Congresswoman Jackie Speier

Remarks on the ILWU May Day Protest of the Iraq war

 Madame Speaker, today many of the 40,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union - the ILWU - are expressing their outrage at the Administration’s war policies and their effect on working families by staging a walkout at ports and other facilities along the West Coast.

I stand in solidarity with these workers who, like the truckers who mobilized in Washington earlier this week and many other working and middle-class Americans, have simply had enough of the diet of mistruths and deceptions that our President continues to feed the American public.

Americans are saying enough is enough.  We spend billions every week in Iraq while the government there banks its oil profits and refuses to pitch in to help fund the necessary projects required to get the Iraqi people back on their feet.

Madame Speaker, my tenure in this house is short, but my interest in the institution has been a life-long pursuit.  May I say that you have done more to bring peace to our nation and get our troops back home to their families than any other war-time Speaker in our history.  I am proud to stand by you and the ILWU as we all do our part to bring an end to this war. 

It is time to bring our men and women home to their families and communities.  It is time for all Americans, like the Longshore and Warehouse workers, to stand up and tell the President “Enough is enough.  End this war before your term is over.  Eight tragic years for our country is bad enough, don’t saddle future generations with a prolonged commitment in a country we never should have gone into in the first place.”