Our next stage Our next stage Two and half years after our founding convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the Labor Party is bigger, more diverse and significantly more rooted than before. Through Labor Party recruitment and our 28th Amendment Campaign, we've gotten our feet wet doing the kind of grassroots organizing in workplaces and communities that we had established as our central task.
What's next? That's up to the elected delegates who come to the Labor Party's First Constitutional Convention in Pittsburgh. Among the items up for discussion: A proposal to move the Labor Party toward electoral involvement and plans to launch a series of issue-based national campaigns, beginning with a concerted push for healthcare reform.
In this issue, we present the views of four Labor Party activists on what they believe are the key issues before us as we gather in Pittsburgh.
In the course of the convention, the Labor Party's Resolutions Committee will present to the delegates a broad range of proposals submitted by the Interim National Council and by Labor Party members from around the country. In part, the convention agenda will be determined by how delegates choose to act on these proposals. Among the questions sure to emerge are these:
Delegates will begin arriving in Pittsburgh on Thursday, November 12 for the Chapter Convention, committee meetings, and registration check-in. The Chapter Convention will run from noon to six pm. (See the box at right.)
The 1st Constitutional Convention officially opens on Friday at 10:30 am (following registration, which begins at 7:30 that morning).
Delegates will vote on rules of the convention and the credentials report before plunging into discussion of the first major item on the agenda, the Electoral Committee's proposal. (For the language of the proposal and a discussion of the issues, see the May 1998 issue of Labor Party Press.) We adjourn at 6:00 pm on Friday.
On Saturday (from 9am to 6pm) and Sunday (9am to noon), delegates will address a range of other issues, including the plan to launch a Just Healthcare campaign and discussion of organizing strategies.
United Steelworkers of America president George Becker will welcome the delegates. Other invited speakers include Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union; consumer advocate Ralph Nader; and Julian Bond, executive director of the NAACP.
Convention chairs will include Bob Clark, president of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America; Rose Ann DeMoro, president of the California Nurses Association; Baldemar Velazquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee; and Bob Wages, president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union.
The convention won't be nonstop work: We'll have musical and theatrical performances and a cartoon exhibit and auction sponsored by the Labor Party's Cultural Workers and Artists Caucus (CWAC).
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