ILWU, you did a great job in this election. On behalf of the Local Officers, I want to thank everyone who gave their time and energy to this union’s political action program.

I want to thank the retirees who labeled and stuffed tens of thousands of leaflets, distributed yard signs and more—they continue to give so much to their union.

I want to thank the members who gave up their weekends to go house-to-house in the community dreds of phone calls. I want to thank the unit officers and stewards who talked to members on the job and registered hundreds of new voters.

I want to thank the fulltime officers and staff who put in a 110 percent effort into this campaign and were always there when we asked for their help. I want to thank the political action coordinators on each island who committed two, three, or four
months of their lives and did nothing but political action.

I want to thank every individual ILWU member who cast their vote for labor-endorsed candidates.

Working together, we made a difference. We scored a tremendous victory for the working people of Hawaii in this election
and you should be proud of what you have done.

Why does the ILWU support
so many Democrats?
As a labor union, the ILWU is politically independent. This means we support candidates based on what they actually DO
for working people, NOT on their party affiliation. We look at whether these candidates share our vision of a society that re-
spects the labor of working people, that takes care of the less fortunate among us, that welcomes people of all races and
beliefs and treats them as equals.

This vision puts us much closer to the Democrats then the Republicans, which is why our union usually endorses many
more Democrats and very few Republican candidates.

We also take a hard look at voting records. And we keep a scorecard of how candidates vote on issues that are important to
working families.

Based on our scorecard, our Democratic Representatives consistently score very high when it comes to improving our schools,
helping the elderly with lower cost medication, and protecting the rights of working people.

On the other hand, most of the Republicans in the House and Senate scored very badly when it came to issues important to
working families. Governor Lingle got the worst score, as she opposed or used the power of the governor’s veto to block nearly every single issue that was important to working people.

Importance of this election
Many of us remember when Hawaii was a plantation community. We remember how the plantation manager lived in a very big and beautiful house, away from the mill and on the highest ground, where they could look down on us.

The rest of us workers lived in very small houses around the mill or in camps near the fields. I grew up in a sugar plantation
camp on the Big Island, and it was the same there. In those days, Hawaii was a society controlled by a small group of very
rich and very powerful people. And the Republican Party served the interests of the rich and powerful.

Many of us also remember how it took years of struggle to change this. How workers changed the balance of power on the plantations by organizing themselves into unions like the ILWU. How unionized workers registered to vote and used the power of the ballot box to elect Democrats, who shared their vision of a more equal and just society. It would take many more years for the Democrats to enact new laws and turn the government around so that it served ALL the people of Hawaii, not just the rich.

Today, life for working people has changed dramatically and for the better since the plantations days. We want to continue this
forward progress and most of the candidates who share this goal with us are Democrats. ◆