Labor Volunteers Pour Into NoVA for Obama, Push Referenda in MD
Sunday, October 28, 2012
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Coming from as far away as West Virginia, nearly 200 labor volunteers
poured into Northern Virginia Saturday as part of NoVA Labor’s get out the
vote
effort for President Obama and other labor-endorsed candidates. “If Romney
gets
in, we’ll be in trouble, big-time,” said Milton Dews (right), a
Giant
meatcutter and member of UFCW Local 400. “Because he doesn’t care about the
middle class,” chimed in fellow UFCW 400 member Waqas Jamil Ahmad, who was
part
of a door-knocking team that included Dews, his wife Carleen – also a Local
400
member at Giant – and Charles Johnson (at left), a Local 400 member who
drove
in from West Virginia. IATSE 22’s Walter Cahill (right, in photo at left
below)
canvassed for Obama in 2008 and was back in the field in Fairfax Station, VA
Saturday because “Virginia’s a swing state and Romney’s been pretty
successful
at trying to blame this economy on Obama, which (former President George) Bush
ran into the ditch.” Fellow IATSE 22 leader John Page (left, in blue
shirt)
said that he was encouraged to find Virginia voters “get it; that Romney
has
come out with a full-throated endorsement of right-to-work, which is pretty
much all you need to know as a labor voter.” Battling her fear of dogs,
Shondra
Alston (below right, in jacket), a housekeeper at the Washington Hilton
and
member of Unite Here Local 25, door-knocked her way through yet another Burke
neighborhood. Like many volunteers Saturday, including fellow team members
Abiola Afolayan and Stephanie Steer-Jones, Alston was proud of being part of
the labor effort that helped Obama carry Virginia in 2008. “You made our
day,”
she happily told Musicians 161-710 member Wendolyn Posner (at left in photo
below) as they admired the handmade Obama sign on the Posner’s door, created by
Posner’s young son.
Meanwhile, in Montgomery County, Josh
Ardison reports that
volunteers from UFCW MCGEO 1994, the MoCo FOP, and AFT canvassed Germantown and
Montgomery Village on Saturday focusing on supporting a "Yes" vote on
referenda 4, 5, 6 and 7 and a "No" vote on Question B, the FOP
effects collective bargaining issue.
In St Mary’s County in
southern Maryland, nearly 100 union
members and supporters met at the home of Jim Lowery, Business Manager of IUEC
Local 10 in Mechanicsville in support of labor-endorsed candidates and
initiatives. A chilly wind blowing off the Patuxent River did not quell the
spirit and enthusiasm of the gathering, which was addressed by Maryland
Congressman Steny Hoyer (D, CD 4), Maryland state senators Brian Frosh and Jim
Rosapepe, Washington Building Trades Council Political Director Mark Coles and
Metro Council President Jos Williams. Their message was that the vote over the
next ten days is “the key to victory" especially for Question 7 on gaming,
and emphasizing the need for Maryland labor to deliver, not just for the state,
but also to “help Virginia send Jim Kaine to the US Senate.” Labor GOTV
efforts
throughout the metro area continue this week; click here for latest
details.
- report/photos by Chris Garlock