By John J. Sweeney
No political voodoo or magic polling or hocus-pocus spin doctoring will win Election 2006 for working families.
It’s a lot simpler than that.
The key to victory is voter turnout.
And the key to turnout is you.
Historically, voter turnout is pretty low when we’re not electing a president. We can’t afford for voters to stay home this year. We need you to mobilize and turn out educated union household voters and Working America members who know where their congressional, state and local candidates stand on the issues that affect the lives of working families every day. We’ll do the research and provide the materials, but it’s you who will take the fight to the streets.
Between now and Nov. 7, we will be relentless in inviting you, encouraging you, urging you to volunteer for neighborhood walks, phone banks, leafleting and whatever else it takes to make sure our nearly 13 million union households and Working America voters know which candidates support working families and get to the polls to vote in their own best interest.
As wages stagnate, health coverage costs soar beyond reach, pensions disappear, gas prices hit higher and higher records, we stumble so deep in debt we can’t see our way out and Iraq careens toward civil war, President Bush and his allies chant their mantra: Stay the course.
We know that course is taking America in the wrong direction—the wrong direction for working families, for our children and for our country.
If you want change, volunteer. If you want affordable health care, volunteer. If you want retirement security, a minimum wage increase, protection for our freedom to form unions, safe jobs, good jobs, volunteer. If you want America to be respected again in the world and working family values to be respected here at home, volunteer.
A few hours of your time a week will make a difference. No magic, no voodoo, just a modest amount of what my mother would have called “elbow grease”―your work.
Our future is at stake. And right now, you can commit to shaping that future.
If you don’t have the benefit of a union on the job, to join Working America and volunteer to educate and inform your neighbors.
Between now and Nov. 7, I’ll see you on the streets.
