Labor, Latinos march in L.A.

By Evelina Alarcon

This article was reprinted from the April 18, 1998= issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

LOS ANGELES - "The Power of the Vote" rally against the anti-labor Proposition 226 and anti-bilingual education Prop. 227 drew over 5,000 labor activists, Mexican Americans and Latinos to East Los Angeles, the nation's largest Mexican American community.

The demonstration focused on organizing for the upcoming June 2 primary elections, where two Gov. Pete Wilson-led initiatives are on the ballot.

"Next time we'll need the coliseum," said County Board of Supervisors member Gloria Molina as the numbers grew quickly to thousands on this rainy morning, topping the number of people attending either the Republican or Democratic Party conventions. The huge crowd overfilled the auditorium of East Los Angeles Community College forcing organizers to seat people in the cafeteria, and there still was not enough room.

"The labor movement and our Latino community are joining forces to fight terrible propositions like 227, which denies us the right to be proud of our heritage by punishing us for speaking our native language, or Gov. Pete Wilson's latest trick to gag workers, Proposition 226," said Maria Elena Durazo. She is president of Hotel and Restaurant Workers Local 11 and a vice president of the Federation of Labor.

Durazo, who chaired the rally, blasted the results of passage of anti-immigrant Prop. 187 and the anti- affirmative action Prop. 209, which, she said, "has already caused the number of Latino applicants to UCLA to be cut in half."

Art Palaski, secretary-treasurer of the California Federation of Labor, called propositions 227 and 226 "part of Pete Wilson's plan to serve the rich, to silence immigrant children and to silence working people."

Palaski said Prop. 226's title, "Campaign reform: employers and unions," is a misnomer which does nothing to keep "big money politics from big business" out of the elections. Its aim is "to stop the voice of working people" on the issues.

Pelaski also addressed the fact that passage of 227 would result in public education losing over $200 million dollars a year in federal funds, "which will hurt all California's children."

Electrifying the crowd was Antonio Villaraigosa, the first labor representative to be elected to the powerful position of Speaker of the California Assembly. Villaraigosa, who hails from the United Teachers of Los Angeles and the East Los Angeles community, referred to "the tremendous potential in this room and across the fields and workplaces of California."

He stressed the need for organization to defeat the Wilsonite forces who "try to take us back to a time when our kids couldn't attend public schools, a time when our kids couldn't get medical care or go to universities." Villaraigosa vowed, "We are here to say. We are not going back to another century!"

Two of the four gubernatorial candidates responded to an invitation to attend what turned out to be, according to the LA Times, "one of the largest crowds to hear gubernatorial candidates in recent memory."

The two were Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, who last week received the unanimous endorsement of the Federation of Labor, and multimillionaire Al Checchi, also a Democrat, who has done much to court the Latino community by buying Spanish language television ads. Neither Democrat Rep. Jane Harman nor Republican candidate Dan Lungren responded to the invitation.

Davis has a strong record on both labor and issues of concern to the Mexican American and Latino community. Newly-elected State Assembly member Gilbert Cedillo, former leader of SEIU Local 660, introduced him.

Davis won laughs when he compared his record of action for working people against some of his opponents who "for the last two-and-a-half decades have been out becoming wealthy." Checchi is a major stockholder in Northwest Airlines and has spent more than $20 million in his race for governor.

Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, called this historic rally an event which "signals the growing strategic alliance between organized labor and Latino community-based groups" in California.