> Of the unions that have signed on to SPAN, how many of them are
> involving their rank-and-file in meaningful activities related to
> its mission?
I would say that the UAW (cf. <http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php? Category=13&ID=231934&r=4>, <http://www.uaw.org/solidarity/rnews/03/ q4/r2b/r2bq4_7.cfm>) has done the most. Look at the composition of UAW workers in Region 2B: <http://www.uaw.org/about/where/ region2b.html>. They have a good reason to be involved -- and in fact they have a good reason why they should be doing more than they have. The UAW probably is the union that is facing the problem of employer-sponsored insurance in the age of neoliberal globalization most acutely. Link the struggles at GM, Delphi, etc. to a campaign for single-payer health care more insistently and prominently.
> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >Okay, so where are those tens of millions of dollars going to come
> from?
>
> Organized labor gave what, something like $40 million to Dems in
> 2004? They keep contributing despite getting kicked in the head
> over & over - and losing election after election. Last I looked,
> the UAW had $1 billion in cash on hand - allegedly for a strike
> fund, but if they strike any time in the next four years, I'll eat
> my hat.
>
> Doug
I don't know how much of the $40 million got poured into Ohio in 2004, but the money from organized labor and other liberal orgs and individuals bought the manpower of more than 100,000 activists in Ohio in that year, according to newspaper articles. The money should have been spent on the minimum wage campaign <http:// www.letjusticeroll.org/> and the single-payer health care campaign <http://spanohio.org/> (which was already underway in 2004) in Ohio. Better late than never. Think about spending serious money and manpower -- at the level of a presidential election campaign -- on the single-payer health care campaign in Ohio for five years at least continuously. The positive effect of that will spill over into electoral politics also (provided that you have more decent candidates than John Kerry and Hillary Clinton).
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>