Author Archive
Tributes to Sen. Edward Kennedy
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The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy has sparked tributes from around the globe, from those who knew him best in his home state of Massachusetts, to world leaders. We include some of these here, mindful that as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote:
Most Americans will never know how many things Ted Kennedy did to make their lives better, how many things he prevented that would have hurt them, and how tenaciously he fought on their behalf.
Be sure to stop by the Edward Kennedy tribute site at: www.tedkennedy.org/tributes.
* Ted Kennedy was not just a senator for Massachusetts; he was our senator—a senator for working people, for poor people, for the old and the vulnerable. For all those who needed a champion, he was our champion. He personified a sense of aspiration that has become America’s aspiration—to make things better, to make them more fair, to make our nation more compassionate and hopeful, to make life work for working men and women.
—AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Working Families Mourn the Loss of Sen. Edward Kennedy
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The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy today leaves a void in the lives of working families that will be hard to replace, if ever it can be. Kennedy fought throughout his life with one goal in mind: to improve the lives of working people. He championed civil rights for people of color and LGBT people; better education for literally millions of kids; immigration reform; women; workers’ rights; the freedom of workers to choose a union; and, of course, health care reform.
Kennedy wasn’t just a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act. He helped create it, and he was the first to introduce it in the Senate.
For some other senators, these issues were opinions. For Kennedy, they were a passion. (Kennedy’s Senate office has compiled the extensive list of his accomplishments here.)
In fact, there is a simple and beautiful pattern in these causes Kennedy made his own. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote about another gifted politician Franklin Roosevelt, “he really did desire a better life for mankind.” That precisely explains Ted Kennedy.
He called health care reform “the cause of my life,” and as early as 1966, introduced his first health care bill. He had toured a community clinic at the Columbia Point housing project in Boston, and he was deeply impressed to see it bringing medical care to people who needed it. Typically for him, Kennedy noticed everything, including the rocking chairs set aside in special waiting rooms for nursing mothers.
‘Out at Work’ Available on DVD
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Seventeen years ago, a couple of New York City filmmakers, Kelli Anderson and Tami Gold, made their way to AFSCME’s District Council 37 in Manhattan to videotape a conference on lesbian and gay rights in the workplace for a monthly show they produced on public access television called “Labor at the Crossroads.”
As it turned out, this was the beginning of “Out at Work,” a compelling documentary about life on the job in the United States. After it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival—an extraordinary event in itself—Variety would praise it for its “inspiring human dimension.” And some 40 million people would eventually see a version of it on HBO.
Both versions of “Out at Work”—the original documentary film and the HBO presentation—are now available for the first time on DVD from Transit Media Communications at 1-800-343-5540. Mention it if you’re a union member and ask about their discount.
The original idea of “Out at Work” was simple enough. It told about three workers who had little in common except that each was LGBT and confronting colossal challenges connected with discrimination on the job. What’s more, each had an extraordinary story filled with grief, courage, confusion and moral grace.
Labor Historian Highlights Workers Who Built Panama Canal
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University of Maryland labor historian Julie Greene will hold a book reading July 15 at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., for The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal. To RSVP, click here.
“One of the greatest engineering feats in history.” That’s how The New York Times has described the Panama Canal.
“It was our technology, our science and our leadership that had carried the day,” the Times said.
When it brought together the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, cut in half the shipping distance between New York and San Francisco, and made vast Asian markets suddenly accessible to businesses along the East Coast, the Panama Canal was considered a crown jewel of the American economic empire.
Since it started operating in 1914, the Panama Canal has been the subject of enough books to fill a small library. But until now, a key part of the story has been missing—the workers who built the canal. In The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal, labor historian Julie Greene tells the story of these workers with great skill.
Northland Poster Collective Closing Its Doors
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More bad news in a bad economy: Northland Poster Collective, an edgy, feisty producer of posters, T-shirts, pins, bumper stickers and note cards for union activists–and a union shop to boot–is closing its doors at the end of the month.
Says founding member and artist Ricardo Levins Morales:
“After 30 years of undermining Wall Street, it finally fell on us.”
The Minneapolis-based company always lived on a shoestring, and a frayed shoestring at that. But somehow, against all the odds, the collective survived for 30 years. The entire stock is now 50 percent off, and you can get some utterly unique items that may never be available again.
Northland folks are the ones who, among other things, coined or spread some of the slogans you’ll find on union members’ pins and bumper stickers, including “The Labor Movement: The Folks that Brought You the Weekend,” “Friends Don’t Let Friends Cross Picket Lines,” and “Unions: The Anti-Theft Device for Working People.”
