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Unions press for alliance with Occupy Sacramento

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The Occupy movement's ability to draw a crowd and media attention has not been lost on more mainstream political forces such as labor unions.

Thursday, two separate groups held Occupy events in the Sacramento region. Both were organized partially or fully by established organizations with long histories of activism.

The raw energy of the Occupy Wall Street movement makes it an attractive ally for traditional liberal forces, said Bruce Cain, a UC Berkeley political science professor and director of the University of California Washington Center.

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Locally, Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, organized an Occupy 99 rally atop the 12th Street overpass during the evening commute.

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But the movement's attempt at leaderless decision-making makes mainstream groups wary of a political marriage with such an amorphous entity.

"It makes it hard to figure out how you can coalesce with them," Cain said.

While some level of trepidation may remain, a conglomeration of unions and liberal activists took a step toward the altar – organizing more than 300 "We are the 99 percent" rallies across the country Thursday.

Locally, Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, organized an Occupy 99 rally atop the 12th Street overpass during the evening commute.

Separately, a smallish Occupy Elk Grove teamed with MoveOn.org, a group that works for "progressive" candidates, to occupy Republican Rep. Dan Lungren's Gold River office.

SEIU has been somewhat involved with the Occupy Sacramento movement since it began demonstrating mostly at Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown Sacramento on Oct. 6, and the group professed its support of the union's Thursday event. The union plans to join with the group at Chavez Plaza for another rally Saturday.

SEIU Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker said she has urged members to lend their voices to the Occupy movement.

"The Occupy Wall Street movement has done a great job of drawing attention to income disparity in this country and the need to create middle-class jobs. We need to do what we can to support them here in California," Walker said.

For their part, the young people spending evening after evening chanting, meeting, planning and getting arrested in Cesar Chavez Plaza expressed some reservations about joining forces with established organizations such as unions and political action groups.

"We don't want to get bogged down with other people's agendas," said Sean Thompson, an active Occupy Sacramento protester.

But Chris MacDonald, a designated spokesman for Occupy Sacramento, said there can be middle ground between the goals of the outside forces and theirs. That is the beauty of their ever-shifting form, he said.

"We are probably going to see a lot more coming from labor unions," MacDonald said.

Rob Stutzman, a GOP political operative, said that while Democratic forces are eager to tap into the energy, they are rightfully concerned about just what they are endorsing.

He cited clashes with the police, concerns about camp sanitation and anti-capitalism talk.

"Democratic forces are desperate to energize their base," Stutzman said, but "it's a bit of a dangerous bet."

Bob Ostertag, a professor of technocultural studies at UC Davis, said the unions are eager to take advantage of the Occupy movement's grassroots energy after failing for years to energize the labor movement.

"Now they want to piggyback on it, because they couldn't figure out how to do it themselves," Ostertag said.

He said criticism of the Occupy movement as undisciplined and unsanitary is overblown.

"There has never been a grass-roots movement that wasn't messy," he said. "Talk about the American revolution – that was messy."

He added that the movement has already succeeded by putting the idea of the 99 percent into the American lexicon.

" 'Tax the rich' and 'the 99 percent' are the two contributions of the Occupy movement," Ostertag said.

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