And John Lacny retorts:
>Surely Yoshie, too, is an organizational genius in calling for
>direct votes of the entire membership on everything unions do,
>including the precise ratio of hickory to maple in each picketline
>burn barrel
Is voting on political candidates for a union to endorse and support financially -- with tens of millions of dollars -- like voting on "the precise ratio of hickory to maple in each picketline burn barrel"?
According to Global Exchange, 1,500 labor unions invest in Israeli bonds. Have union members debated and voted on the decision to invest in Israeli bonds? Or is the decision to invest in the Israeli occupation also a matter of insignificance in your opinion?
Misuse of pension funds to financially support the Israeli government is an issue that can bring a seemingly remote question of the Israeli occupation home to many American workers.
At the same time, the way that such investment decisions are made, without active consent of workers, highlights lack of democratic control over not just trade unions but also governments.
Like James E. McGreevey who invested New Jersey Public Employees Pension Funds in Israeli bonds while advocating for privatization of their management, leaders who misuse pension funds for an immoral political purpose are, more often than not, engaged in simultaneous attacks on workers on other fronts.
Most importantly, the problem is one that the Democratic Party (as well as the top leaders of the AFL-CIO), a close ally of Zionists -- especially those in the Labor Party of Israel -- cannot address, much less solve, without ceasing to be what it is. There is no other issue -- aside from the US occupation of Iraq -- that is a better argument for the urgent need for a political party of the working class and our allies, a party that is not controlled by the US power elite, the majority of whom have seen in Israel a useful instrument to prevent or destroy the rise of Arab masses for democracy in their own countries.
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/08/democratic-party-unions-and-israel.html> -- 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/>