On 2012-03-12, at 10:23 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Mar 12, 2012, at 10:15 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> As the A.F.L.-C.I.O. prepares to endorse President Obama on Tuesday, labor leaders say they will mount their biggest campaign effort, with far more union members than ever before — at least 400,000, they say — knocking on voters’ doors to counter the well-endowed “super PACs” backing Republicans.
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> When's the last time Obama even spoke the word "union," aside from "State of the Union"?
I'm not impressed by Obama, but I am again impressed by the size of the planned mobilization, if the report is accurate. It shows that the unions, though much diminished, are still by far the best organized and most powerful component of the forces which are gathered under the umbrella of the mass Occupy movement, with the ability to deploy 400,000 members going door-to-door in their neighbourhoods. Would that they were deployed on behalf of the 99% than the current administration, but that is another matter. Any serious left would see these union activists as the closest thing to a US working class "vanguard" which exists - not when measured against their more independent and combative forebears during the heroic period of the labour and socialist movement, but in terms of their class and political consciousness relative to other American workers today.
I don't propose to engage in another wearisome debate about the Democrats. Suffice it to say that the willingness of these hundreds of thousands of trade unionists to canvass for the party is an indication that they think their unions and benefits are still better protected under a Democratic rather than a Republican administration, rather than that they're mindless lemmings marching to the dictates of union and party officials. Working people who follow the news can come to this conclusion autonomously.