From: ND AFL-CIO: August 6 Weekly Update

Trumka: 'Working People Are Taking Matters into Our Own Hands' AFL‑CIO President Richard Trumka (UMWA) spoke to reporters Wednesday at The Christian Science Monitor breakfast, highlighting the wave of collective action sweeping the country. “We’re living through the kind of defining moment that can leave its mark for a generation,” he said. “A moment that will determine what kind of economy we work in and what kind of society we live in.” Hoeven Rejects Senate Bill Aimed at Election Security The United States Senate rejected additional funds for election security yesterday. Their rejection follows mounting evidence of what Russia did in 2016 and what they continue to do to this day. Report after report from our intelligence agencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and even Congress themselves layout evidence of election interference. Still, North Dakota’s Senator John Hoeven rejected the funding aimed at combating it in 2018. Review: In ‘Prairie Trilogy,’ All-American Stories of Socialism What does it mean to be a socialist in America, and why do people get so angry, and angrily terrified, when some Americans espouse socialism as a fairer system than the one in place? These questions have been coming up more frequently in recent years, prompted by the rhetoric and policy propositions of the recent presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders and the ascendance of younger politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congressional candidate from New York who is unabashedly aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America. “Prairie Trilogy” Revisits the Days When Socialism Swept North Dakota “I suppose ‘socialist’ was, fifty, sixty years ago, what you would term today an incurable optimist,” declares Henry Martinson, that sunniest of radicals, at the age of 97 in John Hanson and Rob Nilsson’s short portrait Survivor. Martinson certainly got called worse than “optimist” in his decades of organizing farmers and laborers on the high plains of North Dakota, a mission that started in the first years of the twentieth century, as the homesteaders’ sod shanties gave way to farmhouses, and their crops got cynically undervalued by a system of buyers who — in Martinson’s words — “wouldn’t know a goldurn plow from a corn shredder.” First as an activist for the Socialist Party in the 1900s, then in North Dakota’s more successful Nonpartisan League in the teens, Martinson fought the exploitation of local farmers by out-of-state conglomerates. Labor 2018 Weekly Canvas - Fargo - Tuesday - August 7 We will be knocking doors and making calls, talking to union members about union values and the candidates that support them. Tuesday, July 24 5:30 to 8:30 at the FM Labor Temple If you support union values like dignity and respect on the job and a fair return on your work, join us! Training, Materials, Camaraderie, Food and Refreshments provided. Contact Andrew at abushaw@ndaflcio.org with questions. Labor 2018 Weekly Canvas - Bismarck - Wed - August 8 We will be knocking doors and making calls, talking to union members about union values and the candidates that support them. Tuesday, July 24 5:30 to 8:30 at the FM Labor Temple If you support union values like dignity and respect on the job and a fair return on your work, join us! Training, Materials, Camaraderie, Food and Refreshments provided. Contact Tanner at therbert@ndaflcio.org with questions.