Unionists Picket McCain D.C. Fundraiser

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Chanting, singing, handing out flyers and waving signs 

comparing GOP presidential nominee-designate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to 

anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, some 50 unionists demonstrated at the 

site of an April 8 McCain fundraiser in downtown Washington. It looked like a 

picket line.

But their expected nose-to-nose face-off against the Arizonan before he entered 

the $1,000-a-plate bash in the historic Willard Hotel didn’t occur. The Senate 

worked late, listening to top officials discuss Bush’s Iraq War, and by the time 

the senator showed, the demonstrators had had to leave. 

The demonstration, led by Metropolitan Washington AFL-CIO President Jocelyn 

Williams, is part of the federation’s nationwide campaign to define McCain 

before he positively defines himself. The fed’s campaign concentrates on 

exposing McCain’s record on workers’ issues, from his votes for job-destroying 

“free trade” treaties, to support of the war, to opposition to raising the minimum wage to standing against workers’ rights.

That campaign includes protests at other McCain rallies and invitations, which 

McCain has ignored so far, to talk about the economy--his weak point--with 

workers.

And the marchers certainly were colorful about letting everyone know their 

views.

For example, in a variation on the old union song “Everywhere We Go, People Want 

To Know” about unions, the marchers sang: ”Everywhere we go, people want to 

know, why he’s running, why he’s running. So we’ll tell them: Billionaire tax 

cuts, union-busting, 100 years of war. We can’t take it any more.”

And turning their fire on the lobbyists arriving at the Willard’s entrance--who 

walked through the demonstration to enter the hotel--the marchers chanted “Hey, 

McCain, what’s to hide? Corporate lobbyists are inside.”

A third chant summed up their view of the senator: “McSame as Bush.”

 “We are here today to say that you can run but you can’t hide from working men 

and women. Wherever you (McCain) go, we’ll be there to tell the American people what you stand for: Against overtime pay, 

for mortgage foreclosures, against health care for all and for the Colombia Free 

Trade Agreement, which is designed to take American people off of good jobs,” 

Williams said in a short talk at the end of the protest.

“We will tell McBush, trading as John McCain, that we will not have more of the 

same. We’ll save America from George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain. They’re 

all of the same stripe,” he concluded.