Excerpts from address by LNS board member April Sims, President, Washington State Labor Council to the Council’s August Convention in Wenatchee WA.
Fascism is growing in the United States, and globally. Fascism is not a new ideology. But we must recognize what it looks like today, and how it threatens working people.
Fascism is the forcible suppression of opposition, it is the violent enforcement of a supremacist society, it is the disempowerment of the people and forced obedience to anti-democratic, authoritarian leadership.
Fascism is the opposite of organized labor, a movement that has been the principal force in this country for turning misery and despair into hope and progress, in the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. We must continue to be that force.
Conceding to fascism is not inevitable. We must stand together. We must fight back. Here is how we do it.
We beat back fascism at the ballot box. We support pro-worker candidates who reject strategies to divide and diminish working people and our communities.
Here in Washington State, we reject attempts from ultra-wealthy donors to undo the progress this movement has made for working families, and fight to defend what we’ve already won.
We defeat donor-bought ballot initiatives, and defend a union-made, green energy economy, support for long term care, and tax revenue from billionaires to fund kids’ education.
Beyond the ballot box, we embrace unity. We reject divide and conquer strategies in our workplaces. We empower ourselves and our coworkers to call out fascism when we see it.
We center racial and gender justice as an organizing strategy for building the broad, people-powered movement we need to win. We reject the concentration of power in the hands of a few, and instead work towards the liberation of all people.
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