Ohio AFL-CIO President Joe Rugola: Walking the ‘Road to Economic Recovery’

Ben Waxman, Labor 2008 state director for Ohio, sends us this report on the start of Ohio AFL-CIO President Joe Rugola’s walk around the Buckeye State to highlight the failed economic policies John McCain embraces that have destroyed jobs.

On Sunday in Youngstown, Ohio, Joe Rugola, Ohio AFL-CIO president, set out on a 300-mile trek around the state to bring attention to the toll of the past eight years of Bush-McCain economic polices—more than 180,000 Ohio jobs lost and nearly 1,100 plants, factories and other workplaces closed forever.

Rugola says he is walking to underline Ohio’s great need for a responsible national economic policy and a focused effort by our next president to rebuild America’s economy and restore jobs to our country. He says the nation needs to get on the road to economic recovery and is telling the union voters he meets on his statewide walk that Sen. Barack Obama will help lead us down that road.

In contrast, Sen. John McCain offers only more of the same policies that have left Ohio with a 7.4 percent unemployment rate, the highest in 16 years.

Says Rugola:

Our goal is to highlight and demonstrate to Ohioans that there’s a reason why we’ve lost so many jobs and why our economy’s been wrecked and so many lives devastated. Our goal is to raise awareness and let people know what’s going on and that they can change it by electing Barack Obama…somebody who will put the emphasis of the country on the middle class and advance the interest of working people for a change.

The long walk kicked off at an IUE-CWA workplace, where Rugola was joined by supporters, a caravan of cars and the RV in which he’ll rest on the road. One of those joining the walk was Barb Phillips, president of the Ashland-Wayne-Holmes Labor Council.

As I am walking, I’m waving—that’s what I do, I make a spectacle. People were thumbs up yelling and this lady came out of her house and said, “Do you have an Obama sign?” I went in and gave her an Obama-Biden sign. That’s another reason we do what we do. To get people involved and that’s a woman who will talk about Obama and the hope and the change we need to have in this country.

Click here for more photos from the walk.

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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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