|
Rep. Danny Davis:
If We Fight, We Win!
Convention News Bulletin #02-12, Aug. 21, 2012 | PDF
In an inspirational speech Aug. 19, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL) urged union members to fight back against “evil-doers” who would destroy the Postal Service and send the nation back to a dark time when most workers had no rights and few prospects for achieving the American Dream.
 |
|
Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL)
|
|
Davis — a former clerk at the Chicago Post Office and a longtime friend of APWU — warned that there’s a stark choice facing voters this November, but said he was optimistic that if we stay positive and united, we will prevail in our struggle to preserve the USPS and protect our future.
“Our America is at a serious crossroads. And between now and November, we have some great decisions that we have to make. We can decide to go forward, or we can decide to go backward.”
“If we slip back,” he warned, “the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer and the middle class is squeezed practically out of existence — a world where our jobs are downsized, privatized, outsourced or outright eliminated. Where there is no collective bargaining, where workers have virtually no rights, and where even people’s pension funds are in jeopardy.”
So we must go forward, he said, “with renewed energy, strength, and determination to make America the country that it has never been, and yet the country that we know that we can and must be.”
Davis implored union members not be become cynical and to remain committed to activism. “I believe that no matter how difficult things seem to be, there is a way out.” Quoting Frederick Douglass, Davis said, “‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress.’ And so any time somebody tells me that we have to save the Postal Service, I ask them what they are doing as a part of the struggle.”
In these challenging times, he said, “one thing we have is our voice and our vote. We have our voice to say to those who represent us, what it is that we want, and what it is that we need. But we also have our votes to determine whether they get there.”
“No matter what the pollsters and prognosticators say, between now and November, we can determine who becomes president of this nation of ours…
I believe that the masses of people have far more power than the richest of people have money,” Davis added. “If we fight, we win, if we fright, we lose.”
|
