Richard Trumka: "Are You Out of Your Ever Lovin' Mind?"

Yeah, okay. This video has been around for a while, but now's a good time to highlight it (what with all those "Obama's gonna redistribute the wealth by taking your money away and giving it to people who don't deserve it" claims).

Richard Trumka is the Secretary Treasurer of the AFL-CIO. He delivered this address in July, 2008. Watch it here.

The transcript of the entire speech is online at the United SteelWorkers website, but here's a snippet:

I want to take a little opinion poll.

If you think America ought to keep going in the same direction George Bush and Dick Cheney have been taking us in stand up.

(Well, I’m going to cut some of you guys in the aisle a break and assume you didn’t understand the question.)

Now, stand up if you think it’s time we had a president who’s going to fight for national health care, sign the Employee Free Choice Act, strengthen OSHA, defend Social Security, end the war, and protect American jobs?

Well, congratulations -- you just answered the question that’s stumped all the commentators and columnists and consultants in Washington, D.C. who are asking how Barack Obama is going to win the votes of workers in states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

How can he do it? You’ve just said how: by speaking out about the issues that matter to working people.
Of course, some folks have said that he needs a special strategy to reach out to blue collar workers.

That he’s got to talk more about God because a lot of us care about religion -- and more about hunting because, for some of us, hunting is a religion.

And there’s something to that: it shouldn’t be any secret that he’s a Christian and that he’s for the 2nd Amendment.

But, at the end of the day, what people are going to need to hear is that when it comes to protecting jobs,

when it comes to protecting pensions,

when it comes to health care, child care, pay equity for women, Social Security, Medicare, seeing to it that people can afford to go to college and buy a home -- and restoring the right to collective bargaining -- Barack Obama has always, always been on our side.

This is a guy who's voted with labor 98 percent of the time!

Now, contrast that with John McCain.

On one side you have Barack: a man who worked full-time helping laid off steelworkers in Chicago.

On the other side you have John McCain who helped pass the trade laws that resulted in laid-off steelworkers in Chicago.

What kind of man is John McCain?

Let me read you a quote. Listen to what he said. This was on April 23rd in Youngstown, Ohio:

“The biggest problem is not so much what’s happened with free trade, but our inability to adjust to a new world economy.”

In other words, it’s not free trade’s fault your plant shut down and moved to Mexico or China.

It’s your fault.

If you can’t adjust to free trade, well, suck it up: that’s your problem!

Now, imagine for a second, if he’s going to Youngstown -- of all places — and says that in an election year, what’s he going to do if he ever makes it to the White House?

You see brothers and sisters, there’s not a single good reason for any worker -- especially any union member -- to vote against Barack Obama.

There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white.

And I want to talk about that because I saw that for myself during the Pennsylvania primary.

I went back home to vote in Nemacolin and I ran into a woman I’d known for years.

She was active in Democratic politics when I was still in grade school.

We got to talking and I asked if she’d made up her mind who she was supporting and she said: “Oh absolutely, I’m voting for Hillary, there’s no way I’d ever vote for Obama.” Well, why’s that?

“Because he’s a Muslim.”

I told her, “That’s not true -- he’s as much a Christian as you and me, so what if he’s muslim.”

Then she shook her head and said, “He won’t wear an American flag pin.”

I don’t have one on and neither do you.

But, “C’mon, he wears one plenty of times. He just says it takes more than wearing a flag pin to be patriotic.”

“Well, I just don’t trust him.”

Why is that?

Her voice dropped just a bit: “Because he’s black.” I said, “Look around. Nemacolin’s a dying town. There’re no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there’s no future here. And here’s a man, Barack Obama, who’s going to fight for people like us and you won’t vote for him because of the color of his skin ?[ Are you out of your ever-loving mind?]*

Brothers and sisters, we can't tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman.

A lot of them are good union people; they just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man.

Well, those of us who know better can’t afford to look the other way.

I’m not one for quoting dead philosophers, but back in the 1700s, Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism -- and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.

We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker -- how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table – and how we all end up losing.

But we’ve seen something else, too.

We’ve seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down.

That’s why the CIO was created.

That’s why industrial unions were the first to stand up against lynching and segregation.

People need to know that it was the Steel Workers Organizing Committee -- this union -- that was founded on the principal of organizing all workers without regard to race.

That’s why the labor movement -- imperfect as we are -- is the most integrated institution in American life.

I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples’ faces and calling them racist; instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes

-- if they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers --

there’s only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on their side...

only one candidate who’s going to stand up for their families...

only one candidate who’s earned their votes...

and his name is Barack Obama!

And come Novembet we are going to elect him President.

And after he’s elected we are going to hit the ground running so that, years from now, we’re going to be able to tell our grandchildren that 2008 was the year this country finally turned its back on men like George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain…

We're going to be able to say that 2008 was the year we started ending the war in Iraq so we could use that money to create new jobs building wind generators, solar collectors, clean coal technology and retrofitting millions of buildings all across this country…

We're going to be able to look back and say that 2008 was the year the tide began to turn against the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O’Reillys, the Ann Coulters and the right wing hate machine…

Brothers and sisters, we’ll be able to say that 2008 was the year we took our country back from the corporations and had a government that believed in unions again!

* Not in the USW transcript, but included in an NPR transcript of Trumka's speech.