Southeast Minnesota Labor Council Leader Honored as ‘Rising Star’
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Laura Askelin, president of the Southeast Minnesota Area Labor Council in Rochester, is being honored as one of the state’s future leaders within the union movement and the political arena. Recently, Askelin received the 2010 DFL Rising Star award from the Women’s Summit Committee of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
The committee called Askelin a “force to be reckoned with now and in the future.” Askelin entered politics as a volunteer in Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2008. She later signed on as the campaign manager for the winning candidate in an election for state representative.
She now works as a political organizer for AFSCME Council 5 as well as serves as president of the labor council and holds several local and state party positions. She tirelessly campaigned for health care reform over the last year.
Lynn Wilson, DFL chairwoman in Olmsted County, Askelin’s home county, says:
Laura has the “it” factor in politics equivalent to what Simon Cowell looks for on “American Idol.” She views the world with astute political perception and then embarks on making it a reality. She personifies what [late Minnesota Democrat] Senator Paul Wellstone was talking about.
Sweeney Receives Lifetime Leadership Award at America’s Future Now!
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The Campaign for America’s Future awarded AFL-CIO President John Sweeney its Lifetime Leadership Award last night in a gala dinner that capped the first two days of the three-day America’s Future Now! conference in Washington, D.C. In presenting the award, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin noted how Sweeney’s commitment to working families began when, working as a caddy at a golf course, the teenage Sweeney organized a work-stoppage for a wage increase.
Hosted by Rep. Donna Edwards (Md.) and the Campaign’s Roger Hickey, the tribute also featured a short video with highlights of Sweeney’s life and events from his years as a union leader—from creating the nationwide Justice for Janitors campaign, while president of SEIU, to spearheading the now 2.5-million member AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America.
Sweeney called his 55 years of service to working families an honor and noted that when he steps down as president in September he does not plan to retire but will carry on as a “union warrior at large.”
I have been privileged to…represent the millions and millions of working families who make our country so extraordinary. Serving working people is the biggest honor anyone could have. I have been so fortunate to do this work—and now what a great future we are facing together.
As Durbin stated, the efforts by the AFL-CIO union movement with Sweeney as leader were critical to the election of President Barack Obama and a host of working family lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate.
