Last week, FBI agents showed up at homes across the state of Ohio, interrogating people and seizing their electronic devices. The targets were leaders and staff of the non-profit Ohio Organizing Collaborative, whose Youngstown offices were also raided. Their crime? Registering people to vote.
On June 2 of this year, a coalition of local unions and labor advocacy organizations held an historic event that was nearly two months in the making, and, frankly, long overdue.
A coalition of over 325 unions and other organizations, including UE, has released a letter warning against letting “skeptical health care policy wonks” keep working people from demanding “the boldest possible reform” of our healthcare system, Medicare for All.
Our broken health care system is getting worse by the day. With recent cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, 17 million more people could lose their health care this year. This is on top of 26 million people who are already uninsured. Employers continue to demand that workers pay ever higher shares of the cost of insurance, while insurance company profits continue to rise.
Trade officials from the U.S., Mexico and Canada are preparing to meet and consider changes to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the successor agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). UE is joining allies who are mobilizing across the continent to stand up for workers, family farmers, and communities; reject the race-to-the-bottom that pits people across borders against each other; and build solidarity across movements for good jobs, environmental protection, and economic justice.
In his new booklet The Fundamentals of Electoral Organizing, longtime community organizer Tomás Garduño has provided a clear and accessible how-to guide for working people who want to make electoral politics better through organizing. As he writes in the introduction, “I have written this booklet for working-class people who want to organize other working-class people in our shared interests of building political power.”
The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Louisiana v Callais, which effectively guts the one remaining section of the Voting Rights Act, is a blatantly racist attack on Black people that will hurt all workers. As a result of this decision, Black voters and other voters of color will be disenfranchised, and anti-labor politicians will find it even easier to gerrymander their way into permanent majorities.
The Majority Agenda is a set of policy changes which are supported by significant majorities of Americans and have the potential to improve the lives of millions of working people. The 14 policy briefs which make up the report are all short, clear, and easy to read. They are grouped into three broad categories: good jobs, strong infrastructure, and fair play.
On Saturday President Trump, who ran for office pledging to keep the U.S. out of military entanglements overseas, ordered extensive military strikes on Iran. These strikes are unconstitutional and reckless, and will make the world a more dangerous place on many levels. They come at great cost in both human lives and treasure.
In a poll conducted in November by the MedicareForAll PAC, over 50 percent of voters expressed support for the single-payer “Medicare for All” healthcare system that UE has long demanded. After listening to a robust and balanced description of a government-provided system that noted that taxes would increase for some Americans if implemented, 54 percent of voters supported such a system. The support is especially pronounced among Black Americans (77 percent support), women under age 50 (71 percent support), and those under 30 (74 percent support).