Pennsylvania is a perfect example of the evisceration of American democracy and the power of the plutocracy. Were it not for the Koch boys, we would not be fighting to stop the destruction of the Pennsylvania labor movement and the attempted theft of the American Presidency.
We have enough support to stop the legislation, but the Koch boys are extorting legislators with a threat to run and fund primary challengers and bribe legislators with the offer of all the campaign cash they need. In other words, two anti-democratic billionaires are trying to run America by themselves.
This is what radical right-wing Republicans have brought us to. Does anyone still doubt that democracy is endangered in America?
At the state capitol rally in Harrisburg on Jan 28th, President Henry Nicholas spoke very passionately about the human lives lost in the struggle of Pennsylvania and American workers to build and organize unions.
President Nicholas told the story of Norman Rayford, an organizer with District 1199C, who was shot to death on August 28, 1972 while on a picket line with workers on strike for the right to have a union.
Nicholas talked about Pennsylvania being the birthplace of American unions, and all the killings, death, and destruction of families between organized labor’s founding and the the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935.
He reminded us of Homestead, Pennsylvania in 1892, where many were murdered just for being on strike.
President Nicholas reminded us all that Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday we recently celebrated, was assassinated while lending support and helping lead a strike of public employee sanitation workers. “The three hundred 1199 healthcare workers who led the capitol takeover were able to be there because 1199 organizer Norman Rayford gave his life on a picket line. He was the last person in Pennsylvania who died for hospital workers to have a union. We will not let Corbett and the Koch brothers destroy our labor movement,” said Nicholas
Photo source: bogieharmond on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)