Petrelis Files

For Immediate Release
January 18, 2005

Contact: Michael Petrelis
Phone: 415-621-6267
Email: MPetrelis@aol.com


The People With AIDS/HIV Coalition Endorses "Hands Off Social Security" Demonstration

(San Francisco, CA) - Members of the newly formed People With AIDS/HIV Coalition over the weekend agreed to endorse the demonstration and rally to save Social Security which have been organized by the Gray Panthers' chapters of San Francisco and Berkeley.

WHAT: Rally and Speak Out

WHERE: Pacific Stock Exchange, 115 Sansome Street (at Bush)

DATE: Tuesday, January 18

TIME: 11:30 a.m.

WHY: No Privatization of Social Security

As the Bush Administration moves forward to privatize Social Security and make the program a gift to Wall Street, many people living with AIDS/HIV in San Francisco who currently receive Social Security benefits are growing anxious their entitlements are on the chopping block.

"We are proud to join with senior activists in the Gray Panthers today to tell President George Bush, 'Hands off our Social Security,'" said Michael Petrelis, a member of the People With AIDS/HIV Coalition. "For quite a number of AIDS patients, Social Security provides the benefits that keep us alive and must not be jeopardized. That could happen, if Bush is allowed to privatize this federal program."

More information about the rally, background information and history of Social Security, please read the flyer below from the Gray Panthers.

* * *

http://graypantherssf.igc.org/socsec1-18.htm
HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!
SOCIAL SECURITY FOR THE FUTURE,
NOT FOR WALL STREET!

JOIN US: TUES, JAN. 18, 11:30 AM
PACIFIC COAST STOCK EXCHANGE
115 SANSOME ST, (BUSH) more info.

Bush has made overturning Social Security his primary domestic priority in the coming months, a payback to his corporate sponsors. We need to act now!

Social Security is basically sound, but Wall Street wants to convince us it is doomed. Wall Street wants to slash benefits for future retirees, revive a lackluster stock market, and pocket almost a trillion dollars of management fees in a privatized system.

47 million retired and disabled workers, their families, and the families of deceased workers depend on Social Security to keep them from poverty. It is a system of social insurance that has operated efficiently and reliably for 70 years, and is based on a morality of generations taking care of each other and spreading risks among everyone. (more)

Social Security is there for future generations. It has over a $1.5 trillion surplus that is growing. By conservative estimates, it can fund current benefit levels until at least 2042, and 73% of current benefit levels after 2042. Current benefit levels could be funded indefinitely by applying the existing payroll tax to incomes over $88,000. These projections actually underestimate Social Security's strength because the projections assume future growth in Gross Domestic Product to be roughly half its historical value. (more)

For future retirees, Wall Street plans to reduce the percentage of their earnings they get as retirement benefits. For a typical worker retiring 50 years from now, this reduction would be 40%. x x There would be $1 to $2 trillion in transition costs to maintain current benefit levels over the next 10 years while workers divert 1/3 of their payroll deductions into private stock market accounts. Bush plans to borrow this money and dump the repayment costs on the same future workers and retirees whose benefits would be slashed. x x Administrative costs would be 20-30 times Social Security's administrative costs, to come from our benefits. x Wall Street's financial services industry would get up to $900 billion in management fees over the next 75 years. x This is one quarter of the projected $3.7 trillion Social Security shortfall that Wall Street says makes it necessary to scuttle Social Security.

Ultimately, Social Security privatization is a plan to divert workers' savings into the stock market and the private economy, whose outlook is uncertain at best. From 1999 to 2003, the value of 401(k) accounts owned by people near retirement dropped by an average of 25%. Now Wall Street demands our money to solve the problems it created: a record government budget deficit from corporate tax cuts and war, a $55 billion per month trade deficit from exporting manufacturing to use cheap labor, and a dollar whose value is falling and could collapse and cause global depression. No way! x

Social Security was instituted in 1935 in response to organized pressure of millions of working people following the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression. Half of US seniors were in poverty because of the failure of their individual stock market ac-counts, the very system that Wall Street wants to re-institute. We won't go back there!



Join us on January 18th! Strengthen Social Security
for Future Generations…Not Wall Street!

Hands Off Social Security:
SF, 415-215-7575, mlyon01@comcast.net
East Bay, 510-548-9696, GrayPanthersBerk@aol.com



PLANS FOR THE ACTION

At 11:30 AM, We will meet at the
Pacific Stock Exchange, downtown San Francisco
115 Sansome St. (between Bush and Pine),
and have a short rally/demonstration,

We will then march 2 blocks to the
SF Chamber of Commerce,
235 Montgomery St. (also between Bush and Pine),
and have another short rally/demonstration,

We will then march again 2 blocks to the
offices of Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
1 Post St (at Market and Montgomery)
for another short rally/demonstration.

Use the Montgomery Street BART station,
(at Market and Montgomery, at Feinstein's office)

Parking is available at 71 Stevenson (between 1st and 2nd Sts.)

See a map showing this area.



The Social Security System was won by the struggle of millions in 1935, the middle of the Great Depression, where millions lost their jobs and millions more lost their life savings in bank failures. Over half of America's elderly lacked sufficient income to be self-supporting.

Through massive strikes and demonstrations workers and their families formed a movement that challenged the power of the government, forcing it to enact Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, the right to unions and other deep reforms, which business and government are now trying to take back.