Perhaps to bolster the “radical” image he lost in his contract sellout, President Toussaint pressed the Local 100 Executive Board to pass a resolution opposing the US’s planned war against Iraq. The resolution was subsequently published in Local 100 Express and says the war is for oil, which is true, as far as it goes.
The Local also endorsed the Feb. 15 New York City demonstration against the war, although it did little to publicize it to the membership or mobilize them to attend. Accordingly, few joined the tame, modest Labor Union contingent of which Local 100 was part.
Together with hospital workers’ union 1199 President Rivera and other union misleaders, Toussaint feebly protested the Bloomberg/cop/court prohibition of any march. At a union news conference on February 12, Toussaint correctly said that the prohibition was an unconstitutional attack on democratic rights, and that attacks on democracy were attacks on unions and vice-versa. The assembled union hacks denounced the two court decisions banning a march and bravely vowed ... to appeal to yet another court. They guaranteed that the demonstration would be “peaceful and legal.” In other words, they knuckled under to the capitalist mayor, cops and courts. The appeal is pending.
Had the union leaders instead announced that they would lead a mass march defying this unconstitutional ban, they could have rallied the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators behind them and backed the authorities down. Of course, “Incarnation of Mike Quill” Toussaint might have risked a day in jail for such a principled stand, but that seems a small price to pay to prevent the mass slaughter which Toussaint has mouthed so many words against.
So why didn’t Toussaint even raise the possibility of such mass action? For the same reason that the TWU Local 100 resolution wrongly calls the attack on Iraq “Bush’s war.” It’s not only a war of the blatantly anti-working class Republicans, it’s also the racist, imperialist war of most of the Democratic Party, including such Toussaint favorites as Senators Clinton and Schumer – who also arm Israel and cheer it on in its slaughter of Palestinians. So Toussaint and other supposed “left” union leaders oppose the war on Iraq in words, while making clear to their Democratic buddies that they’ll do nothing serious to disrupt the profits of their capitalist masters. And the resolution says nothing about the sanctions and weapons inspections imposed on Iraq by other big powers like France and Germany through the joint imperialist front, the United Nations.
A real chance to oppose this racist imperialist war was TWU Local 100’s contract fight. Had we mobilized and struck, we could have put a big crimp in the war plans, as well as won a big wage hike and all our other demands and retained and improved the No Layoff clause. There, too, Toussaint was more concerned to preserve his alliance with the Taylor-Law-loving scum known as the Democratic Party.
Not all the demonstrators accepted the capitalist government’s ban on marching. Thousands of demonstrators, including supporters of RTW, got disgusted with the cops’ steering us away from the demonstration and took over 2nd Avenue. They marched as far as they could and stood their ground in a prolonged confrontation with riot cops on foot and horseback.
The will to fight is there, the masses are ready to come out. It’s the sellout union leaders who hold us back and keep our capitalist, imperialist oppressors secure. But for how much longer?