Did You Get a Text Inviting You to a Picket Line? It Might Be from Bernie Sanders

[Omaha Steve]

The Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign is helping build a strike wave in America. (Photo by Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

BY JEFF SCHUHRKE

As graduate student workers at the University of Chicago began a three-day work stoppage this week to demand union recognition, Sen. Bernie Sanders—one of the university’s most notable alumni—called on his army of supporters to join their picket lines through an email and text message blast.

One of Sanders’ supporters who received the message was UChicago graduate instructor Laura Colaneri, a member of the union Graduate Students United (GSU) and a PhD candidate in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies.

“It was a really awesome boost to get that message because I’m one of the workers involved in this action,” Colaneri told In These Times. “I’m excited to see a candidate using his status to support workers directly, not just by giving us a rhetorical line, but helping us out with an action that we’re doing.”

While candidates traditionally use their extensive contact lists to focus on fundraising or bringing people out to their campaign rallies, Sanders is undertaking an apparent first in modern presidential politics: using his lists to help mobilize turnout at worker-led actions.

FULL story: http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21922/bernie-sanders-2020-strike-university-chicago-labor