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Down to the Wire for Fast Track and TPP

As House members were back on Capitol Hill this week, just in time for CWA activists and allies to bombard their offices with phone calls urging them to reject Fast Track Authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

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IUE-CWA Local 801FW members in Janesville, WI, (top photo) and IUE-CWA Local 755 members in Dayton, OH, called their members of Congress to them to say #NoTPP and #NoFastTrack.

The National Fast Track Call-In Day was organized by CWA, the AFL-CIO, and more than 180 partner organizations that spread the word among thousands of activists, urging phone calls to every member of the House of Representatives. The calls are ongoing. To participate, please call 1-855-980-2256 now to speak with your member of Congress.

The message to every member of the House of Representatives is simple: The Fast Track trade bill in Congress will send jobs overseas and give more power to giant corporations. It continues the same failed trade policies that leave working people behind.

Opposition to Fast Track and the TPP continued across the nation.

Last week, activists participated in day-long political TPP boot camps in Delaware and Maryland. They reviewed the broader political and economic narrative of workers in this country and practiced critical conversation and organizing methods to best articulate this narrative to the broader public. Using those tools, they were able to formulate concrete campaign plans for how to engage their community on critical issues like the TPP for the weeks and months ahead.

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Representative Ami Bera Being "Made an Example Of"

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"Congressman Bera needs to understand and recognize that he's losing the support of his base," said Robert Longer of CWA Local 9421 to staffers in Rep. Ami Bera's district office in Sacramento, CA, last week. CWA was joined by partners from the Democratic Party of Sacramento, the Sacramento Central Labor Council, Citizen's Trade Campaign, Women Take Back the Night, and Veterans' organizations, who all told Rep. Bera that he needed to "clean out his ears" and listen to constituents, using oversized Q-Tips as props.

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Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA 7th District), who supports Fast Track, is feeling the heat from TPP opponents in his district who have sought to make an example of him in the state of California. Bera has been complaining to House leaders about how he's being targeted for his support of the TPP. "Ami Bera won off the support of working families' boots in the district, knocking on doors for him, but no one's saying, 'Let's not call him out because we're scared of a Republican taking him out,'" AFL-CIO spokesperson Amaya Smith told Politico.

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Salem, MA, City Council Passed Unanimous Resolution against Fast Track

Last Thursday the Salem, MA, City Council passed a unanimous resolution opposing Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The City Council worked closely with members of the North Shore Labor Council in drafting and reviewing the resolution. Salem is the third city, along with Beverley and Lynn, in Representative Seth Moulton's Congressional District to pass such a resolution.

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Price Continues to Hear from Constituents. Will He Listen?

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Also on Thursday, a coalition of groups in North Carolina got together at Rep. David Price's Chapel Hill, NC, office to ask him to oppose Fast Track. CWA activists have been joined at events asking Price to oppose Fast Track by members of Organization for Women, Witness for Peace Southeast, Workers' Right Project at NC Justice Center, Food & Water Watch, and other organizations.

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A Tweet at Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL 7th District)

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Making sure ‪@RepTerriSewell knows: American workers are opposed to Fast Track, ‪#TPP! ‪#StopFastTrack ‪#p2.

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AFA-CWA Flight Attendants Fight Back against Fast Track

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AFA-CWA Flight Attendants in crew rooms throughout the U.S. are engaging Flight Attendants to call on their representatives to say NO to Fast Track. From left: AFA-CWA United Flight Attendants Eileen Lovell, David Hammonds and Louis Breece. No Fast Track! #RingYourRep #NoFastTrack