I love this ad so much. That is all.
The right person at the right time. We seem to have several of those, and we need every single one in this fight.
Wow.
Everyone needs to watch this ad from UAW.
Absolute FIRE. #YesWeKam pic.twitter.com/NMBo46yD9z
— Lesley Abravanel 🪩 (@lesleyabravanel) September 2, 2024
If anyone finds this on YouTube, let me know. (Thanks, Another Scott!) He gets to the part where the ad starts at around minute 16.
Open thread.
Totally open, I just wanted to share the awesome ad!
War for Ukraine Day 923: Russian Strategic Aviation Is Up, Russian Missiles Are Inbound!
Another Scott
I found the full speech on YouTube (22:19). He starts around 4:30. It takes him a while to get going. ;-)
That’s a great ad. Thanks for highlighting it.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Thanks, Scott!
I’ve added the YouTube up top.
Ishiyama
Labor organizers who speak like they mean it! Candidates for office who stand up for the dignity of labor! If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me up!
Jeffro
so incredibly awesome! what’s all this dust in the room all of a sudden?
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: They want to divide us. Divide us by race. Divide us by gender. Divide us by who we love. Divide us by where we were born.
That’s exactly it.
Villago Delenda Est
Yup, that’s powerful. Resist divide and rule.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: I ♥️ this video! Thanks for posting it!
FelonyGovt
Love to see unions unambiguously behind us. About time too!
Jackie
@WaterGirl: When/IF he wants to, I’m ready to support him if he runs for federal office!
WaterGirl
@Jackie: @FelonyGovt: Could this be the year that unions go for the Democrats? For real?
edit: The contrast really couldn’t be more clear. Solidarity!
geg6
He’s maybe the most inspirational union leader of my lifetime and that’s saying a lot. I watched Rich Trumka’s trajectory from miner to lawyer to head of the UMW and then finally the same at the AFL-CIO. A very charismatic guy I knew a lot about because the UMW and mining are pretty big news here in southwestern PA and you could follow his career over the years because the media covered him. This Fain dude has the same vibe. And he’s lucky enough to be the charismatic union leader at a time when the union movement seems to be on the upswing, not coming in at its nadir like Trumka. He makes me so happy.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: He’s really quite courageous, and he got all his people behind him. That’s a special person.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Totally agree!
With one caveat.
I’m not sure it’s luck. I think the movement is on the upswing in large part as a result of his leadership.
HumboldtBlue
That’s fantastic! Goddamn, I love that. Love to see Dems throwing left hooks, feels damn good.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: He’s Joyous!
Quite a contrast to many Union leaders.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: This will sound corny, but it feels like he believe in the people and he’s not just in it for the personal power.
edit: he’s feisty! I agree with the tweeter. Absolute FIRE.
HumboldtBlue
SpaceUnit
The Democratic Party made a huge mistake circa 1990 throwing unions and labor issues under the bus in order to more easily beg for corporate money. It was a fool’s bargain.
Glad to see Biden and Harris finally reverse course.
Scout211
O/T, but I see that it’s time for me to subscribe to Netflix again.
All 10 episodes will be released on the 17th so I only need to pay for one month.
WaterGirl
@SpaceUnit: When did the Dems throw the unions under the bus? I thought the Rs did some stuff to make unions a lot less powerful, but I am not remembering the details.
JML
@FelonyGovt: nice to see the Democratic Party unambiguously behind unions. (Thank you, Joe Biden.) Too many years where democratic electeds either undermined unions, acted like they were relics of the past, or impediments to progress. I was thrilled to hear Harris say proudly that “when unions are strong, America is strong!”
Union Yes!
WaterGirl
@Scout211: ooh! Love that series. I am trying to remember what kind of trouble he was in at the end of series 2. Or maybe he was headed into the ocean with his surfboard. Or maybe that was the end of season 1.
Someone needs to go back and watch the last episode again.
JML
@WaterGirl: we lost a lot of union jobs in the 90’s as corporations shipped jobs overseas, and Democrats were complicit in it with NAFTA and other corporatist beloved by Wall Street. Democrats undermined teacher’s unions with a lot of ill-advised “school reform” measures (including in the Obama years). A lot of measures were pushed by the GOP, but the Dems were far to comfortable letting them have anti-union measures leak in, rather than defend the union. (for example, union dues used to be tax-deductible.)
geg6
@WaterGirl:
He’s a part of it but a lot of union organizing was starting to bubble up before he took over the UAW leadership. He’s been a great mouthpiece for unions collectively and a great leader through the strike. Really masterful, that. But the Amazon and Starbucks union organizing was happening well before I ever heard of Sean Fain. That exposed younger and very diverse people to see the attributes and power of a union, something that most of them had never known or understood. Unions were quietly (not getting much media coverage) on the rise and the actors and writers strikes (Fran Drescher is soooo awesome) and then the UAW strike and Biden walking the picket line brought it all bursting into the front pages. But it’s been a good decade of organizing throughout the various states and unions to get to this point and no one person deserves credit.
BR
@HumboldtBlue:
I mean I want to believe this is true, but people have been saying it for many years and while he’s definitely somewhat worse than before, he was pretty incoherent even in 2020 and it wasn’t enough for most folks to notice.
rikyrah
Thank you for this post👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
SpaceUnit
@WaterGirl:
It wasn’t as if there was a public ceremony. They just went quiet in their support of of unions and labor so that a few blue dog assholes like Joe Lieberman could thrive.
Again, it was a fool’s bargain. If corporations gave a few bucks to a Democrat it was only as a hedge. They were still channeling all their money to the GOP.
And negligible support for labor issues meant there was little to counter the seduction of white working class voters by Fox News’ steady drumbeat of bigotry and white grievance narratives.
ETA: Also Rush Limbaugh. Fuck him in his dead rotting ass.
karen marie
@Jackie: Sean Fain is a terrific speaker. And he’s got the history to back up his words. I’d hate for the UAW to lose him but I too was thinking he’d be great in Congress – House or Senate.
Mike E
I was riding the bus to my dentist appointment today when I saw the CWA picketing AT&T…twice!
The outbound bus driver slowed down to wave at them.
karen marie
Here’s the ad on youtube.
Jackie
Off topic; but more positive news:
Ishiyama
@WaterGirl: Instead of referring to them as unions, they called them “special interests”.
Bupalos
I love the solidarity message, and you can hear in Fain’s intonation of it here the beginnings of a real left-populism that has yet to be defined or inhabited in any significant way in American politics. His most potent and radical sentence is “In the wealthiest nation in the world, working class people shouldn’t have to scrape to get by paycheck to paycheck.” It sounds almost commonplace, but it’s so far from our mode of thought and the way we assume society is to be organized. Capitalism has absolutely no response to that sentiment, and lies as defenseless to it as Communism was to its Polish invocation.
But as it stands, that sentiment lies way out on the periphery of the D circle, way outside any mainstream American thought. Even as it remains so fully and completely outside the Republican tent that we assume it must be more popular than it actually is in Democratic circles.
Jackie
@karen marie:
I’m confident Fain will only leave his Union-ship position WHEN he’s confident his replacement is as committed as he is to Union Solidarity.
Bupalos
@Jackie: He is exactly where he needs to be. He speaks the way he does because of who and what he is speaking for.
Jackie
@karen marie: I
assumehope this ad is broadcasting in Union Strong states! And the southern states where unions are fighting to join.KatKapCC
@HumboldtBlue: I admitted it a long time ago.
sdhays
@SpaceUnit: I wonder how much blame should be leveled at the “Reagan Democrats” from union houses. Reagan and the Republicans attacked unions and union people kept voting for them.
Jackie
@Bupalos: Oh I agree! I’m talking down the road, and if/when he’s tempted. He has that “special sumthin.”
SpaceUnit
@sdhays:
It was always the racism. Cadillac queens. Black young bucks eating T-bone steaks on the welfare dime.
The bigots are natural suckers for that shit.
Bupalos
@SpaceUnit: I know racist blue collar people that rejected Reagan in favor of union solidarity. And folks in the professional class disgusted by racism that embraced his “market magic” anti-union message. You know these people too. It’s not as simple as you want it to be.
Kelly
@Scout211: We just finished watching Kaos on Netflix. Jeff Goldblum is Zeus in a story using Greek mythical characters in a modern setting. Nicely weird.
Also liked Transatlantic on Netflix . It’s about smuggling people out of Vichy France during early WW2.
Bupalos
@SpaceUnit: it was a mostly a rational political move that followed the voting public.
people believed that shit. It was civic gospel for 20 years.
Belafon
@sdhays: And keep voting for Republicans like Trump. Half of my work area here in Texas is part of the UAW, and I see a few pickups flying Trump flags that are owned by people that are part of the union.
SpaceUnit
@Bupalos:
You excel at missing points.
RaflW
@WaterGirl: My sense is that Democrats lost support from rank and file traditional labor unions (steelworkers, for example) when those unions were more male & white and Reagan could peel them off with his racist and misogynist bullshit reasons that jobs were leaving (they were leaving because Reagan’s actual base, big business and the ownership class, were offshoring for cheap workforces).
As Democrats became more college educated and middle class, the working class resentments were easier for Rs to fissure off, even as labor was shrinking.
Dems have done well in more recent times in areas such as communication workers, hospitality, and of course gov’t worker unions, but it’s great to see UAW rank and file returning to Dem energy. The Teamsters fissures are unfortunate, but maybe folks there will get what Fain is saying about the rich screwing labor over.
Chet Murthy
@SpaceUnit: I was a kid back then (turned 20 in 1985) so I don’t remember too much. But I do remember when the DLC started, and remember reading about the rightward shift of the Dems. It was out of a fear of literal destruction: they’d lost every election between 1968 and 1988 (1976 was a fluke b/c of Watergate) and thought they were facing oblivion. One can argue that the Dems didn’t help things by throwing labor under the bus. But another way of seeing it, is that when labor went for the Republicans (remember “Reagan Democrats”, the Teamsters endorsing Reagan) the Dems felt compelled to tack right. What were the Dems to do? Rely entirely on their base among people of color? We were too few back then. And remember that until 9/11, lots of Asian-Americans and Muslim-Americans were still voting for the Republicans.
I mean, sure, I also wish the Dems had stayed true to their principles. But they (probably correctly) saw themselves in a rearguard action: trying to defend the rightness of government as a force that could help people in their lives. We can look back at Clinton’s time from today and cast stones, but it was a tough time, and he did what he had to do, to stanch the bleeding.
gwangung
@Chet Murthy: Hm, I wasn’t a kid back then, but what you’ve said matches up with what I recall. The country actually did drift rightward and the Democrats pragmatically followed (right now the country is drifting left, but the Republicans are ideologically refusing to follow).
And there were opportunities galore for Republicans to make further inroads in POC communities, but they were benignly hostile to Asian Americans as potential constituents. I recall some Republican remnants whining about that and trying to blame Democrats, but it was clear Republicans threw away their chances.
Chet Murthy
@gwangung: Re: POC, I remember reading that Muslim-Americans broke for Dubya in 2000. It took 9/11 to make them see that that was madness. And that the same thing happened for all Asian-Americans.
Chet Murthy
@gwangung: I have very, very distinct memories of reading about “this new Dem group, the DLC” and how it was formed by a bunch of Dem governors to try to set a new direction after the debacle of 1984. Looking at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council
Chet Murthy
@gwangung: Sigh, my comment landed in moderation. I was trying to quote from Wikipedia. Here’s what I wrote: the rest you can find at Wikipedia:
I have very, very distinct memories of reading about “this new Dem group, the DLC” and how it was formed by a bunch of Dem governors to try to set a new direction after the debacle of 1984. Looking at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council
Jay
Reminder, 2/3rds of Dolt 45’s wives were immigrants, so America still needs immigrants to do the things that Americans are unwilling to do.
SpaceUnit
@Chet Murthy:
If you don’t fight, you can’t win. It was true back then just as it is today. Democrats of the 80’s and 90’s surrendered. Fortunately the Harris campaign seems to understand this.
Chet Murthy
@SpaceUnit: Can’t fight when your troops have defected to the enemy.
SpaceUnit
@Chet Murthy:
Then give your troops something to fight for and keep them from defecting. The democrats did not. They went belly up.
Chet Murthy
@SpaceUnit: Reagan Democrats didn’t defect b/c the Dems weren’t fighting for Labor. They defected because they were a buncha racist pigs and Reagan gave ’em what they wanted to eat. There’s not a lot you can do with that.
SpaceUnit
@Chet Murthy:
Maybe. But you’re not going to win elections being just a watered down version of the GOP.
Okay, one could say Bill Clinton did but what the fuck did he accomplish? He was a human punching bag because he didn’t stand for anything.
Chet Murthy
@SpaceUnit: Clinton did something really important: he stopped the bleeding, restored the beliefs of a lot of Americans that Dems could do good things for them. Yes, he also did a ton of bad things. But remember that he showed Americans that good governance was something worth having, and could produce good times. The Clinton years were good years for a lot of Americans. No, not for all. But he didn’t have a lot to work with.
Remember that back then, Americans didn’t have the same belief in the value of governmental intervention, that they have today. Socialism was still a dirty word, as was “social safety net” and “entitlements”.
And something else: today we even look back at Obama as if he accomplished so little. But I think that’s completely wrong: by pushing thru the ACA (and some other things) he showed progressives that we could actually WIN on some things, and that emboldened us (and also Bernie) to try for more. Obama’s successes pushed the Overton Window leftward, pushed the aspirations of the Democratic Base leftward, and we’re benefiting from that today.
SpaceUnit
@Chet Murthy:
Clinton will be remembered for a blow job. He didn’t do shit for working people.
He was all talk. And the blow job I’m talking about was the one he gave to corporate America.
Jay
@Chet Murthy:
There was also that epic IGMFU The Unions gave to new members.
The IGMFU members got to keep their high wages, COLA pensions and benefits.
New “members” got just above minimum wage, a 3% match on a 401K and massively reduced benefits.
John Revolta
@SpaceUnit: Bill Clinton left office with a 66% approval rating. Among Democrats it was 93%. That wasn’t all corporations talking. (Gallup)
If Clinton is remembered for nothing but a blowjob it’ll be because of people talking bullshit like what you spewed here
cain
@karen marie:
I rather see him in a cabinet position.
Chet Murthy
@Jay: I don’t know what things were like in Canada, but in the US, that era (the 80s) was …. well, a IGMFU era. I think it took a good long while for that to wear off. I remember that when unions started winning again in the early noughties, it was in unconventional sectors — places like hotel workers, and other service workers. In sectors where white male workers weren’t the norm, in short.
I guess what I mean is, solidarity kind of fell apart in the 80s, didn’t it? We can blame union members for not looking out for their juniors, but really, it was our entire society that went a bit mad.
Chet Murthy
@cain: Imagine the shit-fit the G(r)OPers would throw if he were Secy of Labor. Imagine. Imagine. And imagine what kind of good he could do in that job.
SpaceUnit
@John Revolta:
During the Clinton years wages for working people were falling behind inflation rates, unions were bleeding membership, venture capitalists were sucking up companies to sell off their parts and raid the pensions funds, and hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs were being outsourced to China. Clinton played his fiddle.
But hey, believe whatever you want to believe pal.
Gwangung
@SpaceUnit: you need to talk to more Black people about the Clintons; your views are centering white people as the norm. And he was fine for the time. You seem to forget the first rule of politics is to win elections.
SpaceUnit
@Gwangung:
I voted for Bill Clinton twice. He was better than the alternatives.
Doesn’t mean I can’t criticize his presidency. And the Democratic Party of that era. They really sucked.
Chet Murthy
@SpaceUnit: Nobody likes fighting rearguard actions. Nobody is celebrated for having given up ground. Nobody. At the time, it seemed like the only thing to do, and that any other course of action would mean losing to the Republicans, who would be -worse-.
SpaceUnit
@Chet Murthy:
I’m not going to fall into the trap of rating politicians and their policies by modern day trumpy standards. That’s yet another fool’s game.
Chet Murthy
@SpaceUnit: I’m not comparing Clinton to the modern-day. I’m judging Clinton by his time. The choice wasn’t between Clinton and Mondale. It was between Clinton and Dole. Or Bush. Or Gingri(n)ch.
John Revolta
@SpaceUnit: Clinton also had a majority Republican House and Senate for all but his first two years. And he left Shrub with a balanced budget and a surplus. But yeah……. blowjob.
Jay
@Chet Murthy:
It was the same thing here, but worse. The US get’s a cold, Canada get’s pneumonia.
Dad, second “career”, $60K a year, COLA pension at a start rate of salary at retirement, full benefits until death. When my Dad passed at 82, his two pensions were giving him an annual income of $280K a year, plus OAP.
New hires at his second job fit in three slots, all “Union” jobs
-part time, minimum wage, $3.65hr, partial benefits, 3% RRSP match, (our 401K),
-full time, up to $15 an hour, partial benefits, 3% RRSP match,
-“Independent subcontractors”, commission only, MGMT and Supply Chain responsibilities for their “area” like Craftsman, Furniture, Appliances, Jewelry.
w_seattle
That’s a great ad. Some notably excellent Dem messaging recently:
I guess the last two are related though they hit differently for me. There are many important reference frames these days, but it seems like they can largely be categorized under the idea that the few (authoritarian, wealthy, etc.) are blatantly trying to usurp power. The above messages tell the story pretty well (and I’m sure there are others) .
The ideas certainly aren’t new, but the message seems more direct and relevant. Maybe that’s just me, but I hope not.
Yutsano
So tonight’s Balloon Juice After Dark is “Did Clinton Suck or Did Clinton Just Get Sucked?” apparently.
SpaceUnit
We’re getting lost here, folks.
My point is that abandoning labor was a really stupid move by the Democrats. It wasn’t something required by the political zeitgeist of the 80’s or 90’s. It was just a stupid, shortsighted and craven strategy by some very comfortable and insulated folks in the DNC.
Does anybody really want to argue with that? Seriously?
Gwangung
@SpaceUnit: I still see you’re not talking about winning elections.
And I see you buying into the Republican theme that only Democrats have agency.
Try not to do that and try not to confuse correlation and causation.
Perhaps a better target for your criticism would be Democrats who held onto a bad tactic for too long (I do recognize that these can also be politicans who were among the powers that be during the 90s).
Chet Murthy
@SpaceUnit:
Why yes, that’s precisely what I was arguing. Labor abandoned the Dems for the Rs in the 80s, moving rightward due to the racism of white voters. The Dems had to follow them or risk oblivion. So that’s what they did.
SpaceUnit
Okay. I see we’ve reached the dense / argument for the sake of argument hour here on BJ.
Y’all have a good night.
Chet Murthy
@Gwangung:
This is definitely true, isn’t it? So much of our intraparty struggles these past two decades has been turfing out these guys who were instrumental to the Dems hanging on in the 90s, but how are in the way of the changes that need to happen in this century. Getting them to retire before they fuck everything up. Or, haha, like Holy Joe, -after- they fuck everything up.
Kay
Spaceunit has the better of this argument, IMO. Bill Clinton was anti union dating back to his days in Arkansas when he kowtowed to Wal Mart and Tyson Foods – the only way to have a political career in Arkansas. He took the Arkansas business communities anti union positions with him when he went national. Labor unions only choice was anti union Clinton or vehemently anti union Republicans, but it wasn’t much of a choice. I was living in Toledo for most of Clinton’s two terms and I think he really believed US manufacturing was done and over with and we’d all ride the magic of free trade to wealth and security. Most people believed that then. It was the ideological position of the majority, including most college educated Democrats. But it was definitely anti union.
Chet Murthy
@Kay:
Can you see that you’ve just refuted yourself? You’re asking the Dems to nominate for President someone who disagrees with the majority of the country. That doesn’t happen, not in a democracy.
trnc
No, she isn’t. It’s not 1992.
Kay
@Chet Murthy:
Im not “asking for” anything.
Im saying that Bill Clinton was anti union going back to 1978 in Arkansas. It’s a fact.
I hope Balloon Juice doesn’t turn into Blue MAGA where we ignore facts that are inconvenient to the legacies of our politicians. It isn’t personal.
Clinton was anti union, Obama was at best neutral towards unions and Biden was robustly pro union – best labor President ever as far as I’m concerned, including FDR.
Biden was the only one who LED on labor issues – Clinton and Obama followed.
Baud
I’m pleased we’re entering a hopefully long era when we don’t have to choose between being anti-racist and being pro-union. Thanks, Biden and Fain!
Ken
Valiant effort, but it’s not going to top “Someone is wrong on the internet.”
It might catch on as a plausible substitute for “people are disagreeing with me”.
Manyakitty
@cain: Secretary of Labor
Gvg
@SpaceUnit: Bull. First, he was there to veto a bunch of worse shit, especially anti women, anti environment, and anti gay. Yes I know don’t ask don’t tell is looked at now as some terrible sell out but back then, it was progress. Seriously, it was an improvement. Second, he did try for some big things like healthcare for all and got family leave, which I used when I had cancer decades later. His foreign policy was sane though the world never quite is and it’s always hard. He balanced the budget. To people paying attention he matters in proving which party is better for the economy (me for example).
I recall laws that passed that I didn’t like and he didn’t have the votes. Other democratic congressmen whose names don’t get remembered didn’t stand up for financial regulation like they should have IMO. It was a more corporate greed is good time and forget history it will never happen again. 2 generations after a big disaster the protected generation thinks it doesn’t need safety belts. The margins for some of those bills was big enough to override a veto so Clinton didn’t. It would make him look weak they said. Dunno, but I am not a politician.
Next we got bush. Look at where that got us. Tell me again Clinton was bad.
Barry
@SpaceUnit: I like pie! Bye now.
SpaceUnit
@Gvg:
I never claimed he was the anti-Christ. Just that he wan’t so great on labor issues. Damn.
SpaceUnit
@Barry:
Umm . . . take care, Barry.
The Thin Black Duke
@SpaceUnit: Bill Clinton was the best the Democrats could do back then.
Thankfully, that’s no longer applicable today.
Geminid
@SpaceUnit: I think you may be the beneficiary here of a slow news cycle.
SpaceUnit
@Geminid:
Lucky me.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@geg6: Fain doesn’t tiptoe around being diplomatic. He unabashedly represents workers and is willing to say screw you to his opponents. That feels real.
moonbat
That Clinton was the best we could elect back then after the Regan realignment and Clinton did a lot of stuff that in the long run was not good for working people in this country can both be true and in my opinion definitely is true. NAFTA, deregulation of Wall Street by weakening Glass-Stegall, etc. I think we tend to overdefend and lionize him now because he was so unfairly pilloried by congress, turning his private life into political fodder. Now we have the MAGA cult in congress wanting to impeach Dem leaders and cabinet members for wearing non matching socks.
The good news is that I think we’re headed for another realignment election and a major correction from the Reagan era. Keep fighting.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Donald Trump is a scab!
No pussyfooting or beating around the bush going on there. :-)
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: I always appreciate the perspective you bring. Your awareness of history allows you to do that.
sab
@Kay: I agree. And that was part of why Hillary lost Ohio in 2016. Union people have long memories.
Baud
@sab:
And the inability to distinguish between a man and his wife!
sab
@SpaceUnit: I am an old, and I remember unions were really pro-war during Vietnam War. Also too, they happily embraced two tier wages soon afterwards. American unions weren’t pro workers. They were pro old guys with seniority. They were anti everyone else, including their own younger workers.
Unions being for good things is very recent in my lifetime. My parents remembered when they were better, but my parents are dead.
sab
@Baud: Yes. Wife looking out for her kid. Who does that?
sab
@Baud: Hillary not Bill was on the Walmart board.
Baud
@sab:
Don’t care. Labor shops at Walmart. Biden lost Ohio in 2020 and we will lose it in 2024. There will always be an excuse.
sab
@sab: But American unions never protected me. They protected old white men with seniority, not anyone else.
They are looking out for everyone else now, but that is a new thing for them.
sab
@Baud: There is no excuse. Ohioans suck. I live here and love here but we are who we are.
MinuteMan
@SpaceUnit:
The Democratic Party made a huge mistake circa 1990 throwing unions and labor issues under the bus in order to more easily beg for corporate money.
The Dems were very much still at it in 2008 to 2016.
sab
@MinuteMan: Unions were only looking after their own shop then, not even other unions or workers in general. So nobody else gave a thought for unions. Why would we?