Team Joe email seeks donations, but not for their guy
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
I get a ton of emails from candidates wanting money. I just got my first one seeking cash, but not for a campaign war chest.
Joe Biden wants you to donate to the NAACP to help support its "work to bring justice for George Floyd and the countless other Black lives that have been cut short by systemic racism today."
If you can't afford to donate, the email urges, "please join the fight in any way you can. You can sign the NAACP’s petition to demand justice for George Floyd here."
Adds the email, "We are bearing witness to a moment in history during which our very character as Americans is being called into question -- as it should be. Because when a police officer murders a black man on camera, in front of God and the entire world, people have the right to ask a whole lot of questions."
"When is this going to stop? What’s it going to take? When will we say we’ve had enough? The truth is it gets harder to answer these questions every time something like this happens.
"Because it should have been enough when Trayvon Martin was killed. Sandra Bland. Philando Castile. Ahmaud Arbery. Atatiana Jefferson. And so many more.
"The heartbreaking, shameful fact is that there are countless other Black Americans throughout history whose deaths have come as a result of systemic racism. One life lost should have been enough. So we must do more than say we have had enough -- we must put something behind our words.
"We’ve got to speak, act, work, and vote like we’ve had enough. What we do in this moment in history will define us, and we must all answer this call to action."
The AFL-CIO endorsed Biden. “Joe Biden is a lifelong supporter of workers and has fought his entire career for living wages, health care, retirement security and civil rights,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Our members know Joe has done everything he could to create a fairer process for forming and joining a union, and he is ready to fight with us to restore faith in America and improve the lives of all working people.”
An AFL-CIO news release said that "Over the next five months, the labor movement will draw a clear contrast between Biden and President Donald Trump. Trump’s record of slashing rules designed to protect us on the job, cutting workplace health and safety inspectors to their lowest level in history, and taking away overtime pay from millions of workers are just a few ways working people have been hurt by the current administration. Worse yet, America’s working families and communities are suffering because of Trump’s delinquent, delayed, disorganized and deadly response to the coronavirus."