Damn. In case you haven’t heard, Miguel Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angles County Labor Federation, died suddenly last night of a heart attack. I never had the good fortune of working with Contreras but anyone who did spoke highly of him. There’s a fairly detailed obit of him in today’s Los Angeles Times.

I feel this morning the way I felt when Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. Why do we lose the best progressive leaders when we need them most? Contreras really drove the L.A. County Fed to be so much better, more progressive, taking the lead in political fights, the immigrant workers freedom ride. Here’s one of the parts from the obit that struck me the most: “Since Contreras was elected secretary-treasurer of the federation in 1996—becoming the first nonwhite to win the seat—the unions’ ranks have grown by 125,000 to more than 800,000, an increase fueled mostly by the city’s burgeoning Latino immigrant population.”

And here we are in the midst of a fight for our survival. Damn shame.