ILWU International Secretary-Treasurer Ed Ferris
Your vote has never meant more
America is in crisis and Donald Trump and the Republican Party have shown that they aren’t up to the task. The working class of this country cannot afford another four years of their failed leadership.
At the time of this writing, over 200,000 lives have been lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to some forecasting models, that number may unfortunately double by the end of the year. Trump’s response to the crisis has been to deny, deflect and divide. At a recent rally in Ohio, Trump told a crowd of his admirers that coronavirus “affects almost nobody.”
This administration has failed to get the pandemic under control because they have refused to follow the sound, science-based health policies that have been successful throughout the industrialized world. Because of Trump’s failure, workers have paid with their lives and their jobs. We cannot allow this to continue.
Wildfires are raging throughout the Western United States with dozens of lives lost, thousands of homes destroyed, and over 5 million acres of land burned so far this summer.
Hurricanes are currently pummeling the southeastern states and are seemingly increasing in frequency, size, and damage every year. Climate change is real. But like the administration’s response to the pandemic, their policy is to deny the science as the costs to workers, the economy, and the planet grows.
And if enough negative events haven’t occurred already in 2020, iconic Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg–a champion of gender equality, women’s interests, and civil rights has passed away at the age of 87.
President Trump and his sycophants have quickly attempted to take advantage of this tragic loss by actively working to ram in another extremist Supreme Court justice confirmation with fewer than 50 days left until the U.S. Presidential election. These actions are in stark contrast to the GOP’s position in 2016 when they refused to confirm President Obama’s Supreme Court pick because the country was only 200 days away from an election.
On March 16, 2016, Senator Mitch McConnell stated on Fox News Sunday “The Senate has a role to play here. The president nominates, we decide to confirm. We think the important principle in the middle of this presidential year is that the American people need to weigh in and decide who’s going to make this decision. Not this lame-duck president on the way out the door, but the next president.”
Throughout the last four years, Senator McConnell and the rest of the duplicitous party hacks have all proven that the only principle they stand for is power. It is another clear reason why your vote matters so much this year and why this election is so important to working-class people.
Don’t despair about the Supreme Court
In preparation for this article, I came across a very interesting op-ed from historian Howard Zinn published in The Progressive magazine on October 21, 2005. It was entitled “Don’t Despair about the Supreme Court.” In his essay, Zinn provides strong historical evidence to formulate the following sound conclusions regarding Supreme Court appointments. His conclusions are highly relevant today and provide me with hope.
He wrote, “There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the Constitution and “the rule of law.” The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible and is used to serve the political needs of the moment. When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the constitutional right to regulate interstate commerce. It decided that the national government, desperate to regulate farm production could tell a family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.
“When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go, claiming there had been no declaration of war by Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech by passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war, the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.
“It would be naïve to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.”
“The Constitution gave no rights to working people, no right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight- hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance.
“The Brown decision on school desegregation did not come from a sudden realization of the Supreme Court that this is what the Fourteenth Amendment called for. After all, it was the same Fourteenth Amendment that had been cited in the Plessy case upholding racial segregation. It was the initiative of brave families in the South—along with the fear by the government, obsessed with the Cold war, that it was losing the hearts and minds of colored people all over the world—that brought a sudden enlightenment to the Court.
“The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.
“Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right-wing. The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, ‘Equal Justice Before the Law,’ have always been a sham.
“No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence—an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—be fulfilled.”
The time is now
The time is now for all working-class people to step up and vote. The stakes have never been higher for organized labor or for American workers. High voter turnout by the working class will best protect our collective interests and can bring about the significant and positive changes that are required in this country.
Your vote in the 2020 election will determine if the United States rejoins the global community in properly addressing climate change instead of denying scientific evidence.
Your vote in the 2020 election will determine if the United States will develop a coherent and science-based federal COVID-19 response instead of denying scientific evidence.
Your vote in the 2020 election will determine if police brutality and systemic racism end in the United States instead of having the federal government promote a false “law and order” fear-based narrative.
Your vote in the 2020 election will determine if corporations and the 1% start paying their fair share of taxes.
Workers simply cannot afford another four years of the status quo. We cannot afford another four years of extremist, anti-union federal judge appointments by the GOP. We cannot afford to have the many gains won by working people in the New Deal lost to corporate greed and special interest groups. We cannot afford another four years of denying climate change. We cannot afford to continue to lose innocent American lives to the COVID-19 virus because of an insufficient and incompetent federal response.
In 2020, we don’t have the luxury of being apathetic when it comes to politics. There must be a massive and historic voter turnout in the 2020 election to ensure a “peaceful transition of governmental power.” Once that occurs we can all focus on the important work of rebuilding America.
As Susan B. Anthony once said, “Someone struggled for your right to vote. Use it.”
In solidarity,
Ed Ferris
#Blacklivesmatter