Solidarity Message: “This is the time to rededicate ourselves as organizers”
Addressing the People's World Amistad Awards alongside members of his union, Rob Baril, president of SEIU 1199 NE, who accepted the Award in 2020, called for increased organizing. Excerpts follow:
“ The Amistad Awards for generations has played an incredibly important role in bringing together folks in community, people who are long distance runners in the fight for justice. That is more important now than at any point in our lifetimes.
“ We're weeks away from a very tumultuous and intense period for working class people in this country and around the globe. The Amistad awards helps to strengthen our spirits. This is the time to rededicate ourselves not just as activists, but as organizers.
“ Our role is to bring together others in greater and greater numbers, uniting the power of working people white, Black and Brown, understanding that the things that unite us are much more powerful than the things that divide us.
“The MAGA movement wants us to believe that we cannot win, that those who believe in something other than greed and mean spiritedness are alone. This is a time to renew our understanding that organizing is life for those who believe in a more just world.
“Our members in health care during the pandemic, felt those feelings of being abandoned, of defeat. And in our union, they found a place to come together, to unite and to find some justice.
“We lost track of our lost souls. We also lost track of the number of civil disobedience actions, the number of rallies and demonstrations and pickets, the number that went out on strike, and all of the fights, all of our struggles that made a difference.
“And that's the spirit that we're going to have to keep really close to our hearts and renew as we move forward. So I ask each of us to use this event to get us ready to bring the best of ourselves to the fights in 2025 and beyond.
“This year thousands of nursing home workers are prepared to strike. We have contract negotiations for group home workers that care for the mentally ill and the addicted with less and less resources at a time of greater and greater need. We are going to keep showing up and demanding that health care is a right for all, not a privilege for the few.”
