Many of you remember ole Taraka Das. Not so long ago, I published many diaries here on Daily Kos, and a few even made the rec list.
About six weeks ago, I disappeared. I went to New Hampshire. I worked as a canvasser for Working America. And I just got back.
Now I've got some things to tell you.
I wasn't canvassing for any presidential candidate. I wasn't canvassing for the Democratic Party. I was canvassing for the LABOR MOVEMENT. You'll be happy to know that it's alive and well, despite it's much maligned image in the corporate-controlled media.
68% of the American people WANT to be in a union. 11% of them ARE in a union. The reason for this discrepancy? The overwhelming and pervasive control and influence of corporations over our elections, legislation, judicial appointments, executive rulemaking, mass media and every imaginable social insititution.
Like many other people, I felt powerless and helpless to do anything about this situation. I just spent six weeks knocking on doors in New Hampshire telling people EXACTLY what we can do about it. We can join together in a citizen-lobbying effort to change all of the unjust, slanted policies that allow a few people in this country to screw the rest of us.
Working America is creating community organizations in 25 states. They are taking the model used in the past to organize unions and using it now to organize whole towns.
There are a few other things that need to be done, like create an alternative media network and challenge corporate charters, but the grass roots effort is the foundation.
It's hard work. There's more hard work to come. Gaining support one person at a time is time-consuming. Following up, by recruiting Organizing Committees in all the localities, is a monumental task. But it's worth it.
How else do you fight the corporations?
Towards the end of the campaign, I was actually able to give an example of a victory for Working America that took place this summer. Did anyone see how quickly SCHIP (State Childrens Health Insurance Program) came up for a vote and passed with a VETO-PROOF bipartisan majority, despite Bush's vow to veto it and the efforts of the right wing to cut the program?
People all over the country were signing up as members of Working America and writing HAND-WRITTEN letters to Congress urging them to support this program. I was in New Hampshire, and the target there was Senator Sununu. Did he vote for it? HE DID.
It's a relatively small victory. But the larger victory is largely invisible to the MSM, the DLC and even the leadership of both political parties. I signed up Republicans. I signed up Democrats. I signed up Independents. I signed up working class people and affluent people.
A seismic shift in demographics is ocurring right under the feet of the political parties, and the sooner they get wise to it, the better off they will be. People are FED UP with corporate tyranny bullying them around in every aspect of their lives.
I can tell you that if the DLC believes that the people will choose a corporate-canned message over progressive policies that benefit the people, they are smoking crack.
New Hamphshire is a relatively conservative state. I signed up people who said they were ANTI-UNION before I talked to them about what we were trying to accomplish. Working America's agenda is a commom sense agenda that matters to any person in this country.
Except of course, those who are "all set." That's a New Hampshire term for "I got mine, I'm doing OK, I don't care what happens to the country." I did get that response. And those who gave it were horrified to learn that the whole rest of their neighborhood were on my sign-up sheet.