“We’re Locking Up Demographics:” AFL-CIO Live Blog, Day Two

Lane Windham


The convention media buzz is mostly about the federation's decision to solidify partnerships with new groups. A resolution to that effect did pass, though it basically punted on the question of how official those partnerships would be. That’s a story we’ll have to watch develop over the next year.

But the bigger story at this convention may actually be what the AFL-CIO is doing to lay the groundwork for those partnerships. Resolution #17, the “Big Business Behind Mass Incarceration” resolution, is important. The AFL-CIO came out sharply against the growing prison pipeline, and embraced this issue fully as its own. President Trumka made the link clear between race, class and incarceration: “We’re not locking up individuals as much as we are locking up demographics…. We punish people for being brown and black.”

A young woman then rose to quote Gompers, calling again for “more school houses and less jails.” She pointed out the US spends six times more money on prisons that education, and that Americas is number one in the developed world for incarceration rates. A teacher then rose to talk about how much education has been de-funded over the last 25 years, and how he has seen too many students who ended up behind bars.

And here’s a little inside scoop. Tefere Gebre, the soon-to-be Exec. V.P., happened to sit down next to me in the hall. As we chatted, this resolution came up, and he confided that he thinks it’s one of the most important ones of the week. In fact, he helped develop it. That bodes well for future leadership and direction for the Fed! Tefere Gebre is pictured here:



A few other fun tidbits:

Terry O’Neill, the President of Now, spoke in support of the resolution on community partnerships, saying “we’re not leaning in as individuals, but together.”

North Carolina’s Moral Mondays and the NAACP’s Reverend Barber were among the groups featured in a film on community partnership.

President Obama was supposed to address the convention live, but took a pass because of Syria. In a taped message, he said he’d join a union if he was someone looking for economic security. Sign that man up! He also called for a “true right to organize, free from intimidation” and said that’s why he got the NLRB functioning again. But, really, isn’t that sort of a low bar after ignoring EFCA?

Good news: an Indiana judge struck down that state’s proposed Right to Work law.

Not so good news: Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said that this decade will be the “lost decade” for the US and Europe, and that unless we change course, we’ll lose more than a decade. The economic crisis was, “not a result of inevitable forces, not a natural disaster or earthquake, but the result of what we have done or not done.”

And finally, there was a tear-filled good-by to the current Exec, V-P, Arlene Holt-Baker. She pointed out that after growing up in a segregated Texas, amidst poverty as the daughter of a domestic worker, “you decide that you want to make your community and your world a better place.” Well done.