San Francisco rally demands jobs, defends immigrants

More than 100 people gathered outside the San Francisco Federal Building to demand a “real jobs program” for the millions of unemployed in this country. Organized by the San Francisco Bail Out the People Movement, this May 8 protest commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Works Projects Administration, the depression-era jobs program that put millions of unemployed back to work. The protest also demanded that the government do whatever it takes to create jobs needed by the more than 30 million unemployed.

Aileen Hernandez and John Parker. WW photo: Judy Greenspan

John Parker, a leader of BOPM, Los Angeles, set the tone of the protest when he said, “It’s the banks that are stealing our jobs, not the immigrant community.” Parker pointed out that “instead of profiling immigrant workers, the government should be profiling big business” and added that the workers and jobless need to be “in solidarity with each other.”

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said that Richmond is “a human rights city. We are a diverse community, and we just passed a measure denouncing the anti-immigrant Arizona law.” The demonstration echoed national sentiment opposing Arizona’s SB 1070.

Many speakers hailed the importance of the WPA and noted that without massive protests by millions of unemployed workers during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would never have signed the federal jobs program into law. Aileen Hernandez, a retired organizer with the Ladies Garment Workers union, noted that it took a long time for the Roosevelt administration to “put out a jobs program. The people had to come together on the bottom to push.”

Hernandez, now a civil rights and women’s rights activist, drew attention to the millions of dollars being spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: “It takes $1 million to keep a soldier in those wars. Imagine what that money could do here.”

Willie Ratcliff, publisher of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper and head of Liberty Builders, an organization of Black contractors, echoed these sentiments. “We have to support immigrant families in Arizona, because we have been there too.” Ratcliff also spoke about the local struggle unfolding in the Bay View neighborhood involving the building of the new community library. “African Americans have been locked out for years from construction jobs,” Ratcliff noted. “We’re going to win the right to build the new Bay View Library.”

Pablo Rodriguez, a local college professor and political director of the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121, brought attention to the “extermination of union jobs and unionization.” Rodriguez noted that the rich are richer than ever before and over 1,000 teachers in San Francisco have just been laid off. “This is the richest country on the planet and teachers are still being laid off,” Rodriguez stated. He called for massive resistance against the layoffs and cuts in education.

The local BOPM coalition, which includes many labor, community, religious and civil rights groups in the Bay Area, has scheduled a film showing about the WPA on Saturday, May 22 at 1 p.m. in the SF Gray Panthers Office, 1182 Market St. For more information call 415-738-4739.