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United in Boston: Kerry-Edwards Ticket Ignites Delegates
Among the 5,000 delegates and alternates, the eight presidential contenders who didn't make the ticket, past presidents and past challengers, and even among those in the roaring crowd with differing views on the war in Iraq, the unity at the Democratic National Convention was unshakeable.
"The Democrats were so solidly together. No matter what meeting you went to, there was no dissention, nothing but a great deal of energy and enthusiasm," said CWA Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, a member of the Democratic National Committee and one of about 40 delegates and alternates among CWA members, officers and staff at the convention July 26-29 in Boston.
"Bush said he was going to be a uniter, not a divider," said CWA Local 6222 President Claude Cummings, a Texas delegate. "He's divided the nation, but he's united the Democratic Party."
Convention participants praised the event's upbeat but pragmatic tone, where speeches were hopeful about the future but realistic about the present.
"My fellow Americans, this is the most important election of our lifetime," Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said in his sweeping speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president. "The stakes are high. We are a nation at war: a global war on terror against an enemy unlike we've ever known before.
"Here at home, wages are falling, health-care costs are rising, and our great middle class is shrinking. People are working weekends - two jobs, three jobs - and they're still not getting ahead. We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best that we can do. They say this is the best economy that we've ever had. And they say anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can't do better."
Kerry, who was welcomed on stage by the veterans of the gunboat he commanded in Vietnam, pledged "swift and certain" action in the event of any terror attack and laid out a plan to better protect America - from stepping up funds for local police and firefighters to ensuring cargo ships are searched, adding 40,000 active duty troops to the military and mending international relations.
He and Vice Presidential Nominee John Edwards detailed a domestic agenda to create jobs, improve schools, make college more affordable, provide health care for the uninsured and lower drug costs for seniors, among other goals. They pledged no hike in middle-class taxes but said they would close corporate tax loopholes and roll back tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, those who have grown richer during the Bush administration while other families have struggled.
"We can move our country forward without passing the bill and the burden on to our children and grandchildren," Edwards said.
The strong unity and positive tone at the convention underscored the ties that bind all Americans, a feeling expressed especially powerfully by U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama of Illinois, the keynote speaker.
"The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats," Obama said. "But I've got news for them. We worship an awesome God in the blue state, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Focus on Workers' Rights
A Maryland Comcast technician fired in March for trying to win CWA representation appeared on stage the last night of the convention with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and two other struggling workers.
Stephen White told reporters he was excited to bring his mission for workers' rights to delegates and to the country via C-SPAN. "I take every chance I get to bring attention to what happens when people like me try to organize," he said.
Sweeney described an economy that rewards the wealthy at the expense of workers, a government that "hands our tax dollars to the 'haves' and the Halliburtons." He spoke of flat wages and the loss of good jobs that offer health care and a secure pension.
"It is against this backdrop of inequality and unfairness that a historic choice has been placed on the doorstep of our democracy," Sweeney said.
The speeches were more easily heard on television than on the floor of Boston's Fleet Center, where CWA delegates said the noise from the raucous crowd was deafening. "It was wonderful," said CWA Representative Elaine Harris, a West Virginia delegate who has gone to Democratic conventions since 1988. Harris spent the last evening on stage, one of two West Virginia delegates - two were chosen from each state - to sit on the platform during the speeches. But she said the real fun was on the floor, in the sea of signs and shouts - and celebrities.
Perhaps because the West Virginia delegation was positioned near the CNN studio inside the center, Harris got to talk to everyone from movie star Ben Affleck, who's traveling with Kerry, to the fiery Rev. Al Sharpton, "Fahrenheit 9/11" filmmaker Michael Moore and the Democrat's newest star, Illinois state Senator and U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama, whose powerful and poignant keynote address brought down the house
on the convention's second night.
"I thanked him and told him I was so impressed. I said, "You are our future. You're giving people hope," Harris said. She was touched when Obama graciously thanked her for the kind words.
Other CWA members, officers and staff attended the convention as guests or sat on convention committees. They included CWA researcher Debbie Goldman, who helped ensure that labor's issues were addressed in the Democrat's platform.
"The goal was to have a visionary document, not a laundry list," said Goldman. In all, the committee had more than 150 members, about 20 of them from labor unions and the AFL-CIO. They met in Hollywood, Fla., in early July to hammer out the 40-page document from a draft platform.
"I felt fabulous about the process. The AFL-CIO made sure that our issues were brought forward and they said they felt the Kerry campaign was receptive to labor in a way that hasn't happened in quite a while," Goldman said.
CWA Campaign Workers
Throughout the country, CWA members have been acting as site scouts, serving as drivers and otherwise lending a hand to the Kerry campaign. Members of Local 3104 in Fort Lauderdale have been helping with Democratic presidential and campaign visits for years and got an early start as Kerry volunteers. Since then, they've helped link the campaign with CWA locals in other states, including New York, California and Colorado.
Gay Kranick, a Local 3104 steward and co-chair of the Legislative Committee, drove Kerry's wife Teresa Heinz Kerry and one of the candidate's daughters in March. She said Heinz Kerry "is warm and fabulous. She came up to us and hugged us. Sen. Kerry's daughter was the same way."
Kranick marveled at Teresa Heinz Kerry's ability to reach out to people - in multiple languages. "She had people with her who spoke different languages," she said. "She could switch at a moment's notice."
Gail Marie Perry, also a Local 3104 steward and legislative co-chair, said members turned out to help on a scorching hot July day for a Kerry rally in an airport hangar. Among other duties, two members got to drive trams bringing the enthusiastic crowd from the parking lot to the event. The next day, "we received an e-mail from the campaign, saying 'Thanks again for your help and thanks again to the CWA crew,'" Perry said.
In New York City, four CWA Local 1101 members helped with transportation and other details for a July fundraiser in Manhattan, and then met Senator Edwards and his staff at LaGuardia Airport, accompanying them into the city. "It was exciting working with a national campaign and an honor to assist the next vice president of the United States in anyway we could," Chief Steward Robert Fighera said.
Platform Focus on Jobs
Regarding the Kerry-Edwards platform, Goldman helped ensure it addressed CWA's issues, including language calling for universal access to affordable broadband, which could add $500 billion to the economy and create 1.2 million jobs.
The workers' rights part of the platform asserts, "We will ensure that the right to organize unions exists in the real world, not just on paper. That means reforming our labor laws to protect the rights of workers, including public employees, to bargain contracts and organize on a level playing field without interference."
The section also calls for barring permanent replacement workers, restoring overtime protections and strengthening health and safety protections.
Other language important to workers and unions calls for stemming the tide of offshoring, extending trade adjustment assistance to workers in the service sector, fair trade agreements with internationally recognized labor and environmental standards, fiscal relief to states burdened by tax cuts and federal mandates, expanded health care coverage for low-income children and adults, federal aid for catastrophic health care to help lower insurance premiums, stronger prescription drug coverage and media ownership rules that would ensure a diversity of viewpoints.
Noting the long list of critical issues affecting working families and unions, CWA President Morton Bahr urged all CWA members to get involved in the campaign, be it canvassing neighborhoods, leafleting at work, hosting a house party, making phone calls or stuffing envelopes at a local campaign office.
"If you're worried now about job security, about our soaring debt and dwindling state resources, about the uninsured and our struggling seniors, about an anti-worker agenda that's taken aim at overtime and given tax credits to companies that take jobs overseas - if you're worried now, imagine what our country will look like if this administration gets another four years," Bahr said. "John Kerry and John Edwards are proven fighters for working Americans. They will bring their values and commitment to the White House, but first we have to make certain they get there."
"The Democrats were so solidly together. No matter what meeting you went to, there was no dissention, nothing but a great deal of energy and enthusiasm," said CWA Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, a member of the Democratic National Committee and one of about 40 delegates and alternates among CWA members, officers and staff at the convention July 26-29 in Boston.
"Bush said he was going to be a uniter, not a divider," said CWA Local 6222 President Claude Cummings, a Texas delegate. "He's divided the nation, but he's united the Democratic Party."
Convention participants praised the event's upbeat but pragmatic tone, where speeches were hopeful about the future but realistic about the present.
"My fellow Americans, this is the most important election of our lifetime," Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said in his sweeping speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president. "The stakes are high. We are a nation at war: a global war on terror against an enemy unlike we've ever known before.
"Here at home, wages are falling, health-care costs are rising, and our great middle class is shrinking. People are working weekends - two jobs, three jobs - and they're still not getting ahead. We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best that we can do. They say this is the best economy that we've ever had. And they say anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can't do better."
Kerry, who was welcomed on stage by the veterans of the gunboat he commanded in Vietnam, pledged "swift and certain" action in the event of any terror attack and laid out a plan to better protect America - from stepping up funds for local police and firefighters to ensuring cargo ships are searched, adding 40,000 active duty troops to the military and mending international relations.
He and Vice Presidential Nominee John Edwards detailed a domestic agenda to create jobs, improve schools, make college more affordable, provide health care for the uninsured and lower drug costs for seniors, among other goals. They pledged no hike in middle-class taxes but said they would close corporate tax loopholes and roll back tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, those who have grown richer during the Bush administration while other families have struggled.
"We can move our country forward without passing the bill and the burden on to our children and grandchildren," Edwards said.
The strong unity and positive tone at the convention underscored the ties that bind all Americans, a feeling expressed especially powerfully by U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama of Illinois, the keynote speaker.
"The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats," Obama said. "But I've got news for them. We worship an awesome God in the blue state, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Focus on Workers' Rights
A Maryland Comcast technician fired in March for trying to win CWA representation appeared on stage the last night of the convention with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and two other struggling workers.
Stephen White told reporters he was excited to bring his mission for workers' rights to delegates and to the country via C-SPAN. "I take every chance I get to bring attention to what happens when people like me try to organize," he said.
Sweeney described an economy that rewards the wealthy at the expense of workers, a government that "hands our tax dollars to the 'haves' and the Halliburtons." He spoke of flat wages and the loss of good jobs that offer health care and a secure pension.
"It is against this backdrop of inequality and unfairness that a historic choice has been placed on the doorstep of our democracy," Sweeney said.
The speeches were more easily heard on television than on the floor of Boston's Fleet Center, where CWA delegates said the noise from the raucous crowd was deafening. "It was wonderful," said CWA Representative Elaine Harris, a West Virginia delegate who has gone to Democratic conventions since 1988. Harris spent the last evening on stage, one of two West Virginia delegates - two were chosen from each state - to sit on the platform during the speeches. But she said the real fun was on the floor, in the sea of signs and shouts - and celebrities.
Perhaps because the West Virginia delegation was positioned near the CNN studio inside the center, Harris got to talk to everyone from movie star Ben Affleck, who's traveling with Kerry, to the fiery Rev. Al Sharpton, "Fahrenheit 9/11" filmmaker Michael Moore and the Democrat's newest star, Illinois state Senator and U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama, whose powerful and poignant keynote address brought down the house
on the convention's second night.
"I thanked him and told him I was so impressed. I said, "You are our future. You're giving people hope," Harris said. She was touched when Obama graciously thanked her for the kind words.
Other CWA members, officers and staff attended the convention as guests or sat on convention committees. They included CWA researcher Debbie Goldman, who helped ensure that labor's issues were addressed in the Democrat's platform.
"The goal was to have a visionary document, not a laundry list," said Goldman. In all, the committee had more than 150 members, about 20 of them from labor unions and the AFL-CIO. They met in Hollywood, Fla., in early July to hammer out the 40-page document from a draft platform.
"I felt fabulous about the process. The AFL-CIO made sure that our issues were brought forward and they said they felt the Kerry campaign was receptive to labor in a way that hasn't happened in quite a while," Goldman said.
CWA Campaign Workers
Throughout the country, CWA members have been acting as site scouts, serving as drivers and otherwise lending a hand to the Kerry campaign. Members of Local 3104 in Fort Lauderdale have been helping with Democratic presidential and campaign visits for years and got an early start as Kerry volunteers. Since then, they've helped link the campaign with CWA locals in other states, including New York, California and Colorado.
Gay Kranick, a Local 3104 steward and co-chair of the Legislative Committee, drove Kerry's wife Teresa Heinz Kerry and one of the candidate's daughters in March. She said Heinz Kerry "is warm and fabulous. She came up to us and hugged us. Sen. Kerry's daughter was the same way."
Kranick marveled at Teresa Heinz Kerry's ability to reach out to people - in multiple languages. "She had people with her who spoke different languages," she said. "She could switch at a moment's notice."
Gail Marie Perry, also a Local 3104 steward and legislative co-chair, said members turned out to help on a scorching hot July day for a Kerry rally in an airport hangar. Among other duties, two members got to drive trams bringing the enthusiastic crowd from the parking lot to the event. The next day, "we received an e-mail from the campaign, saying 'Thanks again for your help and thanks again to the CWA crew,'" Perry said.
In New York City, four CWA Local 1101 members helped with transportation and other details for a July fundraiser in Manhattan, and then met Senator Edwards and his staff at LaGuardia Airport, accompanying them into the city. "It was exciting working with a national campaign and an honor to assist the next vice president of the United States in anyway we could," Chief Steward Robert Fighera said.
Platform Focus on Jobs
Regarding the Kerry-Edwards platform, Goldman helped ensure it addressed CWA's issues, including language calling for universal access to affordable broadband, which could add $500 billion to the economy and create 1.2 million jobs.
The workers' rights part of the platform asserts, "We will ensure that the right to organize unions exists in the real world, not just on paper. That means reforming our labor laws to protect the rights of workers, including public employees, to bargain contracts and organize on a level playing field without interference."
The section also calls for barring permanent replacement workers, restoring overtime protections and strengthening health and safety protections.
Other language important to workers and unions calls for stemming the tide of offshoring, extending trade adjustment assistance to workers in the service sector, fair trade agreements with internationally recognized labor and environmental standards, fiscal relief to states burdened by tax cuts and federal mandates, expanded health care coverage for low-income children and adults, federal aid for catastrophic health care to help lower insurance premiums, stronger prescription drug coverage and media ownership rules that would ensure a diversity of viewpoints.
Noting the long list of critical issues affecting working families and unions, CWA President Morton Bahr urged all CWA members to get involved in the campaign, be it canvassing neighborhoods, leafleting at work, hosting a house party, making phone calls or stuffing envelopes at a local campaign office.
"If you're worried now about job security, about our soaring debt and dwindling state resources, about the uninsured and our struggling seniors, about an anti-worker agenda that's taken aim at overtime and given tax credits to companies that take jobs overseas - if you're worried now, imagine what our country will look like if this administration gets another four years," Bahr said. "John Kerry and John Edwards are proven fighters for working Americans. They will bring their values and commitment to the White House, but first we have to make certain they get there."