In a video message, Vice President Harris says she’s about the future, not the past

In a video message that AFSCME delegates watched Wednesday at our union’s 46th International Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris praised AFSCME members for their leadership in their communities and vowed that if we fight together, we will win in November.

“Over the past several years, there’s been this perverse thing happening, which is that some folks would suggest the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down,” Harris said. “Instead of what we know, which is that the true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up. And for more than 90 years, the members of AFSCME have helped to lift up the people of our nation.”

Organizing for fair pay, better benefits and safer working conditions are just some of the ways AFSCME members have improved not only their workplaces but working conditions, wages and benefits for all working Americans. 

The current moment, however, forces us to make an important choice, Harris said, between two different visions for our country.

“One focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” she said. “We fight for the future — a future with affordable health care, affordable child care and paid leave, a future where we build a broad-based economy where every person, every American, has the opportunity to own a home, to start a business and to build wealth. And a future where we lower the cost of living for America’s families, so that folks have a chance not just to get by but to get ahead.”

Harris promised to continue fighting for working families, as she has done throughout her career.

“Unlike Donald Trump, I will always put the middle class and working families first because I know the middle class built the United States of America, and when the middle class is strong, America is strong,” she said.

Referring to Trump’s Project 2025, Harris said the roadmap for Trump’s second term would eliminate overtime pay for workers across the nation, revoke child labor laws, ban public sector unions and harm working families in other ways.  

“AFSCME, America has tried these failed policies before, and we are not going back,” Harris said. “We will move forward. We fight for a future where every worker, including those in the public sector, has the freedom to organize.”