PARTY HARDLY

...The AFL-CIO president had long been cool to the LPA movement, and he offered no indication of a willingness to embrace the new Labor Party...

...Others acknowledged that a party without candidates would be a tough sell on the shop floors, but said the Labor Party still retains a potential that is worthy of the energy grassroots activists have poured into it...

...What will happen [if the Labor Party runs candidates immediately] is that we will marginalize ourselves, we will get slaughtered, and we may never recover from that...

...It also had the support of several hundred local unions, district councils, lodges, and regional bodies—a spectrum ranging from the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 in New York City to the White River Central Labor Council in Bloomington, Indiana...

...That's what happened in 1924, when the old American Federation of Labor and the Socialist Party threw in behind the Presidential candidacy of Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert M. La Follette...

...A political party has to have some kind of electoral strategy...

...The Cleveland convention got the street part of the equation right...

...The election of a reform slate to the AFL-CIO leadership last year seemed, for a time, to suggest that this might be a reasonable goal, especially when new AFL-CIO President John Sweeney made a point of announcing that the federation would no longer march in lock-step to the beat of a Democratic drummer...

...Mazzocchi and most of the other high-profile backers of the Labor Party have set upon the task of winning broad support for their initiative both from international unions and at the grassroots...

...The walls of the hall were decorated with banners recalling struggles for the eight-hour day, workplace safety, civil rights, and a host of other historic, labor-backed causes...

...The translation: The Labor Party will not run candidates in 1996 and may nol run them two years from now—since its next convention isn't until 1998, and by that time it might well be too late to gear up campaigns for that year...

...Green parties have obtained ballot access in several states...

...Some union leaders associated with the New Party attended the Labor Party convention as delegates, and suggested that progressive third parties should coalesce into one entity...

...I think a lot of the internationals are afraid to build a real party...

...In Cleveland to launch the Labor Party, the delegates left their convention duties to join a raucous protest against Democratic Mayor Michael White's proposal to gut Ohio's collective-bargaining law for public employees...

...We should save the creation of a Labor Party for a non-Presidential year...

...The chapters found an ally in the ILWU, which broke with the other internationals and forced a debate on a resolution that would have allowed Labor Party chapters to run candidates at the state and local level, and to endorse independent candidates who are supportive of the Labor Party platform...

...This is an indefinite delay...

...And the Labor Party is also pitching itself to the top leadership of the AFL-CIO...

...John's University instructor, who watched the crowd of union activists stream into the Marriott lobby chanting, "Labor Party Now...

...Or will they just end up going with some other party that's actually running candidates...

...We see the disillusionment of our own members because of the Democratic Party's collusion with big business," declared Luisa Gratz, a member of the ILWU international executive board...

...Swelling into the streets outside City Hall, the delegates marched impromptu to the Marriott Hotel where White was meeting with aides...

...Thanks in no small part to Mazzocchi's years of effort— and the willingness of OCAW to pour its resources into the drive—the Labor Party founding convention could boast endorsements from OCAW, UE, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of the Way Employees, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, the California Nurses Association, the American Federation of Government Employees, the United Mine Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Duponi Workers, and the Textile Processors, Service Trades, Health Care, Professional, and Technical Employees International Union...

...How can I vote for them?' And I'm going to have to say, 'Er, well, we're not really running candidates or doing much of anything.' At that point, the door gets slammed in my face...

...Instead, it adopted "A New Organizing Approach to Politics" that, ultimately, boiled down to a single line: "The Labor Party will not endorse candidates of any kind, will not run people for office, and will not spend any Labor Partv resources on electoral campaigns, before an electoral strategy is adopted by a national Labor Parry convention, nor before we prove capable of recruiting and organizing working people around a new agenda...

...it's not a party...

...We need to start winning some elections now...

...A revitalized Socialist Party will be on dozens of state Presidential ballots around the country this year...

...Added Carl Rosen, a UE leader from Chicago, "We don't have the base anywhere to run candidates...

...And the national New Party, a progressive group that shares most of the Labor Party's positions on issues, has seen more than ninety of its members win local races around the country and is clearly committed to the sort of electoral strategy many of the delegates favor...

...Sweeney argued that the chief priority must be the election of AFL-CIO-en-dorsed candidates, including President Bill Clinton (who signed NAFTA and other agreements despised by labor...

...We never thought, just as we arrived here in Cleveland to talk about forming a Labor Party, that the Democratic mayor of Cleveland would be the proof of everything we're talking about," said Bob Wages, the president of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union...

...This is the birthplace convention of the new labor movement for the twentyfirst century—a movement to contain the wild excess of corporations and to end their control over our politics, our culture, our very lives," raged consumer activist and Green Party semi-Presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who addressed the convention from the floor, drawing thunderous applause...

...Lembach said his group is not about to back off and wait for the national party to determine when the time is right for an electoral strategy...

...But if all we're going to be is a pressure group, then why are we wasting our energy on it...

...But if White runs for reelection as an endorsed Democrat next year—as is likely—he will not face a Labor Party opponent...

...But the Labor Party's outreach to the AFL-CIO may turn out to be a tougher task than was originally expected...

...The Cleveland convention marks the most serious attempt to form a labor-based political party in America since the great political agitation of 100 years ago, which led a young railroad union leader named Eugene Victor Debs to confidently declare, "I am a Populist, and I favor wiping out both old parties so they will never come to power again...

...The convention adopted a platform packed with traditional appeals to working-class solidarity and calls for full employment, cradle-to-grave health care, higher taxes on the rich, a shorter work week, an end to Wall Street's abuse of trade policy, and the elimination of corporate-sponsored barriers to union organizing...

...Indeed, when the debate on electoral strategy opened, UE members arrayed themselves at virtually every microphone to make the case against running candidates...

...And the way we become an identifiable entity as a party is by running and endorsing candidates...

...This is what makes us different...

...Great...

...But we should be running candidates for the House of Representatives and for state and local offices...

...The question now is whether all of these people will still be committed to this thing next week or next year...

...There's either going to be zero or one progressive third party in this country," said Jim Cavanaugh, president of Wisconsin's South Central Federation of Labor...

...Bruce Bostick, a steelworker from Lorain, Ohio, walked out, saying, "This has been a nice gathering of the faithful, but it's not of any value...

...With successes under its belt, the Upstate Labor Party is a model of the sort of locally based initiative that many delegates were hoping the national Labor Party would allow, and indeed encourage...

...When local reporters asked him why he chose to avoid the convention, Sweeney said that 1996 is the wrong year to be talking about forming a Labor Party, and he criticized using union resources on the project...

...Among delegates from the three dozen LPA chapters around the country, the overwhelming sentiment favored an electoral strategy...

...Who are your candidates...

...This is what distinguishes us from the Democratic Party and all its compromises," said Jerome Joffe, a St...

...Let us look at the reality of what we have so far," said Phil Mamber, a retired UE member from Massachusetts, during the floor debate over whether to adopt an electoral strategy...

...But the timidity about electoral politics frustrated many delegates...

...Mazzocchi, and others hope to reach out io additional international unions, which have the resources that could ensure the party's long-term survival...

...Wages...

...I think the peo-pie here are smart enough and diverse enough and regionally distributed around the country enough that we might just have a shot at organizing a party...

...There is serious doubt about whether Sweeney believes the proper year for forming a Labor Party will ever come...

...Well, shame on us if we start splitting off or distracting our activists," Sweeney said...

...For some, the veto on electoral politics was just too much to stomach...

...Tony Mazzocchi, the veteran OCAW official who has been the prime mover behind Labor Party Advocates for seven years, frequently offered the explanation, "We have to learn to walk before we can run...

...A Labor Party is an excellent idea, but we can't wait twenty years...

...At that moment, on the second day of the convention that dropped the "A" from LPA and turned Labor Party Advocates into the Labor Party, it seemed as if the organization had found the first target for its electoral fury...

...That's an impressive roster, accounting for well over a million union members, and it clearly signals a level of union support for the Labor Party not achieved by any third-party effort since Henry Wallace's 1948 campaign...

...f Certainly, people who are disillusioned with the Democrats and Republicans have other options...

...They're afraid to break with the Democrats," said Pittsburgh's James Collins...

...But Wages quickly declared a victory for the non-electoral forces and moved on to other business...

...But the discipline of the UE and OCAW was such that the supporters of an electoral strategy could not expect to change the course of the convention...

...There's no question that people are ready for a new political direction," said Gary Huck, a labor cartoonist, who has long been a supporter of the Labor Party initiative...

...Here's a man elected with the blood, sweat, and tears of the labor movement, and now he's pissing down your leg...

...Even as the Labor Party delegates were meeting, Sweeney was in Cleveland, but chose not to make an appearance at the convention...

...Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) and the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE)—prevented the new party from adopting an electoral strategy...

...Labor gets it together (sort of) the Labor Party's approach to the ballot box was left distinctly ill-defined—much to the dismay of many delegates, as well as a broader progressive community that had looked to the Labor Party to challenge the increasingly indistinguishable parties of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole...

...There's no1 guarantee that we will ever run candidates," complained James Collins, a charJ ter member of LPA who took the lead in forming the group's Pittsburgh chapter...

...Brothers and Sisters, this has got to change...

...thing that's come down the pike in a long time," says Eric Hensal, a member of the sign-painters union and a leader of the Cleveland LPA chapter...

...another, the United Electrical Workers, still operates outside the labor federation...

...But Mazzocchi and other LPA leaders do not believe this is sufficient for entering the electoral fray...

...We are still a very small force within the overall labor movement...

...We're already doing it because we understand that there's a crying need to get people who are committed to a workers' agenda elected," explained Lembach...

...I think some of them would be entirely satisfied if LPA just became a pressure group within the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party...

...Labor Party organizers hope to appeal to relatively progressive major unions, such as the Service Employees, the Machinists, and the United Auto Workers—organizations that represent roughly three million workers...

...Indeed, one key union backing the Labor Party, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), only in recent years joined the AFL-CIO for the first time...

...There is some question about whether we've provided them with that direction...

...Attempts to form labor-based political organizations in the United States have traditionally floundered on the question of how best to merge the militancy of the street with the practical demands of the ballot box...

...Those with dissenting views found themselves waiting in line for twenty minutes or more...

...I'm not saying we have to run a candidate for President this year...

...And that's what happened in 1948, when left unions and the still-strong Communist Party backed former Vice President Henry Wallace's Progressive Party campaign...

...In Mazzocchi's view, a Labor Party must be constructed carefully over the long term to avoid the catastrophes that have occurred when small parties have launched big-ticket national campaigns prematurely, only to see their energy dissipate after a single election defeat...

...If I knock on your door and say, 'Hey, we've got a new party that's an alternative to the Republicans and the Democrats,' the response from the person at the door is going to be...

...Lembach has taken a lead in organizing a group called the Upstate Labor Party, which has already endorsed several winning candidates and is in the process of seeking ballot status in New York State...

...But this cautious approach diluted the politics of the convention...

...In fact, echoes of previous labor-based political initiatives reverberated throughout the Cleveland convention center— where one elderly delegate actually recalled hearing Debs speak three-quarters of a century before...

...With its decision not to run candidates for at least two years—and most likely longer—the convention told those American voters who hunger for an alternative that they will have to wait for political deliverance...

...Other delegates—including some of the chief proponents of independent, labor-based politics—embraced the slow-as-you-go approach...

...Instead, the party opted for a more obscure line committing it to "informed choice and unimpeded access to a full range of family-planning and reproductive services for men and women" Most of the unions currently backing the Labor Party initiative are relatively small progressive groups that have long tended to be critical of the AFL-CIO's tepid approach to political action...

...That was particularly obvious when the convention eschewed "hot-button issues," such as abortion rights...

...The Labor Party is still as good as any...

...And some delegates on the floor of the Cleveland convention wondered whether Wages, Mazzocchi, and other Labor Party leaders would ever agree to run electoral candidates, either...

...The Labor Party has to be an identifiable entity in our communities...

...By deciding against an electoral strategy, these people have made themselves irrelevant...

...We're either going to have to get together—LPA, New Party, Greens—or we're not going to succeed in winning this struggle...

...If we're serious about changing the direction of this country, we don't have that kind of time...

...More recently, new party initiatives— such as the People's Party of the early 1970s and the Citizen's Party of the early 1980s—failed because of their inability to appeal to core Democratic Party constituencies, most particularly organized labor...

...With that chant, 1,400 union members from across the country flexed a muscle that American political parties rarely use...

...What the leadership doesn't seem to realize is that, without an electoral strategy...

...In fact, no Democrat or Republican— no matter how foul—will have to worry about facing a Labor Party candidate any time soon...

...Let's face it— you ain't a party if you don't have candidates," said New York delegate Margaret Collins...

...The talk of how best to advance labor-based electoral politics seemed a little esoteric for John Lembach, an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union official from Rochester, New York, who listened to all the strategic debates with bemused detachment...

...When she declared, "We need to have political power, and the way you get political power is by electing people to legislate in your interests—not the interests of the bosses," she drew one of the loudest rounds of applause at the convention...

...Bloc voting by larger internationals killed an attempt by the California Nurses Association to give the new party a simple, unequivocal position on the issue: "The Labor Party supports safe and legal abortion...

...But John Nichols, an editorial writer for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, covers electoral politics for The Progressive...

...We came here as delegates to found a political party—not a pressure group," added Connie White, a legal secretary from Los Angeles...

...When the convention took a voice vote on the leadership's plan for a nonelectoral strategy, the room seemed to be evenly divided—with most UE and OCAW delegates backing the non-electoral approach while ILWU and chapter delegates took the opposite stance...

...Bloc voting by the two international unions that have provided much of the energy and working capital for the Labor Party initiative—the Oil...