Assault on unions is an attack on basic civil rights

[babylonsister]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/3935422-452/assault-on-unions-is-an-attack-on-basic-civil-rights.html

Assault on unions is an attack on basic civil rights

JESSE JACKSON [e-mail] Feb 22, 2011 02:06AM


It looks like “Cairo has come to Madison,” said conservative Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, as 50,000 citizens took over the state’s Capitol building. He got the spirit right, but the location wrong. In Madison, folks wearing Packers jerseys stand together with folks wearing Bears colors. Madison is this generation’s Selma, the epicenter for the modern battle for basic human rights.

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The right to organize, to bargain collectively and to strike are basic human rights enshrined in international law. To this day, the U.S. champions independent free trade unions across the world — even as Walker and his ilk seek to crush them at home. With the U.S. suffering more extreme inequality than Egypt, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United giving corporations and billionaires a free pass to distort our elections, unions are virtually the only counter that workers have. That’s why the right has targeted unions; that is why every citizen has a stake in their survival.

In Wisconsin, the public employees accepted the harsh concessions demanded by the governor, but rejected the attack on their basic rights. Teachers, nurses and other public workers stood up. Democratic state legislators left the state, blocking the effort to ram the legislation through. Students, ministers and progressives rallied to their side. The demonstrations are now entering their second week. Across the country, just as in the civil rights movement, people of conscience are holding vigils and protests in support. This is a Martin Luther King moment.

The effort by the governor and his right-wing allies to divide private sector workers from public sector workers is an old trick. In the South, race was used to divide. The tricks perfected in the South — right-to-work laws, barriers to unions — are now coming north.

Madison, like Selma, is not a major city. It isn’t Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. And it isn’t Cairo. It is the epicenter of the battle for America’s democracy, and it is as American as Lexington, Concord, Gettysburg, Montgomery and Selma.

[demigoddess]

1. what I don't get--if free enterprise is so good why do they

need to run their companies by changing the rules through government. Essentially they are using government to benefit their bottom lines. And it seems like they are incapable of running their companies without the assistance of government. Without the subsidies, tax breaks, incentives.

[lunatica]

2. I can't believe this is sinking! kick and rec'd

Jesse Jackson makes an excellent point.

[TheKentuckian]

3. K&R