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| Bruce Raynor |
From time to time, little fragments of information sneak
through the internet to offer us interesting glimpses into the lives of SEIU’s
top officials.
Here’s one.
A former staffer from the Change to Win Coalition recently tweeted the following message about his experiences
with Bruce
Raynor and Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, the former governor of Puerto Rico. Raynor, of course, is the guy who famously teamed up with
SEIU President Andy Stern to unsuccessfully raid UNITE HERE.
Translation?
This unfortunate union staffer was assigned to serve at
the beck and call of Raynor and then-Governor Acevedo Vila… including fetching
them icecream bars during the 2008 Democratic National Convention at Denver’s
Mile High Stadium.
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| Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila |
At that moment, Acevedo Vila had been indicted on 24 counts of
campaign finance violations.
He'd also been doing lots of dirty deeds for SEIU.
Earlier that year, Acevedo Vila worked
hand-in-glove with SEIU’s Dennis Rivera
in an effort to take over the largest and most militant union in Puerto Rico: the 42,000-member Puerto Rican Teachers Union (La Federacion de Maestros de Puerto
Rico or “FMPR”).
SEIU got the governor to issue a declaration
decertifying the FMPR and then suspended the union’s right to collect membership
dues. Next, the governor scheduled an election to allow the island’s 42,000
teachers to choose a union... but Gov. Acevedo Vila carefully rigged the election
so that SEIU was the only union on the ballot!
So... it's no wonder that SEIU/Change to Win assigned its staffers to race
through Mile High Stadium to buy icecream bars for the corrupt governor and SEIU officials!
What happened to Puerto Rico's teachers?
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| SEIU's Dennis Rivera |
Fortunately, the teachers could smell a rat a mile away. When the
ballots from the rigged election were counted in October of 2008, the teachers trounced SEIU… and sent Dennis
Hickey Rivera and hundreds of purple-shirted staffers scurrying for the
first flight back to the U.S.
Quite a story... whose latest chapter was written by the tweet from the union staffer!
