In Response to Ben Fong’s review of “Labor Power and Strategy”

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In December of 2023 Ben Fong published a review of Labor Power and Strategy (PM PRess) in the online journal Catalyst. The review provoked a lot of discussion and continuing interest in the interview with John Womack on the topic of working class power. Jeff Hermanson, a long time organizer in many industries from the garment district of NYC to the Biz in Hollywood wrote a response to Fong based on his rich experience. The Forum is happy to publish his response to Ben Fong.

Ben Fong has written an interesting review of the recent book Labor Power and Strategy.  I thought his response to Womack was better than any of the ten respondents in the book with the exception of Gene Bruskin’s discussion of the Smithfield pork processing organizing experience. But I also think the approach of Brother Fong underestimates the remaining power of workplace organizing, as demonstrated by two recent struggles, that of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, and that of the UAW.

Womack writes, “You have to wound capital to make it yield anything. And you wound it painfully, grabbing its attention, when you take direct material action to stop its production, cut its profit.” 

Graffitti on a construction site wall near 7th on Market Street Photo Robert Gumpert

In the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes, we see how a well-organized and well-led small (11,000 members), independent and democratic union in a position of structural power (the WGA) can use that power to “wound capital” in a significant way, especially when supported by organized workers in the broader industry. Writers are the initiators of the process of production, so their strike takes time to take effect, as their finished scripts wind through the production pipeline. In this case, as in the previous 2007-8 strike,  the writers undertook location picketing (productions in process). Based on the experience of the 2007-8 strike, the writers began location picketing earlier in the strike (in 2007-8 there was initially some member resistance to “picketing our own productions”); and the picketing was much more effective this time because of the solidarity support of the IATSE (cinematographers and other crew) and the Teamsters, who refused to cross picket lines. Then, ten weeks into the writers’ strike, the actors also struck, completely shutting down Hollywood film and TV.

It is highly likely that there would have been no actors’ strike if the writers had not struck first. The writers demonstrated the new degree of solidarity in the industry (in 2007-8 the IATSE opposed the writers’ strike and their members crossed the picket lines) and the ability to shut down production, even productions that had finished scripts. The writers also defined the issues – compensation for streaming, protections for the use of AI – and demonstrated the degree of public support for the writers’ positions, on issues which were shared by the actors. Again, the structural power of the writers – their role as the suppliers of an essential element of the production process – was key to mobilizing the solidarity support of the other unions, and that solidarity support then gave a morale boost to the writers and helped maintain their commitment to fight to the end. “Pencils down” was shown to be an effective strategy.

In the UAW strike, the innovative “Stand Up Strike” picked strategic plants and distribution centers as their targets, while workers in other plants continued working. This preserved the strike fund, avoided putting pressure on all UAW members in the Big Three at once, and hit profit centers of the employers. The assembly plants chosen were not just the most profitable plants, they also stood at the head of long and complex supply chains, and their shutdown had immediate negative effects on the component and parts suppliers. Layoffs immediately began at parts suppliers, not only in the US but also in Mexico. Some of the first supply chain producers to be hit were the seat manufacturers, which were in a just in time (JIT) relationship with the assemblers. They had to stop right away, because there was no place to store bulky seats, and hundreds of workers were laid off from seat plants on the Mexico-US border. Industry analysts reported concerns that a long strike would damage supply chain firms, and could provoke bankruptcy of some, disrupting the ability of the Big Three to resume production when the strike ended.

Both of these examples demonstrate the vulnerability of complex production networks to targeted strikes by small groups of workers in strategic structural positions in those production networks. Defining the critical “strategic structural positions” is a key task of union leaders, and requires serious research and analysis. Often this research requires the participation of workers involved in the production process themselves.

I had an exchange with John Womack Jr. about a strike I coordinated in the 1980’s for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in the NYC garment district. We were striking a non-union blouse manufacturer who was using around 10 to 15 Korean-owned sewing shops that employed Latino workers, mostly Mexicans and Dominicans. We had salted several of the shops with former strikers whose shops had gone out of business rather than sign a union contract. In one of the most important shops, we struck but could only pull out a minority of workers, among whom were four button-hole machine operators. I came out of the dress industry, so in this strike I learned that in a blouse shop, the button-hole machine operators were the most important (and most highly paid) workers, because operating this machine required a high degree of skill, and if the button-holes were not precisely placed, the blouse would not hang correctly. Therefore we agreed to pay the full salary of the four button-hole machine operators, while the other strikers went to look for work in the other shops in the production network, to “bore from within.” 

Another part of the importance of this particular shop was that the employer was an officer of the Korean Apparel Manufacturers Association, of which all 400 Korean-owned garment factories in NYC were members. So KAMA decided to help this owner out by asking other owners to come to the shop and help move cut fabric across the picket line. This effort resulted in the KAMA members discovering the anger and fighting spirit of the Latino workers, as they were unable to cross a very militant picket line. After this incident, the KAMA president, who owned another of the most important shops of this network, approached the union through a Korean organizer that worked with me, and asked how the Korean garment manufacturers could resolve this dispute. We told them that if they stopped working for the blouse company, we would have no reason to target them; and they agreed to stop working on the blouse company’s goods until the strike was over. This was a turning point in the strike, which we eventually won.

Thus there are several factors that need to be looked at to determine whether a particular group of workers is situated in a “strategic structural position.” First is the technical question, i.e. are their skills and function essential for the production process, are they not easily replaced? Second is the economic question, i.e. what role does their particular unit play in the profitability or economic viability of the enterprise or industry sector? What impact does stopping their unit have on other employers in the production network? Third is the social question, i.e. what impact does their action have on other groups of workers in other parts of the production system?

The third point might be considered to be part of the “associational power” equation; but in my opinion, I believe Womack’s view, which I share, is that the social impact of action by a group of workers is largely dependent on the perception by other groups of the structural power the first group can wield. In a garment production system, the cutters are widely considered to have more structural power than the sewers, since they are fewer in number, and if they stop work the sewers will have no cut fabric to sew. Therefore a strike by the cutters often convinces the sewers to join in the strike, as the expectation of victory is enhanced. This is analogous to the situation in the entertainment industry, where a strike by the writers, who are few in number but who produce the scripts that are necessary to start the production process by actors, directors and crews, encourages other industry workers to take action.    

In complex distribution systems, like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Kroger’s, US Foods, etc., the questions presented are similar but as in every inquiry can only be answered by concrete analysis of concrete conditions.

Hoffa, Racism, and the Teamsters: The 1945 Detroit Mayor’s Race

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Richard Frankensteen, UAW Vice President. Photo Library of Congress

As many people know by now, I’ve been looking into the historical relationship between the Teamsters and the State of Israel for a few months. Several online outlets including Counterpunch and the Stansbury Forum posted my original article The Teamster Connection: Apartheid Israel and the IBT. My interest in the subject was sparked by growing calls by many U.S. based unions for a ceasefire in Gaza. So far, neither the leadership of the Teamsters or any of its local affiliates or the longstanding reform group Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) have called for a cease fire, and have, in fact, opposed such resolutions.

One important stage in the evolution of the Teamster’s relationship with Israel was a testimonial dinner thrown for Jimmy Hoffa in April 1956. It was a major attempt to clean up Hoffa’s odious public image. The proceeds of the dinner were donated to the building of a children’s home in Israel. He was not yet the nationally known and notorious figure that he became following his appearance before the Senate Rackets Committee hearing in 1957. But, his thuggery and relationship with gangsters, however, were well-known in the labor movement, and, especially, in Detroit, his home base. 

Curious, I decided to dive deeper into Hoffa’s lesser known but important resume building activities: his role in defeating UAW-CIO leader Richard Frankensteen’s run for mayor of Detroit in 1945. The 1945 Detroit mayor’s race is a real education in the deglamorization of Jimmy Hoffa, especially on the question of fighting racism. While Detroit witnessed much rank and file opposition to the UAW’s no-strike pledge, it also saw hate strikes against black workers and racist rioting over housing. With the war over, Detroit’s 1945  municipal elections saw any parameters of “wartime unity” erased. 

According to an article in The Public Opinion Quarterly, written soon after the election, captured the brawl in its introduction:

Faced with the threat of a liberal candidacy of the UAW-CI’s Frankensteen, conservative forces in Detroit resorted to anti-Negro, anti-Semitic, and anti-“Communist” propaganda to elected their candidate, Jeffries, in one of the “most vicious, nasty campaign” in recent municipal history.

The Teamsters supported the incumbent Mayor Edward Jeffries, who ran a race-baiting campaign to defeat Frankensteen. The UAW and the Teamsters were bitter and contentious rivals in Detroit as well throughout Michigan and the Midwest. The Teamsters were prepared to use the most unsavory methods and make alliances with the most reactionary forces to defeat the UAW-CIO  But, it’s not just a story of Teamster sabotage but also Frankensteen’s self-defeating strategy, especially, his failure to squarely fight racism in Detroit. 

According to Teamster historian Thaddeus Russell, the Detroit Teamsters in 1945, 

“maintained their policy of opposing any candidate backed by the CIO. In the 1945 mayoral election, the CIO put its full weight behind an effort to elect UAW vice president Richard Frankensteen. As the national [CIO] PAC (Political Action Committee)  and state and local CIO bodies pumped more than $200,000 into the Frankensteen campaign, the Teamsters did not hesitate to endorse the incumbent Jeffries.”

A publicly circulated letter by the Detroit Teamsters signed by Hoffa, Bert Brennan, and Joint Council President Sam Hurst endorsed Jeffries.

The Teamsters and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) were thrown into a panic after Frankensteen won the largest share of votes in an eight person non-partisan primary in August 1945. Frankensteen was projected by the UAW-CIO as a “labor candidate” since the non-partisan nature didn’t require a party affiliation, even though he had a long history of involvement in Democratic Party politics. For example, as recently as 1944, he was a delegate to the Democratic Party convention.

Again, according to Russell,

“When Frankensteen scored an impressive victory in the primary, the concerted effort of the CIO behind his candidacy caused the Wayne County Federation of Labor [WCFL] to abandon its longtime opposition to Jefferies and finally agree with the Teamsters on the threat of the CIO’s entry into politics.”

For Russell, “The WCFL’s opposition to Frankensteen along with the vigorous Teamster campaigning and Jeffries’ race-baiting proved to be a winning combination among Detroit’s white working class, who reelected the incumbent by a margin of 56,000 votes.” Vigorous campaigning, indeed. Dan Tobin, the Teamsters national president at the time, wrote in the December 1945 issue of The International Teamster magazine in December 1945, “Frankensteen was defeated by only 56,000 votes. The Teamsters supported his opponent, Mr. Jeffries, not because they were in love with Mr. Jeffries but because we could not afford to support Frankensteen.”

Apparently, the Teamsters had enough affection for Jeffries and his sordid campaign by rewarding him with a major mobilization of Teamster members, family, and friends to the polls. Tobin boasted:

“The membership of the all of the local unions of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Detroit is close to 25,000. Each man was expected and almost commanded to bring one other vote to the polls besides his own. That would be his wife, his sister, his brother or some friend. That would make a total of 50,000 votes, which undoubtedly were delivered against Frankensteen. Some of the other American Federation of Labor not as large in membership as the Teamsters did the same.”

Even if Tobin’s vote count is off by a few thousand votes, the Teamsters role in the re-election of such a racist demagogue as Edward Jeffries is horrendous. But, there is more to the story, including Frankensteen’s hapless campaign. Dubbed “A Knight in Dull Armor” by Time magazine, Frankensteen proved continually unable to defend himself from a hailstorm of attacks and stupidly distancing himself from his trade union background, despite a much larger turn out of voter than the last time the UAW-CIO put forward a labor slate in 1937. Over 500,000 voters turned out in 1945, significantly larger than the 400,000 in 1937.

Writing as Martin Harvey in Labor Action newspaper, Martin Glaberman focused on several critical failings of the Frankensteen campaign. First, according to Glaberman was:

“During the whole campaign the initiative was in the hands of the reactionary Jeffries. It was he who determined the issues and set the tone of the campaign. Outstanding in the issues presented by Jeffries was the race question. Jeffries organized a widespread undercover anti-Negro campaign which surpassed his vicious use of the question in the last municipal election. The central idea was white supremacy in the City Hall and the maintenance of the “purity” of the all-white neighborhoods.”

Jeffries campaigners and supporters among white homeowner associations also, according to Harvey/Glaberman:

“distributed leaflets in Negro neighborhoods charging Frankensteen and the UAW with being anti-Negro. In the same way they initiated a whispering campaign charging that Frankensteen was Jewish, yet distributed newspapers in the Jewish neighborhoods charging Frankensteen with being a friend of Father Coughlin and an anti-Semite. Even the regular daily press gave support to this campaign by featuring prominently news items on the extent of Frankensteen’s Negro support and charging repeatedly that Frankensteen represented only a minority of the population.

“The second major issue,” according to Glaberman , “in Jeffries’ campaign which was constantly combined with the first was the “red scare” and the charge that the CIO wanted to take over the city. On both of these issues Frankensteen devoted his time to denying the charges. He did not represent the Negroes, he said, but all the people. He was not a red and the CIO did not want to take over the city. He offered no program for the Negroes to put an end to the discrimination and segregation to which they are subjected and he offered no program to labor or the people as a whole on the many vital problems which exist, foremost among them being jobs and security. 

Frankensteen was reduced to “only positive statements were devoted to presenting himself as more efficient, as more concerned with improved bus service and cleaner alleys.” Glaberman summarized Frankensteen defeat:

“Without an aggressive program, for labor and the people, without calling on the middle class to support labor in this program, it was impossible for Frankensteen to answer the viciously reactionary charges of Jeffries. If his denials are valid, that is, if he does not represent labor but “all the people,” then why should anyone support him rather than Jeffries, who claims the same thing? If his denials are not true, that is, if he does represent labor, then why should the middle class, the storekeepers, the professionals, etc., support Frankensteen when they see no difference between “labor’s” program and Jeffries’ program?”

The 1945 Detroit municipal elections have fallen down the memory hole for the U.S. Left. It deserves a more extensive research and writing. 

Profile: Detroit News profile, 1997.

Backed by UAW President Homer Martin, Frankensteen won the vice-presidency of the international union in 1937. But in 1939 Martin was ousted as president by R.J. Thomas, and Frankensteen lost as well.

During World War II he was appointed to the National War Labor Board and the National War Production Board by President Franklin Roosevelt. He was appointed by Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) President Philip Murray in 1941 as national director of efforts to organize workers in the expanding aviation industry during the war years. He retained the post when the UAW was given jurisdiction over the industry in 1942.

The power struggle turned ugly at the UAW’s convention in 1943 in Buffalo when Reuther delegates attacked Frankensteen and George F. Addes, secretary-treasurer of the UAW, for their support of piecework and incentive pay in auto plants. The Reuther faction circulated a campaign ditty to the tune of an old ballad, “Reuben and Rachel,” that suggested Frankensteen and Addes were taking orders from Joseph Stalin.

The verse went:
      “Who are the boys who take their orders
      Straight from the office of Joe Sta-leen?
      No one else but the gruesome twosome,
      George F. Addes and Frankensteen.
      Who are the boys who fight for piecework,
      To make the worker a machine?
      No one else but the gruesome twosome,
      George F. Addes and Frankensteen.”

      Other verses, some unprintable, added spice to the doggerel.

      In the end, the convention endorsed a Reuther resolution opposing piecework and incentive pay and Reuther defeated Frankensteen in a race for first vice-president. Addes narrowly kept his office.

At the 1943 UAW convention in Buffalo, Frankensteen was elected first vice-president of the UAW.

Frankensteen was a Wallace supporter at the 1944 Democratic convention.

From Tom Sugrue, The Origin of the Urban crisis, page 80:

“Several Detroit politicians used the housing issue to their advantage in the reelection bids later that year [1945], incumbent Mayor Edward Jeffries, in a campaign laden with racial innuendo, attacked UAW-backed mayoral candidate Richard Frankensteen, flooding Northwest and Northeast Side neighborhoods with literature warning of his opponent’s support for public housing and ties to black organizations.”

“Jeffries and his supporters combined anti-black and anticommunist sentiments into a potent political brew. Frankensteen, warned Jeffries and his supporters, was a “red” who would encourage “racial invasions” of white neighborhoods. Unlike Franksteen, Jeffries would uphold community interests. “Mayor Jeffries is Against Mixed Housing,” proclaimed a boldly printed campaign poster. It quoted Jeffries: “I have tried to safeguard your neighborhoods in the character in which you, their residents, have developed them.” The Home Gazette, a Northwest Side newspaper, editorialized that “There is no question where Edward J. Jeffries’ administration stands on mixed housing.” It praised the Detroit Housing Commission for “declaring that a majority of the people of the city of Detroit do not want the racial character of their neighborhoods changed, and for reiterating “its previous stand against attempts of Community-inspired Negroes to penetrate white residential sections.”

Black observers of the election and union supporters of Frankentseen were appalled by the blatant racial claims of Jeffries’s campaign, and at attempted to use economic populist and anti-Nazi rhetoric to deflate Jeffries’s charges. Henry Lee Moon, writing in the NAACP’s monthly, Crisis, accused Jeffries of appealing “to our more refined fascists, the big money interests, the precarious middle class whose sole inalienable possession is a white skin.” Jeffries’s racial appeals were remarkably successful. They bolstered his flagging campaign, and gave him a comfortable margin in November against UAW-backed candidate in a solidly union city. On the local level, the link between black and red was a clever for attracting white Democrats, suspicious of liberalism and its capacity for egalitarian political and social rhetoric.  

Public housing is “Negro housing.”

Lichtenstein, page 235:

“Most significantly, the fault lines that had long divided autoworkers according to race, ethnicity, skill, and politics were now deeply buried within a larger commitment to the union and its cause. These divisions had not disappeared, of course: Richard Frankensteen’s unexpected defeat in November’s [1945] mayoral election had demonstrated the capacity of those forces backing Mayor Edward Jeffries to use racist and anti-Semitic innuendo and outright slander to pry Polish and Italian voters from the CIO, even in solidly working-class neighborhoods.”

Halpern, UAW Politics, 42-43:

“In the municipal elections, Frankensteen won 44 percent of the total ballot, somewhat more than the labor slate won in 1937. He took 61 percent in Polish working-class neighborhoods and 75 percent in Italian precincts. But the relative decline in their loyalty proved the margin of defeat for the CIO, which had never won more than half of the votes of those who lived in Irish or southern white sectors of the city.”

Time magazine, October 29, 1945

Monday, Oct. 29, 1945

When hulking Richard Truman Frankensteen was nominated for mayor of Detroit, many a U.S. left-winger got excited. Frankensteen was a founder and vice president of the vast United Automobile Workers, C.I.O. He had bled at the hands of Ford “service men” at the famed Battle of the Underpass in 1937. He also seemed to have some political sex appeal: he was a college man (University of Dayton ’32), a ready speaker, young (38) and did not mind admitting that he wrote operettas, collected dolls as a hobby. If U.S. labor was to produce, not merely influence poli. ticians. perhaps Frankensteen would lead the way.

But last week, as Detroit’s final election drew near, Dick Frankensteen looked less like a trail blazer than a man just feeling his way around in a lot of trees. He had spoken as few ringing words about labor as possible. The reason: even his enemies in the union wanted him to be mayor (and thus out of union officialdom) so there was little point in it. Instead, to woo the public, he harangued audiences about Detroit’s dirty alleys, its street-railway fares, tried hard to be everyman’s friend.

Target Elusive. None of this was very exciting. As every city boss knows, candidates should make great promises, roar for reform or sail into their opponents, particularly incumbent opponents. Frankensteen found that attacking his opponent, Mayor Edward J. Jeffries, was disconcertingly like shadow boxing. In six years as mayor, Jeffries had done little, had made few bad mistakes.

But the mayor found 206-pound Dick Frankensteen a target hard to miss. He charged that U.A.W.’s man was suppported by Communists and rabble-rousers, would run the city for a little group of labor chieftains. Smear pamphlets appeared on Detroit’s streets. Hecklers asked Frankensteen embarrassing questions about housing for Negroes, his plans for non-union city employes.

Losing ground, Frankensteen made dramatic attempts to settle the crucial Kelsey-Hayes strike. He failed to produce any dramatic results. Meanwhile the muddled state of Detroit’s labor affairs did nothing to improve his standing in the public eye. Last week Detroit politicos guessed his chances were no better than 50-50 (though he had drawn 82,936 primary votes to Jeffries’ 68,754), that he would win only if Detroit had a strong, last-minute impulse to throw out his opponent.

You can read more from Joe Allen on Medium

Trump Courts the Teamsters

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Sean O’Brien has been driving the Teamsters in a new direction since he led a coalition campaign that included Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) to topple the union’s old guard in 2021.

Last year, O’Brien and TDU teamed up in a grassroots contract campaign at UPS that eliminated two-tier for delivery drivers, ended forced six-day work weeks, increased part-time wages from $15.50 to $23 an hour, and forced UPS to create thousands of more full-time jobs for part-time workers.

Under his leadership, the Teamsters have brought back the strike weapon, used it to win strong contracts, and organize the unorganized – including at DHL, Sysco, and US Foods.

O’Brien hit the stump with Senator Bernie Sanders and Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, to denounce white-collar crime syndicates like Amazon. He’s spoken at the TDU Convention and Labor Notes, the biennial conference of the grassroots, troublemaking wing of the labor movement. 

So more than a few progressives were left scratching their heads when Trump hosted O’Brien in Mar-a-Lago January 4. Alarm grew when Trump met with Teamster leaders and members at IBT headquarters three weeks later.

Now, headlines are breaking that the union contributed $45,000 to the Republican National Committee. What the hell is going on?

It’s understandable why Trump is courting the Teamsters. Fake populist, fake friend of the working stiff, is the would-be dictator’s whole brand. Trump landing the endorsement of the 1.2 million Teamsters would be a major coup, and a disaster for Biden who needs labor’s support to win in the Midwest and other swing states.

Could it really be that the Teamsters, who have not backed a Republican for President since mobbed-up leaders endorsed Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s, are capitulating to MAGA? 

Don’t bet on it.  But the Teamsters face the harsh reality that approximately half of their members support Trump. And they are not alone among unions in facing this problem. The union I worked for, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), faces a similar challenge of doing politics with a membership where Trump support is surprisingly strong in many locals. 

Under the headline, “Biden stakes his reputation on blue-collar workers, turns out they’re Trump voters”, a Bloomberg report using small-donor data documents that, “Mechanics and truck drivers give to Trump, while professors and scientists support Biden.”

This fact is a crisis not just for Biden, but for the entire labor movement. It defies an easy response if the goal is to engage and move more union members away from Trump in a highly polarized and toxic political environment. 

Trump and other right-wing populists have been exceptionally effective at using wedge issues to win over white working class voters. Union voters are more likely to vote against Trump than their nonunion counterparts, but union leaders have largely struggled to persuade their members to break with Trump. 

In the Teamsters, many members resented the rubber-stamp endorsement of Democratic presidential candidates by former Teamster President James Hoffa, O’Brien’s predecessor and the son of Jimmy Hoffa. 

O’Brien is trying something different. The Teamsters are meeting with all presidential candidates. They even sat down with Cornel West, Marianne Williamson, and Robert Kennedy, Jr. Rank-and-file members have been part of each roundtable and Q&A. 

Next month, members and Teamster leaders are scheduled to host President Biden.

The IBT donated $45,000 to both the Republican and Democratic convention funds and pledges to have members “on the ground and active in both Conventions.”

In the meantime, members will be polled about their views on union issues like organizing rights, the NLRB, and right to work as well as on more general issues – their responses will be compared with the candidates’ stances. 

A more open process could leave some Trump supporters and undecideds in the union’s ranks more open to listening to the Teamsters Union’s statements and endorsements. 

Will it work? Who knows?

In the short term, there have been real downsides. Trump, the master pitchman, has effectively played up his Teamster appearances for publicity, leaving some union allies and members bewildered and alienated.

Many Teamsters want no part of Trump and resent their union being part of anything that could further validate or legitimize him.

“Trump’s visit to the IBT was a circus,” one attendee told me. “He didn’t answer a single question or address a single concern. Everything was just a rant about immigration. It was disgusting.” 

While the media has played up Trump’s courtship of the Teamsters, Trump himself hardly sounds confident. 

Asked at the press conference at the IBT what odds he would put on getting the Teamsters endorsement, Trump stammered, “Well, I don’t know, they never do that, they never give it but I felt, I felt, yeah, we have a good shot, I think.” 

Later Trump added: “I don’t know if the top people are going to support me, but within the union I have tremendous support.” 

Sadly, Trump’s  not entirely wrong about his support in the members and that fact goes a long way toward explaining not just the Teamsters endorsement process but the challenge confronting many union leaders.

Engineering Biden endorsements is not front of mind for many on the left.  In Michigan, progressive and Arab-Americans called for a people to vote “no preference” in the Democratic primary to protest Biden’s capitulation to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. 

No one in their right mind wants a Trump victory in November. If and when the Teamsters endorse Biden, it will surprise no one. But what will it take for it to make a meaningful contribution to defeating Trump?

First, the Teamsters endorsement needs to persuade at least some Biden skeptics or soft-Trump supporters in their ranks.

Even more importantly, the union will have to put real money and boots on the ground to work in critical swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada.  

The Teamsters intervened heavily in the Georgia senate race to help elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Osoff to give Democrats the Senate majority in 2021. That new Senate majority passed the Butch Lewis Act. Named for a Teamster and TDU leader, the act saved the pensions of over 400,000 Teamsters and millions of other workers and their families. 

Today, the principal sponsor of the pension relief bill, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, will need the support of at least some Trump supporters to win reelection in Ohio, a state that will likely go for Trump in November. The Teamsters will be stumping for Brown. Already an ad aimed at working class voters features Teamster retiree leader Mike Walden crediting Brown for saving truck drivers’ pensions. 

Last summer, Democrats were bewildered and furious at Shawn Fain for critical remarks aimed at Biden that they said risked boosting Trump among UAW members. Those concerns are now long-forgotten in the wake of the UAW’s Biden endorsement. Now, it’s the Teamsters turn in the headlines.

Trump has milked his appearances with the Teamsters for photo ops and publicity. That’s unfortunate and unseemly. But don’t miss the signal for the noise. 

At the IBT three weeks later, O’Brien followed Trump at the podium and told reporters:

“There’s no question that the Biden administration has been great for unions.”

“Whatever candidate supports our issues is going to get our endorsement,” O’Brien added.. 

The challenge for the Teamsters and the whole labor movement is to make such endorsements, and the GOTV programs that follow, effective in actually defeating Trump. 

This piece originally ran in Portside

New Book Shows: The AFL-CIO can be Reformed, Locally and from the Bottom-Up!

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For the past 65 years, the main locus of union democracy and reform struggles in the U.S. has been local unions, which hold leadership elections every three years and are closest to the membership. Thousands of rank-and-file workers have campaigned for more militant unionism by running for and winning local office. 

Some have had the backing of national networks of like-minded dissidents, including Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a TDU-inspired reform caucus within the United Auto Workers. And, in recent years, TDU and UAWD supporters even ousted national headquarters officials in Washington and Detroit, with the result being more effective contract campaigning and/or strike activity at major employers in the trucking and auto industries.

Very few modern-day reformers have mounted similar challenges to the status quo in city or state labor federations chartered by the national AFL-CIO. Representing workers from different AFL-CIO affiliates, these central labor councils (CLCs) may be just as bureaucratic or dysfunctional as the individual unions that belong to them.  But, structurally, most are too far removed from workplace struggles to generate many electoral challenges to incumbent AFL-CIO officials, at the local, regional, or state level. 

As a result, there have been few contested elections, like in the Teamsters and UAW, with opposing slates offering alternative programs for union revival. In AFL-CIO leadership votes, officers and executive board members are chosen by convention or council delegates, the same method used by most national unions.  The rank-and-file has little or no say about who runs AFL-CIO bodies.

One notable exception is the Vermont Labor Council, which represents 20,000 public and private sector workers. In the Green Mountain State, due its small scale, most state AFL-CIO convention delegates are working members or retirees, not full-time officials. Since 2019, they have cast ballots in several hotly contested elections which resulted in a mandate for change.

 Most recently, last September, they elected an all-female leadership team to three top officer positions and made Katie Maurice the youngest state AFL-CIO president in the country and the only one who belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Maurice took over last fall from David Van Deusen, a fellow member of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).  In a new book from PM Press called Insurgent Labor, Van Deusen describes how a group of local union officers and staff members created a reform faction called “Vermont AFL-CIO United!” five years ago. These rank-and-file activists were frustrated by their labor council’s lack of militancy and creativity, plus its inability to aid new organizing, contract campaigns, or strikes. 

Fourteen United candidates got elected in 2019—taking all the top officer jobs, forming a majority on the executive board, and winning a national AF-CIO-ordered re-run of the original election. Their goal was to revitalize a moribund organization through membership education, mobilization, and direct action. They favored greater internal democracy and transparency, independent political action and more labor support for social and environmental justice.

But, inside and outside Vermont, that progressive agenda proved to be surprisingly controversial. Rather than welcoming and applauding the election results, the national AFL-CIO —then headed by the late Richard Trumka—threatened to remove the reformers from office and put their council under the control of appointed staff members from Washington.

As Van Deusen recounts in his book, this trusteeship was averted and union activists in Vermont have continued to make their state labor council a model for the rest of the nation. Last Fall, a second United! slate again won a majority of the seats on the labor council executive board. Van Deusen’s successor, 31-year old Katie Maurice hailed the results as an “affirmation of our desire to continue to focus on rank-and-file organizing within the state of Vermont over political lobbying.” 

New organizing, plus a major affiliation with the long independent Vermont State Employees Association, has nearly doubled the state fed’s dues-paying membership since 2019 (although the VSEA did not support the United! candidates last fall and instead backed the building trades slate that lost).

What else have Vermonters accomplished in the last four years– in addition to fending off a hostile take-over from Inside-the-Beltway? As Van Deusen reports in Insurgent Labor, state labor council meetings were opened up to all union members, not just elected delegates, and began to attract their largest turnouts ever.  

The reformers worked with building trades unions to pass so-called “responsible contractor ordinances” that require prevailing wages on major public construction projects in multiple Vermont cities and towns.

Vermont became the first state labor federation in the region involved in the “Renew New England Alliance.” This six-state “Green New Deal” coalition is campaigning for the creation of thousands of good union jobs—for workers building affordable housing, installing rooftop solar panels, cleaning up pollution, and slashing the carbon emissions responsible for climate change. 

The new leadership’s savvy use of social media, radio shows, and local TV appearances enabled organized labor to reach a bigger non-labor audience—and build stronger relationships with community allies. Within the broader Vermont labor movement, Van Deusen aided rank-and-filers in non-AFL-CIO unions during their fight against a public employee pension cut favored by Republican governor Phil Scott and leaders of the Democrat-controlled state legislature. Labor council organizers used Vermont’s annual May Day rally in Montpelier to build support for the state’s immigrant workers, who are mainly Latinos employed on dairy farms.

The new and improved state AFL-CIO has given Vermont Democrats a much-needed dope slap by endorsing more third-party candidates for state and local office. As Maurice explains, “since 2019, we have strengthened our ties with the Vermont Progressive Party, which has not only focused on workers’ rights but also championed broader social justice causes, in a political landscape often dominated by powerful corporate interests. “

According to Maurice, “The VPP’s role as a party for the working class is not just about rhetoric; it’s about tangible actions. It’s about supporting legislation like the VT PRO Act that would protect the right to organize, about standing up against union-busting tactics, and ensuring that union members have a seat at the policy-making table in Montpelier.”

Before his death in August, 2021, Rich Trumka had an opportunity to support an exemplary CLC initiative, calling attention to the still looming threat of fascism in the U.S. In anticipation of then-President Trump’s likely rejection of the 2020 election results, Vermont labor council delegates issued a bold call for “a general strike of all working people in our state” if there was a right-wing coup aimed at keeping Trump in office. 

AFL-CIO headquarters tried to block any discussion of such a contingency plan in response to a possible constitutional crisis (of the sort which did occur, shortly thereafter, on January 6, 2021). After Vermont labor leaders debated the subject anyway, Trumka ordered an official probe of their alleged non-compliance with national AFL-CIO rules applying to local affiliates.  

In response, then state fed president Van Deusen urged AFL-CIO headquarters to investigate “how the example we are setting in the Green Mountain State could serve as a model for what a more engaged, more member-driven, more democratic, more anti-racist, more pro-immigrant and more organizing centered labor movement…could actually look like in other parts of the country.” 

As readers of Insurgent Labor will discover, this tug-of-war had a happy ending, temporarily. Vermont labor reformers got a “final warning” from Trumka shortly before his death, but none were removed and replaced by appointees from Washington, D.C. Under Trumka’s successor, Liz Shuler, an organizing subsidy was resumed and relations with the national AFL-CIO took a welcome turn for the better–until late January.

 In a Jan. 22 letter, President Shuler informed the council’s new officers and e-board that she was investigating last Fall’s “election process” based on a “protest appeal” filed by an affiliated union. She also directed them to “refrain from any discussion of the investigation…with the general public or entities and individuals not affiliated with the Labor Council.” 

This attempted gag order is directed at United! supporters who have, in past internal disputes, tried to enlist allies on the AFL-CIO national executive board or keep labor media outlets informed about interference from Washington. Their impressive record of internal democracy and worker engagement should be a source of inspiration for trade unionists elsewhere, not further headquarters harassment and meddling.  

Yet this new controversy does help amplify Insurgent Labor’s bottom line message: the ability to make real change rests in the hands of grassroots activists. To meet the challenges facing Vermont workers, Van Deusen and his reform caucus built on the best of organized labor, at the local and state level. They didn’t wait for top-down solutions or instructions from the national AFL-CIO, which has, consistently, been no friend of bottom up change in Vermont.

This article originally appeared in Capitol Hill Citizen. For ordering info, see: https://www.capitolhillcitizen.com/order-an-issue/

About the author

Steve Early

Steve Early is a NewsGuild/CWA member who supports Sara Steffens’ campaign for CWA president. He is a former CWA staff member in New England and also served as Administrative Assistant to the Vice-President of CWA District One, the union’s largest region. He is the author of five books about labor and politics, including Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress (MRP, 2013) which reports on efforts to revitalize CWA and other unions. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com View all posts by Steve Early →

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Strategy, the Movement and Power: Debating Labour and Community Organizing

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Two recent books, Labor Power and Strategy and Power Concedes Nothing, speak to the urgency of our times – the sense of danger, the sense of possibility, the need to grasp the moment. The fact that these are each collective efforts with multiple authors providing perspectives based on different realms of engagement is a reminder that only by drawing broadly from all streams of activism will we be able to defeat the fascist danger which threatens us all, be able to overcome the fragmentation and destruction which capitalism in its neoliberal phase is imposing on working people, on society at large. Yet the two books reflect strikingly different frameworks as the following quotes make clear.

The overarching perspective informing the essays in Labor Power and Strategy is put forward in an introduction by Glenn Perušek, faculty member at the Building Trades Academy at Michigan State University and former director of the Center for Strategic Research at the national AFL-CIO:

“The labor left sees building workers’ power as starting with existing organizations – mobilizing union members in contract and organizing campaigns. This activism needs to blend into broader solidarities – with other unionists, other workers, and other popular interests. Organizing the unorganized must be a top priority. Building active, member-controlled and member-mobilizing unions, integrally connected with their communities, striving for good-paying jobs for all amounts to movement unionism. … Building strong, active unions also requires a comprehensive research and planning process. … Finally, some conception of aspirational goals – politics in the broadest and most positive sense – must infuse labor. A revitalized labor movement needs to be part of an overall multiform movement for social justice.”1

The discussion which follows focuses on how to bring about that revitalization and realize in practice the potential power workers hold. The contrasting emphasis of Power Concedes Nothing is expressed by Alicia Garza, principal at Black Futures Lab and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, in her essay concluding the volume:

“For the last two decades, the US left has been forced to reckon with race in a new way; none more salient than the push to address and engage with the impacts of racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence. … Marginalized communities largely led this push and moved the US left to a reckoning that is transforming the left itself. With respect to electoral organizing, segments of the US left are pushing beyond a strategy of nonengagement to using electoral organizing as defense, with an eye on long-term power-building. While still certainly uneven, the engagement of leftists of color in the fight to claim the country’s politics is a significant development, one that must become more than a trend. It must become a lifestyle. In order to build and seize power and transform how power operates, we must take electoral engagement even further to incorporate electoral strategies that shape our larger fights and help us win.”2

Although the core anti-capitalist, racial and social justice outlook informing both books overlap, the divergence between them is palpable. Perhaps having the two books “talk to each other,” we can uncover paths to a convergence.

Labor Power is built around an extensive interview with John Womack Jr. (a retired professor of Latin American History and Economics at Harvard) conducted by Peter Olney (former director of organizing for the International Labor and Warehouse Union) in which the work’s key point is made: Workers need to understand the structure of business in order to locate management’s vulnerabilities and then attack those in order to win a particular strike or organizing campaign. Being strategic in this sense – and not being sidetracked by non-strategic struggles notwithstanding the moral importance and social meaning these might have – is of particular importance because the weakening of organized labor in the United States (and globally) the past four decades has led to the concentration of capital in ever fewer hands, growth of massive inequality, and a loss of popular democratic power. The current upsurge of union organizing and strikes raises the possibility of overcoming that weakness, but, Womack posits, militancy without direction will be unable to shift power relationships.

Weakness and decline did not occur because of happenstance. Capital reshaped industrial production through sets of policies imposed under the rubric of neoliberalism, in part to overcome limitations imposed on management “freedom” that union organizing had previously established by way of a post-World War II “social contract.” The success of that restructuring was due to a long-term strategic approach largely absent from organized labor. Globalization combined with “just-in-time production” has meant that production is scattered in multiple smaller units – quite unlike the enormous factories of the past where manufacturing was integrated at central locations and large inventories were maintained to weather downturns and strikes. That means shutting down any one site may not have the impact such an action might have had during the time of the rise of industrial unionism. On the other hand, production is far more dependent than in the past on regional, national, international supply chain links – and it is at the point of those links where worker power can be best exercised to leverage far-reaching change. As Womack explains:

“Let us set aside labor’s political, legal, and other kinds of struggles. These all take their own kinds of strategic analysis, planning, and action. If we focus here on campaigns of struggle along supply chains, I think there is only one kind of study for them, to find the industrially and technically strategic weaknesses in the chains.”3

The logic here applies whether the conflict is restricted to a contract dispute or a demand for recognition, or whether the conflict takes place as part of a wider confrontation over working-class rights. And while this directly highlights the importance of workers in transport industries, a granular analysis can show how workers in tech or services, manufacturing or agriculture, can similarly find points of vulnerability at the heart of capital’s power. Organizing at Amazon, for example, rather than being aimed at every site where the company does business, is better focused on warehouse hubs that can disrupt a whole distribution chain. Finding the particular “choke point” is not only a political question, it’s also a technical question; Womack argues that the ability to do strategic research is vital to labor organization. Yet that is one side of the equation – workers equally need to cultivate a spirit of resistance and defiance, that is essential to any strategy to exercise power. Womack explains:

“Those teachers [striking in West Virginia] confirmed to me yet again that over the last forty-odd years pro-labor liberals have gone wrong in constant appeals to indignation or pity for workers, appeals for feelings to help victims. What works with working people is courage in action, the brave display of power. Once they see somebody acting forcefully in justice, they’re more likely to follow. You see solidarity;”4 adding, “ … their public display of independent power and their public proof of the merits of their cause are the main lessons for labor in general now.”5

The strength of this understanding is that it redirects labor thinking to being concrete rather than relying on sentiment or unfocused militancy. Management’s view of “labor problems” relies on a realistic assessment of what is needed to maximize profits (i.e. how to maximize control over the workforce) within prevailing conditions; labor can do no less by way of response if it is to regain the initiative. Key to doing so means recentering unionism back at the point of production, contrary to the drift over past decades in which comprehensive campaigns focusing on consumers, students, stockholders, the media, the general public) have taken center stage. Important as these are, they tend to remove leadership away from the involved workers and instead give greater importance to those organizing in peripheral spheres, with strikers or organizing workers playing a secondary role. For Womack, the center of any challenge to existing power has to come from people who are impacted, to those workers defending their rights. That is where the intersection between strategic knowledge and strategic action can lie.

There is a danger, however, in the way Womack poses the issue of organizing and power, for by focusing on those sections of the labor force who hold power based on their location in the production process, there is a failure to fully appreciate the necessity to engage all workers irrespective of whether or not they are at a choke point. Moreover, a conception of organizing that over-relies on expert research can underestimate the initiatives working people take on their own – as, for example, treating “hot shops” where workers show a readiness and willingness to organize as a distraction if it isn’t “strategic” as if strategy could be developed that ignores or overrides decisions working people make on their own behalf. Finally, management isn’t passive; the very factors that can enhance labor power can also make capital more determined to undermine the basis of that strength.

This is a critique a number of the commentators in Labor Power make; as a collective enterprise, the book provides a look at class struggle from differing perspectives. A particularly cogent example can be found in a response by Katy Fox-Hodess (lecturer in Work, Employment, People and Organizations at the University of Sheffield) in which she examines the power of dockworkers – as strategic a workforce as one can find in world of globalized production chains. Citing examples from Portugal and Chile, she notes that whenever victory was attained, it was dependent on alliances with “non-strategic” workers be they students, be they the unemployed. Fox-Hodess writes:

“ … Power flows in multiple directions across multiple dimensions – economic, social, and political – in conflicts between capital and labor. The more strategic the industry, the more likely it is that the capitalist state will intervene. As a result, labor movement revitalization will require understanding not only how to find and take advantages of vulnerabilities in the technical division of labor but also how to find and take advantage of economic, social, and political vulnerabilities within the capitalist totality. This will by necessity require a clear understanding of the forms of power each group of workers may offer and a clear understanding that success will come through articulating and combining powers across multiple dimensions, suggesting the need to rethink hierarchies that privilege the technical over the social and political.”6

The subtitle of Power Concedes Nothing – “How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections” – serves notice that virtually all (if not all) the essays maintain a clear focus on the danger of authoritarian reaction and the need to build a multi-racial alliance that contests for political office around maintenance and extension of democratic rights. Each of the book’s contributors see the necessity of making the defeat of the Trump (and Trump-inspired) fascist danger a priority through electoral activity and the complementary necessity of building power through mobilizing heretofore excluded communities. Unity built within and between communities subjected to systemic oppression is thus at the core of any strategy to build wider unity around democratic rights and social justice within our country as a whole. Union struggles are part of the picture but there is little about workplace mobilization, labor-management conflict or internal union divides – nor, for that matter is social justice organizing unconnected to the electoral arena given much attention. Rather, the priority is consistently on how to win elections and gain strength in government sufficient to implement public policy changes that attack poverty and inequity.

Doing so, the authors of the book contest the view that voter mobilization is not foundational for systemic change (a possible implication of Womack’s conception of organizing). Addressing that outlook directly, National Domestic Workers Alliance Executive Director Ai-jen Poo and National Research Director Linda Burnham in an essay on the “get out the vote” mobilization of domestic workers during the 2020 elections, contest misconceptions that minimize the radicalizing impact election campaigns can have:

“There is debate within the social justice left about whether electoral organizing is ‘transformative’ or not. The logic of on-going issue-based and constituency-based organizing is very different from that of electoral organizing … When done well, it engenders a transformation in consciousness from apathy to concern about particular grievances to an understanding of the dynamics of broader social and economic inequities…

“… [On the other hand] to get millions to flip the switch from non-voting to voting – isn’t that transformative? The domestic worker movement mobilized thousands of canvassers and phone bankers in active defense of democracy – isn’t that transformative? … Their work centered the political power of women of color in a system designed to minimize and negate that power. The rhythm and metrics and subjective feel of the work are different from grassroots organizing. But that too can be transformative.”7

What gives salience to this connection is that existing political and legal institutions (let alone ideological and cultural narratives) have undermined the ability of popular movements to move beyond resistance toward implementation of alternatives that people can see and feel in daily life. Focusing on governing office provides a means to overcome limitations that inhibit the ability to shift public policy toward economic and racial justice, a means to create alternative structures of power in the moment when challenges of environmental destruction, violence, poverty, inequality and declining quality of life are everywhere apparent.

Most of the essays and interviews that comprise Power Concedes Nothing provide a close-eyed view of how the authors engaged various communities to put such an electoral orientation into practice. Initiatives such as these do not take place in isolation, rather, they share an overarching conception of systemic change. Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, expressed the underlying aim of left engagement in mainstream politics in an article reviewing the course of the 2020 presidential primaries and general election:

“Neither of the progressive candidates won the Democratic presidential primary, but we were clear-eyed going into the general election. Joe Biden became the standard-bearer and pick to take on Trump, and progressives knew we had to push the Democratic nominee as far to the left as possible. Donald Trump was an existential threat, a global leader of the far right, and we had to defeat him at all costs. The campaigns run by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were instrumental in injecting progressive ideas into mainstream discourse. Canceling student debt, a wealth tax, and health care for all were no longer fringe ideas. Even candidates closer to the center were talking about the need for transformative changes. Our picks were not victorious, but our policies were front and center.”

Mitchell, then quotes from an interview he gave to the Nation in 2021,

“Making Donald Trump a one-term president is our moral mandate and a necessary step to building the world we want to see. Our plan is to beat Trump while organizing a multiracial movement powerful enough to turn our demands into policy. Electing Joe Biden is a door, not a destination.”8

Yet a door that doesn’t open may lead some to draw different conclusions. The impetus for left engagement in mainstream politics flowed from the way mass movements that drew millions into the streets – be it anti-war protests in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2002, the “Day Without Immigrants” boycott of work, school, shopping on May Day in 2006, the Womens March to protest Trump’s inauguration in 2017, the on-going demonstrations, rallies and street actions following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 – were unable, on any significant level, to win legislation that met the demands of those mobilizations. When powerful movements of resistance are unable to create vehicles for positive actions, then space opens up for reaction to take the offensive. It is a recognition of that need to build tangible change out of mass action, not as an end in itself, but as a step toward further change, that inspires the contributors to Power Concedes Nothing.

This danger exists when it comes to electoral engagement too; political success can and often is turned around – recall how victory soon thereafter turned to defeat (as in Virginia), how a narrow loss by Democrats allowed reaction to tighten its grips on power (as in Florida), or, going back a minute, Republican congressional and state-wide gains two years after Obama was elected President in 2008. If electoral mobilization isn’t connected to local membership organizations, gains made can be fleeting – the exercise of power needs to be rooted in on-going engagement if communities are able to find chokepoints equivalent to those sought in labor struggles. Mondale Robinson of the Black Male Voter Project, in one of the several roundtable conversations included in Power Concedes Nothing, noted how talk of reparations gained traction during the 2020 presidential campaign, without sufficient means to turn words of promise into tangible, meaningful policies:

“ … I think what frightens me is what happens to the Black people that came out because of the energy you are talking about – those possibilities of what could happen with an administration that’s willing to hear this conversation about reparations – but then nothing is delivered. … for those of us who knock on Black people’s doors, they’re going to say, we’re still dealing with this, they didn’t do this …”9

No form of action, no campaign, no organizing drive can guarantee victory, and no gain – be it electing a progressive to office or winning a union contract – can guarantee that what was won might not be hollowed out. Campaigns don’t take place in a vacuum; existing power is always looking for ways to reassert its dominance.

Robinson makes the critical point: “If you are organizing the communities, please be of the community …” adding “… we need to figure out how we provide services beyond a ballot for Black people, if we want them to vote for our candidates and issues.”10

Organizations, networks, activists need to come from or be deeply rooted amongst people being mobilized so that decisions to orient in one direction or the other, decisions as to how to address immediate material needs, are community decisions where the people impacted take ownership of the process, including evaluation and reevaluation of the tactics and strategic orientation.

It is only when organizing is genuinely rooted that the political clarity of Mitchell’s assertion that Biden’s election was “a door not a destination,” can be made real and continue over the inevitable flow of successes and setbacks. The 15-year UFCW unionizing drive (1994 – 2009) of 5,000 workers at the Smithfield Meatpacking plant in North Carolina exemplifies what that can look like and provides a bridge leading to an intersection of the themes in each of these books. Gene Bruskin, a long-time union activist who served as UFCW campaign director from 2006-2008, recalls a perfect example of a choke point writing in Labor Power about the moment when workers struck the livestock department: “trucks were lining up and thousands of pigs were either squealing frantically in the trucks or stuck outside the gates heading toward the plant, with no workers to tend them. Once hogs get out of a truck, it’s difficult to get them back in.”11 Ninety workers had shut down the entire plant and “within six months they signed a union contract with raises, safety and line-speed clauses, a good grievance procedure, and, most important, respect and dignity.”12

Yet as Bruskin adds, prior to that was a walkout of Latino immigrant workers to protest deportations – an action they organized on their own initiative through their own networks. So too, African American workers petitioned Smithfield to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday. Although the union drive began largely in response to abysmal working conditions, those galvanizing demands arose from community opposition to discrimination broader than the workplace. UFCW utilized the NLRB (without which the worker who organized the job action at the livestock department would not have regained his job) and OSHA (providing the legal basis for the safety complaint), and sympathetic elected politicians, wherever possible. Maintaining consistent pressure from multiple places without ever losing sight of the need to constantly build and rebuild support amongst Smithfield’s workers, is the reason why the numerous setbacks during the campaign never translated into the demoralization of defeat. And it was why that choke point action was able to prove decisive whereas previous disruptions in production never got past simply being disruptive.

Successful organizing to gain elective office can follow an analogous path as happened over the course of a decade in Arizona beginning in 2010 with a campaign initiated by LUCHA (Living United for Change Arizona) to overturn a “show me your papers law”13 which sought to install fear throughout the state’s Spanish-speaking population. Following that came successful organizing for public school funding, state-wide paid sick leave/living wage increases, and to defeat Sherriff Joe Arpaio (a national hero to the racist right for his brutal treatment of prisoners). This went hand in hand with massive voter registration, rebuilding a Democratic Party infrastructure that Democratic leadership had left to atrophy, and election victories for municipal, county and state office. This led to Trump’s defeat in the 2020 elections in a state that has been a bastion of right-wing power since the days of Barry Goldwater.

César Fierros Mendoza (LUCHA’s communications manager) explained the linkages that made this possible:

“It is incumbent that we engage in the electoral process to oust politicians who stand against us and elect those who stand with us, but elections cannot be the only tactic we engage in. Often our people are disheartened by what feels like wasted energy spent on elections for people who will ultimately betray us, but that is only because we usually fail to make explicit the larger strategy that elections are a small part of. At the end of the day, we’re trying to build political power to reshape our communities into places where we can thrive, and electoral power is essential to that project.”14

Long-term strategy and engagement in the moment need flow one into the other – when social change and immediate needs become divided, organizing (be it electoral or workplace) becomes divorced from popular participation. When pre-conceived ideas are imposed, politics becomes sterile. Any particular approach or direction needs to be constantly tested, reevaluated and altered both by deeper insight in the changing nature of the environment and the initiatives, attitudes, perspectives of the wider community (be those outlooks ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’).

Failure to do so has consequence in labor organizing – a prime example was the United Farm Workers ill-fated strawberry campaign in the mid-1990s which was based on intensive research on the industry without equivalent engagement with the workforce. That is a cul-de-sac those engaged in political campaigns based on programs divorced from people often become trapped. A prime example took place at DSA’s convention in 2019, when delegates passed a “Bernie or Bust” resolution mandating that Sanders was the only candidate the organization would support in the 2020 presidential election. David Duhalde (DSA’s former youth director and current vice chair of Democratic Socialists of America Fund) notes in an essay in Power Concedes Nothing, that the decision “hurt DSA’s ability to work with other mass organizations during the general election, and paralyzed the organization around the general presidential election as the COVID-19 pandemic, surging mobilizations against police violence, and growing right-wing violence changed the landscape in unforeseen ways.”15

This is contrary to the responsiveness to immediate circumstances that led to DSA’s massive growth in 2016, contrary to the kind of organizing others were doing that prevented Trump’s bid to hold onto office in 2020. Or, as Duhalde concludes, “Socialists should avoid solutions and blanket decisions that are devoid of an analysis of the particular conditions and scenarios at play.”16 Sanders himself recognized this, endorsing Biden after the primaries had run their course, based on the same logic as Mitchell articulated – his presidency would be a “door not a destination.”

Organizationally, DSA has moved away from such blanket statements, but a strong undercurrent continues to advocate artificial straightjackets for elected socialists, uphold narrow criteria for supporting candidates or evaluating them after elections. What makes the perspective of those who pretend that they could and should control elected officials so problematic is that it echoes the anti-democratic ethos that calls all politics and politicians corrupt. That leads all too many to seek solutions outside the social sphere, to abstain from voting, it leads others to turn to the authoritarianism of Trump and his ilk, it leaves corporate power unscathed. Forgotten is a simple truth: political leaders are kept honest by organizations and movements strong enough to support them.

The United Auto Workers strike, embodying much of the approach Womack put forth,17 exemplifies the importance of linkages. The victorious strike was built upon the expression of power through mutual support by walking out simultaneously at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis; it was built upon a strategic use of power by striking selectively at each. The UAW also built solidarity within and outside the union by seeing the development of electric vehicles as a potential source of union jobs rather than as a competition between two sets of workers – similarly, the union rejected attempts by Trump and other MAGA Republicans to pose US and Chinese workers in opposition to each other by keeping the focus on corporate greed. Flowing from this, the union displayed genuine political independence, denouncing Trump yet holding off on endorsing Biden until he addressed specific needs of the workforce.

Another example of strategic solidarity was the successful strike undertaken by multiple unions working in tandem by health care workers at Kaiser Permanente. The strike was selective and episodic, mobilizing members that impacted the corporation’s bottom line, while minimizing disruption to patients – so the company could not pose workers against the community as frequently happened during management’s anti-labor offensive in the 1980s and 90s. Moreover, the unions involved were able to connect their grievances due to nursing shortages, their demands around pay, hours and staffing into a community issue of public health and patient need. Coordinated actions by unionists combined with public outreach forced Kaiser Permanente to accept the unions’ basic demands.

A third, more challenging example of a strategic approach to building working class unity against corporate power is seen in the rank-and-file movements within railroad worker unions which was able to gain a critical demand for paid sick leave that had appeared lost when the unions, under pressure from corporations and the Biden Administration, initially agreed to inadequate contracts. But two rank-and-file movements (one a multi-union movement, the other located within the largest rail union) developed a strategy working in cooperation with progressive caucus members of Congress, were able to win through pressure what had been lost at the bargaining table. Railroad accidents, in particular the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, reinforced the connection workers were making: demands for increased staffing are also a demand for community safety.

As with the UAW and the Coalition of Unions at Kaiser Permanente, the rail workers won because of combining solidarity with a strategy rooted in understand where the corporations were vulnerable.18 But many outsiders failed to see that victory for what it was, failing in a sense to understand how political action and worker organizing can combine from the standpoint of organizing, when the organizing takes place from a position of relative weakness. More to the point, it is rooted in failing to understand the mutual dependence of workplace action and political mobilization in the wider public sphere. And this is crucial, for whatever gains are made in the current upsurge of labor action will prove ephemeral unless accompanied by a direct connection to political organizing rooted in mass mobilization and electoral action. The same holds true in reverse, elected officials and mass movements of protest will be unable to consolidate and move beyond protest without the structural power of organized labor acting to overcome the structural power of capital in defining and limiting social and economic rights.

After all union solidarity doesn’t automatically translate into solidarity around public education, affordable housing, criminal justice reform, universal health care, abortion rights (let alone opposition to war or support for environmental justice); that requires a fuller understanding of class. As Bill Fletcher (racial justice, labor and international activist, scholar and author) puts it in Labor Power, “Race and gender are not identity questions. They speak to a specific set of contradictions and forms of oppression that are central to actually existing capitalism.”19 Stresses that inhere in our social structures and within the capitalist system obscure that understanding.

This is where the need to create – both within labor and within political and social justice organizations, structures that are truly controlled and strategically directed by members, by impacted communities. A crucial component of that lies in education – not in the form of trainings or lectures (important as these can be in some contexts), but rather through participatory education, an underutilized form of organizing that expands mutual support by personalizing linkages that grow out of the experience and knowledge of those being engaged.

Melissa Shetler, from the Climate Jobs National Resource Center and Cornell’s Labor Leading on Climate Initiative, puts it in one of the most incisive essays from Labor Power:

“If we want an activated membership, we must practice a participatory democracy, and a participatory pedagogy, that will engage them. To develop leaders, or even better recognize and support already existing ones, we must engage workers in collective action in which they are valued, heard, and able to leverage their power. While identifying strategic choke points can indeed be effective, what was strategic today may not be strategic tomorrow. Without a broad analysis, organizers can spend all their time building power around a position that, in a swiftly evolving global economy, suddenly no longer exists. But if we build broader power, learn to be adaptive, and practice participatory democracy, we can construct new ways of being within the old structures that may ultimately generate momentum,” concluding, “successful pedagogy – and successful labor organizing – is community building.”20

Community building in this sense means forging a new sense of community as a political project that grounds multiracial democratic politics within the anti-corporate class politics of labor action; making multiracial politics a “lifestyle,” as Garza put it, bringing together social justice and economic justice organizing as distinct yet also intertwined spheres of engagement.21 Building union power also involves autonomous action to expand democratic rights; fighting to expand democratic rights means not only fighting the racist, fascist right, but fighting corporate power that structurally inhibits the exercise of popular power anywhere in society.

Such linkages need to be institutionalized, in a form that brings the insights – and the organizing upon which those insights have been developed – together in practice. With a final turn toward Power Concedes Nothing, we conclude with a passage by Maria Poblet, executive director of Grassroots Power Project, charting how those connections can be made.

“To win governing power, state-power-building groups need the capacities to design, drive the demand for, legislate, enact, and defend agendas for progressive reforms that serve the needs of low-income, working-class, and historically marginalized communities. In doing so, these power-building groups will not only help hold electeds accountable through their terms in office, but fundamentally reshape the structure of the government itself, creating the conditions for more authentic and multiracial democracy…  “… pathways to gaining governing power may be circuitous, with setbacks and side steps as well as opportunities to make forward leaps, along the way. 

We will continue to oppose bad government policies, and to fight the advance of authoritarianism and white nationalism. We show up, mobilize our bases, and defend our communities. At the same time, we want to see ourselves as, and start acting like, we can run things, we can co-govern, and beyond this, we can ultimately reshape governance, in our communities, in our states, and in our nation.

“With the goal of governing power as our compass, we use each arena of contestation as an opportunity to shift power, change the political climate, and take steps that get us closer to transforming governance. Electoral engagement is one of many arenas where we make these shifts, over time. This is the essence of what it means to build power in the states, through better aligned, coordinated work. This is what we are talking about when we talk about governing power.”22

This piece originally ran in Socialist Project

Endnotes

  • “Situating Womack,” by Glenn Perušek in John Womack Jr., Labor Power and Strategy, edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perusek, PM Press, Oakland, 2023, pp 8-9.
  • “Building and Transforming Power: Lessons from the 2020 Elections,” by Alicia Garza, Power Concedes Nothing, edited by Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, Maria Poblet, editors, OR Books, New York/London, 2022, p 394.
  • “The Foundry Interviews,” John Womack Jr. with Peter Olney in Womack Jr., op. cit., p 33.
  • Ibid p 54.
  • Ibid p 55.
  • “No Magic Bullet: Technically Alone Strategic Power is Not Enough” by Katy Fox-Hodess, Ibid p 87. See also Jack Metzgar, “Associational Power, Too,” especially pp 95-96.
  • “Domestic Workers Enter the Electoral Arena” by Linda Burnham and Ai-jen Poo, Burnham, Elbaum, Poblet, op. cit., pp 254-255.
  • “Protest, Politics, and (Electoral) Power” by Maurice Mitchell, ibid. p 319.
  • “Black Voters in 2020: A Roundtable Discussion,” with Sendolo Diaminah, Arisha Hatch, Thenjiwe McHarris and Mondale Robinson, moderated by Karl Kumodzi, Ibid. pp 147 – 148.
  • Ibid, p 150. Bill Fletcher, in his contribution to Labor Power, uses Spartacus’ slave rebellion as a metaphor: “While he and his uprising failed, he placed himself within the people who were in motion,” and thus his near success, thus his legacy. Womack Jr, op. cit. p 75.
  • “Thirty-Two Thousand Hogs and Not a Drop to Drink, by Gene Bruskin, Ibid. p, 126. See also Hog Wild by Lynn Waltz, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 2018 for a fuller description of the Smithfield campaign, especially pp 183 – 201.
  • Bruskin, Ibid. p 127.
  • The law referred to is SB 1070. See “LUCHA’s 10-Year Road Map to Victory,” by César Fierros Mendoza, in Burnham, Elbaum, Poblet, op cit. 49.
  • Ibid. p 60.
  • “Democratic Socialists and Presidential elections,” by David Duhalde, Ibid, p. 297. See also Duhalde’s “U.S. Elected Socialists Just Held their Largest Gathering in Nearly Forty Years,” In These Times.
  • Ibid, p. 303.
  • See Womack’s analysis of the strike “The UAW Strike, as of October 9, 2023,” in Stansbury Forum.
  • See “Despite Controversy, Rail Workers are Winning Paid Sick Leave” by Paul Garver and Eli Gerzon, Working Mass, June 29, 2023. For an extended look at the power and limitation of rank-and-file upsurges in the absence of political space (and a strong organized left) see New York Longshoremen: Class and Power on the Docks by William J. Mello, University Press of Florida, Gainsville, 2010, especially pp 197 – 202.
  • “Should Spartacus Have Organized the Roman Citizenry Rather Than the Slaves,” by Bill Fletcher Jr., in Womack Jr. op. cit. p 74.
  • “Abandon the Banking Method!” by Melissa Shetler, in Womack Jr. op cit, p 117, p 118. For an example of that kind of leadership see Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain, Beacon Press, Boston, 2021, especially the description of her role at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and immediately thereafter in 1964, pp 53 – 57.
  • Desmond Serrette notes that “We must develop a more sustained pro-democracy infrastructure that doesn’t depend on stridently racist and extremist opponents to make the case for a well-resourced, accessible election system” in “To Deepen Democracy Give Workers More Say,” Convergence Magazine, May 12, 2023.
  • “States of Solidarity: How State Alignment Builds Multiracial Working-Class Power,” by Maria Poblet, Burnham, Elbaum, Poblet, op. cit. p 127.

About the author

Kurt Stand

Kurt Stand was active in the labor movement for over 20 years including as the elected North American Regional Secretary of the International Union of Food and Allied Workers until 1997.  That year he was arrested and served 15 years in prison on charges of having committed espionage for the GDR, charges he unsuccessfully contested at trial and upon appeal.  Currently he works at a bookstore, is a member of the Washington Metro DSA, is active in Progressive organizations in his community of Cheverly, Maryland, serves as a Portside Labor Moderator and is the facilitator of a Metro DC Labor/Reentry jobs project. View all posts by Kurt Stand →

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Former Pro Athlete Explains His Support For a Ceasefire in Gaza

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This piece originally ran in The Real News Network

The sports world has largely been silent in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Yet former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad is standing up and speaking out in support of a ceasefire and the rights of Palestinian people. Tariq Abdul-Wahad joins Dave Zirin to discuss his support for Palestine and the responsibilities of his fellow athletes in this moment.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden

Dave Zirin:  Welcome to Edge of Sports TV, brought to you by The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. We are going to speak to former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad, who has done what few in the US sports community have done, and that’s come out publicly for a ceasefire in Palestine and to free the people of Gaza. Let’s go to him right now.

All right, so Tariq, just from the start, how did you come to publicly support a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Well, Dave, this is a no-brainer. I mean, historically, for me it’s a little bit different. Being from France. Growing up, France has always taken a stance to protect the Palestinian people. So we always understood this relationship between the state of Israel and the Palestinians as an occupation situation. Do you understand?

In Europe, we don’t see it… It’s closer to us. So we grew up with it, understanding that Palestinians lost the war, but there were still many injustices still going on.

So my relationship with this conflict is not… The lens with which I’m looking at it is way more European than it is American. We understand what the situation is. Israel, in this case, is an occupying force.

So we understand that wars are going to happen in the world, but there are still laws and rules. And when you start to carpet bomb children and women, I don’t care who Hamas is, I don’t care where they are, what’s wrong is wrong.

Dave Zirin:  Now, did you come to these ideas by growing up in France, by growing up in Europe, or was this a political awakening for you later in life?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Well, it’s a combination of things. I graduated from San Jose State University.

Dave Zirin:  Yes!

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  And athletes at San Jose State, thanks to Dr. Edwards, have always been, to some extent, politically active. So it’s the tradition. When Tommy Smith every year comes back to the campus and talks to the student athletes, you don’t miss those speeches. You make sure you attend.

And so it’s really a combination of the area where I lived, where I went to school, being an athlete, and being politically active was almost the norm. It’s not an exception. It’s what you are expected to do.

Dave Zirin:  Dr. Harry Edwards, of course, a former guest on this show, as was Dr. John Carlos. It’s amazing to hear that historical continuity because people forget that in ’68 they had an internationalist outlook. They were against apartheid and occupation all over the world. It wasn’t just for the United States that they raised their fist. Actually, it’s very heartening to hear you standing in that internationalist tradition.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Well, the Speed City. Yes. That’s the name of the track team back then.

Dave Zirin:  Speed City.

Tariq Abdul-WahadYeah, Speed City. Yeah. That’s what they used to call San Jose. Speed City, because these guys, not only were they fast on the track, but they were also very fast with their brains. These are trailblazers. These people are our leaders, technically. Every athlete in America should read Dr. Edward’s book, should read the history of Tommy Smith and John Carlos. We should know this. This is part of American sports heritage as much as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, all these people played a role.

Dave Zirin:  You played in the league for years. You know NBA players. You’re standing for a ceasefire. Can you see other players signing on to such a statement? The horrors are just every day, but we also know that athletes can be fearful or live with some tunnel vision. But do you think we have the chance to break through and get some brave fellow superstars to sign on to something that calls for a ceasefire?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  I sure hope so. I mean, I sure hope so. This is not, listen, this is a no-brainer. This one is obvious. I don’t know what to tell you, Dave. I have children. I have three kids. We’re bordering on insanity at this point. Because first of all, it’s very hard to function as a regular human being on your day-to-day when you know that America is basically funding this madness.

And then you also have to put the things in true perspective, whether you’re an athlete or not, sports are not important in such situations. So if you’re an athlete and you play sports and people listen to what you have to say, the least you can do as a part of the human race is to say something. Is to say something.

So yeah, I hope and pray that athletes across the board, not just basketball players, not just athletes in the NBA, but athletes across the board, anybody who has a platform should use it to say something.

Dave Zirin:  And the number one block to them saying something right now, the number one block for there not being a thousand Tariq Abdul-Wahads standing up to make a statement right now, what do you think that block is? Money?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Dineros. It’s money. They’re afraid. They’re probably afraid that it’s going to hurt their bottom line.

Dave Zirin:  We can’t live that way though. There’s too much crisis right now.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Well, yeah, you and I, we understand that, but that’s why we still have to be active. We still have to reach out. We have to teach them.

A lot of them too, though, they don’t really understand what’s going on. They don’t understand the scope and the gravity of the situation, even though I’m sure a lot of them do. But sometimes it takes organizing in the background. It takes courage. It takes a few to step out and then a few more to join. And then if there’s more of a coalition and there’s a group of athletes who can come out and stand, they will definitely stand stronger.

Dave Zirin:  Right. I totally agree with you about that. Without organization, fear will flourish, but organization is a great hedge against fear because people feel a sense of their own power.

What’s it been like for you since you spoke out? You’ve been very active on social media. Actually it’s harrowing to go to your page because you’re very, very astute about listing the various horrors that have been taking place. What has that been like for you?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Well, my page was starting to get some momentum and then I got shadow-banned, I think. So that’s the first thing. So they’re going to limit your reach.

But for me, it’s nothing. I’m no one. I’m just another voice. I don’t think I’m more important than the next man or than the next lady or the next child. Just gotta say what you see.

I’m a retired player, so obviously I don’t feel the same pressure as someone who is playing. I don’t have these economic pressures. But I honestly believe, from the bottom of my heart, that I am on the right side of history on this one. It’s clear.

Dave Zirin:  Right. Have you heard from people in France… Because it’s been interesting, like you said, in France, there is a culture of standing for Palestinian liberation, but there’s also been a crackdown in France on protesters, on people trying to speak out.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Absolutely, they have. But remember the French president — I’m not supporting him in any way, but I’m just saying. He called for a ceasefire weeks ago. So even he realized that this was too much.

But France now wields very little power. So France is not the country it used to be. It lost a lot of its influence in Western Africa. It lost a lot of its influence to Russia and China. So it’s not the voice that it used to be on the international stage.

And locally, they are fighting against Muslims and minorities. France is not… Even though Macron called for a ceasefire before any American politician even pronounced the word, France is still, at its core, also a racist country. Let’s not get it twisted.

Dave Zirin:  What do you say to, say, your kids or to somebody you’re mentoring who says to you, I’ve been told that the United States is the land of the free, the home of the brave, a place where justice reigns, and yet we’re underwriting this brutal total war on a civilian population. How do we square those two ideas?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Well, that’s the question that this country has been asking itself since its inception. Yes, it’s cool. It’s the land of the free. You and I are free to talk about it. We’re free to discuss it. We are free to debate it.

But the strength of freedom is not in the opportunities we have to voice our opinion. It has to go further than this, and this is why the political system in this country is becoming flawed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed. It’s becoming more and more… What’s the word I’m looking for in English?

Dave Zirin:  I think it’s broken.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  It’s become more and more obtuse. The choices are less. And so it is a free country, in a sense, but we cannot forget that, in this country, money rules. Money rules and influence rules.

What’s happening right now, it’s actually going to be very interesting, because a lot of people who did not participate as much as they should have in the political process in this country are now going to be very active.

And I’m going to give you a very simple example. There are a few states that are going to be swing states in this election, in the presidential coming up, in which many Muslim Americans and Arab Americans live. And I guarantee you that Joe Biden is not going to get these votes. I know this for a fact. These votes are gone. So either he can replace the votes or these votes are going to be his undoing. Do you understand what I’m saying?

Dave Zirin:  Yes.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Pennsylvania and Michigan, we’re talking about differences less than 10,000 votes, 20,000 votes in some cases.

Dave Zirin:  Look, you’ve been so generous with your time. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you just two more questions if I could.

First, I want to give you the chance to put a message out there for all the athletes who want to say something, who want to speak out, but are fearful for a whole host of reasons. What do you have to say to them?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  Grab your courage. You are extraordinary people. These athletes, you guys and ladies are extraordinary. You are the 0.1%. And if you think that this is wrong, you should speak out, whether you’re going to pay the price or not.

I’m going to be honest. This is one of those where you might have to sacrifice something, but something must be said. And as exceptional as you are, you only — And I’m talking to these athletes — As exceptional as you are, you are only as exceptional as your moral fiber.

Dave Zirin:  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you go without pointing out to our audience, in case they’re not big international basketball fans, that you were an absolute pioneer in coming here from France and succeeding as you did. France is on the leading edge of the world right now when it comes to basketball. And I’m in DC where we watch Bilal Coulibaly.

I ask you, how has France made this leap to becoming this kind of basketball powerhouse? And do you ever feel this sense of pride that you laid this groundwork for the basketball culture in the country?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  It’s cool because you are part of something special, obviously. But it’s also a reminder of history. Let’s not get it twisted.

The reason why France has top-notch athletes is because these athletes come from African countries, or their parents immigrated, their grandparents immigrated, and they were born in France. The younger guys who were born in France and raised in France and whatnot. But without the African and Caribbean diaspora, French sport would be run-of-the-mill. The reason why it’s exceptional is because of its relationship with Africa and its relationship with the Caribbean.

Dave Zirin:  I was going to say, so no colonialism, no basketball success is one of the things you’re saying?

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  It’s a weird statement, but it’s very accurate as well.

Dave Zirin:  Like so many things in our upside down era, weird but true.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad, it’s been such a gift to be able to speak to you. Thank you so much for joining us on Edge of Sports TV.

Tariq Abdul-Wahad:  No problem, Dave. Have a good one. Stay safe out there.

About the author

Dave Zirin

Dave Zirin is the sports editor of the Nation Magazine. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sports, including most recently, The Kaepernick Effect Taking A Knee, Saving the World. He’s appeared on ESPN, NBC News, CNN, Democracy Now, and numerous other outlets. Follow him at @EdgeofSports - https://twitter.com/EdgeofSports View all posts by Dave Zirin →

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“Let’s Watch Mays”

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The statue honoring SF Giant and Hall of Famer Willie Howard Mays, Jr. at Giant Stadium. San Francisco, California Photo Robert Gumpert 7 February 2024

Sunday, February 4, 2024, Was Willie Mays Day in San Francisco – A Tribute

Willie Mays was one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Many who know the game call him the greatest. 

Every Giants fan from New York and San Francisco who enjoyed the game in the 1950s and 60s has vivid memories of Mays delivering a clutch hit, making a leaping catch or throwing out a baserunner from deep in the outfield.

Or making a daring dash along the base paths.

One of the most difficult plays in baseball is to score from first base on a single. A fan is far more likely to see a batter swat a pitch 400 feet than to see a runner successfully dash 270 feet from first to home on a one base hit.

Near the finish of the 1966 season, the Giants were battling the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League pennant. It would become another illustrious chapter in what many consider America’s paramount sports rivalry. That heritage had started in New York City when the Giants played in Manhattan and the Dodgers in Brooklyn. By 1958, when both teams decamped from the Big Apple and moved west – the Giants to San Francisco and the Dodgers to Los Angeles, their legendary rivalry had already transformed baseball and America. In 1947, in the first great postwar triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, the Dodgers had broken baseball’s color line when Jackie Robinson joined them. The Giants quickly signed Black ballplayers and by 1949, both teams had become the first National League teams with two Black players on the field.

America’s first nationally televised baseball game was the third and deciding game of the 1951 National League playoff series between the two teams. The entire season that had seen the Giants whittle down the Dodgers 13 1/2 game lead in mid August to a tie, and at the end of regular play it came down to the last of the 9th inning with Brooklyn leading 4 to 2. Two Giants were on base and Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca faced the Giants’ Bobby Thomson at the plate. Twenty year old rookie Willie Mays waited on deck. 

Even if you know what happened next, you should go to Youtube, look up “Russ Hodges announces Bobby Thomson, 1951.” 

(One “person” who never found out what happened next was Sonny Corleone. That was the ballgame that Sonny was listening to on his car radio when he was gunned down at the toll booth in The Godfather.

After the two teams moved west, their historic rivalry intensified in the 1960s as one or both teams were in every pennant race from 1961 to 1966. In 1965, their fight for the pennant became a literal one on August 22 when the two teams brawled at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Both teams’ dugouts emptied after Dodger catcher Johnny Roseboro was injured when a Giant struck him with a bat. Willie Mays quickly intervened to save Roseboro from more serious injury and halt the brawl.

“Let’s watch Mays!”

In September 1966, the two teams were again in a close race for the National League title when the Giants came to Los Angeles for a three game series. The teams split the first two games. The third game was played at night on September 7. At the end of the 9th, the score remained 2-2, forcing the game into extra innings. The 10th and 11th innings passed without any scoring and at the top of the 12th the first two Giant batters were retired. But then Willie Mays came to the plate and singled. Now rookie Frank Johnson stood at bat. The 23 year old outfielder had just been called up from the minor leagues and was playing in his first major league game. He had been hitless in his first at bat. Sixty feet and six inches away on the pitcher’s mound stood Dodger reliever Joe Moeller. Mays took a safe leadoff from first. At the relatively “old” age of 35 and with two outs, he was not a threat to steal. He had slowed down a step or two but had compensated with a daring born of experience yet tempered by the shrewd judgement developed during his amazing career. 

In the announcer’s booth was Russ Hodges, the same man who had broadcast Bobby Thomson’s historic home run in 1951. Like all Giants games played in Los Angeles, this one was televised throughout most of Northern California. Games on TV allow the announcer to choose which camera to broadcast the game’s action. Announcers usually direct the cameras to “follow the ball,” showing the pitcher throw to the batter and then following the ball’s course after it’s hit. But good announcers sometimes improvise.

With two outs, Mays would take off if Johnson’s bat made any contact with the pitch.

Moeller threw and Johnson cracked a single into right field. 

Up in the broadcasters booth, Hodges directed the camera crew: “Let’s watch Mays!”

In just an instant longer than it took to say that, Mays had covered the 60 yards between first and third bases. The camera showed him round third and look toward right field. Home plate lay about 30 yards away.

“He may try it!”

Mays hesitated, then took off.

“He’s gonna try it!”

The throw from right field was perfect. Catcher Johnny Roseboro made a sweeping tag as Mays slid into home. The umpire’s right hand came down hard and fast like a judge’s gavel.

“He’s out,” Hodges said.

But Mays jumped up and pointed at the ground. The ball was rolling away! Coming at the end of his 90 yard sprint from first base, Mays’ power slide had knocked the ball away from one of the game’s best defensive catchers. The umpire changed his mind and quickly waved both arms wide.

“He’s safe! The Giants lead!”

And the Giants went on to hold their lead in the bottom of the 12th to beat the Dodgers 3 to 2.

The greats make others better. On that night in Los Angeles, Willie Mays had shown us a measure of his greatness but had also given young Frank Johnson a chance to make his first major league hit a game winning one. He had given the veteran sports announcer Russ Hodges a chance to use his broadcast skills to showcase the Hall of Fame player’s base running virtuosity. 

And the greats even make their opponents better. Although the Dodgers lost that game, they bounced back to win the pennant on the last day of the season, finishing a scant 1 1/2 games ahead of the Giants.

This piece originally appeared in The Howard Isaac Williams Newsletter. To receive the newsletter email howardisaacwilliams@yahoo.com

Book Review – “The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work” by  Mark Erlich

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Building sites on 18th and Minnasota in Dog Patch district of San Francisco, California. Photo Robert Gumpert 28 August 2017

As I matured politically my searing impression of building trades unionism was the hardhat mob that attacked peace protesters on Wall Street in New York City in May of 1970.  Peter Brennan head of the NYC Building Trades Council and later Secretary of Labor under Nixon led the attack.

But many strange personal, political and professional twists in intervening years brought me to a great appreciation of tradespeople and their unions. My oldest friend in the world, Hugh Kelleher, who I met in the spring of 1965 when we arrived at Philips Academy in Andover, MA , decided to become a union plumber in the 1980’s eventually turning out as a journeyman from Local 12 in Boston. 

As my son Nelson was finishing high school in San Francisco, he indicated at a certain point that he didn’t want to go to college. He was doing fine in school so my wife and I were a little concerned. I told him, “Look, finish high school, go to college and get your degree. Then you can do like your “Uncle” Hugh and become a union plumber.” A few years after graduating from UCLA with a degree in philosophy he enrolled in an apprenticeship program with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 617 in San Mateo and turned out in 2015. Now he makes a great living, loves the work and is currently in Tokyo enrolling in a technical school that will enable him to work as an electrician anywhere in Japan. My friend Hugh’s son Cameron is also a union electrician out of IBEW Local 103 in Boston. Not bad for the sons of two Andover Academy graduates!

Construction worker on one of the building along Market St.. San Francisco, California. Photo Robert Gumpert 2001

I think a better title for Mark Erlich’s book would be “Preserving and Extending the Dignity of Construction Work”. For our two sons, there is tremendous dignity and economic security. They work out of the hiring hall so they have flexibility in pursuit of their interests beyond work, and the pay and benefits are excellent.  The question and challenge that Erlich describes is one of extending that dignity, the good wages, and benefits of the unionized trades to the vast non-union sector. This, of course, is not a charity mission, but a matter of self-preservation because if trends continue, the unionized trades will represent a tiny sliver of the market and their superior wages and conditions will be undermined. 

In Chapter 1 entitled a Tale of Two Cities, referring to the contrast between union and non-union builders, Erlich presents stunning numbers that illustrate the decline of the unionized sector. In 1947 estimates had union construction at 87.1% of the market. Fast-forward to 2020 and that figure is a lowly 13.4%.[1] This decline is not some natural evolutionary phenomenon but the product of a concerted assault on construction unions begun in 1969. In Chapter 3 The Heavy Hand of the Business Roundtable, Erlich explains who was behind this concerted assault. The Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable was founded by giant energy and manufacturing firms like US Steel who were concerned about the costs of construction during the Vietnam War. These corporate forces eventually aligned into what today has become the Business Roundtable. [2]

Here is  J.C.Turner, General President – International Union of Operating Engineers (OE) in 1979 warning about the nature of the Roundtable:

“It has become apparent that a systematic and well planned campaign is being conducted to totally destroy the building trades… the current attack is the result of a decade of planning and groundwork by the Business Roundtable acting in concert with regional and local construction user associations, the contractor associations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pro-business academic institutions and their allies in government… “

“Our real enemy is clearly these large industrial concerns, organized as the Business Roundtable, who are using the contractors and their associations as soldiers in the battle. Their purpose is to put the lid on costs by pressuring their construction contractors to slash wages… The Business Roundtable represents a threat not just to the building trades unions but to the trade union movement as a whole… “

“If corporate America can weaken the hard-won gains of this country’s construction unions, the ultimate target will be the entire trade union movement…”   [3]

In this 112 page very accessible book Erlich describes the drop in union density and the relative decline in living standards. The construction unions still maintain their strongholds in major urban markets building high-rise commercial buildings and public works projects. Representation among residential construction workers however is almost non-existent.

Building site, part of the UC Med “campus” on 18th and Minnasota in the Dog Patch/Mission Bay area of San Francisco, California. Photo Robert Gumpert 28 August 2017

Chapter 6 on Technology and the Future of Construction Work is very valuable in light of the general furor over AI and robots replacing traditional work. Erlich examines modular construction and new production processes but concludes that, “many of these advances remain novelty items available only to a minority of firms that have the resources and inclination to experiment with equipment and systems that have not consistently been proven to be quality or cost effective” [4]Erlich points out that “most union training programs have incorporated Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) into their curricula”[5] However in the end there remains the need for a skilled mechanic albeit employing labor saving precision tools. Nevertheless would not the trades be well served following the knowledge based technology work and stretching their jurisdiction to include the programmers and algorithm writers who are fashioning the CAD and BIM tools. These workers too are part of the construction process and would most certainly benefit from the power of the construction unions and their solidarity. No reason not to dream beyond the immediate physical workplace and leverage the power you have to control work upstream.

Chapter 8 focuses on Many Rivers to Cross: Organizing and Diversity and acknowledges that “the rapid growth of the Latino workforce added another dimension to the issues of organizing, diversity and inclusion”.[6]

Nowhere is this a more dramatic challenge than in California. The California economy is now #5 in the world in GDP  trailing only China, the US, Japan and Germany![7] In the Golden State there are approximately 900,000 workers in construction. 600,000 of those workers are Latinos and 500,000 of those Latinos are non-union. 

Erlich unfortunately  ignores one of the most exciting developments in the history of immigrant worker organizing, the strike and organization of drywall carpenters in Southern California in 1992. The 3,000 “drywalleros” self organized and struck residential construction sites from San Diego to Santa Barbara and assisted by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA) won an agreement with the drywall employer contractors. Their strike inspired Southern California labor as a largely Mexican immigrant workforce engaged in militant and provocative tactics even at one point blocking traffic on the Hollywood freeway at rush hour.[8]

The employers unleashed the police and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on the workforce and the Carpenters union provided training and attorneys to spring these workers from La Migra. This winning battle made a national name for Doug McCarron the SoCal Carpenters district director, and he rose to become national president in 1995 after Sig Lucassen retired. McCarron remains President to this day, and the UBCJA is controversial in the labor movement for its go it alone approach to construction jurisdiction. But the Carpenters, particularly in California, have been in the forefront of organizing immigrant workers.

The battle of the drywallers is instructive for organizers seeking to reverse the dramatic density drop in construction. The battle was waged as an area wide struggle against multiple contractors based in a regional labor market and supported by the Mexican community. The leaders of the effort were from a small village of 2000 residents in Guanajuato Mexico called El Maguey. The elders of the village had given “strike sanctions” to the workers and indicated that those who crossed the picket lines would not be welcome to return home at Xmas or Easter! [9] This phenomenon of immigrant workers is not unfamiliar to Erlich as he himself cites the presence of French Canadian immigrant workers in the New England drywall industry who filled a void left by “generalist carpenters who looked down on the work and left it to others to fill the vacuum.” Unfortunately the drywallers in this case did not self organize but were classified as individual contractors and super exploited.

Erlich was a reformer within his own union in New England having run for office and beat an incumbent based on his innovative approaches to organizing and politics. He does not however address the question of reform within the larger UBCJA union. Recently in Seattle, a reform group called the Peter J. McGuire caucus named after the original organizer of the UBCJA back in the 19th century, participated in a bitter strike in the Puget Sound.[10] Their role was controversial and the strike resulted in McCarron placing the regional council in trusteeship. It would be instructive to hear Erlich’s viewpoint on the questions of internal democracy!

Interest in this book has been largely confined to academic and industry circles. It needs to be read and discussed in trade union circles particularly in the construction trades. 

Since my retirement from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 2013 I have been part of the adjunct faculty  at the Building Trades Academy headquartered for accreditation purposes at Michigan State University. I have co-taught courses on organizing and bargaining for business managers and organizers from the Heat and Frost Insulators, Plasterers and Cement Masons and the Bricklayers. For Ironworker Lathers from NYC and the Central South Region of the UBCJA I taught classes on internal organizing. Erlich’s book would have been a perfect compliment to all those weeklong training sessions.

Now several national formations are springing up advocating for more democracy in the trades and for more focus on new organizing and green construction policies and projects.[11] Erlich’s “The Way We Build” is an instructive and engaging read for those just beginning to cut their teeth in construction organizing and union reform. …


[1] Erlich Page 6 and unionstats.com

[2] An excellent companion volume to Erlich’s work is Wars of Attrition: Vietnam, the business roundtable, and the decline of construction unions  Marc Linder  Fanpihua Press 2000

[3] JC Turner  “The Business Roundtable and American Labor” May 1979

[4] Erlich Page 50

[5] Erlich Page 54-55

[6] Erlich Page 79

[7] https://www.forbes.com/places/ca/?sh=4ae284f73fef

[8] https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/0251c537-6a21-4081-bf90-7a5136bfbff9/content

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-24-me-3937-story.html

[9] I visited the village of El Maguey in the summer of 2000 and met with elders who were relatives of Jesus Gomez, the principal organizer of the drywall strike.

[10] https://council.seattle.gov/2021/09/19/rank-and-file-carpenter-nina-wurz-we-need-a-good-contract-and-rent-control/

[11] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-10/unions-making-a-green-new-deal-from-below-part-1/

“The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work” by  Mark Erlich

About the author

Peter Olney

Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 50 years working for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. With co-editor Glenn Perušek they have edited Labor Power and Strategy by John Womack Jr and available now from PM Press View all posts by Peter Olney →

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Tech Workers Deserve a Union

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16 Oct 2007: Mountain View, CA.: Work commuters on the Mountain View train platform. Photo: Robert Gumpert

Many of us have tried to follow the recent kerfuffle involving Sam Altman’s leadership of the company he founded, OpenAI. In mid-November 2023 he was abruptly fired, then returned to power just five days later. The business press highlighted the implications of this power struggle for the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence and the future influence of investors like Microsoft.

It appears, however, that the pivotal moment in the power struggle came when 738 out of OpenAI’s estimated 770 workers said they would resign if Altman remained ousted. Even if it only resulted in putting a CEO back in power (and to a company that represents a real threat to the labor movement), the revolt by OpenAI workers was nevertheless “one of the most successful collective actions taken to date in the tech industry,” writes Ethan Marcotte, and a reminder to tech workers of the power they have at work.

This story unfolded just as I was finishing up Marcotte’s excellent new book, You Deserve a Tech Union. Though Marcotte admits he is a self-employed web designer who has never been in or organized a union, he has consulted with some of the best and the brightest in union and tech-worker organizing to fashion a wonderful back-pocket book, perfect for any tech worker interested in powering up and getting a union. At around 150 pages it is full of clear advice on organizing, as well as some captivating history of technology.

Marcotte references the work of the scientist Ursula Franklin who presents a fascinating story of the evolving discourse that surrounded the invention of the sewing machine. When it was introduced to the general public in the middle of the 19th century the machine was welcomed as a device that would “banish ragged and unclad humanity.” The authors of an early manual promised that the “sewing machine would end poverty.”

Fast forward to a manual from top sewing-machine manufacturer Singer in 1910 where the emphasis is all on efficiency and speed. “Inside of five short decades, the sewing machine is no longer discussed as a technology that will liberate its users,” Marcotte writes. “Instead, it delivers productivity.” Marcotte sees a similar trend at work with more recent technology, such as the promise of the Internet to “connect humanity and reduce both poverty and armed conflict.” Yet the biggest web and tech firms have become major defense contractors.

Marcotte’s book is a forceful argument that if workers in tech want to improve their conditions, they can only do so collectively—and that means forming a union. He says that this is dawning on more tech workers in the last few years, but that it’s been given an added impetus by recent mass layoffs in the industry, with more than 160,000 tech workers losing their jobs in 2022.

The shift to forming unions represents a significant change from tech workers’ usual strategy of seeking out better pay or conditions by “voting with their feet.” By and large, Marcotte writes, “workers in the tech industry have come to expect that a bad job can only be fixed by getting a better job somewhere else.” But that’s changing—a change that is long past due, since employers have also come to expect that rather than improving conditions, they will always be able to find new workers.

Marcotte acknowledges that many tech workers are paid better than other workers and often receive better benefits. That’s especially the case at the biggest companies like Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google), which also offer lavish cafeteria meals, company gymnasiums, and health clubs.

But there are plenty of other issues that motivate workers in the industry: ever-increasing workloads; being paid less than peers; harassment and discrimination; a lack of opportunities for career growth; and worries about layoffs and severance pay.

Marcotte also stresses that organization is necessary to combat the unethical and destructive use of tech. He highlights the 2018 protest by thousands of Google employees over the company’s contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense. Similarly, Amazon tech employees organized a walkout over climate justice in Seattle headquarters.

Marcotte is careful to include in the community of tech workers such jobs as “content moderators,” who often work in remote offices for limited salaries sometimes even in far-off lands like India and Kenya. These workers must do the often traumatic work of spotting disturbing violent and offensive sexual postings that need to be policed and removed from websites. These are jobs that can lead to serious psychological trauma, and workers that do them are fighting for desperately needed representation.

He also emphasizes the many others who should rightly be considered tech workers, from Amazon warehouse workers to drivers for Uber, GrubHub, and Lyft. He notes that other tech workers can learn from the organizing by the Teamsters among Bay Area shuttle bus drivers for Meta and Alphabet and by UNITE HERE among contracted cafeteria workers at big tech firms.

Chapters 4 and 5 are the heart and soul of Marcotte’s narrative. He explains what a union is and the process through which, under present U.S. labor law and practice, workers can form one. While many union activists may be familiar with these processes, 94 percent of workers in the private sector do not have unions, so this is necessary education for tech workers, among others. He relies on the teachings of veteran organizers to highlight the obstacles to organizing and the methods needed to overcome them.

As someone who has organized many groups of workers into unions over the years, from machinists to bookstore workers to dockworkers, I found this section illuminating, but a little lacking on the question of power relations, particularly with regards to getting a first contract. That’s why I found the Sam Altman saga so illustrative, because it appears to me that the key to reversing his ouster was the revolt by the bulk of OpenAI employees.

My experience over the years in bargaining for first contracts for newly organized workers who have voted for the union is that without a powerful exercise of worker (such as strikes or other job actions) or consumer power (like boycotts), no employer will just wrap up a first agreement just because the majority of workers voted in a union. To get a strong union and a worthy first contract, there needs to be the exercise of power that those OpenAI workers engaged in. In fact that kind of exercise of power could result in an employer willingly recognizing a union (without an election) and accepting a good first contract all in one fell swoop.

In 2022 in the Port of Tacoma, Washington, a group of chassis mechanics organized with the Longshore Workers (ILWU) and went on strike. They won the union and the first contract all within the space of a few days because the marine terminal had come to a halt. Mechanics won an average immediate wage increase of 29 percent, an improved medical plan, and, for the first time, a pension plan.

We need such an analysis of chokepoints in tech so that workers can consider skipping the bureaucracy of the National Labor Relations Board (the federal agency charged with enforcing labor law and conducting elections to determine whether workers want a union) and exercise power to lead directly to a union. Or even if workers go through the formal NLRB-election route, such analysis might be essential in helping win a first contract. (See the book Labor Power and Strategy by John Womack, Jr., which I co-edited, for more discussion of choke points and power analysis.)

That means a concrete analysis of concrete conditions:

  • Who are the most skilled or essential workers whose work cannot be easily or swiftly replaced?
  • Where in the process of “production” is the employer most vulnerable?
  • Are there seasons of production and deadlines when delivery times give us greater power with production interruptions?

Maybe as more experience is accumulated in the tech industry Marcotte will deliver such a volume for us, but in the meantime this is a very useful tool and stimulating read for any tech worker contemplating improving their workplace and enhancing their power over their work life and the products they are fabricating.

The whole labor movement needs the solidarity and organization of these tech workers. Imagine tech workers acting in solidarity with warehouse or production workers dependent on their algorithms! What an awesome transformative power!

Pick up You Deserve a Tech Union at abookapart.com and organize for power.

This review originally ran in Labor Notes

Liz Cheney, the Anti-Fascist Conservative

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Liz Cheney speaks to a small crowd at the American Legion in Buffalo, Wyoming. October 26, 2013. Creative Commons

Since the recent publication of Liz Cheney’s new book, Wyoming’s former Member of Congress has been making the rounds of our top media outlets and news shows. If you have yet to watch one, do so. It’s well worth it.

Entitled ‘Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,’ the work takes a deep dive into former President Donald Trump’s attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. It not only covers that radical rupture with the usual ‘peaceful transfer of power’ in our country’s history, but Cheney also offers us a summary of the events that followed, especially the proceedings of the House of Representatives’s Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But Cheney is making waves again because she’s delivering more than a history lesson. As her title states, she’s warning us that the battle against Trump and his GOP turned-fascist party is far from over. In fact, her claim is that greater violent battles may occur in the upcoming presidential year, and we would do well to prepare. We learn several things from her book we may not have known before, or at least, as the Bible says, we may have only known ‘through a glass darkly’ (1st Corinthians 13).

1: Team Trump did not act alone.

2: It really was a coup attempt, complete with armed backup. 

3: The attempt is ongoing and is getting worse. 

4: Cheney had to organize her particular media experts and armed self-defense to survive, get the initial story out, and continue her battle today. Let’s go over them.

Team Trump was not alone. The fact that Trump and his staff, with the help of the Secret Service, pulled off a large rally on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, was widely known, including Trump’s online assertion that it ‘will be wild.’ We could have guessed that it would march to the steps of the Capitol and even try to push through police lines. But what we did not know was a solid majority of House Republicans and a few GOP Senators had been organized in a deeper plot, one involving dozens of GOP-dominated state legislators as well. They were all in on it; they all knew it was illegal, fraudulent, or at least ‘extra-legal’ and unconstitutional, and they were willing to use violence to get their way.

Liz Cheney knew the vital technical details. She knew the GOP collaborators would have fake ballots of fake electors, and they would try to stuff them into the traditional mahogany box handed to Vice President Pence for the counting ceremony. Cheney conferred with the Senate and House parliamentarians and the Sergeants-at-Arms on how to thwart it. She succeeded, but barely so. The other technical detail was that with each state count that Pence reported, House GOPers could object, but unless a Senator also objected, there would be no debate. If there were debate, the Joint Session would be suspended until each House debated and voted the ‘objections’ up or down. They would then return to the Joint Session for Pence to continue. This adjourning could be repeated 50 times, possibly taking days or even more, ensuring chaos. In the chaos, Team Trump would try to throw the election to the states, where each state got one vote, and the GOP held the majority of states.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the mob breached the Joint Session after only one vote, Arizona, and one Senator, Josh Hawley, casting a vote to force the end of the session. Cheney saw to it that the mahogany box was secured. She also had seen to her personal security. Her father, Dick Cheney, the former Vice President and Secretary of Defense, had warned her ahead of time to do so, and insisted on it. She used a trusted ex-Secret Service agent who had guarded her as a child to make sure she was always secure and protected as she moved about or in undisclosed places. Dick Cheney also had a hand in getting all former living Secretaries of Defense to sign a widely publicized open letter warning of the necessity for a peaceful transfer of power.

Liz Cheney’s next steps were carried out closely and jointly with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They hardly knew each other before, but both knew exactly what had to be done: The Capitol had to be secured that day, and called back into session, even if in the late wee hours. In that session, they had to complete the Arizona debate and make sure there were no more. Still, even after the violence, 139 House GOPers stuck to the Trump plan and voted objections. But no Senator voted with them, meaning no interruption of the Joint Session. Under armed guard against any disruption, Cheney and Pelosi got it done. Pence finished the count, and the ceremony was completed. Biden would be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.

It really was an attempted coup. Trump insisted that his guards at the Jan. 6 rally turn off their weapon detectors because he knew large numbers of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were armed. Luckily, the Secret Service was tactically split. Trump planned to lead the assault himself, but the agents in his limo forcibly restrained him and delivered him back to the White House. The mob who did get into the Capitol, and a trained handful of them knew their several tasks: seize and detain Nancy Pelosi, overwhelm the Sergeants at Arms, get the mahogany box, and seize and detain Mike Pence. Pelosi, working with Liz Cheney, thwarted each tactical move.

But there was more. In the days before Jan. 6, Trump had fired and replaced several top Pentagon officials and replaced them with his hitmen with zero qualifications, other than personal fealty to him, to hold those offices. He was assisted by Gen Micheal Flynn, who he had pardoned earlier. Along with Roger Stone, Flynn was Trump’s liaison with the Oathkeepers and other armed units. Trump also acted to confuse and limit the intervention of the National Guard. Once the Electoral College count was thwarted, the plan was to use the Insurrection Act to put the country under martial law.

The ‘Election Denial’ attempt was, and remains, ongoing. By Jan. 11, even though Trump had only a few days left in office, Democrats introduced Articles of Impeachment. It passed the House but with only 10 Republicans voting for it. The GOP majority, while offering a variety of excuses, still stuck with Trump. Cheney was hopeful that Senator Mitch McConnell would back it in the Senate, but in the end, he wavered, and that meant less than the required two-thirds. In the following weeks, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago to flip-flop from his panicked Jan. 6 statements and get back on Trump’s side. The reason? His main job in the GOP was raising money. As a result of the coup attempt, many large corporate donors let it be known that funds to the ‘Freedom Caucus’ and its coup-plotting allies were drying up. The only other major source was Trump’s massive small donor lists. The price of access? McCarthy had to kiss ‘the Don’s’ ring and work to bring him back to the White House. Liz Cheney knew the Freedom Caucus were, for the most part, all surrendering and would work to sabotage any future joint investigation. Cheney knew the full truth had to come out, and it wouldn’t be easy.

With the prospect of a bicameral investigation cut off, Nancy Pelosi decided on the next best step: a bipartisan House Committee. She made an offer to McCarthy to name five Republicans to it. He did, but Pelosi objected to two of them as demagogic hacks, Reps Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, and told him to pick two more. Instead, McCarthy withdrew all five, leading her to quip that ‘Kevin won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.’ But Pelosi was not to be stopped and instead asked Liz Cheney, and while Liz was a bit surprised, she readily agreed and helped pick one more Republican, Rep Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who had stood against all the coup ploys. Pelosi had named Rep Bennie Thompson of Mississippi to chair the Select Committee, but then asked Cheney to be the vice chair. Somewhat surprised, Liz agreed.

From the start, Cheney knew the Select Committee had to be different. The last thing she wanted to see was a typical House hearing with dozens of reporters, glaring TV lights, and prima donna speakers trying to wring all the stage glamour they could out of an allotted five minutes. Average Americans would tune out. So, working closely with her husband, Philip Perry, an experienced trial lawyer, they planned a radical departure from the average hearing. In addition to legal experts, they hired top film and TV directors. They wanted a series of storyboards drawn up, each featuring a key element of the attempted coup. They wanted it to unfold as a dramatic series, with growing insights and suspense, with only the witnesses in the limelight. Moreover, they wanted nearly all the testimony to come from Republicans themselves, especially those who worked close to Trump and had initially supported him inside the Oval Office or his cabinet. And for any fearful for their lives, they had to do the recordings in highly secure facilities—and with no leaks.

As we know, Thompson and Cheney were successful and powerfully so. The Hearings became among the most widely watched and the most credible that anyone could name. Trump and the GOP attacked it as partisan trash, but the claim didn’t fly. All the testimony did indeed come from their own people. It did cause Liz Cheney to be purged from all her posts in Congress and then to be removed from Congress by a Trump diehard who defeated her in the next race in Wyoming. It didn’t matter.

Liz Cheney now probably has more political clout than she ever has had. And we need to note that she is still a solid right-wing conservative with a 95% rating by those who measure such things. The difference is in the remaining five percent: she is an anti fascist who sticks by the Constitution and her oath to defend it. She is not only making the rounds to every media forum she can to promote her book and tell the story behind it, Cheney has also formed a new PAC, The Great Task. Its aim is not simply to keep Trump out of the Oval Office, or any office. It is also organizing Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to take down every Trump enabler, not only in Congress but also in every state legislature. And if it means endorsing progressive Democrats to do so, so be it.

This last point has considerable importance for the left. We are not in a ‘united front’ with Liz Cheney, or any formal grouping along those lines. We know her politics too well, and there are too many points of importance to sweep under any rug. But in the current conjuncture and its terrain, we do share common ground and a common goal: the routing of the MAGA fascists in the upcoming elections at every level and in future rounds as well. We can encourage Republicans we know at the base, people we know who are not likely to join our coalitions and projects but who might join hers.

Things will undoubtedly change in the future, and for that matter, Liz Cheney may change, too. Nothing in the Universe stands still. But for now, work on the great task at hand.

This piece is republished from the substack “Liberation Road”