By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

This is convention season.

The Democrats will meet in Boston later this month to officially nominate John Kerry as their candidate to take back the White House and bring in policies that help working families. In late August, the Republicans will meet here and map plans to save the job of George W. Bush, the architect of the war in Iraq and the most anti-labor, anti-civil rights, anti-women president in recent memory.

As members of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, we can make a difference in the November election. Together with 277 DC 37 members, representing almost every local in our council, I just returned from AFSCME’s June 26-30 biennial convention.

With delegates representing AFSCME’s 3,500 locals from across the United States and Puerto Rico, the convention demonstrated union democracy at its finest. With some healthy disagreements, we debated issues, elected members of the AFSCME Executive Board and shaped the national policy of our union.

But we were all in agreement on one thing: The presidential election on Nov. 2 is perhaps the most important one we will face in our lifetimes. We know it’s up to us to take back America and elect a president who cares about working families and our communities. And the spirited convention showed that AFSCME members are ready to take on that challenge.

President Bush has given us government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. He wiped out millions of jobs as he gave corporations tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas and handed huge tax cuts to the wealthy, chopped education funding for our children and pressed onward to privatize Social Security. But working class Americans are fighting back nationwide through their unions.

As public employees, we are in the deepest danger. Mr. Bush has already begun to contract out 850,000 federal jobs. We know state and city jobs will be his next targets. We could find ourselves on welfare watching private firms bring in underpaid workers to do our jobs. If he turns Social Security over to Wall Street, will our pension plan be far behind?

AFSCME and DC 37 members provide public services — that’s our job. We fix the roads, protect children on their way to school and staff the libraries — but Mr. Bush thinks public services are the problem, not the solution. We run the public hospitals — but the Bush administration does not believe in public hospitals. We provide the social safety net for the disadvantaged and the unfortunate — but the Bush administration is shredding the safety net.

With positive, progressive leadership in Washington, Albany and City Hall, we can negotiate better contracts and protect our benefits. But four more years of Bush, would erode the services we provide and jeopardize our jobs, our benefits and our future.

Kerry won repeated applause when he addressed the convention on the themes so important to us — creating jobs, strengthening public services, protecting the safety net, preserving Social Security, cutting the cost of prescription drugs and reining in contracting out and privatization. He had some impressive ideas, which I believe would make the lives of our members better.

DC 37 members honored
Many of our delegates served on the committees that began their meetings as early as 7 a.m. to do much of the convention’s work. I am proud to have headed the Health Committee, which reported to the full convention on issues such as easing overwork among hospital employees.

Congratulations to Local 2054 President Joan Reed, who our delegation elected as an AFSCME international vice president, and to Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriguez, who was re-elected as an IVP.

All of DC 37 should be proud of Local 1757 President David Moog, who won AFSCME’s Star of Excellence Award for legislative action on behalf of his members, and Local 384 President Esther “Sandy” Tucker, our PEOPLE chair, who received special recognition for improving DC 37’s political action fundraising. Our membership in PEOPLE has topped 10 percent. This is great, but there is a long way to go — and we have to go all the way to elect John Kerry and take back America for working people.

Back in New York, we must focus on the November national election. I am asking every local officer, every delegate and every member to take the next step. Make sure you and your family, co-workers, friends and neighbors are all registered to vote.

Only registered voters can defeat George W. Bush and take back the White House for working Americans.