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Union Members 25 Percent of Democratic Convention Delegates |
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Union members from around the country will arrive in Denver next week for the Democratic National Convention. A quarter of the more than 4,200 delegates to the convention are active or retired union members or union household members, and they’ll help get the word out about the economic issues that are at the heart of the 2008 elections.
On Sunday, many of the labor delegates will join Colorado union members and their families for a Labor Caucus to get ready for the convention and the election season. The Democratic convention will be a great opportunity for the union movement to highlight the important issues this election year and get ready to get out the vote.
Cindy Spanyers of Alaska and John Clark of Missouri are two delegates who will attend the convention and make sure working families are represented in the election and beyond.
Spanyers is a member of the Alaska Public Employees Association (APEA-AFT) and a delegate from Juneau. Alaska has been closer in presidential polling this year than it has in decades, and the state also has a key U.S. Senate race.
Spanyers says core economic issues like jobs, trade and health care are motivating her this election cycle. She supports Barack Obama for president because of his strong positions on those issues.
As the years go by, we’re finding that more and more people are not able to reach middle class status. Wages are stagnant, costs are going up, and the elusive retirement programs are just harder and harder to come by these days.
At the convention and throughout the fall campaign, Spanyers says she’ll be working to educate others about crucial pro-worker policies like the Employee Free Choice Act. After the convention, she’ll help carry out Alaska’s Labor 2008 political mobilization program.
Spanyers is making a major commitment to get to the convention, driving more than 2,600 miles from her home state to Denver to attend.
John Clark of IBEW Local 1 in St. Louis is among 16 labor delegates attending the convention from Missouri, a critical swing state in the presidential race. The state also has a competitive governor’s race.
I hope we can show the nation that the Democratic party can come together and turn our country around. Organized labor needs to play a principal role in making certain that gets done in Denver.
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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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Obama and the Democratic Party will give this country four more years of war, economic destruction, greater social inequality, etc. That is four more years of further enrichment of the wealthiest corporations and individuals who own anr run this country.
Working people of this country will countinue to suffer greatly because the labor movement is giving so much undeserved support to the Democratic ticket. Continuation of war abroad means further destruction of living standrds in this country. Obama and the Democrats do not support the economic needs of working people for single-payer health care, for massive support of public education, for the massive creation of jobs to repair the country’s infrastructure, more creating affordable housing, replace private polluting cars with public transportation, to develop new jobs and job training in new energy, etc.etc.
For a critical (but truthful, factual and without illusions) perspective of Obama and the Democrats check out this article . Judge the Democratic convention circus, and their platform, and (illusorary) statements against this article.
Democrats and Obama prepare platform of war and reaction
By Bill Van Auken
22 August 2008
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/obam-a22.shtml
“The Democratic convention itself—a carefully scripted and corporate-funded media extravaganza—is to be the culmination of a systematic shift to the right by the Obama campaign.”
“In this election, once again, the vast majority of the American people who oppose the war in Iraq and the global escalation of American militarism are to be politically disenfranchised.”
“While promising only continued US wars of aggression abroad, Obama and the Democrats are incapable of advancing any policy to ameliorate the deepening crisis confronting millions of working class Americans as a result of spiraling prices, growing unemployment and continuing home foreclosures.”
So what are our choices? McCain seems like a worse option to me