January, 1999
Labor Party Press
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| Mineworkers President Cecil Roberts cheers the 1400
delegates on, joined by Lisa Frank, Judy Atkins, Dave Campbell, Mindy Williams, and Adolph
Reed, Jr. Photo 和ichael Kaufman, Impact Visuals |
PITTSBURGH, PA
On the morning of Friday, November 13, delegates to
the Labor Party’s First Constitutional Convention began pouring into the cavernous
convention hall here in downtown Pittsburgh.
Miners from West Virginia, angry over the steady erosion of jobs in the
coalfields, took their seats. California nurses, fresh from their battles with giant
healthcare corporations, sat down too. So did some refinery workers from Illinois who have
been working without a contract for over a year, and 28 members of the Kensington Welfare
Rights Union, who want, more than anything, the guaranteed right to a decent job. Not far
away sat New Jersey mailhandlers, who have been battling privatization. They all had their
reasons for wanting to build their party, the Labor Party, into a powerful force for
working people.
If the Labor Party’s founding convention in June 1996 was euphoric
and chaotic, this convention was purposeful and reasonably well organized. In part, this
reflected the fact that the Labor Party is a very different organization than it was at
its founding. The unions that came to the 1996 convention had endorsed the idea of a labor
party. This time around, six international unions and fully three-quarters of the 233
local unions represented at the convention were dues-paying affiliates of the Labor Party.
In 1996, local Labor Party Advocates chapters were untested. This time, nearly every
chapter that attended had done the hard work of door-to-door organizing for the Labor
Party. It was a wiser and more sober crowd, and perhaps a more determined one.
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Convention co-chairs Bob Wages and
Baldemar Velasquez. Photo 和ichael Kaufman, Impact Visuals |
Over the course of the next two and half days, these 1414 elected
delegates discussed, debated, amended and passed a series of proposals and plans aimed at
bringing the Labor Party to a new stage of dramatic growth and increased activism —
with the help of convention co-chairs Bob Wages (President of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic
Workers Union); Rose Ann DeMoro (Executive Director of the California Nurses Association);
Bob Clark (General Secretary-Treasurer of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine
Workers of America); and Baldemar Velasquez (President of the Farm Labor Organizing
Committee).
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LP co-chair Bob Clark. Photo
和ichael Kaufman, Impact Visuals |
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Delegates launched four new national issue-based campaigns, for just healthcare, workplace rights, fully public Social Security, and a pro-worker international trade policy. They
adopted a proposal that sets the stage for the Labor Party to run candidates. They amended and passed strategic plans and structural changes. They debated proposals to
amend the Labor Party’s program and Constitution. And along the way, chapter leaders held a
convention, the black caucus, women’s caucus, and gay & lesbian caucus convened,
and thousands of informal conversations about the Labor Party and how to organize it
spilled out into the streets of Pittsburgh for three days running.
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Oh, Sooo, Politically Correct
Players. Photo 和ichael Kaufman, Impact Visuals |
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In addition to the convention business, delegates were steeped in culture
at the convention. In the vast convention hall, they were surrounded by the colorful
artwork of Mike Alewitz, Mike Konopacki, and others. The
convention also included a cartoon auction coordinated by UE cartoonist Gary Huck, an
audience-pleasing original musical comedy about the Labor Party by the Oh, Sooo,
Politically Correct Players, and a performance by the Pittsburgh Solidarity Chorus.
Delegates laughed during an address by filmmaker Michael
Moore (who also donated $10,000 in royalties from his new book to the Labor
Party’s educational arm), and watched a segment of a TV series he produced, which had
been cancelled because of its anti-corporate content.
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LP organizer Tony Mazzocchi
presents the Karen Silkwood Award to Kate Bronfenbrenner. Photo 和ichael
Kaufman, Impact Visuals |
The convention-goers also heard talks by consumer advocate Ralph Nader; Henry Nicholas,
President of District 1199C/AFSCME; United Steel Workers President George Becker; United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts; UE’s Bob Clark, and Canadian Auto
Workers President Buzz Hargrove. They also cheered on
Cornell researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner, who received the Labor Party’s first Karen
Silkwood Award at the convention for her efforts to tell the truth about the effects of
NAFTA and the abrogation of workers’ rights in this country.
All in all, said David Kitchen, who
represents UE members in Erie, Pennsylvania, "The whole thing kind of raised some
excitement, and out of that, we’ve got to go home and do some work."
"I think this convention ended our founding-ness," reflected
Labor Party organizer Bob Brown. "It established us
as a real political entity on the ground, with formidable tasks that lie ahead — in
particular, organizing."
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