The wave of worker, student, and renter strikes is growing into a campaign for a general strike that begins on May 1 and continues at the first of each month from there. The government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic collapse, a purely neoliberal money grab, has revealed that the only way we are going to survive and maintain social programs is by fighting for them. We speak with Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, about Congress’ failure to provide necessary funding for the US Postal Service as revenue has fallen by 50%. The USPS faces the real possibility of going bankrupt and the administration is openly saying it will let it fail in order to privatize it. We also speak with Joe Henry, political director of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Iowa, about the Meatless May campaign for meatpackers and against factory farming.
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Mark Dimondstein is President of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents more than 200,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service and approximately 1,500 employees in the private-sector mailing industry. He began his first three-year term in November 2013 and was re-elected on October 5, 2016 for another term starting in November 2016. Since taking office, Dimondstein has transformed the APWU into a fighting, activist organization. He helped establish A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service, strengthened the unity among the four postal unions, helped forge the Campaign for Postal Banking, and led the successful fight against a privatization scheme involving the office-supply chain, Staples. In the union’s recent contract fight, he outlined a vision that emphasizes the unity between the demands of postal workers for a good contract and the demands of the American people for an expanded, vibrant, public Postal Service. Read more.
Joe Henry is the political director of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Iowa and a co-founder of the “Protect Our Workers, Protect Our Food” coalition.
Transcript in Progress