Brothers and Sisters:

In the interest of solidarity and humanity we, workers in the so called "underdeveloped" countries, call upon our brothers and sisters in the United States of America to heed President Bush's words and, "elect new leaders -- leaders not compromised by terror."

Corporate dictated U.S. foreign policy has meant a hellish existence for us here in the underdeveloped world. The same forces that have driven your standard of living steadily downward, that slaughtered women and children in Waco Texas, that have filled your prisons with young people, that refuses to provide medical care for millions of people in the richest country on earth, have imposed an ever more harsh reality on us, either directly or more often through their stooges or the IMF/World bank which are nothing but arms of the U.S. Treasury Department.

But we are clear on one thing: We do not blame U.S. workers for the actions of the U.S. government. We do not blame U.S. workers for some 5 million who perished in the Indo-Chinese peninsula when the U.S. supported and armed a corrupt regime that couldn't win an election in its own country. We grieve for the Vietnamese children still born today with deformities due to the chemical warfare waged on us by the U.S. government. We grieve for the U.S. workers, our brothers and sisters, who perished and were lied to by their own government.

We do not blame U.S. workers for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba by Belgian and U.S. Imperialism and the installing of the U.S. puppet, Mobutu, who went on to murder some 2 million people.

We do not blame U.S. workers for the assassination of General Rene Schneider at the behest of U.S. representative Henry Kissinger. Or for the subsequent U.S. government orchestrated murder of our elected President Salvador Allende and the installation by that government of the dictator Pinochet who destroyed the unions, democratic rights and murdered and tortured thousands of our youth.

We do not blame U.S. workers because the U.S. government financed and armed Saddam Hussein while he was dropping gas on those of us that opposed his dictatorial regime. Nor because the U.S. government armed both Iraq and Iran during a horrible war that cost some half million middle eastern lives. A war that was encouraged by the U.S. state department. We do not blame U.S. workers for some 5000 Iraqi deaths a month caused by the sanctions against Iraq imposed after Saddam Hussein and his U.S. friends (among them the Bush's) fell out.

We do not blame U.S. workers for their government's overthrow of the democratic regime of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 at the behest of the oil conglomerates and the installation of the murderous Shah that led to the present Islamic regime.

U.S. workers are not responsible for the corporate dictated policies of your government that have supported murderous dictators and suppressed democratic rights from Panama to the Philippines.

We do not blame U.S. workers for the terrorism and slaughter inflicted on your brothers and sisters in the former colonial world by the U.S. government and its agents. But the global crisis is at a critical juncture. We can't get rid of our dictators when they're supported and armed by yours. Without your help, without working class unity on a global scale, those desperate victims of U.S. foreign policy in our world will see only the extremists and fanatics as offering a way out. We need your help or we'll all go down together.

No longer can working people in the United States of America passively ignore the actions of the United States government abroad or at home for that matter. We appeal to our U.S. brothers and sisters to bring their power and strength to the world stage. We have a future to win.

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All

Read Labor's Militant Voice issue #10 at: labor's militant voice

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than something I don't want and get it" Eugene Debs

Richard Mellor

Member: AFSCME Local 444 Oakland CA