Lessons for uniting activists
IN THE past 12 months, I have become an active member, both with Join the Impact-Massachusetts and, more recently, with my labor union at WGBH in Boston.
Every single day that I work with the members on both (seemingly separate) missions, I learn important lessons both about myself and about running grassroots campaigns. The number one lesson, though, has been that both causes--lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality and fair contracts for employees--really come down to one issue: the role of democracy and of the united voice.
The union where I work, The Association of the Educational Employees of the Foundation at WGBH, has had a fair and reasonable contract with management for nearly 40 years. This past year, however, the upper management team decided to wipe away all that history, rewriting the contract from cover to cover. Its first proposal took away all of our bargaining rights, which I didn't understand the meaning of at first, but quickly learned really just meant the "employee voice."
As a lifelong LGBT activist, this tugged at my heartstrings. Who were these few quite well-paid people to say that we employees should trust in their judgment, hand over the keys to our benefits, and not question it?
My reaction was similar when Proposition 8 took away the rights of California citizens to marry a same-sex partner. Who were those voters to say who LGBT citizens could or couldn't legally marry? In each case, it feels like the "superior" entity dictating to the "inferior" all terms and conditions under which life can and will be lived.
It has become abundantly clear to me, a person who wasn't always so fervently pro-union, that the fight of LGBT citizens is not separate from any other fight, and in fact, that we should be supportive of each and every cause; be it union rights, immigration rights, education, etc. I have come to this conclusion after newly defining, for myself, what the word "democracy" means.
Together we stand, united we fall (or as I learned at a labor rally recently, "united we bargain, divided we beg"). Each citizen has a voice and that voice must be heard. The powerful, be they members of a conservative party that attempts to limit equal rights or executives striping away decades worth of hard-earned job protections and benefits, will always attempt to grab more power; they will always attempt to stifle that voice. United we must stand to keep the balance equal, to raise that voice decibels louder than it would be alone.
Finally, I have also learned that no right, even if fought for by our grandparents (labor rights) or being fought by us today (LGBT and now labor rights again), can be taken for granted. In addition, if one group of citizens is stripped of their rights, how can we expect that our rights won't be next? How can we ask others to stand with us if we did not stand with them?
Our adversaries also often are the same people. Gov. Scott Walker is attempting to not only strip public labor unions of their bargaining rights, but also to strip LGBT protections from job security clauses.
This is a fight for us all. We will find friends in our union brothers and sisters (and out immigrant brothers and sisters, those in education, etc.).
In solidarity,
Rachel Wiederhoeft; treasurer, Join the Impact-MA; activist and co-founder, AgainstTheGrind.com
