03/25/05 9:11 AM

My name is Wes Brain and I am a member of Local 503.  I am a CLC delegate
and my home email address is brain@mind.net .  I look forward to
participating in the 3/28/05 conference call and below pose a question for
President Stern.

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Dear President Andy Stern,

About the future of organized labor:  Its time for a labor media strategy

The night before all hell broke loose and they showed us the militant Miami
Model (Nov. '04) we had this big FTAA rally in the amphitheater in Miami,
Florida.  There was a carnival-like atmosphere, remember?  You walked up to
this purple shirt and we had a great discussion.  I remember it as one
highlight of my very busy and interesting 6 days in Miami being a
videographer.

Andy, you spoke of the great work of local 503 in Oregon.  We discussed
trade & the FTAA, health care & our newly organized homecare workers, the
Alliance for Sustainable Jobs & the Environment and "The March To Miami."
SEIU had contributed to "The March To Miami" and that support plus the help
of a broad coalition had made this ASJE project a big success.

I brought up the need for labor to have a media voice and talked about how
marginalized our wonderful movement is made by the corporate owned media.  I
told you that it was time for organized labor to have its own, that we
needed our own national cable television channel for working people.

Your response was that it would take a lot of money and we needed to find
somebody with the resources to support it.  A year later we had this
national election and when the dust settled we found that organized labor
had spent a ton of money doing things much the same old way and getting much
the same old results.

That's when it really hit home.

It is time for a Labor Media Strategy to become a leading contender in this
discussion about the future of our wonderful but dying labor movement.

This introduction was used to propose the question to you President Stern:
Will you support a national labor media strategy which will allow us to get
out the wonderful mission, messages, and vision for working people all
across America?  Its time we owned a piece of the pie when it comes to media
and thus have the ability to reach the hearts and minds of people all across
this land.

In closing please look at the editorial in the latest issue of UPPNET News.
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1310 

And here is the link to the PDF of the whole issue of  the UPPNET News
http://www.ilcaonline.org/uppnet.pdf

UPPNET is the Union Producers and Programmers Network

In unity,

Wes Brain
SEIU503 member/activist
labor media videographer
UPPNET board member