Inside LabourStart

LabourStart editor Eric Lee meeting Bernie Sanders and Larry Sanders in Philadelphia.

I spent the last couple of weeks in the United States, mostly attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, I managed to do a few LabourStart tasks:

TURKEY:

Following the abortive military coup and the increase of repression, I contacted our comrades in Turkey as well as a couple of global union federations about a campaign. So far, there has not been any interest.

DISK did issue a statement, which we publicized widely. We’ve also given extensive publicity to statements issued by global unions about the situation in Turkey.

A request came in for another Turkey campaign, unrelated to the coup. However, it appears to be an internal union dispute, so we will not pursue this.

I followed up with the International Federation of Journalists, which has launched an online effort in support of Turkish journalists, and they are considering working with us on a campaign.

AFP campaign:

I sent out the campaign mailing in additional languages. I also added a link to the LabourRadio interview. I did a followup email to English list; the campaign had 4,289 supporters; the follow-up mailing went out to 74,008 people. As a result, the campaign now has 5,341, a gain of over 1,000 people. It remains, however, a small campaign.

SFI campaign:

At the request of BWI, we’ve launched another campaign in support of forestry workers in Malaysia. It has 3,367 supporters as of today and appears in 9 languages with more coming. Our mailing also promoted the IUF’s current campaign on India, which has received a boost due to our effort. I publicized this campaign on Facebook and Twitter and sent out mailings promoting it in a number of languages.

Uzbekistan campaign:

As three months have now passed, I’d asked for permission to close this down. It’s our largest current campaign with well over 10,000 supporters.

USA:

I offered LabourStart’s help with a Philadelphia airport workers campaign. The strike however was settled on the eve of the Democratic Convention.

I’ve informed the Workers Independent News Service that I’ll not be submitting additional “Working World” broadcasts as I did for several months this year.