A Message from Business Manager Chris Erikson
I can’t stress how important it is that we accomplish this task. Yes, the Presidential Election is key, and I am confident that after all is said and done, America will make the right decision. We can’t go back to the chaos and the damage that was done during Trump’s administration. There’s too much at stake and people know it. The hedge in all of this is the House of Representatives, and we are committed in six of those races to flip back the anti-worker Republican seats and also protect our pro-union Democratic friends already in the House. Let’s get it done.
Last week in Cutchogue at our Educational Center, we watched a video online of a Nazi rally in 1939 in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. How close we came to losing our country in 1939 and how close we are once again in 2024 – the threat is real.
I want to share excerpts of an address to Local 3 members from Eleanor Roosevelt at the Leviton Manufacturing Company strike headquarters in 1941:
“I have always felt that it was important that everyone who was a worker join a labor organization because the ideals of the organized labor movement are high ideals. They mean that we are not selfish in our desires, that we stand for the good of the group as a whole, and that is something which we in the United States are learning every day must be the attitude of every citizen.
We must all of us come to look upon our citizenship as a trusteeship, something that we exercise in the interests of the whole people. Only if we cooperate in the battle to make this country a real democracy where the interests of all people are considered, only when each one of us does this, will genuine democracy be achieved. We hope to make the great battle which is before us today a battle of democracy versus a dictatorship.
We ought to try to solve the problems in our situation so that we can be more helpful in the solution of the problems that face the nation. We find ourselves at a serious moment in the history of the world. We face problems not only as citizens of the United States; we face them as part of the entire world.
The greatest thing we can get out of the present crisis is to develop the habit of working together and realizing that whatever happens is going to affect us all. I want to leave you this morning and express my gratitude to you for having stood together to gain those things, materially and spiritually, that will make life for your group richer and more productive. I hope the day will come when all the people of this country will understand that cooperation will bring us greater happiness, and will bring us in the end a better life for the whole country.”
That day it was a strike; today it’s an election with our country and our democracy at risk. We won the strike; let’s not lose the America we know and cherish. God Bless America, brothers and sisters.
