Posted on 08/02/2004 2:08:52 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
On the first day of the Democratic national convention, Andrew Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), dropped a bombshell in an interview with The Washington Post. He said that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John Kerry lost the presidential election this fall. Stern´s remarks were quickly rebuked by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who pledged anew his support for Kerry. However, the SEIU is the largest and fastest growing union in the AFL-CIO and has banded together with other expanding factions of the labor movement to push for a more radical-left agenda than the Democratic Party is presenting this time around.
Stern sees a “deep crisis” on the left. The Kerry-Edwards ticket is trying to identify itself with the moderate-liberal legacy of the Clinton Administration, which Stern also criticized as having been harmful to “reform.” The SEIU had been an early supporter of Howard Dean, especially when he was the darling of the anti-war movement. Dean re-ignited the mythology of the New Left of the 1960s, but the Democratic establishment rallied around Kerry to head off another McGovernite debacle.
The SEIU´s involvement in the antiwar movement was independent of the Dean bubble. At its national convention this June in San Francisco, the SEIU adopted foreign policy resolutions which included calls for “An end to the U.S. Occupation of Iraq,” and “The redirecting of the nation's resources from inflated military spending to meeting the needs of working families for health care, education, a clean environment, housing and a decent standard of living.” And to put meaning into its claim as an “international union,” the SEIU platform repeated a statement made in the letter Stern sent to President Bush in January, 2003 opposing a war with Iraq. That statement claimed, “The goal of our foreign policy must be to promote a safer and more just world - promoting peaceful, multilateral solutions for disputes” and “must give high priority to improving the lives of people around the world.” The SEIU believes that forcefully removing Saddam Hussein from power violated these principles.
The Democratic platform takes a very different approach. It attacks the Bush administration for “badly exaggerat[ing] its case [for war], particularly with respect to weapons of mass destruction and the connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda.” However, now that the U.S. has overthrown the Saddam regime, it “cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.”
The Democratic platform also calls for adding 40,000 troops to the U.S. military, and doubling the strength of special operations units, which are used in unconventional warfare and anti-terrorism actions. In his acceptance speech for the vice-presidential nomination, Sen. John Edwards cited the need to “strengthen and modernize our military” and said in regard to Iraq, “We'll win this war because of the strength and courage of our own people.”
The SEIU is a member of the New Unity Partnership, which also includes the Laborers' International Union of North America, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. The wing of the union movement representing the most unskilled and lowest paid workers has always been the most radical in its demands. Before their merger, the AFL, which represented skilled craft workers, and the CIO, which represented the unskilled, were often bitter political rivals.
During the rise of the United States to world economic leadership, the bulk of the “working class” in industry was elevated to middle class living standards. This was a great success story and a key reason why American politics have been more stable, moderate and realistic compared to what other countries have had to suffer with cycles of demagogues, suicidal policies, and mob violence. Workers who could afford to own homes and send their kids to college where not vulnerable to calls for a Marxist proletarian revolution.
Unfortunately, industrial decline has eliminated millions of middle-class blue collar jobs as America´s “labor aristocracy” has been undermined by cheaper foreign production.. The balance of power within the labor movement has shifted away from the “hard hats,” who wave the U.S. flag from their pickup trucks and send their kids into the military. They confronted the New Left in the streets in the 1960s and emerged as Reagan Democrats in the 1980s. The irony for Republicans is that by embracing the “free trade” policies pushed by corporate interests whose loyalty to the nation and its values is questionable at best, they have decimated the most patriotic and socially conservative segment of the labor movement.
As the number of workers in the shrinking industrial sector has declined, so has that sector´s influence in the labor movement. Service and government-sector unions have recruited members of growing sectors in the economy – service workers and government employees, whose interests and ideologies are much further to the left.
A key feature of the New Unity Partnership is the high percentage of immigrant workers they represent, including large numbers who are in the United States illegally. The SEIU claims to be the nation´s largest immigrant union and has stressed the need “to build a powerful, new immigrant electorate.” The SEIU strategy is to win a complete amnesty for illegal aliens to pave the way for their recruitment as left-wing voters. They have rejected President George W. Bush´s plan for an “earned” legal status through employment because it does not clear a path to full and immediate political rights. The SEIU urges its members to participate in politics even if they are not citizens or even legal residents. Its website states, “While we may not all be able to vote, we can all participate. If you can´t vote, you still have a voice. You can make phone calls, walk precincts, and pass out literature to ensure that everyone who is eligible to vote can.” The union itself has raised about $65 million for use in this year´s political campaigns.
The other unions in the New Unity Partnership coalition are also heavily involved in protecting massive illegal immigration, which has provided them with so many members. LIU resolutions call for “effective and far reaching reform legalizing undocumented workers and oppose current guest worker programs.” These sentiments are shared by all groups on the far left.
Those who want to radically transform the United States need to create a new proletariat which is as alienated from American society on class, ethnic, and cultural grounds as leftist intellectuals are alienated on ideological grounds. Drawing more illegal aliens into the country is the strategy for creating such a movement. In a evenly divided electorate, the influx of millions of foreign-born voters skewed towards one end of the political spectrum would be decisive. Thus behind the hiring of a few more janitors, kitchen helpers, and day laborers lurks the far more ambitious project of importing revolution.
But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.
~Karl Marx, "On the Question of Free Trade" - January 9, 1848
< SNIP >
Ultimately, Garcia says, the goals of the emerging legalization movement are not only to change current and future immigration policy but to "bring immigrants together with other low-income communities in a new progressive movement."
The AFL-CIO announcement gave a similar boost to immigrant organizing in Oregon. "We had been fighting for legalization for a long time," says Ramon Ramirez, president of PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste) in Woodburn, Oregon. "We saw the AFL announcement as a great opportunity. We saw that it was time to move immigrant rights to another level, to have the maturity to get a broad set of folks together."
Absolutely, more immigrants will change America. The latest Barna Research results posted on FR last night showed that Asians were the most anti-Christian in their attitudes, and surprisingly Hispanics were also against such things as the display of the Ten Commandments in greater numbers than most Americans. So of course, liberals would try to open the floodgates and let these immigrants in who will further their godless agenda.
FWIW, that description doesn't sound like the legal immigrants we know, let alone the naturalized ones who can legally vote.
btt
This sounds quite suspect. There are tons of asians and hispanics at my church.
You can look at this way --- most of these people were PRI party voters in Mexico for generations --- and those are kind of like die-hard democrats. If they were real believers in Conservative principles, Mexico wouldn't look like it does.
They have laws against the display of the Ten Commandments or anything religious in Mexico --- so it shouldn't be too surprising.
That's true, being a semi marxist state, and few on hear are as angry about Mexicans sneaking into my state, however the people are still a very faithful lot and this poll just sounded a bit odd. Anti Christian Asians? I have seen alot of antiChristian Jews, and anti Christian agnostics or athiests, but Asians? They never seemed to be hot & bothered about the displays of Christian faith. Like I said it just sounded odd.
Only some are faithful --- some are truly faithful for sure --- very many are like the Irish Catholics who claim to believe in God but will vote for pro-abortion candidates every time like Ted Kennedy. And many aren't religious. A truck outside the Catholic Church here owned by "hispanics" has one bumper sticker "We Vote Pro-Life" next to one of "Clinton-Gore" so I think many even who are religious just don't know.
Well now you are just getting into the paradox of why any non liberal on social issues would ever vote for a modern Dem. I have been on numerous discussion with Republicans wishing away breathlessly at how they are going to make strides in the black vote going to the GOP (ignoring the last 80 years of polling) when if they were smart and they weren't so worried about being accepted politically by blacks rather than actually being practical and would realize that socially conservative Catholics and Southern Dems are the people desperately in need of an explanation of the GOP's social platform. Unfortunately the Republicans are too busy hiding that plank at the Convention and trying to be a shiney new Dem alternative to blacks (yet again) that they are losing a tremendous opportunity.
For shame those dang republicans reaching out those black people.
That's right, you were on that mass hysteria of a thread too. You have my sympathies. In fairness should have pinged you to my post also. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1183350/posts?page=54#54
If by "shame" you are calling the Republicans insane, which is after all by definition repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different result, then I concur entirely. Why would blacks want second rate wanna be reaching out pandering when they can get it from a real pro who knows how?
And your point is? You said the GOP should reach out to Catholics and Southern Democrats. What for? Or are you one those Zell Millerites too! Look at your own numbers, esp, after Barry Goldwater stabbed black people in the back with that stupid southern strategy, also in concert with all the big government social schemes.
Some people treat religion as an ethnic qualifier.
Its called logic, learn it, love it, live it. Because unlike your brothers there is a possibility they might be open to "selling out" for the social conservatism increasely less represented by the increasingly radically socially left DNC.
Or are you one those Zell Millerites too!
Uh Zel is a long time partisan Dem "cyborg" thanks for proving my point.
Look at your own numbers, esp, after Barry Goldwater stabbed black people in the back with that stupid southern strategy, also in concert with all the big government social schemes.
You are talking in circles here, slow down and take a deep breath. Johnson was the big government spender, he had this thing called the Great Society in case you forgot. At the same time he ushered in a whole new age of blacks being even further extreme and out of touch from the rest of the voting body. Take a gander at Ronald Wilson Reagan's props from the blacks in his tremendous landslide in 84. No love for the man who had already proven to the American people he was one of the GREATEST PRESIDENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. The question isn't whether the GOP needs to reach out to blacks, its whether blacks need to reach out to the GOP because if that number is 100 instead of 89 and the Dems still get slaughtered, who cares?
I know --- blacks are quite conservative socially --- especially on abortion but they don't tend to vote that way --- not as a group.
Because unlike your brothers there is a possibility they might be open to "selling out" for the social conservatism increasely less represented by the increasingly radically socially left DNC.
*** What are you talking about?
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