The president of my union has been attending annual School of the Americas protests since the 1980's

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.agenceglobal.com/article.asp?id=2413

The UAW Hits the Streets

by John Nichols Released: 2 Sep 2010

Almost a half-century ago, hoping to prod a young president who meant well but kept missing the mark when it came to implementing bold economic and civil rights initiatives, United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther aligned the most muscular labor organization in the land behind an audacious call by veteran trade unionist A. Philip Randolph and young civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. for a "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." Reuther's personal commitment provided resources, a national network of supporters and help opening doors at the Capitol and the White House. While much of Big Labor resisted the sit-ins, marches and mass protests that would define the 1960s as a period when politics was not just in the voting booths but in the streets, the UAW was in touch with the civil rights and antiwar movements of the moment.

Reuther is long gone and the UAW, battered by decades of free trade policies and flawed federal economic agendas, is down to 390,000 members, barely a quarter of its peak size in the 1970s. And while pretenders like Glenn Beck pervert the memory of that 1963 March on Washington and the campaigns that followed it, genuine heirs to the activist movements with which the union allied struggle to move economic, social and foreign policy debates in a progressive direction.

Enter Bob King. The new UAW president has dusted off the still-substantial union and renewed its activist tradition by building coalitions -- in late August, the UAW joined the BlueGreen Alliance of labor unions and major environmental organizations in pursuit of good jobs, a clean environment and a green economy -- and supporting mass-movement projects like the August 28 Jobs, Justice and Peace march in Detroit. King's election in June signaled a Reuther turn for the union, with the new president declaring, "Our mission is social justice.... We have the resources that we have to share, to fight for, to be part of a much broader struggle {of} workers inside our facilities and outside, inside the UAW and outside. The only way we can have social justice for our membership is to fight for social justice for everybody in society."

That's not just rhetoric for King, who comes out of historically militant UAW Local 600 in the Detroit area, where he practiced international solidarity in the 1980s by organizing opposition to Reagan administration policies in Latin America -- King still attends annual protests to close the former School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia -- and South Africa's apartheid regime. (I met King in the early 1990s, when a recently released Nelson Mandela toured a Local 600 plant to thank UAW members for their support of the freedom struggle.)

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http://media.wayne.edu/2009/01/27/freedom-the-uaw-and-the-release-of

Freedom: The UAW and the Release of Nelson Mandela Exhibit at Wayne State's Walter P. Reuther Library Feb. 2 - 27

January 27, 2009

Wayne State University's Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce the opening of "Freedom: The UAW and the Release of Nelson Mandela." This exhibit demonstrates the role of the UAW, and specifically President Owen Bieber, in the release of Nelson Mandela from Victor Verster Prison and the subsequent end of apartheid in South Africa.

Subjects detailed in the exhibit include Bieber's arrest in front of the South African Embassy, his role in the "Boycott Shell Movement," the release of International Metalworkers' Secretary Moses Miakeyso, Mandela's visit to Detroit, and Bieber's involvement in establishing election monitors for the 1994 presidential election in South Africa.

[patrice]

1. Now that's creds!!!