I walked the avenue, ’til my legs felt like stone, I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone, At night I could hear the blood in my veins, Just as black and whispering as the rain, On the streets of Philadelphia – Bruce Springsteen, 1993
– Of course I will vote for Kamala! Why? Because she is on the team with the unions. She is not opposed to us, as Trump is, says Dave.
Wearing a trade union sweater with a clear message to vote for the union-friendly alternative, he is one of a few hundred workers in Philadelphia who are organizing the very last election campaign event for the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. On Monday evening, up to 100,000 listeners were expected when Harris ended the election campaign with a rally here in the largest city in Pennsylvania – the most important of the seven much-discussed swing states.
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Pennsylvania is the fifth most populous state in the United States with around 13 million inhabitants. Philadelphia is by far the largest city in the state with its 1.6 million inhabitants. The state is far to the east in the USA, and Philadelphia is only about an hour’s train ride away from Penn Station in the middle of New York City.
We are deeply concerned that Trump will pursue a policy that favors the CEOs, not the unions
In 2016, Donald Trump won the state by just over 40,000 votes, and he also won the presidential election. In 2020, it was the Democrats’ Joe Biden who won the state by a margin of 80,000 votes. And Biden also won the election with that.
In fact, no Democrat has won the presidential election without winning Pennsylvania since Harry S. Truman in 1948 lost Pennsylvania but was still elected president by a wide margin.
Since the state has so much to say about the election outcome, no other state has received more visits from the two candidates in the election campaign either. It is therefore not unexpected that Kamala Harris ends her campaign right here in Philadelphia.
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But when you walk around Philadelphia on the Sunday before the election, it’s not as if campaigning is brewing on every corner. The cityscape is characterized more by the fact that the city’s NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles, will play a home game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The green Eagles uniforms can be seen on every street corner. There is more space between the Kamala jerseys, and the signature red Trump caps are barely visible at all.
The city of Philadelphia is a democratic bastion. The blue ones are the biggest here, and since up to 15 percent of the inhabitants of Pennsylvania live here, the vote numbers are very important for the election outcome. Now it is therefore about getting as many people as possible in the city here to use the right to vote.
In order to achieve that, the trade union movement has been strongly involved. The local branch of what is equivalent to the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) in Norway, AFL-CIO, has actively participated in the election campaign. In addition to using their own social media, they have prioritized door-knocking and phoning members to mobilize as many people as possible to vote.
The AFL has also gone through the candidates’ programme, and they have found clear differences that will affect the unions’ work in the coming presidential term. According to the AFL, Kamala Harris is on the team of American unionized workers, and they emphasize that she should have supported strikes and actions even before she became vice president.
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Her policies have brought new workers into the union, improved their pensions, helped younger workers and secured members higher wages, the local AFL union in Philadelphia claims. They are far more critical of Trump. The AFL believes he has put forward many proposals that are in line with what the big companies want – including cuts in wages, overtime pay, pensions and health and safety work.
– If Donald Trump becomes president, we are deeply concerned that he will pursue a policy that favors the executives, not the unions, writes the AFL-CIO, which summarizes as follows: There is a big difference between the two presidential candidates, and the outcome of the election may have major consequences for our trade unions.
Pennsylvania is a diverse state. At each end are metropolitan regions with millions of inhabitants and important suburban voters. The cities are usually won by the Democrats, while Trump is clearly most popular in the villages and small towns in the middle of the state.
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For Harris, the most important voter base is young people, minority voters and women. Pennsylvania used to be a major industrial state, but since the 1970s this sector has declined. At the same time, it has many features of the new United States: rapidly growing Latin American and Asian populations, and an influential oil and gas sector.
Harris has probably therefore moved away from a previous position on banning the extraction of shale oil and gas, so-called fracking, which is a very important industry in Pennsylvania. At the same time, she fronts issues such as price caps on prescription medicine and cheaper daycare, which are considered important to win over the suburbs.
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Today is election day and an intensive election campaign is over. The trade union movement has also received support from a number of celebrities. In recent days, actors Martin Sheen and Robert De Niro, among others, have visited the trade union in Philadelphia.
When the results come in, we will see how many working people they have managed to mobilize to vote. The candidate who wins Pennsylvania has a great chance of winning the world’s most important election, so the trade union movement in Philadelphia is standing to the very end.
At the weekend, they posted the following message on Facebook: Keep your eyes on the trophy, Philly Labor! Let’s win this!
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