This is the transcript of my State of the Union Address, delivered on my radio show.
My fellow Americans, what follows is an excerpt from the SEIU, and then followed by some of Karl Marx’s work in the Communist Manifesto.
We are the Service Employees International Union, an organization of more than 1 million members united by the belief in the dignity and worth of workers and the services they provide and dedicated to improving the lives of workers and their families and creating a more just and humane society.
We are public workers, health care workers, building service workers, office workers, professional workers, and industrial and allied workers.
We seek a stronger union to build power for ourselves and to protect the people we serve.
People of every race, ethnicity, religion, age, physical ability, gender, gender expression and sexual orientation, we are the standard-bearers in the struggle for social and economic justice begun nearly a century ago by janitors who dared to dream beyond their daily hardships and to organize for
economic security, dignity and respect.
Our vision is of a society:
Where all workers and their families live and work in dignity.
Where work is fulfilling and fairly rewarded.
Where workers have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them.
Where workers have the opportunity to develop their talents and skills.
Where the collective voice and power of workers is realized in democratic and progressive unions.
Where union solidarity stands firm against the forces of discrimination and hate and the unfair employment practices of exploitative employers.
Where government plays an active role in improving the lives of working people.
2 CONSTITUTION AND BYLAWS
To achieve this vision:
We must organize unorganized service workers, extending to them the gains of unionism while securing control over our industries and labor markets.
We must build political power to ensure that workers’ voices are heard at every level of government to create economic opportunity and foster social justice.
We must provide meaningful paths for member involvement and participation in strong, democratic unions.
We must develop highly trained and motivated leaders at every level of the union who refl ect the membership in all its diversity.
We must bargain contracts that improve wages and working conditions, expand the role of workers in workplace decision-making, and build a stronger union.
We must build coalitions and act in solidarity with other organizations who share our concern for social
and economic justice.
We must engage in direct action that demonstrates our power and our determination to win.
To accomplish these goals we must be unified—inspired by a set of beliefs and principles that
transcends our social and occupational diversity and guides our work. We believe we can accomplish
little as separate individuals, but that together we have the power to create a just society.
We believe unions are the means by which working people build power—by which ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things.
We believe our strength comes from our unity, and that we must not be divided by forces of
discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, physical ability, sexual orientation or immigration status.
We believe our power and effectiveness depend upon the active participation and commitment
of our members, the development of our leaders, and solidarity with each other and our allies.
We believe we have a special mission to bring economic and social justice to those most exploited
in our community—especially to women and workers of color.
We believe our future cannot be separated from that of workers in other parts of the world who
struggle for economic justice, a decent life for their families, peace, dignity and democracy.
From the Comm Manifesto
…Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years…
…In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality…
…The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action of the leading civilized countries at least is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat…
…But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to communism.
…We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another….
Do you see the similarities, the sharing of interests?
God bless you my fellow Americans, and God bless America.
