{"id":11101,"date":"2016-02-24T23:09:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T23:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/?p=11101"},"modified":"2016-11-17T13:44:54","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T18:44:54","slug":"bridgeport-sparks-a-march-to-rebuild-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/labor\/bridgeport-sparks-a-march-to-rebuild-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridgeport Sparks a \u201cMarch to Rebuild America\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Steve Thornton<\/p>\n

Bridgeport has long been known as the third poorest city in the country, but there is another statistic that completes the poverty picture.\u00a0 Only 28 miles away, Greenwich, Connecticut is one of the wealthiest towns in America, and, not coincidently, the home turf of the Prescott Bush family.\u00a0 One business newspaper has called Fairfield County \u201cthe most unequal place in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

This disparity and the crumbling of many U.S. cities inspired the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1991 to announce a Connecticut march to \u201cRebuild America.\u201d\u00a0 Significantly, Bridgeport was chosen by Rev. Jackson as the starting point.\u00a0 On Sunday, August 15th, Jackson and 2,000 others marched three miles through the city, including Father Panik Village, the notorious and nearly abandoned public housing project.<\/p>\n

\u201cJobs are gone,\u201d Jackson told an attentive crowd on the first day of the seven-day march destined for the state Capitol in Hartford.\u00a0 \u201cPlants are closed.\u00a0 The tax base is limited.\u00a0 Children are neglected. Slums abound. This is a disaster born of greed,\u201d he declared. \u201cBridgeport is a monument to Reagan-Bush economic policies.\u201d Bridgeport\u2019s mayor had only recently announced a plan to have the city file for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

Jackson had called on local unions and community groups to organize the march.\u00a0 Taking the lead was District 1199\/SEIU, the largest health care union in the state, along with local community leaders like Cesar Battala and the city\u2019s Puerto Rican working families. District 1199 brought its Bridgeport nursing home workers, state employees, and community programs (homes for the developmentally disabled) into the effort.\u00a0 As a result of the march, Batalla and his supporters went on to organize the Coalition to Rebuild Bridgeport.<\/p>\n

The first Gulf War had ended three months earlier, when U.S. soldiers were sent to stop Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait. Jackson reasoned that if President George H.W. Bush could \u201dmobilize our girls and boys to bail out Kuwait, he can mobilize our girls and boys to bail out Bridgeport.\u201d\u00a0 The final cost of the war was $676 billion, according to three Arab economic institutions, ten times more than an earlier Defense Department estimate.<\/p>\n

According to District 1199, union members joined the event to \u201cdraw attention to the need for a new domestic agenda.\u201d\u00a0 The union joined Jackson\u2019s demands for \u201cspending more on schools instead of jails, spending more on health care instead of warfare, more to bail out cities and towns instead of savings and loan banks, and the retraining of workers\u201d from defense-oriented to peacetime jobs.<\/p>\n

The statewide coordinator for the march was Merrilee Milstein, a Vice President of District 1199. She noted the widespread Bridgeport support from diverse individuals and organizations as a \u201cremarkable outpouring of people who are demonstrating their concern for our state and our country.\u201d\u00a0 The health care union had long been known as an organization that prioritized not only the \u201cbread and butter\u201d issues of its members but larger civil rights and social justice issues as well.\u00a0 It had mobilized thousands of health care workers for the historic 1963 March on Washington, and was the first trade union to oppose the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

New York mayor David Dinkins and Mayor Ray Flynn of Boston joined Rev. Jackson as the marched stepped off on its 64-mile trek.\u00a0 Homeless veterans like Bob Weug got in line also.\u00a0 \u201cThose other countries have their problems,\u201d Weug told a reporter, \u201cbut good grief, don’t we have our own?.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, August 20, Jackson stood in Hartford before 7,000 marchers, supporters, union members and Bridgeport residents, making good on his pledge \u201cto send out a distress signal from Bridgeport heard around the whole country,\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo

Union members from the Machinists, Hotel Workers, United Electrical workers and District 1199 carry the \u201cRebuild America\u201d banner<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Photo

Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly and Jesse Jackson in HartfordSources<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong>
\nHealth Care Union News<\/em>, vol 12 no 6, September, 1991
\nBusiness Insider<\/em>, December 9, 2014
\nThe Day<\/em>, June 24, 1991
\nThe New York Times<\/em>, April 25, 1993, August 12, 1991
\nThe Hartford Courant<\/em>, August 16, 1991
\nThe Hour<\/em>, June 13, 1991
\nJet Magazine<\/em>, September 1991<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Steve Thornton Bridgeport has long been known as the third poorest city in the country, but there is another statistic that completes the poverty picture.\u00a0 Only 28 miles away, Greenwich, Connecticut is one of the wealthiest towns in America, and, not coincidently, the home turf of the Prescott Bush family.\u00a0 One business newspaper has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":11827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[37,53,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-labor","category-politics","category-social-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12309,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11101\/revisions\/12309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}