This blog is cross-posted at StewartAcuff.com
I hope all of you have joined me in celebrating our historic victory this past week. We elected a black President twice. We protected our majority in the US Senate even though we had twice as many to protect as the Rightwingers. We overcame all the radical Rightwing Republicans efforts to suppress the vote, enact poll taxes, and take our country back to the days when only white men could vote.
One of the ways we protected the right to vote was a movement by civil rights groups, unions, and others to get ahead of those with malicious intent and because average Americans would not allow their votes to be thrown away.
We also protected and saved national, fundamental healthcare reform - a dream for progressives since the passage of medicare and medicaid in 1965.
We resoundingly defeated the haughty power of the rich and all their money. The Supreme Court in their Citizens United decision had already and encouraged the rich and their hacks like Karl Rove to buy this election. But the people of the United States said our democracy is not for sale. We turned back the effort to steal our democracy.
At the risk of speaking for those whose shoes I couldn't fill: Dr. King, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, and all our other forebears would be proud of us. We should be proud of ourselves and our people.
But our business isn't done. We have much left to do to get out of our economic ditch, to march toward more income and wealth equality, to continue to fight racism and much more.
By the way, just to celebrate what we accomplished last week as we gird ourselves for the months ahead, my publisher and I are giving away the e-book version of my latest book Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing absolutely FREE this Tuesday and Wednesday, November 13-14!! Just go to tinyurl.com/organize-today anytime Tuesday or Wednesday to grab a free copy that you'll be able to read not only on a Kindle but on just about any electronic device this side of your daddy's rotary phone. You can also get the print version of Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing or my earlier book Getting America Back to Work via the links on my website at http://stewartacuff.com/...
Please share this blog post with all you can. Forward it on, hang it on bulletin boards, put it on other blogs, spread it far and wide.
God bless you! God bless America!
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Stewart Acuff is America’s best-known and foremost labor organizer. He is the former organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Acuff has also written two books: Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing, and Getting America Back to Work, coauthored by Dr. Richard Levins.