We Can Win! Workers Action, March 1, 2010

We are engaged in a life and death struggle to save public education and social services. If the current budget cuts remain, then accessible quality public education and social services, along with the jobs tied to them, will essentially be destroyed.

However, we are in a historic position to not only force a retraction of the budget cuts but win full funding for all levels of public education while restoring and expanding social services because unions, students, staff and faculty are united more than at any other time in our history. In unity there is strength. We can win!

But in order to ensure that the unity of our movement holds firm, we must include as a central demand that the state raise revenues by taxing the rich and taxing the corporations, NOT WORKING PEOPLE! In an act of true solidarity, we must insist that enough money be generated to address the needs of ALL sectors of our movement, while not allowing one sector to gain at the expense of another (for example, students vs. building and construction workers). If revenues do not increase sufficiently, we will become fractured as we fight among ourselves for the crumbs.

The rich and the corporations can afford to pay:

The New York Times reported, “tax sheltering has cost states more than one-third of their revenue on corporate taxes…” (July 16, 2003).

The New York Times also reported: “The 400 highest-earning households in the United States averaged nearly $345 million in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier…” “Each of the top 400 earning households paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the I.R.S. began tracking the data in 1992…” “The statistics underscore ‘two long-term trends: that income at the very top has exploded and their taxes have been cut dramatically.’…” (The New York Times, February 17, 2010).

We cannot rely on the Democrats, who routinely accept huge corporate donations and, in return, do corporate bidding. Last February, while they were cutting, slashing, and terminating social programs, California Democrats in the state legislature voted to give corporations $1 billion in new tax breaks while raising taxes on the rest of us in five different ways. (Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2009).

We are not alone. More and more unions are going on record demanding progressive taxation. The San Francisco Labor Council, for example, recently passed a resolution (September 28, 2009) declaring that “as a high priority” it would “participate in building a broad based movement for (1) fair and progressive taxation in California, (2) majority rule and the end to the 2/3 vote requirement for taxes (3) adequate funding for public services…”

We are not simply fighting for our own interests when we defend public education and social services. We are fighting for the interests of everyone. The data is “overwhelmingly convincing.” Investing in education is “the best way to address the nation’s economic problems.” (The New York Times, August 5, 2004). And we all need social services. But we should also solidify our alliance with working people across the economy by demanding that the Obama administration bail out workers, not banks, by creating 10 million jobs, a program which could easily be funded by taxing Wall Street, as Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, has recently proposed. There would also be plenty of money for jobs if the U.S. ended both wars.

Let us demand real change and insist that California operate in the interests of the majority. And the majority of the people of California, who are ordinary working people, want taxes raised on the rich, for a change, not on themselves. Polls have consistently indicated this desire, and the people of Oregon, who voted in favor of taxing the rich and the corporations, confirmed it. For this reason we endorse the California Democracy Act. Majority rule means that Democrats should not have the right to continue their support of the corporate agenda by lowering corporate taxes, cutting social services, and raising taxes on the rest of us.