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OUR VOICES                        Jackson
carceration rather than receive employment and education. Pain is not localized and narrowly focused and neither is our protest. The executive, legislative, the judicial branches of government, private industry, most leaders of organized labor and the mass media have each played their role in locking the Black, Hispanic and the poor behind the veil and ignoring their anguish. 

Sending messages to Washington has not worked, so we came in the flesh to serve notice that there is widespread desperation in the land. We seek a better way.

Our nation is suffering from a double economic hemorrhage. On the one hand, because of antiquated equipment and inferior, incompetent management, we have lost our edge in automotive, steel, electronic, rubber, and textile production, and we have become energy dependent. We are energy dependent mainly because special interests have been allowed to operate against our national interest. On the other hand, the flight of capital involves $150 billion annually leaving the United States economy, forcing the American worker to compete with the slave wages of workers under repressive regimes.

The president and the congress must tackle the corporate giants. To "balance the budget" by threatening to eliminate public service jobs, hospital care and aid to the elderly is to hold the poor as hostages. Making demands upon the poor that they cannot refuse is not discipline, it is punishment. It is immoral and it makes economic nonsense. The rich will not sacrifice for the country. To balance the budget by threatening social services is to put a tourniquet on the little finger. Whereas to tackle our trade deficit and our industrial inefficiency is to stop the blood that is gushing from our economic jugular vein. We deserve better leadership or new leadership, and it would be narrow-sighted to only focus on the executive branch. After all, we elected a president, not a king. 

On the very hill in the nation's capital where we lodged our protest, are the butchers of our dreams. On Capitol Hill was born the idea of the a balanced budget. We must be informed as to who the chairpersons of significant committees are, and their powers. For example, we must know that the Senate Budget Committee is headed by Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina; we must know that Robert Giamo of Connecticut is the Chairman of the House Budget Committee. We must understand the budget cycle so that we can exert pressure at the proper place at the proper time. We must reward or retire these gentlemen according to their deeds. When the balance-the-budget hysteria and the Proposition 13 mania struck Washington, the President proposed cutting 50,000 CETA* jobs; the

[[footnote]] *Comprehensive Employment and Training Act [[/footnote]]