Rallying for jobs and infrastructure
Many of us were just arriving for Yearly Kos in 2007 (the second and last time it would be Yearly Kos rather than Netroots Nation) when news came that the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis had collapsed, killing 13 people. Today, the Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA) held a jobs and infrastructure rally looking across the river at the rebuilt I-35 bridge, and busloads of people from Netroots Nation joined a mass of people in Laborers' orange t-shirts.
The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Rep. Keith Ellison, Sen. Ben Cardin, former Michele Bachmann opponent Tarryl Clark, and others addressed the crowd, emphasizing the need for infrastructure investment that would create jobs, make us safer from our bridges to our drinking water, and improve energy efficiency. Two speakers, though, capped the rally.
Van Jones told the crowd that:
The dignity of your fight, the moral center of your fight, is that you're not just fighting for yourselves...What's key is that when you fight you aren't fighting just for your families, you're fighting for the whole American family.
And if you're not familiar with Laborers' President Terry O'Sullivan, let's just say "fiery" would be a good description of his speaking style. That would be fiery as in:
Teabaggers need to get their head out of their ass and see the real world and invest in America.
But as receptive as the crowd was to that kind of approach, O'Sullivan didn't just throw raw meat. He pointed out that this country is filled with bridges built to last for 50 years—and an average age of 43 years.
We've all heard about the bridge to nowhere, but there are plenty of bridges to somewhere that are crumbling and deficient.
Looking across the water at the I-35 bridge, it would be hard to forget that.