This is not a post about why someone should not be the next U.S. Senator from New York. It's advocating for someone who should: the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten.
If you want the full history and credentials for Randi, check it out here. Here are my basic reasons for advocating for Randi:
First, she is smarter than all get out. She actually understands how to get things done--she's had to negotiate contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers, not just teachers but municipal workers generally. She's about organizing, nailing one of the biggest organizing victories for labor in half a century.
Second, I want Randi in that position because I want real labor people to be standing in the well of the Senate when it comes time to cast votes on the vast array of legislative programs that effect workers: minimum wage, health care and union organizing rights. I don't care how good Senators claim they are on labor issues; that's mostly measured by some check-list.
There are no more than a handful who actually feel it in their hearts--mostly they do it because there is some campaign contribution waiting at the end of the road and you have to fight to keep even the good ones in line because they feel they have to be "balanced" in their favoritism. I'm sick of that. Look at what that balance has done to the country.
What I want is someone like Randi who won't have to be cajoled. She will be a leader in the fight.
Let me start by saying that Randi probably would not take the job---or so she has told me. I think one of the reasons she won't take is the fear that she would become, as the head of the teachers union, the focus of an attack by the right-wing.
Well, let's take on that fight. I'm so sick and tired of workers being the whipping boys and girls for the failure of the glorious "free market": the glorious "free market" that has starved public education so that schools lack the billions of dollars needed for a real infrastructure so kids get the right education, and teachers get the decent compensation they deserve. Or the glorious "free market" that tries to blame auto workers for the industry crisis, not the entirely incompetent managers and executives of the auto companies and the morons who cratered the financial system because their greed knew no bounds.
Randi has told me she wants to stay in labor--and, in some way, that's precisely the reason she would be a great Senator...she chooses labor over the glory of a political office. But, if she stepped forward, there would be a choice for the governor, and the people, who would have a voice, a track record and a moral vision that would make a huge difference in peoples' lives.