Labor & Employment Law

Working America, AFL-CIO Launch Woman-to-Woman Postcard GOTV Drive

By Mike Hall

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler helped kick off a Working America get-out-the-vote postcard writing event in Washington, D.C.

Sometime in the next few weeks as the November elections approach, 50,000 women voters who are union members or members of the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America will find handwritten postcards in their mailboxes from women just like them urging them to back candidates who back working people.

This week at the AFL-CIO, more than 70 women from nearly a dozen unions, Working America and other union groups got together for a pizza lunch and postcard writing session and hand wrote and addressed some 2,500 postcards urging women like Megan in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, to:

“vote with me for people who will hold corporations accountable and bring back our good jobs.”

Over the next several weeks, union women and Working America members will meet in small groups around the country, in homes, union halls and coffee shops. At these meetings, they?ll be talking about the most important issues and writing postcards to women in key states.

Through these handwritten postcards, working women will be encouraging other women to vote on the issues that matter most this fall. The goal, says Helen Gonzales, assistant director of the AFL-CIO Civil, Human and Workers Rights Department, is to send the personalized postcards to 25,000 union members and 25,000 Working America members by Election Day.

Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum, who has taken part in postcard mobilizations in the past several elections, says:

I love the postcard campaign because I get to tell other women why I’m motivated to vote?I’m worried about jobs for my grown kids?and I know when they see handwritten postcards they’ll pay attention. And we have the best conversations at the postcard parties while we write the cards.  You can make a difference and have fun.

If you want to want to hold your own postcard parties or events to help  increase voter turnout by union women voters in key states, contact Vivian Smith at vsmith@aflcio.org or at 202-637-5131. The deadline for completing events is Oct. 10.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 16, 2010 (boomark / email).