Samuel ColemanA recent Freedom Foundation public records request with San Bernadino County yielded an unexpected bounty.
While the action was originally filed to determine if the county, at the behest of Teamsters 1932, had blocked the Freedom Foundation website www.optouttoday.com from its servers, it also revealed the union has begun spending its members’ dues money on a committee whose sole enterprise is finding ways to counter the Freedom Foundation.
Records indicate the union is in a frenzied panic and trying to find new ways to buffer against an impending drop in membership, and its weapon of choice is an elite team of high-ranking union officials whose aim is to prevent their own members from exercising their First Amendment right to opt out of paying union dues.
The move came in response to a story posted to the Freedom Foundation’s website on Oct. 4 detailing the organization’s new push to canvass government buildings in Southern California.
This clearly got the attention of the Teamsters, as county records show the “Anti-Freedom Foundation Committee” was created just six days later.
Teamsters 1932 leaders believe we represent such an existential threat to their banana republic that they had to create an entire committee just for us.
We’re flattered.
Members of this anti-freedom committee include Abraham Gallegos, Tizoc Arenas, and Kathleen Brennan. The committee reports to Carlos Gonzales and, unlike other union committees we’re aware of, this one has no set end date.
Kathleen Brennan is the currently listed as the president of Teamsters 1932 and all three committee members can be found on the Teamsters 1932 website and are high-ranking officers.
The description of the committee is perhaps the most telling. It reads:
(The) Freedom Foundation is paying people to stand outside county buildings to educate our members on how to opt out. We need our own committee to fight this.
Unions like Teamsters 1932 understand that once public workers know about their destructive political agenda and harmful practices, they no longer want their dues money to pay for it. The only way they can think of to stop workers from opting out of union dues is to keep them in the dark.
This was clearly displayed when we posted another story on Oct. 19, describing the bullying and harassment of one of our canvassers by more than 20 Teamsters representatives.
We found it a little strange how quickly the Teamsters mobilized against this canvasser. Now we understand perfectly.
They had a contingency plan ready to go.
When we attempt to educate their dues-payers, they launched an all-out attack. But rather than attacking the Freedom Foundation directly, they picked on a lone canvasser who was just doing do her job.
This kind of misguided rage further shows that Teamsters 1932 is getting desperate because they know we’re onto them.
As one San Bernadino County employee told us recently:
I know there are others that do want out (opt out), but there is a lot of fear. People are very afraid of unions, and that’s how the Teamsters rule the city. Unfortunate, but true nonetheless.
Unfortunately for the Teamsters, we’re not a group that can be bullied away. There’s only one organization that elicits this kind of frenzied response from public workers’ unions in California and across the United states, and we’re not going anywhere.