Leaked UAW documents focus on protests

DETROIT, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- The United Auto Workers union is part of a coalition of groups that is organizing political protests scheduled to begin this spring, leaked documents indicate.

The documents were first reported by The Daily Caller, a Web site. The Detroit News said Thursday that the documents reveal a 43-member group that includes the UAW has taken the name, "The 99% Spring."

It has been reported previously that the UAW would be training members in strategies for peaceful protesting. The documents that were taken from the UAW Web site by a hacker say the group plans to "Take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time."

"In April, we're going to be part of a broad coalition that's going to be training our membership and anybody who cares about justice in this society in nonviolent direct action," UAW President Bob King said at a union rally earlier this month in Flint, Mich.

King said the group's first protest would focus on the General Electric Co. shareholders meeting in Detroit on April 25.

"It is morally wrong -- it is absolutely wrong -- that they make billions and billions and billions of dollars and pay not a single penny in taxes," King said.

"Enough is enough. We're the 99 percent who want 100 percent fairness for everyone," he said.

The Daily Caller Executive Editor David Martosko countered that King's $168,073 annual salary puts him in the nation's 1 percent group, not the 99 percent.

"He is the 1 percent. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, but he shouldn't act like a pauper," Martosko said.