4/8/02

Labor action days bring anti-war message

Ideas from anti-war and pro-labor groups blend at Thursday's labor rally

By Jessica Coomes
Daily Kent Stater

Messages of concern for workers' rights mingled with the cold air and anti-war ideas Thursday during a labor rally in the Student Center plaza.

Thursday was the National Student Labor Day of Action. A student group -- Coalition for a Humane And New Global Economy -- extended the national event over three days, addressing local and global labor issues. The events started Wednesday and culminated Friday with a benefit concert.

At the Thursday rally, members of different political groups spoke.

Political science professor Tim Newman, a member of the Kent Living Wage Coalition, said people whose jobs exist no matter what -- like janitors and city workers -- aren't paid enough money to live off of.

His organization is working to get the city of Kent to pay its employees an hourly rate that allows workers to earn at least the basic cost of living.

"These people are here to stay, and they deserve to make a living wage," Newman said.

SARAH THOMPSON | DAILY KENT STATER David Rovics, a traveling musician, played for a small crowd at the Labor Rally last Thursday.

Deb Garner, from the Women's Movement Network, said women and blacks make less money than white men because they're relegated to low-paying jobs, something Garner said is "attributable only to discrimination."

"Pay equity means the criteria employers use to set wages must be sex- and race-neutral," she said.

Garner said women make 23 percent less money than men in the United States and 50 percent less worldwide.

"Their labor goes unrewarded and unrecognized," she said.

Chris Fox spoke for the Kent State Anti-War Committee and expressed concerns about migrant labor. He said migrant workers can't form unions because they have to be citizens and usually aren't. This keeps them in low-paying jobs because they can't fight for better pay.

"These immigrants are not illegal and forced to accept meager jobs," Fox said.

Ken Calkins, president of the Kent State professors' union, also stressed the importance of organized labor. He said Americans have enormous differences in wealth that don't exist in other parts of the world because those other countries have strong organized labor movements.

"The concern of the labor movement must also have with it a concern to end this war," Calkins said.

Angela Beallor, of Student Anti-Racist Action, read a poem she wrote about the war in Afghanistan. She broke down in tears when she read about imagining the "screams of people dying." She finished the poem repeating: "It isn't fair."

"Collectively punishing a whole people for the acts of a group of people is not just," Beallor said.

Fox said the government works to control certain parts of the world to benefit big businesses, and American businesses in foreign countries are only successful because the military protects them.

Revolutionary Communist Party speaker Lee Thompson read about exploitation of workers worldwide from the party's "programme," a document that calls for social change.

"Look in Thailand, the Philippines and many other places," Thompson read off the document, "where girls as young as eight or nine years old are coerced into working for slave wages in toy factories, or else forced to become sex-toys themselves, being used and abused by traveling businessmen and soldiers."

She also said Americans should look at international issues like these through the eyes of the oppressed people.

Thursday was chosen for the national events because April 4 was the 32nd anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed while supporting sanitation workers on strike. This is the second annual event.

E-mail: jcoomes@kent.edu

Historian shares anti-war message based on lessons taken from past conflicts

When historian Howard Zinn spoke Thursday night in the ballroom, he said he was surprised he's never been to Kent State, considering the effect the 1970 shootings had on his life.

"When you really examine closely one event in American history, so many other things in the world are illuminated by that one event," Zinn said.

In the fall of 1970, Zinn was teaching at Boston University, and on the first day of classes, he handed out a syllabus that mentioned the Kent State shootings. Parents came with their children the first day, and after one class, a father came up to Zinn and said his daughter, Allison Krause, was killed May 4. Allison's sister was in Zinn's class.

"It was a special moment in my teaching life," Zinn said.

One of the events on the National Student Labor Day of Action, Zinn's presentation to an audience of about 400 touched on labor issues and anti-war messages.

The local events, which lasted three days, were sponsored by the Coalition for a Humane And New Global Economy.

Zinn said the important stories of U.S. labor struggles aren't always taught in history classes.

When he learned about the transcontinental railroad when he was in school, Zinn said his teachers left out the laborers' aspect of the story.

"It's a very rich and complex history of the labor movement in this history," Zinn said.

As a teacher, historian and activist, Zinn said lessons from history should be taught, remembered and used to solve current problems.

He said people believe the United States is a classless society, and hard work leads to success. But Zinn said even though his working-class family worked hard when he was growing up, his family had nothing to show for it.

"There's no relationship with how hard you work and how successful you become," Zinn said.

Zinn was in the Air Force during World War II, and he said that experience showed him war corrupts everyone involved, and so he opposes the war in Afghanistan.

He said he was horrified Sept. 11, and he said he was horrified again almost immediately when the president said the country was going to war.

"Are we trying to match these dead with another dead?" Zinn said. "Are we trying to match one terrorism with another terrorism?"

Zinn said the United States should stop being a military superpower if it wants to stop being the target for terrorism. He said the government should spend military money on world health issues, like the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Zinn received a standing ovation when he finished speaking.

Activist musician David Rovics played at a labor rally Thursday afternoon and before Zinn's speech.

In one song, Rovics showed the thankless jobs of minimum wage workers by hypothesizing what it would be like if they all went on strike.

"There was no one flipping burgers. All the grills were cold," Rovics sang. "Onion rings were in their bags. Fries were growing mold."

Rovics songs also had anti-war messages.

"There will be no more terrorists once we kill their kids," Rovics sang sarcastically, in reference to the U.S. bombings.

"Hang a flag in the window," the song continued. "All hail to the chief -- follow the leader and suspend your disbelief."

Labor poet Merle Mollenkopf, Kent resident and retired ditch digger, read poetry about labor issues before Zinn's speech.

"These are my credentials as a labor poet," Mollenkopf said, as he held up his callused hands.

He said workers receive "slave pay" -- whatever is left over after bosses and owners take their salaries out of the pot.

"Long ago, the American dream was choked out of me in the dust of the job," Mollenkopf read in one of his poems, "Labor Day 1994."

E-mail: jcoomes@kent.edu

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