This is a crosspost from AFL-CIO Now.
When a pot full of water is first put on the stove, it seems like it will never boil.
But turning up the heat can make it happen a lot faster. And turning up the heat on political mobilization is what took place Oct. 10, when women in 49 states joined in more than 350 AFL-CIO "Stirring the Pot" events determined to take back the 2006 election campaign dialogue for working women and their families.
Meeting over plates of lasagna around kitchen tables or over donuts at local coffee shops, they shared their concerns about issues like jobs, health care and their children's education and took action right there--writing tens of thousands of postcards to other women to remind them to make their voices heard by voting.
Denise Osgood, an internatational rep from the UAW hosted a Stirring the Pot dinner at a local pizza place in Detroit. Osgood is one of 25 UAW members in the area who coordinated Stirring the Pot events. She encouraged those she invited to bring friends, so the 21 women who took part were a mix of familiar friends and new faces, single mothers and empty-nesters. Detroit's troubled auto industry means even women working in jobs outside the industry are facing layoffs and job cutbacks, and worries about jobs and the economy were reflected in the stories the women shared. Says Osgood:
When the Big Three downsizes, everybody else downsizes and everybody wonders what their next job will be in Michigan. One of the women was a single mom and she had been laid off and she talked about how for generations she had been the first woman to receive health care benefits in her family. Now she's laid off--and what is she going to do?
Stirring the Pot events offered the potential for lasting connections among women juggling similar problems and facing comparable concerns, one that can build on itself in the months and years between elections. Says April Harris, who hosted a Stirring the Pot event in St. Louis:
Our group came up with some positive, proactive solutions. We even agreed to continue issue-oriented dialogue among women throughout the year.
Stirring the Pot events provided an opportunity to do what so many of us rarely make time to do: Sit down and talk about what's important. As Brenda Estep, a Stirring the Pot host in Columbus, Ohio, puts it:
Everyone participated and had experiences that amazed me and angered all of us and made us feel we had no choice but to try to make a difference!
Meeting around tables and in living rooms, Stirring the Pot events made us realize how connected we are to each other. Says Cynthia Dine, who hosted an event in Lansing, Mich.:
Any chance to talk about what is driving us crazy and causing us to lose sleep helps us problem-solve together and see that we are not alone.
In every election, the union movement launches an aggressive get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign that involves talking with tens of thousands of union members on the phones and at their doors (and we're really moving our GOTV program this year--check out more here).
Stirring the Pot broadened and deepened this outreach. Union members who signed up to host these events received a guide to get the discussion going and keep it on track around the issues most important to the lives of working women.
We came up with the idea for Stirring the Pot events, co-sponsored with our community affiliate, Working America, after reading the responses from the 2006 AFL-CIO Ask a Working Woman survey. More than 26,000 women took part in the online survey--and 17,000 took the time to write personal comments.
An incredible 97 percent who took the survey say affordable health care tops their concerns, a figure that crosses age and race lines. (Read the full report here.)
In Virginia, a razor-thin race between Republican Sen. George Allen and Democrat Jim Webb, a former Navy Secretary staff member, could determine which party controls the Senate after Nov. 7. Allen recently has trotted out his most effective campaigner: his wife. Susan Allen suddenly is all over the campaign hustings.
Running for his life in a race that all bets had him easily winning, Allen knows his ability to hang onto to his Senate seat depends in large part on women's votes. Yet, like most Republican members of Congress, Allen's pro-Bush policies work against the interests of America's working women.
One of the top priorities of the Bush administration after the Nov. 7 elections is moving to privatize Social Security. Social Security privatization will especially hurt women, who make up 60 percent of all Social Security recipients and are less likely than men to have pensions or substantial savings. In fact, Social Security keeps 42 percent of unmarried older women out of poverty.
In addition to supporting Social Security privatization, Allen also repeatedly opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage. Adult women are still the majority of those working for minimum wage, stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997. And women still only earn 77 cents on the dollar compared with men.
There's a lot at stake for women Nov. 7. The AFL-CIO union movement's Stirring the Pot events helped move the dialogue among those of us who are used by politicians to get elected and whose policies attack us after those same politicians are in office. Stir the Pot events started on a slow boil--and have the potential to build to a roaring flame. As a result of the Stirring the Pot event she hosted in St. Louis, Harris says:
We are going to host our own informative radio talk show program. Furthermore, we will host a public community forum concerning pertinent issues facing public education--nationally and locally.
Those of us who stirred the pot this month want to make sure our children do not face a future without health coverage or work full-time and still get behind.
Those of us who joined together in Stirring the Pot events across the nation say it's up to us to say we've had enough.
Expenses incurred in this posting paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, 815 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.