Jdavej’s Weblog

There are many ways that unions have to get information to their members. Working through a number of those, and hunting for additional opportunities for educational contacts is a big part of the job of a Labor 2008 Release Staff member.  At least through this point in the campaign.

Last week a number of us visited various construction worksites around downtown Denver to pass out leaflets and talk to union workers about Barack Obama, our endorsed candidate for President, and three anti-worker amendments that may be on the Colorado ballot this fall, numbers 47, 53, and 59.  The proposed amendments, although complicated issues, were easy to convince the members to vote against. However, while Obama has been running for months, and has a very favorable voting record on issues that are important to working families, the misinformation and whisper campaigns that have been going on have spread a sense of uncertainty about who he is.  Of course, that is why it is so important for us to be talking with our members.  They will make informed votes on election day.  Our job is to make sure that the information they have to make that informed vote is the truth about his support for working families.

Another of the methods that we, and everyone else working on campaigns, have for getting our information out is to visit people at their homes.  We have been organizing member-to-member walks almost every Saturday for the past couple of months, concentrating on Colorado’s Second Congressional District. Earlier on this blog I described the work that goes into preparing for one of these walks.  But that is just the start. This past Saturday, 15 union members, mostly members of the American Postal Workers Union, met at the Amalgamated Transit Union’s hall, on West 72nd Avenue, in Westminster.  After going over the various fliers, tally sheets, and script in the packets to make sure that everyone was familiar with their materials, they went out in Denver’s 98 degree heat to walk various neighborhoods, knocking on doors of fellow union members.  They returned about 3 1/2 hours later with tales of the frustrations of people not home, or people apparently home (the front door open, radio or television playing, and the dog or cat coming to check out the person at the door) but not wanting to acknowledge the presence of the door knocker, or the addresses that just didn’t seem to exist.  But they also returned with the stories of visiting with members and retired members who are tired of the direction this country is heading.  People who have watched good, solid, union jobs with honest pay and benefits for an honest day’s work become rarer and rarer. People have watched the middle class in this country shrink while the gap between the wealthy and the working class continually grows.  People who, for the first time in the history of this country, do not believe that their children will be better off than they are.  And it’s those stories, those people that are looking for a way to change that direction, that make giving up a four to five hour part of a Saturday to walk in the summer heat worth it.