America & Nebraska Need The Same Thing: Another George Norris
Yesterday, Blue America launched a campaign to help raise grassroots contributions for Nebraska’s independent Senate candidate, Dan Osborn, the best chance Americans have to keep the Senate from falling into Republican hands. Since it’s Labor Day, we decided to continue our efforts with a first person account from Dan about a strike he led 3 three ago. It was pivotal in his decision to run for office. It was October, 2021 and he had been an employee of Kellogg’s for almost 18 years, having dropped out of college and gone to work for the company after his wife got pregnant. “Life’s easy when all you gotta do is take care of yourself,” he recalled. “But we had diapers to buy and needed health insurance for our growing family.”
When I applied in 2004, there were 6 positions and 600 applications. Working at Kellogg’s promised to be a lifelong career. A good-paying job that afforded me the opportunity to become a homeowner, let my wife stay home with the kids, live decently, retire someday, and hopefully live happily ever after.
But over the years, wages became a two-tier system. New workers were being paid less than employees had made decades earlier. Cost of living adjustments weren’t keeping up anywhere near inflation. Retirement and health insurance plans had been gutted. It just wasn’t right. They were making record profits— and doing it off the backs of workers.
So in October 2021, we walked out. And as president of our local union, I led the strike.
It was the first time many of us had ever walked a picket line. It was cold, but we were determined to hold our lines even through the dead of the winter if we had to. Every worker knew we were a part of something bigger than ourselves. We were in a fight for the future of the American middle class.
After 11 weeks, and the company threatening to permanently replace every union worker, we reached an agreement. More importantly, we saved 500 good-paying jobs here in Nebraska alone.
It was one of the proudest moments of my life.
Following the strike, I was fired. The company has its version of events for why, but I believe it was because I was union president. Someone had to pay— and my head was on the chopping block.
It’s easy to let yourself get beaten down by life. To let big corporations and the politicians they own in Washington make all the decisions— and just accept that that’s how things will always be. But that’s not me.
Instead, I’ve decided to run against one of the most corporate politicians— U.S. Senator Republican Deb Fischer— and with your help, we are going to defeat her.
Three polls show me neck-and-neck with Deb Fischer, and in one poll, I am even leading her by 2 points.
Please consider contributing to Dan Osborn’s campaign here. Like we noted yesterday, if he wins, he won’t be beholden to Schumer any more than he is to McConnell or whomever the GOP replaces McConnell with. An independent populist is just what the Senate needs— holding the balance of power between the two corporate parties no less!
Osborn wouldn’t be the first independent progressive in Nebraska’s history either. In 1903, Nebraskans sent a young George Norris to Congress, where he served 5 terms— until 1913, when he went to the U.S. Senate for 5 more terms, 4 as a Republican and the final one as an independent. In the House, he supported Teddy Roosevelt's anti-corporate, progressive agenda and battled his own party’s conservative establishment. He was fighting to abolish the electoral college in the 1920s! He was also fighting for the dignity of labor and the rights of unions. Much later, FDR referred to his as “the very perfect, gentle knight of American progressive ideals,” while Republicans called him one of the “sons of the wild jackass.” He was a thorn in the side of reactionairy Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover and— still a Republican senator— campaigned for FDR is 1928.
Norris and another staunchly progressive Republican, Rep Fiorello La Guardia (R-NY) wrote and passed one of the most consequential, pro-union pieces of legislation in American history, the Norris-La Guardia Act, which ended the hated yellow dog contract (in other words, prohibiting employers forcing job applicants to commit to not joining a union as a condition of employment) and greatly limiting the use of court injunctions against strikes. As a committed New Dealer, he was the primary figure in the passage of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the top senator in formulating and passing the Rural Electrification Act. The fact that, to this day, Nebraska is the only state in which all electric utilities are publicly-owned and where rates for consumers are the lowest in the country while both reliability and customer service are stellar— in other words, socialism at its best— can be directly traced back to Norris.
Today, MAGA-type Republicans hate him with a passion, perhaps no more than for a speech in 1934 in which he said “To get good government and to retain it, it is necessary that a liberty-loving, educated, intelligent people should be ever watchful, to carefully guard and protect their rights and liberties.” When I was a kid every American knew who he was because we all read JFK’s book, Profile in Courage, in school. Norris was one of the 8 senators Kennedy profiled.
You won’t find a Nebraska candidate for anything more like George Norris than Dan Osborn— or one further from Norris’ values and ideals than Deb Fischer. No doubt, Nebraska is a very red state— but polls show that the voters are not enthusiastic about sending Fischer back to DC for a third term after she had pledged to serve for just two. And the more they get to know about Osborn, the more they like him. Please help him get his message out for these next 8 weeks. I’d love to see him working with vice president Walz taking power from the corporations and giving it back to the American people.
Yes. It IS important to know that, long ago, there existed a Republican who cared about the people and republic more than his party. The last one I remember might have been Everett Dirksen, who was in congress from '33 to '69 when he passed away (Norris passed in '43).
Both were in congress during FDR's "New Deal" regime. Norris was maybe more helpful than Dirksen, but both were americans first and Republicans lower down.
It's a damn shame that ALL americans totally forgot everything they learned. We forgot what created the Great Depression; we totally forgot what brought us/US OUT of the Great Depression; we forgot what created that great and broad middle class juggernaut.
“To get good government…