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Al Franken Joins Minnesota Union Members Revved Up for Campaign |
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Barb Kucera, editor of Workday Minnesota, sends us this report from the Minnesota AFL-CIO convention in Duluth.
Union members from across the state who gathered for the biennial convention of the Minnesota AFL-CIO are focused on one goal: electing worker-friendly candidates in the November elections.
More than 500 delegates representing 300,000 working Minnesotans are attending the three-day convention at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. On Sunday, they heard from several elected officials and labor-endorsed candidate Al Franken. Franken, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, told the delegates:
If you’re ready for a change, I need you to stand with me.
Franken is running against Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who was elected in 2002 to fill the seat held by the late Paul Wellstone.
Franken talked about meeting a retired Iron Range steelworker who was struggling to make ends meet after his pension was slashed by a large corporation. The steelworker said he didn’t feel that elected officials like Coleman were aware of his plight. As Franken said:
The biggest difference between me and Norm Coleman is in who we think a senator is supposed to work for. I think I’m supposed to work for that retired steelworker in Eveleth. I think I’m supposed to work for the middle-class mom who is worried sick because her daughter is in a class with too many kids and they don’t have the financial means to send her to college. I think that I’m supposed to be fighting for the hundreds of thousands of homeowners in this state who’ve seen the equity in their homes fall apart.
Norm Coleman thinks being a senator is a game [and] accepts hundreds of thousands in checks from corporate special interests.
Then he comes back to Minnesota and pretends it never happened.
Franken struck a familiar theme at the convention: Republicans like Norm Coleman and presidential candidate John McCain supported and will continue the disastrous economic policies of the Bush administration.
Rep. James Oberstar, who represents Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, blasted McCain for repeatedly backing proposals to turn Social Security over to Wall Street investment brokers.
Social Security has never missed a payment. It has never bounced a check and it has paid benefits to over 400 million of our fellow citizens. It’s there. You can count on it. But you can’t count on McCain.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a DFLer, urged union members to work hard to elect Franken and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
This is a grassroots movement, not just to win the election but also to get something done in Washington.
With a Democratic president and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, progress can be made in many areas, including renewable energy, job creation, infrastructure and benefits for military veterans.
Playing off recent candidate and media comments, she noted:
The people of this country are ready for a change. You read my lipstick: They’re ready for a change.
Delegates will put the words into action Monday when they adjourn the convention to join in a citywide doorknock on behalf of labor-endorsed candidates. To turn around America, we will reach out to union families in Duluth as part of the union movement’s Labor 2008 political mobilization.
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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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Dear concerned citizens of America and Mass Media of the U.S.A.
As a concerned registered independent voter, forensic psychiatrist, disabled American I made my decision to vote after taking into consideration following joint tickets attributes and characteristics.
1. Has the ticket shown adequate calmness, coolness, and connectedness’s under pressure to lead our nation [Presidential Temperament]?
2. Has the ticket shown sustained sound “Judgment and Caliber”?
3. Has the ticket shown adequate understanding of depth and degree to address the crucial challenges in their their purpose, policies, and positions [ Honesty, integrity and sincerity]?
4. Has the ticket sufficient “understanding and knowledge” of inside Washington workings [Experience]“?
5. Has the ticket reservoir resilience, wisdom, and vigor to address the present and future f our beloved “Great-grand Nation”?
6. Has the ticket enough joint foreign policy experience and exposure based on ” Values, Virtues, Vastness, and ” [American moral soul]“?
7. Has their campaign talk, slogans, ads, plans, and programs based on facts and are they free of fear, fiction, frivolous labels, unfair attacks, negativity, and impulsively? [No "imminent danger to national
security and safety"].
8. Has the ticket genuinely kept on message of country first and politics last and avoided copying [Message change"]?
9.Has the ticket message stayed away from Culture divide and war[ Disaster prevention ]?
10. Has the ticket resisted being surrounded, supported and surrogate’s by divisiveness, distortion’s, and destructive characters, [ Real patriotism VS shiftiness and shameless parrot-ism]?
I have personally and professionally concluded that OBAMA-BIDEN ticket will lift and inspire our greatgrand nation back to its greatness within and restore our global standing with the use of maximum, firm
international diplomacy and minimal force if and when indicated {” Peace thru Strenght “}.
Yours sincerely,
COL. A.M.Khajawall [Ret] MD.
Forensic psychiatrist, Disabled American Veteran and Iraq
Freedom team. Grass roots California leader per Senator McCain’s mailings.
Congressman Oberstar makes the point I think has been missed this Monday morning. The Obama campaign should be asking Americans how secure their retirement would look this morning if Bush and McCain had been successful in their plan to privatize Social Security and turn it over to the investment bankers!
Franken makes the right points, and I hope he is elected to the U.S. Senate. In the past he has spoken with eloquence and passion about the difference that Social Security has made in the lives of Americans, and in his own family’s life as well.
And he has spoken the truth.
The fact that the McPalin campaign would still like to hand over Social Security to Wall Street firms is even more chilling a prospect this week, with the collapse of major Wall Street firms and the instability of the stock market.
I know I wouldn’t feel safe with another Republican president who is so indifferent to the consequences of the deregulated financial industry, the mortgage crisis and the trade and foreign policies of the past 8 years.
We need to turn this situation around. A majority of Americans have said that this country’s heading in the wrong direction. Obama/Biden are responding to this, while McCain/Palin are looking around from their self-imposed “cone of silence”, only issuing forth to proclaim that this mess is a fundamentally sound one, or that it’s all in our minds & that we should stop whining.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”–Albert Einstein
I support Al Franken because he is a union member. And he and his family know what it is like when tragedy hits a family and puts them on the edge of survival. Social Security helped his wife’s family make it after a parent died, and Al knows how important it is to give working people a hand up when circumstances turn against them.
Looks like there was more people in this room than had ever listened to his Air America show. Al Franken is just a spiteful, nasty person. I’d be ashamed if he spoke to my Local.