Yesterday, Bob Swern had an awesome piece up on how CWA union immediate past president, Larry Cohen, had announced his support for Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. This is amazing news, but it's even better news than Bob let on. Cohen's announcement came shortly after word leaked out that the campaign for labor support had kicked into high gear.
Hillary Clinton will attend an informal, intimate get-together for national and international labor leaders at campaign chairman John Podesta’s Washington, D.C., home on July 14, sources told POLITICO.
The event, which takes place amid lingering concerns in the labor community over Clinton’s stance on trade, is scheduled for one day after a handful of influential labor leaders host a D.C. meet-and-greet with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Communications Workers of America president Chris Shelton, Larry Cohen, the outgoing CWA president and American Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein will host that meeting, which will be held at APWU headquarters in Washington.
“It’s a meet and greet, he’s an important candidate,” Dimondstein said of Sanders. “He’s not in the pocket of the corporations, and wants corporate money out of politics. We hope to hear from him, to go into some of what his platform and program is, and how it relates to working folks. I have not officially endorsed Bernie, but I’m happy to be a co-host so he can meet with other labor leaders.” He said he is expecting a group of between 30 and 40 labor leaders to attend.
This is a BFD, folks. Cohen is in on this July 13th meet-and-greet. It's pretty clear that he is trying to send a message. More on that in a moment.
There have been a handful of local and state "endorsements" for Bernie already. Labor for Bernie Sanders 2016 has been on the ball with this. Thousands of union members have signed on to their open letter calling on the AFL-CIO and their internationals to back Bernie. If you are union member, you should sign too. (Like, we can wait, why don't you go do so right now.) The "endorsements" you've been hearing about are mostly local union/CLC resolutions asking for the AFL-CIO and their internationals to back Bernie.
Unlike Wall Street, labor unions are democratic (note the little "d") organizations that embrace the fundamentally American premise that one person should equal one vote. This is the way that labor leaders are elected, one person=one vote, and this is the way that they are going to decide whether to back Bernie. They need to see that there is solid support in the rank and file for a candidate before they give them the nod. Your support can help show that.
Remember how I said that Larry Cohen was trying to send a message? I think his interview with In These Times made what that message is pretty clear:
If labor is going to be just a group of unions with different strategies, it’s not going to be a movement. We need to be organizing other people. But given the barriers in the United States, that can’t be primarily around workplaces or collective bargaining. Most Americans aren’t organized into anything in terms of a populist movement for economic justice and democracy...
No other democracy functions like this, and if we don’t take it head on, economic justice and other issues will be blocked. We have to test a new organizing frame that links voting rights, money in politics and Senate rules with core economic and social justice issues.
Larry Cohen wants to build a pro-labor, economic populist movement that can bring Americans who don't have a union contract to protect them into the fold. He wants to replace a transactional model of business unionism with an honest to God social movement like we had back in the 1930s and 1940s when labor was able to return from its near death experience in the 1920s. The Sanders campaign, People for Bernie, Labor Campaign for Bernie Sanders, and many more have been building the road to this bright future.
Convincing the elected leadership that this is the political revolution they've been looking for will mean institutional support, and enhanced name recognition, for the Sanders campaign.... but in order for this to happen, we have to be able to show that there is widespread support in the rank and file, and among those willing to fight to be part of that.
What I'm asking you to do today is sign on to this thunderclap set to go at 7AM EDT on the morning of that labor meeting with Senator Sanders. If we stand together, and speak together, we can let the elected leaders of labor know that we are reporting for duty, if they are willing to sign on to the fight.
Thunderclap allows you to donate your twitter/facebook to send a one time message the morning of that labor meeting with Bernie:
“Bernie backs working people, we ask the labor movement to #BackBernie #1u http://thndr.it/...
The only thing you have to do is allow this one time message to be sent out from your social media account that morning. If we can get this rolling, we can send the message that the political revolution that Cohen, and other labor leaders, have long been looking for is here.