Election 2000: AFSCME's Ready!
A home away from home, full of supportive folks, eager to help. That's what Al Gore, Presidential candidate-to-be, encountered when he addressed the Convention. He responded by telling our members why he deserves their votes: because he strongly supports workers' rights to organize and to keep their jobs if they strike, and because — just as strongly — he opposes privatization.
Addresses by Gore, Pres. Bill Clinton, House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and NAACP Pres./CEO Kweisi Mfume highlighted three different days and gave an election-year urgency to the entire Convention. Both the speakers and their speeches were greeted by a dazzling panorama of color, sound and motion. AFSCME green shirts flooded the hall, along with signs in red, blue and white, and multi-colored banners and streamers. With next to no urging, delegates chanted and whooped and hollered.
If there have been jazzier, more heartfelt demonstrations anywhere else in the political world, anybody would be hard-pressed to identify them.
Vice President Gore had a perfect, two-part response to the wild welcome he received. At the podium, grinning broadly, he held up a T-shirt he'd had specially printed. It read: GORE FOR AFSCME. The delegates roared even louder. Soon after that, referring to our very early endorsement of his Presidential candidacy, he declared, "Thank you, AFSCME!"
As a national candidate, Gore naturally spoke about overarching national issues: the need to balance the budget, pay down the debt, protect Social Security and Medicare, and create tax-free savings accounts. But he reserved ample time to address the concerns — and make the points — that have established him as a true friend of labor.
"I believe, with all my heart," he said, "that the right to organize is a fundamental right that must never be blocked or undermined....I'm for getting rid of the power to replace strikers permanently."
Privatization, he continued, is "not a panacea" for whatever shortcomings exist in the state, county and municipal workplaces, and the people who staff them should never be cast aside because some privateer says he can do the job cheaper and better. Privateers "want to tear down government employees and blame them for our nation's problems. But government employees aren't part of the problem, they're part of the solution. What's fair is giving you a chance to compete and to prove that the workers doing the job are most often the ones doing the best job."
President Clinton, sounding relaxed and at times almost chatty, also thanked AFSCME for its consistent political support. He devoted much of his speech to urging delegates, in this election year, to reach far beyond their normal circle of friends, fellow workers and other contacts to become diligent disciples in behalf of Gore and the Democrats:
"Talk to every person you know and every person you run into between now and November and tell them why they ought to vote, for whom they ought to vote, and the reasons they ought to vote for them."
What to say? Just this, according to the President: "There are three things every American needs to know about this election. Number one, it is a big election; it is real important. Number two, there are real differences between the parties that you can see in the candidates for President, the candidates for the Senate, the candidates for Congress and the local races. Number three — and this is a dead giveaway in terms of who people ought to vote for — only the Democrats want you to know what those real differences are."
Gephardt delivered the most fiery speech veteran listeners could recall his giving. Point after point was interrupted by applause and shouts of fervent approval. Gephardt spoke plainly about the difference between today's Republican Party and the "sensible, worker-friendly, union-friendly Democratic Party."
The Republicans, he said, "know they have to sound like they're for" the proposals Democrats support, "because that's popular. But they're really not because they're right-wing extremists. They've got one aim: They want to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans. They must be defeated in this election!"
In terms of rhetorical heat, nobody produced more than Representative Lee. The Texas congresswoman rapped the right wing hard. But like Clinton, she didn't rest with that. She used it as the reason for making sure her listeners not only believe in pro-worker causes and positions but also will work ceaselessly for the candidates who would turn them into law and policy.
Lee urged the audience to engage in what she termed "the politics of boldness," to "take the boldness of the message of this convention ... into your hamlets, villages, cities and rural areas. ... This Congress can only change with you voting like you've never voted before!"
The NAACP's Mfume, surveying the multi-racial, multihued crowd before him, emphasized the common values and traditions of his organization and AFSCME. The NAACP, he said, gives full support and commitment to "the purposes, mission and mandate of AFSCME."
Members of each, he said, "have a mutual condition and common affliction" that binds them. "The action items that will be part of our [NAACP] agenda," he vowed, "will be strikingly familiar to the action items of AFSCME" and tools to empower "a shared destiny and a shared hope for change."
Be It Resolved
The 2000 Elections: charges AFSCME with redoubling its dedication to the political process by committing the maximum available human and financial resources to elect pro-worker political leaders, and asks each council and local to register at least 80 percent of their members to vote in November.
Goals of the PEOPLE Program: asks that a standing PEOPLE Committee be established in each AFSCME local, council and retiree chapter; and sets a PEOPLE fundraising goal of at least $2.50 per member per year for the 2002 elections.
PEOPLE Training and Education: promotes education on the importance of the PEOPLE program and asks that information on PEOPLE become a regular and integral part of all training and education programs.
PEOPLE Checkoff: stresses the importance of achieving checkoff — or an Electronic Funds Transfer System — at all levels of the union.
This portion of the website is posted in full compliance with FEC regulations (11C.F.R. Sect.11 4.5(i)). It is paid for by the AFSCME PEOPLE Committee, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
