There’s really no such thing as luck. There’s chance and opportunity and being prepared to pounce on it and turn it into success. You have to make your own luck—the hard way.
This is one of those times of opportunity, an opening in history when a social movement can insert and assert itself to make a difference. Past experiences and the insights gained from them determine if and how well people do intervene and change things.
Right now the Republicans have paved the way for their own demise in the 2006 mid-term elections, with their missteps, mistakes and high crimes and misdemeanors. (And that’s not even counting the class-war crimes of their last six years.) These guys have stepped in front of more buckshot than a Dick Cheney hunting partner. Once again history is showing its disdain for the arrogant abuse of power. But it’s up to us to enforce the punishment.
The Republicans have put the hurt on themselves with a dizzying array of blunders. The Iraq War is dragging on into its fourth year with no end in sight, with some 2400 American soldiers killed, thousands more wounded and maimed, tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and wounded as the country spirals into civil war, terrorism is growing and the conflict is seemingly spreading in Iran.
The Jack Abramoff affair is the most widespread influence-peddling case yet to be uncovered. Republican House Speaker Tom DeLay departs in disgrace. Hurricane Katrina exacerbated not only the perception of Bush incompetence and racism, but the decline of his poll numbers. Vulnerability abounds.
From March 13-17 into this chasm of blunders a troop of more than 50 ILWU local officers and rank-and-file activists took to Capitol Hill intent on pushing the ILWU pro-worker agenda. As ILWU Legislative Director Lindsay McLaughlin relates in his Washington Report (see page 4), they had some preparation, some veteran leaders and a lot of focus and determination.
The groundwork had been in process for a while. This was the third such orchestrated Congressional blitz in the last five years, the union’s regional District Councils have been more active recently and the union’s education program has provided expanded rank-and-file training and opportunities to participate. And, of course, McLaughlin’s lobbying work on the Hill for 16 years helped open doors.
They came in pounding their points on port security, port pollution, pension protection, health care for all and union rights. The new lobbyists took their assignment seriously, veteran Northern California District Council Legislative Rep-resentative Lawrence Thibeaux told me the day after he returned from D.C.
"The new people were a bit intimidated at first, but each was given an assignment of a certain subject and by the end of the week presented it to the legislators," Thibeaux said. "They all pulled it off great. It was good to see the young people involved in the legislative process. It gives us hope the District Councils will continue as they have in the past."
A simple case of preparedness seizing opportunity. How lucky was that? Hardly.
—Steve Stallone
Editor
