January, 1999
Labor Party Press
Conversation with
Dave Kitchen
David Kitchen is chief plant steward for UE
Local 506 in Erie, PA. His members work for GE building locomotives.
I thought the convention was extremely well thought out and well put
together.
We had 10 delegates from my local. Our main concern was that if the Labor
Party intends at some point in the future to run candidates, we should be held to a higher
standard and not water down what we stand for. If I’m going to try and put my 3800
members behind a candidate, I want to be sure that he or she is really worth electing and
is not a Republican or Democrat. And that means that we can’t run candidates for
awhile — it would be putting the cart before the horse.
I can see a way for the Labor Party to get involved in local politics
here, at some point. We have a very Democratic town. But that doesn’t mean we’ve
always had real good Democratic candidates.
We get into discussions with other union people here who argue that
it’s easier to make the Democratic Party more democratic than it is to create a whole
new party. We argue that labor unions have been trying to do that for years. Give me
thirty years to establish another party, and I’ll bet you I’ll be further ahead
than where we are now having stuck with the Democrats all these years.
Yesterday we had a membership meeting in my local and we told people about
the convention, and that they’re going to be hearing a whole lot more from us. You
know, there was a question about whether we should invest in sending those ten delegates
to the convention. And we decided, yes — we want the Labor Party to look as much like
a UE platform as possible! And to do that, we’ve got to get in on the ground floor
and take part in the debates.
My members are extremely positive about the Labor Party. I have to give a
presentation to three separate meetings of my members. And each time I do, I start out by
saying the same thing — "If anybody in here believes that the two-party system
represents our interests, then please, stand up and defend them. But if everybody here
agrees that they don’t, then the logical next step is not to say, ‘It can’t
be done,’ but to get it done!" They all agree.
|
