Metro-Justice President's Address - Metro-Justice of Rochester, Annual Meeting 2010

(Rochester & Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation)President’s Address
Metro-Justice of Rochester Annual Meeting

January 30, 2010


Last year this time we were excited, we were hopeful, and we were ready for change.  

Who could blame us?

But lets imagine for a moment, what we’d be thinking right now if John McCain was our President, or if Randy Kuhl was still in Congress.

I think we should take stock in that.  We worked hard for many years and paid a high price to stop the advance of the extreme right, and we did it, and we are all the better for it. My nieces and my god children will be better for it.

And there has been some significant accomplishments this past year across the country.  I had to print out a list from Whitehouse.org just to be sure.

But we are not satisfied. We have not gone as far enough or fast enough toward the change we can believe in. The far-right, at having been stopped dead in their tracks, has come back at us with everything its got, from tea-baggers, to radio talk show hosts, to filibusters, and as many other varieties of hate-filled nuts they can find.  

So now what?

I’ll seek some help from the late Howard Zinn, who said:  “I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King.because King believedthat you cannot depend on presidents, and you cannot depend on elections and voting to solve your problems. People themselves, organizing, demonstrating, clamoring, they are the only ones who can push the President and push Congress into change.  And thats what we have to do now with Obama.”  (Howard Zinn on Democray Now, May, 2009)

Thats what we must do! We must act, not moan, not lament Obama and the other politicians being what they are, what they have always been. We must do what people have always done to make change, to right an injustice, they made it necessary for those in power to listen and to respond.

So let’s talk about Metro-Justice.  Its been a very hard year, in a lot of ways.  Our funding has been hit drastically.  Due to the economy we lost the RACF grant that we used for our voter mobilization and push back work. The statewide education funding has been severely cut, and our members are suffering.  Some have had to give less and some have had to hold off contributing until things get better. Many of you spoke with members, who believe so much in what we are doing, but are dealing with layoffs, fixed incomes that need to stretch and competing needs for help from many other worthy organizations struggling just as we are.

All that said, we remain strong and independent because the overwhelming majority of our members are contributing at the same or higher levels and contributing consistently year after year.  This is why we are still here and why we are not going anywhere.

I like to reflect back often on the priorities we set at this meeting in 2007, one of which was to promote our issues in the electoral campaigns of politicians so that we could hold them accountable during their term.  This past year we did this on the issue of smaller class sizes and local jobs.

Another priority we set was in the area of leadership development.  We worked on this in a big way this past year in the running of Camp Justice. And as Jon reminded me yesterday, we see the fruits of this labor in the community when Metro-Justice activists and people who went through the Camp or Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) are in the forefront of important community issues like the fight against Mayoral control of the schools.

I must highlight again some of the accomplishments of 2009

Fair Share Tax Reform.

We also helped promote the Economic Stimulus Plan which extended unemployment benefits for more than 18 million Americans.  It is attributed with saving over 2 million jobs, averting a second great depression, and the recent reports of growth in the economy.

As part of our statewide Alliance for Quality Education campaign, over the past 18 months, we stopped $2.7B in cuts to education!!!!

This year AQE must again mobilize parents at the grassroots level to fight against the Governors $1.4 billion proposed budget cuts [including $19 million for Rochester].

Locally we must stop Mayoral Control.

The fact is, we have demonstrated to the community and the School Board that we will be heard on our issues, and this drastic change in how decisions are made for the distract will cut, not only Metro Justice, out of the process, but parents and students as well.

We have joined with people from all over this community to oppose this move to take over the schools with several volleys of back-to-back demonstrations protesting the move and just yesterday we were rewarded with our first victory, the announcement from city hall that forums to present legislation had been postponed.  

We worked along side of statewide affiliate Citizen Action all year and in addition to the Fair Share Tax reform victory, when the State Senate mess happened, we used our combined organizing power to shift press attention back to the issues that really matter.  We took on this mess and turned the State’s attention to the need to get big money out of politics and put the people’s agenda first.

Citizen Action also had success passing legislation requiring employers to allow children of employees to remain covered by their parents’ health insurance until age 29.  CANY was also successful in extending COBRA benefits from 18 to 36 months.  Given the high unemployment rate the extension of these benefits will keep thousands of New Yorks families from losing their health care coverage. Our members sat in on some of the lobby visits that lead to these victories.

Its been a rough road on Healthcare reform, right?

I am excited that we will be presenting a resolution today on single payer.  This resolution is the product of many hours of impassioned conversation and it represents for me a commitment to support the members of Metro-Justice who have stood their ground, spoke their minds, and fought on, despite President Obamas reluctance to endorse single payer.  It represents the hope that we can someday build a movement large enough and powerful enough to enact the common sense reform of single payer.

That said, Federal reform is upon us now and the Governor’s budget looms.  We need to stop the budget cuts again. We need to defend the gains we have made over decades here in New York. We need to challenge, here in New York, the insurance companies’ abuses that will be left un-checked by Federal reform. And we need to continue the fight on behalf of all those New Yorkers who we know will be left behind by Federal reform.

We need to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

I will quote our President here.  “Its not enough to get out of Iraq; we have to get out of the mindset that led us into Iraq.”

That mindset is why the ongoing work of our Peace Action and Education Taskforce is more important than ever.

We need to remember that this mindset is the same and it extends to our brothers and sisters in Latin America and it is why I wonder what the President means when he says, we will strengthen our trade relationswith key partners like Colombia. For the sake of my partners in the labor movement of Colombia, I would hope he doesn’t mean more of the same.

There is so much to do, and we may need to act this year on so many things, including: climate change, financial reform, immigration reform, and an end to ‘Dont ask, Dont Tell.’

We will be there to do our part.

I have to say something now about my work. I have never gotten so many calls from workers looking to form a union.  We didn’t need the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).  In fact, we knew EFCA would only come at the demand of the right to organize.  That is coming. I hear that demand everyday on the doors, in the union workplaces, and in the calls to the hall asking how can we form a union.  Workers laid off, only to make room for the boss’s kid. Workers treated like crap because now the supervisors think they have no where to go.  Workers up against the wall of nothing left to lose and ready to make a change. Metro-Justice has to be there for them when they are ready.  We have to be there, not just because their cause is just, but because the economy of this country will be shaped by their demands.  As the economy recovers, will the sacrifices of these last few years be permanent? Will the coming growth and prosperity be shared with those who are working right now to achieve it?  We will decide the answer.

We have to hold on to that hope, not the hope of Obama’s campaign slogan.  That’s gone now.  But of the hope that has always driven us on to fight and struggle through much harder times than these. We haven’t goten everything we wanted.  We won’t get everything we want, but we will move this country in the right direction.  We will win and we will make things better for everyone

Obama was right last Wednesday night.  He promised us change, but not that it would be easy. We always knew, and we know now more than ever, that change doesn’t come from him.  It will come at him, and it will come from us.

Thank you,

Jesse