Members of the Bluegrass Express got an early start today when they leafleted workers at Dana Corp. in Elizabethtown.

Rachele Huennekens, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, is setting out on a 10-day bus tour through Kentucky, where Steve Beshear is challenging Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), who has canceled bargaining rights for state employees, privatized Kentucky’s Medicaid program and taken other anti-worker stands. Dozens of local labor leaders and union volunteers are taking part in the Bluegrass Express tour, which starts today. Huennekens will blog along the route and sends us her first post.

Toot! Toot! Look out, Kentucky, the Bluegrass Express is coming through! 

Starting today, the “It’s Our Time” Bluegrass Express tour is taking off to mobilize union members to elect working family-friendly candidates in the upcoming statewide elections. The Bluegrass Express bus will travel hundreds of miles, criss-crossing the state and stopping several times a day at worksites in Ashland, Calvert City, Elizabethtown, Hazard, Lexington, Madisonville and dozens of other Kentucky towns.

I’ll be on the bus, along with Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan, Mine Workers political coordinator Steve Earle, UAW Labor 2007 coordinator Danny Ernestes, AFL-CIO field representative Don Slaiman and many other elected officials, labor leaders and union volunteers along the way. We will stop at worksites ranging from steel mills to call centers, auto plants to hospitals, coal mines to colleges, not to mention rail yards, power plants and fire stations, to pass out leaflets and talk to union members about what’s at stake—vital issues, including health care, good jobs and the freedom to form and join unions.

We won’t be getting much sleep, for sure, but we will be energizing union members in the final few weeks before the election to steer Kentucky away from the middle-class disaster course that Gov. Ernie Fletcher put them on!

Says Londrigan: 

This is our time. We’re doing whatever it takes to make sure that on Nov. 6, elected officials will hear the voice of Kentucky working families loud and clear.

I’ll be sending in daily blog reports from the road, look for them here. Toot, toot! 

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Paid for by AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Treasury Fund.

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