Heard a great story today.<\/p>\n
I’m at a conference of union activists who are working to build their activist muscles up and do work in communities. \u00a0One of the presenters here is Jason Sidener, who I’ve enjoyed spending a couple of hours with. \u00a0Jason is the Member Mobilization Coordinator for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). \u00a0he is abased in Madison, Wisconsin and played a key organizing role in the upheavals there in 2011 when public sector unions successfully stood up to Governer Scott Walker’s anti union agenda.<\/p>\n
Jason told a story today about some of the work he did long before that high profile action. \u00a0He was brought up on a farm, a conservative rural young man who was raised Republican and came from a Republican family. \u00a0He changed as he grew up, and when he started working for the union he discovered that in the AFSCME about a third of the members are Republicans. \u00a0They like their guns, they are social conservatives and they don’t trust outsiders.<\/p>\n
Jason noticed that at union meetings and conventions, these conservatives, who nevertheless were supporters of fair wages and benefits for public sector workers, often found themselves silenced, ostracized and marginalized. \u00a0The temptation is to argue with conservative union members and try to convince them that their politics are wrong. \u00a0But Jason took another approach. \u00a0He saw that the split between conservative and progressive members was dangerous to the unity of the union, so he set about creating a Conservative caucus within the union, where Conservative members could have a safe place to discuss their ideas.<\/p>\n
Although counter intuitive, this initiative paid dividends when Republican Scott Walker tried to pass his radical legislation last year. \u00a0Many of the members of the Conservative caucus started coming to Jason saying “take me off that list.” \u00a0They were realizing that the guy they had elected was no friend of theirs after all. \u00a0They appreciated the Conservative caucus but saw that in this case, the bigger movement was more important.<\/p>\n
I was struck by Jason’s unfettered approach to this work. \u00a0His confidence in the right thing to do, his commitment to inclusion and his presence of mind to care for the bigger movement is inspiring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Heard a great story today. I’m at a conference of union activists who are working to build their activist muscles up and do work in communities. \u00a0One of the presenters here is Jason Sidener, who I’ve enjoyed spending a couple of hours with. \u00a0Jason is the Member Mobilization Coordinator for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). \u00a0he is abased in Madison, Wisconsin and played a key organizing role in the upheavals there in 2011 when public sector unions successfully stood up to Governer Scott Walker’s anti union agenda. Jason told a story today about some of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[19,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation","category-facilitation","category-leadership"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-XW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3717,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions\/3717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}