Illinois labor leaders and union workers should take a long, hard look at Peter Roskam.

At the behest of the Bush Administration, Roskam recently traveled to Colombia and came back singing the praises of President Alvaro Uribe and his Colombian “success story”. Roskam has chosen to totally ignore the persistent violence that is occurring against union organizers, human rights activists, journalists and indigenous people by paramilitaries with ties to Uribe’s administration and to American and other foreign corporations. Bush is agressively pushing for a free trade agreement and Roskam is staying on message.

In promoting the free trade agreement for Bush, Roskam is wholeheartedly embracing the immoral Latin American policies of the two George Bushes, Henry Hyde, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and their predecessors going back many years, men who have embraced terrorism and brutal right wing regimes to advance the interests of American corporations at the expense of the lives of countless voiceless people.

Roskam looks at Columbia and doesn’t see the plight of its people. He sees only profits for American corporations, some of whom have been actively funding paramilitary violence.

Unionists in this country should be infuriated that Roskam cares so little about the oppression and murder of their brethren and they should understand that Roskam has no more support for their cause here. And if men like Roskam are allowed to continue turning the reigns of our own government over to corporate elites, the kinds of abuses that happen in Colombia can happen here as well.

BTW: If Roskam is interested in promoting trade, perhaps he should push for normalizing relations with Cuba. My sense is that the people of Cuba would actually benefit from such an opening and Americans could benefit as well.