Tue. April 19, 2011
“Working families didn't create this mess, and we are not just going to sit by and get blamed for it,” said Western Territory GVP Gary Allen at a rally in support of workers’ rights held in Olympia, WA. “We didn't walk away with billions in bonuses and tax breaks, and we shouldn't have to pay for their mess.”
By some accounts, the rally was the largest held at the Capitol in more than a decade. The crowd displayed signs calling for fairness and demanded accountability for pain caused by corporate excesses, legislative blindness and the lack of sensibility in trade policies.
“We do not have a budget deficit,” Jeff Johnson, president of the Washington State Labor Council, one of the rally’s main organizers, told the crowd. “We have a social services deficit, we have a jobs deficit, we have a revenue deficit, and we have a deficit of leadership.”
Dan Twohig, a worker from the state ferry system said, "Corporations walk away with billions of taxpayer dollars every year, while working families are forced to make do with less and less. The state would do well to stop attacking the workers, we aren't the ones with the money.”
Wisconsin state Sen. Spencer Coggs, one of the " Wisconsin 14," got the biggest applause. He said it was labor groups across the country who “had our backs.”
