March 2, 2015
By Joe Maniscalco
New York, NY – Local labor leaders are calling Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker “shameful” and urging the cheesehead GOPer to apologize for comparing American working men and women to ISIS terrorists last week.
It didn’t take long for the presidential wannabe to try and deny that he did, if fact, equate working men and women fighting for their rights in Wisconsin to the masked gang of armed killers murdering innocent people and destroying historic treasures in Iraq and Syria.
New Yorkers, however, aren’t buying any of it, and they want Walker to apologize for the ugly statements he made to an ultra-conservative crowd on February 26.
“Scott Walker comparing working people to ISIS is insulting and offensive not only to union members, but to anyone whose life has been directly impacted by the evil of terrorism,” said Wallace Jones, executive board member, SEIU 32BJ. “He should be ashamed, and he should publicly apologize.”
The Wisconsin governor’s declaration that he’d be able to take care of ISIS as president, because he callously fought to strip public sector unions of their collective bargaining rights in 2011, is especially galling to Jones because he spends his days as a security officer helping to protect New York City’s 9/11 memorial.
“As someone who works to protect the American people at the 9/11 Memorial—a major target for terrorists—and who lost union brothers and sisters on 9/11, I am so angry,” Jones continued. “Walker should look up the word union in the dictionary: we unite people, and he has done nothing but divide people with his comments and his actions.”
Walker’s ugly bashing of working men and women across the United States, has also angered New York City Central Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez.
"Governor Walker's comments likening working people engaged in the democratic process to cold-blooded terrorists are both pitiful, and indicative of the hateful anti-worker propaganda that he and others like him are insistent upon spreading," Alvarez said.
The New York City Central Labor Council leader further lambasted Walker and urged the entire labor community to show more solidarity in the face of similar right wing attacks.
”From the day he took office, Governor Walker has made it a priority to vilify American workers, and to strip them of their rights,” Alvarez added. “Now more than ever, we must all stand united in this fight to ensure that we are organizing workers, and helping them to secure the wages and benefits they need for financial security.”
Thousands of trade unionists once again demonstrated at Wisconsin’s State Capitol over the weekend in an effort to oppose the Orwellian-named “Right to Work bill — the latest legislative attack on working men and women, courtesy of Walker and his deep-pocketed backers on the right.
If passed, the so-called “Right to Work” bill in Wisconsin would make it harder for unions to raise money and advocate for workers, even as the torrent of anti-worker corporate cash pouring into Republican coffers, continues unabated.
