The Million Worker March

by Maya O'Connor
Co-Chair, Green Party of the United States

Speech prepared by Maya O'Connor, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States, for the Million Worker March (www.millionworkermarch.org), October 17, 2004 in Washington, DC.  Ms. O'Connor was prevented from delivering the speech at the march.
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Thank you very much for inviting me here to speak today. I am here on behalf of the Green Party of the United States, but I am also a proud to be a union member - I'm in the Newspaper Guild, Local 35 which is part of the Communications Workers of America.

I have always felt that a union is essential to represent the interests of workers in the workplace - ever since I was 16, had a minimum wage job, and my boss did not want to allow me to take breaks, I have known how important it is to have a union to protect my rights as a worker. 

Now , you might be wondering - why the Green Party? Isn't that the party of the environmentalists? Well, it is, but it is so much more than that. The Green Party 10 key values - and I encourage you to check us out at gp.org - are about building a just and sustainable society for people. We believe that social, economic and environmental justice are indivisible and must be worked for together. We are involved in anti-poverty movements, the anti-war movement, and many others. The Green Party is proud of our work to help build Vote for Racial Justice Week, which starts tomorrow. When you get home check it out at www.racismwatch.org. The Green Party may seem like an odd place for a union member, but I believe that it really is the home of working class politics in America right now.

The reason for this is simple: other parties have tried to represent workers' interests, but have failed to run candidates. The Green Party has both the platform and the candidates to make our demands - that is the demands of this march - a reality.

I have devoted most of my political energies for a number of years now to advancing the green Party both locally and nationally for this reason: I believe that workers need political power as well as economic power We have economic power naturally because we do the work that makes the country run, but we have been shut out of political power by corporate interests and political parties that respond to them.

Political power is necessary because of what the politicians are doing now, which is ignoring by and large the issues that most affect workers in this country. In fact, you would think from listening to the presidential debates that either everyone is "middle class" (whatever that means) or else they are millionaires. We know that the issues we face very day - such as: stagnant wages, inadequate health care, rising unemployment, unaffordable higher education, eroding union rights - are being ignored by the two major parties or else we would not all be here today, making these demands that have mostly been ignored by politicians.

The Green Party exists to be the party of the people, not the corporations. We are the only political party on the map now that refuses to accept corporate donations, so our candidates are not beholden to employers, with their lobbyists and PACs, who so often have hijacked the political agenda. This is especially important in the area of issues affecting workers. As so often it is management that gives the donations to politicians to advance their agenda, workers' concerns are often shut out of big money politics.

Take the issue of health care: corporate parties have been afraid to takes this on - only the GP calls for a national single payer health care plan, one that takes the insurance companies and the profit motive out of our system, and guaranteed health care for all. Employers are cutting back on health benefits and raising premiums all over the country because of rising health care costs, and the Congress is not going to do much about except give more subsides to insurance and drug companies (like in Bush's Medicare plan, which passed this year with plenty of votes from both corporate parties and was pretty much written by the drug companies' lobbyists.) Meanwhile there are 45 million uninsured and this number is growing! The Democrats talk about increasing insurance, but they will not take on the question of the many workers whose jobs cannot or will not provide insurance coverage. The politicians will not take on the same interests that give them their campaign contributions, but we can change this if we elect candidates to office who are not beholden to these interests.

The Green Party also calls for a living wage and a guaranteed income for all - we believe that the richest country in the world can afford to guarantee a basic standard of living all and that everyone who works should able to not only survive but have a decent quality of life. The corporate parties cannot even consent to raise the minimum wage due to pressure from their corporate donors, even though it is well below the poverty line!

The Green Party also calls explicitly for the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, which as you know has been the major obstacle to the growth of organized labor in this country during the postwar era. Don't forget it was a Democratic president who proposed this and Democrats voted this in! The Green Party is not playing both sides of the fence. We're not afraid of corporate donors who don't like unions because we don't take their money!

Of course, having a good platform is not enough - the Labor Party, for example, has a good platform which the Green Party fully endorsed at its convention this year - but it is not running candidates, so it has no way to ensure that its platform is put into effect, The Green party is running candidates around the country, at every level - local, state and national races. This year we have more than 400 candidates running for office, our biggest number ever. We will not retreat from our position that we must run candidates for office who have our values and who are not also indebted in to others who do not share our values. While we recognize that we have a long way to go before we can be a major challenger to the corporate parties, we are proud to have over 200 elected officials in state and local offices today, ranging from the County Soil and Water commission (in North Carolina) to the mayor's office in New Paltz, New York and Santa Monica, CA to the state legislature (in Maine)! And we have been able to get important measures implemented when we have been elected to office such as a living wage law in Santa Monica.

It's possible to advance the worker's agenda if we have a political party to do so. The Green Party can provide that vehicle that will advance the agenda of this march in the legislatures and Congress and hope that you will join us in making these demands into laws around the country. Join your state and local Green Parties, work for green Party candidates, and help get the agenda of our march today from here to the national stage.

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