Organizing for Economic Justice after September 11

America united! That slogan in some variety is seen everywhere now. Yes, we are united in grief and mourning. We are together in honoring unsung heroes. And we want perpetrators to be brought to appropriate justice.

Beyond that, however, all the terrible conditions which were ripping our society apart on September 11 still remain, or are even worse. The inequality of income and wealth, already growing for years, will probably become worse as layoffs mount. Exploitation of immigrants will intensify as the movement for full legalization and equality is momentarily blunted. Racial profiling has received a virtual stamp of approval. And, in Boston area, the housing crisis continues

The average listed Boston rent is $1600; but the median Boston renter income is $27,700, a family income which can pay less than $700 in rent. "Vital Workers Priced Out," reads a Globe headline Oct. 13. "Housing Disparity Found Growing" (Globe, Oct. 14). What this really means is that thousands of working class families are daily threatened with forcible displacement form their homes as the real estate industry pushes for maximum profit. When large owners want to double the rent of families who have lived in their homes for many years, as happened recently to three buildings in Roxbury, calls for "unity" ring a little hollow.

These worsening conditions have led to increased housing organizing, even in the weeks immediately following September 11. For instance:

• September 12: 50 tenant leaders representing 500 apartments attended a round table discussion to press for non-profit purchase of their buildings.
• September 19: 130 people attended a rally to defend Forest Vale tenants, opposing plans by their owner to terminate federal affordability contracts.
• September 25: The City-wide coalition for the Community Preservation Act turned in 43,000 names to get this affordable housing question on the ballot.

Many housing events began with a moment of silence for those who lost their lives September 11. Nevertheless, implied in all these actions is a fundamental criticism of how our society is organized. How can the pursuit of ever more profit by the rich be used to justify taking away thousands of peoples' homes? Since talk of national unity has not stopped exploitation, neither can it, or should it, stop the resistance to exploitation.

While we wish that our national govenment would, in the spirit of unity, dedicate itself to decreasing inequality and poverty and wages. It will instead bail out the airline companies while requiring that they do little for workers. We wish our government would make sure all its citizens have access to medical attention through universal health care and to housing through increased HUD spending. It will instead seek to cut the HUD budget. We wish it would legalize exploited immigrant workers who are driven here by international economic policies of free trade which undermine their livelihoods in their home countries. Legalization has been abandoned.

Many of these same contradictions play out on the international scene. We live in a world increasingly characterized by gross disparities in wealth, between countries and within countries. Some few hundred of the world's richest individuals control as much wealth as almost the bottom half of humanity combined.

Unfortunately, the considerable economic and military power of the US government has generally been used to defend this extreme inequality, to even glorify it. Nevertheless, it is continuously challenged. Sometimes these challenges come from determined and heroic grass roots movements. Naturally, those of us who do tenant organizing, or in support of workers or immigrants, within the US identify with those movements.

Sometimes, international inequality is used as a breeding ground for unspeakably barbaric acts, such as September 11. While condemning such acts, we must at the same time continue the struggle against underlying conditions.

The Bush Administration will not support efforts to lessen inequality internationally or within our boundaries. It will probably even condemn attempts to struggle against inequality as somehow unpatriotic. But it is the obligation of all progressive people to carry on that very struggle. We must defend efforts to lessen inequality and poverty as being at the very core of a patriotic American response to what happened September 11.