Do Michigan auto workers know that the UAW, which has endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, also endorsed anti-auto Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez in NY-7?

 How the UAW abandoned auto-workers to back radicals 

... The UAW is no longer all about building cars. The union, desperate to build its shrinking ranks, has been adding members in all kinds of professions and trades, including signing up some 100,000 people who work in higher education. That group, which includes post-doctoral researchers and adjunct faculty members, now constitutes more than 25 percent of UAW membership, according to the Detroit Press, and has led, not surprisingly, to a significantly more progressive and activist union profile.

This is why the union’s 2022 changes to its election process, intended to “give a greater voice to rank-and-file members,” has instead empowered an ever-more radical constituency of university teaching assistants. UAW’s resulting leftward lurch made headlines recently in New York’s Democratic primary contests, where democratic socialist Claire Valdez won her race to represent New York’s District 7 in Congress. Valdez had previously worked at Columbia University as a program assistant in the visual arts department, where she joined the UAW. The union boasted, “UAW Region 9A mobilized thousands of members across NY-07 to help deliver a victory for New York’s working class.” 

Here is what we know about Valdez: she went to the exclusive School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where tuition runs about $60,000 per year. Also, she hates cars. Her campaign embraced the normal lefty litany: abolishing ICE, Medicare for all, universal rent control and so forth. But one distinctive item was her promise to “fight to redirect federal dollars toward public transportation, walking, and biking” and “reverse the proliferation of surface highways.”

Do UAW workers on Detroit’s assembly lines know that their union’s favored candidate hates automobiles and wants to shut down federal highway spending? Is that in their best interests? ... 

Michigan's bigshot Democrats shun Joe Biden at Detroit appearance: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Gary Peters, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Sen. hopeful Elissa Slotkin, UAW President Shawn Fain

 What a bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas.

But at a critical juncture when Biden needs to consolidate support, key Democratic leaders in the state were notably absent Friday.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is co-chair of Biden’s campaign, was out of the state. Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, and Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is vying for Michigan’s open Senate seat, were also not there. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, whom Biden actively courted during last year’s strikes, was traveling for a conference.

Rep. Hillary Scholten, who is seeking reelection in a battleground district in western Michigan, is among the lawmakers who’ve called on Biden to step aside. 

More.

Trotsky Lives! At EmpireStrikesBlack.com

Oh the things you run across out here.

This is by one Barry Grey, a true believer of the Fourth International variety who rather dislikes that Stalinist, Barack Hussein Obama:

In the United Auto Workers union and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win union federations the Obama administration and the corporate elite have accomplices whose only concern is to secure for the union bureaucracy a cut in the spoils of the class war being waged against working people.

The Socialist Equality Party urges workers to carry out a rebellion against these corrupt, right-wing organizations and establish independent and democratic rank-and-file action committees to fight against layoffs, plant closures and wage cuts. These committees should spearhead the struggle to unite all sections of workers and young people and mobilize the power of the working class.

This is a political fight against the Obama administration, both big business parties and the capitalist system which they defend.

Very nice website, though. And clever name!

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain.

So Wikipedia, here.

Barry Grey sits on the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site.

The Party of Nyet in WI and IN Merits Universal Condemnation

So says Nolan Finley, Editorial Page Editor for The Detroit News, in a scathing editorial entitled "AWOL Dems Defy Ballot Box" for February 27, 2011, here:

AWOL Dems defy ballot box

NOLAN FINLEY

American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters.

These guidelines kept the nation from shearing apart in 2000, when supporters of Al Gore (wrongly) believed the presidential election was stolen by George W. Bush. A tense period of uncertainty ended when Gore, in perhaps his finest moment, conceded and urged his backers to work to heal the country.

But what's happening in Wisconsin and Indiana breaks that tradition and puts a crack in our democratic foundation.

Democrats in those states, as in most others, were shellacked in legislative races last fall, giving Republicans majority control of their legislatures.

Republicans interpreted their overwhelming victories as a mandate to change the course of the states. Specifically, they set about undoing decades of laws put in place by Democrats to favor labor unions over taxpayers.

Instead of staying on the field to defend their positions, Democratic lawmakers in both states fled to neighboring Illinois, where they hope to win with their absence what they couldn't at the ballot box — namely, the right to control policymaking.

Without the Democrats, the legislatures don't have the required quorums to pass budget measures, including cutting pay and benefits for public workers.

The lawmakers in exile call this a defense of democracy. In truth, it's a step toward anarchy. If it catches on as a practice, it will officially end government by, of and for the people.

It's part of a disturbing trend by Democrats to embrace a by-any-means-necessary approach to governing. We saw it during passage of Obamacare, when the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate blew up the rules to block a filibuster. In Massachusetts, Democrats used after-the-fact law changes in a failed attempt to keep a Republican from succeeding Ted Kennedy.

Obama trashed bankruptcy law to move the United Auto Workers ahead of General Motors' and Chrysler's secured creditors. And his regulatory agencies are bypassing Congress to enact policies he knows the elected representatives would never approve.

The strategy exposes the arrogant liberal conviction that they are justified in imposing their will on the people, because only they know what's best for America.

These Democrats in Indiana and Wisconsin merit universal condemnation.

What they are saying is that the people no longer have the right to use the ballot box to decide the direction of their government.

That's a rule change our system can't survive.