Public Employee Press

Poltical Action 2005

Grassroots prep course

Just days before state legislators passed the first on-time budget in 21 years, 200 DC 37 members met March 26 to strategize for more affordable housing, better health care and election reforms at the union’s 11th annual Grassroots Lobbying Institute.

DC 37’s Political Action Dept. sponsored the daylong seminar, which reinforced partnerships with legislators and coalition allies as a large core of politically-conscious activists geared up for the union’s annual Lobby Day in Albany on Tuesday, May 10.

Political Action Director Wanda Williams said DC 37 would use its formidable people power to fight to:

• Restore the proposed $300 million cut to Medicaid
• Repeal the Urstadt law
• Election reform—oppose the use of electronic voting.

“They changed the rules on us by a new limit on campaign contributions,” said DC 37 Political Action Chair Lenny Allen. “I believe this rule was aimed directly at DC 37. Politics is our existence.”

The union is actively lobbying City Council members to support Intro. 564, which is known as the “freedom of expression” bill because it allows unions and their locals to make campaign contributions.

“Working families’ upward mobility is threatened by Bush’s anti-union agenda and private behemoths like Wal-Mart,” said guest panelist Ed Ott of the Central Labor Council. “Wal-mart is bad for New York because it cuts prices to crush local businesses, pays substandard wages, denies workers’ the right to organize, provides little or no health benefits and instructs employees to get on welfare for health coverage.”

Other panelists at the daylong seminar included LaRay Brown, Health and Hospitals Corp. vice president; Michael McKee, director of the housing group Tenants and Neighbors; DC 37 attorney Len Polletta; and Bronx Assemblyman Carl Hastie, the keynote speaker. Hastie told the audience, “We have to put the issues — especially the Campaign for Fiscal Equity — before all the gubernatorial candidates, see where they stand and whether they will drop Pataki’s appeal.”

“The HHC cuts are not about those people, they are about us,” Brown said. “The president is waging war on our health, on our quality of life, and on poor and working-class people.”Panelists urged attendees to call every official — including Gov. Pataki — to protest the proposed Medicaid cuts. “We’re going to fight back harder than ever,” said Williams. “If we do nothing, we accept defeat by our inaction.”

— Diane S. Williams