the City Council Speaker, of making "--referencing to Eve Moskowitz--at the expense of the careers of "over 100,000 workers"—referencing New York public school teachers—who "were ridiculed in the process." McLaughlin, stating that labor had "built our city," simply saying that it was time "to get tough and play offense." A local newspaper, attempting to make sense of the speech, stated: "Clearly, here was the labor candidate denouncing the anti-labor candidate in no uncertain terms in what will be recalled as the day the race for the 2005 Democratic mayoral primary got off the mark." Other activism McLaughlin was part of a coalition urging the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to commit $1 billion in post-9/11 federal funding to the Liberty Jobs plan. He led the 2003 Labor for Democracy campaign in reaction to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's effort to increase voter participation by replacing the 2003 party primaries with a charter referendum proposal. "If not the labor movement," he said, "then who is going to stand up and speak out for the working people? Sure, I'm looking cynically at the mayor's proposal; this smells of politics. What's broken? What's he trying to fix? The medicine we're trying to give the patient is not what the doctor prescribed. It imperils democracy." McLaughlin, in collaboration with Randi Weingarten, Rev. Al Sharpton and others, was part of a coalition that organized a march against police brutality. In 2003, he started, as the New York chairman of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a campaign which called for "a road to citizenship, the reunification of families, a voice and dignity in the workplace, and the civil rights of all people." At the 2004 Republican National Convention, he worked with convention organizers to negotiate no-strike labor agreements, in order to secure the convention's venue in New York. However, during the convention, he organized a rally of unionists from a wide variety of trades to protest certain Bush Administration labor policies. Indictment, trial and imprisonment Indictment In March 2006, the FBI raided McLaughlin's offices, making public the fact that he was being investigated. In October 2006, McLaughlin was indicted on 44 federal counts, including racketeering, money laundering, bank and mail fraud, labor bribery, and embezzlement. He was placed under arrest. "He was accused of stealing from virtually every organization with which he was involved," said the New York Post. At the news conference announcing the 186-page indictment, Michael