Views in brief

The fight for union democracy

BRIAN CRUZ'S account of the fight both against the leadership of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and within SEIU itself for union democracy is tremendously inspiring ("Puerto Rico teachers defeat SEIU raid").

Andy Stern and his staffers have all the funding and the traditional power in SEIU, but they are certainly not popular with their own rank and file. From the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR) to the dissidents in United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW), inside the union, SEIU's top brass is learning that we have a kind of power they do not.

Genuine organizers exist in the ranks, not in fancy hotels and office buildings. Teachers and health care workers want to fight for better conditions and against injustice, not be pawns in a series of high-level sweetheart deals designed to steal their dues.

If put to a democratic mass vote, would Puerto Rican teachers and most SEIU rank-and-filers support the political program of Andy Stern, or that of the socialists and other militants who lead the FMPR and the dissident movement inside SEIU?

Governor Vila and Andy Stern: your day will come.
David Rapkin, United Teachers Los Angeles

Time for Andy Stern to go

THANKS FOR the article "Puerto Rico teachers defeat SEIU raid." The Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) actions in Puerto Rico are an eerie parallel to the hegemonic designs of U.S. government and corporate power, and show how far unions, and the very ideals for which unions exist, have fallen from grace.

The fact that Stern felt so emboldened even to attempt this seems to say a lot about the state of the SEIU's rank and file. Dissent from certain quarters needs to evolve to full blown insurrection if this is what is to be expected from SEIU going forward.

I hope the rank and file wakes up and realizes how anti-union their union has become, and gives Stern and the other proponents of this move at the top of SEIU the boot. If the ISO can help encourage that, great! The sooner, the better.
Jeff Weinberger, Plantation, Fla.

Priorities of the system

PROFIT COMES first in this economic system at all levels--international, national and local. We see this clearly with the Wall Street bailout of $700 billion and the military budget of $650 billion, while 4 million families face foreclosure, nearly 1 million people were thrown out of work this year, and nearly 50 million in the U.S. have no health care coverage.

A crisis on Wall Street demands quick government action. The crisis of homelessness and economic suffering of millions is ignored by the Democrats and Republicans.

In Seattle, this is clearly shown at the University of Washington (UW). This summer, UW (now only 16 percent publicly funded) raised $2.8 billion for special projects from rich donors. At the same time, UW management cried poverty during contract negotiations and only gave its staff a raise of 4.5 percent over two years--well below inflation.

Now, in the face of a state budget crisis, UW has instituted a hiring freeze and ordered a $10 million cut in educational programs--at the same time that the Board of Regents voted to spend $300 million on renovating the football stadium, money that it doesn't even have yet. It hopes to raise it from tax increases on working-class taxpayers.

What is wrong with this picture? The system has plenty of money for wars, golden parachutes and corporate bailouts--but not enough for decent wage increases, educational funding and health care. The UW regents act as if it is just obvious that they should build up a larger endowment and build stadiums while ignoring the needs of students and staff.

We need to let them know that we won't accept this. We need to build a strong, militant movement to begin to shift the priorities in the direction of people over profit--and finally replace the system with one based on grassroots democracy and human needs instead of corporate greed!
Steve Leigh, Seattle

Engaging Obama supporters

IT HAS been challenging to cover this election season. Overall, I think Socialist Worker has done an excellent job of articulating a critique of Barack Obama, while emphasizing our solidarity with many Obama supporters in terms of shared aspirations for an end to the war and programs to benefit U.S. workers at home.

I do have a concern about the most recent print version of the paper. The article "Why I'm not voting for Obama," by Todd Chretien made sound arguments that need to be heard. I do question the choice to put this article, titled as such, on the front page of our paper.

An argument like this makes sense to make to an audience built of the self-conscious left where debates about supporting Obama are raging--on a Web site like CounterPunch for example. Yet Socialist Worker attempts to reach a broader audience.

Most of the people to whom we sell SW to at a local level, probably planned on voting for Obama, and see little alternative in the world of electoral politics. While many SW readers probably voted for either Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader, Socialist Worker understandably criticized the rightward gestures of both campaigns and withheld an endorsement.

Without a positive case to make, a headline like this could be read at a glance as urging a vote for McCain. For most people, my guess is that it will be read as an argument to abstain from the election, a choice that people hopeful about the prospects for change are unlikely to make.

By the time this is published, we will know the results of the election, and any debate about how socialists should address the campaign will be somewhat moot. Nonetheless, I felt the need to raise this, because I think it's important that we have sharp debate about how to craft principled revolutionary arguments in ways that connect with people moving to the left, even while holding hope for what an Obama campaign could deliver.

This headline may have alienated people who we want to engage, before they even got a chance to think through the content of our argument.
David Thurston, Washington, D.C.