Discover the Networks has published the following update and provides a wealth of information on the One Nation Working Together (ONWT) organization, here it is:
"A project of the Tides Center, One Nation Working Together (ONWT) is headquartered in the Washington, DC offices of USAction. It also coordinates some of its activities out of the New York City offices of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU). ONWT's principal goal is to inject new energy into the social justice movement in advance of the 2010 mid-term elections. The organization's “signature event” is its October 2, 2010 “March on Washington,” whose purpose is to inspire “an intensive voter-mobilization program for Election Day 2010.”
ONWT's March on Washington is endorsed by a wide range of leftist groups and activists. Notable endorsers include such national organizations as: International ANSWER, the American Muslim Association of North America, United for Peace and Justice, Pax Christi, Sojourners, Color of Change , the American Friends Service Committee, the Campaign for America’s Future, Code Pink, the National Council of La Raza, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Working Families Party, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Progressive Democrats of America, the Green Party, Planned Parenthood, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the International Socialist Organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, Tikkun--Network of Spiritual Progressives (founded by Michael Lerner), Campus Progress, Green for All, the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU, USAction, the National Action Network (headed by Al Sharpton), the United States Student Association, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the NAACP, the Center for Community Change, the Earth Day Network, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Apollo Alliance, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Democracy For America, Women's Action for New Directions, Veterans For Peace, Win Without War, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Reform Immigration For America, School of the Americas Watch, People For the American Way, Physicians For a National Health Program, the Peace and Freedom Party, the National Urban League, the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, the Midwest Academy, Interfaith Worker Justice, the Institute for Policy Studies, Friends of the Earth, Free Speech TV, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, UNITE HERE, Peace Action, Jewish Funds For Justice, the American Association of University Professors, and the AFSCME. A local chapter of the National Organization for Women also endorses the ONWT rally.
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SOURCE:Discover the Networks
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Organizing for America, President Barack Obama’s support organization, has helped publicize ONWT's October 2 rally, as has the Daily Kos. Notable public figures to support the event include Danny Glover and Howard Dean.
ONWT's national campaign manager is Leah Daughtry, daughter of Herbert Daughtry, a noted mouthpiece of black liberation theology, a belief system whose tenets Leah likewise embraces. A minister at the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church in Washington, DC, Ms. Daughtry also serves as director of Faith in Action, a community outreach initiative. She previously worked in the Clinton-era Labor Department and was chief of staff to Democratic National Committee chairmen Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean.
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ONWT's steering committee liaison is Rosalyn Pelles, former director of the AFL-CIO’s Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Department. A onetime black-liberation activist, Pelles was a signatory to the 1998 call for the formation of a Black Radical Congress as a means of reviving social militancy among African Americans. That statement was also signed by such notables as Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Cornel West, and Deborah Bell of the Communist Party USA.
ONWT’s “director of peace,” Michael McPhearson, is a key organizer of the October 2, 2010 project. A former executive director of Veterans for Peace, McPhearson also has worked for the United for Peace and Justice coalition and has endorsed the Black Radical Congress.
The ONWT project's three central pillars are jobs, education, and “equality for all.” While the organization claims that “putting America back to work” is its primary focus, the vast majority of its proposals on this issue deal with increasing direct relief benefits to the unemployed, expanding the public sector, and unionizing the workplace.
Specifically, ONWT's platform calls for the following key items, whose most commonly shared thread is their call for increased government intervention and taxpayer-dollar expenditures:
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living-wage laws to guarantee that all jobs “pa[y] enough to support a family”
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an end to “racial profiling and re-segregation”
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“a fair path to citizenship” for illegal aliens, so as to “fix the broken immigration system” and alleviate immigrant children's fears that their “parents will be deported”
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“a clean environment, so no child is ever forced to decide between drinking the water or breathing the air, and staying healthy”
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an end to “tax cuts for the wealthy”
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an end to “unjustified military spending”
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“full equality for all women in all communities, indulging an end to wage discrimination”
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an expansion of taxpayer-funded unemployment benefits, healthcare benefits, and mortgage assistance, with particular emphasis on helping “populations and communities in the greatest need”
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an increase in federally funded “youth summer jobs and training initiatives”
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more federal spending to “stimulate job growth and retention”
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more federal “aid to states and cities—including direct job creation at local levels—especially in education, health care, social services and first responder workforces”
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more federal loans and grants to small businesses
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more federal “infrastructure investment,” particularly in “clean energy enterprises” and “green jobs”
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federally funded “training opportunities for workers who want to advance their careers”
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the provision of “paid sick days and paid family leave for all workers”
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an expansion of “access to the polls for everyone, including former felons,” so as to combat “voter disenfranchisement”
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an end to “discriminatory practices within the criminal-justice system,” particularly those practices that have a disparate impact on nonwhite minorities
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an expansion of federally funded programs “to help ex-felony offenders reintegrate into society, including job training [and] educational opportunities”
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“increase[d] federal support to institutions of higher education that provide opportunities for underserved communities”
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greater investment of taxpayer dollars “in public education systems, not prisons”
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the provision of “more education opportunities for incarcerated youth”
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the creation of more taxpayer-funded “affordable housing”
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the creation of a “public option” in healthcare, where a government-run health insurance agency would compete with private insurance companies
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support for the Dream Act, which would offer illegal-alien students a path to citizenship and would make them eligible for in-state college tuition discounts=============================
