Friday, December 3, 2021

The El Salvador Murders, The AFL-CIO, AIFLD. Interview With Frank Hammer

Richard Mellor Admin

Good interview with Frank Hammer here.  Frank has been very supportive of this blog, Facts For Working People. Facts For Working People started a campaign in support of Frank's efforts to get the AFL-CIO to release the AIFLD files some time back.

After a resolution written by another retired UAW president calling for former AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka to release the files passed at a labor body in Duluth Minnesota, Facts For Working People called on other activists and socialists in the labor movement to take the resolution in to their locals and build the campaign. It was an important opportunity to explain to our co-workers and other union members the importance of international solidarity and the role of the US government and the AFL-CIO leadership in undermining it.

A few other resolutions were passed supporting the Duluth call, mostly by supporters of Facts For Working People Blog but regretfully there was almost no support coming from the wider labor movement.  This is quite shameful given the many thousands of activists and lower level officials within organized labor who identify as socialists or anti-imperialist.

To see the Duluth resolution and other material concerning the campaign Facts For Working People created we have a page with most of it at this link: https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_7.html

2 comments:

Frank said...

I'm grateful to Comrade Mellor and the Facts for Working People Blog for posting this interview that I just did this week with Steve Zeltzer regarding the murder of my brother Mike, another AIFLD official, and Salvadoran Jose Viera, at the hands of the reactionaries in El Salvador on January 3, 1981. The irony of what came to be known as the "Sheraton Murders" is that the forces responsible for the assassinations and my brother and the other two men were all motivated by the same goal of crushing the revolutionary peasant movements in the name of "anti-communism."

Richard Mellor said...

I am grateful that we met Frank and that you have remained a strong fighter for workers' rights and in particular, the health of the planet in the face of capitalist madness. Rob's book is out and I am personally proud to have met you both and been part of your struggles to set the records straight.