(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Declaring Government is broken and responds now to the rich, but not Working People, a group of several dozen protesters - many from the National Education Association (NEA) - gathered on Capitol Hill to urge massive structural reforms. Their point and their command: “No more business as usual.” No more half-measures, no more filibusters, no more rigged elections by Plutocrats or the Republican Donald Trump regime, no more bans on a Woman’s right to govern her own body, and no more gerrymandering, preventing it by law. Change the U.S. Supreme Court, one speaker said. And, especially, no more massive assaults on voting rights. Those assaults, in Southern and/or Deep Red States, would take the U.S. back to the days of Jim Crow, speakers warned. The protest came as Southern States continued their Trump-ordered assaults on Congressional Districts represented by People of Color. The latest battle erupted in South Carolina, where the GOP-run State House again approved a redistricting plan to eliminate the seat of influential Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn, the only African-American and Democrat in the State’s seven-member delegation. Other Southern States have already redistricted Black Lawmakers out of their chairs by abolishing their Districts, leading to protests and lawsuits region-wide. Trump ordered the destruction, which began in Texas, to preserve the slim and overall Republican U.S. House majority. But redistricting is only one facet of a much wider net of repression, speakers said. “Educators feel” the impact of racism and oppression by the wealthy and well-connected - and their destruction of the safety net that helps the rest of us “every day,” said Noel Candelaria, an El Paso, Texas Special Ed Teacher and Secretary-Treasurer of the NEA, the Nation’s largest Union. “They feel it when students come to school hungry, when Teachers have to hold two or three more jobs to make ends meet, when billionaires get what they want. When the political system fails, it’s part of a larger story of who gets heard in America. And no one should be silenced because of who they love versus how much money they have.”

To Continue Reading This Labor News Story, Go To: Union protesters to lawmakers: ‘No more business as usual’ – People's World