Barney joins the cause

posted by: Nick | on: Sunday, 26 October 2008, 12:29

If you think there is excitement in the UK about a change of political direction in the US then you can only imagine what is like over here. There are bumper stickers, road side signs and T-shirts everywhere. Today we left DC and headed up to Philadelphia where we met up with union activists from the AFL-CIO and the Barney truck, a converted lorry which is being used by the unions as a mobile telephone bank.

Our host for the evening was Lindsay Patterson, an Activist Corps Captain with the United Steelworkers (USW). He is one of 200 union activists who has been seconded from his job to work on the campaign to turn out members.

The union effort in Philadelphia is awesome. We were joined by the AFL-CIO’s campaign organiser who told us that over the last couple of months they had knocked on the doors of 80,000 members and phoned 100,000 numbers. “We are now doing the second round of contact,” she said.

And this is just the start. All the unions are gearing up to the final few days and the effort is going to be phenomenal. Two of our team attended a meeting of Political Officers of all the main unions, the final gathering before the election. Over $20m was committed to the final push.

One of the key points made to us today was the importance of confronting the race issue. After ignoring the issue for too long the unions had now changed their approach. “We tell people that they have to forget about him being black and should concentrate on the issues. We tell people that they have to make a choice and of course there is only one answer.”

Much of this change of approach originated from the speech given by AFL-CIO Secretary Rick Trumka made to the Annual Conference of the USW in August. It was a groundbreaking speech from a union leader to their members (

).

There is still 10 days to go and a lot could change but the mood amongst so many people, especially the young, is electrifying. While I have been wary of those who believe Obama’s election would signal a post racial politics there is certainly a mood by a great section of the population to move on from its past. None of the activists we met today believed that all the problems of race would disappear with an Obama victory but they all recognised the significance of the moment.