It is a dirty little secret, but often times the more virulently anti-union employers are religious orders that run health systems.  Such is the situation with the Sisters of St. Joseph who run the St. Joseph Health System.  They have been resisting the efforts of their service employees to join SEIU-UHW for the past three years.

SEIU-UHW is organizing a series of events this week in support of their organizing efforts.  Today Delores Huerta of the United Farm Workers wrote a HuffPost piece on the struggle.

This week I’m joining St. Joseph Health System workers, Attorney General Jerry Brown, Father Eugene Boyle, actor Ed Begley Jr, and community and religious leaders to call upon the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange to make peace with their workers.

For decades, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange have fought for justice for California’s workers. In the summer of 1973, they marched in solidarity with Cesar Chavez and farm workers during the brutal Grape Strike. I witnessed the Sisters putting their personal safety at risk. They walked picket lines and even went to jail with more than 3500 striking farm workers. I was inspired by the Sisters’ commitment to stand with the farm workers, even in the face of violent provocation.

But now, these same sisters are refusing to show their own workers the same justice they once fought for.

Flip it for more and a video.

When I write that the nuns are resisting the organizing, I mean it.  They have been using heavy-handed and it appears illegal tactics to stop their employees from forming a union.  Workers have been threatened that they will lose their jobs is they continue to push for a union.  Delores Huerta writes:

Public records show that SJHS has hired some of the most notorious union-busting firms to fight their employees. Meanwhile, government officials have cited SJHS for violating its employees’ basic labor rights, including illegally firing, spying on, and intimidating workers who want to form a union. These heavy-handed tactics leave workers feeling threatened, intimidated and disregarded.

How can the Sisters support farm workers’ efforts to form a union, but fight their own employees for seeking this same basic right? Is there such a big difference between the people who feed us and the people who heal us? Clearly, there is not.

It is great to see a community coming together to support the workers, including Huerta nad Jerry Brown.  More importantly at least IMHO, 20 former members of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s wrote a letter to the current members, urging them to find peace with their service employees.  Here is a video of the delivery of that letter to the nuns.  No, they did not come receive the letter personally.

We have all come a long ways in the past three years since Calitics was founded and I moved out to California.  Nowhere is that more evident than Netroots Nation, where we as a community, a movement and a power source get together to  learn, inspire and build relationships.

I was just talking to Gina Cooper, who while exhausted was beaming, talking about being up on the stage with Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Gore.  One of my brother’s business partners and all around good guy Josh Koenig came up to say hi.  He has a good friend looking to volunteer for the No on Prop. 8, Equality for All campaign and asked if I could help point him in the right direction.  I’m my role as Online Director for the Courage Campaign I have been working with the campaign the past few months on their online outreach and know just who to tell him to talk to.

As soon as Josh, left Gina turned at me and simultaneously mocked and marveled that I said of course I knew just who Josh’s friend should talk to.  For when we first met a few years ago there was no way I would know the major players in a fight like that and was just another young politico looking for my opportunity to break.  I was an aspiring online organizer in a field that just barely was starting to exist.  And Gina, well, a few years ago she was a teacher in Tennesse and now was a leader up on the stage with Speaker Pelosi and VP Gore.

Years ago I would have been excited just to shake a politician’s hand.  This year Gavin Newsom is here trying to suck up to me.  And Debra Bowen greets me with a hug.  It is surreal, but wonderful.  And it is indicative of how our movement has grown.

These conventions are never about what is said on a panel.  It is all about the relationships we start and build with fellow bloggers, staffers and candidates in the halls, at the parties and in the lobby.  After three years I have friends I only see once or twice a year, but work with on a regular basis.  So that whenever some right-wingnut says something offensive on the radio, I know just who to talk to at Media Matters.  Or when we have a hot juicy story I know which Daily Kos front pager to email.  Or when I need to know when the Senate is in session I know which Hill staffer to call.

As strange as it is, Netroots Nation is one of the few times a year when the Calitics crew gets together in person, whether it is in Las Vegas, Chicago or Austin.  We may talk on a daily basis, but is it is Netroots Nation where we get to be better friends and better colleagues.  So to my boys (in no particular order): Dave, Brian, Todd, Robert, Bob and Lucas, not to mention Beth and Shayera, I am honored to be your friend and colleague.  We have done so much together, but have so far to go.  

See ya in my hometown Pittsburgh next year.  But first we have to marry two of our own in September.  Oh yeah and that little thing called the DNC in August.

To three years of Calitics and three years of Netroots Nation.  May the next three find you more powerful, more employed and better friends.  I couldn’t ask for a better community.

I’m super excited about Netroots Nation tomorrow.  And I am very much looking forward to the panel I am on Friday morning (10:30 am Ballroom F) titled: “Middle class isn’t middle of the road: Take politicians’ populist shpeil and make it real”.  

David Sirota, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute and David Goldstein, of Horse’s Ass will also be on it.  The panel will be moderated by Elana Levin, the Assistant Director of Communications for UNITE HERE.

Here is the description.

We know that populism wins elections, but once a politician wins how do we make sure that pro-middle class policies are actually implemented? Blue Dogs and the media conflate being pro-middle class with being “centrist”.

The debt stricken, under-insured public’s realization that their personal economic struggles are really political struggles presents an opportunity for lasting progressive change. Barack Obama’s agenda includes healthcare and transportation among other investments in our country that the middle class needs– but these aren’t free. How can the netroots mobilize to make it politically possible to pass Obama’s domestic agenda in a Grover Norquist-shaped world?

For my part, I plan on focusing on the California budget fight and using the Yacht Party campaign as an example of how we can attack the right to help advance progressive policies that help the middle class.  California is very much a lab for progressive politics and we have a unique opportunity here to actually advocate for higher taxes to pay for programs.  The public is amenable to increasing revenue and there is no better time to promote our agenda than now when we are at a crisis stage and the other side is advancing proposals that the public does not support.  Flip it.

A lot of this may be old hat to regular Calitcs readers, but for those who are not I want to talk about the structural reasons that have lead us to this opportunity and how we can be productive as members of the netroots in this fight.

California has a structural budget deficit.  By that I mean we have set spending that is greater than what we take in.  That is true even during a good year.

When we have a bad year like this one it grows into a huge gaping hole.  We are somewhere around $15 billion at this point, though that changes depending on how bad the revenues really are into the state’s coffers.  

California has done so much ballot box budgeting and formulaic allocating of funding that there is actually a really limited amount of programs that we can actually cut.  Those are mostly social welfare programs, things that aid the poor, provide assistance and health care.  Why is it that those programs are vulnerable?

A) There is not much of a support structure to advocate for them.  Quite frankly the poor/middle class just don’t have that big of a voice in Sacramento.  B) This is related to A, but they have not passed an initiative to protect their funding.

The result is that the most vulnerable are most vulnerable during a budget deficit to cuts.  So they have been cut and cut some more and cut some more over the past few years.  Before we used to say that we were cutting muscle after having gotten rid of the fat, but now we are into the bone.

Our Democratic legislators want to increase revenues to help pay for spending and eliminate the structural budget deficit.  81% of the public (Field pdf) says that we will have to increase taxes to resolve the current deficit.  They don’t like paying taxes and wish that others would pay for the increases, not them, but they don’t really want to see cuts to programs.  In fact the program they would like to see cut the most, Prisons & Corrections doesn’t even get majority support, with only 47% saying to reduce spending.

So why is it that it is so hard to pass tax increases given the general public support for the Democratic world-view?

Chalk that up to the two 2/3rds rules.  Our legislature is dysfunctional for many reasons, but the two biggest are the 2/3rds support requirement to pass a budget and 2/3rds to increase taxes.

The Republicans refuse on principle to increasing revenue and we need their votes to do it.  The Democrats finally seem to have dug their heels in and are refusing to pass a budget that is all cuts as we have done before.  That is why we are several weeks into the new fiscal year and do not have a budget.

In a few weeks the state will run out of money and things will go from bad to worse, particularly this year since the borrowing that many groups have done in the past will not be an option due to the credit crunch.  It is in short a big freaking disaster.

But is is a disaster that Californians are aware of but are not particularly engaged on.  So the question for folks like myself who want to ensure that the budget that is passed does not hurt the middle class and the poor is how do we engage the public when they generally agree with us, but aren’t that into it.

The answer that Calitics and the Courage Campaign came up with was mockery and using one obscure tax increase to make a larger point about the budget.

The Democratic leadership started pushing for increased revenue with the so-called yacht tax loophole.  If you stash your boat or airplane out of the state for 90 days, you don’t have to pay sales tax.  Closing the loophole would bring in a fairly minimal amount of money, $25 million or so a year.

But that wasn’t the point.  The point was to make the Republican’s position ridiculous, to find a way to engage Californians in the budget debate.

Someone on Calitics dubbed the Republican Party as the Yacht Party.  Dave Dayen produced a spoof video and the Courage Campaign turned it into two different television ads with the support of several unions, legislators and our members to air on television.

These videos and the whole Yacht Party frame were never going to be the end-all-be-all in the budget negotiations.  However, for the first time the netroots, labor, and legislators were working together to attack the Republicans and advance a progressive economic argument.  The campaign reached outside of the relatively small world of the blogosphere and progressive activists to the general public.  The videos were easily accessible and compelling enough to engage them in what is a very boring topic, the state budget deficit.

It was a relatively small scale campaign for California standards, but it showed a lot of promise for future collaborations.  While the blogosphere has cut its teeth working on legislative campaigns, it is important that we continue to learn how to help pass progressive legislation and take it from shpeil to reality.

Sec. Bowen just announced that she has assigned numbers for the boatload of initiatives that will be on the ballot in November.

So get used to these numbers.  You are going to be seeing these a lot on this website, your TV screen and your mailbox.  We need to refine the shorthand for these initiatives.  This admittedly a quick pass at it.  The framing needs to be tweaked and I am sure there will be some argument within the progressive left about these initiatives.

Prop. 1 High Speed Rail

Prop 2 Treatment of Farm Animals

Prop 3 Children’s Hospital Bond

Prop 4 Parental Notification

Prop 5 Parole and Rehab of Nonviolent Offenders

Prop 6 Tough on Crime

Prop 7 Renewable Energy

Prop 8 Take Away Marriage Equality

Prop 9 Victims Rights and Parole

Prop 10 Alternative Fuels and Renewable Energy Bonds

Prop 11 Redistricting

The sham “compromise” on FISA is now being considered in the in House.  After all of this time fighting to make sure the telecom companies don’t get immunity, it is extremely frustrating and disheartening to see the leadership cave to the Bush administration.  There was absolutely no need to do it.  We could have run out the clock until Bush was out of office.

It is heartening to hear from my Rep, who rarely seems to step out with her own strong voice on FISA.  Here is the statement from Rep. Doris Matsui on FISA.

I believe firmly that liberty and security are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they go hand in hand.  It is in celebration of our civil liberties that we fight to secure our nation and preserve our way of life.  In the absence of the liberties and values that we hold most dear, we lose a piece of our national identity and a small piece of the heart of our country.

That is why I must, in good conscience, vote against the FISA legislation before the House today.   The structure of the bill chips away at the bedrock of our liberties.  It is exactly times like these when we must pause, study our national discourse, and make a choice to take a principled stand against the erosion of the principles we cherish.

This is not a partisan battle, although many have fought to make it one.  It is a fight for the right of every American citizen to be free of oppression and the infringement of their personal privacy.  I am saddened that we could not reach a compromise that preserved these rights while still allowing our law enforcement professionals broad latitude to do their jobs.

Granting too much power and oversight to one branch of government shakes the very foundation of our country.  While the spirit of compromise and reasoned debate are often the best tools in a democracy, there are unalienable rights which cannot be compromised. and these rights are the reason I cannot support this legislation.

If people have other good statements on FISA from CA Reps, please throw them in this thread/diary.

[UPDATE by Dave]: On the other hand, these 11 CA Reps., who voted to provide amnesty for lawbreaking and allow illegal spying, have no conscience whatsoever, no understanding of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, and are a complete embarrassment to the Democratic Party and should be kindly asked to leave.

Baca

Berman

Cardoza

Costa

Harman

McNerney

Pelosi

Richardson

Schiff

Sherman

Tauscher

If you can’t stand up for Constitutional rights and civil liberties, you are worthless and contemptible.  And stop asking me for money.  And don’t expect a warm reception if you should ever come around here to apologize.

Yes, we are an ATM for the presidential candidates.  They come here and take our money and rarely actually campaign.  That is unlikely to change, but that does not mean that we have not seen a big difference in how Obama worked this state as compared to his predecessors and competitors.  He has hit the holy grail, which Dean scratched the surface on back in 2004.  The combination of small donor, highly active volunteers and new Silicon Valley cash has fueled his volunteer run offices and campaign activities in other states.

Jose Antonio Vargas has an wonderful profile of an Obama delegate Linnie Bailey, a supervolunteer and political neophyite who ended up running GOTV operations in CA-44.  He follows her from her first $10 donation to running an official campaign office.

One Saturday morning in early November, she drove 30 minutes north to attend a Camp Obama meeting at a storefront church. She had read about the event online. Organized by Obama staffers, Camp Obama is Politics 101 for volunteers, where they learn the value of phone-banking, the goals of precinct captains and how to register new voters. About 25 people attended — young and old, black, white and Latino. When she introduced herself to the group, “Hi, I’m Linnie,” a few recognized her name.

She left the meeting tasked by Obama staffers as the “area coordinator” in charge of Corona. Working with Jose Medina, 55, the area coordinator in nearby Riverside, she scheduled an informal meeting of those from the two cities at a Barnes & Noble the following Wednesday. She posted it on BarackObama.com. They expected 10 people. About 20 showed up.

After the meeting, Medina, a fixture in the local political scene who teaches Chicano studies at Riverside Polytechnic High School, suggested they run as Obama delegates for the convention. She agreed. Outside the bookstore, they shook hands on it.

The period between December and February was, in Bailey’s words, “a complete whirlwind.” She was so effective in organizing meetings, attending rallies and networking that Jocelyn Anderson, an Obama staffer overseeing southern California, asked Bailey to be a “regional field organizer.” “Here’s the thing about Linnie,” Anderson says. “She was always on overdrive and she never said no.”

Now Bailey is hard at work a running voter registration program.  She is in a heavily Latino area, bringing new voters to the Democratic party and Barack Obama.  Oh and she is planning a run at her local community college board of trustees seat.  That is a legacy that will last well after Novemeber.

The flip side of the equasion are all of the new big money people Obama has been able to bring in.  The Chronicle today notes that if Northern California was a state, we would be the forth in the nation in dollars donated to presidential candidates.  This is the year of the love affair between the Silicon Valley and Barack Obama.  Six out of the top 10 zip codes for fundraising in CA are in NorCal.  (flip it)

“It’s not that Southern California is giving less, it’s that Northern California is giving more” said Anthony Corrado Jr., a professor of government at Colby College in Maine, who specializes in campaign finance. “Silicon Valley has become much more engaged, and the new technologies of social networking and Internet-giving have made Northern California much more involved.”

Josh Green at the Atlantic, who I admittedly really enjoy has an article on the Obama fundraising machine and describes it as a Silicon Valley startup that naturally attracted Silicon Valley donors.

Meanwhile, the Obama machine rolls on, to the delight of its early stakeholders. “They’ve gone from zero to 700 employees in a year and raised $200 million,” Steve Spinner says of the campaign. “That’s a super-high-growth, fast-charging operation.”

It’s also one whose growth curve is coming into sharper focus. The Obama campaign has not yet assumed a place in Silicon Valley lore alongside Apple, Google, and Facebook. But a few more months could change that. The hottest start-up in the Valley right now won’t make anybody rich, but it might put the next president in the White House.

Barack Obama was new to most Americans when he entered the presidential race, in February 2007. But he was familiar to Silicon Valley in at least one way: like a hot Internet start-up in the glory years, he had great buzz, a compelling pitch, and no money to back it up. He wasn’t anybody’s obvious bet to succeed, not least because the market for a Democratic nominee already had its Microsoft.

New Silicon Valley bundlers stepped up and helped raise the other half of Obama’s money, from people giving more than $100 at a time.  They were drawn to him for the same reasons why they give 20 year olds millions of dollars to run with a bright idea: they have a vision and experience is often times the exact opposite of what you need when you are trying something new and different.

Furthermore, in Silicon Valley’s unique reckoning, what everyone else considered to be Obama’s major shortcomings-his youth, his inexperience-here counted as prime assets.

I asked Roos, the personification of a buttoned-down corporate attorney, if there had been concerns about Obama’s limited CV, and for a moment he looked as if he might burst out laughing. “No one in Silicon Valley sits here and thinks, ‘You need massive inside-the-Beltway experience,'” he explained, after a diplomatic pause. “Sergey and Larry were in their early 20s when they started Google. The YouTube guys were also in their 20s. So were the guys who started Facebook. And I’ll tell you, we recognize what great companies have been built on, and that’s ideas, talent, and inspirational leadership.”

As Jane Hamshire wrote on HuffPo, “forget what Clinton did wrong.  What did Obama do right?”

He may have lost the primary here, but he got way more out of California than a few delegates.  The Obama campaign created new activists and donors large and small.  He will activate them through the fall and the big question is how much will they build on the Dean legacy of continued political activeness like Linnie Bailey is planning to do.

Ok, I think some people may have some random things to say and no thread to say them in as we wait for the CA polls to close.

I will start.  Good lord McCain put up a stinker today.  The advance job was terrible.  The old white man candidates, spoke roboticly to a lackluster all white crowd waving all white signs.

And yes we finally have a nominee.  Let the healing and unifying begin.

[UPDATE] FYI Charlie Brown will be liveblogging at FDL tonight starting around 8 PM.

[UPDATE by Dave] OK, this is hilarious.

He literally swept McCain off the screen.  Talk about your foreshadowing.

I expect that we would see a surge in Democratic registration due to the presidential primary, but did not think it would be quite this good.  We now have reversed the trend of dropping our share due to the rise of the DTS stats and have a greater share of the electorate registered as Democrats now, compared to four years ago.  It is small, but compared to the dwindling Republican numbers it is impressive.

Keep in mind that voters did not have to register as Democrats to participate in the Democratic primary.

The overall voter registration numbers have grown to 16.1 million, a growth of a million voters since the 2004 primary.  The growth actually increased the percentage of eligible voters who are registered to vote from 68.96% in 2004 to 70% now.

This really would be better in a formal table, but I just grabbed it from Secretary Bowen’s press release. Fixed by Brian.

It’s time for some random links and a good ole fashioned open thread.

• Rather than having a blog, Capitol Weekly decided to post an email thread between the beloved around these parts Steve Maviglio and his counterpart in the SenateAssembly Morgan Crinklaw.  Steve naturally starts his first response by paraphrasing an old SNL skits and calls Morgan an “ignorant slut”. (Note: Morgan’s employer corrected)
• Another gay victory from the CA Supremes.  No longer can doctors refuse to treat us because we are gay and their religion does not approve.
• Paid sick leave for all! Ok, it has only passed the Assembly, but it is cause to celebrate.
• McClintock decided to be a whiney brat and refused to show up to the last debate with Doug Ose.  About 180 well paying guests didn’t get the smackdown show they had paid good money to attend.  McClintock’s excuse was that the also rans were not invited, that and he is sulking about Ose’s attack ads.
• The AFT just informed the Mt. Shasta Brewing Co., based in Weed, CA that they can no longer use bottle caps that read “Try Legal Weed”.  Evidently, alluding to marijuana on beer is not allowed.  The town is named after a dude named Abner Weed and has nothing to do with pot.

That’s all I got.  Any FP’ers who feel inspired, go ahead and add to this thread.

The Black Key’s new album rocks.  Here is “Strange Times”