Unions stand for freedom of speech

By Fabrizio Sasso
Executive Director, Sacramento CLC

Free speech is under attack. I don’t know how to say it more clearly.

After months of assaults on our civil rights, it is now the most fundamental of American rights that is being dismantled. There is a reason the founders  made the right to speak out, even to criticize the government, our First Amendment. The ability to peacefully resist power is what keeps a democracy strong and free.

And that power to resist and push back is also at the heart of unionism. Everything we do is about using our collective voice to make change, whether at the ballot box or on the streets. It is not just the Labor Movement as a whole that demands our First Amendment rights be held sacrosanct. Individual unions have at times bargained free speech safeguards into their contracts to protect those rights, so that people who speak out cannot be fired for doing so.

In these strange days, when online mobs attack individuals with the goal of cancelling them, the power of a union can be the difference between being silenced and protecting those individual liberties.

It is our right as citizens and unionists to be heard, and now it is our duty as patriots to fight to protect that right. And that is what we are doing.

Here at the Sacramento Central Labor Council, we have fully mobilized our members to help pass Proposition 50, the measure on the November ballot that will allow California to fight back against the Trump-led gerrymandering in Texas. Texas is trying to create five new Congressional GOP seats to ensure that Trump’s power remains unchecked. Proposition 50 would create an equal number of Democratic seats in California, effectively neutralizing the Texas scheme.

A year ago, it may have seemed ridiculous that union members would be supporting a push to draw lines on voting maps that favor either party. Unions have always been about protecting the democratic process, win or lose. But now it is democracy itself that is in need of protection, and the only way to do that is to vote in legislators at the federal level with the power and courage to stand up to this administration. We can no longer pretend we are creeping up on authoritarianism. It is rolling full force upon us.

In the past days, we have seen our president label opposition as domestic terrorism. He put out an enemies list that included politicians who resisted his authoritarianism. He ordered the military to engage against citizens in Portland.

We have not faced a crisis of democracy this extreme in our lifetimes. But unions are prepared to fight to protect the values we hold dear: freedom, equality, liberty. And no matter how difficult it is to keep our solidarity intact and take on this challenge, there is a core truth to unionism that gives me confidence. When we fight, we win.