Postal workers, actors, stageworkers, teachers, truckers mingle with candidates.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: September 8 2026
Host: There are 30,000-plus active and retired union workers in Manatee and Sarasota County, according to the AFL-CIO, and some of them showed up for a Labor Day celebration Monday at Fogartyville Community Center.
[Gentle, upbeat music and indistinct chatter]
Johannes Werner: The Coalition of Manasota Unions invited, and 100-plus came, for live music, cake and Mediterranean fare. Represented were stagehands, actors, musicians, postal workers, flight attendants, teachers, university professors and graduate assistants, truckers and warehouse workers.
Postal union representative Martha Shunn-King started with the basics: Send letters, please. But she then veered into how Trump administration politics affect post office workers. The tug of war over restricting vote-by-mail playing out in the courts could well end up on the shoulders of the people supposed to send your ballot.
Martha Shunn-King
Martha Shunn-King: They want us to decide whether your mail is going to the supervisor of elections. That can’t happen. For one thing, the Post Office—that’s not our job. We’re not allowed to touch the mail. Ever since the beginning of time, we just process it and deliver it. The only thing we were to take out of the mail is a bomb or something unsafe. Everything else, we deliver. We still do a good job. In our contract last year, we put in that, during election season, we were allowed so many people in each office to monitor the mail. They will go around and make sure there is no mail left in any building. It’s a big deal. They have to do it. They have to follow it. We really care about the mail, we really care about your votes, and we take care of them.
JW: It’s election season, and three candidates worked the crowd—Kelly Kirschner, who is running for Congress with the AFL-CIO’s endorsement; Jimmy Glover, a member of the flight attendants’ union running for the Sarasota School Board; and Lee Wasserman, a retired labor lawyer running for Florida Senate.
Kirschner pleaded with union members to help him overcome a big campaign funding gap.
Kelly Kirschner
Kelly Kirschner: Look at this race. Just in the primary, our Trump-endorsed candidate spent $2.5 million on her primary alone. Over $2 million of that came from PAC money, which is special interest money from all these corporations that we’re talking about. What I’m asking you is to listen to your Teamsters brothers—to listen to everyone else in here—that we have to mobilize. We have to animate people. We can’t be bystanders. When we do that, we win. When we talk to people of all political orientations, they understand that. They understand the grift—the corruption—that they’re seeing. It’s time that we can do better, so let’s fix this together. Thank you all very much for what you do and for giving me this opportunity.
[Applause]
Tihda Vongkoth
Tihda Vongkoth: Thank you, Kelly. Alright. We’ll be saying, “When we fight, we win.” When we fight—
Crowd: We win!
TV: When we fight—
Crowd: We win!
TV: When we fight—
Crowd: We win!
TV: Alright, everybody. Eat, drink and be merry. Music’s coming back.
JW: The crowd rouser, by the way, was Tihda Vongkoth, a Sarasota Orchestra percussionist and marimba player, who emceed the event.
For WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm.