Union leader will blast Sarah Palin, calling her rhetoric ‘poisonous’

In a speech Thursday, a prominent labor official will blast former
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) for recent anti-union rhetoric.

AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumka, in a speech from Anchorage, Alaska, is
expected to criticize the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate
for language he says could lead to violence by her supporters

{mosads}”And down in Tyler, Texas, she’s talking about — and I quote — ‘union
thugs.’ What? Her husband’s a union man. Is she calling him a thug?
Sarah Palin ought to know what union men and women are,” Trumka will say. “That’s poisonous. There’s history
behind that rhetoric. That’s how bosses and politicians in decades past
justified the terrorizing of workers, the murdering of organizers.”

Trumka
was referring to a June speech by Palin in Tyler’s Oil Palace. In the
speech, she said she would have waived the Jones Act to help with the
Gulf of Mexico oil spill’s clean-up, adding, “Some unions not might not
like it, not the union membership, but the union leaders, too many, who
are thugs.”

In his Anchorage speech, Trumka will say that kind of rhetoric edges
closer to calling for violence. Palin has faced criticism for using
cross-hairs on a United States map, posted on her Facebook page, to
show what congressional Democrats her political action committee is
opposing in the 2010 elections. 

“In this charged political environment, her kind of
talk gets dangerous. ‘Don’t retreat… reload’ may seem clever, the kind
of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context,” Trumka will say. “She’s using
crosshairs to illustrate targeted legislators. She’s on the wrong side
of the line there. She’s getting close to calling for violence. And
some of her fans take that stuff seriously. We’ve got legislators in
America who have been living with death threats since the health care
votes.”