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Alternative Features
Kathy Starks-Dyer and Phil Eskew could be understandably smug about the resounding Monroe County Public Library (MCPL) employee vote on Earth Day to unionize. The “business-model” types whose management philosophy has dominated decision making at the community institution in recent years were anything but subtle in their anti-union sentiments.
Former MCPL Board of Trustees President Stephen Moberly expressed dismay back in the winter that the resignation of former director Cindy Gray didn’t end the union movement. He thought the staff would be so enamored with Interim Director Sara Laughlin that all from the contentious Gray era would be forgotten, and they would drop the idea.
The board went so far as to post notice of a behind-closed-door session during which, three days before the April 22 union vote, they would discuss making Laughlin’s appointment permanent. Under President John Walsh and Vice President Fred Risinger, the board learned from their attorneys that they did not meet the 48-hour notification requirement for a closed meeting and canceled it.
So, following a 62-35 vote to join the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), union organizing committee members like Eskew and Starks-Dyer could easily gloat. But they’re not. They’re looking ahead.
It's three days until the 2008 primary election, an election that promises to be one of the more exciting ones we've had here in Indiana, since at least 1968 for us Democrats, when Robert Kennedy came here to square off against Eugene McCarthy.
But that was a different kind of primary from the one we're seeing here today. It was a primary that started in the fall of 1967 with the incumbent Lyndon Johnson intending to run for re-election. But McCarthy soon thereafter launched a primary challenge to Johnson, entering the race as an anti-war dark horse in November 1967.
Kennedy waited until March 1968 to enter the primary, in a move that enraged McCarthy's supporters while simultaneously creating the spectacle of not one, but two high-profile Democrats challenging an incumbent Democratic president. It proved too much for Johnson who, seeing the writing on the wall, exited his bid for re-election just two weeks after Kennedy announced his bid for the ticket.
And so they came, Kennedy and McCarthy to Indiana where, on April 4, Kennedy delivered his famous speech in Indianapolis, at what was to be a bread-and-butter campaign stop, and which turned instead into one of the most famous extemporaneous eulogistical evocations in history.
If Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has been fatally wounded by the most recent onslaught of drive-by attacks on his presidential run, he didn't show it as he delivered a red-meat speech to 13,000 still-feverishly-on-boards on April 30 in Assembly Hall.
In a long and bloody primary race between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, one that many fear will be settled by what could turn out to be this year’s hanging chads -- superdelegates -- Indiana’s May 6 primary could play a decisive role in a presidential election for the first time in decades.
As part of his Indiana tour, Obama spoke to a swooning Bloomington audience, which, while student-heavy, was as diverse in its demographic make-up as the disparate cultural identities and political perspectives the senator has sought to mobilize in his historic campaign.
U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ninth, made introductory remarks, announcing his late-in-the game, surprise endorsement of Obama, saying, "I believe he can change the tone and tenor in Washington. ... I believe he can bring our country together in a way we so desperately need right now. Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States."
