Sept. / Oct. 2006

Each time we vote for candidates who are on our side when it comes to keeping good jobs in America, improving affordable health care and ensuring workers’ rights, we’re swinging the pendulum our way.

Pushing the pendulum

We know all too well that the pendulum has been swinging against America’s working class. Too many jobs are in jeopardy. Too many families are uninsured or underinsured while health care costs for everyone continue to rise. The U.S. trade deficit keeps growing. Pensions are under attack. College tuitions keep rising beyond the reach of our young people. And all of us are paying too much to fill our gas tanks.

Of course, there are no easy fixes to unfair trade policies, the health care crisis and the oil companies’ profiteering.

But there is one simple act that each of us can do: Vote on Nov. 7.

To make change, we first have to believe that change is possible.

Just look back to the presidential election of 1932 when people voted against Herbert Hoover more than they voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was a time of homelessness and hopelessness. Voters were fed up with Hoover’s indifference to the poor and the unemployed and his failure to create jobs.

Those voters were ready for change, but even they could not have imagined that within only three years, President Roosevelt and Congress would enact Social Security, create thousands of civilian jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and ensure workers the right to organize.

This November if we elect candidates at all levels of government who stand with workers, then we know change is possible. Then we can tackle health care reform that benefits people, not the pharmaceutical companies; we can reform the tax code to stop incentives that encourage shifting production and jobs overseas; we can pass a minimum wage increase without a cynical attachment that helps the super-rich; and we can focus on those issues that unite us as a nation, not those that divide us.

One thing is for sure: That pendulum won’t swing our way without our push.