Take Time Out to Volunteer in the Volunteer State

by Mike Hall, Oct 27, 2006

They call it the “Volunteer State.” And just last Saturday in Tennessee more than 200 Labor 2006 working family volunteers knocked on union households doors from Knoxville in the northeast to Memphis in the Southwest.

And come Election Day weekend (Nov. 4–Nov. 7), hundreds more will be knocking on doors, making phone calls to union members, handing out fliers at nearly 400 worksites and knocking on more doors to get out the vote for Rep. Harold Ford’s (D) bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate, along with mobilizing support for Gov. Phil Bredesen’s re-election and other endorsed candidates.

In Tennessee, as in other battleground states, the focus in the last week and a half before Election Day is GOTV—Get Out the Vote. Union members can take part in Tennessee get-out-the-vote events in coming days by contacting Labor 2006 offices in Knoxville, 865-414-2786; Johnson City, 423-416-2929; Chattanooga, 423-472-7855; Nashville, 615-831-6715; and Memphis, 754-224-8007. Click here for more information on the Tennessee events. There are 167,000 voters who are members of the AFL-CIO union movement in Tennessee.

At a recent Nashville rally (see video above), Ford, who during his five terms in the House voted with working families 84 percent of the time on key issues, warned more than a hundred volunteers getting set for a labor-to-labor walk that Republican campaign tactics were about to get even nastier than the already extremely vicious attacks  

They’re going to try their hardest over the next two weeks just to scare everybody.…But we have something they don’t. We have something they wish they had going into this election. We have people knowing that America can be better than what it is today.

Along with the recent labor walks, Volunteer State union volunteers have distributed thousands of leaflets to workers at 366 worksites and some 200 local unions have reached out to their members through mailings or newsletter articles outlining the key issues at stake in this election—health care, good jobs, education, retirement security—and why their unions are backing Ford and other Tennessee candidates.

While Ford supports raising the federal minimum wage, opposes Bush administration trade schemes to send U.S. jobs overseas and opposes risky Social Security privatization schemes, his opponent, Bob Corker stands on the exact opposite side of all three issues. Ford has been the target of racist campaign ads, one of which was pulled from television stations after public outcry. One radio add targeting Ford, which was paid for by Corker’s campaign, included “jungle drums” in the background.

The Labor 2006 efforts have helped propel Ford in his race to fill the seat of retiring U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R) that most experts predicted would stay securely in the Republican column.

Around the country, Labor 2006 volunteers are playing key roles in this watershed election year. Just last Saturday, 4,730 volunteers across the nation walked neighborhoods and talked to working families. So far in October alone, more than 12,000 have pounded the pavement. All union offices have been asked to close on Nov. 6 and 7 so we can put all union staff and officers on the street along with hundreds of rank and file volunteers.

So far this election year, more than 11 million worksite fliers have been ordered from the AFL-CIO’s Working Families Toolkit; 10.9 million phone calls have been made to union homes and more than 11 million pieces of mail have found their way to union family homes.

Click here to find GOTV actions in your state or here to search for events near your hometown.

Don’t forget to check out the AFL-CIO Political Action Center at www.votenov7.org, where you can register to vote, learn about working family issues and download candidate comparison fliers.  

This portion of this website is paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, 815 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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