The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) backed out of an event with other organizations promoting the Senate healthcare reform bill Wednesday over concerns about changes made to the legislation to accommodate centrist Democrats.

The SEIU had planned to participate in a Capitol Hill press conference along with the AARP, the liberal advocacy group Families USA, Consumers Union and the American Cancer Society Action Network. As recently as Tuesday morning, the organizations distributed an advisory to the news media that included the SEIU. But the move by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to excise provisions of the healthcare reform bill to create a government-run public option health insurance program and to allow people between 55 and 64 years old to buy into Medicare gave the labor union pause, spokeswoman Lori Lodes said.

"That decision has to be made by our leaders and our members," Lodes said. The event with the AARP and the other groups was scheduled before Reid made changes to the bill.

The SEIU executive board will hold what Lodes described as an "emergency" meeting Wednesday night to decide how to move forward. "Right now, they don't have the information they need to make this decision," said Lodes, who added that the SEIU informed the other organizations on Tuesday they would not be joining the press conference.

The board meeting likely will not produce a final determination by the union about whether to support advancing the Senate healthcare bill, which not only lacks a public option and the Medicare buy-in but also would levy an excise tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance plans that some union members have, Lodes said.

"We will not have an absolute decision coming," largely because Reid has not released the final language of the healthcare bill, she said.

Classy, Union thugs spitting on kids.

So some SEIU members beat up a protester in St. Louis last week, and the internet - at least, parts of it - noticed. But all the blogs and columns and coverage and punditizing seem to be missing one important word. Again.

As in: SEIU members got violent at a protest...again.

Remember this, from last April: SEIU International Attempts Disruption at 2008 Labor Notes Conference. The SEIU disrupted - some might say attacked - another union's event. Some details:

Some participants were thrown to the ground by larger SEIUers. One protestor broke through the first line and, finding himself trapped between the two lines, flailed wildly. Former Labor Notes office manager Dianne Feeley, a retiree from American Axle, was pushed and fell, cutting her head, and was treated at an emergency room.

Luckily, the mob of 200+ SEIU members wasn't able to push their way into the room. Things could have been much worse, if they had:

... SEIU's planned disruption would have frightened and intimidated hundreds of union members who are not party to their dispute with CNA. In the crowded banquet hall, in which there was barely room between tables; in the panic people undoubtedly would have been injured.

Well, that would serve 'em right, wouldn't it, for being there in the first place. People should know better than to be someplace when the SEIU wants to protest.

Am I wrong to think that's how the SEIU sees it?

Things are heating up at these health care "reform" events. People are angry, and they're letting that anger out. That's just fine with me - it makes for good blogging material, if nothing else - as long as it doesn't go too far.

Conservatives, libertarians, pro-Hayekians and free marketers: be angry, and forceful, but polite. Don't shout speakers down, but don't back down, either. Don't get physical. If somebody - even somebody in a purple t-shirt - pushes you, don't push back.

And most importantly: everybody - everybody - carry a video camera.

Either SEIU or its front organization HCAN has taken to hiring illegal aliens to do the astroturfing real Americans won’t do for Nancy Pelosi:

These two guys were put into action after being recruited at a nearby illegal alien day laborer hangout.  Seeing as the proposed Obamacare will give them free healthcare if it is passed, it is ironic that they had no idea what their signs said.

But I’ll let our friend El Marco tell the story:

This clinic is adjacent to Denver’s day laborer pickup street, Park Avenue. Being fluent in Spanish, El Marco asked these guys “¿hablan ingles?” “casi nada” was the reply from our amigo on the left. I asked him if he could tell me what the signs said. “¿Quien sabe?” (who knows?) was all he said to me, with a big grin. I’m kicking myself for not asking them how much they were getting paid to support the grassroots.

The irony of their lack of comprehension of the signs they were holding was heightened by the fact that they were the most elaborate and detailed signs of either group.

For the whole report and a ton of photos of Pelosi’s astroturfed visit Looking at the Left. 

Healthcare for America Now (HCAN), front group for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has declared war on Tea Party Patriots and concerned Americans.  Using their astroturf campaign and their surrogates, the labor union movement is trying to destroy healthcare for those Americans who are not exempt, like themselves, from the nationalized healthcare they support.  Not surprisingly, the SEIU enjoys a curiously close relationship with the White House.

Margarida Jorge, a former organizing director for SEIU, and now the National Director for HCAN, wrote and distributed a playbook for disrupting Tea Party Patriots and average Americans from exercising their rights of free speech and their access to their representatives in Congress.

Her biography reads:

Margarida Jorge is the National Field Director for Health Care for America Now. In this role, Jorge works with labor, community, faith, grassroots, and progressive organizations to move Members of Congress to support HCAN’s vision of health care reform in ways that build power for permanent local organizations. Previously, Jorge directed Americans for Health Care, SEIU’s grassroots campaign to win health care for all and also worked on candidate elections, state legislative fights, and ballot initiative campaigns in the states. Jorge began her career in the labor movement, where she organized low-income health care workers in the South and the Midwest for nearly 10 years.

Margarida has been celebrated by such luminaries of the communist left as Peoples Weekly World and Political Affairs Net.  She has also served as an advocate for the Missouri Citizen Education Fund who famously accused John Ashcroft of supporting white supremecists.

Here is her dirty tricks playbook via Talking Points Memo:

You can download a copy of her playbook here.

Hat Tip:  Race Bannon

Michelle Malkin:  SEIU and the “Persuasion of Power”

Gateway Pundit:  White House and DNC release Labor Goons

Atlas Shrugs has reports of union thuggery and this video:

This Thursday, August 6th, over 1,000 Tea Partiers showed up to attend Russ Carnahan’s townhall meeting in South Saint Louis. They were locked out.

And yet he Carnahan staff sneaked in Service Employees International Union (SEIU) memebers through a side door marked “handicapped.” (The SEIU, for those who don’t know, is the group for whom Healthcare for America Now (HCAN) is only a front.) Check it out:

After the President himself talked about getting in people’s faces when they oppose his policies and setting up snitch lines at the White House, the only shocker in this video is that it took so long for townhalls to turn violent. The SEIU showed up in t-shirted uniform to a townhall meeting for Rep. Russ Carnahan in St. Louis, apparently intent on demonstrating union tactics in organizing elections if Congress passes Card Check. The video below shows the immediate aftermath of the attack, including the arrest of one of the SEIU’s thugs:

His excuse? After being berated by a member of the crowd for attacking a black conservative for opposing ObamaCare, the union thug replied, “He attacked America!” The same goon made a threatening motion to the vocal witness, but perhaps thought better of it when he saw the camera. Police eventually responded and started arresting a number of people, including one reporter on the scene:

Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.

“It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked,” he said.

Pay attention, America. This is a glimpse into the next three years of the Obama administration, at least using the same logic by which the Left accuses health-care reform opponents of “astroturfing”. If its policies get organized opposition, especially at events designed to allow for public debate, purple-shirted thugs will appear to crack heads and scare off the opposition.

And if nothing else, it’s a great look at how the unions will act once the secret ballot gets eliminated from organizing elections.