TRUMKA TO WORKERS: LOOK PAST OBAMA’S RACE TO HIS ECONOMICS

Friday, July 11, 2008

(PAI)

LAS VEGAS (PAI)--Taking on an electoral problem usually mentioned in whispers, or avoided completely, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka has challenged white voters who have doubts about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) because of his race to look beyond that and focus on his economics.

And it’s up to the labor movement to educate voters about doing so, he adds.

When voters compare economic records, Trumka told the Steel Workers convention earlier in July, they’ll realize the presumed Democratic presidential nominee has far more in common with them, and advocates policies to benefit them. Meanwhile, his foe, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), does not. The AFL-CIO backs Obama.

“The middle class isn’t being squeezed. It’s being crushed,” Trumka declared. In his speech aimed at the entire labor movement, Trumka said Obama offers workers help against that pressure. McCain does not.

Trumka tackled the racial issue head-on in his USWA speech in Las Vegas, posted on the AFL-CIO website, www.aflcio.org. The Steel Workers and other blue-collar majority-white unions have tens of thousands of members in key swing states such as Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Polls show many of those members, especially working-class white men, voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in those states’ primaries. She won the races.

Obama also must beware of “the Bradley effect,” named for the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, in his first race for governor against Republican George Deukmejian in 1982. Bradley’s lead the last pre-Election Day poll--the Sunday before--was eight to 10 percentage points. Bradley lost, 49.3%-48.1%. Similar patterns have appeared in other African-American-versus-white statewide races since.

For Trumka, the state of the economy for workers and families is the answer.

“Does everyone here remember how all those people piled on Obama after he said that a lot of working people in this country are angry? Remember the reaction? ‘The nerve of him to say that working people are angry!’ Well, brothers and sisters, I don't know about you, but I happen to think that was one of the most honest things I've heard a presidential candidate say in a long time.

“Working people angry? Hell, yes we are. And, you know something? We ought to be,” given an economy tilting to the rich and the corporations and away from workers during both Republican and Democratic administrations, Trumka added.

But other voters backed Clinton because of race, and Trumka used his conversation with a longtime female Democratic activist in their Pennsylvania hometown, Nemacolin, before the state’s May 22 primary, to tackle that problem.
The woman, whom Trumka did not name, said she would not vote for Obama because she heard--falsely--that the senator is a Moslem, and that he did not wear a flag pin. After Trumka debunked the Islam lie and pointed out Obama considers patriotism to be far more than wearing a flag pin, they got to the heart of the matter.

"Well, I just don't trust him," Trumka quoted her as saying. “Why is that?” “Her voice dropped just a bit: ‘Because he's black.’

“I said, ‘Look around. Nemacolin's a dying town. There're no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there's no future here. And here's a man, Barack Obama, who's going to fight for people like us and you won't vote for him because of the color of his skin?

“Brothers and sisters, we can't tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman...Those of us who know better can't afford to look the other way,” Trumka warned.

Trumka reminded Steel Worker delegates of their own union’s history of standing up to racism as part of the original Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) at a time when the American Federation of Labor (AFL) still discriminated

He also noted: “There's no evil that's inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism--and it's something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge...because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people” by corporations intent on defeating unions.

“But we've seen something else, too. We've seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down...That's why the labor movement--imperfect as we are--is the most integrated institution in American life,” he added.

Nevertheless the problem that Trumka’s Nemacolin neighbor symbolizes remains. He said the solution is not to point fingers at people and call them racists.

The real solution is to “educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, their homes, about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers--there's only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who's on their side...Barack Obama.”

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