By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

I want to thank every one of the dedicated activists who got up early May 8 and boarded a union bus to Albany for our Lobby Day. Together, 1,100 strong, you almost broke the record for participation in this grassroots effort, and you brought the needs of our members to the attention of every politician in Albany!

The leaders of the state Assembly and Senate — a Democrat and a Republican — attended, met with our rank-and-file lobbyists and discussed our legislative proposals. For the first time in more than a decade, the governor of New York State attended, and he was impressed with the power you represented.

The governor and the Legislature this year passed a budget that reflects tremendous progress on two of our most important needs. Where once we had to fight former mayors Koch and Giuliani as they sought Albany’s help to close, sell and privatize public hospitals, the new state budget restored over $350 million for health care in our Health and Hospitals Corp. Where not long ago Gov. Pataki stood in the schoolhouse door blocking court-mandated education funding, the new budget raised funding for our public schools by $1.76 billion over the next four years.

We won these gains in large part because DC 37 activists got out on Election Day 2006 and helped elect a new governor and Legislature. But we have a long way to go, because life is tough every day for our members and for working people across the United States, and most of the problems come directly from the Bush administration.

We achieved a lot in November 2006 when we threw out the right-wing, pro-Bush leadership in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The new Congress is on the way to passing some excellent legislation, but we all know that every bit of progress faces a presidential veto or negotiations with enemies strengthened by that veto power.

Time to ease the pain
We have to finish the job and take back the White House before we can turn this country around and enact a new agenda that puts working people, our families and our communities first.

We need a national budget that replaces the pain of Bush’s constant cutbacks with adequate funding for public schools, college tuition aid, day care, and, yes, universal health coverage for every American. We need to make our tax system fair for all instead of giving constant reductions to the wealthy while working people make up the difference.

We need to stop privatizing public services and restore workers’ right to a union by making the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land.
And we need to end Bush’s war in Iraq, which was based on lies from the start. This misguided effort has now killed more than 3,000 of our brave men and women —mainly working people and their sons and daughters — and squandered billions of dollars that we need for public services. Supporting the troops by bringing them home was the strongest reason the American people elected a new Congress in 2006, but Bush has managed to frustrate this deep desire and expand the war.

From now to November 2008, we need to work harder and smarter than ever with AFSCME, our national union, to raise our political strength to a new level. We need the power to elect a candidate who cares about the working people of the United States — we are the majority, after all — and who will join with us to erase the misery of the Bush years.

Public sector workers must get more active
More than any other group in our society, public employees are affected by the political process. Our jobs, our benefits and our pay negotiations are all on the line every election day. This is why I have been pressing for more of our members to get more involved as volunteers in the political process.

And please don’t forget, this fight is against people who have a lot of money. Our “people power” makes us strong, but politics takes money, too. Your voluntary contribution to the union’s PEOPLE political action committee can make a big difference in 2008.

It’s easy! Call your DC 37 Political Action Department at 212-815-1550 and start out on the path to volunteering, contributing and building the union’s power to win.