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Northwoods Primary

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Way up north, way on the tippy top of Wisconsin sits Superior. You might not know it just by looking at a map - unless its an election-results map - but Superior is one of the most Democratic parts of the state and one of the most pro-education and pro-labor in how they vote and what they support. In fact, in the Assembly race up there this year, for the 73rd District as Frank Boyle retires, there isn't a Republican candidate. Whomever wins the Democratic primary wins the seat.

Now Frank has been about as good a friend of AFT-Wisconsin and the TAA as anyone in the state legislature. He's been a stalwart progressive and strong voice for education from pre-K through PhDs. With him retiring, we lose a good friend in the Assembly. But we have a chance to make a new friend.

As Frank retires, he endorsed a candidate to replace him in the Assembly, his good friend Nick Milroy. Nick is a Superior city councilor - and he's a member of the AFT family. Both his wife and his parents are members of AFT-Wisconsin as teachers in the Superior Federation of Teachers. The SFT is one of our union's strongest locals and with nearly 800 household members in the district, they are a large part of the voting population up there. Nick's good people too - he's a strong progressive that has said he wants to be a "Frank Boyle Democrat" when he's in Madison. We in the AFT thought that sounded pretty good. So we endorsed him.

Actually, it's more complext than that. There's a candidate running in the Democratic primary that is no Frank Boyle Democrat. In fact, most of the folks in the world of AFT members from up in Superior say she's not much of a Suprerior Democrat at all - she's even running as the "moderate" voice for "moderate" people in Superior. Sounds good on paper maybe, but not to progressives.

In their endorsement interviews, Nick and the other candidate couldn't have been more difficult: Nick spoke about being a progressive voice and leader like Frank had been, making his top priorities public education and getting our state's economy on-track for working families, while explicitly referring to himself as a progressive without running away from an ideological defintion for himself; the other candidate just kept referring to herself as a moderate, didn't stake out any progressive priorities, and just didn't seem like the Frank Boyle Democrat we want.

Two of the leaders of our Superior locals drove down for the endorsement interviews AFT-Wisconsin held in Madison, and both of them voted as part of a unanimous 'majority' to endorse Nick Milroy. So along with AFT, Nick is endorsed by Frank Boyle, the Building & Construction Trades in Superior, Congressman Dave Obey (a progressive leader if ever there was one), and the progressive industrial union United Steelworkers.

When one of the Superior AFT leaders and I were speaking after the endorsement vote, she said she'd be grateful for any help that the TAA could give to help get Nick elected. I said we'd do whatever was asked of us. And we got asked...

This past week, TAA political activist members have called through our entire AFT-Wisconsin membership list in the district, having conversations with member households about the 73rd Assembly District race and sharing with folks that AFT-Wisconsin has endorsed Nick Milroy. We've identified supporters of Nick, and we're getting ready to make the final push for Get Out the Vote (GOTV) in the crutical final 72 hours before the primary election on September 9th.

So we're going to be working to get our TAA members plugged in to help with GOTV in the 73rd Assembly District primary because this Northwoods area is one where we can win for a progressive 2 months out from the general election. We could really use your help on Saturday the 6th and/or Sunday the 7th and/or Monday the 8th.

So can you come on out for a few hours worth of political action to help a progressive win a seat? We can elect someone who is going to be a strong ally of ours - a new friend - in the fight for better pro-labor, pro-education, and progressive policy in the state legislature. Remember, elections don't win themselves - only real people engaged in the real work of political action win elections and build power. Come on out to be a part of it!

Saturday, 1 PM to 5 PM
Sunday, 5 PM to 8:30 PM
Monday, 5 PM to 8:30 PM
First half-hour of each session is training and education

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posted by TAA Political Action

TAA-UFAS 2008 Political Action Kickoff!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Clear your calendars! Save the date! Whatever it takes, be there!

The TAA Political Action organizing team and our good friends at UFAS (our brothers and sisters of United Faculty & Academic Staff) is proud to announce our TAA-UFAS 2008 Political Action Kickoff event! We'll rally with fellow union members as well as union and political leaders.

The event will take place on September 16th at 5:30 PM over at Grainger Hall. We'll hear from a great list of speakers that will cover topics ranging from what's at stake in 2008 from the presidential election through the state legislature, what a pro-labor, pro-education, pro-UW majority in the state legislature will look like, the political lay of the land - and perhaps most importantly, what we can do about it.

Here's the list of speakers right now:

AFT-Wisconsin President Bryan Kennedy
AFL-CIO Wisconsin Executive Vice President Sara Rogers
62nd Assembly District Rep and former AFT-Wisconsin Political Director Cory Mason
78th Assembly District Rep and potential future chair of the state legislature's (all-important) Joint Finance Committee Mark Pocan
A high-level surrogate from the Barack Obama campaign.

So check out the details with the event listing on our TAA Politics Facebook page and we'll see you there! Don't forget to RSVP and to share this with your friends...let's pack the place!

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posted by TAA Political Action

Saturday's AFT Higher Ed Solidarity Action

This Saturday, higher ed unionists from around AFT-Wisconsin came together for a joint action as part of our 2008 political program. Member-activists from the TAA joined with our brothers and sisters from AFT-Wisconsin higher ed locals for a political action around this year's elections. They included union members from the Milwaukee Graduate Assistants Association, United Faculty & Academic Staff, and The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (the latter two being the unions for faculty and academic staff at UW-Madison and other UW-system campuses, respectively). But the TAA definitely led the pack.

As many of you know, we have two major political opportunities this year. One, which I'm sure most are familiar with, is the chance to bring change to our country by electing Barack Obama as our next president. The TAA membership voted to endorse Senator Obama way back in January and we'll be continuing, along with our brothers and sisters in the labor movement, to work to ensure that Barack Obama wins the crucial labor vote by the margin he needs to win Wisconsin's electoral votes.

The other major political opportunity in front of us in 2008 is to build a pro-labor, pro-education, pro-UW majority in the state legislature. The state legislature has a huge impact on us as graduate students, grad student workers, and members of the UW community. Right now, there is a narrow margin between us and our progressive majority. Six of the top-tier races are right here in our own backyard, so we can have a huge impact by mobilizing the labor vote for key candidates that we support.

This Saturday's action was a combination of our work on both of these fronts.

The event centered around higher ed unionists working to elect one of our own. Kim Hixson is a progressive State Assembly Representative in a dog-fight of a re-election campaign (one of our six priority races). He is also a UW-system professor on leave from UW-Whitewater AND a member of our union. His local, TAUWP is made up of UW-system faculty and academic staff that right now do not have collective bargaining rights. So one fight on which Kim has been a leader has been in working towards guaranteeing faculty & academic staff the same rights we have, the basic human right of organizing into a union. Kim has also been an incredibly strong and credible voice for better support of the UW-system as the crown jewel of our state. He has stood in solidarity with us in working to ensure better funding of Wisconsin's state universities.

So on Saturday, we went and spoke with fellow union members in Whitewater, Edgerton, and Milton about re-electing Kim Hixson against radical anti-education privatizer Debi Towns, the person Kim beat in 2006 by 38 votes in a highly-contested recount. The support for Kim was strong - union members realize that we need a strong university system as an economic driver in our state; and the principle of solidarity stood strong - union members want another one of their own from the House of Labor in the state legislature.

The other aim of our work on Saturday was in building support amongst union households for Barack Obama. Many have thought that this election is in the bag for Barack Obama, especially right here in Wisconsin. However, the facts on the ground are different. This is a hotly-contested race where we will need to work hard, along with the hard work of the Obama campaign proper, to win Wisconsin's critical electoral votes for Barack Obama.

The men and women of organized labor, traditionally a Democratic stronghold, are a swing voting bloc this year for a number of reasons. But make no mistake about it - when we in the TAA endorsed Senator Obama, it was because we knew he is the pro-worker, pro-labor candidate in this election. John McCain is just wrong for union members, wrong for Wisconsin, and wrong for this country. From getting our economy back on track to re-establishing America's moral leadership around the world, Barack Obama is the right choice.

So we knocked on the doors of fellow union members to encourage their support of Barack Obama. Not surprisingly, in this area that has been badly damaged by the failed economic policies of the Bush Administration, there was strong support for Barack Obama.

But we need to keep it up. These elections won't win themselves, and there's too much at stake to sit at home and watch. WE will win these elections, be it the presidential race or the fight for the state legislature. WE must be active and involved. That's what our political program is all about - organizing our members as activists to deliver the electoral victories we need to bring about change and to build the political power to enact a progressive agenda here in Wisconsin and throughout this country.

So this Saturday was an opening salvo of sorts (even though we've been engaged in multiple major actions prior to this one)...our announcement that the TAA will fight like hell to win in 2008. But soon, we'll have more actions, from working to win a primary for a progressive Democrat to building more support among fellow AFT members for Barack Obama, to organizing in our top-tier Assembly races. And much, much more.

Stay tuned here and elsewhere for updates...and keep your calendars open for September 16th at 5:30 PM. Along with our brothers and sisters of UFAS, we'll host a political kickoff event with a host of great speakers and opportunities for you to get involved.

In the meantime, we'd love to have you involved. So if you'd like to step up and help us win in 2008, just get in touch with us today!

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posted by TAA Political Action

Progressive Labor Needs To Stand Up for Barack Obama

Friday, August 22, 2008

Believe it or not, we might be losing this election right now. Barack Obama is not going to coast to an easy victory here in Wisconsin or nationally. Sure, the American people are fed up with George Bush - and John McCain is promising four more years of Bush policy. But Obama still has to overcome one of the most insidious forces of the dark side of America's flawed humanity: racism.

And we need to be honest - it might even be affecting the men and women of organized labor. While we as an institution are among the most integrated justice-oriented, there are some workers that have been swayed by the path of least resistance in politics that is modern American racism. So we need to stand up to confront that.

Progressive labor that is with Obama in this election needs to stand up, step up, and educate our brothers and sisters about what really matters in this election and why racism is just fundamentally at odds with the principles of justice and solidarity that underpin the labor movement.

There are some fine leaders in the labor movement today, but few are better than the president of the United Mine Workers and Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Rich Trumka. In two videos, Rich addresses these two issues - why this election is vitally important and why Barack Obama is the right choice for workers, and the potential reality and divisiveness of racism.

Racism is real in the labor movement, and it's just plain wrong...

posted by TAA Political Action

 

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