This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

August 26 , 2006

City rallies cry for justice

By Paul J. Nyden
Charleston Gazette Staff writer

The Bush administration, mountaintop removal, pay inequities and the nation’s health-care system all came under assault on Saturday at two rallies in Charleston that drew hundreds of people.

“George W. Bush is the worst president in the history of the United States,” said national AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, addressing about 500 attending one of the rallies, held near the labor organization’s local headquarters off Leon Sullivan Way.

Sweeney, on his first trip to Charleston, announced that the labor movement just approved spending $40 million to register voters and get people to the polls.

“This will be one of the most remarkable political campaigns in the history of the United States,” he said. “As union members, we will be the single biggest player in our nation’s political process.”

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., also spoke at the rally.

“Like your parents and grandparents, I know what conditions were like before the union,” said Byrd, who grew up in Stotesbury, a Raleigh County coal town. “I know what it is like to owe your soul to the company store, as the old song goes.”

Byrd called Bush’s labor policy “an assault upon American working families.”

“It includes efforts to wipe out the financial security of American working families,” he said. “The president wants to privatize Social Security ... to put it under the control of Wall Street wheelers and dealers. Is that what you call security?”

Meanwhile, nearly 300 people gathered in front of the U.S. Courthouse on Virginia Street, among them war protesters holding placards listing the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

“There is nothing nice about pay inequality,” said Margaret Chapman of the abortion-rights group West Virginia FREE. “Women still get 76 cents for every $1 that a man makes for the same work.”

People from the environmental group Coal River Mountain Watch carried signs criticizing mountaintop removal mines. Many wore shirts reading: “God Made Mountains for Glory, Not Greed.”

Access to health care was another rallying point.

“The sixth leading cause of death in the country today is being uninsured for health care,” said Perry Bryant, a retired West Virginia Education Association official who recently founded an organization called West Virginians for Affordable Health Care. “We all end up paying.”

“Today, an average of $1,800 comes from every working family in West Virginia to pay health costs of the uninsured,” Bryant said.

The skyrocketing cost of health care is one cause, he said. In 1960, the nation spent $28 billion on health care, or 5 percent of the gross domestic product, according to Bryant. “Today, we spend $1.9 trillion a year on health care, which is 16 percent of the GDP. There is a need for cost containment.”

Sweeney complained that worker wages have stagnated for 25 years.

“The gap between the rich and the poor is wider than in any other industrialized country in the world,” he said.

Byrd blamed the state of affairs for workers on trade pacts like the Central American and North American free trade agreements, known as CAFTA and NAFTA.

“We have fought against job-killing trade agreements like CAFTA and NAFTA, and we have fought to stop the flood of American jobs moving overseas,” he said. “We have fought to ensure that companies comply with their health and pension obligations to workers.”

Voters need to “elect people who understand decent wages ... and decent health care,” he said. “Go to the polls and make your voices heard.”

To contact staff writer Paul J. Nyden, use e-mail or call 348-5164.