Members Lobby For Economic Justice
02.05.2008
UAW activists visited Capitol Hill today
to meet with their representatives and senators and discuss issues confronting
working people.
But before taking to the Hill, they heard from Sen. Claire McCaskill,
D-Mo., who said this year’s elections are about economic justice.
She called the budget the president sent to Congress yesterday “a
work of fiction,” and said it doesn’t 
include
funding for the Iraq war.
“He doesn’t even want the American people to realize the
economic problems that come from us being stuck in Iraq.
“He has made his priority extending the tax breaks to the top
one percent of wealth in this country,” she said, while cutting
spending on domestic programs, including education.
“It is the most cynical and inappropriate budget that this president
has ever sent to us, and it will not pass.”
McCaskill said most Americans don’t realize that the United States
is borrowing money from Mexico to help fund the war Iraq.
“Now let’s just think about that. We are borrowing money
every month, not just from Mexico, but from China, from Japan,”
she said. “This is bad, because, I don’t know about you,
but I don’t want to negotiate trade with the guy who holds the
mortgage on my house!
“We have to realize that the economic strength of this nation
is more important, in the long run, to our ability to protect Americans
from harm than any weapon systems we can buy. And that’s why this
election is so important.”
Charlene Davis, president of Local 551 at Ford’s Chicago Assembly
Plant and a delegate to this year’s CAP Conference, said universal
health care is a key to achieving economic justice. Her daughter and
son-in-law both lost their jobs - she worked for a temporary medical
staffing agency, he at a car dealership - so Davis and her husband,
also a UAW member, are caring for the couple’s three children.
“My granddaughter, when she was two years old, was so sick she
could barely breathe. And we would take her the hospital and they would
treat her for a couple hours and kick her out because she didn’t
have insurance for her. Now with insurance she’s doing 100 percent
better,” said Davis.
“I think anyone who doesn’t think it’s a big problem
should try and walk in the shoes of someone who doesn’t have health
insurance.”
CAP delegate Pete Miller of Local 12, who works at St. Vincent’s
Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, says the American Dream has been lost. “My
parents came from middle-class backgrounds and they were able to go
to college. But will their grandchildren be able to do that?”
He cited the sub-prime lending problem as one of many economic injustices
that needs to be addressed. “We just had to refinance our house
and the value went down because three houses on our street were foreclosed
on,” said Miller.
“There’s a huge disconnect between what’s going on
in Washington and what’s going on in the rest of America.
“That’s why we’re here this week. We’re going
to bring back the American Dream.”
Local 1413 activist Leslie Hinshaw and other Region 8 CAP delegates
called on Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., during the afternoon’s Hill
visits. Hinshaw works at the an automotive electronics plant in Huntsville,
Ala. She said the plant had 3,500 workers before NAFTA was enacted and
now employs only 700 people.
“We’re in a fight to survive,” said Hinshaw. “Bad
trade agreements have decimated labor. And I think we need to put an
end to bad trade agreements until they’re fair to workers.”
