Jackson Urges Defeat of Candidates Who Put Businesses Over Workers : Politics: The activist leads a union rally and march to doomed GM plant in Van Nuys. He says new leadership is needed to combat unemployment and shrinking benefits.

Led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, hundreds of union workers gathered at a “rally for jobs” Saturday in Van Nuys and marched on a General Motors plant set to close this year.

The throng of sign-carrying and flag-waving workers from a range of local unions billed themselves as the “Coalition for Jobs and Health Care” and demonstrated to call attention to rising unemployment and shrinking benefits they said have been caused by corporate greed and mismanagement in the White House.

Jackson and several other speakers, including farm-worker advocate Cesar Chavez and local politicians, urged the crowd to exercise its political muscle and defeat politicians who favor corporations over workers.

“We need alternatives to plants closing, alternatives to jobs leaving,” Jackson told the crowd, which police estimated at nearly 1,000. “We need an alternative vision. We need a new President.”

The union members, including scores of laborers who stand to lose their jobs if the GM plant closes as scheduled in August, said they hoped that the rally would send a message of worker dissatisfaction to those running for public office.

“I think the only way to make a difference is with a united front like this,” said Jess Pacheco, a United Auto Workers member at the plant. “Hopefully, corporate America will take note. Nothing is set in stone on the GM plant. I am optimistic things can change.”

GM, however, has shown no sign that it will reverse its decision, which is expected to put 2,600 employees out of work. GM says it will try to find other jobs for the workers.

Jackson stressed the theme of hard times facing workers in his 15-minute address in the schoolyard at Fulton Junior High School.

“Here in California, over 1 million are unemployed today,” Jackson said. “Plants are closing and jobs are disappearing in aerospace, high technology, heavy manufacturing and construction. We need these industries. We need these workers’ skills. We must not surrender. It is time to fight back.”

Jackson said political leaders must formulate plans to re-industrialize the nation, at one point suggesting that money used to bail out failed savings and loans could be redirected to keep plants such as the GM one open. He spoke highly of Japan’s long-term plans to rebuild its infrastructure and asked why there is no such plan in the United States.

Jackson also complained that the presidential primaries have been dominated by bickering among candidates, rather than a serious discussion of the issues.

“The central issues . . . are not college parties. They are not rumors, pot or sex,” he said. “It is about the dignity of working people. The shared pain of the country is at stake. In the face of this pain, we must choose partnership, not polarization.”

Other speakers and attendees included a broad sampling of Democratic leaders, from U.S. Senate hopefuls Dianne Feinstein and Controller Gray Davis to Rep. Howard L. Berman and Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman.

Some speakers offered more pointed criticism of the Bush Administration. National UAW President Owen Bieber said the union “will work harder than it ever has before to kick George Bush’s . . . out of the White House.”

Bieber said the union has not given up efforts to save auto worker jobs in Van Nuys.

“We are going to continue to fight the decision by GM to close this plant,” he said. “They are not going to leave the workers out there with nothing.”