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Guild Service Award Nomination Letter for Dan Duncan March 10, 2009 When Herbert Block – the venerable “Herblock” of Washington Post editorial cartoon fame – died in 2001, he left a $50,000 bequest to the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, of which he had been a member since joining the Post in 1946. He might not have realized it, but that bequest helped the local get out of a financial jam and gave it the breathing room to right its fiscal ship. In appreciation, WBNG established the Herb Block Community Service Award to honor those members who give meritorious service in their community, however you define “community” at any given moment. The winner of the award its first two years was Bonnita Spikes, a unit officer of the Montgomery County Council of Supporting Service Employees, a.k.a. SEIU Local 500. Her volunteer efforts in union-sponsored and church-run endeavors alike – not to mention her work in trying to abolish the death penalty in Maryland – may have made her such a formidable candidate that, after her two wins, nobody else even bothered to nominate another WBNG member for the award. But for 2008, I suggest an eminently worthy candidate: Dan Duncan, at-large member of the local who serves on the Executive Council as vice chair of the Small Units and Members delegation, works for the Maritime Trades Division of the AFL-CIO, and is president of the Northern Virginia Allied Labor Federation. We all know how the Guild has historically stayed away from embracing causes, let alone candidates. That doesn’t stop us as individuals, though, from following our own political instincts. Nor should it. What Dan did in his role as head of the Northern Virginia Allied Labor Federation deserves notice. He set into place the structure that enabled both AFL-CIO and Change to Win-affiliated unions to send members into Virginia to canvass Virginians and to ask them to vote for Barack Obama for president. You may recall watching television on Election Night and seeing Virginia turn blue for the first time since 1964 – well before most of us had a color TV to make all those blue-state/red-state distinctions. And Dan helped make the change we as a labor movement sought in several other races in Northern Virginia. Now, Dan’s not perfect. He’s a mediocre bowler at best, and is a fan of the Cleveland Indians. But those faults are trivial compared to his accomplishments last year. And, for his part in making the Northern Virginia community, the Virginia community, and the American community a place where hope can thrive, I gladly nominate Dan Duncan for this year’s Herb Block Community Service Award. – Mark Pattison (Catholic News Service), president
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