A.The results of recent surgery for colon cancer won’t stop James Phipps, 75, from attending Saturday’s No Kings protest in Chicago, Illinois. “I have a burning desire to participate in the protest.” he said, “because that’s all I’ve done my whole life.”
Phipps, born in Marks, Mississippi, was involved in the civil rights movement in the 1960s from the age of 13, when he participated in the racial integration of his local high school and organized with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At age 15, he became involved with the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union (MFLU), which organized sharecroppers for better wages.
At the time, the MFLU organized cotton pickers. “They were paid 30 cents an hour and worked in the hot sun, 10 hours a day, which worked out to $3 and a half per pound of cotton,” Phipps said. “It broke their necks, backs, pelvises and knees.”
“They had no medical care,” he added. “That’s one of the key things on my mind right now.”
Phipps, who now works in administrative support in Cook County, is a member of SEIU Local 73.
He was grateful to have health insurance to cover his recent cancer surgery. The federal government shutdown continues, after Democrats demanded that Republicans address recent cuts to Medicaid under Donald Trump and extend health insurance subsidies that expire at the end of the year. The expiration would set the stage for rapidly rising insurance premiums and risk leaving an estimated 3.1 million Americans without health insurance.
“You have greedy men who only think about one thing, which is improving their wallets, their financial well-being,” said Phipps, who was also alarmed by the aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids in Chicago. The Trump administration defended these raids with false and misleading claims about criminality.
“There’s no reason to walk the streets and take people out of their homes, and they’ve been here for 20 or 30 years,” he said. “I had Mexican neighbors who lived next door to me for 41 years. They were some of my best friends in life. We came together.
“We were sociable with the neighbors, with each other, and we loved each other. When we saw someone die or there was a problem, we were already there.”
There are parallels, Phipps said, between the way immigrants are treated under Trump and the discriminatory laws he grew up under in Mississippi.
“The same struggle that Mexican Americans and people of color go through, we’ve been going through since 1619, particularly in the South, when we had Jim Crow,” he said. “If you dared to do anything at that time to confront them about how you were treated, you would end up being found in the river or lynched somewhere, so I identify with what’s happening.”
“We didn’t want kings then, and we don’t want kings now”
Some of the largest unions in the United States are involved in organizing the No Kings protests, with more than 2,700 protests planned across all 50 states, with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Teachers as anchors of the events.
“Unions understand that a voice at work creates power for ordinary people at work. Unions understand that a voice in democracy creates power for ordinary people, for the workers of a society,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “These are two of the main ways that ordinary people have power.
“We and the unions understand that you have to have a voice to have freedom. Freedom does not come without a voice.”
While prominent Republicans and Trump administration officials have claimed the protests amount to “hate America” rallies, in stark contrast to Trump’s description of the Jan. 6 rioters as “patriots.” Republican Rep. Tom Emmer went so far as to suggest that Democrats were bowing to the “pro-terrorist wing of their party” by sticking to their demands that Republicans address recent Medicaid cuts and expand health insurance subsidies.
Weingarten said the events were actually a response to Trump’s abuses of power and intended to express frustration with his administration’s inability to solve problems such as soaring food and health care prices.
“I love America and I hate anyone who tries to take away my patriotism because I want the promise of America to be real for all Americans,” she said. “That’s where unions are. They want to make the promise of America real for our members, for their families and for the people we serve.
“Our founders were a group of rebels who said, ‘We don’t want kings.’ And today, 249 years later, people are saying, “No, we really mean it. “There are a lot of things we’ve changed in America, but one of the things that has remained constant is that we didn’t want kings then, and we don’t want kings now. »
“The real threat to this country is not peaceful protesters. It’s politicians who shut down our government to protect billionaires and corporate greed,” said Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of SEIU 32 BJ, which represents 185,000 janitors, security guards, airport workers and other service workers on the U.S. East Coast. “What seems ironic to me is that you call peaceful protesters ‘terrorists,’ but the people who destroyed our nation’s Capitol are ‘patriots.’
“On October 18, SEIU members will take to the streets across the country in No Kings, because America belongs to the people, to the working people, not to billionaires or a few politicians who think they can rule like kings in a democracy like ours. »
