North West Indiana Residents Battle Corporations and Politicians
By: Richard Mellor Retired member, AFSCME Local 444 Oakland CA & John Martinez Local UAW 22
N.W. Lake County Indiana is bordered to the west by Chicago and the north by Lake Michigan. Driving east on Indianapolis Boulevard you pass through historic industrial towns like Hammond, East Chicago and Gary. These towns are home to working people, many of who worked in steel or the oil industry. Good blue-collar jobs were once to be found here. The county is also home to British Petroleum and U.S. Steel, global corporations that wield tremendous power in the community and the state as a whole.
These two corporations, along with Ispat and Inland, two other steel companies, have wielded that power with disastrous consequences for the working people of North West Indiana. They had Indiana State legislators introduce and pass two bills that lowered their taxes and shifted the tax burden on to homeowners through increased property taxes. Many residents of Lake County have seen their mortgages triple. Some have already foreclosed and others are facing the prospect of losing their homes in the immediate future.
Dado Rothenberg, and her husband Andy, are two Whiting Indiana homeowners who started the Can’t Pay Won’t Pay campaign. The CPWP believes that the two bills, 1902 and 1858, that legalized the tax shift should be repealed. The Can’t Pay Won’t Pay Campaign has a very different approach to some of the other groups that are protesting the tax theft. Rather than relying on the courts or appealing to the very politicians that voted for the bills (the corporate sponsored bills were passed unanimously by both Republicans and Democrats) the CPWP Campaign is organizing and mobilizing homeowners, renters and other working class people to act on their own behalf. The campaign had its first meeting in Hammond on December 14th and on December 23rd picketed the home of one of the bill’s authors.
On February 5th, the campaign organized a successful car caravan through three NW Indiana towns, Hammond, East Chicago, and Whiting, stopping at BP’s information center on the way. Can’t Pay Won’t Pay is confident that if enough people are willing to come out on the streets, attend rallies, attend legal pickets of politicians homes, offices or leaflet their neighborhoods, then they can get these bills repealed. BP made over $10 billion dollars in profit last year. “These politicians and their corporate masters must understand that they cannot take action that destroys people’s lives without hearing from us”, said one CPWP supporter, and she didn’t mean sending a letter. The campaign is planning more actions and leafleting of politicians communities and has a planned a protest at the home of a bp spokesperson on March 19th. The campaign also joined with other groups in a protest at the state capitol on March 14th.
The unions have the power and resources to organize direct action campaigns like the cpwp campaign. Many of these homeowners in NW Indiana are union members or retired union members. By fighting for housing and renters rights, unions would win tremendous support within our communities but so far, the leadership of many local AFL- CIO unions have been silent.
The CPWP campaign points demands the repeal of these corporate sponsored tax bills and opposes any cuts in jobs or public services. Corporation’s share of taxes in the state of Indiana declined 38% between 1989 and 2003 according to Citizens for tax Justice, and that figure for Lake County must be considerably higher by 2005. Nationally state government income deriving from major corporations has dropped by 40%. These issues are union issues. The employers and corporations have many ways of increasing their share of the national wealth beyond just attacking our wages and benefits at work. They change tax laws and create loopholes for themselves; they can manipulate interests rates and money supply that can affect savings, housing costs and rents. We must fight them in the community as well as on the job.
The Can’t Pay Won’t pay campaign is supporting a rally at the Indiana state capitol being called by the United Citizen’s Alliance, another group against the tax hike. If you want to know more or contact the CPWP campaign you can e-mail them at: ANDO2@sbcglobal.net
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