Nov. 5, 2004
Already the strategists are advising the Democrats to go to church more, hunt more, and become more like the Republicans. This strategy has, however, been pushed just about as far as it will go, and in a quarter century of trying has worked only for Bill Clinton, and then only with a lot of help from Ross Perot and a number of lucky breaks.

With over 40 percent of the country still not interested in voting despite massive Get-Out-the-Vote efforts, record turnouts, and endless lines read more

November 22, 2004
Those desperate enough to consider moving to Canada to escape a nation headed by George W. Bush may want to consider an easier option that could deny Bush’s Republican successor the presidency: moving to Iowa.

We spent upwards of $300 million trying to elect John Kerry ($241 million through the campaign, another $80 million through other organizations). We turned out every anti-Bush voter we could find. But there weren’t enough pro-Kerry voters to put Kerry over the read more

November 22, 2004
Part of the ILCA Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories
Bush’s success in reducing the value of the minimum wage in each of the past four years has wreaked havoc with the lives of millions of working Americans, but it does not exist as a media story.

The minimum wage loses value as the cost of living rises. Were the government to take action to partially correct for this loss in value, the media would cover that story, but would refer to it as “raising read more

December 8, 2004
Five hundred people who care about the future of the labor movement gathered at the City University of New York on December 2nd and 3rd to discuss what that future should look like.

There were some rank and file members in the crowd, but mostly it was made up of those who work for or write about labor. Perhaps the only points of universal agreement among the speakers and participants of the “Labor at the Crossroads” conference hosted by the Queens College Labor Resource read more

Media Outlets Refuse Union Advertising
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories
By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator, http://ILCAonline.org

Major corporate media outlets often reject advertising from labor unions. This means that the same outlets that will not cover labor for free, in many cases will not even sell working people 60 seconds of the public’s airwaves for hard-earned money.

Even people well aware of the media’s failings in covering labor issues read more

December 20, 2004

By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories

The AFL-CIO will be 50 years old in 2005. Its leaders have sat down and met with every U.S. President during those 50 years, except one, George W. Bush.

The compassionate conservative will not talk to the representatives of organized workers. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney made this point in a speech on Labor Day of 2003, in which he called Bush’s refusal to meet “a read more

By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator
Part of the ILCA’s Building Labor Media series

The Problems We Face

Two major problems face the United States that in combination seriously impede any large-scale attempts to better the lives of working people.

The first is the ongoing decline of the labor movement, which is shrinking our organized force of political activism. The second is the increasing failure of the corporate media to serve as a source of honest and useful information for citizens. read more

By David Swanson, ILCA
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories
A shorter version of this article, for easy reading between commercial interruptions, is available at http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=… [1].

January 3, 2005 — The Cleveland Federation of Labor is sending busloads of demonstrators to a rally in Columbus, Ohio, today to take part in a protest of election fraud in the 2004 presidential election.

As read more

Jan. 6, 2005

Thirty-three Members of the US House of Representatives, and one all-important Senator — one more than four years ago — voted not to accept Ohio’s 20 electoral votes for George Bush.

The votes were 33 to 260 and 1 to 72. The protesters lost. What does it mean?

First, it’s worth noting that more than one Senator took action. Barbara Boxer announced her intention to challenge the election on Thursday morning. By midday Senators Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Harry read more

January 19, 2005
Should Democratic leaders who want to defeat Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security go along with the pretense that there are serious problems in Social Security and focus on telling people that Bush’s proposal would make the problems worse? That’s what some people are advising Democratic leaders to do. They are also advising that the Dems should avoid proposing any plan of their own to address the “problems.” Doing so, they say, would allow read more