‘John McCain Is Not Our Friend’

Ben Waxman, national AFL-CIO Ohio state director, sends us this report from Cleveland.

If the spirit and tenacity recently displayed by a group of union activists is any sign, then Republican presidential candidate John McCain is in for the fight of his life.

In the face of Ohio’s biggest snowstorm since 1910, union members earlier this week braved the roads and fierce winter weather, driving to Cleveland from as far away as Columbus and Detroit to learn how they can make difference in the upcoming 2008 elections.

The two dozen local activists took part in a special a three-day Labor 2008 political training session for women and people of color. The sessions focused on member mobilization, election law, activist building, political communication and a special workshop on the AFL-CIO’s health care reform efforts. It was a joint effort of the Ohio AFL-CIO and the national AFL-CIO.

Eric Evans, a member of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 683 in Columbus, says it’s critical that grassroots union activists and local union leaders build an aggressive and effective mobilization program because:

John McCain is not our friend….We need to get out members out and get candidates into office that are going to help us out…the labor movement.

Postal Worker (APWU) Donna Dean from Dayton says union members can make a difference in who is elected to office, and training like the Cleveland sessions is great preparation.

There is an important role labor plays in politics—talking to members, getting them to turn out to vote.

She succinctly sums up her thoughts on McCain, who is offering voters four more years of Bush-like policies on health care, privatizing Social Security, the freedom to form unions, job-killing trade deals, the war in Iraq and more.

We need to stop him.

Click here to watch Evans’s remarks and here for Dean’s comments and here to learn more about McCain from the AFL-CIO’s new McCain Revealed website.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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