Union workers protest, ask McCain for one of his homes

By Ed Runyan

UAW Local 1112 President Jim Graham said McCain ‘has a total disconnect with the middle class.’

WARREN — They didn’t actually bring a U-Haul of furniture with them or a person losing their home to foreclosure, as promised.

But local health-care union members and a national organizer did ask local Republicans to ask Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Wednesday to give them one of McCain’s several homes.

The local members of the Service Employees International Union did put two small tents on the lawn in front of the Trumbull County Republican Party headquarters on Elm Road before entering the building and asking for one of the homes.

GOP officials listened to the request and pledged to get back to them.

Chrissy Heineman, executive board member of SEIU District 1199, said McCain has said he owns seven homes — one of the things that makes the group believe McCain can’t relate to middle-class people.

“His wife can go on shopping sprees and spend more money than I make in a year,” Heineman said of McCain, who made appearances in Trumbull County on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Grant Williams, who said he is a national organizer with the group Change to Win, said the request was “tongue in cheek,” but is being done to question McCain’s sincerity in helping people facing foreclosure. The same type of demonstration was being planned in six other states Wednesday, he added.

“He talks about deregulation, deregulation, but deregulation is what put us where we’re at,” Williams said of the nation’s foreclosure crisis.

A Youngstown woman, Hameedah Shakoor, spoke up as a local person who is losing her home despite having a job.

Shakoor said she bought a home 11 years ago to have the American dream. “Eleven years later, I have to decide between the mortgage, food and utilities,” she said.

She later clarified that her bank had not actually foreclosed on her but that she was behind on payments, and she had talked to the bank’s foreclosure department.

“I want to ask John McCain, ‘Can I have one of your houses, because I don’t want to live on the streets,’” she said.

Jim Graham, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112 at General Motors, agreed that McCain has a “total disconnect with the middle class.”

John McClelland, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, called the demonstration in Warren a “childish stunt” put on by the Democrats and their presidential candidate, Barack Obama, the Illinois senator.

“The fact is John McCain has put together an aggressive and detailed plan to help with foreclosures” and an economic plan that would help the people who were part of the protest, he said.

Obama’s “tax-and-spend plan will increase the tax burden on the vast majority of Americans and create [economic] instability,” he added.

When asked about the charge that McCain is not able to relate to the middle class, McClelland said, “And Barack Obama is? Come on.”

runyan@vindy.com