October 18, 2006. Every year, hundreds of Teamsters travel across the country to attend TDU’s Rank and File Convention. They come for the educational workshops. They come to learn more about what is happening in our union. But most of all, they come to build an organization that speaks the truth and fights for a stronger union.

Tommy Burke and Dolores Bowden (see articles below) appear to be two very different types of Teamsters. Burke is a truck driver from rural North Carolina who joined TDU in 1989 to fight for pension reform.

Halfway across the country, Dolores Bowden works in the public sector for the City of Chicago. She joined TDU two months ago to work on battling corruption and poor representation in her local union.

But maybe Burke and Bowden aren’t so different. They both are committed not just to changing their own little slice of the world, but to building a network of Teamsters for a Democratic Union that brings the best of activists all across North America together to be a resource for all Teamsters. They know that, as one union brother told Rick Sather (see opposite page), “We are TDU.”