My experience on the Democratic County Central Committee

By Walter F. Rice

I have been a member of the County Central Committee for 5 years, and have the leader in bringing forth social issues.

At a union meeting, I heard from mine workers from Colorado, that Sacramento County had bought its rails for an expansion from an anti union firm that had locked out and fired its union workers. As (Sacramento Area) Regional director of the California State Employees Association, I got some of these mine worker organizers to come to our Regional meeting. After I was requested to write a resolution of support by our members, I wrote a matching one for the Central Committee, as the official position of the Democratic Party of Sacramento, to send to elected officials and the Regional Transit Directors.

I was one of roughly 6 people on the Central Labor Council Human Rights Committee to organize a fundraiser for the Charleston 5, 4 Black and 1 white union dock workers in South Carolina, who had been charged with felonies, and had been on house arrest for a year and a half. The Union, the ILA, had had a union contract with Nordana shipping company for 23 years. The company, in Right to Work South Carolina, had unilaterally broken the contract, and the 5 were arrested after a mainly peaceful union picket protesting the action. I went to a fund raiser in San Francisco, sponsored by the ILWU (the West Coast Longshore union) where I got literature for our fundraiser, including support letters, and heard, talked with and had dinner (with others) with the President of the Charleston ILA local, Ken Riley. I wrote 2 articles for the Sacramento Valley Labor Bulletin about the fund raiser, presented a resolution including a contribution to my own Union, the CSEA, Local 1000, Civil Service Division. The Division Council was meeting in Sacramento, and a contribution of $1000 was made by the Council. I went to other organizations I am in, the Town and Country Democratic Club, which gave $50, the 9th AD Committee where I have the title of Vice Chair, and got their support, and I got the County Central Committee to support it and contribute $50 in the same way. I also worked the admission table at the fundraiser, and mailed the letters of protest we collected to the shipping company and the prosecutor, the South Carolina Attorney General. The Charleston 5 have since been freed from house arrest, and the felony charges have been dropped. Our fundraiser netted over $6300.

Recently, I brought the issues of moratorium for the Death penalty, originally introduced by Kitty Gerwig, but this has not yet passed, and I have brought two other issues myself that were passed, a statment in favor of the rights of women in Afghanistan, and a resolution for civil liberties for everyone and against the military tribunals, both of these passed. I am also on the local board of Health Care For All, which beleives in single payer universal healthcare.

I have worked actively and extensively for Democratic candidates and issues for many years. My first campaign was for Willie Brown Jr., in his first campain for Assembly, in 1964, when I was a student at U.C. Berkely.

Most of all, I have brought a strong social conscious voice to the Democratic County Central Committee, beginning when I became a member in 1997. The party activists are mainly people who work to support Democratic electoral efforts and the party leadership. I do that myself but the Democratic Party needs to be an active party for the working people, for union organizing that is power of the working people. It needs to be the party that insists on universal rights to the basic things in life, food, shelter, education, fair treatment before the law, medical care, and the right to organize against your employer, and to have dignity.

I have enjoyed doing the things I have done on the committee, and I feel I my role on the committee has been an extremely important one.