Taking On the Right's Local Machine & Fighting Against the Class War

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Above is the video from a debate between myself and the Colorado House Republican Whip, moderated by the president of the Independence Institute (Colorado's local version of the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation). The debate was televised statewide on PBS here, and it shows how our states and local communities - not just Washington, D.C. - are often the most important frontlines in both the Great American Class War and the battle against the extreme right. Here in Colorado, the present battle all centers around a modest effort to give workers rights to freely associate with unions. Yes, this is not some flashback to the 19th Century - workers still are being persecuted for daring to want to come together and make their voices heard collectively.

Some background: Last week Gov. Bill Ritter (D) issued an executive order recognizing state employee partnership associations. Most states allow public employees to have full collective bargaining rights, and those rights are often issued by gubernatorial executive order rather than legislative initiative because governors are the CEOs of the state workforce.

Colorado - with its extremely ugly history of worker persecution - does not allow such rights. And that's true even after Ritter's laudatory order (his order doesn't allow strikes or binding arbitration - the two key tenets that really operationalize collective bargaining).

As shown by Colorado Media Matters, the state's editorial boards and Republican political establishment have been working together to vent the most nauseating rhetoric attacking workers in the lead up to Ritter's move. And, not surprisingly, after he issued his executive order, this rhetoric has gotten even more heated.

The most absurd attack on Ritter is the one that claims he acted in secret - even though, of course, he campaigned on a pledge to support more rights for workers and even though he has long ago responded to the GOP's Open Records Act requests about his deliberations over employee partnerships. These attacks are particularly ridiculous considering that the Republicans' chief attacker, Sen. Shawn Mitchell, seems to be refusing to follow state law by not responding to similar Open Records Act requests himself.

These modern-day royalists are so blinded by their hatred of a wildly popular Democratic governor; so embarrassed about Republicans' past mismanagement of state government that this executive order cleans up; and so wedded to persecuting workers that they are trying to stake their entire party image on an attack on a modest initiative that most other states in America have already enacted. And the good news news is that there is new infrastructure here to push back.

Jay Marvin, the local progressive radio host, has been using his show to tear apart Republicans' empty rhetoric. Similarly, Colorado Media Matters, ColoradoPols, SquareState.net, and ProgressNow have been aggressively debunking the lies spewing out of the GOP. The Progressive States Network (on whose board I serve) has distributed research materials to legislators, organizations and activists showing how public employee rights really help make state government more efficient.

The video above gives you a good taste of what this battle is really all about. Watch it - it's 30 minutes, so if you don't have a lot of time, just flip around. And make sure to check out Colorado Media Matters' fact-checking of the debate. Obviously, this was a tough forum - two-on-one is never easy. Let me know how you think I did - feedback is always welcome.

Republicans are promising to try to bring this battle into the 2008 legislature, so this is just the first of many skirmishes. Here on the frontlines of the Great American Class War, progressives are putting up a real fight - and our state and our country will be better for it.

Comments

[ralphie]

keep it up, David!

[BlackWidowPilot]

As a Military Hstorian, I am familiar with the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913. Colorado National Guard troops under orders of the governor of Colorado machine gunned a striking miner's camp that was occupied by the miners AND THEIR FAMILIES. That's right, *American* soldiers machine gunned innocent American women and children, because their menfolk dared to go on strike and defy the mining company who's owner's brother was the CO of the Colorado National Guard.

So CEO pulls his strings with the gov, and the troops go in. In addition to attacking the miners, they also sabre-charged and rode down unarmed women and girls who were peacefully picketing for their menfolk striking in the mining camp. The attack was launched after the CO of the Guard was thrown from his spooked horse, and the women and girls dared to laugh at his inability to stay on his horse.

And THIS is the legacy that these Busheviks want to maintain at the expense of worker's rights in Colorado?

Give 'em Hell, people! Give 'em HELL!

Leland R. Erickson
Citizen

[Rule Of Law]

Dave,

No it's not the 19th century--yet! But isn't the Bush regime (and his neo-con followers) all about the "good old days" of Amerika? When Corporations told workers when they would work, how long,for how much and don't complain about the dangerous conditions? Who to vote for, where to live, where to attend church? Where to shop, how clean your food would be, and don't complain about that either?

When the Menckens, DuPonts, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Mellons, Stanfords, Hiltons, Crockers, and Chases WERE Royalty and did just as they pleased! The Bush's are johnny-come-lately money compared to those Royal lines, but they have carved their niche since old Prescott Bush supported the Nazis and made his fortune. And to this day, the Bushs and their enablers are still trying to bring a new Reich to this country. Meet the new boss...

And it won't change until Labor takes to the streets again and the body toll exceeds Iraq--but this time the shooters will be Blackwater, along with the usual police and goons hired by the Bosses.

If we are waiting for graying hippies, left coast liberals, and angry students to lead the march this time, we are out of luck. The movement against this Royal Corporatocracy will come from working people who have seen their jobs leave the country and what was left taken by an influx of even poorer, less powerful people held in virtual slavery.

This movement will be angry because, unlike a war which touches a percentage of people, this economic battle will be led by everyone with a mortgage, or who eats, or who has a family to defend from starvation and homelessness. And this movement will fill the Halliburton Camps with revolutionaries too dangerous to the system--in other words, you, me and every citizen who still believes in the Constitution.

[Desiderata]

Amazing how those self-defined "Conservatives" tagged to shout David down, yet lamented, when David tried to be heard, that nobody could be understood with everyone talking at once.

Bullies rarely mature into adulthood.

[KevinKSF]

You have a lot of guts to go up against those two on that program. The host is a total jerk who thrills to the sound of his own empty rhetoric. He mispronounced your name deliberately 3 or more times as a cheap tactic to throw you off. When people wake up some day and wonder what happened to the A-hole that used to live down the street or tormented co-workers chances are he/she moved to Colorado.