MAIN MOTION (AS AMENDED)
 THE LABOR CONFERENCE TO STOP THE WAR


 Mobilize the Labor Movement Through Workers’ Actions to Stop the War!

Whereas, the overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. and around the
world oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and

Whereas, both major American political parties, Democrats and
Republicans, have continued to vote to fund these wars, and

Whereas, the international labor movement through workers action has
the power to stop the war, and

Whereas, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are being killed and those
countries destroyed, as U.S. imperial might and its regional allies,
the Zionists and puppet Arab monarchists and generals threaten to
expand attacks to Iran and Syria, while Palestinian rights are
blatantly denied, and

Whereas, the bloody war abroad is waged against Iraqis and Afghanis,
while the “war on terror” at home is targeting American working people,
oppressed minorities and immigrants,

1.      One of the first targets of government repression since 9/11 was the
ILWU, which during longshore contract negotiations in 2002 was
threatened by the Bush administration with a military occupation of the
docks.
2.      Recently, under the guise of Homeland Security two black
longshoremen were attacked by police in the port of Sacramento, victims
of racial profiling and police brutality, while at the start of the war
scores of antiwar protesters and longshore workers were shot by police
during a demonstration in the port of Oakland.
3.      Victims of Hurricane Katrina, mostly black and the poor, in New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast died needlessly as the world witnessed a
callous and racist disregard for their lives by the U.S. government.
And the hanging noose from the schoolyard tree in Jena, Louisiana shows
how deeply rooted racism is in America.
4.      People here are victims of government repression- spying,
extraordinary rendition, attacks by police against antiwar protesters,
-- all violations of civil liberties supposedly protected by the U.S.
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The rights of women to equality in
the workplace, freedom from sexual violence and harassment and control
over their own bodies, have all been eroded.
5.      As the great anti-imperialist American labor leader, Eugene V. Debs
said from prison during World War I,  “It is the master class that
declares war. It is the subject class that fights the battles.” And it
is true today as working class youth are used in a bloody imperial
quest for oil and power in the Middle East.
6.      And both political parties threaten to expand the war to Iran, Syria
and Lebanon, while repressing Palestinians and denying their
fundamental rights as a people.

Therefore be it resolved that this conference calls for participants to
go back to their unions committed to the urgent task of organizing
actions, including strikes where possible, at the workplace against the
war, recognizing that only an independent mobilization of labor can
stop these wars and withdraw the troops immediately.



Addendum: From the workshop “Middle East: The War for Oil and Empire” a
motion was passed “calling for educating and mobilizing rank and file
workers in
union locals and in organized forums about the false nature of the
Category
of Terror, to expose the role of our rulers in using state power to
stage
terror events as a pretext for repression, imperial war and the massive
destruction of our rights as part of a heightened class war on working
people everywhere.”