Organized Labor is the type of "Change" we voted for!

Organized labor is on the march
this Labor Day weekend to make real the promise of the 2008 election. That election saw America signal a desire for a new economic and social order — one in which U.S. priorities are reordered so that human needs at home are more of a priority than unnecessary wars, where tax policies are fair and functional, and where workers earn wages sufficient to sustain families.

This is not a radical agenda. Indeed, these are goals Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower outlined.

It was Roosevelt who included among his Four Freedoms a “freedom from want” based on “economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants.”

It was Truman who carried on with the call for an Economic Bill of Rights including “the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation … the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living … the right of every family to a decent home … the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health … the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment … the right to a good education.”

It was Eisenhower who warned with regard to spending priorities: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Unfortunately, the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have stopped short of delivering on the promise not just of the 2008 campaign but of American progress as defined by our greatest presidents.

That’s why the United Auto Workers union and the Reverend Jesse Jackson have combined to push this fall to: 1. Rebuild America by enacting industrial and trade policies that will create jobs, encourage manufacturing and put workers first. 2. Enforce the law regarding workers’ rights, civil rights, industrial regulation, and creation of fair and just educational, economic and health policies. 3. End the ongoing wars and redirect the funds to rebuilding America.

Jackson will bring the agenda to Baraboo next Saturday. He will receive a lifetime achievement award at Fighting Bob Fest, where 10,000 progressives will gather at the Sauk County Fairgrounds for the largest annual gathering of its kind in the Midwest. Jackson’s right when he says: “We have a plan for Afghanistan and Iraq. We would do better to prioritize rebuilding America.” And he’s even more right when he says that it takes more than just presidents to get a nation’s priorities right. Working families and their unions must join in making the very American demand for jobs, justice and peace.

Fighting Bob Fest is today 9/11 and I (the Dead Peasant) will be there.
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