HELPING HILLARY IN HOUSTON

My trip to Houston was fast, furious and fun.  But more importantly, it was successful.

I had no idea what to expect since I've never volunteered to travel for a campaign before.  But my first good "omen" was on the plane ride from San Diego to Houston where I sat with an older couple from Minnesota. They asked why I was heading to Houston and after I told them about my undying love for Hillary Clinton - they raised their eyebrows and told me "We love her too!". We talked for the whole 3 1/2 hours to Houston about Hillary, the Clintons, and the democratic party.  My first good "omen" that maybe, just maybe things will turn around for Hillary in Texas.

I met my roommate, Jessica, a 23 year old student from SDSU around 1am on Saturday morning, March 1st at our Marriott hotel. She flew in from San Diego, and like me, had the same level of enthusiasm and hope that our being here over the next few days might make a difference and turn things around for our candidate. After 11 straight losses, and polls showing Obama ahead by a couple points, was this even possible?

We talked about that - could Hillary really come back again?

A few hours later, our alarm clock went off and the 2 of us headed downtown Houston for the annual Rodeo Parade. We found the area where all the Hillary supporters were - hard to miss with their large signs, hats, buttons and T-Shirts.  As we screamed out "Hil-A-Ree" every time the parade marched by in hopes of the cameras catching a glimpse of our signs and enthusiasm, our group seemed to be growing by the minute.

My 2nd good omen was when I took a walk down the parade route and did not see any Obama signs or supporters anywhere.....hmmmm.....

Cross posted at www.BurntOrangeReport.comand www.StopCornyn.com

Not often you watch a Saturday, off-cycle runoff with anticipation.  This past weekend, Texas bloggers watched intently as the Houston City Council At-Large results came in.

Houston Mayor Bill White has been long rumored to be eyeing a statewide race in 2010, and growing the Democratic base and brand in his own backyard is an important part of preparing for such a run.

Clearly Melissa Noriega, State Rep. and decorated war hero Rick Noriega's wife, was interested in her own race against Republican Roy Morales.  Would she be able to win a race so few thought she should run in? A loss surely ended any speculation that her husband could run for statewide office, while a victory would fuel the speculation.

As Saturday's numbers rolled in (slowly but surely) Noriega won handily.  She beat Morales by over 11 points and now all eyes turned toward the future. Harris County is home to 1,782,013 voters spread throughout 875 precincts. Texas only has 12,357,887 registered voters in 254 counties or 8,306 precincts.  What happens in Houston is a gage of 14% of the Texas electorate.

During the last presidential election an impressive 1,067,968 people voted in Harris County -- 55% turnout of registered voters at the time.

Not only does extending our bench to 8 out of 14 city council members in Houston matter, but Melissa Noriega winning a citywide election in such a crucial state will possibly influence both the primary and general election for another Noriega.

The news gets better in Houston. Houston City Council is now at 8 to 6 majority for Democrats, but if you include influential and ambitious Mayor Bill White and Controller Annise Parker, that means Democrats hold 10 of 16 regionally and citywide elected officials.

Now that we are done with the city elections, we are staring directly at 2008, and Houston has changed the picture.

The Texas netroots (aka Texroots) is bubbling over with excitement about State Rep. Rick Noriega as the best challenger to take out John Cornyn next year, but first we need to help his wife win a city council seat in Houston against a truly odious creep. Texas Nate

I've been talking up my friend State Rep. Rick Noriega as the person who's going to beat John Cornyn in 2008. But first things first, we've got another Noriega to get elected first, Rick's wife Melissa. She ably took his place in the Legislature when he served our country in Afghanistan in 2005 and now she's running for Houston City Council.

Even if you don't live in Houston, this race matters.

Promoted because Sunday evenings are too quiet around here. Texas Nate
As Rep Nick Lampson continues recovering from his heart surgery, he's making plans for his political future that seem likely to leave a lot of his supporters in the district very unhappy.

The Battle for TX-22 was a hard fought one in 2006. Replacing a wounded Delay (who left the race after the primary in vain hope of allowing the RPT to name a successor) took the combined efforts of a determined candidate, the DCCC and other established Dem powers, and bloggers and other activists sowing blue seeds in a determinedly red district.

Cross-posted from Tort Deform: The Civil Justice Defense Blog

Arbitrating Away the American Dream (Vol 1): One Conservative Grandmother's Battle With Mandatory Arbitration

Mandatory arbitration? What does that even mean? How can it affect me?

Right now, if you have a new home, new car, car lease, credit card, bank account, cell phone, storage room, utilities, or an exterminator you more than likely have one. Since you probably don't know what it is, and since you probably have one, it might make sense to learn more about the devastating effect that this type of agreement can have on your life.

Jordan Fogal, an award winning author whose personal struggle with her builder and her mandatory arbitration contract was featured in a Mother Jones Magazine article, has tirelessly struggled to bring attention to the public about the dangers of mandatory arbitration agreements.

Ms. Fogal was working on her new book of memoirs until it was interrupted by the deterioration of her brand new home. She then began her fight against the mandatory arbitration agreements that protect bad builders and create devastating personal tragedies for homebuyers.

For the past three years her efforts have been to inform the public about bad builders and the injustices rampant in Houston. After learning that this problem was not just happening in Houston, Jordan expanded her efforts to engage the entire nation.

Listen in to this first podcast as Jordan tells her cautionary tale about the devastating impact that a mandatory arbitration agreement had on her life, her changed view of America, and the accessibility of the American dream for us all.

This is a guest-post from Stephen Lerner.  Lerner is Director of SEIU's Property Services Division. With 1.8 million members, SEIU is the largest and fastest-growing union in America.

Today, 5,300 of Houston's janitors work part-time, are paid just $20 a day and get no health insurance for scrubbing the floors and cleaning the toilets of some of the wealthiest corporations in America. Within 24 months, the workers' income will double and they will have secure, affordable health insurance. Why? They joined together, formed a union, and fought like hell to win a new labor contract that guarantees those things and more.

The janitors' seemingly unlikely victory teaches some important lessons because it tears down some conventional wisdom about what it is going to take to change our country.

1) Houston janitors are a beacon of hope for all of us.  The janitors' victory proves that just because you live in the South where workers' wages have been kept low and rights have been stifled by anti-union corporations helped by anti-worker politicians, doesn't mean you can't have the same shot at the American Dream as workers everywhere.  These janitors had everything working against them:  They are low-wage, part-time workers, the majority of them are recent immigrants, and they were up against some of the richest corporations in the world, like the big oil company Chevron.  The conventional wisdom says any one of these obstacles by itself would have made victory impossible.  But they won, because they had a strategy.  Backed by the right strategy, workers can win - in the South, or anywhere.

2) The high number of uninsured is indefensible.  From the beginning, affordable health care was a critical goal for the janitors.  A contract without health care would have been unacceptable.  And the janitors were not alone - in the very first week of the strike, Houston's mayor publicly argued that these workers must have health insurance.  He understood - as more politicians are beginning to understand - that the cost of the uninsured is passed on to all of us, and it's a problem that needs to be addressed by covering more people, not less.  Ultimately Houston's largest corporations, whether they agreed or not, were not willing to have that debate.

3) The need for better jobs crosses racial lines.  Too often, African Americans and Latino immigrants have been pitted against one another, fighting over bad jobs that don't pay enough and don't offer health care.  But in the Houston strike, "black and brown" national leaders united to support this largely immigrant workforce.  Dozens of African American leaders - many of them veterans of the civil rights movement of the 1960s - lent their support to help these mostly Latina women win better jobs.  And it's no coincidence that many of the same non-violent, civil disobedience tactics that helped spur the civil rights movement were also effective in Houston.

4) Globalization can be a tool for workers to raise their living standards. It used to be that to win a union contract, workers just had to join with co-workers in their building or factory. Not any more. Like manufacturing did before, the service industry is nationalizing and globalizing. Houston janitors were able to draw on the strength of SEIU janitors from throughout the US who work for the same employers in buildings owned by the same multinational real estate landlords. Globally, union workers in Mexico City, Moscow, London, and Berlin held actions in support of Houston strikers. The workers get it - they know that if their multinational employers are holding wages down in Houston, their own living standards are on the line. With the service economy going global, janitors and other workers have the opportunity to turn globalization on its head and use it as a tool to improve their lives.

So what does this all mean?  Working people in this country are hungry for change.  We saw it in the election, when voters, 80% of whom listed economic issues as "extremely" or "very important," elected a new Congress that campaigned explicitly on issues of raising the minimum wage and health care.  We definitely saw it in the thousands of Houston janitors willing to risk everything to change their lives and win a better future for themselves and their families.  

And with the Houston janitors' victory, we see that unions, with the right strategies, can be a vehicle to unite workers and their allies in a real movement for economic and social justice.

Andy Stern sent out an all SEIU email this morning.  Here are the first two paragraphs.

More than 5,300 Houston janitors have reached a solid tentative agreement with their employers that will put workers and their families on the road to a better future and pave the way for workers throughout the country to unite to improve their lives. Details of the agreement are forthcoming, however the janitors' contract will lift workers and their families out of deep poverty and ensure access to quality, affordable health care.

The agreement was reached following an intense four-week long strike waged by nearly two thousand janitors that received tremendous local, national, and international support from SEIU janitors, union members across multiple industries and divisions, some of the nation's top elected and civil rights' leaders, and faith, labor, and community leaders in Houston and around the country.

The movement to restore balance in our economic system is picking up steam.  Jim Webb's Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal is not an aberration, there is a movement to redress inequities in America.  It's a popular movement, and my advice to politicians is that they should get on board.

Apparently I couldn't have been more wrong (a specialty of mine) in my previous comments blaming Mayor White for the police actions during the strike. The strike was settled today and he's being credited with behind the scenes arm twisting that brought the strike to a happy ending. Well done Mayor White.