On National Day of Action
By Steve Early
Federal Union Rank-and-Filers Protest Musk & Challenge Their Own Leaders
In Washington, D.C., there’s now a ritual formula for labor gatherings outside a government office to protest the latest depredations of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) created by President Trump.
Paid staffers from national union headquarters and the AFL-CIO arrive with neatly printed signs and approved messages. Worried federal workers mill about on their lunch hour, share the latest rumors, and hold the signs. PR consultants buttonhole the press and hand out media advisories. Often the news of day involves another lawsuit being filed against DOGE.
Top union officials and their putative friends on Capitol Hill show up to deliver fiery rally rhetoric or leave statements of support in their wake. In some cases, these are Senate Democrats who just voted to confirm the Trump cabinet member now working with DOGE to downsize their own agency.
Inside the Beltway, the epi-center of astro-turf organizing, everyone is most comfortable training their fire on the evil genius of Elon Musk. Not busy enough running Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX, and X, and having his 14th child with an employee at Neuralink, the world’s richest man is now directing Trump’s multi-faceted assault on federal workers and the services they provide.
No United Front?
Despite representing hundreds of thousands of those embattled workers around the country, none of the AFL-CIO affiliates representing them have come together and developed a multi-union plan for taking the fight against Musk, DOGE, and Trump to the grassroots level.
“… with no national union encouragement or resources, they called for a nation-wide “day of action” to resist federal funding freezes, the elimination of 200,000 jobs, the disruption of vital programs”
As VA occupational therapist Mark Smith explains politely, that’s because federal employee unions are “a bit siloed.” Instead of looking for ways to unite all workers in the federal sector, their top officials and staff like to promote their own organizational brand, cultivate separate connections to politicians and agency managers, and focus on their particular bargaining units, which too often have low membership and weak locals.
To save money, some national unions did agree recently to share the mounting cost of DOGE-related litigation. But a month ago, 39-year old Smith and other younger local union leaders in the Federal Unionist Network (FUN) decided this limited form of cooperation was not good enough to meet the challenges of the moment.
So, with no national union encouragement or resources, they called for a nation-wide “day of action” to resist federal funding freezes, the elimination of 200,000 jobs, the disruption of vital programs, and their further privatization by Trump.
Their email blast was issued in the name of the “nurses, scientists, park rangers, protectors of our country, researchers, and attorneys who serve our communities every day.” As the FUN organizers reassured their often angry but frightened co-workers, “If we speak out together, we can make it clear to the public why Trump’s attack on our jobs is designed to make all of our lives worse…”
A Rank-and-File Initiative
The results of that rank-and-file initiative to “save our services and build workplace solidarity were on display last Wednesday, Feb. 19– in more than 35 locations across the nation.
Federal workers, along with labor and community allies, responded to FUN’s appeal in Portland and Seattle, Boise and Boulder, Philadelphia and Baltimore, Chattanooga and Boston, Troy, NY and NYC, where 1,000 protestors gathered in Lower Manhattan’s Foley Square to hear speakers like longtime VA defender, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Here in San Francisco, outside the (now much protested) Tesla dealer at the corner of Van Ness and O’Farrell, a crowd of 300 assembled, including members of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1, which elected Smith its president two years ago.
They were joined by local staffers of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the Park Service, Army Corps of Engineers, National Labor Relations Board, the General Services and Social Security Administrations, and the federal Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.
As CFPB attorney Hai Binh Nguyen told The Chronicle, she was there to protest a stop work order issued earlier this month, which has stalled investigations of consumer fraud cases. “I think it’s really rare, “she said, “that we get to be in a place that has a really amazing mission. And our mission is to make the market fair and protect everyday consumers.”
Stop The Coup
Members of the crowd chanted, cheered, and hoisted banners and placards that were home-made and hand-lettered, rather than union issued. One sign-waver called for “National Parks, Not Oilfields,” while another wanted “No Muskrats in Our VA Hospital.” Other personal demands included: “Stop the Coup,” “Protect Our Clean Air Act,” “Fire and/or Deport Musk!” and “Keep Your DOGE off My CFPB!”
The message from a yoga practitioner was simply “Down DOG-e.” Another placard read: “Federal Workers: Here to Serve, Not Afraid and Not Leaving,” which pretty well summed up the sentiment of the crowd.
In his speech to the group, Smith reminded everyone of who does the real work of the federal government. “I’ve never seen a billionaire carry the mail,” he said “I’ve never seen a billionaire put out a forest fire. I’ve never seen a billionaire make sure people get their Social Security checks on time. I’ve never seen a billionaire answer a phone call from a suicidal veteran on the VA crisis line.”
Another speaker, Army veteran and VA patient Ricardo Ortiz recalled the role played by working-class vets in the long campaign to create a healthcare system, based on public provision of care, not for-profit medical treatment. That achievement is now at risk, he warned, because of bi-partisan efforts to privatize the VA-run Veterans Health Administration.
Belated Backing
On the eve of FUN’s after-work events and coordinated workplace solidarity activities, the DC-based headquarters of NFFE, the National Treasury Employees, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) finally endorsed the “day of action.” The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal worker union, and National Nurses United (NNU), which represents 15,000 VA nurses—never officially embraced this bottom up effort.
For their part, FUN organizers like Smith in San Francisco and Colin Smalley, an Army Corps of Engineers geologist who leads IFPTE Local 777 Chicago, began making contact, via a WhatsApp chat, with other like-minded workers prior to last year’s national Labor Notes conference.
At that April, 2024 meeting of 5,000 union activists, they conferred, face-to-face, with federal employees from throughout the U.S. They also compared notes with trade unionists from abroad who, as Smalley recalls, were already dealing with “autocratic and, at times, even fascist regimes, which exploit public employees as scapegoats.”
Since Trump’s re-election, locals from multiple federal employee unions, who are doing membership education and mobilization, report rapid growth. At the VA Medical Center on Clement St., NFFE Local 1 holds weekly “lunch and learns” to keep its new dues payers fully informed about their contract rights and how to use them in current and past fights with VA headquarters and local management.
It’s definitely not fun to be a federal worker these days. But thanks to this latest example of Labor Notes-backed rank-and-file networking, many DOGE targets are not waiting, any longer, for a fight-back plan, handed down from above. Instead, they’re developing one of the own and, in the process, pressuring the labor officialdom in Washington to get on board (and not just at the last minute).
“Everybody right now needs to become an organizer,” says FUN supporter Chris Dols, president of IFTPE Local 98 in New York City. “If you’re a federal employee and you don’t know what your union is, get involved with the FUN, we’ll help you figure it out. If you don’t have a union, we’ll help you learn how to organize one.”
…
Resisting Trump
By Mike Miller
“How do we resist Trump’s doings and at the same time build something that can reverse a point in American politics that has been a long-time coming.“
Evidently, little of what President Biden did on the economic front actually materialized as jobs on the ground, so the actual political beneficiary of when people are hired will be Trump because he inherits it. This fact alone makes it difficult to evaluate whether sheer “economism” —i.e. jobs, even good ones, or income (guaranteed annual wage) are sufficient for a program to defeat Trump, and more generally to defeat the right.
Some History
We would do well to recall that the turn toward the right started in the mid-1960s with white working class voters’ support for George Wallace, and grew stronger especially after the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Friends of mine who worked in the Appalachian Volunteers at the time told me how RFK supporters became Wallace supporters in the time it takes to blink an eye. We cannot understand that shift by looking only at the economy.
On his campaign ’72, “One of [Wallace’s] supporters, who was horrified [at his rabid use of racism in the campaign], came up to him after his speech and said, ‘George, why are you doing this?’” recalls Wallace biographer Dan Carter. “And Wallace, sadly he thought, said, ‘You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened.’” “I’ll never be out nggrd again” he concluded after this earlier campaign in which he was a racial “moderate”.
It’s worthwhile remembering that in the 1964 Democratic primary in Wisconsin he got upward of 30% of the vote; in his 1968 American Independent Party third party run his votes were 20% or more in Oregon, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania; 30% or more in West Virginia Maryland, and topped 40% in Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida; and in the 1972 Democratic primary topped 20% in Oregon, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Tennessee and North Carolina. In “white ethnic” working class precincts in the suburbs of Detroit, it was over 50%.
Further, around the same time (1966) Ronald Reagan defeated the previously popular Governor Pat Brown of whom the Los Angeles Times recalled in 1996 “was a third generation Californian whose main ambition was not higher office, but to be a great governor for his native state. He succeeded.
“Brown turned California from a Republican to Democratic State with his major programs and public expenditures, so you can’t even say, ‘Too little, too late.’ He was on-time.
“While voters may not have appreciated his greatness 30 years ago, millions probably do today. And historians certainly will tomorrow.”
The point isn’t to enter an “either/or” question (economics versus ______) but a “when/where/why” one. When are questions of economic welfare of sufficient electoral saliency to overcome various issues raised by those who well understand, and are quite ready to use, the strategy of “divide and conquer”.
If Not Economics, Then What?
New York Times columnist David Brooks goes too far in the opposite direction: “The Biden administration was built on the theory that if you redistribute huge amounts of money to people and places left behind, they will return to the Democratic fold. It didn’t happen because you can’t use money to solve a problem primarily about recognition and respect.” (NYT 1/19/25).
If we could answer affirmatively these questions, we would know a lot more:
1: Did Biden’s program actually create jobs on the ground? If so, where? How many? Paying what, with what benefits?, etc?
2: Are the deliverers of the message that “good jobs are coming” believable? Or are they “elitists” who now occupy most key leadership positions in the Democratic Party, and aren’t trusted by blue collar workers?
3: When, and under what conditions, is economic improvement, especially well-paying union jobs, sufficient? Where and when in the past has it overcome general alienation from the system and distrust of its everyday politicians? When does such alienation run so deep that it overrides material interests? When does it overcome racial and other prejudices?
4: Most basically, what are the facts on the ground for individuals, families, friends, neighbors and other associates? Whatever the GNP might be, are their lives better? Are there more-or-less of them living paycheck to paycheck? And even if it’s a close call, do pessimistic and painful stories travel farther and faster than do optimistic and hopeful ones?
The Turn To the Right Didn’t Just Start
We would learn a lot by carefully examining the shift to Wallace in Appalachia after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
Let’s look further back. FDR’s speeches (i.e. “messaging”) and programs were a big part of the New Deal’s success. He assured the American people that things were going to get better, that he was on their side against the plutocrats, and that he could win politically in Congress. And he delivered, if not enough at least enough for the electorate in 1936, 1940 and 1944 to give him four more years.
What’s the difference between then and now? The barrier of race among working class people has been broken in unions that were intentional about getting workers to put class above race, and where relationships among those workers contributed to mutual respect. But not always.
What leads to those different outcomes in roughly similar circumstances? The truth is we don’t fully know.
There is no equivalent to the CIO or Popular Front “at the base” to make Presidential (or any other Democrat’s) policies or promises believable. Without rebuilding unions that don’t vigorously oppose racial/ethnic and other forms of discrimination; without a more generally vital civil society, we are not in a position to win because to win now requires big money for media, and that money comes from wealthy people who are pursuing their agendas, not from the bottom up.
The challenge is, “How do we resist Trump’s doings and at the same time build something that can reverse a point in American politics that has been a long-time coming.
Maybe that requires parallel strategies. If so, these considerations are central:
— Those engaged in direct action need to carefully balance the need for militancy required to express their anger at injustice with the need to communicate with those who don’t share that anger, or don’t share it that militantly.
— Those engaged in the more careful building for the long-haul processes have to persuade the militants to be more careful lest their action create a bigger counter-reaction. I believe we are dealing with the absence of such care in the recent past.
In 1961/62 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee field secretary Bob Moses traveled to Mississippi to meet an underground network of civil rights leaders who had worked with Ella Baker when she was Director of Branches for the NAACP. While they admired the courage of the “sit-ins” and “freedom rides,” what they really were interested in was the right to vote.
At the August, 1961 SNCC staff meeting, the issue almost split the organization. Ella Baker, who attended but rarely spoke at such gatherings, interceded with the question, “Why not both?” The problem was resolved. After a period in which SNCC had two divisions, it became apparent that voter registration work was as likely to get people thrown in prison as sit-ins or freedom rides.
Increasingly, SNCC became an organization of organizers building local “units” of Black people power across the Deep South. At the same time it is worth noting that SNCC couldn’t do both in the same place at the same time. That was tried in McComb. It frightened local Black adults, who backed away from the voter registration program.
The Amazon “plants” or “salts” are analogous to the voter registration people in SNCC. Protest action will inevitably go on. At the same time, some of the protestors or others who support the causes for protest need to dig deep roots in poor-to-middle class communities of all colors and build people power organizations that have the capacity to move from protest to power.
…
TO JANE FROM GENE
By Gene Bruskin
“My dear friend and comrade, Gene Bruskin, presented a beautiful poetic tribute to Jane McAlevey at her memorial on February 18th in NYC. Supporters and comrades there to celebrate and honor her included many Amazon workers. Jane’s teachings and training will live on with workers worldwide.” Peter Olney
Hey Jane
Good to talk with you again
I just wanted to say a few things
You were my friend
Comrade
Inspiration
Teacher
Sister
Sometime partner in crime
I remember visiting you in your tiny cabin in Marin
And meeting your beloved horse
And hearing your story about how getting a horse as a little girl saved your spirit after your mom died
I want to thank that horse
One of my finest memories of you
Was when you decided to include the Justice@Smthfield campaign
In No Shortcuts
And indeed, I watched you work on this project
Taking NO shortcuts
As you documented, the successful 15-year Smithfield worker struggle for a union
You always liked winning.
You said-I am coming to DC to see you on this
Bring up Smithfield workers to meet with me
I blanched
That is not easy, Jane-they live 5 hours south
And they’re working, you know
I need to talk to the workers, you said
So, I made it happen
Then you said,
“Get me Every single relevant Document”
Really, all I asked?
15 years’ worth?
This is only one chapter
Yes, I mean every document, you insisted
Leaflets, planning documents, videos, legal documents-everything
And you read them all, including all the sealed court documents that I took when leaving UFCW
And you asked me question after question, detail after detail and sent me draft after draft
And you created the Justice@Smithfield chapter for No Shortcuts
A beautiful combination of attention to both vision and detail
Which has been gobbled up by the many thousands of mostly young workers and organizers hungry for knowledge
I was proud to play a part
Of the power and scope and reach of the book
But most importantly
You brought the story back to life
The successful victory of 5,000 slaughterhouse workers in the South
When the national union ignored it
And it lives, in part, through your book
And Jane, it led so many people to me
People say “Hey, Are you the guy in Jane’s book?”
Can you talk about the lessons in that big campaign in the South?
So, the Smithfield victory matters more than ever.
Thanks Jane
And then of course
Our adventures with the Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island, the ALU
As soon as they won (again, you always like winning) I got your call- “Gene, get me in. I want to run the campaign with these workers.”
Again, I thought. No small feat
But they couldn’t resist you and in you came
And we conspired
I loved strategizing with you
Blow by blow
Watching you operate
And operating with you
Sharing love and respect
It meant a lot to me
I loved learning from you
I loved that you trusted my judgment.
And let me reign you in from time to time
While being awed by the integrity of your vision
And the way you connected to the workers
Watching you deal directly and definitively but always with respect
Teaching, challenging, leading, backing leaders
And to this day they often talk about you at JFK8 on Staten Island
“Like Jane said…” they say
And they throw around words like: Natural leader, structure test, super majority actions
And by the way Jane, the other day they told me that 40 ALU workers signed up for your latest Organizing for Power training
They know that you will be watching
And they say “she gave us her time, when she didn’t have much time left to give”
You left a permanent mark at ALU
Like you have with so many workers and organizers in so many places
Like the permanent mark you have left with me
Lastly, I remember when I visited you at your precious NYC apartment
As you counted down your final days
As you cooked me a pesto pasta lunch as we had a warm chat
We talked about health, our families, strikes, and even did some prep for your panel that afternoon with Sean Obrian
To the end, you were never one to miss an opportunity to teach
Hey, you asked, what should I say?
And so, we talked.
As I left, knowing your days were numbered, I missed you already
And I will always miss you
Never forget you
Cherish our friendship
And the lessons you taught.
And your love for the struggle and the people
Jane, you have moved on
But you will never be forgotten
Long live Jane McAlevey!
…
A video of the Jane celebration made by the Nation can be seen here
28 Anti-Fascist Films
By Kurt Stand
Note: On February 7, Trump announced that he was taking over the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Not surprising, controlling the arts that has long been a dream of reaction. This calls to mind the ban Hitler imposed on literary criticism — an anti-Semitic measure (Jews can “critique but cannot create” was a trope repeated in various forms ad nauseum in those years) to be sure. But it also exemplified the essence of the fascist approach to art: if it is not immediately comprehensible, then it is subversive. Put in other terms, critical thinking is itself subversive. The manifestations of that are visible everywhere today, most vividly in renewed book bannings, rewritten school curricula, repression of sexuality (which fits nicely with permissiveness toward sexual assault) and, of course, suppression of critical race theory (that word, “critical,” does it every time).
By contrast, anti-fascist films, anti-fascist art in all its forms, has one prime purpose: to encourage critical thinking, see beneath the surface, understand life in movement. The recent film about the assassination of Lumumba — Soundtrack of a Coup d’Etat — reminds us of the connection between fascism and colonialism and reminds us of the centrality of culture in the fight for freedom. Thoughts to keep in mind while watching the films noted below.
“What is most important is not what people with unbridled power can impose on us, but rather on what we can do as human beings, as political actors.”
Introduction
We are entering into a new period of reaction – and though the exact shape things will take in the years ahead are unknown, the immediate picture is indeed bleak. We face the all too real risk of authoritarian reaction, unfettered corporate power, a society rooted in stigmatization, violence, the crumbling of hard-fought rights. It is not too much of a leap to recognize the danger of fascism.
Critically, what we do matters. How we live, act, make a life for ourselves without giving in to resignation or bitterness are questions many are asking. Many movies have explored these dimensions for these are questions others have faced in times past – such as the films noted below — all anti-fascist movies that reveal different aspects of how people have seen the possibility of change in the past during times when hope was hard to grasp. Below is a list of 28 such movies.
These films don’t directly analyze the social or economic basis of fascism, nor do they dwell on its horrors (though those are never far from the surface) for what is most important is not what people with unbridled power can impose on us, but rather on what we can do as human beings, as political actors.
A fuller description of these films and the logic behind choosing them can be found here.
Hope and Fear
To understand fascism, one needs to understand what preceded it. The devastation of World War I, economic uncertainty, inflation, massive unemployment, intense exploitation at work, and a sense of society coming apart at the seams were in the background of all the disruptions of the 1920s and 30s. But so too was the defeat of working-class challenges to the rule of capital. In Central Europe the strength of revolutionary movements was palpable, but insufficient, creating fear in ruling circles, yet not strong enough to overcome the attacks that were to come. These films explore aspects of those hopes and defeats.
Rosa Luxemburg – Directed by Margarethe Von Trotta (West Germany, 1986). Luxemburg’s life culminates in opposition to World War I, her leadership of a revolutionary movement in the working class, its suppression, and her brutal murder at the hands of the forerunners of Hitler’s stormtroopers.
The Organizer (I compagni) – Directed by Mario Monicelli (Italy, 1963). A depiction of a mass strike, followed by an attempt to occupy factories, met by brutal armed suppression. A pre-World War I battle foreshadowing the larger post-war factory occupations which was followed by Mussolini’s March of Rome and the suppression of labor.
Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World (Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehort die Welt?) – Directed by Slatan Dudow (Weimar Germany,1933). Screenplay by Bertolt Brecht. Filmed on the eve of the Nazis takeover, it depicts the misery of mass unemployment in the waning days of the Weimar Republic. In counterpoint, it shows Communist youth trying to create something for themselves through mutual support, a sense of collectivity, through confidence in political struggle.
La Vie est a Nous (Life is Us) – Directed by Jean Renoir (France, 1936). A French Communist Party film mixes narrative with documentary made to support the Popular Front election campaign in 1936.
Eve of Destruction
Fascism cannot be separated from periods of instability and crisis in capitalist society. But to say that and no more says very little – why such a virulent response at one time and not another, what does it mean to live in a society on the edge? More to the point, how do we understand why some people look backward not forward as a way out? The following films are attempts at answers.
Der Untertan – Directed by Wolfgang Staudte (East Germany, 1951). Based on a novel by Heinrich Mann. A satire of the middle-class personality who licks the boots of those in power above them while kicking those below them – i.e. the personality type who gravitated to the Nazis.
The Conformist (Il Conformista) – Directed by Bernado Bertolucci (Italy, 1970). An examination of the authoritarian personality; someone whose search to “fit in” includes an unquestioning willingness to kill. Alberto Moravia’s novel about the murder of two anti-fascists in French exile inspired the film.
Ship of Fools – Directed by Stanley Kramer (U.S., 1965). Screenplay by Abby Mann. Based on a novel by Katherine Anne Porter. An ocean liner enroute from Mexico to 1933 Germany evokes the sense of oncoming disaster from the interactions of passengers who are – for the most part – unaware of what lies ahead.
Cabaret – Directed by Bob Fosse (U.S. 1972). Set in and around a musical hall in Berlin on the eve of fascism’s triumph with performances taking place in an atmosphere of despair and forced gaiety. The sensibility of a society coming apart at the seams is told through the eyes of a gay academic teaching English at a boarding house to earn his keep. Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories are the basis of the film.
Living Under the Grip
Lives continued to be lived in the worst of times. These films all depict daily life and the way political commitment and forms of resistance sometimes emerge when the realities of war or repression can no longer be ignored.
Christ Stopped at Eboli (Cristo si è fermato a Eboli)– Directed by Francesco Rossi (Italy, 1979). Carlo Levi’s memoir of internal exile in a barren impoverished region of southern Italy is gives a view of fascism far from the cities or centers of power that are the focus of most accounts. The film captures the life he relates beautifully.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis ( Il giardino dei Finzi Contini) – Directed by Vittori DeSica (Italy, 1970). Based on Giorgio Bassanti’s semi-autobiographical novel. The story of the tightening noose of a small wealthy Jewish community that had initially been insulated from Mussolini’s repressive policies.
The Seventh Cross – Directed by Fred Zinneman (U.S., 1944). Seven concentration camp inmates escape, one survives. He regains his sense of humanity, while the individuals, as do the individuals who help him along the way – providing a connection to political resistance. Anna Seghers wrote the novel while in exile in Mexico.
Alone in Berlin by Directed by Vincent Perez (Germany/France/UK, 2016). The film brings to life Hans Fallada’s novel of a true story of a working-class couple, animated by their son’s death in combat and the persecution of a Jewish neighbor to engage in their own, personal, resistance. A campaign they carried out until their own execution.
Resistance to Fascism’s Wars
War brought out the full brutality of fascism. These movies were all made during wartime or when memories were still fresh. They all touch on conflicting urges to ignore, collaborate or resist, and with that the personal choice whether and how to act, to survive with humanity intact.
Blockade – Directed by William Dieterle (U.S. 1938). Screenplay by John Howard Lawson. Film centers on the attempt to break a blockade to get supplies in to support Spanish Republicans resisting Franco. It serves as a plea to end U.S./British/French non-intervention policies.
This Land is Mine – Directed by Jean Renoir (U.S., 1943). Two schoolteachers in occupied France are the focal point of a story of resistance and collaboration, courage and fear.
Hangmen Also Die – Directed by Fritz Lang (U.S., 1943). Screenplay by Bertolt Brecht. Resistance in occupied Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the assassination of SS leader Heydrich.
Open City (Roma città aperta) – Directed by Roberto Rossellini (Italy, 1945). The resistance as Mussolini’s rule is near its end, brutal repression, a search for Communist/Catholic unity for an alternative future.
The Fate of a Man – Directed by Sergei Bonarchul (Soviet Union, 1959). Based on a short story by Mikhail Sholokhov. The journey through life and loss of a Soviet soldier that sketches Nazi wrought destruction and the search for human bonds and hope in the war’s aftermath.
Lifeboat – Directed by Alfred Hitchcock (U.S., 1944). Based on short story by John Steinbeck. Set on a lifeboat filled with a heterogenous number of survivors of a torpedoed merchant ship and one Nazi rescued from a submarine, the movie presents a contest between democratic multiplicity and authoritarian single-minded power.
Coming to Grips With the Past
After the war comes the battle for understanding – what happened, how did people behave? And how does that inform choices we are making here and now so that other, better, choices may be possible later
Judgement at Nuremberg – Directed by Stanley Kramer (U.S. 1961). Screenplay by Abby Mann. The Nuremberg tirals were an attempt to establish criteria for crimes against humanity. This film recounts the story of judge’s whose compromises with the truth corrupted the law, corrupted society.
The Nasty Girl – Directed by Michael Verhoeven (West Germany, 1990). A high school student who challenged her town’s sanitized version of the past, revealing its complicity with the Nazis. A true story, the film reveals the hypocrisy in many German treatments of fascism.
Playing for Time – TV movie directed by Daniel Mann (U.S., 1980). Screenplay by Arthur Miller, based on memoir by Fania Fenelon’s memoir about Auschwitz and her being “allowed” to survive because recognized as a classical musician. An orchestra formed of inmates to perform for SS officers one aspect of Nazi perversity as against the will to survive of those they caged.
Life is Beautiful (La vita è bella) – Directed by Roberto Benigni (Italy, 1997). A story about how telling stories, conjuring the imagination, is a way to survive the most brutal conditions, story-telling an essential part of resistance to oppression.
Jacob the Liar (Jakob der Lügner)– Directed by Frank Beyer (East Germany, 1975). Living in the Warsaw Ghetto as the noose was tightening, a man hears that Soviet troops are nearing the border. He tells others, giving hope where there was none, and then makes up stories to try and keep hope alive.
Fascism: Other Times, Other Places
The films noted above, focus on Germany and Italy in the 1930s and 40s because that is the main reference point for fascists and anti-fascists in our own country. But fascism has existed at other times, in other places and these too should be noted. Below are just a very few of the many possible films that serve to remind that the dangers facing the world now are part of a continuum that someday needs to be overcome at its roots.
Z – Directed by Costa-Gravas (France, 1969). About 1967 coup in Greece, based on Vassillis Vassilikos fictionalized account of the Greek’s military’s role in the 1963 assassination of Giorgios Lambrakis.
Burning Patience (Ardiente paciente) – Directed by Antonio Skarmeta (Chile, 1985). Skarmeta, also wrote the screenplay and the novel of that name. The film is about a postman incurably in love, poetry, events in Chile leading up to Pinochet’s fascist coup – and is about Pablo Neruda.
Argentina, 1985 –Directed by Santiago Mitre (Argentina, 2022). Recounts the trial of the leaders of Argentina’s military junta, for the extra-legal murders and tortures that took place during the “dirty war,” in which tens of thousands were killed by government decree
Cry, The Beloved Country – Directed by Zoltan Korda (UK, 1951). Screenplay by John Howard Lawson, based on novel by Alan Paton providing a glimpse of South Africa as apartheid was bing imposed on a society that was legally and structurally racist. Filmed on location, so stars Canada Lee and Sydny Poitier had to pretend to be Director Korda’s indentured servants.
A Dry White Season – Directed by Euzhan Palcy (U.S. 1989). Based on a novel by Andre Brink, the film demonstrates how South Africa’s apartheid was its own form of fascism.
…
THE LEFT’S DIMINISHED DNC PRESENCE
By Tom Gallagher
Just before starting to write my lament about what a dramatic step backward the recent campaign for Democratic National Committee chair had been, I opened an Our Revolution email that told me, “We beat back the Party establishment at the DNC.” Now Our Revolution being a direct organizational descendent of the 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and me having been a 2016 Sanders convention delegate, I feel pretty confident that our ideas of who “we” means are pretty much the same. So what accounts for the widely divergent takes?
For those who haven’t been following this, Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin was just elected to lead the DNC for the next four years, defeating Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler by a 246.5–134.5 vote margin. There was no contested election four years ago, because by tradition a just-elected president selects the new chair; contested elections generally follow defeats. In the last one, in 2017, former Obama Administration Secretary of Labor Tom Perez won the job, beating Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison in a second round of voting, 235–200.
Ellison’s candidacy came in the wake of his having been just the second member of Congress to support Sanders in the prior year’s presidential primaries, and the fact that Sanders people harbored serious grievances with the DNC over its perceived favoritism for the ultimate nominee, Hillary Clinton, lent a distinct edge to the election, bringing it considerably more buzz than the one that just occurred. At the time, former Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, a vociferous opponent of Sanders’s run — who had once declared “the most effective thing liberals and progressives can do to advance our public policy goals … is to help Clinton win our nomination early in the year” — now thought there was “a great deal to be said for putting an active Sanders supporter in there,” so as to clear the air “of suspicions and paranoia.” But Clinton and Barack Obama apparently didn’t think so and Clinton’s past Obama Cabinet colleague, Perez took up the torch in a race that produced a level of grassroots involvement seldom if ever before seen in this contest.
“More importantly, it raises a serious question for those of us who believe that the structure and history of the American political system require the left’s engagement in the Democratic Party”
Although the office is traditionally considered organizational rather than ideological and the 2017 candidates did run on those issues, the underlying political differences were obvious to all. This time around, the race was generally understood to involve little if any political disagreement on the issues. By way of explaining its support for new party chair Martin, Our Revolution characterized runner-up Wikler, as “an establishment candidate backed by Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer, and bankrolled by the billionaire class.” We understand that election campaigns are about sharpening the perception of differences between the candidates, but still this seems a rather thin flimsy basis for hailing the vote as an anti-establishment triumph, given that Martin has publicly stated that he doesn’t want the party to take money from “those bad billionaires” only from “good billionaires;”and one of the two billionaires who gave a quarter million dollars to Wikler’s campaign was George Soros — probably the DNC’s model “good billionaire.” Besides, Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg probably aren’t thinking of donating anyhow. Oh, and Chuck Schumer actually supported Ellison eight years ago.
Actually, “we” did have a horse in the race — 2020 Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir. Shakir, who has been running a non-profit news organization called More Perfect Union, dedicated to “building power for the working class,” argued that Democrats needed a pitch for building a pro-worker economy to go with their criticism of Trump’s policy proposals. His viewpoint presented a serious alternative to that of Martin, who told a candidates forum that “We’ve got the right message … What we need to do is connect it back with the voters,” — seemingly a tough position to maintain following an election in which NBC’s ten state exit polling showed the majority of voters with annual household incomes under $100,000 voting Republican, while the majority of those from over-$100,000 households voted Democrat. But even though Shakir was a DNC member and thereby able to get the 40 signatures of committee members needed to run, he entered the race far too late to be taken for a serious contender and ultimately received but two votes.
Mind you, none of this critique comes as a criticism of the work of the two state party chairs who were the principal contenders. Martin touts the fact that Democrats have won every statewide election in Minnesota in the fourteen years that he has chaired the party and anyone who understands the effort that goes into political campaign work can only admire that achievement. Nor is Our Revolution to be criticized for taking the time to discern what they thought would be the best possible option in a not terribly exciting race that was nevertheless of some importance.
At the same time it’s hard not to regret the diminished DNC presence of the “we” that Our Revolution spoke of, after “we” legitimately contended for power in the last contested election. Certainly this lack of interest was in no small part a consequence of the extraordinary circumstances that produced a presidential nominee who had not gone before the voters in a single primary — for the first time since Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
More importantly, it raises a serious question for those of us who believe that the structure and history of the American political system require the left’s engagement in the Democratic Party — uncomfortable and unpleasant as that may be at times. As the social scientists like to say, politics abhors a vacuum, and absent a national Democratic Party presence for the perspective that motivated the Sanders campaigns, people seeking action on the big questions on the big stage may start to look elsewhere. And elsewhere always looms the possibility of the cul-de-sac of yet another third party candidacy that holds interesting conventions and debates, but ultimately receives only a small share of vote, but a large share of the blame for the election of a Republican president.
At the moment there is no one obviously positioned to take up the Sanders mantle in the 2028 presidential campaign. But we may have to make it our business to find one.
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What is to be done – NOW?
By Robert J.S. Ross, PhD
“The task of the democratic renewal is to create face-to-face organizations and relationships”
Claiming no great originality, I here list the guidelines for political activity that aims to protect human rights, preserve material decency, and prepare for future advances towards more equal and participatory democracy.
The first note is one of frank recognition: this is a defensive moment. The proto fascists have control of the government and as evidenced by Trump’s first week both the will and the knowledge to subvert constitutional guarantees of equal rights and due process. Indeed, one hopes any future democratic government will take note of and emulate the preparation the MAGA’s have made for their takeover of state power.
With goals in mind: protection and potential advance, here is a broadly painted agenda.
- The Dam is breached: fill the holes with lawyers
The initial surge of Executive Orders range from the nasty but probably legal (remove funding for abortion, interpreting support broadly) to obvious constitutional breaches (removing birthright citizenship with the stroke of Presidential Pen). In cases we will win and in those we might not, the moment requires at first legal action to slow the process down. Use Trumpian means of delays; appeal every semi-colon. All those idealistic lawyers – now’s the time to burn the pro bono hours. It will take a while for many of these cases to become either newly enacted law or settled bad decisions. In the meantime…
- Win the House in ‘26
The reason to emphasize legal delay however costly in people-power and attention is to give time for the popular majority for humane solutions to exert itself in the Congressional campaigns of 2026. The House can become majority Democratic/left independent with only a handful of flipped seats. This majority will NOT be able immediately to deliver on ambitious promises: but it has a decisive role in the constitutional restraint on the president. Republican House majorities have brought Democratic presidents to their knees with such bargaining power. We can too.
One unknown in grasping for the constitutional straw of a Democratic majority House is the potentially wicked role that might be played by the collaborationist Supreme Court. Let’s not pretend to see into crystal balls. Things could get much worse…
- How did we survive Reagan? Use the States
In their flawed wisdom the deal between what became Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians produced a federal system with powerful States. Once thought of as the laboratories of democracy now they can become the defenders of human rights and decency. When the Reaganites attacked the federal budget progressives around the nation responded with state and local policy ideas and initiatives. Abortion rights were preserved though federal Medicaid funds would not cover them; housing was supported (at much less than actually needed) with varieties of tax and other subsidies; localities and states upped the minimum wage and many have stronger labor protections than the federal structures.
Even in states won by the MAGA’s support for such policies is greater than support for Democrats. Now is a moment to get everything that can be got from state government.
In the meantime, many Blue state governors will be stressed by the possibility of dangerous legal action against them by the feds and against protection of human and labor rights locally. We should be mindful of that and similar points of attack and support/press these Dems to do the right thing.
- Wake Up about strategy: build the labor movement
Social movements arise in a confluence of circumstance, hard to predict. Why one murder (George Floyd) sparks a nationwide of protest and another does not always has a story – always told in retrospect. The needs in the long run, as Carl Davidson and Bill Fletcher, put so well is for organizations to bridge the moments from peak to tough to peak. (Revisiting Our 2020 Post-Election Hypotheses, four years on)
The general lessons – build them! In the context of politics and policy, support initiatives that build, support, enhance the ability of working people and their allies to advance the causes of equality and equity. Most obviously this means, on its face, support, building, joining the labor movement.
In earlier eras when addressing advocates for equality and human rights one would take such advice for granted. But strategic discussions among the educated classes no longer have labor unions and workers’ rights as the default beginning of their understandings. Apart from the empirical impact on reducing inequality and injustice on the job, organized labor, except for liberal billionaires, is the largest source of support for progressive candidates and policy.
Union members in their millions, vote more Democratic than other workers of comparable demographics. Their phone banks and volunteer efforts are huge strategic assets: protect them, advance them.
The particular matters and instant moments when Seasmus Heaney observes:
“ the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.”
Whether or not our own issue engagements produce surges of mobilization, or whether they come from regions of social space now unplumbed, the task of the democratic renewal is to create face-to-face organizations and relationships that will outlast surges and win more than once.
And did I mention: Win Back the House!
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Interview: Can a Labor-Backed Candidate in Nebraska Inspire More Working-Class Independents?
By Steve Early
Dan Osborn’s independent U.S. Senate run in Nebraska came closer to winning than anyone expected.
While running for U.S. Senate in Nebraska, working class candidate Dan Osborn characterized the Senate as “a country club of millionaires that work for billionaires.”
In November, he almost crashed their party.
Osborn, a 49-year old former local union president who helped lead a multi-state strike against Kellogg’s cereal company, was recruited by railroad workers to challenge two-term incumbent Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican. Rail is a major industry in Nebraska, and Fischer had voted to break the 2022 national railroad strike. She also opposed the Railway Safety Act.
Osborn’s labor-backed independent campaign was, for many months, ignored by the mainstream press and even progressive media outlets (though we covered it).
The Nebraska Democratic Party, which ended up not fielding a candidate, was miffed by Osborn’s decision not to participate in its primary or seek the party’s endorsement. Still, by October, the Senate Majority PAC had shifted $3.8 million to an independent expenditure committee supporting him.
Osborn’s candidacy was initially given little chance of success by national and local experts because he was, in their view, a complete unknown. Union political directors in Washington, D.C., were skeptical as well.
But Osborn’s campaign clearly hit a chord among working people. Last fall, the New York Times reported, Republican Super PACs and national party operatives were forced to launch a $15 million advertising blitz to blunt Osborn’s homestretch momentum against Fischer. On election day, Osborn’s 47 percent showing against Fischer—in a state Kamala Harris lost by 59 to 39 percent—confirmed the crossover appeal of Osborn’s blue-collar agenda among voters in Nebraska.
This unexpectedly strong showing drew post-election praise from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and others. As Sanders told The Nation, Osborn ran as a strong trade unionist who “took on the corporate world’ in an “extraordinary campaign” that reached working class people all over Nebraska and proved that many want real change.
In late November, when Osborn was preparing to return to work as a rank-and-file member of Steamfitters Local 664, he and his supporters formed a Working Class Heroes Fund. The goal of this new political action committee, which has already raised $200,000, is to recruit, train, and support more blue-collar candidates for public office.
Osborn also hopes to persuade more working-class people to vote in their own economic self-interest, rather than for parties and politicians backed by “special interests and billionaires.”
Osborn’s call echoes that of union activists in the late 1990s, who launched a ten-year effort to build a Labor Party as a political vehicle for the working class. One of its goals—unfortunately, never achieved—was to help more working-class leaders run for office themselves, as challengers to business-backed candidates from the two major parties.
In this interview, longtime Stansbury Forum contributor Steve Early asked Osborn about his experience as a first-time political candidate, how he outperformed Harris against a MAGA Republican, and his hopes for the Working Class Heroes Fund.
Based on your recent campaign experience, what advice do you have for other labor activists similarly disenchanted with both major parties and thinking about running for office?
Hopefully, our campaign will pave the way for more truck drivers, nurses, teachers, plumbers, carpenters, and other working-class people to run for office, challenge the system, and win by uniting the working class across party lines.
People are hungry for anything outside the two parties. They know that you shouldn’t have to be a self-funding crypto billionaire to get elected to public office. They’re hungry for working-class candidates. It’s a huge opportunity for all of us, and we need to seize it.
Your best bet for a labor candidate is someone who needs to be actively recruited and did not look in the mirror one day and decide they should be a state legislator or member of Congress. If there hadn’t been people in the Nebraska labor movement who came to me and asked me to run, it would probably never have occurred to me.
If you’re running independent, you should be independent. Changing your party registration overnight can be a liability, and I would discourage people who are thinking of being “tactically” independent from doing this.
We will always start out under-resourced and outgunned. So we have to pick our spots. A lot has to go right. It definitely helps to end up in a one-on-one general election contest with an out-of-touch Republican incumbent, rather than a three-way race in which a labor independent might be regarded as a “spoiler.”
How were you able to convince local and national unions that your independent candidacy was viable?
Well, it took a while. We didn’t see our first union donation check until about five months after I announced. The United Association (UA) people [Plumbers and Pipefitters] believed in and fought for us from very early on. The railroaders of Central Nebraska were very strong for us. But they were exceptions. It took most labor people a long, long time to come around.
Union resources are limited, and decision makers want to see you’re for real. Those early days when you have to prove yourself, that’s what really tests you as a candidate. We had some dark days early on, believe me.
I wish there was a little more willingness on the part of the people who hold the purse strings to lift up candidates earlier in an election cycle. But eventually, unions saw us raising money. They saw the polling about Deb Fischer’s unpopularity and electoral vulnerability. And that’s what it took to convince them.
When you got more labor endorsements, how did you work with Nebraska unions to involve their rank-and-file members as signature gatherers during your nomination petition drive or as phone bank and door-to-door canvassing volunteers in the homestretch?
It’s interesting. Even at the end, we didn’t see huge organized labor turnout efforts. There were unions who did great work on the ground, for sure. The UA turned out their apprentices in bulk. Insulators Local 39 in Omaha punched way above their weight. The railroad unions were with us from the start.
But mostly—and I think this is true in other states—our unions don’t generally have some great ground game, ready to go, even on behalf of someone who is one of their own. We definitely tried to get every local to release staff for election work and set up their own canvassing operations and phone banks to involve more members.
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This piece originally appeared in Labor Notes
For more on Dan Osborn: In March 2024 Steve Early interviewed Dan Osborn about his independent run for Senator from Nebraska. You can read that March 2024 piece here
Trading One Uniform for Another: The Military to Prison Pipeline
By Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon
Like old soldiers around the country, a group of former service members gathered in Crest Hill, Illinois to remember fallen comrades on Memorial Day, 2024. Several months later, The Veteran, a newspaper published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, ran a photo of the event they attended. It shows a multi-generational group of men–white, Black and Latino—lined up proudly between two flags.
In his dispatch to the newspaper, African-American Navy veteran Robert Maury explained why everyone in the Stateville Veterans Group was wearing government issued clothing of a non-military sort. As Maury wrote, “This was the first time in the history of Stateville, if not the first time in the history of the state of Illinois, that incarcerated veterans were allowed to organize a Memorial Day ceremony in a maximum-security prison.”
There would not be another such event because, late last year, the Illinois Department of Corrections closed this century-old facility. The Veterans Group there was forced to disband; its members dispersed to other prisons around the state where some hoped to plant seeds for future veteran initiated programs at their new addresses.
How did these vets and 180,000 others end up in a U.S. prison population now numbering more than 1.2 million? And what can be done to keep other former service members out of jail in the future? These are questions that Jason Higgins, a Virginia Tech researcher, explores in his new book, Prisoners After War, which is particularly timely in light of President Joe Biden’s Dec. 12 pardon of a small group of veterans convicted of non-violent crimes, including long ago drug offenses.
Higgins, along with John Kindler, an associate professor of history from Oklahoma State University, has also produced an edited collection called Service Denied. That volume, with multiple contributors, offers a broader historical perspective on post-war mistreatment of former soldiers, including the hundreds of veterans who were born abroad, served in the military, ended up in prison, and then were deported after their release.
Mass Incarceration
Higgins calls his own study a “social history of veterans in the age of mass incarceration.” It links their experience in foreign wars and related problems transitioning back to civilian life to changes in the criminal justice system that put millions of men and women behind bars during an on-going domestic crackdown on crime.
Fifty years after the official end of U.S. intervention in southeast Asia, “Vietnam vets are still the single largest population of war veterans in prison, illustrating the profound and lasting impact of the ‘war on crime’ on their generation.”
As Higgins reports, the broader U.S. trend of “criminalizing and punishing people with behavioral and social problems”–due to their being non-white, unemployed, unhoused, and/or drug dependent–led to a doubling in the number of vets in prison between the end of that war and 9/11. The author finds, however, that the “history of incarcerated veterans is not exclusively a story of racial injustice.”
In Prisoners After War, we learn that white veterans are much more likely to go to prison compared to white civilians, while Black vets are slightly less likely to be jailed than African-Americans who never served. Overall, about one third of all veterans, who number 19 million, report having been arrested and booked into jail at least once in their lives, as compared to less than one-fifth of the rest of the population.
When they end up incarcerated, veterans receive longer sentences than non-veterans, despite the good work of a national network of Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs). As Higgins documents in great detail, this “hybrid drug and mental health treatment system” offers access to counseling services, opportunities for housing, education and job employment, and disability benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
As a diversion program, VTC’s “have the lowest recidivism rates in the nation” and, according to the author, “could serve as a model for greater criminal justice reform.” But the effectiveness of their “reparative justice” approach varies from state to state and is not available to vets charged with violent crimes, which disqualifies many defendants.
Betrayed and Abandoned
Higgins builds his book around personal stories he collected for the Incarcerated Veterans Oral History Project. He interviewed scores of veterans still imprisoned and out of jail, police officers and judges, and fellow vets who have become VTC volunteers and helpers. One common theme among those who end up in legal trouble is the feeling of being betrayed and abandoned. That’s because they’ve been denied the services and benefits—or opportunities for citizenship– promised by military recruiters, charged with filling the ranks of an “all-volunteer force” with poor and working-class youth since 1973.
Their exclusion from the few perks of “veteranhood” occurred when pre-existing mental health issues or service-related medical conditions lead to misconduct while in uniform and resulting military discipline. As Higgins notes, punitive discharges first became widespread, during the Vietnam era, even before conscription was suspended.
“Thousands of African-Americans were excessively punished for minor offenses, behavioral issues, acts of resistance and drug use,” he writes. “As the military began to withdraw forces from Vietnam, a disproportionate number of Black soldiers received administrative discharges compared to whites, disqualifying them from VA care, disability compensation, and the GI Bill.”
This left many Black combat veterans—more likely than others to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—without access to much needed treatment programs and disability pay. As one government study found in 1981, their resulting “readjustment difficulties increased the likelihood of incarceration.”
More than 300,000 veterans, who served at home and abroad, since 9/11 also received less than “honorable” discharges. The Department of Defense (DOD) often made such determinations in the absence of uniform disciplinary standards across military branches or even among individual commanders within the same branch. For the DOD, despite its ample $884 billion budget, getting rid of soldiers whose performance is adversely affected by PTSD, traumatic brain injuries (TBI), military sexual trauma (MST), drug or alcohol abuse is easier, quicker, and cheaper than treating them.
The Stigma of “Bad Paper”
Being drummed out of the military in this fashion, without even a court-martial, has lasting consequences. As civilians, “bad paper” holders aren’t eligible for preferential treatment when applying for public sector jobs. The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Disabled American Veterans won’t even let them join. According to Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, vets stigmatized in this fashion are more likely to have mental health conditions and are also twice as likely to commit suicide.
A Syracuse University study found that “minorities and women were disproportionately represented among veterans with bad paper” due to “racial inequities in the military’s criminal justice system and the number of women who struggle with MST.” Those who seek their own discharge upgrade face a long legal fight, which is why, in the waning days of the Obama Administration, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) “called for the outgoing president to issue a full pardon for every veteran with a bad paper discharge.”
Unlike most other veterans’ organizations, the VVA has long distinguished itself not just as an advocate for disabled vets, but for those in prison as well. In 2017, as Higgins reports, VVA helped win passage of the Fairness to Veterans Act, which reformed the individual appeals process for “bad paper veterans diagnosed with PTSD or a TBI.”
Unfortunately, Barack Obama left office without acting on the VVA’s appeal for broader clemency. Seven years later, Biden did pardon a few of the many of the LGBTQ service members court martialed and kicked out of the military before the DOD’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was repealed in 2011. (Months after this much publicized action, only 8 had applied.)
So Swords to Plowshares, Minority Veterans of America, the Black Veterans Project, and two veterans’ legal clinics are now trying again with Biden. In a December 6 letter, they reminded him that past “administrative separations and resulting denial of critical veterans’ benefits” are “a life sentence,” that can result in greater risk of substance abuse, joblessness, homelessness, incarceration, and self-harm.
A week later, Biden did grant clemency to 15 military veterans (out of 1,500 other people who got pardons or commutations on the same day). The recipients were mainly officers and NCOs aged 46 to 79, with honorable discharges and military decorations, who committed some lesser offense long ago and then, in the words of the White House, “turned their lives around.”
But time is running out for Biden to erase the stain of “bad paper” from the records of the many veterans who tried to serve honorably but got fired from their jobs in the military with little or no due process but lasting adverse consequences.
Veterans behind bars– like the ones who celebrated Memorial Day in Stateville last May—are even more unlikely to see their names on any additional presidential pardon lists issued before January 20. For them, Biden’s claim last month that America “was built on the promise of possibility and second chances” sounded like the spiel many got from military recruiters who signed them up, as teenagers, and put them on the road from one government-issued uniform to another.
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Getting Ready to Fight Mass Deportations (or Whatever Comes Next!):Marshaling Forces to Defend the Haitian Community
By Jeff Crosby
As the Trump administration begins its assault on immigrant communities, it’s crucial that the left organize and get in formation now. We offer this as one example of what that work can look like.
In early December 2024, the New Lynn Coalition and the North Shore Haitian Association rallied an event to counter the racist anti-Haitian lies of the New Confederacy, welcome the Haitian community and direct that community to resources they might need, and begin to coalesce the united front against mass deportations. Initiated in response to Vance and Trump spreading hateful lies about Haitians “stealing and eating cats and dogs” in Springfield, Ohio, it took on a broader significance after Trump won the presidential election. Our goal was to draw a minimum of 50 or 60 people, Haitians as well as people from the broader community. We met that and more with about 100 participants. It was a success—a strong start.
The New Lynn Coalition is made up of over a dozen organizations working together to build a permanent working-class pole in our city around economic, political, and cultural issues—a 12-year-old independent political organization uniting many of Lynn’s diverse working-class communities. The North Shore Haitian Association was formed over a year ago to advocate for the growing Haitian population on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
A powerful welcome in English and French from the President of the New Lynn Coalition, a Congolese migrant, struck home: “I am African! We welcome you to help us build a New Lynn and its united working-class majority, not two Lynns. We don’t care what language you speak, where you come from, the color of your skin, how you worship, or who you love. We are with you in solidarity and will not tolerate scapegoating any of our peoples and will always fight white supremacy and fascism.” This is the basic line of the New Lynn Coalition.
The North Shore Haitian Association welcomed people as well, provided Haitian food (which was well-received, and that is an understatement!) and asked us all to call our congressman to stop any military intervention in Haiti, respect the constitution of Haiti, and stop the flow of arms from the US to the gangs/paramilitaries.
Understanding US Imperialism’s Impact on Haiti
Migration cannot be understood outside the context of US foreign policy, and we centered a presentation on Haitian history and its domination by France and then the US. The main talk by the North Shore Haitian Association described:
- The independence war in 1804 and the French imposition of $21 billion (in today’s dollars) as “reparations” for the freed slaves (that is, ransom to free their own bodies from those who enslaved and profited from them), which has confined the country up to today.
- US support for the bloody Duvalier dictatorships (Papa Doc and Baby Doc, father and son)
- The overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, the first genuinely democratically elected President of Haiti, and his forced exile to the Central African Republic.
- The current domination by the CORE group, set up by foreign powers without a single Haitian, and the police force from Kenya.
- The funding of the gangs/paramilitaries—highlighted in mainstream news coverage—by the Haitian elite. Many of that elite are also US citizens, like Gilbert Bigio, the richest man in Haiti, who resides in Florida.
Unions and churches have asked for copies of the presentation to continue the political education of their members.
Uniting Against Deportations
We targeted three sectors for support that we believed were essential and likely elements of building a united front against mass deportations: communities of faith, labor, and local elected officials.
A representative of the Essex County Community Organization, which includes churches and temples on the North Shore, spoke of the Haitian community:
“Organizing across different backgrounds is a way to live out our faith. It’s an opportunity not just to fight for the world we want but to practice living in the world as God intended it to be…As people of faith, we are called to walk alongside them…When we stand together, we embody the power of community and faith. Regardless of where we come from, we all need the same things—to be safe, to be seen, and to see our families thrive.”
A rabbi from Lynn shared a teaching from Jewish tradition that speaks to the moment we are in and the need for solidarity:
“‘God gathered the dust [of the first human] from the four corners of the world [so that] every place that a person walks, from there he was created and from there he will return.’ This ancient text shows us that migration is not new—migration is human, and has happened as long as there were humans on this earth…I am the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor…It is our obligation to create a world that will accept us all no matter where we end up. And that starts by accepting everyone here in Lynn…Our safety is tied up in one another’s safety. We all belong here together.”
The corporations are falling all over themselves to make peace with Trump – even those who said they would stop funding him after January 6, and who claimed to oppose him before November 5. Capitalists will always follow the money. The North Shore Labor Council responded:
“The labor movement has a particular obligation to fight back against this government tyranny. We may be some of the last genuinely democratic institutions left in the country. We won’t just be on the front lines, we’ll be some of the last lines of defense. We can provide legal support to our members to give them a pathway to citizenship, we can file unfair labor practice charges and go on strike if management invites ICE into the workplace, we can provide aid and be there when disaster strikes and we’re at our lowest, and we can give a voice to working people as our elected leaders abandon us and refuse to listen.”
A Haitian shop steward from SEIU 509 spoke of the resilience and power of the Haitian people. The President of the Lynn Teachers Union, in tears, promised:
“As a Lynn teacher and local leader, one of my chief duties is to ensure the health and safety of all my students. And that includes protecting them, not just from harmful and false claims about who they are and where they come from, but to promote and praise my students for everything they have to offer to this world. The Lynn Teachers Union stands in solidarity with our Haitian brothers, sisters, and siblings.”
The entire Lynn City Council, the Mayor and our two state representatives signed a powerful statement written by New Lynn, which was read by a Haitian/Dominican City Councilor.
“Our city has a proud history of fighting for freedom and inclusion…We welcome migrants and commit to using every available means to prevent the harassment and deportations of migrants and their families, including Haitians who have faced racist dehumanizing insults from high-ranking government officials including President-elect Trump and his VP JD Vance as well as openly fascist groups across the country. The Mayor, the Lynn City Council and State Delegation will work to unify all parts of our community, from the public schools to our businesses and labor unions, to ensure the safety and protection of all our people. We are All Lynn.”
Finally, two Dominicans spoke. This carried special weight due to the history of conflict between Haitians and Dominicans, who share the island of Hispaniola. The long-time Dominican dictator Trujillo “othered” Haitians as a scapegoat for his own oppression of the Dominican people. More Haitians are being deported from the Dominican Republic today than from the United States. A community leader from New Lynn partner Neighbor to Neighbor pledged her support, and a student from nearby Salem State University denounced the attacks on Haitians in her own home country as well as in her new home, the United States. Her remarks, as well as the introductory words in French and especially the history of Haiti, received the strongest response from the Haitians present.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Event
“Giving a hug to the Haitian community” in a time of fear and oppression was successful. We received good coverage in the local daily paper. It weighs on you when all you hear is how awful your country is: “shithole country,” “eating dogs and cats,” gangs and violence, again and again. One leader of a Haitian group roamed the room, showing videos of the countryside, so those of us who had never been there could see how beautiful the country is – as the history introduction put it, “the most mountainous country in the Caribbean, a hikers’ paradise!” We also provided information tables with help with legal issues, housing, and community gardening. New Lynn is offering free classes in computer basics and English in Creole in our Lynn Community Engagement Program, or “night school.”
The depth of ties New Lynn has built over the last 10 years enabled us to rally representatives from the three sectors we targeted within just a few weeks in response to the “cats and dogs” libel. We showed how the issue of “immigration” is tied to US foreign policy and must be explained that way.
We had less participation from local Haitian churches than we had hoped. Haiti is a devout country, dominated for most of its religious history by Catholicism. More recently Pentecostal and Evangelical Protestantism have grown rapidly, as in Central and South America. Historic African religious influences like Voudu have had syncretic impacts on all of these. It is not possible to organize with that community without respecting that background.
Too late we realized that our Sunday afternoon start time, which we thought would coincide with the end of services, was in fact too early, especially since pastors spend a lot of time after church welcoming and chatting with parishioners. The program was held in the basement of a Catholic church, and we drew some people by standing in the parking lot with signs welcoming people to join us. It also may be that the fear that has pervaded the Haitian and other migrant communities inhibited their participation.
The labor participation was stronger than expected, with Haitian union leaders from SEIU and the Boston Teachers Union as well as new Haitian members of UFCW and IUE-CWA joining non-Haitian union members. It may be that union protection made these Haitian workers more willing to step out than, for example, an average parishioner at the Pentecostal church. In any case, Haitian workers are a growing part of the labor movement here and are likely to be a powerful voice against Trump’s xenophobia.
At the same time, we do not suffer from the misunderstanding of much of the left that “immigrants” are somehow a solid progressive bloc. Lynners from Congo and Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Pakistan, all reported some family and friends who were supporting Trump. Reasons given were often abortion and the economy, but also included random false stories, even that Trump had promised to get Pakistan’s Imran Khan out of jail. Many are convinced that Trump will not deport otherwise law-abiding undocumented folks. And they don’t want criminals from whom they suffered in their home countries to follow them across the border to the US any more than any other working-class people do. We expect conflict within and between immigrant communities in our city as well as between them and the power structure at local and national levels.
In retrospect, it may have been wise to reach out to small businesses. The Haitian small businesses depend on that community. Some fear that they will be deported so someone else can steal their business, as happened to Jews in Germany. The most influential people in a new and growing immigrant community tend to be clergy and small business people. They have been strong allies on issues such as winning driver’s licenses for undocumented people. On the other hand, when we added “Ceasefire in Gaza” for our May Day march, we lost the support of some Guatemalan evangelicals. Both sectors are likely to be strong allies against deportations, especially if Trump actually moves to mass deportations.
Looking Ahead
We concluded the meeting by asking people to “Stay Ready” for whatever comes next, like the nickname for the powerful bench of the Boston Celtics. For non-sports fans, the bench is those players who are back-ups, not starters, for the team. They have to be ready to play, never knowing when the call will come or circumstances. We don’t want to be caught off balance from whatever Trump does, and he is deliberately unpredictable—that’s his M.O. But we could have been clearer on the push to make the calls the North Shore Haitian Association asked us to make. We adjusted following the event to set a call day with their message, but that is harder after the fact than if the last thing we had said, with a flier, was “Call the Congressman on Friday!” and perhaps did a role play of the call.
In the main we accomplished what we set out to do: reach out to and comfort the Haitian community, deepen our relationships there, do some clear anti-imperialist political education, and set the table for whatever comes next.
We’re ready.
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Will the media beat Trump at censoring itself? Industry trends suggest it’s already happening.
By David Helvarg
Two billionaire publishers, the Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos and the LA Times Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked their editorial page editors from endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election. If you believe the Washington Post’s slogan that ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ their owner was the first to switch off the light.
Then, Soon-Shiong blocked an editorial asking the Senate to perform its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on Trump’s cabinet picks. Now ABC News (owned by Disney) has agreed to pay $15 million in a settlement of a Trump defamation lawsuit plus $1 million in attorney fees because George Stephanopoulos said on his Sunday show that Trump was found liable for the ‘rape’ of writer E. Jean Carroll. Actually, he was found guilty of ‘sexual abuse’ because a New York civil jury believed her claim that he forced his fingers into her vagina but was uncertain if he also used his penis. New York law states only penile penetration is considered rape. This was a case ABC could have clearly pursued in court but made a political – really a business – decision not to. Trump is now suing the Des Moines Register and their pollster for a pre-election poll suggesting he would not do as well as he did in Iowa.
It seems likely that top-down self-censorship of the mainstream media may preempt expected legal attacks on critical coverage from the incoming administration that has been promised by Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel and by Trump himself.
This is in large measure the result not only of right-wing ascendency in national politics but of a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism. Also, helping to undermine the public’s ability to stay informed is the rise of the internet as a selective news source that generates revenue by reinforcing existing biases through its algorithmic infrastructure that aims to keep viewers online longer. While billionaire tech ‘bros’ embrace Trump, working journalists are portrayed as part of an elite that Trump has defined as ‘enemies of the people’ mainly for exposing the machinations of those in power including the president-elect.
I’ve worked as a freelance journalist for half a century. According to a study by the job recruitment company Zippia there are close to 15,000 freelance reporters working in the U.S. whose demographics skew slightly more white and female, than the nation as a whole and who earn an average of $61,000 a year compared to full-time journalists who average $86,000. Freelancers make up a third of the 45,000 working journalists in the U.S. so figure your news is coming not from some media “elite,” that promote “fake news,” but working people like myself covering wars, politics, pandemics and the climate emergency.
Earlier in this century I got to train colleagues in Poland, Turkey, Tunisia and elsewhere on environmental reporting. I remember in Turkey going over some of the basics of investigative reporting including always keeping good notes and tapes stored and dated including by year as some stories become beats that can continue over a lifetime. Sergei Kiselyov, a Ukrainian colleague who’d covered the Chernobyl disaster, offered an addendum, “I’d just suggest you also keep your notes and files somewhere other than your home or office so that when the police come to look for them, they won’t be there.” This tip is worth keeping in mind over the next several years. The jailing of journalists has happened too often before in this country and almost certainly will again in the near term.
Or they could just be laid off. Many of my friends and colleagues who worked in newspapers are now freelancers like myself, the newspaper industry being in a near terminal stage of collapse. This is largely due to loss of revenue to online advertising, corporate consolidation and hedge fund predation where operating enterprises are bought up, wrung out (staff layoffs focused on older higher-paid reporters doing complex investigative work), and then sold off for parts (printing presses, data-bases, real-estate). This has resulted in massive job loss. Newsroom employment dropped 26 percent between 2008 and 2020 according to a study by the Pew Research Center and continues today. I know of one Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who agreed to a one-third pay cut rather than see a second wave of layoffs further hollow out their publication.
The loss of competitive newspapers has resulted in the absence of a lot of good reporting, particularly at the local and regional level where many continue to shut down each year. Since most local TV news stations depend on local newspapers for their hard news this has also had a cascading effect on the public’s ability to access reliable information about those with and in power and how they’re wielding it from zoning boards to local corporations and government agencies. Many people have turned instead to unreliable online social media including bloggers and influencers to get their news.
The proliferation of disinformation, misinformation and incitement to hate on social media or through the use of AI fakes also raises questions about who’s left to mediate what passes for news and to sort facts from fabrication, particularly at a time when much of the public now agree with Donald Trump. An October 2024 Gallup poll found 69% of the public has either “no trust” or “not very much confidence” in the media. When I began working in 1974 over 70% of the public trusted the news media. And with some reason.
When I was covering the wars in Central America I asked my friend photo-journalist John Hoagland how he saw our role. “I don’t believe in objectivity because everyone has a point of view,” he said. “What I say is I’m not going to be a propagandist for anyone. If you do something right, I’m going to take your picture. If you do something wrong, I’ll take your picture also.” He was killed in crossfire a year later. Ironically the best recent movie on how reporters actually behave under fire and under stress is ‘Civil War’ that is set in a future America at war with itself.
With the “legacy” network news operations of ABC, CBS and NBC now under the control of Disney, Comcast and ViacomCBS, major corporations dependent on the regulatory whims of Donald Trump, and with Trump’s talk of eliminating public funding for PBS (and its ‘News Hour’) plus ‘news outlets’ such as Fox and the Sinclair Broadcast Group that owns 294 TV stations covering 40% of U.S. households, acting as propaganda arms of the MAGA movement, the likelihood of much critical mainstream coverage during a second Trump administration is doubtful even before any expected lawsuits, indictments and jailing of journalists.
To paraphrase a quote from a darker time, “First they came for the journalists and then we don’t know what happened.”
For more on this topic check out Status’ piece; “The Atlantic Editor-In-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg warns newsroom decay is how ‘democracy decomposes'”
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