Last week we experienced a disaster in the Portland area. AIPAC financed the campaigns of two corporate Democratic Party tools, and the progressive candidates, Susheela Jayapal and Jamie McLeod Skinner will not be on the ballot in November. However one of our candidates, Jonathan Tasini is still going strong in his City Council race in Portland’s second district (the north and northeast part of the city). With AIPAC busy elsewhere and not spending any of the Republican and Israeli money in this race, there’s no reason to imagine that Tasini won’t win in November the first time Portland’s proportional ranked choice voting system is being used.
Former president of the National Writers Union, he is labor’s preferred candidate and has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO, the UAW, the Iron Workers, the Teamsters, the IBEW and several other unions. You can see why if you read his platform, which you can do by clicking here. He released the video below when he addressed the IBEW local after his endorsement. I asked him to consider re-introducing himself to DWT readers and Blue America contributors. This is what he had to say about overcoming the systemic problems that plague working families in Oregon (and across the country). Please consider contributing to his grassroots campaign. The maximum legal contribution is $350, and the city has a terrific small donor matching program for Portland residents.
A Paycheck Is Not Red Or Blue
-by Jonathan Tasini
I recently spoke at the headquarters of the IBEW Local, one of 12 unions that has endorsed my campaign for Portland City Council (the most labor endorsements of any candidate running here). My theme was simple: How does one explain the recent UAW victory at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee by a 73 percent margin in a place that in the past has not been kind to union organizing, and in the standard political analysis is tinged “red”?
It actually isn’t a mystery.
A good paycheck is not red.
A good paycheck is not blue.
It’s only the color of the bills that get paid because a person earns a decent paycheck— and, as you will see in this video, that’s a theme that connects with working class people like the IBEW members who are supporting my campaign.
A decent paycheck that reflects the work she or he puts in, whether it’s in the private or public sector.
When people say the system is broken, that’s not exactly right.
The system works just fine for Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. It works exactly as they and their ilk have designed it. It works exactly as they demand from political leaders.
The various political operatives, consultants, party leaders, aided by the dolts in the traditional media, wring their hands over endless polls, studies or analysis trying to figure out why “working class” voters are voting a certain way. To be sure, race, gender and other very important issues can’t be just shoved to the side.
But, it’s pretty simple:
The system is broken for every other person who is not rich.
Over there is the boss, the CEO, the owner, the politician who is making money off your labor. It’s all flowing one way.
Wonder why people are angry and fed up with the political system? Here’s a clear example: if the minimum wage matched productivity over the past 40 years, it would stand at $23-$25-an-hour, not the breathtakingly immoral $7.25-an-hour. And $25-an-hour is just a floor to build on: the prevailing wage for a licensed electrician in the county I live in, without calculating health and pension benefits, is $53-an-hour.
Virtually every issue we confront comes back to the broken economic system and the robbery of the last half century, the draining of money from peoples’ pockets into the hands of a small elite.
Houselessness? That isn’t the fault of the people who end up on the streets. It’s the almost predictable result of pay checks not covering the rent and land speculation by private equity funds who buy up vast tracts of real estate.
The auto workers in Tennessee gave us an answer to all that Red vs. Blue dichotomy: give us a vision and a doable strategy, and, hell, yes, we will rise up. And do it together.
When your paycheck isn’t fair and doesn’t pay the bills, the division between “rural” America and “coastal elites” is not even relevant.
Yes, the more recent UAW loss at the Mercedes plant in Alabama was a setback— but that tells us when a company runs an ugly anti-union campaign, it won’t be easy to overcome fear.
The Volkswagen victory will be just the beginning.
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How about more people like Tasini in office and fewer like... where do I start? Marjorie Traitor Greene? MAGA Mike? Joe Manchin? Kyrsten Sinema? It's up to us. $350 is the maximum for an individual contribution. But $35 contributions from 10 people would be great as well. Again, contribute here.
I’d like to ask you to consider lending your support to a very important fundraising event hosted by Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO. Jonathan Tasini, an old friend of mine and a Blue America stalwart, is leading a drive to create a pro-labor, progressive majority on the Portland, Oregon City Council—and by doing so create a model for the entire nation and empower progressive politics at the local level. Because of a complete revamping of the city’s government, an entirely new City Council will take office next year. As he mentioned above, he’s a 32-year UAW member, and is running with more labor support than any other of the 70 City Council candidates in the city, with 11 endorsements to date including the citywide labor federation. He can win this race but he is also working to elect a majority labor Council and build a labor caucus— with a clean slate, we could use Portland as the place to put in place visionary policies, which could be especially crucial with the challenges we face advancing our agenda in Congress.
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