Hal Friedman over at explained to me how the Taylor Laws was passed to make government unions legal. What did they have to relinquish for the right to unionize? You got it, the right to strike. The strike was illegal, but we have had strikes and slowdowns by city government workers before. This time around demographics changed everything and I don't think that it's a coincidence that the Transit Workers Union was one of the few labor unions to endorse Fernando Ferrer.

Fernando Ferrer represents the dream of "Middle Class America" to a lot of Latinos in New York City. The Transit Workers Union has become the anchor of minorities in the city's labor movement. The TWU represents in many ways the dream of getting up from some of the most menial and thankless jobs in New York City to walk through the doors of the working middle class ranks; just like white minorities have done since the 1930s when Italian, Polish, Irish and countless European Jews did in the last century.

Still showing signs of good journalism, The New York Times published an excellent article that explores the racist overtones of the media and government attacks against the union:

[via Race Bubbles to the Surface in Standoff - New York Times]:

But for all the accusations and counter-accusations, clues of a simmering racial tension have hovered over the contract negotiations between the union and the transit authority all along.

Mr. Toussaint, for instance, continued yesterday to cast the strike as part of a broader movement for social justice and invoked the civil rights movement, as he often does in his calls to respect the dignity of his workers. "Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would instead be at the back of the bus," he said.

Mr. Toussaint added that he was the one who pointed out that the authority did not honor the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The authority, in its offer on Monday night, agreed to create such a holiday, an action estimated to cost $9 million a year. Indeed, the politics of the strike are in some ways embedded in the broader demographic changes in the city. Mr. Toussaint, who is originally from Trinidad, leads a union, now dominated by blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans, whose members were once mostly of European descent.

"Clearly race is a subtext of much of what has happened in city politics, in the ethnic succession within unions and city agencies," said Douglas A. Muzzio, a professor at the Baruch School of Public Affairs, who said he saw nothing inherently racial in the use of the term thuggish.

Among members of the Transport Workers Union, however, there is a real and bitter sense that city leaders speak of them differently from members of other unions, like those of police officers and firefighters, whose memberships are whiter.

New York Daily News, of all newspapers, has been incredibly dissapointing in the tone and the level of outright prejudice thrown the way of Roger Toussaint, head of the Transit Workers Union. They called for his head, to put him behind bars for being arrogant and not wanting to back-down :

[via New York Daily News - Home - Editorials: Stop the strike dead in its tracks]:

Pataki and Bloomberg must ask a judge to:

# Jail Toussaint and his bull-headed lieutenants.

# Impose fines on the TWU that double daily and are large enough to bankrupt the union within days.

# Hit every transit worker who walks with a penalty of two days' pay for every day out, as the law allows.

Now, mind you, this paper is the home of writers like Juan Gonzalez, ER Shipp and Stanley Crouch. This is not a "whites only" newspaper at all. Actually, I find their mix of opinion writers one of the best in the nation. But still, I am appalled at how vitriolic that paper turned against Toussaint. And it reminded me of the lamentations coming from Schwarzenegger about Toukie Smith and that Apprentice black guy who was booted because he was too ambitious and assertive.

Are we down a pattern here?

What is going on with these sly attacks on black men, their judgement and assertiveness and their lack of humility in the face of other men of power?

TWU had a blog and they had to close comments due to the racist nature of a lot of what was posted there. It just made your stomach turn. Strikes and protestations of fair pay are good for unions as long as they do not benefit people of color?

But to come back to Ferrer; let me make a connection here between his failed bid for Mayor and the now close to failed bid for better pension terms for the TWU: They have both failed because they have very little or no influence on the local mass media.

Political activism by minorities and the working class has been thoroughly smeared, diminished and even ridiculed by the local mass media; from the Grey Lady to fish-wrapping rags such as New York Post. Our minority leaders were comfortable with the idea they could get on TV any time they wanted. This is true with Ferrer, who became an almost weekly fixture of local news and commentary shows. Then he decided to run for mayor.

You have the same situation with Toussaint. TWU is a pretty big union and certainly powerful due to the nature of their jobs. But look at the mess of their communications support structure. They open a blog on Blogger?!?! Are they out of their minds!

No advance conversations with local grassroots media or bloggers came from their offices. With Ferrer's campaign it was worse because it is an ill kept secret that people from numerous liberal blogs, this one included, called and badgered their campaign for at least a conference call. And at each and every step Ferrer's communication's manager cowered and backed out of arranged meetings and or opportunities to spread the gospel according to Fernando.

The Ferrer communications people ought to be run out of town for how poorly they connected with the grassroots and bloggers. And I don't care how much or how little money they had. Had they talked to us, BlogPAC would most certainly have tried to raise money for him but their obtuseness and outright cowardice prevented them from taking the ball and running with a non-traditional roll-up your sleeves campaign.

Left-wing Latino and minority politicians better learn from this experience : You're not walking in the front door of the MSM. If you are a colored hatemonger like Michelle Malkin, that's one thing. If you are a Roger Toussaint talking about union rights and social justice, that's a whole different situation.

The grassroots need to revisit who they are, what they do and what do they look like. Even though all unionized labor is going to have to learn the hard way that they are not mainstream anymore; it is going to be a more pressing issue for the unionized colored left.

Labor unions had a good thing going there up until the 80s. Compromises like the Taylor laws, the union busting accelerated during the Reagan years and the WalMartization of blue collar jobs with the off-shoring of white collar ones have brought their years of brute force glory to an end. Unions, just like all of the left-wing grassroots, are going to have to learn to be more lithe, flexible.

Creating a new grassroots media network ought to be on the top of their "to do" list.

For the final results, check out Gotham Gazette Campaign 2005 - November 8, 2005 General Election Results

I urge everybody to read Micah Sifry's post-mortem of the Rasiej campaing.

[via micah.sifry.com]:

Emboldened by a sense that the Internet is enabling more people to participate, inspired by all the evidence of public disaffection with politics as usual, and motivated by a desire to push a 21st century vision of government and civic life, we dove in and tried to put into practice what many of us have been talking about. What follows is meant to be a continuation of that conversation, neither its beginning nor its end.

It's an amazingly candid and insightful review of not just what happened but what everybody in grassroots politics could be learn from their experiences. Awesome work that merits a third reading before I comment on it.

Ben over at The Policker talks about the retroness of the Bloomberg's campaign tactics in The Politicker: The Return of the Telephone - NYO. I have to agree with him and I am going to go one further (because I already did here : Bloomberg knew that Ferrer was going to hit the pavement and so he did as well. He used his money to buy himself a grassroots to destroy the Democrats effort. And contrary to what would be the obvious, many of these 'grassroots' by my own account were immigrant men from the Caribbean and Indian/Pakistan region. Or at least they were the ones who were unleashed on my kneck of the woods.

And of course, there is the level headed op-ed from Gigi E. Georges and Howard L. Wolfson, Singing the Blues in a Blue City on the matter of campaign financing:

One way to avoid repeating this situation is to re-examine the city's campaign finance law. We do not think it wise to infuse more public money into campaigns, but when candidates who pay for their own campaigns significantly exceed the law's spending limits, opponents who stay within the system should be permitted to raise larger contributions.

And I can't believe Will over at OnNYTurf posted a snippet of an email from a discussion a few of us had about the Ferrer campaign : Blame the campaign not the candidate. Or as Mole wrote on that email :

"They started out HORRIBLY organized and improved to merely poorly organized. But a couple of days before the election, it seemed to me that the whole campaign was unraveling. I heard reports from organizers that their Ferrer contacts in essence threw up their hands and told our people that we were on our own. This meant that on election night, there was almost no Ferrer campaign presence. At PS 321, one of the highest turnout polling places in the city, from 5:30-7 PM I was the only Ferrer person there. No one was there before me from what I could tell, and when I called in to the people I knew covering the district I learned that because the Ferrer campaign had sent them no people, they couldn't cover PS 321 at all. Folks, that is SURRENDER by the Ferrer campaign. In the end, we did more for Ferrer than his own campaign did, I think."

I honestly believe that the people who were working for Ferrer fucked it up out of not just incompetence but lack of true support for him. Can we discuss career politickers for a moment? These consultants that go from campaign to campaign : Are they doing it just for the paycheck or are they working from a core set of liberal values? Because, honestly, I was slammed with a lot of cynicism from the Ferrer people.

There are many things I've learned through this whole local blogging process. I have to tell you upfront that covering local politics, especially New York City politics, is a whole different animal than covering national politics. This is a city that still relies on good all face-to-face meetings, secret handshakes and political club hopping.

All what most bloggers covering national politics need to do is scan other blogs and the media. They really do not have to do anything beyond spending their employer's time tapping into their Blogspot accounts or Scoop sites. At the local level? In New York City? Nuh-uh. You gotta get off your ass and hit the pavement. Big time.

Which is why I have to say, blog bless anybody who wants to run for office in New York City and is not Michael Bloomberg. I honestly do not know how any of the Democrats running for the mayoral primaries could do it. And then Ferrer had to marathon-it to the elections? In New York City you need a batallion of people to play the old school politics that only billionaires can afford.

Which is why liberals, not just Democrats, but hard-working liberals and progressives in this city have to counter billionaire politics with a real grassroots. Hence, my Letter to the Editor at Newsday:

[via Newsday.com: LETTERS]:

Liberals, unite

Volunteer political activism in New York City is hard work thanks to the huge scale of the city. Everybody I know who has volunteered on a campaign or is doing citizen journalism through their blogs says the same thing: It's exhausting.

That's why Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent more than $75 million on a re-election campaign. He knew that the vast majority of New Yorkers do not have disposable income to make contributions, nor can they afford to lose paid work to do volunteer work.

The loss of City Hall should be a wake-up call to the Democratic Party. This is not the liberal city we used to know, with voting blocks of democratic constituencies. VotingResearch.org recently published a survey of the 25 most liberal cities in the United States. Ours ranks No. 21. This year's election may well knock the city off the list.

We on the left need to work hard to create support systems not just for the poor but also for the working stiffs of the middle class. The Democratic Party will not win 2006 or 2008 if it keeps running away from the obvious: To fight big money you have to grow a strong grassroots.

Liza Sabater
Manhattan
Editor's note: The writer is a political activist and editor of the blog The Daily Gotham.

First, even though I'm not that hot about the title they gave the letter, here's a shout-out to Newsday for publishing it in it's entirety. Let's hope next time my writing hits the Op-Ed section. Heh.

Second, this letter is another one of those big post-election lessons I learned : keep a stack of letters to the editor at the ready to send to each and every local newspaper. Actually, let's back-track it a bit. First and foremost, get the local media to know you exist.

On the one hand, we need to read the local media to follow what's happening. On the other hand, given we here at The Daily Gotham are committed to be activists first and bloggers second, we need to keep the local mass media aware of what we are doing.

Big media and blogs --they are a symbiotic relationship. Hopefully, we'll get more writers from the blog publishing their articles and letters and broadcsting their opinions all over New York City media landscape. End of journalism? Is that going to happen? Nah. I have gone on record as saying that journalism as we know it has gone out the window and I stand by that belief. Blogs in the hands of 'We The People" can be very powerful.

For now though, many of us do not have the resources to kick it to the next level vertically. Which is why growing horizontally is imperative for the local liberal blogosphere. The Daily Gotham is a truly bootstrapped labor of love with a budget of $0,000,000.00. We could never ever have the reach that regular newspapers or news shows have. But you know what? We could never have the reach we have just by blogging.

The Daily Gotham has grown in visibility and influence because the people who are here blogging like Mole333, Our Gal in Brooklyn, Bouldin, TakeBackThe City, Atomic Bird Song and others are hitting the pavement, working for their neighborhood political clubs, attending council meetings.

We are living and breathing New York City politics, not just writing about it.

If only the outcome of the outcome were this silly.

With Ferrer's loss, republicans will have controlled City Hall for 16 years in a row. It goes without saying it's time to do politics differently in New York City.

The Daily Gotham will be open for business for a looooooong time.

"Is this Fernando?", asked my youngest son as he pointed to a campaign flier while waiting for Ferrer who was making a campaign stop with Barak Obama.

"Yes honey, that is Fernando Ferrer".
"So is he real?"
"What do you mean is he real?"
My oldest jumped in, "Is he a real person? You know, as in not an actor in a movie or something."

The question took me by surprise. It had never occurred to me they needed to meet Fernando Ferrer in order to make a connection. "Yes honey, he is a real person

This is from an email from the Working Families Party. I should note that Freddy Ferrer did not get enough endorsing votes to get a WFP line on the ballot, but he did get enough for an official endorsement and considerable on the ground help. If you want to see all of WFP's endorsements (not all of which I agree with, but they have the right to their endorsements) please go here. And now their statement on Freddy Ferrer:

The WFP believes elections are about issues, not personalities. Elections are a moment for society to pause and, by the simple act of pulling a lever, say, this is what we stand for.

That moment comes once every four years in New York City. And for us, the choice is clear. On the issues that matter most to working families, Fernando Ferrer reflects our values -- equality, decency, opportunity, solidarity, freedom.

Here are five examples – five reasons to vote for Fernando Ferrer:

1. Expanding the Law Requiring Companies that do business with the city to pay a Living Wage. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it.

2. Requiring Big Box Retailers in NYC to provide Health Care to their employees. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it (and vetoed the City Council’s bill).

3. Building a Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel, Congressman Jerry Nadler’s extremely smart idea that will reduce traffic, pollution, and asthma. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it (and flip-flopped).

4. Postponing the city tax cut for millionaires scheduled to phase in at the end of 2005. Ferrer supports postponing the phase-out.

5. Returning the power of rent control and rent stabilization to the City so more working families can afford to live in New York. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it.

On the issues, the WFP endorses Fernando Ferrer and we urge you to vote for him on Tuesday.

Thank you,

Jim Duncan, Bertha Lewis, and Bob Master, Co-Chairs
Dan Cantor, Executive Director

Please join New Yorkers for Ferrer for an

ELECTION EVE PARTY!

Monday, November 7th, 2005, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Suede
161 West 23rd Street
(between 6th and 7th Avenues)

Open Bar

$25 - $50 - $100

For more information or to RSVP, call
Andrea Leung at (646) 839-4918 or
e-mail aleung@ferrer2005.com.

Corporate contributions to the committee are prohibited by law. Contributions are not tax deductible for federal, state, or local income tax purposes.

From Pierre in the Ferrer Campaign:

Friday morning, November 4th from 7-8:15AM Fernando Ferrer will be doing a meet and greet at the 4th Av./Pacific St. entrance of the Atlantic Terminal. He will likely be joined by Senator Montgomery, Councilwoman Tish James among others.

Please take time out of your busy schedules to get up a bit early and come out and support the mayoral candidate who stands with the community he hopes to represent.

Sincerely,
Pierre-Andre Devaud
Ferrer Campaign '05

Personal problems kept me away from the boob tube.
I completely missed the debates.

The whole debate is featured at the WABC-NYC website

Bloomberg Vs. Ferrer On Channel 7
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=elections&id=3586196

I feel awful about this. If anybody watched it, please post.

Thanks!

[UPDATE]:
I forgot to say that Ben at The Politicker did a kick-ass job of live blogging the debate.

Rush and Molloy's write-up was glorious but they did not include a URL. Boo-hoo. Make sure you spread the word (I'll try to get them to make a correction.)

http://www.cafepress.com/dailygotham

Thanks to their plug, we've sold more than a few. So do yourself a favor and get yours. You know you want them. Get the t-shirt too!