By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Nearly 200 DC 37 activists went to the nation’s capital March 26-28 to chart a fight-back against the Bush administration’s anti-labor agenda.

The contingent joined hundreds of other members from around the nation who participated in the 2001 legislative conference of DC 37’s parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

“Today’s working families are facing leaders — not just in the White House but in both houses of Congress — with the most right-wing, anti-working people agenda in 50 years,” AFSCME International President Gerald W. McEntee said March 26 in his keynote address.

Several policy experts and top politicians spoke at the conference, which was titled “Speak Up. It’s Up to Us!”

Together with union leaders, the guest speakers criticized Bush’s repeal of ergonomic safety standards and his executive orders that weaken union and job rights for workers under federal contracts. They also spoke against the administration’s plan to privatize government services and the proposed $1.6 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthy.

The guest speakers included Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.); Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.), Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.), Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) and Hilda Solis (D-Calif.); Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation; Robert Greenstein, executive director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Celinda Lake, president of Lake, Snell, Perry and Associates, a polling firm; and William McNary, president of the grassroots group USAction.

Besides listening to informative talks, activists got briefings on major political issues in workshops. Topics included privatization, Medicare, education, the politics of budgets, and “charitable choice,” or the policy of providing social services through government-funded religious and community groups.

“What they are trying to do is bleed the federal government dry, so there will not be enough money to fund vital federal programs,” said Charles M. Loveless, AFSCME’s director of legislation.

AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy called Bush’s push for “charitable choice” a “smokescreen” for budget cuts and privatization.

In a luncheon address, Sen. Clinton, who was introduced by DC 37 Administrator Lee Saunders, criticized the Bush administration’s budgetary priorities. Sixty percent of senior citizens and people with disabilities would be left out of his Medicare drug proposal, she said.

Ms. vanden Heuvel appealed for unions to play a greater leadership role in building an effective progressive movement. While pessimists talk with a sense of fatalism about a conservative drift in American politics, Ms. vanden Heuvel said that the results of the presidential election actually offer hope. The combined vote of Al Gore and Ralph Nader amounted to 52 percent, which is the largest center-left vote since 1964, she said.

“So, go, quietly or noisily, please, into war-mode, because you are at war,” Ms. vanden Heuvel said.

The next day, AFSCME’s army of activists flocked to Capitol Hill to voice opposition to the Bush millionaire tax giveaway and other legislation harmful to working families.