Archive for the 'Organized Labor' Category

Soon-to-be Gov. Steve Beshear can transform how the world sees Kentucky and how Kentuckians see themselves

Matt Gunterman November 5th, 2007

Yesterday morning a German friend emailed me to say that The New York Times Sunday travel section was running a feature on the finer qualities of bourbon and bluegrass in Kentucky.

He’s read much about Kentucky lately, and it’s intriguing him. Just last week, both the London-based Guardian newspaper and The American Prospect magazine ran pieces on the growth of progressive culture and politics in Kentucky. These follow in the wake of Bob Moser’s monumental cover story on Kentucky for The Nation in September.

When Terence Samuel, who authored the Guardian and TAP articles, interviewed me, he made the comment, “Everyone’s talking about Kentucky.”

People around the world are talking about Kentucky because — right here, right now — Kentuckians are offering them hope. In us they see the potential that the American spirit that has inspired so many generations of the past is finally awakening and is ready to take on the wicked specter that is the creation of hate- and fear-mongers like Pres. George W. Bush (R), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), and Rep. Stan Lee (R).

They see it in the workers who are out canvassing neighborhoods today. They see it in the peace demonstrators who are agitating to end a senseless war. They see it in the families who are fighting for their children’s health care. They see it in the crusade to protect and restore our environment. They see it in people of faith who are standing up to the bigots and bullies who have dominated Kentucky pulpits for too long.

The evidence is all around that something is happening in Kentucky, and the world is hungry for that something to be a people who are innovative, bold, tolerant, and progressive.

There is not a thing about McConnell, Fletcher, or Lee that’s any of those things. They are instead calculating, rigid, bullying, and conservative.

Soon-to-be Governor-elect Steve Beshear (D) will have the opportunity to communicate to the world what the new Kentucky is all about.

Ernie Fletcher saw “selling” Kentucky as a mere re-branding exercise. Nothing of the substance changed, and the discerning public could see through that. Fletcher’s take on “unbridled spirit” was anything but.

But Beshear can change the substance because he is not beholden to the baser elements of Kentucky society; his opponent will win the vote of every sort of bigot our state has to offer. With Kentucky’s urban center of Louisville poised to enter a sort of renaissance (barring the next Bush recession undermining its growth), Kentucky can become part of a new face for the United States to the rest of the world, one that is dynamic and provocative, welcoming and welcomed.

Kentucky can’t move forward on jobs, education, or other quality of life issues if it doesn’t tackle those elements of its culture that are holding the state back, and Beshear is well positioned to change the conversation and move down a different path.

Quoted (in muddled fashion) in my favorite paper

Matt Gunterman October 30th, 2007

When I lived in Glasgow in 2001-02, one of my favorite morning pleasures was picking up a copy of The Guardian on my way to the coffee shop before heading into the dark recesses of the library for a good day’s work. (Of course, since it’s Scotland, for much of the year anyway, everywhere is a dark recess.) I loved this time with that paper; it was like nothing I’d ever seen before (this was, of course, before the rise of the blogosphere).

So, you can imagine I was tickled to find in my email inbox this morning a Google Alert that had a quote from me [albeit a little muddled in the online edition]. Lots of people get quoted in The Guardian everyday, but it’s nice to be a small part of a narrative that you’re proud of and that you feel will make a difference — that difference being the defeat of the American conservative bile and bigotry that not only infects our nation’s politics and culture, but adversely affects the lives of so many millions around the world.

One of the biggest players in this election cycle in Kentucky towards the defeat of the conservative machine has been organized labor. Their level of commitment and, appropriately, organization, is amazing; they are not sitting down as Republicans rip apart the shared American prosperity that’s taken generations to build.

The humiliating defeat of candidates like Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) and Rep. Stan Lee (R) for attorney general next week will send a strong — and encouraging — message to the rest of the nation and world that a healthy majority of Kentuckians are ready to fight the intellectual filth, churlish bigotry, and general idiocy of the Kentucky GOP and its conservative ranks.

We are beginning the process of pushing social conservatives to the margins of our society, where there delusions can no longer harm the middle class, workers, children, students, ethnic and sexual minorities, or the elderly.