A UNION PETITION

To Encourage & Defend the Right of Workers to Participate in
“A NATIONAL DAY OF ABSENCE AGAINST POVERTY RACISM & WAR”
On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Rosa Parks Arrest, December 1, 2005

As trade unionists and community leaders, we urge our fellow unionists to join with us in signing and passing the following resolution:

Where as, December 1st 2005 will mark the 50th anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks helped to open the modern civil rights movement by being arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing an order to give her bus seat to a white man;

Where as, on September 14, the U.S. Congress passed a Resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of Rosa Park's sponsored by Rep. John Conyers that "encourages the people of the United States to recognize and celebrate this anniversary”, and many colleges, businesses, communities and work places will be observing a “National Day Of Absence Against Poverty Racism and War” from school, shopping and work to honor the spirit of the heroic and successful Montgomery bus boycott that Rosa Parks` sparked;

Where as, the heroic, and successful Montgomery bus boycott against racial segregation, which introduced the world to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott’s principal spokesperson, demonstrated that there comes a time when working people must use their economic power in a coordinated and massive way to compel the powers that be to listen to their just demands;

Where as, the corporate assault on workers health care benefits, pensions, wages, jobs, right to a union, and dignity as exemplified by the recent waving of the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage act, along with the assaults on the rights of hotel, airline, auto workers, grocery, and immigrant workers, indeed, workers in every industry private and public, has proven that the right of workers to engage in protest commensurate with the grave crises that they face is a right that must be both defended and exercised;

Where as, the tragic Katrina hurricane exposed to the world that 50 years after the start of the civil rights movement, the need to battle racial inequality, poverty and war, the three things that Dr. King came to see as the enemy of all human progress, remains more urgent than ever before;

Be it resolved that we, the following signers support all those who are commemorating Rosa Park’s 50th anniversary, December 1, 2005 by calling for an end to poverty, racism and war, and to bring the troops home from Iraq so that funds wasted on an unjust war can be redirected to important social needs.

Be it further resolved that we request that our union local, chapter, delegates council, executive council, or membership officially encourage workers to participate in Rosa Parks commemoration and protest events, and further more defend the right of workers who wish to participate in such activities during working hours as part of the “National Day Of Absence” on December 1 to take the whole, or part of the day off with impunity from any kind of retaliation, threats or fines.

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