- 1) Which Side Are the Democrats On?
- 2) Which Side Are the Labor Unions On?
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- It
is refreshing to hear the new head of the AFL-CIO, former mineworker and
Mineworkers President Richard Trumka, get mad at sell-out Democrats and
make a threat not to "support" them next year.
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- As
Trumka pointed out in a talk to the Center for American Progress this week,
for years, Democratic politicians, and the Democrats as a Party, have counted
on the labor movement to get out the vote of its membership on Election
Day, only to turn on workers after getting to Washington, on the issues
that really matter, like jobs-killing free trade agreements, the gutting
of bankruptcy law and credit law protections, and, most recently, the undermining
of needed labor law reform.
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- Trumka,
quoting from a famous Joe Hill song, said that going forward, Democrats
will have to make it clear to labor "Which side are you on?"
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- But
really, that's only half the question. Joe Hill, in his song, was asking
that question of workers themselves. And indeed, the reason Democrats have
become such traitors to working class interests in recent decades is that
the labor movement itself has not answered Joe Hill's question resolutely
or honestly.
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- The
hard reality is that, despite years of betrayal by Democratic politicians
and by the Democratic Party, labor unions have continued year after year
to answer the call to rally their ever diminishing members during campaign
seasons to go door to door doing the hard work of rallying voters for ever
more treacherous candidates, and to do massive "get-out-the-vote"
campaigns on Election Day, as they did this past November to assure the
election of solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and
the election of President Barack Obama. Labor has also donated princely
sums collected from members to Democratic candidates and to the Democratic
National Committee.
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- And
just as predictably, Congressional Democrats, and the new president, have
been betraying their labor base....
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- For the rest of this story, please go to: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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