Unions vote nearly unanimously to bring Troops home

[Toots]

There’s an old adage among investigative journalists: if you want to know what’s really going on, ask the workers.

If you want to know what’s really going on in Iraq – to American soldiers, to their families back home, to Iraqi women – read this column, and learn what I did at the historic AFL-CIO convention held this summer in Chicago.

If you find yourself hesitating, your mind’s eye imagining a smoke-filled room full of union toughs battling over issues that have no relevance to your life, believe me: this convention defied all stereotypes.

Predictably, the mainstream media would have you believe that the only thing that happened at the convention was negative: the much anticipated (and widely decried) walkout and disaffiliation, before the convention began, of two of the nation’s largest unions, the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters. True, the defection cast a temporary pall over the AFL-CIO’s 50th anniversary celebration. But something else happened that caused the remaining 2,000 delegates to stand tall and walk with a spring in their step. For the first time in the history of the trade union movement, they voted nearly unanimously to break with the federal government over a foreign war while it was still being fought. They passed a strongly worded resolution against the war in Iraq, and demanded that American troops be brought home, not merely "as soon as possible," but "rapidly." And rapidly, according to one of the makers of the motion, was to be interpreted as "immediately."
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The mainstream press did not cover the resolution, even though the convention hall erupted with cheers and applause when it passed with resounding "ayes" and only one "no." I asked the New York Times reporter why he neglected it. "The AFL-CIO isn’t as important as it used to be," he replied smugly, then confessed, perhaps realizing that his comment belied why he was there at the convention, "and besides, my editors told me to focus on the split."
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One of the five visiting trade unionists was the female President of the Federation of Free Workers, Councils and Unions in Iraq. Falah Alwan explained that women in Iraq are worse off now than they were before American troops invaded their country. In Baghdad, she told the convention, women cannot go outdoors without fear of being targeted or kidnapped by religious extremists. "In April," Falah said, "I couldn’t find women on the streets. Now I need a bodyguard. I never needed that when I was growing up." Now, she went on, Islamist extremists are gaining ground, calling for women to go under the veil and insisting on Islamic Sharia law becoming part of the proposed new Iraqi constitution, which among other things allows for "stoning for sex outside of marriage."
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I can’t predict how this will all end, but this much I know: There’s anger in the air, and a will to fight back. It started in Iraq, and it is spilling over into this country. When the nation’s largest labor federation turns against the war, that’s news and word will get out. And when working families say enough is enough and stop sending their children into this war, that means George W. Bush is in big trouble. If you don’t believe me, just ask a worker.

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