This union has a sense of humor

Look what you can do with a couple hundred dollars, members that are willing to dress up like inmates, and a sense of humor. This 30 second ad produced by John Rivera, the Dade County PBA, and the Florida PBA, was the single most powerful thing that derailed the Tea Party governor’s effort to privatize all the state’s prisons. Check it out and do it in your town! Our idea of great tactics. Brilliant. If you have ads you’ve produced send them along.

The effort to privatize every aspect of the public sector – from schools, to prisons, to law enforcement – has been relentless and the victories against the onslaught have been few and far between.

Over the last decade we’ve seen public employees and union members demonized as “thugs” and “parasites” taking home hefty paychecks and pensions. This campaign of gross disinformation cost billions of dollars and relies heavily on pitting the voters against first responders, teachers, nurses, librarians and everyone else who works for a state, city or town. As anyone that’s been paying attention can tell you, the campaign has been wildly successful. Guys like billionaire Pete Peterson (he’s spent $500 million personally in the war on labor) have used melodramatic, over the top ads, editorials and other communications designed to infuriate and divide.

The sad part is it seems to be working like a charm.

But not everywhere. Now some groups are fighting fire with fire. Remember the infamous Willie Horton ad from the Bush I campaign? The Florida PBA has tried something similar and it worked like a charm.

A few months later, the Florida PBA celebrated a huge victory when a judge blocked the plan to privatize 29 Florida prisons, ruling that lawmakers violated the Florida Constitution by approving the measure.

John Rivera, president of both the Dade County PBA and the Florida PBA was in the fight from the beginning. The multi-faceted game-plan was waged mostly with the courts and the politicians, but this clever television ad was wildly successful in driving the message home that cutting the budget of the state’s prison system and handing the insitutions over to Gov. Rick Scott’s cronies in private industry was going to be a disaster for the residents of Florida. Let us know what you think about the ad in the Comments section below.

John Rivera has been one of the nation’s more aggressive police union leaders. He serves as president of the Dade County PBA (over 7000 members) and president of the Florida PBA (over 37,000) members.

More about John Rivera . . .
John has served the Dade County Police Department since June of 1976. In the late 1980s, Rivera was assigned to the Organized Crime Bureau (OCB), where he served for ten years. While in OCB, he investigated cases involving organized crime and political and public corruption. Rivera was the lead investigator on the Mariel Task Force. In May of 1990, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. In 1989, Rivera was elected to the Dade County Police Benevolent Association (PBA) Board of Directors. He served on the board until December 1992, when he was elected president of the Association. He took the office of PBA President in January 1993, a position he still holds. He is also president of the Florida PBA. John has appeared repeatedly on national and local television programs commenting on law enforcement issues and coming up with innovative solutions to the tough problems facing the law enforcement profession.