Shuler in Oregon: The Sharks We Defeated Are Still Circling

by Seth Michaels, Oct 28, 2009

At the Oregon AFL-CIO convention, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who got her start organizing in Oregon, spoke yesterday to hundreds of delegates from across the state and encouraged them to start now on educating and mobilizing union members. Shuler told delegates: 

Last year, you helped transform our country. And everything you did in 2008, we must do from now to 2010—and here’s why. The sharks you defeated last November are still circling out there. They’ve never given up. They’re just as vicious now, and they want to destroy everything you won. Don’t let them do it.

You have a big job next year: electing a governor who’s pro-working family, pro-union, pro-us; making sure we re-elect the representatives who stand up for what’s right; and beating back the two initiatives that our right-wing pals have dreamed up for 2010….So it’s not too early to get ready. 

Oregon union members and Working America members made a critical difference in one of last year’s closest and most important Senate races, sending Jeff Merkley, a true friend of working families, to Washington. Shuler said we need to be as active in the 2010 elections as we were in 2008.

She also laid out her vision for the policies we need to build a stronger economy—including health care reform, job creation, the Employee Free Choice Act and financial reform.

Shuler also talked about what we need to do to build a union movement that will help secure a fairer economy for generations to come: 

There’s one thing we have to get right, and that is to give the next generation hope. Fight for them, embrace them and welcome them into our movement. Our job is to make this movement exactly what it should be, which is a place where they know they belong, where they’re excited about what’s coming up next, and where they’ll build a lot better life than what they’re stuck in right now. That’s how our movement can grow. I hope you make it your personal mission, like I have.

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