Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Dolores Huerta is keynote speaker at Dem convention

I am a delegate to the Wyoming Democratic Party state convention in Rock Springs.

I had to fight hard for the convention spot. Really, all I had to do was show up for the county convention and sign my name to a statement that said something like "I swear to (insert here the name of spiritual entity or higher power or, if atheist, "none of the above") _____________ that I will show up in Rock Springs May 16-17 for the Democratic Party convention, will participate in the proceedings and will not nap in my seat. Amen."

That was it.

A much different experience than that very exciting presidential election year in 2008. Dems in Laramie County duked it out for a spot at the state convention. We even had to make convincing speeches from the floor and get voted on. I was elected as an Obama delegate, my wife Chris as a Clinton alternate. This turned her even more surly than she'd been all through the early primary season as it became clear that the unknown male senator from Chicago was getting the upper hand on Hilary, the party favorite. It was a long election season in the Shay household. Wyoming did send some Clinton delegates to the national convention in Denver, although Chris wasn't one of them. I attended as an embedded blogger, stirring up trouble wherever I could.

Wyoming Dems may not have many elected officials to show for our efforts. But we do have cameraderie. We will be among friends in Rock Springs and a fine time will be had by all. And the keynote speaker is fantastic. From the Wyoming Dems Facebook page:

There are four elementary schools in California, one in Fort Worth, Texas, and a high school in Pueblo, Colorado named after Dolores Huerta.

She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in March of 2013. She has received numerous awards: among them The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in l998, Ms. Magazine’s One of the Three Most Important Women of l997, Ladies Home Journal’s 100 Most Important Woman of the 20th Century, The Puffin Foundation’s Award for Creative Citizenship: Labor Leader Award 1984, The Kern County Woman of The Year Award from the California State Legislature, The Ohtli Award from the Mexican Government, The Smithsonian Institution – James Smithson Award, and nine honorary doctorates from universities throughout the U.S.

In 2012 President Obama bestowed Dolores with her most prestigious award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S. Upon receiving this award, Dolores said, “The freedom of association means that people can come together in organization to fight for solutions to the problems they confront in their communities. The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights. I thank President Obama for raising the importance of organizing to the highest level of merit and honor.”

FOR MORE INFO: http://tinyurl.com/pf9dsao
READ HER FULL BIOGRAPHY: http://tinyurl.com/n9nue5k

History is not a game

We live in the age of miracles and innovations. I walk around with a device that helps my heart correct arrhythmia -- I got rhythm! I just watched an online tutorial (complete with code) by a young man explaining how to hack a drone and take it over for your own purposes. Amazon, beware! 

At work, I supervise print and online communications. I typed my first book manuscript on a portable non-electric typewriter. My younger colleagues have never seen such a device. 

The year I was born, 1950, was closer to the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) by propeller-driven aircraft than to the 1969 launch of the Atlas rocket that carried the astronauts to the moon.

1950 was closer to the Russian Revolution (1917) than it was to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the end of the global Cold War (1991). 

My birth year was closer to the first 1951 airing of "Duck and Cover," a film by the U.S. Civil Defense Administration, than to the dawn of the atomic age (1945). 

My birth year was closer to the founding of Hewlett-Packard in 1939 than it was to the 1976 launch of the Apple-1, a single-board computer for hobbyists, designed by Steve Wozniak, and the founding of Apple Computer by Wozniak and Steve Jobs. 

We are approaching the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. 1914 was a very big year. An archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo, the machines of war were set in motion, and four years later, millions were dead, the world map was changed and the seeds were planted for the next world war. 

One hundred years ago (1913), members of the United Mine Workers of America at Ludlow, Colorado, went on strike. At Christmas, it's possible that a little girl in the miners' tent colony received the gift of a bisque doll that was made in Germany and purchased from a Sears and Roebucks catalog. The remains of that doll were recovered in the exhumation of the tent colony. Also recovered were the remains of somewhere between 19 and 25 men, women and children slaughtered by Colorado National Guard troops and goons from John D. Rockefeller's Colorado Coal, Fuel and Iron Works on April 20, 1914. Most of them were immigrants, trying to make a living in their adopted country.

The remains of that doll is now part of the collection held by the UMWA. It also is a significant Colorado historical artifact, according to the Center for Colorado and the West at the Auraria Library in Denver. 

How this artifact relates to Colorado history: 

At the turn of the century coal mining was a large part of the labor force in Colorado, and the working conditions were poor, which prompted the miners with the help of UMWA to go on strike. This artifact reflects the families that were directly involved in the violence and turmoil during that time. This coal strike affected Colorado as well as the nation. On April 20, 1914, the death of the women and children at the Ludlow Massacre shocked the nation. This watershed moment spurred stricter labor laws to be enforced, and is considered the breaking point for American labor relations.

The doll's head is chilling to behold, its sightless eyes staring out at us a century later.

You can vote for Colorado’s most significant artifacts by Dec. 31 at https://collectioncare.auraria.edu/content/vote-colorados-most-significant-artifacts

I voted. My duty as a Colorado native and a union member. 

The object also has a connection to Wyoming history. Rockefeller moved much of his iron-ore mining operations to Platte County, Wyoming, in the wake of the bad press he received after Ludlow. Sunrise was a company town, far away (Rockefeller hoped) from trouble-making unions.  

Now Sunrise is a fenced-off ghost town, much like the Ludlow town site. By 1928, the Sunrise mine employed 547 and featured brick housing, modern utilities, a hospital, parks, playgrounds and the state's first YMCA. It closed in 1980. Both Ludlow and Sunrise are National Historic Sites.

Rockefeller learned some lessons from Ludlow. 

A beat-up doll's head helps us remember Ludlow. 

Performance by Wyoming artist remembers the 1913 IWW strike at a New Jersey factory

Suzanne Morlock is a socially engaged artist from Wilson, Wyoming. This bucolic Rocky Mountain valley town is a long way from Paterson, N.J. But that's where Suzanne is traveling to mark a labor tradition shared by the hard-rock miners of the West and the factory workers of the industrial East.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were known as "Wobblies" and nobody seems to know how it got its nickname. Its organizers were fed up with the tactics of the larger unions and decided to take their fight to the streets and the factories and the mines. Joe Hill may be the best-known members of the Wobblies. Remember the folk song that Joan Baez made famous at Woodstock:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"
"I never died" said he,
"I never died" said he.

Hill was framed for murder by the "Copper Bosses"and executed in 1915 in Utah. His martyrdom has been used as a union rallying cry for a century. Hill himself was a talented poet and songwriter, dedicating his work to the union.

The Wobblies were active throughout Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Colorado. They also were part of the Paterson, N.J., Silk Strike in 1913. Some 1,800 strikers were arrested, including organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood. In 1907, Haywood was tried for the murder of the retired governor of Idaho, who had been a fierce opponent of organized labor, especially Haywood's radical Western Federation of Miners. The WFM was involved in the Colorado Labor Wars in the Cripple Creek mining district in which 33 people were killed. The defeat of that strike led to the formation of the IWW a few years later

Which now leads to a performance and art exhibit by a Wyoming artist in New Jersey.

Here are the details from a press release via the CultureFront web site:

On Sunday, October 27, visual artist Suzanne Morlock from Wilson, Wyoming, will create a new kind of textile operation at The Art Factory in Paterson, New Jersey, from 1-3 p.m.

Morlock has reimagined the traditional art of fabric creation with her own brand of magic at venues from the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz Poland to the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California. Morlock brandishes a set of over-sized “needles” made from PVC pipes and re-imagines cast-off materials into new and curious forms.

This performance pays homage to the Paterson Silk Strike which took place 100 years ago in protest of poor working conditions for workers in textile manufacture industry in the town of Paterson, New Jersey. Morlock’s intent with this performance entitled Industrial Workers of the World, the name of the union at the time of the strike, is to also highlight other areas of the world where substandard working conditions run rampant. At the conclusion of the performance, the finished textile will be displayed for the remainder of the exhibition. Visitors to the exhibition will be invited to tie on strips of paper with the names of other manufacturing areas of the world where unacceptable working conditionals continue.

The Textile Show has been designed to celebrate Paterson’s rich textile heritage, highlight the role that the Art Factory is playing in that continuing history and showcase the talents of emerging and established textile-based artists – both domestically and internationally. This annual textile art exhibition opened in September in various locations within Art Factory properties. The exhibition will be open daily by appointment until the closing reception on Saturday, November 16. Contact 973.ART.1500 or email create@artfactory.us.com to arrange for a tour.

The Art Factory is a spacious, inspiring collection of 19th century textile mill buildings in the heart of Paterson’s Historic District. The Art Factory is restoring these historic textile spaces and converting them into galleries, studios, lounges, classrooms, workshops and event spaces.

You can see some of Suzanne's work in Wyoming at the Wyoming Arts Council's biennial fellowship show through Jan. 26 at the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper. She will be attending the exhibit's reception on the evening of Nov. 8. Come on out, view the work, consume some munchies, and talk art and Wobblies.

Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak is eminent-writer-in-residence at UW in February

Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak in coming to Wyoming:

For the much of the past decade, Mark Nowak has been extricating the poetry workshop from the academic classroom and re-employing it in factories, workplaces, and other labor/working-class spaces. These workshops include his early transnational "poetry dialogues" with autoworkers at Ford plants in St. Paul, Minnesota (through UAW 879) and Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, South Africa (through NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa), another series of workshops with Muslim/Somali nurses (through Rufaidah, a Somali nurse support organization), and his current ongoing project with members of Domestic Workers United <http://www.domesticworkersunited.org/> in New York City (to be featured in the 2012 PEN World Voices Festival). 

While at the University of Wyoming, Mark hopes to work with graduate students and other community members in facilitating a Wyoming version of these creative writing workshops with workers in the area. In advance of his visit, he would like to work with interested students in identifying potential groups to work with, making initial contacts, and selecting a group of Wyoming workers with whom several creative writing workshops could be facilitated. As always, the goal is to also produce an event at the end of these workshops (and the end of Mark's residency) in which the participants read the work they produce to their family, friends, co-workers, and the larger community. 

Mark Nowak, a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009) and Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2004). He frequently speaks about global working class policies and issues, most recently on Al Jazeera, BBC World News America, BBC Radio 3, and Pacifica Radio’s “Against the Grain.” A native of Buffalo, New York, Nowak currently works as director of the graduate creative writing program at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY. 

Mark Nowak will be on campus February 18th - March 1st.  Public workshops will be held between February 17th and February 27th and will culminate in a Reading and Celebration the Gryphon Theater on February 28th.  There will be a public reading by Mark Nowak on February 22nd at Second Story Books. 

Website

Rev. Rodger McDaniel's Labor Day sermon: "Cesar, Samuel, Shanker & Moses"

The Rev. Rodger McDaniel is one of my fellow progressive bloggers. While none of us take any pledges as bloggers, Rodger has pledged a lifetime of service to God. As pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church in Cheyenne, he has taken to heart the old adage, "to comfort the afflicted to to afflict the comfortable." Newspaper reporters used to believe in that, although in today's media, it seems as if that gets turned on its head to become "to comfort the comfortable and to afflict the afflicted."

That carries over into politics. Republicans make no secret of their disdain for working people, especially the working poor. They spent all last week comforting and praising their rich-boy presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who aims to gut government programs for working people while giving more tax breaks to his rich pals.

This week, the Democratic Party will showcase a different philosophy. While the Dems sometimes are beholden to the same corporate interests that own the Republicans, there is a clear-cut difference in their policies. They will speak in Charlotte about health care, liveable wages, protecting Social Security and Medicare, education, environmental policies and that nebulous thing known as "the future." It's up to us to hold them accountable once the convention is over. This is good to keep in mind on this Labor Day as we remember the workplace sacrifices of our ancestors.

In his Labor Day sermon reprinted on his Blowing in the Wyoming Wind blog,  Rodger reminds us that our religious traditions have a long history -- going back to Moses -- of standing up for working people. He also notes that our modern churches must do more than conduct the occasional holiday food drive, that they must actively champion the rights of people to receive a living wage and fair benefits. Read his sermon: "Cesar, Samuel, Shanker & Moses"

Ashes to ashes -- now take the bastards down!

So Ash Wednesday was yesterday. This marks the beginning of Lent. I wore ashes on my forehead for most of my life. I miss them, but I can no longer stomach the Catholic Church and its bigotry against the LGBT community and women. And hypocrisy on child sex abuse by priests. I do like the Pope's cool shoes.

As Lent begins, I also think of St. Patrick's Day and the holiday's importance in our Irish-Catholic family. Many of those memories involve drinking and toasts to The Old Sod where I've never been and to where my Irish grandfather never wanted to return. It'd odd to be nostalgic for a place I haven't visited. But it's in my blood and I grew up with the stories. I credit some of my storytelling and writing skills to DNA and a certain spirit that travels down the generations. My parents, both terrific readers, get a lot of the credit. So do the nuns and priests and public school teachers who educated this lad.

Irish have a creative side, a drinking side, a dark side, a feisty side. I was thinking of that when I watched this Dropkick Murphys song as accompaniment to videos of the worker protests in Madison, WI. "Take the bastards down." Has a good ring, don't you think? As a public service to me and my readers, I'm going to track down the origins of this song. The Murphs are known for their ass-kicking shows. Maybe this is an original. Maybe an old union song. I will let you know. Meanwhile, here's the vid:



UPDATE: Here's a post from the Dropkick Murphys web site (with cool T-shirt):

Hey Everyone -- the Dropkick Murphys would like to take a moment to acknowledge the struggles of the working people of Wisconsin and to pledge our support and solidarity by releasing the song “Take Em Down” from our upcoming album. We think it’s appropriate at the moment and hope you like it.

We have also created a limited edition “Take ‘Em Down” t-shirt which will be available for sale shortly at www.dropkickmurphys.com/merch. Proceeds from the “Take ‘Em Down” t-shirt sales will benefit Workers’ Rights Emergency Response Fund (https://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4002/wi-response).

Which Side Are You On?

Dropkick Murphys rock out an old union song. And remember the struggles of the Irish in America.

Tell it like it is M.L. and Wanda and Walt and Eminem and Maria and...

Nice review of the anthology "Working Words" in Hot Metal Bridge, the litmag at University of Pittsburgh. The reviewer, Amanda Brant, points out that "tell it like it is" seems to be the touchstone holding the many pieces together." Who can argue? Not every day that Eminem and Walt Whitman and Jim Daniels and Wanda Coleman and Emily Dickinson and Michael Moore and Maria Mazzioti Gillan get to share the same stage.

The reviewer excerpted the end of Gillan's long poem, “Daddy, We Called You.” Because it is much easier to cut-and-paste than actually type, here it is:

Papa,
silk worker,
janitor,
night watchman,
immigrant Italian,
better than any “Father Knows Best” father,
bland as white rice,
with your wine press in the cellar,
with the newspapers you collected
out of garbage piles to turn into money
you banked for us,
with your mousetraps,
with your cracked and calloused hands,
with your yellowed teeth.

Papa,
dragging your dead leg
through the factories of Paterson,
I am outside the house now,
shouting your name.

Read the entire review at Hot Metal Bridge.

Buy "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams" at Coffee House Press or from your local bookstore.

"It is our labor that keeps this whole world together"

Lines from M.L. Liebler's poem "Making it Right" in Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams from Coffee House Press:

We dream that, maybe, prosperity
Is really just around the corner. So we
get up every morning with hope, and

We return each night to the broken houses
Of our lives, seldom realizing that it is our
Labor that keeps this whole world together.

Read a favorable post on this anthology on Daily Kos at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/10/19/911857/-What-about-the-working-class. Also a great review in the Detroit News at http://www.detnews.com/article/20101020/ENT01/10200311/M.L.-Liebler%E2%80%99s-new-anthology-an-ode-to-the-labor-movement

For my Detroit readers: Get thee to the Working Words reading at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 22, at the Walter Reuther Labor Library, Cass Avenue at Kirby, Wayne State University, Detroit.

For my Wyoming readers: M.L. will be in Cheyenne in late February for a reading and performance with musician and Moby Grape founder Peter Lewis. Stay tuned for details.

Even on Labor Day, corporations busily creating fewer jobs

As always, bona fide populist Jim Hightower is angry and is making sense when it comes to corporate greed. Great reading for Labor Day (or even the day after Labor Day):

America's corporate chieftains must love poor people, for they're doing all they can to create millions more of them.

They're knocking down wages, offshoring everything from manufacturing jobs to high tech, reducing full-time work to part-time, downsizing our workplaces, busting unions, cutting health care coverage and canceling pensions -- while also lobbying in Washington to privatize Social Security, eliminate job safety protections, restrict unemployment benefits, kill job-creating programs and increase corporate control of our elections.

It's said that the poor and the rich will always be among us. But nowhere is it written that the middle-class will always be there. In fact, it is a very recent creation in our society (and an unavailable dream for most people in the world). America's great middle class literally arose with the rise of labor unions and populist political movements in the 1800s, finally culminating in democratic economic reforms implemented from the 1930s into the 1960s.

Read the rest at truthout.

Labor Day weekend is good time to order new "Working Words" anthology

A new anthology from Coffee House Press in the Twin Cities is Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams. It's edited by my old pal in Detroit, poet and performer M. L. Liebler. The foreword is written by Ben Hamper.

I would be negligent (and totally self-promoting) if I didn't mention that one of my stories is in the book. Entitled "The Problem with Mrs. P," it's in my first collection, The Weight of a Body from Ghost Road Press in Denver.

I was just reading another of the anthology's stories, "Turn the Radio to a Gospel Station" by Ohio writer, poet and nurse Jeanne Bryner. I met Jeanne at a YMCA Writer's Voice retreat at Fur Peace Ranch near Pomeroy, Ohio. The ranch is run by guitar great and bluesman Jorma Kaukonen and his wife. Some of you Boomers may remember Jorma from his days with a little group called Jefferson Airplane. M.L. was also at the retreat. That was back in the days when he ran the Detroit YMCA's Writer's Voice program. Bluiesman, writer and arts administrator Bob Fox was also in attendance. Bob passed away from lung cancer a few years later. I miss Bob.

All of us come from modest roots. Working people. Assembly-line workers. Oil well workers. Cowboys. Accountants. Nurses. Day laborers. Union people of all kinds. Maybe that's why we write about regular folks. Those are whom most writers are concerned with. Even Ayn Rand before she went loony.

But the late Ayn is not in this anthology. Here's some background on the book:

Jobs are at the forefront of the national consciousness, yet there is a dearth of literature written by and for workers. This anthology—of fiction, memoir, poetry, rock lyrics, and astute historical analysis—fills the gap for readers both young and old, as well as students of literature and labor history.

A collection about living while barely making one, about layoffs and picket lines, about farmers, butchers, miners, waitresses, assembly-line workers, and the “Groundskeeper Busted Reading in the Custodial Water Closet,” this is literature by the people and for the people—a transcendent volume that touches upon all aspects of working-class life.

Glad to be sharing the pages with M.L. and Jeanne. And all of these people: Bonnie Jo Campbell, Woody Guthrie, Edward Sanders, Willa Cather, Lolita Hernandez, John Sayles, Andrei Codrescu, Bret Lott, Quincy Troupe, Dorothy Day, Thomas Lynch, Jack White, Diane di Prima, Michael McClure, Walt Whitman, Bob Dylan, Michael Moore . . . and many more!

Happy Labor Day!

Michael and me: Angry White Men

Make It Happen. Again.

President Obama said this in his inaugural address: "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."

Alliance of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has released a new video highlighting the lessons to be learned from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression. To see the video, go to “Make America Happen. It links FDR’s New Deal with President-elect Barack Obama’s calls for bold action and civic engagement in response to our present crisis.

I'm a member of the Wyoming Public Employees Association (WPEA)/Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1990. AFSCME does some great things on behalf of government workers.

Labor Day: Hope vs. More of the McSame

Labor Day drive across WYO in our trusty high-mileage Saturn Ion, made in the U.S.A. by American workers. Raining along I-25 as we return from visiting our daughter in Casper. Raining outside, political signs from DNC reflect political state of affairs. Notice McCain reflection on far right: THE SAME.

Meet the DNC delegates: Kathy Karpan

Kathy Karpan grew up in a Democratic neighborhood. In Wyoming.

"I didn't know there was a Republican Party," says Karpan.

That was in Rock Springs, back when most hard-rock miners were Democrats. Follow the railroad and the mines from Pine Bluffs 350 miles west to Evanston. This corridor, the same one I-80 now transverses, was where you found the majority of the state's Democrats.

Karpan's parents and grandparents -- and thousands of other European immigrants -- were met at the boat by party organizers

"They all had a collective memory that when the gangplank hit the earth at Ellis Island, there was only one political party there to greet them and invite them to be Democrats," Karpan says. "They were very loyal because of that."

Karpan moved upward and outward from Rock Springs. She traces her career in thirds. She spent one-third in the private sector as a journalist in Cody and Cheyenne, as a press secretary in Washington, D.C., and as an attorney. She spent one-third of her career in Wyoming state government. The final third was in the employ of the federal government, mostly in D.C. She did three tours in D.C., the most recent as Pres. Clinton's Director of the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement.

"That was a nice match-up," she says. "I come from a coal mining family. My grandfathers were coal miners."

Karpan was out of a job when Bush took over in January 2001 (as she puts it -- "when Bush stole the election from Gore"). But later that year, she was still in D.C. exploring other options when her neighbor came to the door one September morning. "I was packing and the neighbor said that they just hit the Pentagon. I lived in Crystal City, a quarter-mile away."

The military commandeered the hotel next to her building. That night she took a photo of the Pentagon. It showed flames still erupting from the building. Helicopters circled the site, their searchlights stabbing through the smoke. "This is as close as I want to come in my lifetime to the London Blitz," noting that it was sobering to think that a U.S. Government building had been hit "by the enemy."

This will be Kathy Karpan's seventh convention. Actually, it will be the seventh she was elected to but only the sixth she's attended. She was elected chair of the Wyoming delegation in 2000 but broke her leg at home in a freak accident while watching the Cheney-Lieberman V.P. debate. She still wanted to go to the L.A. convention, but the doctor scheduled surgery instead.

Karpan remembers that Ed Herschler was the Wyoming governor at the time of her first convention in 1984. "Dave Freudenthal was a delegate -- it was in San Francisco," she says. "I've seen this whole progression," noting that Freudenthal is now Gov. Dave, attending his second of these national Dem gatherings as leader of a red state.

Maybe one of the delegates to this year's Dem convention will be the state's gov in, say, 2032?

Karpan is the "Clinton whip" of the Wyoming delegation. When we talked, she'd just had back-to-back phone calls with the Clinton camp about the upcoming convention. "Hillary was very clear about this, and my opinion is that we are all going to do our best to unite our party."

As whip, she's charged with bringing the Wyoming Clinton delegates news about any position on votes "if something comes up, but," she adds, "this convention will be highly rehearsed."

When it comes to the general election, "people will see the clear choices between candidates and I'm confident that the Clinton people will rally behind our nominee."

Wyo Dems host "Salute to Labor"

This comes from Bill Luckett, communications director for the Wyoming Democratic Party:

As promised, here are the details for this year’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner and Banquet. Sweetwater County will host the event, which will be centered around the theme, "A Salute to Labor."

The dinner is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 29, at the Rock Springs Holiday Inn (1675 Sunset Drive). Among the featured guests will be Gov. Dave Freudenthal, and our keynote speaker this year is Andrew Romanoff, the Democratic speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives. The Wyoming Democratic Party will also honor Kim Floyd, executive director of the Wyoming AFL-CIO, with the "Party Builder of the Year" Award.

To reserve your tickets for the events, call 800-729-3367 or register online at http://www.wyomingdemocrats.com/.

The state party has reserved a block of rooms at the Holiday Inn for $99 a piece. For further information or to reserve a room, contact the hotel at 307-382-9200.