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Chavez-Thompson Running for Lt. Gov. of Texas |
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Big shout out to AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson who yesterday announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor of Texas, her home state.
The “Draft Linda” movement swept through Texas, pulling our much-admired former executive vice president out of semi-retirement and onto the Democratic Party slate for state leadership. The first hurdle is the March 2 primary, where she will run against Democratic candidates Ronnie Earle, a former county district attorney, and Austin delicatessen owner Marc Katz.
Ed Sills, communications director of the Texas AFL-CIO, says at her campaign launch, Chavez-Thompson’s campaign made it clear she is running to make changes in Texas, not against the Democratic opponents:
Chavez-Thompson discussed her journey from the cotton fields of West Texas to national office in the labor movement and how the hard work and leadership skills that drove her will translate to a state leadership role. She spoke of the need to emphasize education, health care and other basic priorities.
“With hard work and the right priorities, we can do better,” Chavez-Thompson said at Texas Democratic Party headquarters in Austin. “For the sake of our families and the future of this great state that we love so much, we must do better. When I am lieutenant governor, we will do better.”
Although Chavez-Thompson retired as the AFL-CIO’s first executive vice president in September 2007, she has continued to champion workers’ rights in her role as head of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC’s) regional organization for the Americas. She also will serve as an adviser to state federations and labor councils. Last year, she traveled to Colombia on a delegation that told Colombian President Alvaro Uribe the U.S. union movement cannot support the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until real progress is made to protect the lives and rights of trade union members.
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It would far more exciting if she would run as a candidate for a Labor Party. That’s the only way to win real progress for workers. Labor should send a message to the Democrat Party that if they continue to sell us out, we will run our own independent and Labor Party candidates. Then we’ll see the Democrats fighting to throw us off the ballot and reveal which side they are on.
It’s not a bad idea to support candidates for a labor party; if we stay the course we’re on, we’re doomed so soon as the oil supply starts drying up more rapidly which is expected around 2013 which isn’t to far form now. The Democrats & Republicans have proven once again by their idea of what health care reform means to them, as opposed to what it means to most people in this country, that they are incapable of leadership, and no matter which of their candidates are at the helm, they refuse to work for their constituents, and instead choose to create policy in almost direct accordance with various bribes they receive in the form of campaign contributions from corporate donors. I suppose this may perhaps be a temporary fix for a politician addicted to money; however, our country faces serious threats which are far superior to the various security threats which they have used as scare tactics to manipulate the public into giving up most all of our individual rights mandated in our constitution. They choose instead to spend 20, or 30 billion dollars a month on fruitless wars which result in 90% civilian casualty rates, as opposed to seriously dealing with issues of major concern in addressing our actual security; issues such as unemployment, which continues to escalate; actual adequate health care for all of us, which has become a privilege under their leadership, and not a the human right, which it is. Most of these politicians must believe that the various health care problems facing our country, can some how be resolved by mandating that we buy products from multinational insurance companies which we do not want, because, after all, you have to buy auto insurance to be able to drive your car, or have your drivers license revoked because a drivers license is a privilege, not a right; this is the only logical conclusion I can draw from such mandated policies; their confusing driving with getting sick and being able to do something about it. I have to wonder why? Could it have something to do with the bribes they receive from these multinational corporations; and then the tax payers have to subsidize these corporate welfare recipients just to make sure their executives get the sort of bonuses which they feel they deserve, because they can.
Your both right of course (Paul B & Roy) but the only way to ensure any real Labor Party success is to get just one Labor Party candidate elected on the local level somewhere/anywhere. On healthcare: I don’t belive in pharmaceuticals of anykind (because they’re all petroleum distillate/chineses ingrediante garbage) but, the only way to cut the crap, and get real healthcare reform is to pass HR 676 (medicare for all.) And the only way to gain any ground on that, is to revoke the elected officials luxary plan they are on, then watch real healthcare pass like a bullet train. Sen. Sharrod Brown of Ohio has already taken himself off that plan in protest. (I really wish He were on the national ticket for something, President, Vice President,.. I don’t care just something)