Highway to Hell
By Steve Chapple
“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday as the COP27 climate conference began in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. How firmly humanity’s foot stays on that accelerator will depend partly on the outcome of midterm elections in the United States.
Andy @Revkin in in his excellent SUSTAIN WHAT Substack suggests we should move on to the real problems in America before we start yammering about the next horserace, the 2024 elections and whether Biden will run or Trump will run, and so forth, but we at HOT GLOBE™ simply can’t resist a Friday Fish Wrap about this week’s electoral puzzle.
THERE WAS IN FACT A RED TIDE for Republicans but to put it in scientific terms, it turned out to be a red tide more like Kerenia brevis, the poisonous red tide that kills manatees and sickens swimmers and, evidently, puts off independent voters. too.
Republicans in 2022 thought all Americans were concerned about was inflation, gas prices and crime (even though 8 of the 10 high crime states are all Red) and forgot that maybe hobbling reproductive rights and reducing Social Security and Medicare might bother many voters. That much is talked about but what is only now coming to be understood is that a real youth wave came to shore this week with Gen Z’ers skate-boarding to vote in historic–nay!—record numbers.
The issues most important to these activist kids riding the curl (to keep our wave metaphors flowing): Guns, Climate, and Abortion, as reported in Covering Climate Now:
Youth organizers from the climate, gun violence, and other progressive social movements predicted a “youth wave” election-night surprise, Mark Hertsgaard* reported in The Nation (“Can Gen Z Save the Midterms for the Democrats?”)— and the youth were right. [Point of liquidity: I’ve known the Norwegian-American journalist Mark Hertsgaard since Rio Eco 92.]
Exit polls show that 63% of young Americans voted for a Democratic candidate for the US House, while 35% of young Americans backed Republican candidates, Rachel Janfaza reported for Teen Vogue. The strongest support came from youth of color, with 89% of Black youth and 67% of Latino youth voting for a Democratic candidate.
Also, a certain former President seems to have stayed too long at the beach–like a wet fart. Even Foxies Rupert Murdoch and son Lachlan gagged at the smell. (See “Murdoch Outlets Turn on Trump After Midterms” in the National Review.) The Murdochs own “The Network” (Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, ad nauseam,) literally and symbolically. When the Trump Show begins to hurt the ratings, well, bottom line this is what those immigrants, Rupert & Son, are all about, their $-money-$ and so when the numbers fall, time to box up the frothing apprentice like the old silent screen star Norma Desmond in the movie Sunset Boulevard, and send him packing to his luxury retirement home.
Problem is, Mar-A-Lago is at sea level and this election week, as a rare November hurricane crashed ashore, residents of Palm Beach were put under an evacuation order. It is delicious to think that Ron De Sanctimonious may have signed off on the evacuation order and to wonder whether his 2024 rival Trump refused to go, seeking refuge on the third floor to wait out the storm, in his tanning bed.
Have Republicans Always Been Toxic for the Environment?
Hold the guffaws. ‘Twas not always thus. Teddy Roosevelt founded many of our national parks. Gilbert Pinchot did the same for national forests at least until the 1950’s post-WWII building boom when the forest service came up with the “mixed use” euphemism which pretty much means more roads and more logging. There were always wilderness mavericks and conservative outdoors folks like Northern California Republican Pete McCloskey, Adlai Stevenson Republicans such as David Brower, who saved the Grand Canyon among many other wild places of exquisite beauty (“In wildness is the preservation of the world,” as the now mildly canceled John Muir put it) and don’t forget America’s most Shakespearean President, Richard Milhous Nixon and his convicted domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman, who, nevertheless, did much to develop the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act, partly out of a love of nature but mostly to garner votes in a very different time. On the negative side Herr Ehrlichman criminalized marijuana and psychedelics in order to put millions of black, brown, and hippie youth in prison. Those folks didn’t much like the Vietnam War and rarely voted for the boss.
Climate makes for strange bedfellows. The sun sets over us all, and only the most philistine Republican are unable to appreciate a green flash or a bugling elk.
At an early EPA banquet, Nixon once even turned to Russell Train, who was the second head of the EPA and the founder of the World Wildlife Fund, and made a plea for climate justice in the inner cities.
Then came the Old Tree Cutter himself, Ronald Reagan, and his Interior Secretary James “Paul Bunyan” Watt. Reagan said trees caused more air pollution than automobiles, which gave rise to the ”killer tree” meme of early late-night comedy.
It’s been downhill ever since, as 85% of political contributions from fossil fuel companies go to Republican candidates so that they might continue to obfuscate the role of fossil fuels in global warming. In my own district in California, the Fighting 49th, Republican candidate Bryan Maryott was funded by big oil after Democrat Mike Levin co-sponsored the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax. At press time Mike is leading by 3 points.
By the way, this “Highway to Hell” reference is intriguing (click the link for the official recording.) UN Secretary-General António Guterres graduated from the Technical University of Lisbon in physics and electrical engineering in 1971, before later becoming prime minister of Portugal. AC-DC wrote “Highway to Hell” in 1979 with Aussie Angus Young contributing the killer guitar riff. Was Guterres, then 29, rocking out in the clubs of Porto to AC-DC and so retained the reference in his mind? Data point: probably not. He was part of the “Club of Light” in college, a Catholic Franciscan group. But who knows? Remember that our last Substack featured Dr. V. “Ram” Ramanathan, who influenced Pope Francis to issue his Climate Encyclical.
That’s it for HOT GLOBE™ ‘s Friday Fish Wrap on the elections.
NEXT FRIDAY we walk down the hall from my office at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and begin An Informal Chat with Ralph Keeling about how important a part “carbon land sinks” play in global warming compared to the abject nakedness of fossil fuel burning. Ralph works on the big picture and like Ramanathan, he’s worried. “We’re locked into such massive changes that it would be irresponsible not to be working really hard to get ready.”
I ask him what his father Charles Keeling, he of the Keeling Curve, might think:
“My guess is my father would be horrified by the politics of it all,” Ralph Keeling.
We are now at 416 parts per million of CO2, as measured by the Keelings’ Curve, speeding down (I can’t resist) a highway to—well, let’s make some changes, kids, and quick, before it’s too late.
Don’t forget to subscribe and share. Thanks.
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Steve Chapple runs HOT GLOBE
On The State of the Nation (and large part of the world). Some Reflections on the Election.
By Mike Miller
The pessimists (I was one) weren’t right, but neither were the optimists. At this writing, it looks like we’re in for more of the same in the nation’s politics. The American electorate is worried with many voters saying and doing contradictory things.
But let me focus on some optimistic notes. Given what many expected, the Republican victory in the House is Pyrrhic. It’s also testimony to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership. Given the defeat of a number of Trump-backed Republicans, the election may unleash a war between De Santos and Trump, which would benefit the country. There is no question: Democrats did far better than expected.
If Democrats win the Nevada and Arizona Senate seats, it will strengthen the Nevada UNITE/HERE Local—a good thing both for labor and the country. For example, let’s hope the new Teamster leadership develops an electoral program like that of the Las Vegas hotel, restaurant and entertainment workers. In Arizona, a strong on-the-ground operation contributed to the Democratic victory. The damage done by Andrew Cuomo to the State Democratic Party may create new opportunities for the Working Families Party in New York. Where the issue was on the ballot, anti-abortion rights propositions were defeated; where it was a key campaign issue it helped pro “choice” candidates as well.
Candidates are important. John Fetterman’s Pennsylvania win demonstrates that a politician who cultivates a relationship with voters can translate that into victory while, at the same time, having a history of progressive stands and victories, including: criminal justice reform, legalizing marijuana, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, environmental racism and economic justice.
Here are some bigger picture thoughts on what it will take to significantly change things.
Problems
Democrats, Labor, Socialists, Social Democrats, et al, no matter what the country, failed for many years to deliver on election promises. Over the longer term, and the short term as well, voters don’t forget.
Faced with “redlining” (broadly defined here as withholding money to get desired political results) in a variety of forms by investors/lenders/global financial institutions and others with $$, or the control of money, these leaders concluded they had little alternative—Syriza is perhaps the best example; its capitulation to European demands to pay its debt no doubt contributed to its political demise.
What if instead of getting bogged down in “negotiations” that weren’t real, Syriza had won the cooperation of longshore unions across the globe to refuse to unload a product targeted for boycott of a highly visible German brand? Or what if it had organized allies to pull deposits from a targeted European bank. Or… The point being that Syriza got trapped in what Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis later characterized as non-negotiations: it was clear in retrospect that the lenders were not going to make substantial concessions.
Obama’s bank bailout that left homeowners in the lurch while bailing out bankers is another example. Nor was that an exception to the rule: he has a long history of ties to the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) complex in Chicago.
These failures leave incumbent social democrats, liberals, “progressives” and socialists the objects of skepticism from those whose economic interests they slightly served (at least better than the Right), if they served them at all. American voters in the industrial Midwest know that Bill Clinton brought them NAFTA. (You can’t successfully pursue immigration reform without stemming the tide of Mexican, Central and South Americans forced from their farms, homes and jobs by American support for corporate-defined “globalization”.)
Confidence in Institutions
Here’s how Gallup sums up its current annual survey of confidence in American institutions: “Americans’ confidence in institutions has been lacking for most of the past 15 years, but their trust in key institutions has hit a new low this year.”
Most of the institutions Gallup tracks are at historic lows, and average confidence across all institutions is now four points lower than the prior low.
“Notably, confidence in the major institutions of the federal government is at a low point at a time when the president and Congress are struggling to address high inflation, record gas prices, increased crime and gun violence, continued illegal immigration, and significant foreign policy challenges from Russia and China. Confidence in the Supreme Court had already dropped even before it overturned Roe v. Wade, though that ruling was expected after a draft opinion was leaked in May.
“The confidence crisis extends beyond political institutions: a near record-low 13% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. Confidence in institutions is unlikely to improve until the economy gets better — but it is unclear if confidence will ever get back to the levels Gallup measured in decades past, even with an improved economy.”
The problem has become deeper than economic performance. The gap between promises and results alienated vast numbers of voters, especially white working, and lower-middle class, who then were vulnerable to the appeal of the man on the white horse. “I, and only I, can solve these problems,” said Trump, as did his Swedish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish and other counterparts.
Powerless to attack those with the real power, this constituency needed someone to make them feel better — attacking “The Other” served them and right-wing politicians perfectly. For example, few Democratic politicians call out NAFTA as a major source of Mexican immigration to the United States. To do so would require attacking a history of Democrats supporting the treaty and “globalization” of which it is a part. Lord Acton’s warning about the corruption of power needs to be balanced with the corruption of powerlessness which damages the human spirit and creates the soil Donald Trump tilled.
Civil Society
What follows when civil society institutions erode and disappear?: isolation and the destruction of community. Social media are non-stop. They feed the anger. The alienated can find relief by blaming The Other: “kick the dog” when you can’t kick its master. For those in power, divide and conquer is a useful strategy.
It is a mistake to dismiss all this as scapegoating. “I want to be somebody” is an expression of being recognized, of meaningful membership. And that is what is being shouted out now by people who feel ignored, abandoned, voiceless, and without hope for the future. (They were depicted by Hillary Clinton as a “basket of deplorables,” and Barack Obama said during his run for President, they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them…as a way to explain their frustrations.”) Whatever elements of validity there might be in his argument, a Presidential campaign is not a seminar.
The erosion of community, the increased isolation and loneliness of people, the powerlessness that arises when one does not belong to a democratic collectivity that offers a powerful voice—these are among the results of the erosion of civil society. The causes are long-term, and the solutions will not come overnight. No single election campaign, or even series of them, can rebuild what has been torn-asunder over a long period of time.
In a community, people talk with one another; there is deliberation among them. Organizations to which they belong, and in which they have confidence, have the capacity to evaluate political proposals and offer alternatives. But unions, for example, have largely become service and advocacy organizations: they provide things for members and act in their behalf, rather than serving as vehicles in which members argue, discuss, deliberate, make compromises and act collectively for themselves. Instead, a member “files” a grievance which may take years to resolve and is done without his/her participation. At contract time, full-time union officials haggle with management over the terms of a contract. The process takes place in downtown hotels; participation by members in “glass house” negotiations is, for the most part, a thing of the past. The contrast is expressed in a familiar labor organizer complaint that “members act like their dues bought them an insurance policy”. When they’re in trouble, they want the union — understood as a third party — to provide them benefits.
Ironically, the better full-time elected leaders and paid staff perform the “representation” task, the more difficult it becomes to persuade members they have to do anything more than vote in public and union elections, and pay their dues. When profits were growing and markets expanding, some sharing of the benefit with workers worked for major corporations. But with slowdown and foreign competition, things got tight.
Even given the above, union membership has an impact on political preferences. But the private sector is now down to about 6%! Stirrings in places like Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, and poll results showing growing support for unions, are hopeful signs. There’s a long road yet to go.
The alienation described above is not limited to urban and rural moderate-to-middle income whites. It extends across lines of race, gender, age and geography. It is at crisis proportions. I have focused here on this group of white people because they are the volatile factor that is most vulnerable to appeals from demagogues and the use of scapegoats. But beware: there are signs of Black and Latina/o shifting to Republicans. A small gain by Republicans in these two constituencies can have a major impact on election outcomes.
Corporations fought back.
That shouldn’t be a surprise. On the occasion of their 1937 defeat by the United Auto Workers/CIO, General Motors’ negotiator John Thomas Smith said to CIO leader John L. Lewis, who had strategized and led the winning campaign,“Well, Mr. Lewis, you beat us, but I’m not going to forget it. I just want to tell you that one of these days we’ll come back and give you the kind of whipping that you and your people will never forget.” GM lived up to its word.
In the film Salt of the Earth, management finally decided it couldn’t break the miner’s strike. Hartwell, the on-site representative of the corporation, says, “I’ll talk to New York. Maybe we better settle this thing…For the present.”
In both these cases, it was a union that brought the power structure to the negotiating table by its power to deny profits to the corporation. The farm workers did it with grape and lettuce boycotts. At the peak of its influence, the civil rights movement did it with mass disruption and the threat of breaking apart the Democratic Party alliance that included both Blacks and Dixiecrats.
Building sustainable people power is what led to these results. When that power eroded, so did the victories. Keep your powder dry!
What Follows?
ORGANIZE! These are not a short-term problems to be overcome by slightly better candidates offering better messages by more sophisticated means. Nor is it overcome by ad hoc “mass mobilizations” after which “the troops” go home—sometimes with a victory but more often with little to show for their energy—leaving only the activists for the next “demo”.
ORGANIZE democratically with a lower case “d” so that members are the real owners of people power organizations and create a counterculture of deliberation thus able to realize when compromises aren’t sellouts because they decide they’ve stretched as far as they can and need to get back to their day-to-day lives. They conclude, because they’ve learned this truth from their own experience, that the way toward better compromises is broadening and deepening the base, and engaging it more in the life of the union (or whatever organization we’re discussing—neighborhood, interest, identity, etc). Instead, we have a seemingly endless proliferation of narrowly-focused advocacy nonprofits and social media substituting for people-to-people politics.
Lowest Significant Common Denominator Demands
We need a path to majoritarian politics that recognizes the rights and interests of the constituencies comprising it while not demanding from potential allies that which they cannot deliver in their own respective constituencies. That’s a tough one, especially for the most oppressed and discriminated against. This difficult road to navigate must include short-term benefits for whatever segment of a majority we’re talking about. But it pays far higher dividends in the longer term.
To take a controversial example: in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, there was widespread support among Americans for criminal justice reform. With a longer-term perspective, the shift in recognition of the reality of police brutality could have created majorities for significant change. Instead, “defund the police” became the dominant campaign—divisive even within the Black community, and certainly not a winner among the rest of the American electorate.
There are other examples. Since the 1954 Brown v Board decision on school integration, reliance on Supreme Court decisions to win major policy changes seemed a good way for minorities to achieve rights. This path was followed in Roe v Wade. It seemed to work. Now it looks problematic. To win by persuading everyday people of your point of view takes a longer-run view of what it takes to win durable victories. It begins with establishing relationships that go beyond “deep canvassing” let alone phone-banking or mailing postcards.
Reporting on their work in Kentucky, SURJ said, “We are headed to bed on election night with a huge victory to share: after SURJ members made more than 110,000 calls as part of a powerful, multi-racial coalition in Kentucky, we just blocked a near-total ban on abortion. This is how we beat the Right. SURJ brings white people into multiracial fights by engaging real issues that affect them. When we organize, we win.”That’s the right road. They’ve just started down it.
Conclusion
Given where we now are, a reasonable timeframe would take us to 2040, with the 2032 presidential election an important marker along the way, and numerous smaller victories that bring both concrete benefits to people and changes in the relations of power—the “us versus them”.
The bigger game is more transformative –which at the center involves economic and social equality, and the break-up of vast centers of unaccountable power into units that are either member-owned (consumer and worker coops), or whether publicly- or privately-owned are accountable to “the people” through their civil society institutions and public policies they support. Electoral politics are part of that. So are mutual aid, member benefits, direct negotiation and action with and against power centers, boycotts, and other forms of popular power that make small “d” democracy a reality.
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The Union Difference Behind the Orange Curtain – Working the Mid-terms in Little Saigon
By Peter Olney
In 2018 I deployed to Brea, California to work on flipping the 39th Congressional District from Red to Blue. It was part of the successful effort to win Democratic control of the House of Representatives, a check on the dictatorial agenda of “Agent Orange”, then President Trump. In 2020, two of the four seats that we flipped in Orange County (the OC) were flipped back to the Republican aisle. One of those newly redistricted seats is held by Republican Michelle Steel who voted against certifying the Presidential election and is all in with Trump.
Many of the members of my old union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) live in the OC. Over 1000 members of the principal LA/Long Beach port dockers union, Local 13, live in the 45th Congressional district represented by Michelle Steel. Steel has gifted us a great issue. She is the co-sponsor of “HR 5886” that would place the ILWU and other maritime unions under the jurisdiction of the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The RLA would severely limit the ability of the ILWU to exercise power in bargaining with the giant international ocean carriers represented collectively by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). The contract for the west coast expired July 1 and the ILWU and PMA are in acrimonious negotiations at this very moment.
“The greatest antidote to disinformation and vicious attacks is direct contact, and …”
The race for the 45th is projected to be very tight so every vote counts (The American Prospect). I have been knocking doors with the campaign in the neighborhoods of multiple cities in Orange County. Democrats have a 5% registration edge in the district and the demographics could favor the effort to flip the seat. The district is 31% Asian Pacific Islander and 21% Latino. However, it is important to dissect the demographics deeper especially the Asian Pacific factor (NPR). The district is home to one of the largest concentrations of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam. The older Viet generation, forced to flee their country after the collapse of the US supported government in 1975, tends to vote conservative, like the Cuban refugees of 1959 who flooded South Florida. In fact, Michele Steel’s campaign has featured vicious adds attacking Navy veteran Jay Chen as “China’s Candidate”. TV adds fraudulently show Chen, an educator and community college board member, supposedly teaching schoolchildren flanked by photos of Mao and Lenin. Another ad has two Chinese communist intelligence officers claiming Jay Chen as “one of us.”
The greatest antidote to disinformation and vicious attacks is direct contact, and there is nothing as powerful as union member to union member conversation, particularly when members know that a strong union is what has enabled them to live a decent life with their families. That is why the radical decline of union membership, particularly in the private sector from 35% in 1955 to 6% today, makes it so difficult to counter the outright lies and distortions of Trump and his MAGA collaborators. When workers are in the same organization there is the basis for a healthy discussion even if there isn’t always agreement.
Working with fellow ILWUers and members of the Inland Boatmen’s Union, the marine division, we have been making a special appeal to our members on the phone, and It Works, it works really well! While we are flummoxed by the number of message machines we get, when we do go live with a member, the response is almost universally positive. Members have received emails and mailings from their Locals, and our calls reinforce the message that Steel is poison for the ILWU. Hearing directly from us that Chen is backed by the labor movement, members volunteer to take lawn signs and to corral their whole household into voting for Chen.
Mickey Chavez, a Local 94 (working foremen) member and newly elected head of the Southern California District Council (SCDC) reported to me that there were 25 active Local 94 members and 6 retirees in the district. He told me he had personally talked with all of them and that they are all “Yeses for Chen” including one Republican. I was delighted but initially mystified by Mickey’s ability to talk to everyone given I was getting more message machines than live members. Acting on a hunch I asked him if he had called from Local 94 offices. He burst out laughing and said yes, and that he called during dispatch, so all the members thought he was calling to offer them work! The power of a hiring hall union!
When I was on doors in Garden Grove, I approached the home of a 72-year-old female voter with “Declined to State” affiliation. I rang the bell and the husband answered. I asked for his spouse, and he asked what it was about. I told him I was working for Jay Chen for Congress, and he said, “He is a Democrat. Democrats are evil. Get off my porch you son of a bitch.” Compare this Fox fueled rant with the response of an ILWU member who is anti-Abortion and pro-GUNS. I called a member in the 45th and told him my mission. He said he would check Jay out. The next day I received the following message: “Hey Peter this is Fred. I am calling you back because you called me yesterday about the Congressional race in the 45th District. I did some research, and we had a get together in my neighborhood last night, as we do every Tuesday night. We have a very diverse neighborhood, Hispanic, white, and Asian. They don’t like this Jay Chen. I personally vote with my religious beliefs. Jay Chen is not a pro-gun guy. He doesn’t sound like a Christian to me. He is pro-abortion. I am not going to vote for him no matter what my union says. I may leave that race completely blank. These damn Democrats are pushing abortion. I am sick and tired of that. Fuck them. I am sorry for my language, and God is going to punish me for that. I am not voting for any Democrats. Sorry buddy!” I have returned his call and am hoping to have a face to face meet up with him. I continue to call Local 13 members and have had conversations with two registered Republicans who agreed to vote for Chen because their union is on record supporting him. Solidarity just this once!
The power of the union can bind people together. I can at least lead to a respectful issues-based discussion and a respectful disagreement that doesn’t come to blows!
Despite my long history on doors, I make rookie mistakes. I went to the door of 20-year-old Basurto Jimenez, a registered Democrat. I told him I was working for Jay Chen for Congress and asked him if he had heard of him. He said no, so I proceeded to say that he was “Running against a right-wing Republican named Michele Steel”. An older female voice behind him spoke up and said, “We are a right-wing Republican household”. Basurto sheepishly retreated, obviously used to his outsider status when it came to family politics. I stepped away from the porch and back out into the 90-degree heat of the OC. An older man followed me out and said, “Get yourself a hat or you will die of sunstroke.” I replied that this is a very humane right-wing Republican household! There is nothing like the doors to open insights into America with all its frights and faults, humanity, and kindness.
Good luck to all of us on November 8th! VOTE!
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Between the Rivers 
By Stewart Acuff
Stewart Acuff’s has a regular column in The Spirit of Jefferson newspaper, Charles Town and Jefferson County, West Virginia. This was one was published on October 26, 2022
“It’s very hard for many of us to understand why the county commission would not be happy to condemn hate.“
Their steady steps on the Saturday sidewalk in downtown Charles Town tapped their own beat to go vote in the statewide symphony of defending democracy.
Registering voters, educating voters, getting our people to the polls; the Poor Peoples Campaign brought its voting mobilization to Jefferson County on October 15 with a march/walk on Washington Street and barbecue in Evitts Run Park.
Goodness knows there’s every reason and issue in the world for folks to address in this election.
The GOP dominated Jefferson County Commission has ensnared itself in scandal by refusing to condemn racism and domestic terrorism after Commissioner Tricia Jackson posed for a photo with men wearing Proud Boys gear and holding their hands in a white power salute.
Led by long time NAACP President George Rutherford, upwards of 100 county residents have protested before and during county commission meetings through the summer.
It’s very hard for many of us to understand why the county commission would not be happy to condemn hate. Their refusal to act is evidence of a deeper problem of a county commission acting or refusing to act against domestic terrorism and racism.
What does that say about our county leadership?
Our county commission is dramatically changing how emergency services are delivered in Jefferson County with a top-down process that hasn’t recognized our volunteer lifesavers and firefighters as critical and crucial to saving lives. The fact that the county paid $40,000 of our tax money for a PR firm to tell us to support the county plan is a failure of the process for making public policy. Millions of dollars will be moved and spent to expand county government and minimize volunteerism by county commissioners who claim to want smaller government.
Amendments put on the ballot by a GOP legislative majority would centralize more power in the laps of the legislature.
Wake up and watch out when any branch of government tries to give itself more power.
It is evidence of the strength of America’s spirit of democracy that again at election time we are reminding one another over and over to go vote.
That democratic strength is desperately needed at this moment when the structure and foundation of the American government has been challenged for the first time since the Civil War.
One of the bedrock fundamentals of American democracy is the peaceful transfer of power from one administration/president to the next duly elected president. Our last president blew that tradition up with a coup d’état attempt and a violent insurrection and riot at our nation’s Capital.
Every single one of our votes is an affirmation of our belief in democracy, our trust in the will of the people. Now, as much as ever, we must vote.
Some of our own neighbors talk way too casually about the possibilities of civil war. This land we stand on has carried the feet and blood of a civil war for greater freedom. The steady expansion of freedom and Democratic rights is the source of American Exceptionalism. Exercise that Exceptionalism.
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About Those “LA Audio Tapes” and How to Heal Los Angeles: We Have Questions
By Jorge H Rodriguez
The words spoken by several prominent elected Mexican, Latina(@) officials in 2021, and recently revealed on tape, were prejudicial, discriminatory, mean, and hurtful to everyone they were directed at. But they were not expressed by racists, or white supremacists as some people who have written or spoken about this incident have claimed.
We know the social, political history and the core values of Martinez, Cedillo, De Leon and Herrera. Cedillo, along with former Mayor Villaraigosa, and Senator Durazo were all part of CASA, a national immigrant workers’ rights organization, which fought from 1972 to 1986, to gain amnesty for all immigrants in the US with the passing of the 1986 Amnesty IRCA Law signed by then President Reagan. In1994 Cedillo, then the leader of SEIU Local 660, along with the LA Federation of Labor spearheaded the fight against Governor Wilson’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187. All of the elected Mexican/Latina(@) officials participated in the mega immigration marches in 2006, including the now famous “Day Without An Immigrant” on May 1, 2006 where over 1.5 million people marched in the streets of Los Angeles, joined by millions more across the country, against the racist immigration Sensenbrenner Bill.
Cedillo, once called “ONE BILL GIL”, fought for nine years to pass a law giving undocumented workers the right to drive in the state of California. He made it safe for families to take their children to school, to shop, drive to work, to go to playgrounds, and beaches without the fear of being detained and deported.
Kevin De Leon has been an immigrant’s rights defender since his early days in the late 1980’s working at One Stop Immigration. He has been a tremendous fighter for the environment and workers’ rights in California. During De Leon’s time in the Senate, he took on President Trump and his allies on immigration and helped pass landmark legislation establishing sanctuary in the State of California. He became the target of racists and white supremacists throughout the state. He was constantly receiving death threats.
Martinez rose from the streets of the San Fernando Valley becoming a leading force fighting for environmental issues and inclusion of her neglected community in the west valley. She was elected to the LA Board of Education and finally to the Los Angeles City Council; becoming its first Mexican/Latina(@) president.
Ron Herrera has been a champion for working people for over 30 years. He grew up in the West Wilmington, a working-class union family community in the LA Port area of Los Angeles. He began working as a warehouse employee at United Parcel Service (UPS). Then he became a driver, and a Teamsters shop steward. Ron helped lead the largest strike in U.S. history, the 1997 strike of UPS workers which helped to end low-wages for part-time employees. In 2003 Herrera was elected as Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 396, the largest UPS local in the country. He later became a national leader as the first Mexican/Latino national vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He was a key figure in the “Don’t Waste L.A.” campaign uniting environmental, community and labor leaders to create an innovative franchise that increased recycling efforts across Los Angeles and raised industry standards. It was under his leadership that during the Pandemic the LA FED served up bags of food feeding over 350,000 working families and community members throughout the LA region creating an inclusive and innovative labor movement for all workers.
The ignorant words used in the conversation they were having should not take away from all the important civil rights work and things they have fought for. Fights and programs that have advanced the wellbeing of women, immigrants, and working people in California, the City of Los Angeles, and the country. Cesar Chavez once called immigrants “Illegal Aliens” and “Wetbacks”, “Those Wets” during a congressional hearing.” Chavez later colluded with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to deport immigrants during a strike. He is still looked upon with admiration for the things he did. Why should these leaders be treated any different? This incident does not define them.
What key elements have not been written about in the heated debate taking place in the Los Angeles right now?
As Bill Gallegos and Bill Fletcher Jr. Point out in their excellent article: The Racial Volcano Explodes in Los Angeles Portside.org, the issue of representation is still the elephant in the room. The LA Times has framed the issue as one strictly of racism and fomented the idea of division among Angelenos. Yet the demographics of LA show clearly how under-represented communities are in the halls of power; for instance Mexicans/Latina(@)s make up about 48% of the city’s residents and only have 26.6%% representation on the LA City Council. The current three black city council districts, 8, 9,10, were left unchanged during the redistricting process in LA. So all this postering and talk about anti-black is “JUST NOT TRUE”. The discussion centered around the future of these districts where Mexican/Latina(@) and Black populations are heading in opposite directions – Mexican/Latina(@) are increasing and Blacks are moving out – especially in the 9th.
Let’s be honest, all the LA city council members have discussions about their, and their supporters, interests now and in the future. We need to address the issue of equitable representation so governmental reflects the residents and living patterns of LA.
With just four weeks before election day, the timing of this year-old audio is no coincidence. Why did whoever released the audio wait a year to make it public? It’s a calculated attempt to damage the important electoral work being taken up by the LA Federation of Labor. Headed by Ron Herrera, the LA Fed had built, and was about to send hundreds of union workers to phone banks, and precincts to knock on doors to ensure voters could and would vote.
The audio’s release was also a deliberate attack on the Mexican/Latin(@) community, an attempt to undermine the political leadership and influence of their elected officials. Mexicans/Latina(@) are already underrepresented in the city council, board of supervisors and the board of education. The vacancies that are expected in the coming days will leave an even bigger vacuum of leadership over our community while poverty and a lack of services remain, unreported in the media stampede to create inflammatory headlines.
We need to continue to work to combat our community’s prejudices against people of color.
The solidarity of our communities dates back to the times when Mexicans helped enslaved Africans cross Texas into Mexico to escape slavery. In the 1930s Black, Latin@, and white seamstresses where organized by Guatemalan labor organizer and civil rights activist Luisa Moreno. That solidarity is as true today as it was then. We must continue the work of eradicating our own self-loathing of our indigenous people. We can’t permit this type of thinking at all.
The audio release was further intended to open historical wounds of indigenous peoples of Mexico and the US who have traditionally not been represented in the halls of government. The comments about them were mean and a reminder that Oaxacans, like all indigenous people, are objectified and treated as if they are invisible. It is also a reminder that indigenous peoples in the US are rendered invisible in the media, totally omitted on coverage of issues of white supremacy and racism, police brutality, health, the environment, and the current crisis of the disappearance and murder of indigenous women and girls.
This was also an effort to drive a wedge and mistrust between Black and Brown communities who have worked for decades to form strong and meaningful alliances. In the last 20 years the LA Fed has played a historical role, helping build mutual trust and a working alliance around issues affecting both communities. In workplaces where race, ethnicity and gender are often used by bosses to divide workers on the job and off. The LA Fed, through its unions, has pushed for equality of pay and opportunity, strengthening workers’ rights on the job and improving the communities in which they live. Of course, work remains to be done. We still need to strengthen the bonds of our communities and those of other people of color in LA.
While the timing of the release raises questions, we must not forget to ask: Who benefits? Why was it made? Who released the audio? Who made it? What was their goal?
A broader question for LA is: Do we really want to heal? Or do we just want to be punitive?
In order to heal we need to expose the real efforts and intent of those behind the leak. Only when this is done will we be able to regain the trust between our communities and among all Angelenos.
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Peak Season for Action at Amazon
By Rand Wilson and Peter Olney
Could this November see the biggest coordinated international day of action at Amazon yet?
Although Thanksgiving is a unique U.S. holiday, the day after—known as “Black Friday”—is celebrated in many countries as the opening of the Christmas shopping season. In Italy, for example, merchants offer Black Friday discounts that fill their stores with the same bargain-hungry shoppers as in the U.S.
That’s why three Italian trade union federations chose it as a strategic day in 2017 to strike Amazon’s million-square-foot distribution center in Castel San Giovanni, near Piacenza in Northern Italy.
The San Giovanni facility opened in 2015. Two years later, half of the 1,650 permanent “Blue Badge” employees struck on Black Friday. While there had been some previous job actions at Amazon in Germany, this was one of the first Amazon strikes in Europe, or, in fact, anywhere.
Amazon spokespersons insisted that the strike was only 10 percent of the workforce because they love to undercount and because they factored in the 2,000 “Green Badge” employees—short-term and seasonal workers—who mostly came to work. Nevertheless, the company agreed to negotiate with the unions the following Monday.
Then management canceled negotiations and sought to reschedule the meeting unilaterally for the following January. The unions warned there would be more actions if there were no substantive face-to-face discussions by December 6. In a victory for the unions, on December 5, Amazon management agreed to meet and subsequently bargained improvements in working conditions.
The Italian actions and later Amazon strikes in Germany and Poland were hugely inspirational to us (in fact Peter Olney was in Italy during the Castel San Giovanni strike). We believed they would help motivate more worker organizing in the U.S. and thus began urging young activists to get jobs at Amazon.
COALITION TARGETS AMAZON
Since 2017, coordinated international actions targeting Amazon have increased. In 2019, UNI Global Union and Progressive International launched Make Amazon Pay, a coalition uniting over 70 trade unions, civil society organizations, environmentalists, and tax watchdogs. The coalition’s unifying demands are that Amazon pay its workers fairly and respect their right to join unions, pay its fair share of taxes, and commit to real environmental sustainability.
Last November, peak season actions took place in 25 countries around the world. However, past participation by unions and organizations in the U.S. has been modest at best.
The organizing successes at Amazon facilities—including winning a National Labor Relations Board vote at a Staten Island Fulfillment Center in April—and the numerous walkouts over pay and conditions in Amazon facilities from Maryland to California reflects a new spirit of labor militancy in the U.S. Building on that opportunity, UNI Global recently convened a meeting of rank-and-file Amazon organizers and union leaders to begin planning for Black Friday actions in the U.S. We hope this will lead to high-profile walkouts and rallies targeting U.S. Amazon facilities on November 25.
In addition to the substantial increase in worker organizing at Amazon, other factors could contribute to broader support and participation in U.S. Black Friday actions this year:
- The Teamsters have already begun a contract campaign for their 340,000 members at UPS;
- Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the West Coast dockworkers union, are working without a contract as negotiations continue with the Pacific Maritime Association;
- Railroad workers are voting on national agreements bargained with the big freight railroads. The membership of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, the third largest rail union, just voted to reject the contract and could strike as early as November 19. Votes in the two largest unions, representing engineers and conductors, are pending. If members vote to reject these agreements, it could lead to a dramatic work stoppage affecting the 40 percent of U.S. GNP that travels on rail;
- The increased support for unions generally—thanks to the courageous organizing by Starbucks and Amazon workers, prominent strikes by Nabisco, Frito-Lay, Kellogg’s, and John Deere workers, and the respect for the role of essential workers during the pandemic—means that Black Friday protests will be perceived as part of a much broader labor movement.
Could these combined developments lead to a “Peak Season” moment when logistics workers at many companies across the entire sector take action together? Imagine Teamster drivers and warehouse workers protesting at UPS barns, then marching to nearby Amazon facilities to support walkouts by workers there. Or dockworkers and railroad workers taking their message to workers at intermodal facilities that handle Amazon freight. Or thousands of warehouse and delivery workers at smaller companies using Black Friday as a strategic opportunity to dramatize their power in the supply chain and begin forming their own unions.
While much of the above may only be a dream for this November, it’s the direction that the labor movement is headed in. For now, it’s realistic to envision U.S.-based peak season actions dovetailing nicely with Make Amazon Pay activities around the world. Logistics workers of the world, unite!
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This piece is also running in Labor Notes
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Review: Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs
By Kim Scipes
This country is really good at sending young people off to war, killing people, animals, plants and the environment overall while destroying buildings and highways, and disrupting people’s lives and societies wherever the US invades. The US has turned this into an art form. What they haven’t done well is taking care of the women and men they send to do their dirty work once these servicemembers return from the field of battle; or even from their term of “service.” This new book by Suzanne Gordon, Steve Early, and Jasper Craven does an excellent job of pulling the covers back and illuminating the governmental disservice to these veterans.
This book gets behind all of the “Yankee Doodle Dandy” bullshit that is propagated throughout our society about military service. The military picks on young people who often want desperately to contribute to the well-being of our society, to make it better, and who think military service is a noble cause, as well as those living in economically devastated areas and who are willing to do almost anything to get out and be able to (ultimately) try to get another shot at life. The key thing to note is the emphasis on young people: they want to get to them before they learn to think critically about what they are being told, and before they figure out that they have options otherwise that they may not have known about or even considered. (Increase the minimum age of enlistment to 21, for example, from 18 or 17 with parental approval, and I’ll all-but-guarantee that enlistment rates plummet; free college education for all would have a similar effect.)
The strength of this book is the clear thinking behind it. Most importantly, for which I’m extremely grateful, is that they recognize that “veterans” are not just a bunch of flag-waving “patriots” that don’t have a brain in their head. Yes, there are some like that. Military service affects each person who survives it; some say it was the best time of their lives, while others recognize they have had their desire to improve life to be distorted, instead causing great pain and suffering to wherever the US sent them. Add in a suicide rate averaging 22 veterans a day, along with massive amounts of alcohol and drug abuse, and you see the human cost to many of the US’s veterans. The key thing to recognize, however, is that “veterans” are not a monolithic group.
And “Veterans of all types experience higher-than-average rates of joblessness, homelessness, chronic pain, mental illness, and substance abuse.” Approximately one-in-three women veterans are survivors of military sexual trauma from their military “comrades.” “These problems,” the authors note, “were particularly acute among former enlisted men and women who returned to poor and working-class communities slow to recover from the great recession of 2007 and 2008.”
This is worse than for previous veterans: 44 percent of today’s veterans are suffering re-integration problems, as compared to 25 percent previously.
The thing the authors make clear is that military service itself, excluding combat, is dangerous. This begins in boot camp, when the military tries to break down and then re-establish one’s personality; this varies with branch of the military, with the Marines being the most determined to build a “new” you. Again, varying with branch, physical punishment is a key component in this process, whether direct physical attack or the work of “motivation platoons,” where the insistent digging and refiling and digging and refilling deep holes in the ground while incessantly being screamed at by a charming “drill instructor” who helps convey the message that you better get with their program—or you will continue to “pay” for your failure to comprehend.
Beyond that, many of the jobs that service people have to perform are inherently dangerous, whether driving a tank or a truck over imposing physical obstacles, firing artillery, or working on war planes, with screaming jet engines, live ammunition, and active ordinance, including rockets and bombs: what could possibly go wrong? Service at sea also brings additional hazards for those in the Navy and Coast Guard, as well as for those who fly.
And then combat accentuates these dangers to the nth degree: not a single combat veteran I’ve ever met has come out unscathed, and many survivors have taken years to get themselves back together, if they ever do.
The US Government has an agency, the VA or “Veterans’ Administration,” that is supposed to provide medical resources to help veterans overcome whatever they experienced in the military when they present themselves for treatment. The authors point out that, when fully resourced, the VA generally does an excellent job of serving veterans. Their treatment of physical injuries is deemed quite good, and while it varies between facilities, the VA seems to be dealing better with mental health-related issues over time; it took multiple veteran occupations of VA facilities during the Vietnam War to get the VA to begin to address the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Since many of the VA employees are veterans themselves, it shows that veterans in VA facilities can often get more sympathetic help than they can in most “civilian” facilities.
The problem, however, is tied to the phrase “when fully resourced.” The government has never fully funded the VA, and in fact, Congress has been channeling significant amounts of money away from the VA, supposedly to improving services for veterans—especially those physically distant from VA facilities—but have done this in a way that has undercut the VA itself and its ability to provide support for veterans in general.
Challenging the attacks, the authors argue that the VA is so good—when fully resourced that it serves as a model for the entire country, showing how a single-payer system could/should work. This is important. In fact, they point out that something around 70 percent of all medical residencies in the country are carried out in VA facilities today, and that the VA served as a back-up medical system for when our medical system was overwhelmed by the COVID pandemic.
These political attacks have been given “cover” by a number of right-wing veterans serving in the House and Senate, as well as conservatives in office who cannot wave the flag enough, the “uber-patriots,” many of whom avoided serving, but who work desperately to deny the impact of their own decisions, effectively they don’t give a shit about veterans.
Gordon, Early, and Craven deplore this, and detail what is really going on behind the flag-waving. Interestingly, they point out that most of the right-wing veterans were officers, and that we must not conflate their efforts with those of enlisted personnel who have often borne the brunt of officers’ decisions.
The strength of this book is its honesty about the whole field of military service and its effects on those who survive it; as well as, those who don’t. The authors demonstrate through this, and previous activities, their concerns for the well-being of those who have served. Their writing is straight-forward, clear, and honest.
However, I have two criticisms. First, I think they delve into the veterans’ world more deeply than many would on their own. To be honest, it can be very depressing to learn a what goes on with veterans’ groups, many who, despite their stated “missions” and their rhetoric, work against addressing real needs and concerns of veterans. This is even worse when their actions provide “cover” for the right-wing who use veterans’ groups positions to justify their own.
Second, and my larger and more important critique, begins with the cover photo and title of the book, and extends beyond. I don’t like the cover and title! In my opinion, these are not “our” veterans; they are the veterans and victims of the US Empire. “We” didn’t send them to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other place around the world where they’ve been sent, political leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, sent them. These “leaders” bear responsibility for this, as is their failure to care of these men and women after their return home.
I don’t think sufficient attention has been paid in this book to explaining and understanding the US Empire: while these political leaders suggest our country and the Empire are the same, the reality is that they are not. The United States is our country, where we live, but the US Empire includes everywhere in the world that the US seeks to dominate. Our country is not at risk from others, despite all of the propaganda; the US Empire is at risk. If the political leaders want to defend the US Empire, let THEM do it. As Phil Ochs said, “I ain’t marching anymore!”
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Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs
By Suzanne Gordon, Steve Early, and Jasper Craven
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-4780-1854-4 (paper), $24.95
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Exhibit: Two Years of Heat and COVID in the San Joaquin Valley
By David Bacon
“Two Years of Heat and COVID in the San Joaquin Valley”, Photographs by David Bacon
Opening Reception: Thursday October 13th, 4:30 – 6:00
For more information: Robin DeLugan (rdelugan@ucmerced.edu)
In the San Joaquin Valley, the most productive agricultural area in the world, rural poverty is endemic. That poverty produced COVID infection rates far exceeding, per capita, any urban area in California. Rural communities enduring the pressure of low wages and bad housing became coronavirus hotspots.
This exhibition presents this complex reality through documentary photographs taken in the course of the pandemic and the past two years’ heat dome crises. They concentrate on the daily lives of farmworkers and their families, including Filipino immigrants and in particular indigenous Mexican migrants, who did the essential labor that ensured that food left the field to supply supermarkets and dinner tables. They also show that while COVID created enormous risks and problems, in many ways people lived in conditions that existed long before the pandemic began.
In these images, farmworkers appear masked and exhausted as they pick grapes, pluots and persimmons. The series documents the crisis in rural housing, and the efforts of local communities to build homes using self-help projects. Haunting night photographs taken in Fresno show the streets of San Joaquin Valley’s largest city empty except for people sleeping on sidewalks, or working in taco trucks into the early hours of the morning. Indigenous farmworkers labor as irrigators in 114 degree heat in the sun all day, while crews pick and toss watermelons into trucks—one of the most physically demanding jobs in agriculture. The growing number of H-2A guestworkers are shown both as they harvest cantaloupes in the harsh temperature, and the rundown motels where they’re housed.
The pandemic and the crisis of climate change threw the problems of social injustice in our society into high relief, and I tried to document this reality as I’ve seen it. In May, 2021, the California Newspaper Publishers Association gave its first place awards to this series of images taken in the San Joaquin Valley, and the Los Angeles Press Club gave it a first place in the Southern California Journalism Awards in 2022.
This exhibition consists of 67 black and white photographs and oral histories giving their context. It is a continuation of previous projects that document the lives of indigenous farmworker communities, including Living Under the Trees and In the Fields of the North.
The photographs are produced as a cooperative effort with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB), the Central Valley Empowerment Alliance, California Rural Legal Assistance, the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and the United Farm Workers. The photographs are used by partner organizations in campaigns for immigrant rights and better working and living conditions. Part of this effort includes using the exhibitions to organize dialogues within these communities about indigenous identity and culture, and ways to advocate for equality and social justice as migrant communities in the U.S., opposing an abusive and dysfunctional immigration system.
Public support is vital to creating a broad movement for immigrant rights, labor rights, cultural respect and the social justice demands of Mexican indigenous migrant farmworkers. This project is part of that effort, at the same time helping documentary photography survive as a medium for advancing social justice.
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“Two Years of Heat and COVID in the San Joaquin Valley”, Photographs by David Bacon
October 1 – February 10, 2023
Kolligian Library, 5200 N. Lake Road, 5200 Lake Rd #275, Merced, CA 95343
To: Brothers and Sisters of the Railroad Unions
By Bill Bon
Re: The Tentative Agreements
I’ve frequently observed that railroad freight labor contract negotiations are the most politicized collective bargaining regime in the private sector. What do I mean by that? First, there is the structured processes of the Railway Labor Act, which provide for an executive branch agency, the National Mediation Board (NMB), with members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. With only the rarest of exceptions, the NMB controls the pace and timing of collective bargaining, with the ability to delay or advance the end of mandatory mediation. That is a critical piece of the RLA ‘map’. The actual terrain of battle is more complex.
Who appoints the NMB matters, as does just who sits on that Board. Who the President appoints to a Presidential Emergency Board (or even if one is to be appointed at all) matters, as does who controls the House and Senate. (And, of course, in the long run, the make-up of the courts, appointed and confirmed in political processes, matters as well.)
Freight rail management has demonstrated a long-term refusal to engage in serious give-and-take bargaining with the organized workforce. Instead, they have sought political fixes to their labor relations, and it has worked so well that they refuse to depart from a system which they have frequently managed to their benefit. For example, they used political mechanisms to relieve the railroads of their collective bargaining agreements with their employees, in the course of undertaking the mega-mergers that resulted in today’s monopolistic carriers. So, too, with bargaining over changes to agreements. By judicially enforcing participation in multi-employer bargaining, the major railroads’ single representative (National Carriers Conference Committee of the NRLC) deals with all of the unions, on the same timeline. Then, the NMB has virtually non-court-reviewable authority to control the pace of bargaining, by controlling the timing of termination of mandatory mediation; only then can the ‘released’ parties move towards self-help (strike, lockout, or imposition of the employers’ final offer.)
Because the threat of a total railroad shut-down has national implications, Congress has sometimes legislated, at endgame. Most recently, back in 1991, they passed legislation that, when signed by the President, imposed a Presidential Emergency Board’s (PEB) formally non-binding recommendations for settlement as the new “agreements” between the carriers and their employees, and prohibiting further ‘self-help’.
So, having some elected and appointed friends sitting at veto points in Washington, DC can make all the difference in the world to railroad workers. Who appoints the NMB matters, as does just who sits on that Board. Who the President appoints to an Emergency Board (or even if one is to be appointed at all) matters, as does who controls the House and Senate. (And, of course, in the long run, the make-up of the courts, appointed and confirmed in political processes, matters as well.)
My first encounter with a PEB was in 1991, PEB 219. The railroads cut train crew size, extracted massive rules concessions without paying for them, instituted health insurance cost-sharing, and enforced wage rates that failed to keep up with inflation, all by persuading the Congress and President G.H.W. Bush to impose PEB 219’s report as the new terms of employment, ending a short national strike.
Understanding that a national transportation emergency was the predicate for a legislated resolution, we refused to shut down the entire country in 1992 (PEBs 220, 221, 222), limiting picketing to CSX. The railroads weren’t having it. They ceased operations nation-wide, locking-out the unionized workforce, including the employees who were already living under the imposed terms of PEB 219. They created a national emergency to force Congress’ hand. There was some grumbling, but they got their way: Congress mandated “baseball” last-best-offer interest arbitration of the open disputes, and an end to the lock-out.
In the ensuing years, no nation-wide shutdown has occurred, but the view that the end game in national handling would lead from release by the National Mediation Board to a PEB and then imposition by Congress became a commonly held belief. Of course, that is not what is in the statute, and there is no reason to enshrine a process that management has manipulated to its benefit, as the inevitable result of a big-table impasse.
Let’s catch up with the current round, commencing before the 2020 elections. Trump was demonstrably an enemy of labor. His Federal Railroad Administration chief Ron Batory pretty explicitly said he was there to serve railroad management (per a talk given at RailTrends). The agency killed two-person crew rule making at the state level and declared that the topic is federally preempted; that is, the states could not legislate or regulate on the subject matter. Trump’s administration demonstrated that they are not the sort of people we would want shaping our collective bargaining outcomes!
When bargaining began, while Trump was in office, the railroads served aggressive demands: single-person train crews, work rule concessions for the non-ops, wage erosion, no back pay (contrary to customary expectations. Remember, these talks get dragged on for years…). I saw the carriers’ demands as an attempt to do a rerun of the film of 1991: cut train crews and extract devastating concessions across the board for free, all with the political connivance of the Republicans then in power.
But, the best laid plans, etc. Joe Biden won!
The railroads didn’t get their way. They complained that a release was premature, when the Democratic-majority NMB pressed for serious bargaining, then proffered voluntary arbitration, the start of the count-down to a PEB and possible self-help. This is exactly what the railroads didn’t want, as it would mean an endpoint while the Republicans control neither the White House (and its administrative agency appointees), or the Congress.
Biden appointed an Emergency Board, as provided for in the Railway Labor Act. PEBs were meant to involve distinguished persons, reporting on who is being unreasonable, in order to apply public pressure on the recalcitrant party. But they have evolved into something like ad-hoc interest arbitrations, although that is not their intended role under the Act. The RLA provides for voluntary interest arbitration, not mandatory litigation of wages and rules, decided by a panel of arbitrators.
This PEB 250 was pro labor. It didn’t go quite far enough on wages and kicked the can down the road on attendance policy reform. But having failed to play out the process in a boss-friendly political moment in Washington, the carriers totally failed to advance their agenda. To top it off, the Secretary of Labor and even the President himself leaned on the employers to address the operating crafts’ non-monetary concerns. So: tentative agreements averted a major transportation/supply chain disruption.
They care nothing for their workers, and, ironically, don’t give a damn about the shippers that they promised to service when they sought support for their mega-mergers. It is symptomatic of finance-driven late capitalism.
Score sheet: Unions got their friends to drag the railroads, kicking and screaming, to the bargaining table. Carriers got bupkis. Workers didn’t get everything they deserve, but made real gains WHILE DODGING THE MASSIVE CONCESSIONS THAT WOULD HAVE RESULTED IF THE RAILROADS WOULD HAVE DELAYED THE PROCESS LONG ENOUGH TO HAVE REPUBLICANS SITTING AT THE VETO POINTS.
This is a huge win. It is time to say “Yes!’, ratify, and celebrate!
But. (There is always a but!) The abusive nature of the railroads has so inflamed worker sentiments that there is a real desire to strike, to get more. The carriers are essentially monopolies that are seeking monopoly rents. They care nothing for their workers, and, ironically, don’t give a damn about the shippers that they promised to service when they sought support for their mega-mergers. It is symptomatic of finance-driven late capitalism.
I’ve led successful strikes, but I’ve also seen my wife replaced by scabs, in a lost strike in the early 1980’s. Strikes are valuable weapons in our arsenal. To be successful, they need to be part of a strategy grounded in concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Done right, they should be based on extensive planning, including structure tests to build and assess member support, participation, and resolve. If mishandled, they can lead to a panic and rout. Strikes are not to be trifled with. You deploy powerful weapons carefully.
So, if the ratifications fail, and we’re out on strike: What happens on Day 2? Day 3? What is the plan? Not to blow off steam, but to move the needle, back at the bargaining table? Will Congress get involved? If so, with a split Senate what mischief will the friends of the bosses play? Does resolution get pushed back to 2023?
We don’t know. I don’t want to find out.
Right now, there are some people urging a ‘no’ vote on ratification. Internet revolutionaries that have never organized a worker or actually led a successful strike manage to show up, play on members’ anger and frustration, and call for rejection and strike. But they offer nothing but magical thinking in how that might translate to a better deal. Check it out: One sect is openly seeking the destruction of the unions, to be replaced by non-existent “rank-and-file committees”. Another website urges a ‘no’ vote. Their agenda? Agnostic on who to support in the 2016 and 2020 elections, saying there was no real difference between the parties, they are promoting yet another dead-end third-party effort. They are offended that Biden acted to prevent a strike. Of course he did! The threat of a strike applies pressure for a deal, and a deal makes a strike unnecessary.
Who else wants you to vote ‘no’? Industry pundit Frank Wilner has been bellyaching that the NMB released the parties too soon, before the November election. (Yes, Frank, we screwed up the carriers’ plan!) In his Railway Age column, he features remarks of Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, that long-time enemy of the organized labor movement. Mix opines that, even if the tentative agreements are rejected by the membership, the union leaderships may impose it anyway. How touching, that he would suddenly show up, just now, to fan rank-and-file suspicions. No, they don’t come out and say ‘vote no’, but they clearly relish the disruption failed ratifications could cause.
These people have their own agendas. The ultra”left” winds up in an unholy alignment with the ultra-right and the bosses. When people tell you who they are, believe them…
Take the win. Ratify. A system that can be manipulated by the railroads to allow them to avoid serious give-and-take bargaining and, if the political winds blow their way, to transfer wealth from the workforce to their bloated coffers is not one that should go unchallenged. That is a heavy lift that should be, must be addressed. But a strike, now, won’t advance the ball, and runs the risk that the rail bosses will get a do-over.
You won. You deserve it, and more. And think about thinking strategically: how best to approach the next round? First identify the sources of the problem. Then, consider how we might work to reform a system that the railroads have held onto for decades because they often got politicians to give them labor concessions, concessions they can’t win at the bargaining table. You don’t have to be an elected officer to think about the big picture!
In Solidarity – Bill Bon
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Long Live Jeff Perry
By Gene Bruskin
Jeffrey B. Perry died this morning, Sept 24th at around 8am.
For 58 years Jeff was one of my closest friends. The intertwining of our lives from our first meeting is most remarkable.
My memory, part imagination, was wandering around the Princeton campus on the first day of my freshman year in 1964, feeling lost and totally out of place and walking right into Jeff.
That instant “collision”, turned into an instant connection – two working class guys at Princeton on basketball scholarships feeling alone. We traveled a long way since then, together, in parallel, mutually inspired, in solidarity, in touch, buddies, changing and challenging, in each other’s corner, on the phone, on the streets of Manhattan, always within reach. You couldn’t help but like Jeff, love Jeff. He had that type of charm and genuineness.
Now he is gone—but his life and work touched so many I couldn’t even begin to do that justice.
But I do know how he touched mine.
We struggled with our basketball careers and our studies at Princeton, eventually both transformed by the winds of change in the 60s as the counterculture and the anti-war movement seeped into us both and began to radicalize us.
We both majored in Psychology; I think it seemed like an easier major than the sciences.
We hitchhiked to Vassar and other women’s colleges, desperate, but unsuccessful, at meeting someone, to bring to all male Princeton for a weekend date, like all the prep school guys seemed to be doing
We worked at Camp Tonset on Cape Cod the summer of 1966 as counselors, and with Jeff’s encouragement, I made an unsuccessful (at first) attempt to pick up a beautiful woman on the beach who would eventually become my first wife.
We joined SDS our senior year, I think Jeff signed up first, and marched against the war in our first demo, in Newark.
While I taught in the South Bronx in 1968 to avoid the draft, I remember Jeff leaving the country and somehow, in Che style, hitching around South America for several months.
By the fall of 1969 Jeff was selling the Liberated Guardian on the streets of New York and visiting me regularly at my apartment on 190th St. in Manhattan. Jeff landed in Hoboken working with the Puerto Rican socialist party. We kept moving left, together.
In this tumultuous “Ocean Hill Brownsville” era in NYC, Jeff helped me figure out how to navigate the heated-up city politics surrounding the union strikes, antisemitism, race and class. Then, as I struggled in my second year of teaching, he gave me some clear advice that once again changed my life:
“Gene’” he said, after spending a day in my classroom at a neglected elementary school filled with poor and wonderful children of color, “You are part of the oppressive system by teaching here. This school is not here for learning – just for keeping these kids off the streets. You are losing the battle to be useful and helpful. (I had actually slapped a kid on the head for misbehaving, only to find that one of his parents had shot the other that morning). “You need to quit.”
Boom. It hit me in the gut – he was right. I quit shortly after that.
Jeff then had an answer to my next question: Now what? The draft was looming. “Come with me to Cuba on the March 1970 Venceremos Brigade to cut sugar cane in solidarity during ‘The Year of the Ten Million Tons.” While you are there send them postcards every day – they have to put them in your file and won’t want you after that.”
Going to Cuba changed the political trajectory of my life. We were exposed to revolutionaries from Africa, Vietnam, Uruguay and beyond, including meeting with Fidel. Our commitment to socialism and internationalism were permanently solidified.
Meanwhile, if I remember correctly, Jeff avoided the draft by disrupting his induction ceremony, jumping up and yelling about the war and handing out literature in support of the NLF.
Somehow in the 70s Jeff managed to get into the Harvard Ed school but left because of the elitism and liberal hypocrisy.
After that Jeff started working at the giant bulk mail center in Jersey City and became part of the historic wildcat national postal strike in 1978. He launched a 33-year career in the National Postal Mail handlers Union (NPMHU).
While his scholarly work was emerging, he stayed with Local 300 and by 1989 was part of a Black-led national rank and file insurgency to take over the union. (Part of LIUNA, the Laborers Union).
Not satisfied with helping to build a strong anti-racist rank and file local as Secretary Treasurer, Jeff was on an continuous mission to publicly expose the corrupt president and leader of LIUNA, Anthony Fosco, a man very few people ever choose to challenge.
Once again, Jeff changed my life, convincing the new NPMHU national leadership to hire me and my good friend Bill Fletcher to build a contract campaign for the 1990 national postal negotiations. That brought me to DC which led to many other jobs organizing with national unions, and became my home until today.
Backing up to the late 70s and eighties, while working part time at the “Bulk” as it was called, Jeff remarkably got his PHD at Columbia. During this period, he built a close relationship with Theodore Allen and invited me into Ted’s world, again a life-changing event for me.
Ted was a working-class self-educated scholar, former WV miner and union leader, who spent decades developing his research that led to the monumental, pioneering two-volume work on The Invention of the White Race. He broke new ground, starting in the 60’s, with a deep understanding of white skin privilege from a class perspective and the origin and centrality of white supremacy in understanding the history of the US working class. Knowing and loving Ted, a sweet and unpretentious man, changed my life and forever enriched my understanding of the profound connection between race and class.
When Ted died in 2005, Jeff became the executor of his works and his tireless efforts got Ted’s extensive writings out deep into the world, and his papers placed at the University of Mass, Amherst archives; appropriately, where WEB Dubois archives are preserved. (Here’s a link to Jeff Perry’s Stansbury Forum piece Ted Allen’s work: Theodore W. Allen’s Work On Centrality of Struggle Against White Supremacy Growing in Importance on 98th Anniversary of His Birth)
While at Columbia Jeff discovered the under-appreciated voice of Hubert Harrison, a brilliant early 20th century Caribbean-born writer and leader, known in his day as the Father of Harlem Radicalism, who electrified NYC during his short life. Harrison’s brilliant insights into the connections between race and class went unnoticed by history until Jeff decided to make it his life mission to find out about him and tell the world. He worked on this project until he died after completing a groundbreaking two volume work on Harrison’s remarkable life and ideas in 2021.
Not surprisingly, Jeff remained an internationalist and went with me and others in 1988 on a labor delegation to the West Bank sponsored by the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee. We returned and gave testimony to the Commerce Department challenging the GSP (trade preferences) given to Israel due to the extensive labor violations against Palestinian workers and trade unions. The images of Palestinians and their mistreatment by Israeli authorities were seared into our minds forever.
To say that Jeff was a central player in my life is an understatement of an understatement. One other crowning joint achievement happened in 1994 when Jeff and his wife Becky adopted their daughter Perri from China and my wife Evie and I followed shortly, adopting our daughter Nadja from Russia. Both girls were four years old. Being a father was a huge addition to both of our lives and Jeff spent decades, until his death, committed to his wonderful wife, Becky Hom while Evie and I have loved and lived our lives together to this day.
Jeff was a glorious model of a human beings. Not a man without flaws, but a man with great passion, intelligence, determination, caring, humility, generosity, and an unwavering drive toward justice. Those wishing to honor Jeff need only to read his works on Harrison and those of Jeff’s mentor Theodore Allen and follow the powerful insights they contain to help guide our struggle.
There is a song (by ‘Just Keith and Evelyn’) “May the work I’ve done speak for me.” I would add about Jeff, “May the life I have led speak for me”
Jeff Perry has passed. Long live Jeff Perry.
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