#WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY *DOING* FOR THOSE TWO YEARS OF MANDATORY SHUTDOWN

[marypsue]

I only watched the first four episodes of season four and have only the vaguest notion of what happens in the rest of it. And I've been told that I misread what was going on and that that's not where the plot was going. But.

I cannot get over the wasted potential of not having Vecna's Curse target, specifically, people who feel guilt over being responsible for another person's death. (Even though they're not, actually, responsible.)

Like. Apparently what was going on with Chrissy was an eating disorder. I misread the coding on that hard in the early episodes, and thought that she'd recently been to Chicago to see Jane. And if she had...apparently Jason was also super religious? If Chrissy had had an abortion, because they'd been having sex, then that makes a whole thematic reinforcement to his hypocrisy and whatever half-baked point the show sort of made gestures at making about the Satanic Panic.

Then there's Fred and his friend. Whatsisface in Pennhurst, the older Creel, and the baby in the house he ordered the bombing on. Max and Billy. Nancy and Barb. (Hell, Steve and Barb if you really want to play to your audience.) You could even use that to tie in the adults' storyline - we haven't heard about Hopper's guilt over Sara in a minute!

And all of that would dovetail nicely into motive. Because apparently "Vecna" is, in fact, Henry Creel, is in fact Experiment 001? Who [something something something] psychic powers [something something] horrific child abuse [something something something] massacre at the Hawkins lab [something something] Always Chaotic Axe-Crazy?

But it would make so much sense for a child who'd been ripped from his family, survived awful mistreatment in the name of the greater good, and been witness to the deaths of other kids just like him due to the actions of people who didn't seem to care, who didn't seem to see it as their fault, to be lashing out at anybody he perceived to be like those people.

It would have made sense. It would have been a reason. It would have drawn a throughline from the Big Bad's motivation through to Our Heroes and their actions. It would have given them so much room to work with consequences of the earlier seasons coming back to bite Our Heroes, and could have gone in some really good directions about exploring survivor's guilt and whether these characters really were responsible for any of the deaths they take as their responsibility. And also about institutional hurt and how sometimes, people who have no other option and no way to reach the people who actually hurt them will just aim their pain at anyone in reach, anyone who looks enough like the person who hurt them if you squint and hold your tongue just right, and how, to make actual change against the systems that hurt people, we all need to keep in mind who the real enemy is. It could have been so good.

[meiilan]

-slides in after months of radio silence, just to rant-

(not really tho, I'm still around. I just don't got a lot to say these days, for my live has become busy af, but this thought has been turning around in my head like a rotisserie chicken for weeks now, since I had some remarkably infuriating encounters.)

The one thing, I have always hated about fatphobia, even before society had an actual name for it, is the hypocrisy. Like whenever fat people express even the tiniest measure of confidence, or - gods forbid- pride in their body, everyone and their dog feels the need to tell them, that they are promoting unhealthy lifestyles. Worse even are the people, that actually outright lie and claim, that they are honestly concerned for the fat person's health. When you then point out to them, that fat is not synonymous with unhealthy and that in fact many fat people are having the cleanest fucking health checks, they turn around and go "Oh, we wouldn't say that to a healthy fat person of course." Like, yes, you fucking would!

And just for full clarity, this is coming from the POV of a person, that's been having the "perfect slim body" of societal standards for years. And because that's the place, I'm coming from, I fucking know that you lot are lying straight of your bumholes.

All my life, I have been struggling with dangerous underweight and threats of malnutrition, not because of diet culture, but because of being born with a whole host of genetic metabolism issues. I just can't process a large portion of the nutritions I eat. And when growing up in a culture (Germany, for those curious), where your meals are being rationed and monitored by kindergarden- and school-teachers since age 3, that was a fucking issue. Because the normal "healthy" portion-size for a child my age was literally starving me. And unlike many kids in my situation, who like me got complimented for their slim figure by adults and peers left and right, I got lucky in that I had a mother whose actual concern was always for my health and comfort and I also had a pediatrician, who didn't give two shits about diet culture and could see me for the starved, malnutritioned, underdeveloped little bugger, I was. And they both decided to fucking do something about it.

And even with their support and all the nutritionists and phisotherapists I went through, it took me three fucking decades to finally make it to a point, where I could not only reach a healthy weight for my age and bodytype, but I also actually maintain it.

I could now go on, how I know you "fat is unhealthy" nutjobs are lying out your arse, simply because you are the very same people, who complimented me for my "healthy" weight and bodytype, while I was virtually on the edge of complete physical shutdown.

But no. The actual reason, why I know y'all are hypocrites and liars, I learned much later in my life. I now, have finally reached what is considered a healthy weight for my body type. Many of my malnutrition-related health-issues are thankfully a matter of the past and my body is now even able to maintain a thin layer of healthy fat, that is single-handedly responsible for having me survive my worst depressive episodes, where eating regularly is just not on the menu. I look good. I look healthy. My skin is glowing. My cheeks are round, and my hips are fucking sexy. And yet. People who knew me for years, who've known me during my worst years, where malnutrition and mental health issues were having me fail school, because I was not able to maintain the mandatory minimum of presence during a school year - those same people that back then complemented me for my healthy figure, they now look at me and have the audacity to come at me with comments like: "I know you're proud of your weight gain, but aren't you going to far?" When I'm literally having the perfect BMI for my bodytype and the cleanest fucking health check in decades!

Like, Bitch! I fucking worked for those rolls! SO, sit your ass down and shut the fuck up! It's not my fault, you cannot feel satisfied with your body!

But, yeah. In other news: Here's to me not having had any malnutrition-related health-issue in 5 consecutive years!

[purplesurveys]

752

Have you ever had a controlling boyfriend/girlfriend? No, my girlfriend is super laidback and in fact she’s always the one encouraging me to go out and try new stuff with other people.

Have you ever written a love letter to someone as a joke? No but that doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to do either.

How many true heartbreaks have you had in your lifetime? In a romantic sense, once. I’ve had my heart crushed in other ways as well, like when a loved one dies.

Who last grabbed your ass? It’s definitely Gab but I don’t remember when that was. It’s been a while.

Have you ever cut yourself? Yeah man, I was big on that from 2016-2017. If I remember correctly I had a short lapse last year too, which is disappointing.

Do you get a 'Good Morning' text from someone every day? Not everyday but often enough. I like them; I do feel like I need greetings like those more so these days since I haven’t gotten to see anyone other than my family for two months now.

Do you have any gay family members? I honestly think I do but my family is so secretive about everything, from family drama to who has a terminal illness to sexual orientation. I will probably be the first one to publicly come out, if everything goes right in the new few months.

Where did you get the shirt you are wearing? I got it from one of the independent clothing stores in Feliz. They sold all these really cute tiny halter tops for only ₱80 each ($1.60)?!?!?! which was wild so I went ahead and got like four, and one of them is what I’m wearing at the moment. I’m so desperate to be outside, or at least, feel like I’m outside, so I’ve taken to wearing the clothes I’d wear in public right at home loooool.

Do any of your friends dislike each other? Yes lmao it’s hilarious. Andrew (who’s part of the newer wave of members in our org) has never been able to win over my OG org friends – Jo, Kate, Aya – so it gets super awkward when both ~generations~ get together in org parties. Since I’m everyone’s friend I always have to divide my time between groups or tables so that I get to spend time with everyone :(

Who is your last missed call from? It was from Angela’s mom, who called on the morning of my birthday to greet me. I feel bad about missing the call but you have to know that I hate getting calls from anyone other than Gabie, so when I woke up to my phone ringing I just rolled over to the other side and let the call pass. I did thank her profusely once I was properly up though.

Do you feel like everything is falling apart around you? This was me last night. As a journalism major, I felt very helpless seeing ABS-CBN get off the air at 7:47 PM and even more helpless when I saw so many people rejoicing over their shutdown, with absolutely no regard for the 11,000 employees who have just lost their jobs. Times have been hard enough in the country because of the government’s poor response to the virus, and now one of our biggest sources of news and information has also been silenced. It was enough to make me shut down last night and I just couldn’t do anything, couldn’t think properly, couldn’t even talk to my girlfriend.

Was your first kiss romantic? I’ve always thought it had been more awkward, but when we got to talking about it in the past my girlfriend apparently found it very romantic and sweet.

Do you miss any of your ex's right now? No ex.

Have you ever overdosed on anything? I have not.

What would you say if you found out your last ex was in a relationship? Look two questions above.

Who was the last person to text you before you went to bed? No one texted me before bed but I did get a text upon waking up this morning; it was Andrew. I’m guessing they saw that I deactivated all my social media last night because they texted their concern for me and told me they were gonna be there for me if I needed anyone to talk to.

How many chances do you tend to give people before enough is enough? One.

Do you know anybody whose last name is a color? Answered this in a survey but yeah, Maroon and Black.

What are you most likely to go to jail for? Ooh I dunno, I’m honestly such a goody two shoes skskksks. Does answering back to the police count? That’s the legit worst thing I imagine myself doing.

Where was your last kiss? Near my car. I was leaving Gabie’s place and she walked me to my car, and I gave her a kiss before I left.

Who was your date to Prom? My cousin. I didn’t give a shit about prom during my junior year since I was super infatuated with Gabie then, I was already seeing her, and I still had no guy friends, but because prom in my school was mandatory attendance I just pulled my favorite cousin to be with me that night.

Do you still talk to your first love? Yeah, I’m still with her to this day.

Whose wedding did you go to first? I honestly don’t remember since I was gotten as flower girl so many times as a toddler. I do have photos of being a flower girl when I was 3 and at least, that’s the oldest-documented wedding I was in. I don’t know whose it was, but it must have been a very distant relative since I only went with my paternal grandparents and absolutely no one else from my family, not even my parents lol.

When is the last time you went to the beach? Nasugbu, August 2019.

Do you ever feel like life is going by too fast? For sure. April was a fucking blur.

Are you ashamed of anyone you've dated in the past? No but my friends have always made me feel like not dating Mike was a bullet dodged. I dunno what to think of it though as I barely knew/know him.

What about anyone you've been friends with? Mostly no, since former friends were important to me at some point and to be ashamed of them is to throw away the good times we did have, but I do prefer to dissociate myself from Athenna. Her behavior has turned so rotten in college and she badmouthed Angela and made her miserable for a very long time; it’s like I have no clue who she is now. Apparently people in her school also think she’s a fucking weirdo, so that has just made me all the more confused about what’s happened to her through the years.

Have you ever made out with someone in a pool? In the sea, yes. Not in a pool since there’s always kids around.

What are you doing this weekend? Same thing I’ve been doing the last 51 days I guess: have late breakfast, take several surveys, maybe take a nap, continue my Spanish lessons, play with my dog, take more surveys, maybe meet some progress on my thesis if I feel mentally capable to work on it.

Who’s the last person that slept over your house? I think it was Gabie. I’m really the only family member that brings over someone at our place for the night haha, and it’s usually Gabie.

Do you still talk to the last person you kissed? Yes.

Have you ever kissed someone with a tongue ring? No but this did remind me of when I used to have a big crush on CM Punk, who used to have a lip ring hahahahahaha.

Is it hard for you to get over a lover? As a demi, I imagine it would be very hard as it would also be losing a best friend.

Have you ever had a best friend of the opposite sex? I wouldn’t say that. I have a couple of close friends though.

Was your mom ever a stripper? No.

Do you regret any of the relationships you were in? A little bit. I wish my first relationship with Gabie ended months sooner than it actually did. The last few months of it were just us beating around the bush and physically avoiding it each other in school; it was a huge waste of time.

Have you ever tried making someone jealous? Yes, that’s what I did when we ^ finally broke up. By the time we broke up I had long accepted that the relationship wasn’t working and I was already doing a little fine, and I was well enough to do stuff to make her see that she was missing out. It’s high school pettiness so I’ve forgiven myself for it lol.

Would you ever get a boob job? I’ve definitely thought about it but idk. I’ll have to be rich enough to want to allot money for plastic surgery because it’s not very essential for me.

Did your last relationship end because of you or the other person? Because of her.

Who is the last person you flirted with? Just my girlfriend.

Whos the most racist person you know? Probably my mom. She has said some eyeroll-worthy stuff about the Chinese throughout the lockdown and I remember she initially had a negative reaction to my cousin Joelle when she introduced us to her black fiancé. I do know she’s a bit scared of me because I wouldn’t hesitate to call her out on her racism, so thankfully her statements have lessened over the years.

Do people ever compliment your eyes? Not really. It’s not a strong suit.

Have you ever lied to your boyfriend/girlfriend? Eh, just about small stuff like lying about not being hungry.

When is the last time you saw one of your ex's? Gabie was my ex at one point I guess? I last saw her March 7th.

Who was the last person you hung out with? Also Gabie. She was the last non-family member I saw before the whole world fell apart, basically lol.

Which one of your ex's do you hate the most?

Would you be upset if you caught your boyfriend looking at porn? No. I never understood why it’s a big deal for a lot of couples and I’d genuinely like to hear a good reason why. We don’t watch porn together but Gab and I would definitely watch some on our own time and it hasn’t affected our relationship or sex life at all.

Out of everyone you kissed, give me the initials of the best kisser? I’ve only kissed one person and she kisses amazingly, so GAD.

Do you regret a lot of things you did in the past? No. Just some small stuff here and there.

How many people have you kissed this year? One.

How many people has your best friend had sex with? One.

How long have you known the last person you kissed? I have technically known her since 2002, but we didn’t know each other and become friends until 2011.

Do you think one of your friends is a slut? No. One of my former acquaintances was and I’m so not saying that in a judgy way lmao she can fuck whoever she wants whenever she wants, but I don’t really talk to her anymore + she’s no longer single.

When is your birthday? April 21st.

[thisdaynews]

The New Union Label: Female, Progressive and Very Anti-Trump

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-new-union-label-female-progressive-and-very-anti-trump/

The New Union Label: Female, Progressive and Very Anti-Trump

Sinjun Strom for Politico Magazine

On a clear eveningin Washington this past summer, Sara Nelson was in her element, waiting to speak to a revved-up crowd of union members at Reagan National Airport. Dressed in a navy flight attendants’ uniform, she stood out against the sea of jewel-toned business suits and union T-shirts.

If it intimidated Nelson that she was slotted to speak alongside two of the nation’s most notable progressives — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — it didn’t show. Over the course of her seven-minute speech, Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, excoriated American Airlines executives for outsourcing catering jobs and driving down wages.

“We’re here to call bullshit on that scam!” Nelson roared into the microphone. “American Airlines is responsible — isresponsible —for the poverty wages in these kitchens!”

By the end, the crowd of several hundredwas cheering louder for Nelson than it had for Sanders. As she stepped away from the podium, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who was up later, leaned over and playfully whispered in her ear: “I fucking hate you.”

Coming from Brown, one of the labor movement’s most beloved politicians, the salty jab speaks to Nelson’s emerging public profile. Though she leads a union with nearly 50,000 members from 20 airlines (the other major flight attendants union has a membership of 28,000) few people outside corporate boardrooms and airplane galleys know Nelson’s name. In the male-dominated universe of the American labor movement, however, Nelson is gaining altitude with a pace that resembles the dramatic emergence of youthful female politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“She has come from — I don’t want to say nowhere — she has come from not being very well known to being a star in the labor movement,” Brown said in an interview later. “She’s just so good. She captures the crowd and you don’t want to speak after somebody like that.”

Nelson’s rise can be attributed to a potent mix of progressive politics and relentless self-promotion. More than anyone else in the labor movement, she has tapped into the energy on the new left and used the media to her advantage, ascending past a ruling class of older white men to become one of the most visible labor leaders in America. She has crisscrossed the country lamenting the evils of unchecked capitalism and taken on the president with the gusto of someone running to unseat him.

Nelson’s first major burst of publicity came earlier this year during the government shutdown when she called for a general strike, a seldom-used nuclear option in which union leaders incite widespread work stoppages across multiple industries. A general strike hasn’t occurred in earnest since 1946, when more than 100,000 workers in Oakland, California, shut down the city for three days. While Nelson’s proposition was legally dubious—federal workers face severe consequences for striking without authorization—less than a week later, air traffic controllers called in sick,snarling flights up and down the East Coast. President Donald Trump caved hours later, and the longest shutdown in American history ended.

It’s an accomplishment that Nelson proclaims in almost every speech. The fact that Nelson didn’t actuallydoanything tangible to end the shutdown—she was not in the room negotiating with Trump and has no direct influence over the air traffic controllers, who have a union of their own—is almost beside the point. What matters, in the eyes of more than a dozen people in the labor movement who spoke to me for this article, is that she said what an increasingly agitated swath of union supporters wanted to hear.

“She’s the closest thing to kind of a charismatic labor leader we’ve had since, you know, maybe Cesar Chavez,” said Peter Dreier, a union historian at Occidental College.

Nelson, 46, is now weighing a run to become first woman to lead the AFL-CIO, effectively the leader of organized labor in the United States, representing 12.5 million workers who still have the power to shape major legislation and swing elections. The election to replace the federation’s leader, Richard Trumka, who is expected to step aside, won’t happen until October 2021, well after a presidential contest that is shaping up as referendum on the nation’s tolerance for seismic left-wing change to the economy. Nelson has tied her candidacy to the same progressive ideas that are dominating the debate among the Democratic aspirants for the White House and wants to remake the labor federation as dramatically as candidates like Sanders and Warren hope to do from the White House. She rejects the current labor leadership’s moderate approach and unapologetically calls on labor to embrace a more liberal set of values as a way to reverse decades of systemic decline in membership and influence.

The labor movement is split—thanks to Trump, whose candidacy in 2016 created a schism in the labor vote that deeply embarrassed Trumka and probably helped deliver the White House to a president who openly despises unions. Nelson, however, is not interested in pulling the factions back together. She wants to repudiate Trump—and, implicitly, rank-and-file members of AFL-CIO unions who support him for his trade policies and broader war on establishment elites.

Nelson does not fit the classic profile of an American labor leader, at least not the cigar-chomping, pugnacious image enshrined in the public consciousness by the likes of George Meany and Jimmy Hoffa. Nelson, with her signature platinum blond hair, favors silk scarves, though she swears like a sailor. She grew up as a Christian Scientist, abstaining from medical treatment until her late 20s, but now advocates universal health care. Nelson is known for popping up on TV at all hours talking about workers issues, even those that don’t directly relate to flight attendants and has hired an outside media consultant to boost her public profile. It’s all asharp contrast with Trumka, who lives for deer hunting every fall at his Pennsylvania property and began his labor activism representing mine workers. Nelson began at 30,000 feet and would rather spend time with her young son, Jack.

Her likely candidacy also embodies the growing influence of women in the labor movement and the shift of unions away from the blue-collar manufacturing sector to more white-collar jobs in service industry and government. While union membership rates among men have fallen by more than half since the early 1980s, the percentage of women has dropped by just 4 percentage points over the same period; as of last year, the rates were nearly equal. And in public-sector unions—a sector that gained 132,000 members from 2018 to 2019 despite a Supreme Court ruling outlawing mandatory collective bargaining fees—women now outnumber men.

“Sara Nelson embodies the changing demography of the labor movement, which is now increasingly women and increasingly people of color,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Work, Labor, and Democracy center at the University of California Santa Barbara.

She matches the demographic shifts but she is by no means a lock to replace Trumka. She has acquired detractors throughout her career, many of whom were reluctant to criticize her on the record for fear of reprisal. They see her as less of a coalition builder than a flashy, self-involved promoter. Perhaps most significantly, she would have to outmaneuver Liz Shuler, the AFL-CIO’s well-liked secretary treasurer, who has also expressed interest in running and would be a natural successor to Trumka. But Nelson’s candidacy alone could pull unions to the left on a host of issues, according to labor scholars and activists who have followed her career trajectory.

“If you want to lead the labor movement, you have to think bigger,” Nelson told me in an interview earlier this summer at an upscale restaurant in downtown Washington. Relentlessly on message, she hardly touched her salmon and kale salad as she deftly avoided sounding eager to replace an incumbent who hasn’t retired yet.

“Whether or not I hold a position that is a title position,” Nelson added, “I want to do everything I can to make this labor movement strong and work for working people and totally change the rules of the game in this country.”

Which raises the central question: Can labor return to its radically progressive roots, or will Nelson’s left-wing candidacy further divide a movement that was long a mainstay of Democratic support?

Nelson became a flight attendant almost by accident.After graduating from a tiny Christian Science college in St. Louis in 1995, she was working four jobs, barely making ends meet. A friend called from Miami Beach in 1996 and told her about her salary and benefits as a flight attendant. The next day, Nelson drove 300 miles to Chicago and interviewed with United Airlines.

The glamour faded when her first paycheck didn’t arrive on time. Desperate and out of money, Nelson rode a jump seat from Boston to Chicago just to eat free plane food. When she landed back east she went to the airline desk, and was told her check still hadn’t arrived.

As she began to cry, a stranger tapped her on the shoulder. It was a fellow flight attendant who wrote her a check for $800 on the spot.

“She [said], number one, you’ve got to take care of yourself, and number two, call our union,” Nelson said. “I learned everything I needed to about our union and the labor movement in general.”

From her earliest days, Nelson saw the dark side of a profession that depended on women and devalued them in equal measure. Up until 1970, United flight attendants could not be married under company rules, and it was common for airlines to show flight attendants the door at 32. By the mid-1990s, when Nelson began flying, attendants had just finished waging war over policies that set body weight limits; in 1993, USAir required that a 5-foot-5-inch female attendant weigh no more than 138 pounds. Two of Nelson’s co-workers suffered from eating disorders promoted by years of shame from their employer. They died soon after.

“That was the product of those weigh-ins,” Nelson said, tears welling in her eyes. “Maybe they were prone to it or whatever, but the weigh-ins killed them. And I saw it firsthand.”

Then there was the sexual harassment.

“It wouldn’t have even crossed your mind to complain about any sexual advances by anyone—by passengers, by pilots, by anyone in the office,” Nelson said. “Most flight attendants thought we just had to deal with it. And we dealt with it by going internal, by building our union, and taking other actions … to gain respect for our roles.”

A week after the incident with her first paycheck, Nelson was recruited to do the union’s new-hire program and was soon named local communications chair. Six months later, the nationalunion presented members with a contract proposal with United “that I thought stunk,” Nelson said. She led a charge to get it voted down; it passed by 51 percent nationally but, she said, “I did a really good job in Boston because we voted it down by 80 percent.”

“Instead of giving up, I got more involved and was a dissident voice in the union,” Nelson said. “Not really to tear the union down but to challenge the union.”

Nelson was off on Sept. 11, 2001, and had planned to spend the day doing union work. At 9:03 a.m., one of her usual flights to Los Angeles, United 175, collided with the south tower of the World Trade Center. She knew the entire crew, as well as two customer service representatives who were going on vacation. The experience crystallized Nelson’s view of flight attendants as essential guardians of public safety. In an effort to keep spreading the message,she became the union’s national communications director for the United chapter in 2002, which served as a platform to become vice president in 2011 and then president in 2014.

Nelson is reluctant to talk about the way she became president of AFA, probably because it involved ousting the cancer-stricken incumbent.

The incident, which has not been previously reported, is a messy part of Nelson’s carefully curated image. In the wake of a merger between U.S. Airways and American Airlines, Nelson participated in a coup against Veda Shook, who had been president for three years. U.S. Airways, whose employees were represented by Nelson and Shook’s union, was disappearing; American had its own union, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which was anticipated to represent the new combined unit.

Nelson objected fiercely, arguing that the new bargaining unit should be represented by AFA. It was an outlandish proposition, according to several people involved in the talks, given that the American union outnumbered the U.S. Airways flight attendants 2 to 1 and easily would have won a representation election.

In September 2013, the board passed a resolution that stripped Shook of her power to negotiate with the American Airlines union, effectively handing the reins to Nelson. The vote was unanimous, a board member at the time told me.

Shook, who is no longer involved in the union, was not eager to talk about her relationship with Nelson. “I was still working and undergoing chemotherapy and then all this other stuff happened,” Shook told me. “I didn’t see it coming until it was too late because I’d never met anyone like that before.”

According to Shook, Nelson convinced the board that Shook hadn’t fought hard enough for the U.S. Airways flight attendants. In the regularly scheduled election a few months later, Shook was defeated.

When I asked Nelson about this, she said other people put her up to it because Shook passed up an opportunity to get a better deal for the union. The AFA contract was better than the American Airlines union’s contract, Nelsonsaid, and could have been used as a bargaining chip to get a better deal for all of the flight attendants.

“The leverage that we had was squandered,” Nelson said. “There were a lot of things where we weren’t fighting like we should, so people asked me to step up and fight, and it was probably one of the most difficult times in my life, actually. Painful. Really painful.”

“I took massive personal attacks,” she said. “So, hey, I know what that’s like, and I lived through it.”

The former board member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, corroborated Nelson’s account, saying the board had “lost confidence” in Shook’s leadership.

Others who were involved in the negotiations challenge Nelson’s version of events.

“It would be very disingenuous for them to say that their contract was better,” said Lenny Aurigemma, one of the negotiators for the American Airlines union. “We felt we got the best of both contracts. … They never made the money that we’re making now. Never, not even close.”

“I like Sara. I also like Veda,” said a person who worked for another transportation union that was involved in the merger “And I think a lot of people felt that Veda got a bad deal.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to talk about Sara’s history without saying she became president by pushing out the predecessor, because she’s not shy about taking on people who are in these offices,” this person added. “That’s the moral of the story here.”

Nelson’s talent for spotlighting the power of her union on hot-button progressive topics that have as much to do with embarrassing Trump as they do with labor issues was on sharp display in March. A Mesa Airlines flight attendant, who was a beneficiary of the DACA immigration program, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on an inbound flight from Mexico and detained for six weeks. Nelson mobilized her publicity machine upon learning of her plight. Hillary Clinton retweeted her, setting off a social media storm. Nelson and Mesa Airlines CEO Jonathan Ornstein, who knew each other from prior contract negotiations, spoke on the phone.

“It was like, you call the Democrats, I’ll call the Republicans, and let’s fix this,” said Ornstein.

The flight attendant was released within a day.

Ornstein and Nelson should be enemies. But behind closed doors, Nelson proved to be a skilled deal-maker, Ornstein said, and he gained respect for her at the outset when the two were able to finalize contract negotiations in a single meeting in 2017.

“You look at the labor movement right now and you’ve got what, 6 percent of the [private-sector] workforce now organized?” Ornstein said. “To me, that kind of creativity is what’s needed. The model needs to change, and I think Sara is the kind of person that could do that.”

Nelson’s opportunity to reshape the national movementis due in large part to the political wound Trump dealt to union leadership, specifically Trumka.

Three years ago, Trumka suffered embarrassment when portions of his membership—white workers galvanized by Trump’s protectionist trade message and promises of reviving manufacuturing—ignored the federation’s endorsement of Clinton and voted for Trump, rewarding the man accused of not paying his own workerswith the largest percentage of union-household votes to a Republican since Ronald Reagan.

Trumka’s struggle to marshal the disparate factions of his coalition and present a unified voice has come at a precarious moment for unions, whose membershiphas declined inexorably in recent years. Last year, private and public sector unions represented 10.5 percent of the American workforce, down from their peak of 35 percent in 1954. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court also dealt a major blow to unions in 2018 when it ruled that public-sector unions may not charge members mandatory collective bargaining fees on the grounds that such fees violated members’ First Amendment rights.

Even the good news for the labor movement has come with a reminder of leadership’s weakening grip. More workers participated in major work stoppages in 2018 than in any year since 1986. But much of that increase came from the teachers strikes over pay and classroom fundingin West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona. And those strikes — in deeply red states — were driven not by national unions but by grassroots Facebook groups created by local teachers.

Just who is in charge of the labor movement has forced a debate over what labor’s role should be in defeating Trump, or whether it should play any role at all. Trumka has said the AFL-CIO will evaluate all the candidates, including Trump, acknowledging that the president’s performance has been mixed for unions—good on trade, but bad on health care and wages.

Democrats want to step into that breach and rebuild the fabled “blue wall” in Midwestern swing states. But there is little agreement on how to accomplish that. Presidential candidates like Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who dropped out in October, have suggested that Democrats are ignoring unions by embracing far-left policy ideas like “Medicare for All.” Trumka—reflecting a divide in his membership—has said that the country “ultimately” needs to move to a single-payer system but that the value of union-won health care plans shouldn’t be lost in the process.

Nelson, by contrast, embodies a growing cross-section of union-minded Democrats who believe labor needs to stop apologizing for being liberal. Unions would have more success, she argues, if they embraced their activist roots.

Speaking to the Chicago Democratic Socialists in May—a speaking invitation it’s hard to imagine Trumka ever accepting—Nelson extolled radical labor leaders of yore. She spoke of A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the first black union, and his protégé, Bayard Rustin, who in 1963 organized 250,000 people for Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, and Lucy Gonzales Parsons, who was thrust into activism after her husband was executed on false charges that he had carried out an attack at a labor demonstration in 1886.

“They were shot down at Homestead, Pennsylvania and in the hills of West Virginia,” Nelson said. “They were hanged for the Haymarket Affair in Chicago and beaten on an overpass near Detroit. … These activists thought it was important enough to stand up against all odds. … Today it’s our turn.”

“Our task,” Nelson added, “is to build a labor movement that sees itself truly as a labor movement — not just a collection of separate unions.”

“For years we outsourced our power while the bosses were outsourcing our jobs. We spent too much time trying to cut deals with the boss or build favor with politicians and too little time organizing members to fight for what we deserve. People think power is a limited resource, but using power builds power.”

This emboldened vision of union influence, say some labor activists, is not a breakaway faction—it’s actually a return to the mainstream of the movement.

“The new whitewashed idea that the labor movement is moderate—it’s not that,” said Amaya Smith, a former AFL-CIO communications director who now works for the National Partnership for Women and Families. “It’s a big family … You’re part of a historic movement that literally worked to fight against capitalism. It doesn’t get any more progressive than that.”

In that spirit, a growing number of progressives believe unions should do more to inject themselves into national conversations such as health care, climate change and immigration.

“I believe in a labor movement that leads the entire country, not just sits at a bargaining table advocating for the members of a particular union,” said Representative Andy Levin, a freshman Democrat from suburban Detroit.

That Democrats like Levin (who replaced his father, Representative Sander Levin, when he retired in 2018) agree with the progressive left on environmental issues and health care is significant, though he is careful to make clear he has not endorsed a possible successor for Trumka. In addition to representing a large swath of union auto workers, Levin is also a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Climate change is a pants-on-fire crisis of such proportions and such immediacy that you literally can’t overstate how fast and how comprehensively we’ve got to deal with it,” Levin said. “If we do it fast and if we do it right, it’s going to create a tremendous number of jobs. And if we do it right it can be a lever to re-unionize America.”

Nelson knows that such policies—with their sky-high price tags—draw plenty of fire from political centrists who fear that anything that smacks of tax and spend socialism is simply playing into Trump’s hands. But Nelson is determined to reframe how unions look at issues like Medicare for All, which calls for abolishing private insurance in favor of a government program. Initially, Medicare for All was seen risky for the 2020 candidates to support because it could alienate union voters who had negotiated plans through collective bargaining. “You’ve worked like hell, you gave up wages for it,” former Vice President Joe Biden told the Iowa Federation of Labor convention this past summer, bashing the concept.

After former Maryland Rep. John Delaney argued that supporting Medicare for All would “get Trump reelected,” Nelson swooped in to back Sanders and Warren, two of its most prominent advocates. Government health care, she said, would allow unions to spend their time bargaining for higher wages and other benefits.

“It’s a huge drag on our bargaining,” Nelson told POLITICO in August. “So our message is: Get it off the table.”

Her pronouncement made the rounds online. Splinter, the now defunct liberal news site, proclaimed that “Not Every Union is Buying Into the Lies About Medicare For All.” Weeks later, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO passed a resolution to require that any candidate it endorses support Medicare for All, breaking with the national leadership.

Given the tepid support she enjoys from more conservative members of the AFL-CIO—particularly the building trades, where concern over eliminating oil and gas jobs runs deep—its hard to imagine Nelson ultimately succeeding Trumka. And even if she were to win, observers say Nelson would find it difficult to enact some of the controversial policies she supports. The AFL-CIO president has the unenviable task of managing a diverse array of 55 unions and developing positions that, in practice, are often a compromise.

“Historically, the AFL-CIO actions are taken around issues of the least common denominator because any union or group of unions can block a Green New Deal or Medicare for All from becoming adopted,” said Andy Stern, the former Service Employees International Union president who split with the labor federation in 2005. “So the AFL-CIO ends up being for building windmills because the building trades like building windmills and environmentalists like building windmills. That’s very different than supporting the candidates’ environmental plans or the Green New Deal.”

But winning Trumka’s seat might not be the only measure of success for Nelson. If she can link her wing of the labor movement to the political growndswell that is animating the 2020 contest—who knows? It might just topple a president.

“There are people who understand you can’t extract a social movement from an economic movement,” Nelson said. “They go together.”

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