In the United States, union officials are too busy, <a href="http://www.saveovertimepay.org/">saving overtime pay</a> and working overtime to elect their class enemy and exclude their petit-bourgeois ally from the ballots, to put shorter work time on the national agenda:
<blockquote><ul><li>"A union backing Sen. John Kerry for president charged the Ralph Nader petition campaign with fraud and forgery Monday in its effort to place Nader on the presidential ballot in Oregon. Leaders of the Service Employees International Union, Local 49, said they analyzed some Nader petitions and found that two-thirds of the names might be fraudulent" (Don Hamilton, " Union Blasts Nader Petitions," <em>Portland Tribune</em>, <a href="http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=25756">August 17, 2004</a>).</li>
<li>"The service employees union . . . said it has spent <strong>as much as $25,000 </strong> to investigate Nader's petition drive" (Jeff Mapes, "Service Union Contends Signatures for Nader Petition Faulty," <em>The Oregonian</em>, <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1092743727240641.xml">August 17, 2004</a>).</li></ul></blockquote>
It's ironic that one of the few things that union officials expect the Democratic Party to do is to allow <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/aboutunions/voiceatwork/upload/cardcheckq&a.pdf">card check</a>. What if bosses are to show the same zeal in investigating signatures on authorization forms and spend big bucks arguing that they are fraudulent?
Speaking of work week, David Cobb wants to "[r]equire welfare recipients to spend at least [!?!?!] 40 hours a week in a combination of work and training programs" (Project Vote Smart, <a href="http://www.vote-smart.org/npat.php?can_id=MZZ78717">"Mr. David Keith Cobb: 2004 Presidential National Political Awareness Test"</a>)!
Carrol wrote:
>But I do want to insist that anyone (locally or on a maillist) who
>proposes that "The Left" _or_ some local organization ought to take
>on this or that task has to provide a serious estimate of what kind
>of resources (in people, money, public visibility, political base,
>etc) the proposal involves.
A lot of LBO-talk subscribers who are voting for Democrats this year probably are willing to join a movement to challenge both the Democratic and Republican Parties if such a movement is shown to have become already immensely popular to the point of commanding support of at least 45% of the US population, <strong>without</strong> them putting in time and money to get there in the first place.
It makes sense to think about how to make the best use of 5-10% of the US population on the left, since that's the sector from which you can and need to draw organizers and activists to advance, but this listserv probably isn't the right place for that sort of discussion. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>