Back during the campaign, I used to do Sunday Video Wrap-ups. One video in particular got a response both here and from anyone I sent it to separately (and it was viewed on YouTube over a half-million times). This video features AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka speaking some hard truths about why labor voters might not elect an African-American president:
The full text of his speech is here, and the part featured in the video starts about 2/3 down the page (with “There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white.”) Trumka effectively and quite movingly ties the cause of racial equality to the labor movement, calling labor the “most integrated institution in American life.” And then there’s this:
And after he’s elected we are going to hit the ground running so that, years from now, we’re going to be able to tell our grandchildren that 2008 was the year this country finally turned its back on men like George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain.
We’re going to be able to say that 2008 was the year we started ending the war in Iraq so we could use that money to create new jobs building wind generators, solar collectors, clean coal technology and retrofitting millions of buildings all across this country
We’re going to be able to look back and say that 2008 was the year the tide began to turn against the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O’Reillys, the Ann Coulters and the right wing hate machine
Brothers and sisters, we’ll be able to say that 2008 was the year we took our country back from the corporations and had a government that believed in unions again!
The emphasis is mine, though Trumka was yelling by that point.
Today, he did some yelling of another kind — right into Arlen Specter’s ear — when he appeared on ABC’s Webcast “Top Line” this morning and said that labor in Pennsylvania won’t support Specter if he doesn’t support labor:
Trumka said the Democratic Party establishment won’t prevent labor leaders from making their own decision on Specter, even though President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., have all pledged to support Specter.
“We have a lot of members that are elected into that establishment, and our members generally do what’s right by workers, and we don’t care who’s lined up against us,” Trumka said. “If a candidate isn’t good for workers, we won’t be there. If they are good for workers, we will be there regardless of their party. I mean, we supported Arlen Specter — and he was a Republican — because he was good for what was happening. He was good for our members at that time.”
Is labor going to have more of a spine about Specter’s positions than the Democratic Party? Color me… OK, not surprised at all. It’s getting pretty ugly out there for Specter. And this was supposed to be the path of least resistence?
SATURN SMITH 