Delegates Commit to Action, Alliance-Building to Fight Key Threats

Resolutions Focus on Medicare, Voter Suppression, Colombia, State Battles

Wisconsin CWA delegates display U.S. and state flags that flew over the capitol while union members and activists were standing up for workers rights.

From protecting Medicare to opposing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, stopping voter suppression and battling state attacks on workers' rights, resolutions that CWA convention delegates passed this week had a central theme: Taking action and continuing to build a broad-based movement to fight back.

The resolutions are posted in full on the CWA website. You'll find a separate newsletter story on Resolution 1. Here's a summary of the other four:

• CWA will join with progressive allies in an aggressive campaign to oppose the Republican House plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program, forcing seniors to pay far more out of pocket for health care or go without. In August, when House members hold town hall meetings in their home districts, CWA and allies will be there in force.
• Anti-democratic forces in states across the country are enacting new voter ID laws and other ways to suppress voter turnout, mainly affecting students, minorities, seniors and the poor. CWA will fight this new threat to democracy through education and movement-building, and will participate with the AFL-CIO and other allies to document abuses during the 2012 elections.
• To oppose the Colombia Free Trade Deal, each local president will write a letter to his or her member or Congress, and the union will generate another 5,000 contacts from CWA members. The Colombia deal not only would hurt U.S. workers, it would appear to sanction the country's horrifying lack of workplace rights and protections. Nearly 3,000 union activists have been murdered in Colombia in the last 25 years, including 17 to date in 2011.
• As locals and districts continue to build alliances to fight grave assaults on workers' rights in Ohio, New Jersey, Wisconsin and other states, many new actions are planned. CWA will work with Move On to organize summer "Rebuild the American Dream" house parties; "We Are One" actions in August will hold elected officials accountable for their anti-worker agenda; and CWA supports the historic Aug. 27 march on the National Mall for jobs and justice, called "From the Emancipator (Lincoln) to the Liberator (Martin Luther King, Jr.)." A national memorial to Dr. King will be unveiled on the Mall the next day.