Carla Katz's blog

As it tends to, history seems to be repeating itself as 240 laid-off workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago revive a decades old tactic -- a sit-in siege of their factory. Without warning, their employer closed shop last week when the Bank of America, which received $25 billion in the government bailout package itself, abruptly cancelled the factory’s financing. The workers occupied their plant for five days, demanding severance and vacation pay, and angrily said they would not leave until they were assured of their benefits. Facing increasing public pressure from the sit-in, the Bank of America today agreed to extend loans to the factory to resolve the workers’ claims but not enough to reopen the factory.

A couple of weeks ago, my mother, Angelina Katz, did her second debate on behalf of Barack Obama. A debate? My mother? If you knew her, you’d be both shocked and amused. Just over one year ago she suffered a stroke that took most of her sight, and her mobility. She had to quit the day care center job she loved and was alone much of the day unable to read or even watch TV. Politics was the furthest thing from her mind.

After living her entire life in New Jersey, my mom is now happy to live in western Pennsylvania, a few minutes from my brother and his family in an apartment in a wonderful assisted living St. Barnabus facility. Happily, this move has positively changed her life. She and my father were politically active in my youth (my dad was Mayor of Edgewater Park and my mom was on the Township Committee), but I thought that era was long past. My mom’s latest long hand letter (she writes to me since her hearing is bad and phone conversations become surrealistic yelling fests) had me both laughing and crying. And, it convinced me that hope and change are truly ageless. So, here it is, in my mother’s words.

As I drove home from a VP debate party on Thursday night, I surfed radio talk shows and heard countless callers say that Governor Palin ‘won’ the debate and express that they liked her because she could “relate” to ”regular” people.  Call me crazy, but I don’t think the President or the Vice President of arguably the most powerful country in the world should be a “regular person.”  On the contrary, I think the country’s top leaders should be extremely special or at least better informed, smarter and more experienced than the rest of us.  I am sure most of those callers would agree that their next-door neighbor could relate to “regular” people but they sure wouldn’t want them to run the country.  

Why do we need the Vice President to relate?  Yes, we desperately need a Vice President and President who understand the needs of working and middle class families who are suffering economically at the same time that corporate CEO’s get multibillion-dollar bailouts and golden parachutes. But the fact that Sarah Palin gets points from some folks for repeating obviously memorized and overly rehearsed talking points and political platitudes simply because they were peppered with homespun lingo like “there ya go” and “you betcha” is demoralizing.

She is reported to be smart, tough and a politically savvy working mother.

She has become the subject of celebrity-style media interest and of an astonishing barrage of stories and photos about her and her family -- some real and some fabricated -- winging across the internet.

Her arrival on the scene has triggered endless kitchen table discussions about parenting, work, teenage pregnancy and feminism. Her name has outpaced Google hits for "Paris Hilton" and "Michael Phelps."

Her speech to the Republican convention met with such breath less excitement from the mostly male delegates that I wondered if she had appeared, as depicted in that now-famously faked photo, in a flag bikini with a rifle rakishly held aloft.

Last year, like many New Jerseyans, I spent Labor Day weekend, with my family at the ever-shrinking shoreline on Long Beach Island. This year, I stayed close to home and ran a 5K race with my other family, my union brothers and sisters from the fire service, police officers and EMS in honor of Jimmy D'heron--a hero, a firefighter, a union member, father, husband and grandfather.

As labor is burning, our National union leaders are fiddling. Some of them are simply arsonists. While the labor movement has made tremendous progress in the past, every working American knows that we are facing exceptionally challenging economic times and a union movement that continues to decline. Everyone, that is, except for some national union leaders, who these days seem too focused on creating internal divides and engaging in selfish politics to focus on the fight for their members' rights. 

As the Presidential election draws closer and closer, we tend to focus our attention on the daily horse race between the candidates and lose sight of one key question recently raised in the Washington Post: What can our elected officials actually do for us?

As a union leader, I hear that question from my members quite often.  For us, that question becomes even more specific: What can elected officials do to help working families and union members?  With the recent news of Senator Ted Kennedy’s illness, I thought is was worth reminding ourselves of exactly what a passionate and dedicated elected official really can do and why it is so important that we stay engaged in the political arena and work to elect strong and uncompromising advocates of workers’ rights.

A hugely misguided attempt to eliminate the Department of Agriculture is the spark which has lit an angry fire which took over West State street recently as an unlikely combination of farmers with goats, pigs, tractors, and horses, CWA Local 1034 union members, labor leaders and politicians joined forces at one big statehouse rally to keep the “Garden” in the ‘Garden State’. One ‘Future Farmer of America’ student held a piglet donning a t-shirt that read “Butcher me, not the Department of Agriculture.” Another held a piglet adorned with a shirt which read “Cut the Pork, not Agriculture.” 

Eliminating the Department of Agriculture (NJDA) does not make sense and Governor Corzine should reverse course.  The agriculture and food complex is one of New Jersey's largest industries, and at $82 billion dollars, follows only pharmaceuticals and tourism in the economic benefits it brings to New Jersey. The Agriculture department is dominantly federally funded, with only $26.7 million of its $354 million budget coming from the state.  Closing the department, which efficiently and effectively serves that industry, fails to save significant, if any, money.

Accepting the Oscar for his leading role in the budget adaptation of "There Will Be Blood" is Governor Jon Corzine. This was a budget speech that reached out and stabbed nearly every constituency and hacked at countless services that the public holds dear. As intended, the Governor's speech was grim, sobering and gory. It was also dead wrong.

Slashing thousands of jobs of middle class workers, who had nothing to do with getting the state in this fiscal fix, is grossly unfair. More to the point, it doesn't save money, it doesn't attack patronage and it ultimately hurts all families in New Jersey. My local union, representing thousands of public workers, vehemently opposes these cuts and we intend to vigorously fight against them.

We've seen this movie before starring Governors past. As horror films go, each sequel gets bloodier. This year's version, seemingly written with a chainsaw, proposes to eliminate between 4,000 and 5,000 hard-working middle class workers while failing to present any real solution to state's ongoing fiscal problems. These cuts will be devastating to the critical services that our members provide to the public and which the public values.

Seventeen-year-old Dave Landstrom lives in Flemington, the county seat of one of New Jersey's most Republican leaning counties. He was a 10-year-old when George W. Bush was elected President, and he turns 18 this October 26th, making him eligible to vote on Election Day in November.