RE: [Marxism] Andy Stern and the labor movement

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From the article in the NYTimes Magazine:

>Stern invited Moore to speak at an S.E.I.U. meeting in Chicago a few years
ago -- which is roughly the equivalent of Michael Moore being asked over to
the National Rifle Association for lunch. Now Stern has begun to emulate the
club's model; last year, the S.E.I.U. ran its own candidate, a union ally,
against the Democratic House speaker in Washington State, because the
speaker voted against a health-benefits package for home health care
workers. The union's challenger lost -- but only by about 500 votes. ''I
think we need to spend more time running candidates against Democrats,''
Stern says matter-of-factly.

Don't get too excited about this development. Unless I am very much
mistaken, this is a garbled account of the campaign of Alice Woldt against
Helen Summers for Washington's 36th Legislative District, position No. 1;
each district has one senator and two assembly persons. The 36th District is
the westerly half of the north side of Seattle and solidly Democratic.

Summers is notable because she is a 32-year legislature member from a
rock-solid Seattle district who is the chairperson of the state equivalent
of an appropriations committee and thus a very powerful person. She is not
the speaker of the house. SEIU did in fact take her on because of her
refusal to help some poor people maintain health care access, but Alice
Woldt is a lifetime Democrat, former chairperson of the King County
Democrats, and ran in the Washington State Primary as a Democrat against
Summers. So it represented a bit of a palace revolt in the sense that SEIU
refused to accept the DP's idea of who the DP candidate ought to be, but it
was all within the Democratic Party.

What is interesting is that Woldt (full disclosure: Alice is a personal
friend) ran partially on her reputation as a stalwart of the Seattle peace
community, earned in her tenure as acting Executive Secretary of the Church
Council of Greater Seattle. She wishes she had been able to do two things
better in her campaign: doorbell the neighborhoods and bring out the
connection between money for state needs and national squandering on war.
That she came within so few votes of unseating a sitting committee
chairperson who has been in the legislature for 32 years and feels she ought
to have run more to the left on the war question is interesting. Her
campaign was mercilessly union-baited in all the press in Seattle. "SEIU Bid
to Take Over Legislative Seat Charged" kind of thing.


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