Buses heading to Tallahassee March 7 are sponsored by the AFL-CIO, local unions, schools, and churches for what promises to be a massive rally to defend this social gain. Like strikes and struggles for dignity on the job, actions against police brutality, and those standing up to anti-immigrant attacks, the protests in Florida over the past weeks are part of working people taking the moral high ground against the effects of the employer and government offensive.

Statements in defense of affirmative action by those who have turned out for meetings around the state have helped answer the ideological rationalizations for attacking this gain by the Democratic and Republican party politicians. Workers and students have presented facts and convincing testimony as to why, given persistent and endemic discrimination in the United States, affirmative action should be extended rather than eliminated.

Affirmative action is a key question for the working class. It is not only about correcting past wrongs, but aimed at building unity among working people. It is a social conquest that was won as a result of the massive civil rights battles in the 1950s and '60s.

Discrimination is a weapon used by the capitalist bosses to maintain divisions among workers and tear apart class solidarity in order to deepen the exploitation of the working class as a whole. Life for workers under capitalism is not worth much, as evidenced by the recent cuts in Kentucky for workers compensation and black lung benefits. Some 1,500 workers rallied in that state recently to protest these cutbacks.

The truth is that the rich minority that runs this country considers workers, especially those who are Black and from other oppressed nationalities, little more than animals. Blacks like Amadou Diallo are more likely to be gunned down by killer cops, thrown behind prison bars, or driven into poverty than be given a "fair chance" in a "One Florida" or "One America."

A look at any socioeconomic indicator gives irrefutable proof that capitalism continues to perpetuate discrimination based on race, sex, language, and citizenship and the dog-eat-dog competition for jobs. This is shown by figures on rising hunger among workers cited elsewhere in this issue; facts on the sharp decline in the net worth of the median Black household; and growing numbers of minorities and women thrown behind prison bars.

The battle for affirmative action in employment, education, and housing--and the fight for busing to achieve school desegregation--puts working people in a better position to push back the capitalist rulers' attempts to weaken the unions, roll back social conquests, and pit one against another in a desperate scramble for survival.

These advances enable all workers to better see the political economy of discrimination and how the bosses profit from divisions that drag down the real wages and job conditions of the working class as a whole. Discrimination and its ideological justifications sap the ability to unify and fight back. That's why blaming immigrants for low wages and worsening social conditions, such as is promoted by ultrarightists like Patrick Buchanan and other capitalist politicians, is poison for the working class. Instead, targeting the capitalist system, the state that defends the ruling rich, and the Democratic and Republican parties that serve them is the only road forward.

The response of working people in Florida has opened the door to involving unions there in this fight. This is a welcome advance. It helps show the class interests of each contending side. This stands as an example of how the basic defense organizations of the working class--the labor unions--can be brought to bear on broader social questions facing humanity.

Taking this example more widely into the labor movement can help win more rank-and-file workers and unions to join in defending affirmative action, including quotas in hiring, education, and housing. Unions must wage a broad struggle to counter growing wage inequality and fight to raise the minimum wage to a living income.

The battle for affirmative action unfolding in Florida points to the initial germination of a proletarian movement in the United States. Actions such as those in Florida help draw in more farmers, students, and workers to see themselves as actors and the subjects of history, not helpless victims of a cruel system. They also help show that despite their dictates and pretense of unquestioned power, the ruling rich and their state and federal governments are weaker and more fragile than they would like working people to believe.

Stop attacks on affirmative action!

Restore full affirmative action programs in employment, education, and housing where they have been rolled back!

Raise the minimum wage!  
 
 
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