Valley residents urged to attend ‘American rally’

By Don Shilling

Organizers hope the event highlights the need to support manufacturing.

Mahoning Valley residents are urged to come out in large numbers Saturday to send a message to politicians in Washington and Columbus.

Jim Graham, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112 in Lordstown, expects thousands of people to attend the “America Fights Back. Enough” rally at 1 p.m. on Courthouse Square in downtown Warren.

“We need jobs,” Graham said. “If you want to solve the economy, building up China, building up Japan is not the way to do it.”

What’s needed, he said, are government policies that support manufacturing. If thousands of people attend the rally, the event will put pressure on state and national politicians, he said.

About 100 people attended an organizational meeting Monday. Although Graham and other union officials are leading the effort, also attending were representatives from senior- citizens groups and salaried retirees from Delphi Corp.

“It’s not a union rally. It’s not a labor rally. It’s not a senior-citizens rally. It’s not a churches rally. It’s an American rally,” Graham said.

Graham and others will speak on topics such as outsourcing of jobs to other countries, unemployment and health care. Politicians who will speak include U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, state Sen. Capri Cafaro and Warren Mayor Michael O’Brien.

The focus of the country has to be placed on how to rebuild an industrial base, said Gary Steinbeck, a local representative for the United Steelworkers of America.

“We are in crisis. We’ve lost millions of jobs,” he said.

The nation can’t rely only on retail jobs to support its middle class, he said.

Just in the Valley, about 50,000 Steelworker jobs have been eliminated since the early 1980s, he said. In Akron, the number of rubber workers has fallen from 100,000 to 3,000, he said.

Besides pushing for job-creation policies, the rally also is designed to teach something to people outside the Valley, said Bill Padisak, president of the Mahoning-Trumbull Federation of Labor.

“We persevere, and we haven’t lost hope. The president said we’ll get through this, and don’t lose hope. That’s how we feel,” Padisak said.

Graham said he is hoping that national media outlets will report on the rally. He also hopes that national union leaders will take the idea and plan rallies in other cities.

With the recession, the rest of the nation now is seeing what the Valley has been living through since the local steel industry collapsed, he said.

“The system is broken. We are going to highlight the Valley and what we’ve been going through for 30 years. Now the rest of the country is going through this, and they don’t like it,” he said.

shilling@vindy.com