this is progressive

TRox51 at aol.com TRox51 at aol.com
Thu Apr 13 13:12:32 PDT 2000


Here's an interesting reply to the Max Sawickys of the labor "left" from a senior staffer at the AFL-CIO who has worked on many corporate campaigns as well as the Nafta and fast track fights. I received this today after sending this person a copy of my earlier missive to the LBO list on the atrocious anti-China rally yesterday. Tim Shorrock

QUOTE I've been talking to a lot of people around here - including AFL-CIO managers - stating opposition to the way this has been handled. Most people I speak to have expressed reservations about it but everyone just followed the program. All of the speeches were deplorable. If you thought Becker was bad, you should have heard Sandra Feldman of AFT. She talked about how "our" pressure campaign worked in South Africa and Chile - and now it can work on China. On Chile I didn't know if she was referring to Allende or Pinochet. Another interesting aspect of this effort was that there was no involvement by Asian-American leaders in the labor movement. APALA was no where to be seen. The UNITE NYC local union that has Chinese American leadership did show up (to accompany Mazur) but did not want to speak. I remember when we were working on Nigeria, we had African-American labor leaders playing leadership roles. It's too bad that the AFL-CIO leadership didn't have the sense to kno! ! w that something was wrong when Chinese American labor leaders distanced themselves from this. It's too bad the Chinese American community hasn't spoken out on this - they could play an important role. UNQU0TE



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