Local Labor Organizers Make Swing State Push

Local labor organizer Charlie Delgado returned to an apartment complex in ​“the slums of Miami” looking for a voter named Robert.

He had an important message to deliver: Robert’s fines related to a past felony conviction had been paid off, and, unbeknownst to him, Robert could vote in this year’s election.

Delgado shared that voter outreach story Tuesday afternoon during a virtual Zoom press conference hosted by New Haven Rising and UNITE HERE’s local union chapters.

Many of the vote-pullers usually racing through New Haven streets on Election Day are in more competitive battlegrounds this presidential year.

New Haven Rising leader Scott Marks said that the labor coalition has sent 10 New Haveners to Florida, 60 New Haveners to Philadelphia, and 500 New Haveners to the phones to make calls to voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Nevada in the roughly two months running up to Tuesday’s election.

All as part of a union-wide push to swing key swing states — and their hotly contested Electoral College votes — away from Republican incumbent Presidenti Donald Trump and towards Democratic challenger, former Vice-President Joe Biden.

Another 90 New Haveners affiliated with the local labor groups have also spent the past few weeks knocking doors for Democrats in various contested races closer to home, including in re-election bids by New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield, Danbury State Sen. Julie Kushner, and Hartford State Rep. Matt Ritter.

Overall, Marks (pictured) said, UNITE HERE has 2,300 people pounding the pavement, knocking doors, talking with voters, and coming up with voting plans in Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada.

“Trump and his party have failed our country, have failed New Haven, and have failed UNITE HERE,” Marks said. ​“His failure to control Covid-19 has killed many folks.” Just yesterday, Marks said, he lost his own aunt to the novel coronavirus. ​“We need a different direction.”

Local 35 President Bob Proto (pictured), who heads Yale’s blue-collar union, agreed. ​“If we learned anything in the past four years, it’s that racism is very much alive. Anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-union. There is so much division going on in this country.”

Proto described the culture of UNITE HERE as a simple one. ​“Outwork the people that are haters, that are racist, that are anti-union, that will try to keep workers down, that will try to undermine organizing rights.”

Fines Paid In Florida

Delgado’s story pointed to that persistence Proto said the local union and labor organizers take pride in in New Haven.

Delgado said he’s leading a team of 12 volunteers in Miami this year. They’ve been targeting people who have not voted since 2008, when they last cast a ballot for former President Barack Obama.

He said the labor organizers are working in conjunction with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which, among other services, helps pay for fines and fees that prevent people with felony convictions from being able to vote in the Sunshine State.

Delgado said that his most recent visit to Robert’s apartment was not his first. He had tried before, to no avail.

When he finally found him, Delgado told him that his fines were all cleared.

“He did not know that he could vote,” he said. ​“We had given him a golden ticket.”

Delgado recalled telling Robert, ​“Your fines are paid off. You don’t owe anything. All I need you to do is go vote.”

“That meant something to him,” he remembered. He said the man began to cry, and Delgado teared up in response.

“We are beating Trump in Florida by enfranchising voters who have been denied a basic political right to vote.”

New Haven-Philadelphia Connection

Marks and fellow New Haven Rising and UNITE HERE member Jess Corbett (pictured) have spent the past few weeks in Philadelphia, particularly in predominantly Black and working-class neighborhoods on the west and north sides of the city.

Marks said the struggles he has seen people in North Philadelphia going through are near identical to the ones he sees in New Haven every day.

“There were back-to-back shootings on the block over” from where one group of canvasses were, he said. ​“The average income here is $14,000 a year.”

He said New Haven and Philadelphia — and many cities around the country — have seen upticks in violence that he believes is directly related to the economic hardship and mass layoffs related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I don’t think things will ever bee the same,” he said.

Corbett said he recently met at the doors an undecided voter in West Philadelphia.

Corbett told the man about his own upbringing in New Haven, raised by a single mom who was able to achieve a middle class life for her family because of her union job.

“He also has a single mom,” Corbett said. ​“We talked about the struggles of single moms in getting by.” And they spoke about Trump, and what they saw as the little his presidency has done to help working-class people.

“He promised to vote,” Corbett said. ​“And I told him I would text him, call him, and bother him today” to make sure he got to the polls. ​“This is how the election is going to be won.”

A Last-Minute Call To A Las Vegas Undecided Voter

Local 33 Co-President Lena Eckert-Erdheim (pictured), who co-leads Yale’s graduate teacher-student union, said that since August she has coordinated a phone banking operation that has had union members, family, friends, and other interested New Haveners make over 50,000 calls to four swing states.

“We are turning out voters for Biden-Harris,” she said, by helping people make plans for how to vote, making sure they have rides to the polls, and talking through candidate positions and voters’ top policy priorities.

She said two stories stick out to her in particular as emblematic of the transformative influence that phone banking can have on voter turnout.

One of the volunteers she oversees spoke with a 102-year-old man in Florida, she said, and the two made a plan on the very last day of Florida’s early voting to ensure that he could cast his ballot.

They stayed on the phone together, looked up his voting location, and made sure he had a ride.

Another volunteer from New Haven, she said, called an undecided voter in Las Vegas as she was on her way to the polls. The Las Vegas woman said that she did not know who to vote for and was praying for a sign when she received the phone banker’s call.

“They spoke for 20 minutes,” she said. Those are the types of deep conversations that trained organizers and volunteers are able to have.