"Fight with the money in your hands!" if you're questioning Kerry

[NewHampshireDem]

In the midst of some pretty tense contract negotiations between our union and the school board we declared impasse and brought in a moderator. As usual, the issue of contention was salary. We thought the school board's offer was too low (in retrospect, it was, but that's another issue) ... we were so angry we were willing to reject their offer, go back to the membership and tell them we would be working without a new contract--meaning the old one would be in force and meaning *no raises* at all.

Keep in mind that 10 weeks of contract negotiations are a stressful thing--purposely so, in my mind, designed to break down the participants and get them thinking with their guts rather than their brains.

Fortunately, our mediator, who was brought in once impasse was declared, gave us some sage words of advice. He knew the board would not budge and he also knew how angry--and powerless--we were. "Fight with the money in your hands," he told us. His point was that a small raise was better than no raise and that if we took it we didn't have to like it, *but we should still take it!* Once we had the new contract we could begin the fight for the next one--with the mone in our hands!

The situation here at DU has reminded me a lot of that situation. Some people are saying, "Kerry doesn't support ____________ so I'm thinking of not voting or voting for Nader." That's foolishly walking away from a small improvement to take no improvement at all. The alternative--another four years of * and maybe 20 years of his SCOTUS--is much, much worse than any disagrement anyone here might have with Kerry's positions.

So the point of this is summed up in a paraphrase of those sage words:
LET'S FIGHT WITH THE WHITEHOUSE IN OUR HANDS! Support Kerry, then fight like hell to make sure our voices are heard.