After Defeating Democrats, Will Ohio Unionists Form a New Labor Party?
X post in Labor & Socialist-Progressive
And this DU post from 2011:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1812319
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17227/defeat_democrats_independent_labor_party_ohio_lorain_county_unionists
Three independent city council members backed by unions won city council seats in Lorain, Ohio. What's next? (angelfire.com/mi2/LorainOhio/)
The relationship between the American labor movement and the Democratic Party has long been fairly predictable. For the better part of a century, labor has depended on the Democrats for favorable policy, and the Democrats have depended on labor for votes. Few from either side of the bargain anticipate an immediate future where that arrangement will be upset.
So when rumblings started coming out of Ohio late last year about breaking with the Democrats, many in the labor movement were startled. Last November, in the small county of Lorain, Ohio, local labor leaders who were intimately wedded to the Democratic establishment broke rank and supported three independent pro-labor candidates in county elections, all of whom won.
The act of rebellion in a union-dense county gained national attention as a story of labor flexing its musclesand winningagainst a Democratic establishment drifting rightward.
Considering Lorain along with the election of Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, the first socialist in decades to be elected to public office in a major American city, Jennifer Roesch wrote for Jacobin after last years elections that for the first time since 2000, there is a space opening up in mainstream politics to the left of the Democratic Party.
FULL story at link.