But they should not get bogged down in economic issues alone. "Many of the workers at NYU are African American or Latina women," Rudnick said. They "worry about their children, especially their sons, getting hauled in by the cops and beat up." Rudnick chided the New York Central Labor Council for inviting Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to march in the Labor Day Parade and those union leaders who have endorsed him in this fall's mayoral race. Giuliani is a staunch backer of the racist cops. Rudnick said, "The AFL-CIO needs to reach out to organize the new sectors of the labor movement--women, African American, Latino, immigrant workers." IT'S A LABOR ISSUE Larry Holmes, co-founder of the workfare-organizing group Workfairness, which called the meeting with the National People's Campaign, co-chaired the meeting and laid out the evening's political theme. He gave greetings to Abner Louima and said, "He has not suffered in vain." Referring to the Rev. Al Sharpton's strong showing in the September Democratic primary, he said the attack on Louima "sparked such anger against police brutality and the pigs who tried to kill him that it even changed the character of the mayoral election." However, he asked, where was organized labor in the marches that followed the Louima beating? There were a few local unions, but there should have been a mass labor presence. Holmes said the "anti-police brutality struggle is a labor issue. Unions should have organized hundreds of thousands of workers to protest in the streets, not simply to do the right thing, but because they need us, we need them, in order to win." Holmes explained that "young people in the community, even those not yet working, can identify with unions if the unions take a stand on police brutality. This is just what labor has to do to successfully organize." Holmes said militant trade unionists have to "understand the problem and then turn the situation around," so that the unions take their rightful place in the struggle against the racist cops. Holmes called for unity among all progressive groups to fight racism and police brutality, despite any ideological differences. He said everyone should take part in a national day of protest against police brutality set for Oct. 22. Workfairness Co-chair Vondora Jordan called workfare "union-busting slavery. If workfare is not abolished, there will not be a union movement. We refuse to be slaves, cheap replacements for union sisters and brothers." Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 100 Organizer Jos, Guzman said: "Police brutality hits the African American, Latino and immigrant communities the hardest. The police are abusing people in the community--and this includes sexual abuse. "They do not represent a judicial body," he said. "They have no right to condemn anyone, especially when they use racism to judge the person." POLICE DEFEND CLASS RULE Mail Handlers Local 300 President Larry Adams thanked Abner Louima and the nurse who first reported his injuries because their courage "has given life to the fight-back movement in this city." Adams said unions are "in contradiction with the police-- this is a fundamental class issue. The movement is one for social justice in the work place and in the community. Police brutality oppresses our whole class." He explained that "everything the police do is brutality--legal violence- -done to defend class rule. They are not just `bad apples' but the agents of state repression." Adams read a resolution his union passed opposing police brutality. Ben Dupuy, co-director of the weekly newspaper Haiti Progress, said: "`Police brutality' is too abstract to describe what happened to Abner Louima. We should call it torture. It is the concrete expression of racist ideology, which is a basic part of the capitalist ideology of divide and conquer." King Hector of the Latin Kings and Queens described his group as the "new kids on the block" in the protest movement. The authorities and media are trying to demonize them, he said. "When they incarcerate us," he said, "they will use us to take jobs away from you." Miguel Maldonado, who organizes immigrant workers, told the audience about the marches scheduled for Oct. 12 to demand amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Ray La Forrest of AFSCME District Council 1707 called the police "an institution defending the system of injustice. This contradiction can only be solved by creating a different kind of society." African American activist and former political prisoner Herman Ferguson told the crowd about Jericho `98, the movement to organize a march on Washington on March 27, 1998. The mass march will demand the U.S. government admit there are political prisoners and release them all. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. 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