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March 31: Save Social Security!

Dallas unionists and other progressives will gather at brokerage firm Charles Schwab at 11:45 AM on Thursday, March 31, to ask them to stop financing the publicity campaign to privatize Social Security. A brief picket will be held on the public sidewalk in the 7600 block of Northwest Highway. It is just below the NorthPark shopping center on Central Expressway in the tall Brierley building. There is a well-partronized Barnes and Noble bookstore in the strip mall there.

Schwab and other brokers formed a group to gather funds to back proposals from the Bush Administration that would take billions of money out of public hands and put it into private investments. Brokerage firms would be among the first to profit from the scheme, while America's workers and retirees would be the first to suffer.

March 31 will be a national day of action. According to AFL-CIO Field Organizer Paul Vasquez, there will be five actions that day in Texas alone.

Pressure from unions and retiree organizations has already gotten results. Two brokerage firms have already pulled out of the publicity organization, according to Vasquez.

Even though Bush's privatization proposals have steadily lost support since he began his public crusade, it would be foolish to think that the Republican majority will not give him the privatization he wants.

The Administration has confused the issue greatly by keeping its proposal vague, but they always insist on some kind of privatization. Opponents, including organized labor, have said that they would be open to all suggestions, but will not consider privatization.

Even Bush has said that privatization would not help extend the program's solvency.