1/18 SF March for Social Security

Please add the January 18, 2005 march for Social Security at 11:30 a.m.in San Francisco's Financial District to your Martin Luther King week of demonstrations. We are going to give Bush the political lesson he needs: When you attack Social Security, you build a united front of opposition, and we shall win.

We won Social Security in 1935 as a result of the general strikes of 1934 in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Toledo. It is a testament to the strength of a labor movement that we still have it 70 years later. Now is the time to not only save Social Security, but to make it better than ever, removing the cap so that the rich pay for Social Security on all their income, and raising the minimum benefit level to $2,000 per month.

Below are the details from:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/01/1713239.php
and it is on the Calendar, although the time is 11:30 a.m., of course.
HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!

Social Security for Our Future,
Not for Wall Street Profits!

Join us in a March on
Tuesday., Jan. 18, 2005 at 11:30 AM
to
The Pacific Stock Exchange,
115 Sansome (at Bush Street)
Near the Montgomery Street BART Station
Then on to the
San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
235 Montgomery Street (Between Bush and Pine)
Then to
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Office
1 Post Street (Corner of Market

We'll be there with banners, signs, costumes, skits, music!

HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!

President Bush is trying to cut back on our Social Security and line the pockets of his Wall Street friends. We must stop him now!

Our Social Security is really not in danger, but Wall Street wants to tell us that it is doomed. Wall Street wants use our money to build corporations, slash our retirement benefits, and slash our kids' retirement benefits.
Wall Street would pocket almost a trillion dollars in fees they would charge you in this private pension system. This would not be Social Security!

More than 47 million retired workers, disabled workers, worker's families, widows, and their children depend on Social Security to keep them from poverty. For the last 70 years, our social insurance has operated efficiently and
reliably. It is based on the idea that we want to help take care of each other and protect each other from the risks of living and dying.

Right now, Social Security is there for us and our children. It has more than 1.5 trillion dollars in its reserve that is growing every year. Most economists believe that Social Security can pay out today's benefits until at least
the year 2042, but only 73% of benefits after that. But today's benefits could be continued by having those with more than $88,000 a year paying their fair share.

If Wall Street has its way, tomorrow's workers will be cheated four ways:

1. Workers would get less pension in the future--workers retiring 50 years
from now would have their retirement income cut by 40%. OUR CHILDREN would
have to repay 1 to 2 trillion dollars that BUSH borrowed for transition
costs.
ThIS EXTRA MONEY would be needed for the next ten years, because

2. Social Security would be paying out today's full benefit payments, but
would only take in 2/3 of its payroll taxes: 1/3 would go into A PERSON'S
PRIVATE retirEment account.

3. The fees that financial managers would POCKET from PRIVATE retirement
accounts ARE 20-30 times Social Security's operating costs. THE fees would
BE
PAID OUT OF our SOCIAL SECURITY income. Wall Street's stock brokers and
financial managers would CLEAN UP more than $900 billion in fees over the
next 75
years.

4. .The safety of private pension accounts is very uncertain. From 1999 to
2003, the value of 401(k) accounts owned by people near retirement dropped
by
an average of 25%.

Now Wall Street wants our money to solve problems it created. The
government
has a high budget deficit because of corporate tax cuts, and the Iraq war.
The US imports 5 billion dollars more in goods each month than it exports,
because it moved manufacturing to countries with cheap labor. Our dollar's
value
is falling. Wall Street's policies threaten to collapse the economy, and
they want to use Social Security to bail themselves out. No way!

Social Security began in 1935 because of strikes and street demonstrations
by millions of working people who lost everything after the 1929 stock
market
crash, which triggered the Great Depression. Many older people were left in
poverty because their stock market funds were lost. This is the very system
that
Wall Street and the Bush administration wants us to return to. We won't go
back there!

Contacts:

SF: 415-215-7575, mlyon01 [at] comcast.net
East Bay: 510-548-9696, GrayPanthersBerk [at] aol.com

See: http://graypantherssf.igc.org/socsec1-18.htm