When I was a freshman in high school in a little town in northern Wyoming, my stepdad, one of 200+ union mine workers at a nearby mine, voted to strike at 12:01 AM on October 1st, 1987. It was a strike that would last four years and in the process, change our family, our town, and our futures forever.

From the day he started working in his first mine, he'd been a union member. He believed in unions as surely as he believed in the Bible, and preached the virtues of the labor movement like it was the Word of God. By the time he met my mom, he was a strike captain in the United Mine Workers of America, Local #1972. He was also a hardcore Democrat and as far as he was concerned, union and Democrat were one and the same: they both championed the little guy, the one who didn't have the advantage of wealth or power or fame; they both valued the integrity of hard work; they both trusted in the power of the ordinary to do extraordinary things...they both believed that together, we are mighty.

Labor is the great producer of wealth: it moves all other causes. -- Congressman Daniel Webster, 4/2/1824

Cross posted on Daily Kos

Thu Dec 22, 2005 at 06:22:48 AM PDT

Dear Senator Clinton:

Where are you, Senator Clinton?

I know you must be concerned. You must know that we are in day three of a transit strike in New York City. New York is the largest city in the richest country in the world. You are our senator. I'm sure you feel kinship for the striking TWU employees.

So I went to your web site, certain I had missed a statement you probably made. I poked around, I didn't see anything.

It's here for any intrepid reader. Maybe I missed something. If I did, please forgive me.

http://clinton.senate.gov/

Our fellow citizens are striking to remain in the middle class.  This has become an increasingly impossible task in America.

They vote. You ignore them, and everyone who supports what their strike represents, at your own political peril.