_Working people need to fight back against austerity _
The U.S. economy continues to stagnate with almost no economic growth or job creation more than three years after the great financial crisis of 2008 and more than two years after the recession officially ended in 2009. The official unemployment rate is still over 9% nationally, and millions of workers who have stopped looking for work are not included in this count. Even worse, the Obama administration projects unemployment to stay above 8% for all of 2012, which would be four years of near double-digit unemployment.
Now that ten years are passed since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, we would do well to look back and take note of some of the causes and consequences. We need to sum up and draw lessons. Immediately following the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, the Bush administration began cynically manipulating events to launch an expansive and ongoing war on the peoples of the world and an escalating campaign of repression here at home under the guise of a ‘war on terror.’ This two-pronged approach to reasserting the power of the U.S. empire at the expense of working and oppressed people is continuing, and in some ways accelerating under the Obama administration.
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following resolution to save the public postal service by the Letter Carriers Union, Golden Gate Branch 214.
The huge procession began with 400 members of Bricklayers Union No. 6, all dressed in white aprons. They were followed by a band and then the members of the Manufacturing Jewelers union. The jewelers marched four abreast, wearing derby hats and dark suits with buttonhole bouquets. They all carried canes resting on their shoulders (similar to the way infantry officers carry swords when on parade.)
In order to preserve democratic appearances, power brokers may limit repression to intimidation and creating divisions within dissident ranks. Surely, those targeted with the threat or reality of jail time, or cowed by abusive, freewheeling investigations do remember. Yet activists who are spared or members of the general public either never knew, or may forget.
*Fight Back News Service is circulating the following letter from U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on the repression directed against anti-war and international solidarity activists.*
Plan would cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations while cutting Social Security
The Bipartisan Senate Proposal is being pushed by the so-called Gang of Six – Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), and Mark Warner (D-Virginia). Four of them were members of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform which was unable to pass a proposal to cut the Federal Budget deficit. This proposal has been welcomed by President Obama, who said that he endorsed the thrust of the proposal.
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following resolution that was adopted by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) Executive Board in July 2011. More statements supporting the anti-war, international solidarity and trade union activists under attack by the FBI can be seen at StopFBI.net.
