by James Parks, Apr 29, 2011
The attempts to blame the nation’s economic mess on teachers, firefighters, nurses and other public employees provide a great opportunity for working people to regain the American Dream, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this week.
But reviving the Dream will require working families and unions to rededicate themselves to organizing, reach out in solidarity to other workers at home and around the world and develop strategies to win back state legislatures as well as keep the White House in 2012, Trumka said. Read the entire speech here.
Speaking to the Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC), a group of union and labor lawyers, Trumka said the public is learning what the CEO-backed Republican attackers are trying to do to working people and their rights. Over the next 18 months, he said, “working people and our allies across these battleground states are going to win—not every fight, but the big ones and the day. “
But he warned that victory over the likes of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will not mean victory for all workers and our unions. We need to win at the ballot box in 2012 to create the changes that will help working people and the nation reverse all the damage from these anti-worker policies, he said:
We need a 2012 election that puts the Scott Walkers of the world on notice that their agenda is not a viable political strategy. We need to win back the House, keep the Senate and win state and local races across the country. We need to win back at least one house in every one of these embattled state legislatures. Political strategies that are simply about low-risk ways of holding the White House will not help workers—they will lengthen a losing end game and will not give us a path to victory.
Global solidarity among workers is critical as well. Trumka said:
In the age of Internet globalization, we live our cause as one with workers around the world. The U.S. labor movement’s voice has been clear in support of democracy and workers’ rights in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Bahrain, in Syria, in Iran—and our voice has been heard.
“Now we must take that same spirit that brought working people to the streets of Indianapolis and Madison and Columbus—and Tunis and Cairo—and bring it to all our nation’s workplaces—and to our polling places, our state capitols and our national capitol,” Trumka said.
With this spirit of unity, of solidarity, of democracy itself, we can be unstoppable in 2011, in 2012 and in the years to come.
