Million Worker March

Media Release from the

RICHMOND MILLION WORKER MARCH ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

For immediate release: October 7, 2004

Media contacts: Christie Burwell – (804) 726-9913; burwellc@mail1.vcu.edu
Charlie Schmidt – (804) 643-8634; (804) 399-7594 –
charlieschmidt@riseup.net

Richmond activists organize for Million Worker March

A coalition of Richmond activists has formed to bring people to the
Million Worker March, a national event scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 17,
noon at the Lincoln Memorial in
Washington, D.C. On that day, members of organized and unorganized
labor, anti-war and other social justice organizations will raise
their voices to demand “Money for jobs and human needs, not war!”

Locally, the Richmond Million Worker March Organizing Committee has
chartered a bus to take people to the march. The bus will leave Sunday
morning, Oct. 17, at 8:30 from 915 N. Allan Ave (behind the Lowes at
Lombardy and Allan). Free parking is available. The bus will be
returning same evening. A donation of $10 is requested, but no one
will be turned away for lack of funds. There are 43 seats and the bus
is whealchair accesable.

Initiated by Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union in San Francisco, the MWM has been endorsed by hundreds of
unionorganizations, social action groups and prominent individuals. (A
partial listing is included on the leaflet that follows this release.)
Speakers include the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory, and Danny
Glover.

Local coalition members include the Defenders for Freedom, Justice and
Equality; Richmond A.N.S.W.E.R.; Richmond Coalition for a Living Wage;
Richmond Food Not Bombs; United Parents Against Lead National Inc.;
and the Virginia Commonwealth University Coalition for a Living Wage.

“With every day that passes, the crisis facing the American people
deepens,” said Richmond MWM organizer Christie Burwell of the VCU
Coalition for a Living Wage. “In Iraq,
resistance to a brutal occupation escalates as both major political
parties march in lock-step to intensify this war,
increase the numbers of troops, allocate yet further trillions of
dollars to permanent war while devastating social services here at
home. The Million Worker March is rooted in the intensity and range of
anger over the placement of priority on war over health care, jobs,
education and civil liberties.”

The demands of the March include a slash in the military budget to
provide essentials like universal health care, a
national living wage, public education, Social Security, and the
rebuilding of inner cities. It is a call for a more open government
and media, and a more dirrect democrasy, with amnesty for undocumented
workers and an end to “free trade” agreements, anti-labor legislation,
and threats to civil liberties.

For more information or to volunteer to help, contact Richmond
Coalition for a Living Wage at (804) 643-8634 or (804) 399-7594; or
the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality at (804) 644-5834 or
(804) 247-3731.

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