One of many women participating in efforts to recall Scott Walker. Photo by marctasman.

Workers are under attack and women are bearing the brunt of it when it comes to pay. Who’s to blame? Corporate-backed politicians typified by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Last week, in the dead of night, Walker signed a piece of legislation that rolls back progress on pay equity in his state, where women make only 75 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same job. (Wisconsin’s rate was already worse than the disheartening national average of 77 cents on the dollar.) Walker’s legislation repeals a 2009 law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court.

His action adds another to the growing list of reasons Wisconsin voters want to recall him this June.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has yet to denounce Walker’s anti-worker, anti-women action. Recently, Romney’s campaign officials were stumped by a reporter’s question on the topic. The reporter asked if Romney supports the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first law President Barack Obama signed, making it easier for women to sue in wage discrimination cases. Campaign officials were silent, then said only, “We’ll get back to you on that.”

No public official should have to stop and think about pay equity. It’s the right thing to do. And it’s the smart thing to do. When women do not get paid fairly, we all suffer.

Yet in places like Wisconsin, the systematic attacks on women’s pay and voices continue. Walker’s so-called “budget repair” bill passed last year broke the livelihoods of many women in the state, where the resulting layoffs and pay cuts disproportionally hit working women.

Leah Lipska, a member of AFSCME Local 1 in Wisconsin, told her story in a letter to the Washington Post. She wrote, “Aside from my full-time job with the state, I have been forced to take a part-time job at a local pizza place. Even that’s not enough to make up for my decrease in pay since Governor Walker’s law. I got so far behind on my car payments, I had to ask my parents for help. I’ve even had to go to the local food pantry. [Walker] is no hero; he’s stolen our American Dream.”

Read the rest of this entry →

On Tuesday, the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, told the press that he would not schedule a vote on President Obama’s American Jobs Bill. That’s appalling, but not surprising. With its current leadership, the House never schedules votes on bills to increase employment in the U.S. If you look closely at their record, you’ll see that putting more people to work is the last thing they want to accomplish. It would be bad for the billionaires who finance their campaigns, and it would hurt their chances of maintaining power.

None of the folks on TV news will mention it, but the truth is that the bosses on Wall Street and right-wing talk radio like high unemployment. It drives down wages and increases profits. That makes most corporate CEOs happy. High unemployment delights the Rush Limbaughs of the world, too. It makes President Obama fail, and that’s been their hope since day one of his presidency. Remember, it was Limbaugh who told his audience in the earliest days of 2009: “I want to see him fail.”

Limbaugh was not alone. The GOP leader in the Senate made it clear after the elections last November that jobs would not be the top item on his upcoming agenda. No, Sen. Mitch McConnell said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Not lower unemployment. Not help for families facing foreclosures. Not financial support for students struggling to stay in school. No, the single most important thing they want is to defeat President Barack Obama.

If you understand that this is their guiding goal, much of their abysmal record on the economy begins to make sense. It helps explain the GOP’s willingness to allow taxes to be raised on 99 percent of the American public, which is what will happen if President Obama’s plan to extend the tax cuts for workers is not passed by the end of the year. That tax cut is part of the American Jobs Act, which Leader Cantor won’t schedule for a vote.

It explains the efforts by House members last spring, when the economy was beginning to recover, to launch an unprecedented months-long debate on whether the U.S. would increase the debt limit. This wasn’t about giving President Obama a blank check, as clueless Rep. Michelle Bachmann said. The Congress had already approved legislation spending the money – with the support of Rep. Bachmann. The question was whether the U.S. would live up to its commitments.

In the end, thanks to the efforts of Rep. Cantor’s and Rep. Bachmann’s allies to undermine the full faith and credit of the United States, a ratings agency lowered the rating of the U.S. debt, for the first time in history. They sent a clear message to the financial markets that the leadership in the U.S. House was willing to risk the default of the United States rather than compromise on taxing the wealthiest people in America. They succeeded in derailing the economic recovery. They got what they really wanted: higher unemployment.

Never mind that this agenda hurts millions of America’s working families. The House leadership in Washington may give lip-service to the concerns of America’s jobless, but they do what their bosses on Wall Street tell them to do. And that is: “Don’t increase taxes on the rich.”

The working middle class has been under attack for decades. Now, when we have a chance to rebuild Main Street and help hard working American families by passing a much-needed jobs bill, the leadership in the House won’t hold hearings or bring it to a vote. These people deserve all the criticism they are getting from the students, young people and activists who are targeting the House leadership’s bosses on Wall Street. That’s why AFSCME stands with the courageous participants who are broadening the Main Street movement by occupying Wall Street.

When will Congress realize that they should be working for the American people, not the obscenely wealthy CEOs, the slick Wall Street operators and the shrill blowhards on right-wing talk radio? When will they listen to the voices on Main Street, and not do the bidding of their Wall Street masters? No time soon, if Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell have their way.

According to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, only 14 percent of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. Those 14 percent must be working for Cantor and McConnell and their cronies in the U.S. Capitol. The rest of us think that their leadership is worthless. They take their cues from Wall Street, not Main Street. If they are not going to help put the country back to work, it’s they and their Congressional collaborators who will be looking for work after the next election.

"9/11 Memorial Stained Glass at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Midtown NYC" by By NYCUrbanScape Peter Cigliano on flickr

A decade has passed since the attacks that brought horrific destruction and death to the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the fields outside Shanksville, Pa.  Those acts of terrorism ripped apart steel and concrete and broke our hearts. The families that lost loved ones may never be whole again.

Father Mychal F. Judge, a New York Fire Department chaplain and member of AFSCME Local 299 (District Council 37), was among the first to arrive at the scene in New York.  Father Judge did not hesitate when he heard of the attacks.  He put on his collar and went to be of help.  He died giving the Last Rites of the Roman Catholic Church to a mortally wounded firefighter.  He is known today as “the Saint of 9/11.”

Father Judge was not alone.  Paramedics Carlos Lillo and Ricardo Quinn, both AFSCME DC 37 members, braved the horrors in Lower Manhattan to support rescue efforts. They too gave their lives, as did Chet Louie, an AFSCME member who worked a second job at the World Trade Center, and five members of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000 – Yvette Anderson, Florence Cohen, Harry Goody, Marian Hrycak and Dorothy Temple – who worked for the state Department of Taxation and Finance in the South Tower.

Ten years later, one is still moved by the memory of the many public employees who put their lives in danger.  Police officers, firefighters, EMTs and other first responders rushed into the twin towers to rescue the injured. Emergency personnel created caravans to help dig through the rubble. Engineers worked up to 36-hour shifts trying to find survivors. Sanitation workers, child care providers and hundreds of other public employees delivered lunches, supplies and volunteered to do whatever was necessary.  Similar acts of courage and service were seen at each of the attack sites. Read the rest of this entry →

"San Francisco Labor Temple Wall Painting" by xeeliz. The San Francisco Temple of Labor was built to house the San Francisco Labor Council and labor union offices and to provide a meeting hall for San Francisco's unions. The building was the primary center for the city's historic labor community for over half a century and played a significant role in the 1934 citywide labor strike for better working conditions.

As we celebrate Labor Day 2011, working families face greater attacks on their economic security than at any time since the days of the robber barons in the late19th Century.  In state houses across the country, politicians backed by Wall Street billionaires are attacking fundamental reforms that union members fought and won over many decades, reforms like collective bargaining, child labor laws, safety regulations and even the right of workers to vote.  In the U.S. House of Representatives, right-wing forces have passed legislation to eliminate Medicare, undermine Social Security and increase the taxes paid by working families while giving massive benefits to corporations and the very rich.

Rather than pulling together to find real solutions to our problems, anti-worker billionaires and the politicians they fund are mobilizing to transfer all the burdens of taxation onto working families.  Under the budget bill supported by all except nine Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate, taxes would increase for the working middle class while the wealthiest one percent would find their taxes cut in half.  Millionaires would be taxed at a lower effective rate than anyone working nine to five for a paycheck.  That’s not a real solution, and it does nothing to create jobs.

We fought for reforms . . .

Unions opposed these measures.  The labor movement worked long and hard to enact reforms like the progressive income tax, Social Security and Medicare.  On Labor Day and every day, we need to remember that winning those victories – and so many others – was not a day at the beach or a walk in the park.  When unions fought for collective bargaining rights, for the eight hour work day, to expand non-discrimination laws, to restrict the use of child labor and to enforce workplace safety regulations, we were always opposed by Wall Street.  Yet, today, too many Americans take those reforms for granted.  But many realize how important these reforms were.  And they are mobilizing to oppose the concerted efforts underway across the country to repeal them, along with other policies and laws that have promoted social and economic justice.  Read the rest of this entry →

"Power and Influence" by Wandering Eyre on flickr

As the eyes of the nation are focused on lawmakers in Washington this week, hundreds of right-wing state legislators are quietly meeting with corporate lobbyists behind closed doors in a New Orleans hotel to draft far-reaching legislation. The secret meetings, underwritten by powerful special interests –  including the insurance and banking industries, big oil and the pharmaceutical giants – are part of an on-going effort to subvert the public interest by an industry backed-group shamelessly called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This hidden collusion between well-financed lobbyists and elected legislators undermines the basic American values of public debate and full-disclosure that Americans rightly expect when our laws are made.

Through ALEC, big corporations lay out more than $6 million a year to wine and dine state legislators, and pay for expensive vacations and junkets, while at the same time drafting corporate-friendly legislation that the politicians then push when they return to their statehouses. This covert coalition of state legislators and Wall Street moneymen has been surreptitiously working out of the view of Main Street Americans to dismantle health, safety and environmental regulations, privatize vital public services, restrict the ability of working men and women to make a fair wage, and reduce the ability of seniors, students, minorities and the poor to vote. All done behind closed doors without the press or public seeing whose palm is greased.

More than 2,000 state legislators are in on the game. Over the years, with corporate backing in their campaigns, they often go for higher office, like former ALEC members Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. More than 70 members of Congress and governors have attended the closed-to-the public get-togethers where corporate CEOs lay out the agenda for the year ahead. It is no coincidence that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio made attacks on the middle class and collective bargaining rights their top priorities, rather than find real solutions and focus on job creation, when they took power earlier this year. They are both ALEC alumni. Read the rest of this entry →

March 25  marks the 100th anniversary of a tragic, pivotal moment in history, when 146 mostly young New York garment workers, all but 17 female, died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.  Many were immigrants, who came to find the American Dream and went to work in a Manhattan sweatshop on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of a building near Washington Square.  They put in nine hour days, six days a week, hundreds of workers on each floor, surrounded by piles of flammable fabric.  Some of the piles were so large that they blocked the exits that could have saved lives on that terrible afternoon.

When the fire started around 4:30 p.m., it spread quickly.  Within minutes, the workers were caught in an inferno.  The fire trucks, which arrived quickly to the scene, were not able to help.  The ladders could not reach the victims.  The water from the hoses could reach the 6th floor, but no higher.  Many of those on the floors above leapt to their deaths.  An eyewitness later described the crowds who gathered on the street below as “horrified and helpless.”

The bodies of six workers were so badly burned that they were not identified until last month, February of 2011, when a remarkable researcher named Michael Hirsch was able to track down their identities.  A recent article in The New York Times noted that their burial in early April of 1911 was a culmination of collective grief.  “Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers turned out in a driving rain for a symbolic funeral procession sponsored by labor unions and other organizations,” the paper noted, “while hundreds of thousands more watched from the sidewalks.”

It is difficult today, after 100 years, to fully appreciate how the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire changed America.  These young workers knew their workplace was unsafe.  Two years earlier, they had tried to form a union.  They had tried to exercise their fundamental right to bargain collectively to improve the safety of their hazard-strewn sweatshop.  They had walked in picket lines.  But they had not succeeded.  The trauma of the Triangle tragedy moved a nation to pick up the fallen banner of these workers and fight for the rights they had been denied.

Unions and other organizations, including the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the Women’s’ Trade Union League, set out to improve working conditions at sweatshops like the Triangle Factory through collective bargaining . They also organized to force the adoption of fire safety measures in New York that served as a model for the entire country. “The Triangle fire became a central moment in the history of the labor movement and in particular of the ILGWU,” says the Cornell University Library website. “It endured in the collective memory of its members as a symbol of the evils that made it necessary for workers to organize into unions.”

Even today, this tragedy demonstrates why unions are so important in the lives of working Americans, and why working men and women continue to organize and fight for workplace safety and better education for dangerous jobs.  It’s why leaders like Megan Burger, a tour guide at the U.S. Capitol, organized more than 130 tour guides and visitor assistants last year to make sure they had a voice at the table when issues of security are being discussed.  It’s why correction officers come together to make sure that they have the proper equipment and safety standards when dealing with dangerous inmates under stressful conditions. It’s why LaTonya Johnson, the owner/operator of a licensed family child care facility in Milwaukee, fought so hard for the collective bargaining rights that Gov. Scott Walker has stolen with his recent anti-worker legislation.

As was true a century ago, the key to success is organizing.  On Monday, the White House will host an event to commemorate the tragedy of the Triangle fire by focusing on the work of women around the country who are fighting to improve conditions on their jobs and in their communities.  U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Valerie B. Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama, will host a Women’s History Month forum with women who are organizing and making a real contribution to progress for all working Americans.

Deanna Vizi, a child care provider from Genoa, Ohio, and a member of AFSCME Council 8 will be among the speakers at the forum.  She recently fought for three years to gain union recognition for 3,500 dedicated professionals who care for the next generation in the Buckeye State.  “Being a union member is important to me,” Deanna says.  “Many voices together are better heard.  Although I work independently, I know that I have an entire team ready and willing to support me at any time.”

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was a turning point in the development of broad public support for the reforms that America desperately needed if it was to be free of the corporate abuses and excesses of the Gilded Age.  It helped Americans see the difference between right and wrong.  It had a profound influence on politics, culture and the first stirrings of the New Deal. Today, one hundred years later, this terrible and tragic event can still teach a new generation about the need to pull together, to organize and to fight for the common good.

Near the end of the now-classic film Chinatown, set in Los Angeles during the 1930s, working-stiff private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) confronts the greedy land developer Noah Cross (John Huston) about his sinister, murderous behavior:

Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million?
Cross: Oh my, yes!
Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.

That scene’s been on my mind as I have listened to the repugnant rhetoric that’s recently spewed out of the mouths of some of our newly elected public officials and other right-wing representatives of the super-rich.

During his campaign, incoming Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said, “We cannot and should not maintain a system where public employees are the haves and the taxpayers footing the bill are the have-nots.” Now he’s talking about rescinding the right of government employees to bargain collectively.

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently told Fox News that public service workers — not the Wall Street CEOs who crashed the economy (and got rich doing it) — are the privileged class.

And, in a throwback to the dark days of McCarthyism, former ‘Morning Zoo’ shock jock Glenn Beck has the gall to say that AFSCME is synonymous with “commies.”

These statements are false and absurd. By blaming public service workers and working families, the right wing tries to divert attention from the simple fact that reckless, unregulated behavior of multi-millionaires on Wall Street caused unprecedented state budget shortfalls, the loss of 15 million American jobs and the collapse of our economy.

We’re not going to let them get away with it. At this pivotal moment in the economic history of our country – indeed, the world – we cannot stand by and let corporate CEOs and their flunkies define the debate and shape the future. . . . Read the rest of this entry →

The U.S. Commerce Department reports today that corporate profits are at a record high, at a time when corporations are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash reserves. At the same time, 15 million Americans are still looking for work.

Two years after the financial collapse caused by right-wing deregulation and corporate greed, Wall Street is handing out its biggest bonuses in history – more than $144 billion. At the same time, millions of working Americans are struggling to feed their families, pay their bills and keep a roof over their heads.

And the situation is set to get even more painful in the months ahead. Millions of Americans – 2 million in December alone – will be cut off from unemployment insurance. Republicans in Congress blocked an extension of this emergency lifeline just before leaving Washington, DC, for their Thanksgiving recess.

Most laid-off workers desperately want to get back to work. But the jobs are just not there. Yet, while families are struggling, the U.S. House failed to pass a much-needed extension in unemployment benefits. The members who voted to make life more difficult for the unemployed should hang their heads in shame. Their vote, one week before Thanksgiving, was disgusting. . . . Read the rest of this entry →

Angry voters sent a clear message on Tuesday: Much, much more must be done to put America back to work. But voters rejected right-wing and Tea Party candidates who argued that government should do nothing to improve the economy or protect working families during the worst economic crisis the Great Depression. Voters support efforts to build an economic recovery that works for everyone.

Voters abandoned most of the U.S. Senate candidates backed by the Tea Party, including Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Joe Miller, and Christine O’Donnell. And they thwarted millionaire candidates who sought to catch a Tea Party wave – such as Linda McMahon, John Raese, Carly Fiorina and Dino Rossi.

But let’s be clear: The loss of the U.S. House of Representatives is a real setback for working families. Washington Republicans have done nothing since the last election to curtail the Bush recession and bring down unemployment. They opposed every effort to address the economic wreckage that resulted from their failed policies in the Bush years. They voted against the Recovery Act that prevented a second Great Depression and a jobs bill that provided emergency funding to the states for public safety, health care and education programs. Now, Republicans must demonstrate that their priority is working families, rather than corporate interests and the very rich. Voters have not embraced the radical plans of Republican leaders in the Congress to cut taxes for millionaires, privatize Social Security and slash Medicare funding.

It is worth noting that in the past century, Republicans gained the most seats in off-year elections following the passage of remarkable legislative achievements by Democratic Congresses: the GOP gained more than 80 seats in 1938 after the passage of the Social Security Act and more than sixty seats in 1966 after the passage of Medicare and the Civil Rights Act. Over the years, voters recognized the enduring value of these historic bills. We have no doubt that in coming years, the passage of health care and Wall Street reform will be regarded as similar, far-reaching victories for all Americans.

On the state level, candidates who support the funding of public services won races for governor in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Rhode Island. We are optimistic about the three gubernatorial races that are now too close to call.

Voters also produced important victories in state ballot initiatives, including the passage of propositions in California to end the destructive requirement of a two-thirds vote to pass the state’s budget. In Colorado, voters rejected the ‘Bad 3’ ballot initiatives, signaling their support for funding the state’s vital public services.

Voters in Massachusetts and Washington also voted to reject proposals that would have restricted the ability of government to pay for the services families rely upon during these tough economic times. These votes signify that Tuesday’s elections were not a blanket rejection of government and revenue-enhancing measures at the ballot box.

AFSCME is proud to stand as a champion of working men and women against an onslaught of money from shady organizations that seek to harm them. We mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers and sent more than 300 staff to key battleground states. Our Councils and affiliates mounted aggressive operations throughout the country. Through phone, mail and person-to-person contact, we reached more than one million of our members to get out the vote.

Progress is a process. The hard work does not end on Election Day. State governments have cut almost a trillion dollars in spending in the past three years and services have been cut to the bone. We will mobilize to defend the programs that help middle class families as well as the working poor and disadvantaged families. We intend to continue our efforts to support working Americans in the days and months ahead, confident in our cause and committed to doing what is necessary to ensure that all of our nation’s families have the ability to realize the American Dream.

The conventional wisdom in Washington right now is that the Republicans are about to take back the House, and possibly the Senate. That would be awful news for every American who believes that government should protect the interests of American working families rather than international corporate interests. And it is certainly a nightmare for the young people, minorities, union members and progressives who made history two years ago by electing Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman notes today that Republican control could have dangerous long-term consequences. “In fact,” he writes, “future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.”

Anyone who remembers the eight years of George W. Bush should know that now is not the time to play six-bullet Russian roulette with the future. Every vote for the GOP only makes it more likely that they will continue to stand in the way of the kind of reforms Americans support, such as real penalties on corporations that outsource American jobs. Unfortunately, too few voters – particularly independent voters – have gotten that message. We need to be sure over these last few days that we let them know what is really on the ballot Tuesday.

When talking with AFSCME members across the country, I have focused on four issues that I believe have helped to energize them to get active this campaign season: Jobs, Social Security, Retirement and Medicare. How we respond to the challenges posed by these issues will be determined on November 2nd. Here’s why:

American jobs are on the ballot. If Republicans gain power in either the House or the Senate, they will have a much stronger hand in their efforts to give corporations the power to lay off American workers and send our jobs to foreign countries. This has been a GOP priority for years, yet too few independents are aware of it. Remind them that just this August, all but two Republicans in the House voted against reforms to eliminate tax loopholes for companies that outsource American jobs. Just two. Now they want to take control of the entire House.

Social Security is on the ballot. The same politicians who have spent a generation bad-mouthing Social Security now say they want to improve it by privatizing it and giving Wall Street the ability to manage the nation’s retirement security. Republicans from coast-to-coast have made it clear that they have big plans to overhaul Social Security in the coming congressional session. Their candidates for the U.S. Senate in Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky and other states have called for the eventual elimination of Social Security, the greatest program of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Nevada’s Sharon Angle says Social Security – along with Medicare and Aid to Families with Depended Children – is part of America’s “wicked ways.” She and her fellow Republicans would place our retirement security at risk in the stock market.

Contrary to what the Republican privateers want people to believe, Social Security is healthy. It did not cause the deficit. It has a $2.6 trillion surplus. But Republicans want to take it and hand it away to their backers on Wall Street. We cannot let them do this.

Retirement is on the ballot. John Boehner, Wall Street’s favorite member of the House, has already announced his plans to push the retirement age up to 70. As many know, or should, Boehner would be named Speaker of the House if the Republicans win. He spends many hours each week playing golf with his buddies – the Washington corporate lobbyists. They finance his campaigns and give him checks to distribute to other Republicans on the floor of the House of Representatives. He has no problem asking bricklayers, firefighters, road crews and nurses to keep working until they are 70 to qualify for their full Social Security benefits. And he has no problem allowing corporate lobbyists to write the legislation he’ll push through the House as speaker.

Medicare is on the ballot. Rep. Paul Ryan, who will head up the Budget Committee if the Republicans win Tuesday, has already announced his plan to end Medicare as we know it. He would turn it into a voucher program. Republicans would wreck a program that has successfully provided health security for millions of Americans – for more than forty years – solely to give insurance companies more opportunities to make a buck.

Indeed, they would make unconscionable cuts in other programs that millions of Americans rely on, including veterans’ benefits, children’s health programs, cancer research and food safety. They plan to turn back the clock on environmental protection, women’s rights and the cause of equality for LGBT Americans. Their views are far from mainstream, yet if they gain control of Congress, they could cause untold damage to the lives of countless millions in our country. They have outlined some of their plans in the so-called Pledge to America, which they released to great fan-fare a few weeks ago. Today, few GOP candidates are discussing what’s in the Pledge to America, because they know voters would reject the radical cuts in important programs that the Pledge seeks to hide.

Paul Krugman sees danger ahead with Republican policies: “If they get their way, we’ll get the worst of both worlds: They’ll refuse to do anything to boost the economy now, claiming to be worried about the deficit, while simultaneously increasing long-run deficits with irresponsible tax cuts — cuts they have already announced won’t have to be offset with spending cuts.”

Tuesday’s elections can save us from the bleak future that awaits working families if the GOP takes control. It is a day when working Americans can stand up to the corporate special interest who control Wall Street and too much of Capitol Hill and elect champions of the middle class to Congress. It’s not too late. Call your friends and neighbors and let them know what’s at stake on Tuesday, November 2nd.