We have a duty. Now is the time, and there is no tomorrow. Get up. Get out. Have a conversation, or two or three or ten. With your neighbors, with your father, with your cousin, with your friends.
The attacks on union members are not the end game, they are the just the current battle.
This is going to continue and deepen. Unless.
Unless we say enough is enough.
We can stop this, one conversation at a time.
This war did not begin in Wisconsin and will not end there.
And make no mistake, this is a war.
And like any war there will be a lot of collateral damage to innocents.
Right now it seems we are losing this battle as these assaults spread throughout our country. But is is just that - a battle.
It is up to us to change the debate and win the day.
If we "are the change we have been waiting for" then it is incumbent on us to light a fire under POTUS by example if we are to take back the momentum against these assaults against working people. It must be reframed as that - not an "assault against unions" as he put it. Most people could care less about unions and believe they are all corrupt and as bad as the Wall Street banskters and are buying in to the line that it is out of control unions that are bankrupting the country.
But we can change that, and must.
I have been leaving a printout list of the rights people have in their work that were gained for them by unions (8 hour workday, overtime, weekends, etc. etc.) on trains, in cafes, etc. just a small list and a quiet rebellion to educate people.
I have conversations at every opportunity. Quietly, insistently, unambiguously about what it means to be without workplace protections. That this erosion of rights to pulic sector unions is merely the opening move, not the end game. And that you are next.
Talk about this not "the unions".
Educate yourself, use real examples - and have a conversation, or two, or three or ten.
We and the President have a lot of fence mending to do with the new voters that put him in office if he is to get another term. This is a window to do just that.
Many those first time voters and independents who voted for him have been feeling "new boss, same as the old boss" given the leechery of Geithner, now Dailey, et al and now Gitmo, and on and on.
POTUS has to get them back in order to win and he has a great deal of work to do to close that sale again. It is up to us to help him do that.
This crisis offers an opportunity.
Just because the Reeps are overreaching everywhere does mean a guarantee that those voters "have no place else to go". They do -- they will go hiking, to the mall, to the beach - and stay home on election day if he doesn't change his tack and change it fast.
They just did that in November. Liberal numbers were pretty consistent but those voters who stay at home unless motivated by something greater, an historic moment if you will, dropped off markedly. We must change that because the conservatives and Tea Baggers will be more motivated then ever before.
CANDIDATE Obama pledged to stand up against 'any effort to roll back collective bargaining rights". Has he even gotten out from behind the Resolute Desk on this one yet besides some milquetoast statement about fairness to workers? Really?
He said:
"Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain, generally seems like more of an assault on unions. And I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends."
"Generally seems like" What the hell is that? It IS AN ASSAULT ON UNIONS.
But more than that, it is an assault on the PEOPLE in those unions and their rights.
We need to make this real. Not talk about "generally seems like" and "unions".
Educate yourself, use real examples - and have a conversation, or two, or three or ten.
That word should never be in the same sentence as talking about what is going on in the states. It should be more pointed IMO. It is not tangible to a lot of people. Merely saying they are "our neighbors and our friends" does not make it tangible enough. WHO are they and HOW is eliminating automatic check deduction going to effect their rights? This clause is one of the most damaging of all the annual requirement for permission and opt in to have the deduction taken. This is the real core of what they are going after - the funding base not the bargaining over work rules. What does it MEAN to not be able to collectively bargain? HOW has collective bargaining gained and preserved work rules that people not in a union get the benefit of? How does eliminating bargaining over everything except pay endanger those rights?
Educate yourself, use real examples - and have a conversation, or two, or three or ten.
Reframing this is essential to getting people to buy in to the need to re-elect Obama and take back more seats in Congress and in the state houses as the only way to put a stop to our "neighbors and friends" losing those rights. Not talking about unions, but talking about teachers, firefighters, bus drivers, etc. And reminding people that they could be next, and are likely to be.
If we and the President don't talk about this in the context of the people not the unions and make it real for people constantly and unambiguously, it will be viewed as "Big Labor" trying to cover its bank account.
Remind people what unions have given them:
the 8 hours workday
the weekend
the employer paid health care
the pension
no child labor
maternity leave
etc., etc.
Educate yourself, use real examples - and have a conversation, or two, or three or ten.
Most people have no clue it was union members who fought, bled, and yes died for those rights they just take for granted. This is our mission as well to remind people every day every chance we get of the importance of this. Take the rights of workers in one sector and you take the rights away for all of us. Because it wont stop there. We have to point to a world without these rights and the abuses that have occurred and will happen again without them. Change the debate over "unions" to one over their own rights and we can win. It won't be easy, or quick.
But perhaps it can begin with one conversation, or two, or three or ten.
Start today.