The labor organization is working to get out the union vote for the Democratic presidential nominee.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced its largest-ever voter mobilization initiative on Aug. 27, vowing to use its nationwide “organizing machine” to help the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, defeat former President Donald Trump.
“A lot of folks in this movement, like so many people in this country, gave Donald Trump a chance, and he … divided us,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in her second annual “State of the Unions” speech.
“We delivered Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House, and every day since then, we have seen a huge difference. Well, now it’s time to go even bigger because it’s all on the line Nov. 5.”
In this case, “even bigger” means leveraging the AFL-CIO’s nearly 13 million members to sway union voters in battleground states and on job sites across America.
“When you ask a union member who their most trusted source is in the world on politics, it’s not their friends, it’s not their family or their loved ones, it’s their fellow union member,” Shuler said, noting that union workers “know each other inside and out.”
“And when you combine that trust with this organizing machine that we have built, this ability to connect with our members, our families, our neighbors, and mobilize on a dime, you have a force multiplier. You have a movement that can actually deliver voters and win an election.”
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Describing her trip to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention last week, Shuler said many of the people she spoke with were struggling to make ends meet in the current economic climate.
She blamed a system that she says has been “rigged” against workers by wealthy billionaire executives such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
Linking Trump to those billionaires, Shuler said union members “need to fundamentally rewrite the rules by winning elections, by passing laws, by having the right to stand up for ourselves if we are going to balance the scales.”
She also pointed to Project 2025, a political initiative published by The Heritage Foundation, as a reason to support Harris, decrying the conservative policy playbook’s stances on abortion, illegal immigration, and unions.
“If you are a worker or just think workers should have basic fairness to organize, to strike, to retire with dignity, you should not stand for this Project 2025 agenda that guts those rights,” Shuler said, implying that Trump would implement the plan despite his repeated statements to the contrary.
Describing the state of the unions as “battle-ready,” Shuler issued a call to arms, urging AFL-CIO members to volunteer to canvass and door-knock over the coming Labor Day weekend.
The goal of the initiative, according to AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond, is not only to help Harris but also to help “every pro-working candidate up and down the ballot.”
“There’s so much at stake, and we’re going to flip the House, we’re going to keep the Senate, and we are going to make Kamala Harris the next president of the United States of America,” Redmond said.
The organization’s announcement was made just after Trump picked up key endorsements from notable independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
Jackson Richman contributed to this report.
Original News Source Link – Epoch Times
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