CHICAGO – Excitement filled the House of Fortune restaurant in Chinatown here as Donna DeWitt, president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, addressed the annual People’s Weekly World banquet Nov. 18. The banquet raised $8,000 for the People’s Weekly World fund drive.

DeWitt’s keynote speech came only days after the release of the International Longshoremen’s Association members known as the Charleston Five.

DeWitt, who played a key role in organizing support for the Charleston Five, warned of the right-wing’s anti-labor and racist agenda that menace not only her state, but the whole country.

Emblematic of this agenda, she said, is the new campaign launched by South Carolina’s aggressive and ambitious Attorney General Charles Condon against immigrants, in particular Mexican immigrants.

“Charlie Condon wants to wash his hands of the Charleston Five and go on to ‘greater things,’” DeWitt said. In January Condon will introduce state legislation to turn all police agencies into adjuncts of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service so as to hunt immigrants, especially those who have been active in organizing efforts in that right-to-work state.

Focusing on the current crisis, John Bachtell, PWW banquet committee chairperson and head of the Illinois district of the Communist Party, denounced the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, but warned that “crimes against humanity must be met with global justice, not military tribunals.”

Bachtell warned against the attempts by the corporate elite to cynically take advantage of the present crisis for their own financial and political gain. “While workers risked their lives rescuing people from the Twin Towers, the ruling class rushed to rescue their hoarded gold and to loot the Treasury.”

The banquet presented its annual “Chris Hani/Rudy Lozano Awards” to three distinguished Chicagoans. Alderman Ricardo Munoz, a Mexican-American member of the Chicago City Council, was honored for his work in the fight for a living wage ordinance and for a new high school for his largely Mexican-American ward.

In his remarks, Munoz denounced the anti-worker trend of the city, state and federal governments. “In the country we have a president who wants to bail out corporations and leave workers hungry and without a job.”

The second award recipient, Bernice Bild, has a long, distinguished resume as a fighter for social justice and peace, and has been the chief source of energy and inspiration behind Chicago Jobs with Justice’s Committee for New Priorities.

Rev. Dr. Marshall Elijah Hatch, pastor of the New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church and coordinator of ministry for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, has been a major figure in the movements against police brutality and for housing, among other struggles.