Note: This is part of my Weekly Wednesday AQ Wisdom special series. To see other posts in the series, click on the Best Bets tab at the top of any page here and scroll down to the “AQ McElrath” section.
Below is an excerpt from AQ McElrath’s keynote address to the 32nd Convention of the ILWU, held in San Francisco, California from April 28-May 2, 2003.
“We all gain a measure of immortality in families and friends who remain after us and in being part of the human gene pool. But primarily a measure of our immortality is preserved in the building of a union, the ILWU, which is near 70 years old and which, through good times and bad, through good policies and bad, continues as an organization through which working people can still exercise am easure of control over the nature of their owkr, that which continues to define who we are and what we are.
“The lessons are many that we can learn from the history of our union. Only you can learn from those lessons and pass on what you learned to others. Only you, in concert with others, can prevent moving into the bowels of a police state. You can do it, but only if you are willing to participate in the life of your local, only if you do not become smug in your protected jobs with adequate wages and fringe benefits, only if you recognize that there are many more of us who slave 40 or more hours a week at two or three jobs to put food on the table, pay the rent, send our children to school, and get health care only if we do without a meal.
“The 16.1 million of us in unions have a refuge only so long as we are willing to organize the 129 million unorganized workers subject to layoff, bad working conditions, low pay because business and industry concentrate on their bottom line by exporting capital and jobs abroad…
“That is your mission in the 21st Century. To ignore that mission is to condemn your children and your grandchildren and hte rest of the working class to lives with debts, no education, no health care, no hope for the future.
“The cudgel is there for you to pick up. You can do it. Will you do it?”
With the outrageous news of AIG paying $170 million in executive bonueses, that paragraph in bold was right on the money.
Mahalo!
Unless you rise above and become one of the "thiefs" that accepted the bonus. Let's hope that the letter Liddy sent out asking for them to return the bonuses works. I highly doubt it
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