Anger is “the purest form of care.”
By Catha Worthman
It was a special thing to be Paul Worthman’s daughter. His “favorite oldest daughter,” he called me, and my sister Kristin, his “favorite youngest daughter.”
Pete was all the things you know – brilliant, passionate, funny, a jock (if lapsed somewhere in midlife when he was bargaining around the clock and living on coffee, fast food and cigars), anti-elitist, committed to making a world that wasn’t based on capitalism, racism, sexism, imperialism, or ecological exploitation – and not at all sentimental about it.
Pete also cared deeply about being a father, even if he didn’t go by the label “Dad.” (The reason being, Lin and Pete wanted Kristin and me to see them as people, not as their roles.) In the last month of his life, I was lucky to take time off work and spend long days again with him and Lin. One of the most moving things he said to me during this time was how he valued being able to talk with his closest friends about parenting.
He had a side of him that was deeply wise and generous, and I felt that I was seeing a part of the “real” Pete when that side emerged. It was the side that believed wholeheartedly in me and Kristin and gave us the freedom to take risks and grow, the same side maybe that helped him settle complex and contentious bargaining disputes, loved James Baldwin when he was in college, and sent us all articles that expressed deep grief about the war in Gaza — articles by Judy Butler, Masha Gessen, and one about a swim team in Jerusalem and the divisions that arose between Palestinian and Israeli kids after October 7.
He cared tremendously about Kristin’s and my political education and training. We grew up going to picket lines and demonstrations and were often given jobs to do. We knew how to ask someone to sign a petition or take a flyer just like we knew how to breathe, notwithstanding (at least my) natural shyness. When we drove around L.A. together (often heading to swim practice or a swim meet), he explained L.A.’s racially constructed geography, the history of each neighborhood and its inhabitants and workers, why there were food deserts, and it seemed like he knew everything that mattered.
Pete was for many decades my mentor and closest intellectual collaborator, maybe beginning with first grade when he coached me to ask my teacher why there were two lines (boys and girls): why not three? Breaking down categories from the beginning. When I was in fourth grade, he trained me how to do original source research in the census for a biography of Harriet Tubman. In high school, he tried to teach me how to write about dialectical materialism for a paper on Rockefeller and Eugene Debs. When I worked as an organizer and researcher in the labor movement, he collaborated with me on strategy and shared complaints about the bosses and corrupt union leaders. When I later became a lawyer, I talked with him about my most important cases before I argued them. Some of the best advice I got came from his training union members to present grievances to an arbitrator: Start with a simple, compelling sentence, “This is a case about …”
There are so many stories I want to tell, but since it’s the holiday season I’ll focus on a couple appropriate to this time of year. One is that I gave him the sweatshirt that he wore almost every day for the last three years: a picture of Marx (looking a lot like Santa) with the slogan, “All I Want for Christmas is the Means of Production.” I bought him two new sweatshirts for his last birthday, including a fresh one and one that said “I’m Dreaming of a Red Christmas,” figuring he could use a refresh. But he only wondered why I spent the money on them. (One of the things I realized about him, though, in looking at old photos, was that Paul Worthman had a stylish side earlier in life… maybe we’ll get to post those photos sometime.)
Pete could be grumpy about “bourgeois holidays,” but there were many years when he channeled the Christmas spirit, like the Marxist Santa he was. Red diaper babies though we were, Kristin and I grew up waking up before dawn Christmas morning excited to see what was in our stockings. Pete would wear the red Santa hat – like Lin’s dad Lou did before him – and hand them out. Inside were funny little items from the discount dollar store Pik n Save, all with witty comments written on the tags. Along with Christmas bathrobes, slippers, books, bikes, and other traditional items, we got gifts like the Class Struggle board game, and – my favorite – one I received as an adult, this tear apart Boss Doll the year I was non-stop complaining about my boss.
When Alex and Tenaya were born, I got to go with Pete to Pik n Save and acquire discount holiday items to try to give them the same experience. He loved his grandkids both so much, of course, and I’m so glad they both got to spend time with him before he died.
Pete was raised Jewish, although decidedly atheist and anti-Zionist as an adult, so some years we also celebrated a version of Hanukkah – a version where the workers triumphed because they collectivized their oil, because it lasted longer that way and everyone had enough when they shared.
Not a holiday story, but one I think of often as a highlight. After the Soviet Union collapsed, like many leftists Pete was depressed. Not that he had ever been anything other than a deeply critical, anti-Stalinist, but at least the U.S.S.R. represented the possibility of an alternative to capitalism and support for such alternatives around the world. But then … the Rangers won the Stanley Cup! Pete was transformed, and his spirits lifted. I saw them lifted again when the Dodgers finally won the World Series just before he died. The Bums finally succeeded, just like he knew they would if they ever listened to his advice.
While Pete was in hospice, I reflected often on the gifts I got from being his daughter. Unfortunately, I didn’t get his talent for ball sports (despite his giving me a baseball glove to sleep with when I was an infant), but I hope I can carry on his vitality, energy, passion, confidence, loyalty to his people and causes, and commitment to making a better world. I see those things in my kids, too.
And I have realized, too, I’m grateful I got to grow up close to Pete’s full expression of emotion, including anger — a gift that can sometimes be hard to appreciate, and may be one of his defining characteristics to the people who know him best. Anger, says the poet David Whyte, properly understood, “is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt.” Anger, he continues, is “the purest form of care.” There is no real wisdom, no real commitment to transformation, without anger. “The internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.” If you read this essay, I think you’ll recognize Paul Worthman.. I miss him.
One last thing, although I want to keep sharing more: Pete sent me cassette tapes regularly my first year at college, when I was missing home. He passed on his love of what we could call anti-fascist music to Kristin and me, and we made this playlist. Hope it reminds you of him, too.
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Exit, Laughing
By Gerry Daley
Irascible. Relentless. Impatient. Hilarious. Generous. Going through my inventory of adjectives applicable to Paul B. Worthman (“PBW” was the invariable email signature during our times of working for the same union), these are the ones that floated immediately to the top. But the theme that runs through all of the memories is teaching. PBW, a natural-born educator, was always and everywhere teaching all of us how to:
- Be good union members
- Be in solidarity with all workers locally, nationally, internationally
- Fight the power of unaccountable, illegitimate bosses (i.e., ALL bosses)
- Fight racists and sexists
- Fight fascists wherever we found them (see “unaccountable, illegitimate bosses” supra)
- Be leaders in a Wobbly sense
- Re-introduce the “C” word (class) to American workers, even those in show business
- Have a lot of laughs
- Teach our fellow-workers how to do all of the above
By now I can’t remember how I first met PBW – who it was that introduced us, or on what campaign we first intersected. It might have been through Lou Siegel; it might have been the mid-‘90s iteration of J For J. In any event, when I was part of a small reform movement within AFTRA’s Los Angeles Local in the mid-‘90s, I helped PBW get hired on as an organizing staffer working with both the Local and National Union. We had a lot of fun (and some modest albeit temporary victories) trying to bring AFTRA back to its radical roots.[1] When I left AFTRA for the Writers Guild, PBW took over my job as director of the AFTRA L.A. Local’s broadcast department and continued to torment the networks (and some of the reactionaries in the AFTRA command structure). When I left the Writers Guild several years later, I landed in one of PBW’s old jobs: as representation specialist at the California Faculty Association. It was fascinating to go through their archives (the Union was founded in the early 1980s, and PBW was present at the creation) and see how much of the structure of faculty rights in the Cal State University system was created by PBW and Ed Purcell. Even today, forty years later, CSU faculty still live in a house those two built.
Maybe the most fun we ever had on a project was team-teaching a class at L.A. Trade Tech in 2004 on “U.S. Working Class & Cinema,” combining most of our mutual obsessions (baseball is another one, so we managed to work in “Bingo Long And His Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings”). Our students were a group of 25 or so workers, members of various L.A. unions from all kinds of trades, who watched some great movies, read some great articles and book chapters (gathering the readings might have been the most fun for both of us), and interacted with a stellar line-up of show-biz guest speakers. We kept looking for a chance to do that class again, but our insane workloads never aligned.
When I left CFA – I seem to use the expression “When I left [Union X]” a lot[2] – wonder what that’s about? – and went to work for the California Nurses Association, I continued to study under the master. He was always available for a consult and ready to offer creative solutions to organizing, grievance or bargaining problems, even after he retired and he and Linda absconded to their beautiful craftsman bungalow in Berkeley. Seems appropriate for a craftsman of contract language and campaign strategies.
In these dark months of the phony war period leading to the coming Anschluss of January 20, it is the laughing that I will especially remember. PBW never stopped laughing at the idiocy and pretentions of the bosses, oligarchs and fascists, and neither should we.
Syllabus “U.S. Working Class & Cinema
[1] AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, was founded as AFRA (pre-TV) in the mid-1930s by a cadre of left performers in the radio production hubs of New York and Hollywood. It was, until its back was broken by the blacklist in the mid-1950s, the most progressive and most effective Union in show business. For example, AFTRA negotiated the first industry-funded pension in entertainment, and a 100% residual for ANY re-use of TV programs. If you want to know why so much great LIVE TV was made during the medium’s so-called golden age of the ‘50s, it was because AFTRA made it just as expensive to re-run a Playhouse 90 episode as to produce a new show, thus generating a ton of work for actors. That lasted only a short while, until SAG (under the “leadership” of its then-president– wait for it – Ronald Reagan), as part of its 50-year raid on AFTRA’s jurisdiction in TV, undercut the 100% residual with a descending scale of payments for each subsequent re-use. Thus was born the age of re-runs (and the phenomenon of TV actors receiving residuals checks of ONE CENT, see image below). For anyone interested in AFRA’s great years and the damage done by the blacklist, see Harvey, Rita Morley, Those Wonderful, Terrible Years: George Heller and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Southern Illinois University Press (1996).
[2] I don’t think I got to use this expression quite as often as PBW did. Union work is notoriously precarious for shit-stirrers, and PBW’s list of one-time employers is truly impressive. But he left the kind of trail that all of us strive for: universally beloved by his members, universally hated by the employers, universally feared by timid union bureaucrats. The Wobbly Trifecta!
Paul Worthman, Presente!
By Glenn Rothner
“Who the hell is Della Bahan, and what the hell is her name doing on my brief?” Paul, then Director of Representation for the California Faculty Association, left that message for me. I had represented CFA since its inception many years earlier, in 1979. To my embarrassment, I had forgotten to tell Paul that due to the press of other urgent matters, I had asked my highly capable then associate Della for help with a brief.
Paul’s message was a not so gentle reminder that our by then longstanding relationship had blossomed because, our different but overlapping roles in the union’s work notwithstanding, we treated each with respect, as colleagues and as comrades. This minor incident was but a blip in a 45-year relationship that began as client-lawyer but grew into as continuous and fast a friendship as I’ve ever had.
I met Paul when he worked for AFSCME Council 36. My first impression was unfavorable. It wasn’t his clothes. (In fact, his determined lack of style grew on me over the years.) He seemed harried, mostly deflecting my questions with questions of his own. I wondered later whether he was testing me, trying to decide whether it was worth his time to teach me about organizing and representation strategy and tactics, in return for any legal assistance I might offer with a mere three years of lawyering under my belt. Perhaps he took a chance on me because I had spent those first few years as a lawyer with the UFW, because he had a generous spirit, or because he loved teaching.
And what a teacher. I don’t remember Paul ever using the phrase “leadership development,” but he shared his valuable experience unsparingly, without patronizing, not only with existing leaders but with members and potential members alike, because his abiding default premise, despite the occasional mismatch or disappointment, was that greater leadership, or greater involvement, could indeed be developed. And as is true for any skilled mentor, he knew well when to remain silent or to step aside.
At some point I passed the test. I can’t say when, but I knew it had happened because we continued working with each no matter where Paul’s peripatetic path took him – AFTRA, UWUA Local 132, CFA, SEIU, the LADWP Load Dispatchers, and so on – sometimes at his invitation and sometimes at mine.
Along the way, our friendship took on the characteristics of family – vacations together in the Pyrenees and British Columbia, coming together for holidays, lifecycle events, and for support in times of need. At the top of this page, sitting on Paul’s shoulders during an Iraq War protest march down Hollywood Boulevard in 2003, is our son Jacobo, who was born on May Day in 1997. When Jacobo was born, I called Paul from the hospital. It was a test. I asked him, “What is the most auspicious day for the child of a union lawyer to be born?” He failed the test, initially. But by the time he called me back he had figured it out. Like the rest of us, he wasn’t perfect, but he was pretty damn good!
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Paul, You were a great friend, comrade, and pal
By Steve Brier
“What always came through in Paul’s teaching was his abundant intellect and sheer passion for working-class history”
I met Paul in 1970-71 when I was a doctoral student in U.S. history at UCLA and Paul had just started teaching in the department as an instructor. I was soon assigned as his teaching assistant in an undergraduate U.S. history course (it might have been on southern or post-Civil War history; I can’t recall). Paul had his own distinctive teaching style then: He was a provocative lecturer, always challenging his students; he tended to favor flannel or work shirts and blue overalls as his professorial “costume.” But what always came through in Paul’s teaching was his abundant intellect and sheer passion for working-class history. Paul taught me how to be a better labor historian and how to think about the conflicted relationship between issues of race and class in U.S. history. I also learned a lot from watching Paul teach, reading his work, and listening to him engage with and encourage students (including me). He even let me lecture in his class (an “honor” for a grad student) about my own research work, which paralleled his work on interracial unionism in the coal industry (he wrote about Alabama; I did West Virginia). When I set out to do my first coal miner research work back East in 1972, Paul made a point of introducing me to the distinguished labor historian David Montgomery, his dear friend, and encouraged me to make a pilgrimage to visit with Montgomery in his Pittsburgh home and to tell him about my work. I like to think I carried over many of those lessons that Paul taught me in my own subsequent writing and teaching in what has turned out to be my four-decade long academic career.
My daughter Jennie was born in January 1971 soon after I met Paul. Since Paul and Linda had already had Catha (who is a few years older than Jennie), and were about to have Krissy, we all gravitated to the struggle to create and sustain the UCLA Child Care Center (CCC), which was an unrealized and much needed institution at UCLA in those years. One of the hallmarks of that student- and faculty-led struggle that the Briers and the “Worthpeople” (as we called them then so as to clearly indicate our opposition to patriarchy!) helped to lead was that the CCC needed to be open to all members of the campus community: students, faculty, and staff; that it be formed as a co-op in which all parents had to put in a minimum of 5 hours of work a week, not only to reduce costs for students and staff but also to encourage buy-in by the parents; and that the center accept babies as young a few months old, an important concession to young students who were starting families and going to school. The UCLA administration refused to accede to our non-negotiable demands for the CCC, including for a dedicated campus space for the center and provision of necessary support funding to pay unionized staff. When the UCLA chancellor, Chuck Young, refused to negotiate with us we decided to stage a sit-in in his office. After we took over the office we discovered that Young collected very expensive what were then called “Oriental” rugs, which covered the floors of his substantial office space. We quickly decided to reach out to student parents involved in the child care struggle who had young babies and recruited a handful of babies who were known to “projectile vomit” their formula. We brought them to Young’s office where they “did their thing”; the rugs looked polka-dotted after half a day of babies lolling on the floor! Young caved in soon after and authorized the child care center, which is still going more than half a century later. Paul, Pam Brier (my wife then) and I remained actively involved in steering the CCC through difficult times over the next three years as members of the parents’ steering committee. Paul and I even resigned in principled protest over some outrage (the exact nature of which I can’t quite seem to recall at this point). We submitted our joint letter of resignation to Pam Brier, who was then serving as the chair of the board. One thing that you learned when you did politics with Paul was there was no compromise or room for sentimentality, even when it involved a member of your own family!
That both the Brier and Worthman families had girl children was another basis for our bonding. I always admired the way Paul and Linda had raised Catha, who always acted smart, self-assured, and independent, and how they carried that approach over after Krissy was born a few years later, despite Krissy’s medical issues. Paul and Linda were my models as parents of how to raise smart, tough, and independent girls. My daughter, Jennie, is indeed that kind of adult, a fact that I attribute to the model that I observed Paul and Linda living.
Paul and Linda’s house in Mar Vista was a magnet for progressive UCLA faculty and graduate students, who gravitated to their home for meals, music and political and ideological conversations. Paul also recruited his graduate students to help with home improvement projects. He once put me in charge (or perhaps I foolishly volunteered) to build a low brick wall in their backyard that may have had something to do with creating a dedicated space for Linda’s keen gardening skills. I plunged in to the project (not knowing what the hell I was doing) and though I managed to build a “wall” with brick and mortar I can say that my one true regret is that I didn’t build a better, straighter wall in the Worthmans’ backyard, lo those many decades ago!
I was also involved with Paul in what proved to be the tumultuous politics of the UCLA History department, which were endless and frustrating. One moment is illustrative of how Paul approached dealing with his fellow UCLA faculty members and why he ultimately ended up leaving academia for a far more important career as a union organizer and negotiator. The department always had pretensions of becoming the Harvard or Yale of the West. In one key moment in the early 1970s the department big-wigs decided to try to recruit the old school historian and Lincoln scholar David Donald from Harvard to join the UCLA faculty. Because Paul had a well-deserved reputation as a contrarian among his faculty colleagues, they dispatched Frank Gattell, a friend and senior faculty mentor of Paul’s, to make sure that Paul would “behave” in the faculty gathering to welcome Donald to the department. Gattell was especially concerned that Paul shed his work shirt and overalls and be sure to wear a tie to the meeting. Paul assured him that he would indeed wear a tie to meet Donald. And when the time came for Paul to enter the faculty lounge late for the meeting with David Donald, he was not wearing one tie; he was wearing two ties! This was Paul’s way of assuring his faculty colleagues that he knew how to behave like a proper faculty member. Needless to say, Paul didn’t last too many years after that before he made the absolutely right decision to switch careers to his first love: labor organizing.
Paul: You were a great friend, comrade, and pal and I was glad I was able to tell you before you died how much I admired you and what you stood up for in your entire life and career. You will be missed and remembered by me and legions of other family, friends, fans, and comrades.
Your comrade in peace and power,
Steve Brier
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In memory of Paul B. Worthman – November 11, 1940 – November 3, 2024
By Peter Olney
On Sunday, November 3 Paul passed away at his home in Berkeley surrounded by his family. Always a thoughtful planner he timed things just right. His beloved Dodgers won the World Series against the hated Yankees on Wednesday, October 30 and Paul checked out on Sunday, November 3, 2 days prior to the election of Donald J. Trump.
Paul was a dear friend and comrade to many of us throughout the country and particularly in the labor movement in California.
We at The Stansbury Forum want to remember “Pete” Worthman. We have reached out to family, friends and colleagues for their memories. We decided to dedicate several episodes of the Forum to our friend. We start with my tribute to Paul at his 60th birthday party in Los Angeles in November of 2000.
The Measure of the Man: Worthperson at Sixty
On occasions like this it is customary to look for essence, or that one defining characteristic that captures the honoree. When I think about Paul “Pete” Worthman I think about the quotation: To afllict the Comfortable and Comfort the afflicted.
Paul has won our everlasting respect as a tireless advocate for working people. He has been the principal spokesperson for thousands of workers seeking justice at the bargaining table and in the streets.
When Worthman goes to the table you get a first class organizer, lawyer, researcher and accountant all rolled into one. Artistes in Hollywood, utility workers at the gas company, healthcare workers at Kaiser, 8000 janitors in commercial office buildings, California state university faculty, airline pilots and all kinds of public employees have all benefited from Worthman’s smarts, skills and toughness.
Bargaining committee members and union members wherever Paul has worked remember him for his ability to dispel the boss’s logic, and their fuzzy numbers. In short he has been a first class afflicter of the powerful and the comfortable.
But what I love about Paul is his dogged irreverence and his capacity to afflict all of us too:
- How about those outrageous neckties? Is he wearing one tonite?
- How about the wordplays that transform venerable LA educational institutions from USC and UCLA to USK and UKLA?
- His own surname was transformed to Worthperson as a playful gender equality statement. A Dodger utility infielder named Mike Sharperson followed Paul’s lead.
- I can never forget Paul’s actions at my wedding in 1985 after my wife’s cousin Eddy went out and bought some extra beer for the guests. Cousin Eddy liked Coors. No sooner had the beer been delivered to the kitchen at the Grace Simmons lodge in Elsysian Park than I heard Worthman cursing “phony liberals” and pouring all the cans down the sink!
- His etiquette and breeding at dinner are also an experience. I remember a Southwest nouvelle meal once replete with all the presentation perfection and lack of chow that those cuisines thrive on. A little dash of ketchup substitutes for a hearty helping of vegetables. After Paul feasted on medallions of beef that looked more like dimes, it was time for dessert. The waiter asked Paul what he wanted for sweets and Paul promptly and boldly replied: “the biggest thing you have on the menu”.
- You have heard Fred Sollowey’ s tale of Paul’s politique encounter with a Soviet political commissar and Rene Talbot’s story of Paul eloquent upbraiding of the City of Santa Monica.
- You all no doubt have your own story of Worthman afflicting you with some irreverent remark or aggressive action. I value those memories and we love him for them.
One of the great puzzle’s of Paul has been solved for me in the process of organizing this tribute. When I first met Worthman in 1983, and started going over to his place in Mar Vista, I was perplexed by the fact that Linda, Catha and Kristin all called him Pete. I never asked why, I just assumed it was some intimate family thing that was none of my business. Turns out, as many of you know, Pete is a nomer that Paul chose in junior high because he liked a Brooklyn Dodger named Harold Patrick Reiser, nicknamed and known to the Dodger faithful as Pistol Pete, or just Pete. He was a St. Louis native born in 1919 who in his first year with the Dodgers, one year after Paul was born in 1941, batted .343 and won the batting title. He was 5’11” and weighed 185. He played third base and the outfield and was known for his fearless playing style. Sound familiar? Many say he could have been one of the all-time greats, but he was injured running into outfield fences, and walls.
He along with Pee Wee Reese refused to sign the petition circulated by Dodger outfielder Dixie Walker that asked Dodger players to declare their unwillingness to play on the same team with the first Black ballplayer in the majors, Jackie Robinson. Paul adopted the name Pete in junior high and carried it all through high school forcing friends, and family alike to call him Pete and not Paul. It wasn’t until noted historian C. Vann Woodward at Yale called him Paul that he permitted folks thereafter to use the name most of us know him by.
Paul was not an armchair fan of the Brooklyn Bums. Many of you may not know that Paul was a fine athlete in many sports. He was a basketball guard, a track sprinter and a third baseman. He was invited in the summer of 1959 to play ball in the Cape Cod League in Massachusetts. Baseball fanatics know that this has become the premier summer baseball league for college players, and many pros have caught the eye of their first pro scouts in this league because it is the only amateur league that uses wooden bats. Paul worked as a shipyard worker in that summer and played third base for the Chatham A’s.
So, I want to call Paul “Pete” Worthman, a very worth person, to come up and cap off this evening by saying a few words himself.
Happy Sixtieth Paul!
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Democratic socialist post-election musings
By Tom Gallagher
Had Bernie Sanders won the 2016 Democratic nomination and gone on to defeat Donald Trump — as most polls suggested he had a better chance of doing than Hillary Clinton, the actual nominee — he would be now entering his lame duck period, and perhaps Donald Trump might not figure in the current discussion much at all. (Alternately, had the party poobahs not closed ranks behind Biden with lightning speed to deny Sanders the nomination in 2020, he might have just completed his campaign for a second term — which he clearly would have been fit to serve.)
Eight years on
Sanders did not succeed in bringing democratic socialism to the White House, of course, but he did deliver the message to quite a number of other households during the Democratic nomination debates. As a result, two presidential cycles on, democratic socialists have now run and won races all the way up to the U.S. House, and democratic socialism has now become a “thing” in American politics. Not a big thing, really, but most definitely a thing. Between the Republicans, right-wing Democrats and the corporate news-media, it’s a thing that certainly draws more negative mention than positive — but given that its critique of American society pointedly includes Republicans, right-wing Democrats and the corporations that own the news-media, we could hardly expect it to be otherwise.
During this time, self described democratic socialists have been elected and they’ve been unelected. They’ve exerted influence beyond their numbers; and they’ve also struggled with the hurly burly of political life. Some have been blown away by big money; some have contributed to their own downfall. In other words, they’ve run the gamut of the electoral political world — if still largely at the margins. Any thoughts of a socialist wave following the first Sanders campaign or the election of the “Squad” soon bent to the more grueling reality of trying to eke out a new congressional seat or two per term — or defend those currently held, with efforts on the other levels of government playing out in similar fashion. But at the least we can say that the U.S. has joined the mainstream of modern world politics to the point where the socialist viewpoint generally figures in the mix — albeit in a modest way.
Lesser of two evils?
The 2024 race stood out from the presidential election norm both for the return of one president, Trump’s return being the first since Grover Cleveland’s in 1892 — also the only other time a president reoccupied the White House after having been previously voted out; and for the withdrawal of another president, Joe Biden’s exit from the campaign being the first since Lyndon Johnson’s in 1968. And, just like Hubert Humphrey in ’68, Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee — without running in any primaries. Both of them inherited, and endorsed the policies of the administration in which they occupied the number two office, which included support of a war effort opposed by a significant number of otherwise generally Democratic-leaning voters.
In Johnson’s case, the withdrawal of his candidacy had everything to do with that opposition, and the shock of Minnesota Senator Gene McCarthy drawing 42 percent of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote running as an anti-Vietnam War candidate. But when Humphrey won the Democratic nomination and the equally hawkish Richard Nixon took the Republican slot, the substantial number of war opponents felt themselves facing the prospect of choosing the lesser of two evils. The dismal choice presented in that race soured untold numbers of voters on the left who came to consider a choice between two evils to be the norm for presidential elections. Over time, the hostility faded, with most coming to judge the choice offered less harshly, now more one of picking the less inadequate of two inadequate programs — until now. The intensity of opposition to the Biden-Harris support of Israel’s war on Palestine has certainly not approached that shown toward the Johnson-Humphrey conduct of the American war against Vietnam. But for a substantial number of people who considered it criminal to continue supplying 2000 pound bombs to Israel’s relentless ongoing disproportionate obliteration of Gaza in retaliation for an atrocity that occurred on a day more than a year past, this was a “lesser of two evils” choice, to a degree unmatched since the bad old Humphrey-Nixon days.
And yet, while we don’t know how many opted not to vote for president at all, we do know that those who did vote almost all did make that choice. Even with a Democratic nominee preferring the campaign companionship of former third-ranking House Republican Liz Cheney to that of Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian democratic socialist, third party votes did not prove to be a factor. There was no blaming Jill Stein this time.
Democratic Socialists of America
Organizationally, the greatest beneficiary of the Sanders campaigns has been the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Ironically, while Bernie has been the nation’s twenty-first century avatar of socialism — generally understood to be a philosophy of collective action — he himself is not a joiner, being a member neither of the Democratic Party, whose presidential nomination he has twice sought; nor DSA, an organization he has long worked with. With about 6,000 members, the pre-Sanders campaign DSA was the largest socialist organization in an undernourished American left. In the minds of some long time members, their maintenance of the socialist tradition bore a certain similarity to the work of the medieval Irish monks who copied ancient manuscripts whose true value would only be appreciated in the future. But when the post-Sanders surge came, there DSA was — popping up in the Google search of every newly minted or newly energized socialist looking to meet people of like mind. Membership mushroomed to 100,000. Organizational inflation on that order that does not come without growing pains — the sort of problems that any organization covets, but problems nonetheless.
DSA’s very name reflects the troubled history of the socialist movement. In the minds of early socialists the term “democratic socialist” would have been one for Monty Python’s Department of Redundancy Department. The whole point of socialism, after all, was to create a society that was more democratic than the status quo, extending democratic rights past the political realm into that of economics, and the difference between socialism and communism was pretty much a matter that only scholars concerned themselves with. But with the devolution of the Russian Revolution into Stalinism, “communism,” the word generally associated with the Soviet Union, came to mean the opposite of democratic to much of the world. And in the U.S. in particular, “socialism” too seemed tainted, to the point where socialists felt the need to tag “democratic” onto it.
DSA was an organization, then, where people most definitely did not call themselves communists. It was not the place to go to find people talking about the “dictatorship of the proletariat,”“vanguard parties,” or other phrases reminiscent of the 1920s or 30s left. Among its members, the Russian and Chinese revolutions, while certainly considered interesting and significant — fascinating even, were not events to look to for guidance in contemporary American politics.
And then the expansion. A lot of previously unaffiliated socialists, pleasantly surprised — shocked even — to find the idea entering the public realm, decided it was time to join up and do something about it. The curious also came, eager to learn more of what the whole thing was all about, maybe suffering from imposter syndrome: “Do I really know enough to call myself a socialist?” And then there were the already socialists who would never have thought to join DSA in the pre-Sanders inflation era, some with politics that DSA’s name had been chosen to distinguish the organization from. The expanded DSA was a “big tent,” “multi-tendency” organization. Soon there was a Communist Caucus in DSA — along with a bunch of others. Whether the internal dissonance can be contained and managed long-run remains to be seen, but then what is politics but a continuous series of crises? It’s to the organization’s credit that it has held itself together thus far, but for the moment some hoping to grapple with the questions of twenty-first century socialism may encounter local chapter leadership still finding their guidance in reading the leaves in the tea room of the Russian Revolution. Initial stumbles in the organization’s immediate response to the Hamas attack in Israel prompted a spate of long-time member resignations — some with accompanying open letters — but the trickle did not turn into a torrent.
In the meantime, DSA, now slimmed down to 80-some-odd thousand members, has also struggled with the more immediate, public, and arguably more important question of working out a tenable relationship with those members holding elected political office. While the organization encourages members to seek office and benefits from their successes, it understandably does not want to be associated with public figures with markedly divergent politics. At the same time, office-holding members are answerable to their electorate, not DSA. In the light of some recent experiences on this front, Sanders’s non-joiner stance starts to look somewhat prescient. DSA’s long-term relevance will depend on its ability to carve out a meaningful role as a socialist organization that is not and does not aspire to being a political party.
2028 and beyond
Much of the post-election Democratic Party fretting has quite appropriately centered on the degree to which it has lost the presumption of being the party of the working-class. One solution to the problem was succinctly, and improbably, formulated by the centrist New York Times columnist David Brooks: “Maybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption — something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable.” By Jove, you’ve got it, Mr. Brooks: Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable! But Brooks goes on to fret, “Can the Democratic Party do this? Can the party of the universities, the affluent suburbs and the hipster urban cores do this?”
Can students, teachers, suburbanites and hipsters “embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption?” Well sure, quite a few have already done so — twice now. The roadblock clearly does not lie there. The real problem is those uncomfortable with the idea of a Democratic Party no longer aspiring to the impossible status of being both the party of the working-class and the party of billionaire financiers. For a look into the void at the core of the Democratic Party we need only think back to that moment in February, 2020 when it began to look like the “Bernie Sanders-style disruption” just might pull it off and the party closed ranks, with candidates Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, and Tom Steyer scurrying out of the race and endorsing Joe Biden in a matter of just six days. None of this underscored the party’s determination not to turn its back on the billionaires so clearly as the fact that at the time of his withdrawal Bloomberg was in the process of spending a billion bucks of his “own money” in pursuit of the nomination. Obama’s fingerprints were never found on these coordinated withdrawals but most observers draw the obvious conclusions. And we know that the prior nominee, executive whisperer Hillary Clinton, was certainly all in on the move. Herein lies our problem, Mr. Brooks.
But how? And who? The how is the easy question in the sense that Bernie Sanders unforgettably demonstrated how much the right presidential primary candidate can alter the national political debate — even when the Democratic Party establishment pulls out all the stops to block them; and even if succeeds in doing so. At the same time, the difficulty in winning and holding congressional seats shows that, while self evidently necessary in the long run, those campaigns do not have the same galvanizing potential. Who? At the moment, the only person whose career thus far suggests such potential is New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. But then a lot can happen in four years. And Donald Trump’s reelection portends four years of American politics bizarre beyond anything we’ve seen before.
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This piece first appeared on Portside
This Was A Very Close Election, Trump Won, But Got Less Than 50% of The Popular Vote, Now Let’s Act Like That and Build On It – Monroe County, Pennsylvania – A Case Study
By Jay Schaffner
With a much larger population than previously, with a larger youth population, the erosion of vast numbers of voters throughout the country is cause for alarm – for voting rights and for democracy and warrants further study and exploration.
Kamala Harris lost the election, her vote was just under 7-million votes less than that of Joe Biden in 2020. Four million fewer voted nationally than four years ago, due both to a large stay-at-home vote as a protest by voters to the continued war in Gaza, as well as to increased voter suppression by Republicans in many states. Still the turnout of registered voters was higher than it was four years ago.
Donald Trump won, but he did not get a majority of the national vote. This year’s election had the highest voter turnout of eligible voters – 63.68% of the last five presidential elections, according to The Election Lab at the University of Florida, which has tracked data for all elections since 1789. Trump’s winning vote was the lowest since Bush in 2000.
The reality is that Trump is a minority president, polling less than 50% of the national popular vote. In the battle-ground states, Trump won by less than 1% in Wisconsin; and less than 2% in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, the three “Blue line states.” He barely won by two percent in Georgia and squeaked by with just 3% margins in both Nevada and North Carolina. squeaking by with 1% margins in many states.
Voter turnout (percentage of registered voters voting) was higher this year than the pandemic year turnout of 62% in 2020, when most voting was done by mail; then voting was done with Donald Trump in office, and voters were voting against the reality of what another four years of pandemic Donald would be for themselves, their families, their communities and the country.
Voter turnout of registered voters was higher than the then high of 62.17 in 2008, when voters were voting for hope and against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with Barack Obama running against the reality of the GOP and George Bush.
In this year’s election, with a larger voter pool than any previous election, Kamala Harris received more than four million more votes than Obama did in 2008 and more than eight million more votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
With a much larger population than previously, with a larger youth population, the erosion of vast numbers of voters throughout the country is cause for alarm – for voting rights and for democracy and warrants further study and exploration.
Racism and misogyny were a factor. But they were not the factor that was predicted by nearly all the pre-election polls. The polls for the most part got it wrong, with the exception that it would be a very close race. There was no major defection of African American men to Donald Trump. Similarly, there was no major machismo swing towards Donald Trump – the Hispanic male vote for Trump was 48%, with 49% voting for Harris, reflected a division in the population as whole.
There was no major massive gender gap between women going for Harris and men going for Trump. The one place where there was a significant gender gap was among youth voters under age 30 – here the gender gap was 30 points with young men breaking for Trump! (Trump sees high number of young voters in the 2024 election (NBC) Post-election data in fact show that there was nearly an even split between men and women nationally going for both Harris and Trump, with some notable exceptions:
- There are more women in the population, and more women are registered to vote, and the reality is more women of all races voted for Trump, except for African American women
- Roughly 53% of white women ended up voting for Donald Trump (only 10% of African American women voted for Trump, white 39% of Hispanic women voted for him, according to the 2024 Fox News Voter Analysis).
- There was a higher youth vote for Trump than was anticipated – 46% of the age 18-27 vote, slightly higher among Millennials, but 51% among Gen-X-ers.
- Seniors nearly evenly divided, with Boomers going 51% for Trump, 47% for Harris, but those Seniors over 79 going for Trump at an even higher rate – 57%.
In all seven of the battle-ground states, the voter turnout of registered voters was much higher than nationally.
Did voters in other states not turn out because their votes didn’t matter? If one looks at the New York State vote going back to 2008, the answer is no. There was a higher turnout of registered voters this year than in any of the previous presidential elections going back to 2008, however statewide
there were 700,000 fewer voters than in the 2000 election. In a heavily Blue state, this can be
counted as voters that stayed home and did not turn out to vote for Harris-Walz for a variety of
reasons.
Harris raised more money than Donald Trump and the GOP, so what went wrong? What happened?
Monroe County, Pennsylvania – A Case Study
I spent ten weeks knocking on doors in Monroe County in Northeast Pennsylvania, NEPA as it is called. Pennsylvania, one of the seven battle-ground swing states with 19 electoral votes, was considered the “prize.” It was supposed to be part of the Blue Wall, along with Michigan and Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania has close to ten million eligible voters, of which so far 7,025,000 ballots have been counted. Everyone is familiar with the population rich anchors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The more than fifteen counties that comprise the NEPA region of the state cast one-and-a-quarter million of those votes. That is why Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance anchored much of their campaigns in this part of the state.
Over those ten weeks I personally knocked on more than 2000-2500 doors in different parts of Monroe Country. Along with my wife, we emailed every friend, co-worker, relative, neighbor, many of the musicians that I had represented for over twenty years, activists that I had known and worked with. The response was incredible – 46 responded and came out to join our group in Monroe County, a group of us that had worked together going back to the 2008 Obama campaign. We worked with the local Monroe County Democratic Organization and the Harris-Walz Campaign. Some came for a day, some for the weekend, some for longer. Additionally, friends helped email more than 5000 postcards to Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan voters.
Our country came out of the McCarthy period to end Jim Crow, to pass Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation, and then to help end the war in Viet Nam. And two years after Richard Nixon swept the 1972 election, this is the country that drove him from office and nearly impeached him the following year.
Can we do this again?
I think we can, but we need to do this working differently, reaching out to those that voted, for various reasons, for Trump, and at the same time, in defense of reproductive rights, to raise the minimum wage and numerous other ballot measures in states from one end of the country to the other.
Some say the Economic Issues Were Not Emphasized – Not Enough – Those some were not in northeast Pennsylvania.
Along state highways there were signs saying, “Kamala Wants to Raise the Minimum Wage.” The minimum wage in Pennsylvania is $7.25. Those some did not attend the mass rally that I did in Wilkes Barre, where both economic issues and reproductive rights were stressed.
Could there have been more signs? Sure. Could there have been better literature? Sure. The message at the rallies from friends who attended the rallies with Tim Walz was that he hit on the same issues. The campaign did not control how the news media covered those rallies.
The campaign did control the message in the ads – these could have been vastly improved on.
The volunteers that we brought out came because of the existential threat of fascism. That does not mean that this was the number one issue on the minds of voters. Talking with voters at their doors, the number one issue was prices they paid for goods in the stores, jobs or lack of jobs, and inflation. After the fact polling shows that .as well.
But changing the message when you are canvassing, and when the infrastructure of the campaign is doing something else is a daunting and perplexing task.
The campaign should have championed an economic message of jobs, raising the minimum wage and tying those wages tied to inflation. But would Wall Street and the small businesses that the campaign was pitching to have gone along with that? Did the campaign count who had the votes, not just some of the dollar contributions?
Pitching a $25,000 credit for first-time home buyers when there aren’t homes to buy, when the cost of homes in the NEPA area is from $200,000 on up, amounts to closing costs. People realized it just wasn’t real, or didn’t apply to them, or to their immediate needs. They also realized that $25,000 would merely drive up the cost of what homes were actually on the market.
Similarly, the $50,000 tax credit for first-time businesses, given the cost of starting a business today, and the cost of equipment and capital improvements, was also not real to many.
Harris projected raising prescription caps for all and extending Medicare to include home elder care, but these were raised late in the campaign. Debt relief for teachers and other workers in the public sector should have been a top issue for the campaign and should be still for Democrats in Congress.
Bottom line, the economic issue of jobs, and wages tied to inflation are what should have been forefront – but that is a weakness and limitation of the Democratic Party as it is constituted.
Democrats need to advance an Economic and Social Bill of Rights that they will champion in Congress, even in a Congress that is dominated by Republicans. Such legislation can then be introduced in every state and city.
Minimum wage increases were approved in Missouri and Alaska; both those states and Nebraska passed paid sick-leave statues – all three states gave a majority of votes to Trump.
Too Much Emphasis on Cultural Issues – I Think Not
Voters clearly understood that women’s right to control over their bodies, families right to control over their collective bodies was on the line. This was expressed repeatedly in after-vote comments on why voters voted for Kamala Harris.
Voters approved a state constitutional right to abortion in seven states (Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York); and a majority of voters in Florida voted similarly, but it failed to reach the 60% bar imposed by Gov. DeSantis and GOP-controlled legislature. (Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Florida voted for Trump.)
Other state-wide measures of significance passed by voters were:
- Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska voters rejected school vouchers
- Alaska voters banned anti-union captive audience meetings
- Oregon voters passed a measure to protect cannabis workers’ right to unionize
(Kentucky, Nebraska, and Alaska voted for Trump.)
Strategy of Working the Margins Needs to Be Changed for Reaching Everyone
The national emphasis of the Democratic Party has been to concentrate on the inconsistent voters the irregular voters – registered Democrats who did not vote in 2022, or 2020, or 2018, or 2016 and to reach them, convince them to vote for Harris and get them to the polls.
Add to their ranks similar registered Independents who are inconsistent voters, Greens, Libertarians and even Republicans who may have signed a petition for a democratic cause over the past few years.
Left alone were registered Democrats and Independents who voted regularly. These voters were excluded from the voter call banks; the lists prepared for door canvassing. (In New York City we regularly get calls, or at least my wife does, who is a registered Democrat. This year she did not get one call, none from her union, or from any of our elected Democratic officials, urging her to vote. Since I am registered for the Working Families Party, I can understand why I didn’t get these calls.)
My experience was that the voters identified as “Independents” through this process were really closet Republicans in the main.
Over the ten weeks, I was going to some houses four and five times – once people said they were voting for Harris and the Democratic ticket and had a plan, and were visited in the past two weeks, I didn’t go again, unless it was the weekend before the election. The MiniVan (phone app used by the campaign) history showed that some of these voters were being called or texted as many as 6, 8 and 10 times since the beginning of September. And the message was always the same.
And yet, for the neighbors on the block who we were passing by, who were registered Democrats, there was no door knock, no literature drop, no phone call, no nothing. No finding out what concerned them, where they stood, if they were voting, and who they supported.
There was no training for the hundreds and thousands that answered the call of “come to Pennsylvania.” The message was, read the MiniVan script, tell people why you are for Harris, get them to commit. There was no emphasis on what were the key issues for the area of Pennsylvania we were canvassing in.
Many of the “Democrats” that we visited were not going to vote for Harris. I think the same can be said of the regular Democratic voters.
There was plenty of money in the campaign – it was just not allocated for this – this was not a priority. What was needed was a massive outreach campaign to all potential voters, to reach and educate, and then mobilize them to vote.
The approach of working the margins resulted in all the battle-ground states in a voter turnout of registered voters that was significantly better than the national average of 63.68%, but could more have been accomplished? In order to win, more needs to be accomplished.
No Real Coordination With Local People
There was no real coordination with the local Democratic Committee. No exchange of information as to what the communities were like, what the local issues were, even who the local candidates were (other than read the campaign handouts); and even sending volunteers to communities where they could not gain entry because they were gated.
On the last weekend of the campaign, we finally gained entrance to the largest community in the Poconos – a gated community. I asked why “X” wasn’t contacted; she lives in the community and got us access in previous elections. The response of the area Harris coordinator was “who is that.” My response is “she is one of the candidates listed on the literature that everyone is giving out.”
The people working for the Harris Campaign were hard working people, but they were not from the local area.In previous elections, out of area staffers came into the area much earlier (In 2012 a staffer from Kansas moved into the area in February; in 2016 a staffer from Scranton moved into the area in late May). These people learned about the area, the various communities, met with local people, lived with local people. Such was not the case with the 2024 campaign. Part of the problem was the late start of Kamala Harris’s campaign, but the key staff was here while Joe Biden was the candidate in June.
Some Specifics of the Campaign
Misogyny – Was a real factor and you could see it. So many times, when we knocked on doors and when both husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend came to the door together, after hearing what we were there for so often the man stayed and the woman walked away ‘to do other things,’ or the man came out to talk to us. Often the woman would come out by herself and say or whisper: ‘I’m with her and he doesn’t know it.’
Lack of a Trump Ground Game – The media was full of reports that there was no Trump Ground Game in Pennsylvania, that Musk’s efforts were breaking down, and we didn’t really see much evidence of any Trump or Republican literature on people’s doors. In the last two weeks there was literature for local state assembly Republican candidates.
But there was a Trump Ground Game – it was the Catholic Church and the different Evangelical Churches. When you would get repeated answers, and these were from “registered Democrats, “that I can’t vote for that woman because she kills babies,” because she changes children’s sex when they go to school,” because she is for “men playing on girls’ sports teams,” you know that these are organized and indoctrinated responses.
In the more western parts of NEPA there is the added factor of the Amish. The Amish community rallied to Donald Trump, and their vote cannot be underestimated in Berks County and the farms surrounding Reading and Kutztown.
There were fewer Trump signs than in previous years, but there were still fewer Harris signs. It took weeks for us to get a Harris sign, and we ordered and paid for one from the Harris-Walz campaign. The local campaign was stingy giving them out at first, and only had lots of signs the last few weeks of the campaign. In canvassing, the Trump signs were up to intimidate and terrorize neighbors to not put up a Harris sign – that was the atmosphere.
People who took signs said they felt safe doing so this year, that in 2020 the Biden signs in their part of the country had been shot down.
We found some Hispanic support for Trump – and division in families along generational lines that was inconsistent. In some families it was the younger members that supported Harris, in other families the opposite was the case. Reasons for doing so were often expressed as, “our family did it the right way,” or “our family didn’t jump the line.” Then there were the more MAGA expressions that “we are not rapists.” More Hispanic men supported Harris than Trump (49 to 48%) and amongst Hispanic women, Harris received support from 59% of Hispanic women, with Trump garnering just 39%. (2024 Fox News Voter Analysis)
Immigrants of other nationalities in our nation’s past faced similar divisions. In the 1880’s Irish who were already here, were opposed to the entry of new immigrants from Ireland.
Later in the century, new Italian immigrants faced similar hostility from Italian Americans already here. In the early part of the last century, Jews from England and Germany were hostile to the entry of Eastern European Jews, and even championed quotas, which were later enacted.
Immigrants who were already here have long sought to be “Americanized.” We are seeing this play out once again. There is a new twist, however. This time there is opposition to immigrants coming to the country from Venezuela, Nicaragua Brazil, and Cuba – countries that have taken a socialist or non-capitalist path or have tried to. So, the opposition now is also fueled by good old anti-communism.
I haven’t seen figures for the Asian American vote, but from experiences canvassing, I can say that this was similar. There also needs to be a differentiation amongst the different peoples of Asia and the Pacific Islands, where immigrants have come from, and their experiences.
African American support for Trump – we found this, and nationally it reached about 23-25% of the African American population, up from what it had been in previous elections. (The AP reports that in 2020 Trump got 13% of the African American vote, and in 2016, 8%.) In some homes it was the male member supporting Trump, in fewer, it was the woman.
Surprisingly, contrary to what the polls predicted; on election day a number of younger family members came to the door whispering that they voted for Harris.
Arab American and Palestinian Americans – we found mixed reactions from these voters, depending it seems on their age and how long they have been in the country. Some were going to be voting for Harris, some doing so reluctantly, more were going to sit the election out. None were going to be voting for Trump. Many while they would give us their choices on who they were supporting for President, were not inclined to do so when in came to Senate (Casey) and Congress (Cartwright or Wild, depending which district we were in).
Disconnect between volunteers and those being canvassed – thousands of wonderful people came to Pennsylvania to help “turn Pennsylvania Blue.” They were motivated by the existential threat of fascism posed by Donald Trump and the MAGites. They came as individuals, some in their own cars, some by bus, some flew in; others got on buses organized by Democratic elected officials and Democratic Clubs and the Working Families Party in New York; or similarly organized in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. . Volunteers came regularly from Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland the District of Columbia, some flew in from states to the west, a few, even from Canada. Others came on buses organized by their union – 1199, SEIU, UNITE-HERE, UFT, AFSCME, SAG-AFTRA, AFM and others.
Some of those being canvassed were also moved by the threat of fascism, but not many –remember these were infrequent voters, not regular voters. More were moved by the threat Trump posed to women and reproductive health and a ban on abortion. But canvassers were not prepared to take on the economic issues uppermost on those being canvassed – prices, inflation and jobs. There was no preparation of canvassers.
NEPA is low union density – seeing the busloads of union members coming in was great for this retired union organizer. It was a great pick-up for those of us at the mobilization point when the purple SEIU and 1199 buses rolled in. But when those same buses hit the neighborhoods, it was a different story. Union membership in this part of Pennsylvania is low. My neighbors in Monroe who are union members are often those who commute back to New York City, belonging to unions there, and voting in the city. Teachers here who are in a union are more likely to be in the Pennsylvania State Education Association. Some in our neighborhood are in IATSE, working jobs at venues like the arenas, casinos, stage shows, etc.
Canvassers expecting to hit the doors talking to their union brothers and sisters were disappointed.
The kicker – the last two weeks TV commercials for Matt Cartwright were disgusting. Matt Cartwright was our Congressperson. He was number ten on the GOP hit list. He was defeated.
The commercial starts out with Cartwright standing next to dam wall, saying we need this, it protects us from flooding. Next is a shot of the Texas-Mexico border wall, with Cartwright saying, ‘we need this, it protects us from murderers and rapists.’ Politico quotes Cartwright: “I took on my own party to oppose sanctuary cities and deport immigrants who commit crimes because it’s absolutely necessary for America to work,” said Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), as his ad showed footage of the wall.
This is the campaign literature we were handing out! We were telling voters that if Kamala is elected, she needs people in Congress like Matt Cartwright to have her back. Right!
When first elected to Congress, Cartwright supported sanctuary cities and was a member of the Progressive Caucus in Congress. Later he dropped out. Cartwright reminds me of members of the Populist Party in the late 1800s, who while elected as progressives, refused to take on racism, and later even made a pact with the Klan. Hopefully, Democrats like Cartwright won’t go that far. But positions like this are not how we are going to win back support for the Democratic Party.
Both Democratic Congressional Representatives, Susan Wild (PA-7) and Matt Cartwright (PA-8) were defeated.
So, how do we build a movement that combines people that live out here, with people that help and support their work, on issues that reach out to people that voted for Donald Trump?
Writing this I was reminded of movements I participated in many years ago. One such movement was Vietnam Summer in 1967, where we canvassed everyone who lived in the Evanston community, north of Chicago. We were planning to run a peace candidate against Congress member Donald Rumsfeld in the election the following year, and we were trying to get a sense of the community in a non-election year on the issue of the war in Viet Nam, and a halt to the bombing, for negotiations.
My parents had done similar work in their suburban community of Skokie for open housing in 1965 and 1966 while Martin Luther King was leading the open housing marches in Chicago. Skokie later passed an ordinance declaring that the suburban community was ending the practice of Jim Crow housing and the covenants attached to home sales. Similar efforts were undertaken in other Chicago suburban communities.
What if a coordinated campaign were undertaken with peace forces in Monroe County, working with students from local colleges, calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel with the money going to fund hospitals, schools, new housing construction and libraries in our country. Elements of a campaign could be a petition, teach-ins, forums, hearings, with the aim of resolutions in student bodies, churches, synagogues and mosques; and the getting of letters to the editor, elected officials to come out in support, etc.
A similar campaign could be undertaken to Save our Social Security and Medicare – We Paid For It.
If such campaigns could get off the ground, could we seek to get progressives once again from other states to “come to Pennsylvania,” stay with Penn Staters for the weekend or longer and help us return Pennsylvania to the Blue? Could we go back to door-to-door canvassing? Could we coordinate with the Monroe County Democratic Committee, and could we use the MiniVan app for all registered Democrats and Independents, regardless of when they voted?
Donald Trump was elected President with 50% of the national vote. In eight of those states, voters in their majorities voted to support women’s right to an abortion, putting it in their state constitution in seven of them. Voters in a number of states that voted for Trump also passed incredible economic measures, aimed at alleviating the pain which working people face. This shows that a cross electoral coalition and movement can be built, if we are smart, that can include Harris voters, Trump voters, and those that didn’t vote.
So, while Trump is president, while Republicans control the Senate and hold a slim majority in the House, we can still pressure Congress, and we must. We can still pressure state legislatures. And we must. We will continue to build a political movement in the streets, in the communities, and to win and take back the legislative halls. We will still defend immigrants and immigrant families, and we must. We will still defend our trans brothers and sisters, our trans neighbors and families, and we must. We will still defend all the gains that we now have and fight against all attempts to cut our basic social safety net, and we must.
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Photos From The Edge – March and Civil Disobedience Demand a Ceasefire in Gaza
By David Bacon
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 11/11/24 – On Veterans Day hundreds of people, including many war veterans, marched from Harry Bridges Plaza at the foot of Market Street to the office of California Senator Alex Padilla. Marchers demanded that he and Senator Laphonza Butler support a ceasefire in Israel’s assault on Gaza. More than 43,600 people have been killed in the last year, mostly women and children, and over 102,900 others injured, according to local health authorities. Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
Senator Bernie Sanders called for a vote in the Senate to block further military aid to Israel. “The war in Gaza has been conducted almost entirely with American weapons and $18 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars,” he said. The demonstration was sponsored by Veterans for Peace, the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Jewish Voice for Peace, and others. Speeches called for meeting the election of Donald Trump without fear, demonstrating in the streets popular opposition to war and repression.
The march stopped to support striking hotel workers outside the Palace Hotel, one of five in San Francisco which have been on strike for weeks. Marchers and strikers both spoke of seeing the close connection between the working class demands for a decent life and a union, and the demands for an end to military support for Israel. At the end of the march San Francisco activist artist David Solnit led many in painting a colorful protest on the pavement of Bush Street, while others chained themselves together, blocking the doors of the building housing Senator Padilla’s office.
Demonstrators march from the Ferry Building to the office of Senator Alex Padilla, protesting the Israeli bombing of Gaza and demanding that Padilla support a ceasefire. The actions were organized by veterans groups, on Veterans’ Day, and the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.
All photographs copyright David Bacon.
To see a full set of these photos, click here
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Glenn Perušek – A Celebration of Life
By Peter Olney
On Saturday November 2, the weekend before the big national election, family and friends of Glenn Perusek gathered for his memorial at the Slovenian National House on St Clair Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. I was honored to speak at Glenn’s memorial. Here are my remarks:
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“I am very happy that Gail and Dawn, Glenn’s sisters, decided to hold this memorial in the Slovenian National House. I think Glenn had an office and a living space here for a while. I know Glenn was exploring his Slovenian heritage, and I believe a trip to Ljubljana and greater Slovenia was on his agenda. I know that when I met him in 2005 he was using Perusek, but more recently his name became Perušek. (Sek vs Check) I hope I got the accent right. I called his cell phone the other day just to hear him pronounce it. Christina Perez and I were looking forward to meet up with him in Slovenia on one of our trips to Florence, Italy.
Glenn did visit us for a week in Florence in 2017. He met our Italian friends and engaged with them on everything from food to politics to futbol soccer! We make a point of awarding our guests in Florence some recognition based on their stay with us. For instance do they do the dishes or make their beds? His time with us in Florence was great, and he won “Best Male Guest”!!
In his capacity as Director of the Center for Strategic Campaigns at the AFL-CIO, Glenn safeguarded resources for my union, the ILWU. We waged several epic battles organizing a large Rite Aid distribution center in the Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles and battling an employer lockout in the Mojave Desert at a borax mine owned by the giant multi-national Rio Tinto. Glenn made sure we had the research and staff support to prevail. Because of him, the ILWU, a small but powerful union of 45,000 members, got more support per capita for new organizing than any other affiliate of the national federation.
After I retired from the ILWU in 2013, Glenn brought me on in 2015 to help teach Heat and Frost Insulators how to organize and opened a whole Building Trades instruction world for me. I had no idea what a heat and frost insulator was? We were a great team and made a lot of new friends. Tommy Williams, an accomplished organizer, and at the time Director of Organizing of the Heat and Frost Insulators, who is with us today used to call Glenn “The Professor”, a whimsical term of endearment and reverence.
What made working with Glenn so fruitful was his overall willingness, despite his rigorous traditional academic training, to call “audibles”, sports parlance for employing flexible teaching methods, to draw on the intelligence and experience and creativity of the building trades students. We would engage a student organizer at lunch, and if they had some experience or expertise Glenn would tap that student to be a presenter in the PM session.
We instituted a regular talent show at the end of the 4-day classes where we invited students beforehand to bring their poetry, musical instruments and rap to the closing session. I will never forget a Canadian Vice President of the Cement Masons, and accomplished blues harp player, stepping up in Ft Lauderdale and serenading us with some Latin tunes that he had played previously at the Buena Vista Social Club in Havana, ninety miles away. A dear friend and co-instructor colleague of Glenn’s who was not able to be with us today; Melissa Shetler is an accomplished jazz singer and closed out one of our sessions with a live performance.
Glenn was a great comrade to me and many in our labor world. He opened new pathways in my life. I think one of Glenn’s biggest recent achievements was putting together the John Womack book, Labor Power and Strategy that is very much in play and being read by young organizers everywhere. It was Glenn’s insight that made the book so unique and powerful. I thought of interviewing the Harvard historian John Womack about labor power in production and logistics systems, but it was Glenn who suggested that we get 10 of labor’s best and brightest organizers and thinkers to respond to Womack’s theses. This has generated a rich dialogical work that provokes thought and discussion and healthy controversy. This was part of Glenn’s commitment to the up and coming generation of new organizers – Ride Share Kevin, Noah Carmichael, Deven Mantz, Carey Dall and Taft Mangas. Oh and don’t forget veteran unionists like Chris Scarl who Glenn helped get elected to the City Council of North Olmstead, Ohio.
This memorial of course coincides with the final push for the national elections. Christina Perez and I are in Orange County, CA working to flip several House seats to the “D” column and I know Glenn would be with us in spirit and curious as to our findings on the “doors.” But the Perusek Memorial takes precedence on our calendar because of our love for Glenn and our deep curiosity to learn more about our dear Brother from his family and friends. Our curiosity abides…
We go back to Orange County for the final push and we dedicate our work to Glenn Perusek. Glenn Perusek Presente!”
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The booklet that is presented here on The Forum was designed and produced by Gail Perusek and Dawn Stang, Glenn’s sisters. It was distributed to all the attendees at the memorial.
To view the booklet fullscreen: Click the symbol on the far right of the line below the image
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This Rural Political Strategist Says Democrats Need to Learn from Winners
By Justin Perkins - Barn Raiser and Joel Bleifuss - Barn Raiser
This piece was originally published in Barn Raiser, an source for rural and small town news
“The Democrats are stuck on this consultant-driven, top-down approach to campaigns that is not working.”
Johnson teaches political science part time at Monmouth College and lives outside Monmouth in Warren County, Illinois.
Barn Raiser spoke with him about last week’s election and why the Democrats are having such a hard time connecting to rural voters.
What stood out to you about how rural America voted?
I wasn’t sure Trump could do better as far as the share of the rural vote in 2024 versus 2020. But he did.
In my county, Warren County, Illinois, which is an Obama-Trump county, we had a 15-point swing toward Trump, the largest of any county in the state.
This election in some ways matched what’s happened internationally, where incumbent parties have lost everywhere. It’s a global trend that is partly due to the impact of inflation. I’m older. I remember the last time we had bad inflation was in the 1980s, and it was devastating. Trump was very aggressive in making that case on the economy.
But I put a lot of the blame on Democrats who have not invested in rural America. The Democratic Party is focused on doing things the status quo way, running TV ads and making a lot of consultants rich.
Whenever it comes to rural America, you’ve got big city consultants coming in and saying, “We know what to do.” Yet people out here who live in rural America understand the dynamics better, and they’re being passed over. The Democrats are stuck on this consultant-driven, top-down approach to campaigns that is not working.
Why has the Democratic Party become reliant on consultants who lack a track record of success?
I wish I knew. It’s very frustrating to see this happen over and over and over again.
After the 2016 election, I worked with my former Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos to visit hundreds of Democrats who had won in rural areas. We asked, “How did you do it?” These were the survivors, and in 2017, we published a 50-page report about their stories.
After I wrote the report, Cheri told me up front, “Robin, one thing I’m not going to do is raise money for PACs off of this.” They wanted her to raise money to give to them to do TV ads appealing to rural voters. It was like flies on shit. (Sorry for the barnyard comparison.) Here were people who had come for the latest trend just to make money.
Right now, a bunch of TV consultants are probably in the Bahamas, drinking tropical drinks from the money they made on the recent round of campaigning. What the Democrats need to do more than anything else is take a long, hard look at this model.
They need to start from the ground up. Sure, you need funders from the big cities. But it’s got to be done by rural folks. It’s been eight years since Trump was first elected, and there’s been no movement to do this the right way.
What does the Democratic National Committee have to do with that lack of progress?
The term I use is “failing up.” We have a lot of people that lose in rural areas, and then they’re promoted to the DNC’s Rural Council and are talking on TV. There are candidates who have actually won in rural America, but you never hear about them.
Here’s your spokesperson for rural Democrats, and it’s somebody that lost their last race. What the hell? It’s like in football. Instead of going to the Kansas City Chiefs to learn how to win, you’re going to go talk to my Chicago Bears.
He parks his old red truck, a 1999 Dodge Ram, on the side of the road and has a handmade sign that says, “Stop and Talk with Senator Jeff Smith.”
It’s not that hard. Go talk to people who win and ask them how they won. In 2022, I wrote a piece for Washington Monthly with the idea of putting people front and center that won their rural districts.
Take Jeff Smith, for instance. He’s a state senator from rural Wisconsin. He parks his old red truck, a 1999 Dodge Ram, on the side of the road and has a handmade sign that says, “Stop and Talk with Senator Jeff Smith.” There needs to be more examples like that. What Jeff Smith did didn’t cost a lot.
The problem with consultants is they don’t see any way to make money out of this unless it’s a TV ad. So they’ll come in and do your TV ads for you and get their 15% commissions.
What else needs to be done? Going out and training local people to knock doors—that’s a minimal cost. Buying some radio spots year-round. Doing more with social media and weekly newspapers, although there aren’t as many of those, that’s going to cost a little bit.
Instead, the Democrats’ current approach to rural has been, “Well, the election’s over, let’s turn the lights off and lock the door.”
That’s not what the Republicans do. They’re going every day, 365 days a year.
Would that dynamic change if Democrats, say, held their first primaries in battleground states or in rural states?
It was a mistake to take it away from Iowa. That sent a message: “We really don’t care about rural states.” I know Iowa’s not necessarily representative of the country, but it’s a rural state, and it prizes retail campaigning, which is what the party needs. With the caucus system, candidates to have to go out and meet people in their homes, in the American Legion Halls and churches and small groups.
Barack Obama won that way. It’s not perfect, but moving it to South Carolina wasn’t the best move. If they switch it to a state like Michigan, or even Illinois, which is more representative of the country, the temptation would be to do more TV ads.
TV has to be part of the equation, but Iowa forces candidates to have a ground game and person-to-person contact, which is ultimately the key to doing better in rural areas.
Is it true that what campaign consultants earn is dependent on how much money they decide to spend on TV ad buys?
It varies, but consultants typically get 10% to 15% of the TV buy. If they spend a million dollars on TV, then they get 15%, $150,000. That creates an incentive for consultants to tell you to use TV.
People might not remember Paul Wellstone. He was a Senator from Minnesota with a progressive populist appeal in rural areas. His TV guy was named Bill Hillsman. His theory was that if you do a really creative TV ad, you don’t need to run it a million times because people will remember it.
Nowadays, they run this mind-numbing bullshit on TV that you see 50 times a day. It drives the cost up and the fees up.
Trump had better ads this time, honestly. I don’t remember Kamala’s ads. I don’t remember Hillary’s ads. If you see Bill Hillsman’s work, you don’t need to see it 10 times a day to remember it. But Hillsman was frozen out of the Democratic Party because he represented a threat to the system. And that’s why we have what we have. We’re either about winning elections or making the consultants rich.
How do you think Democrats can best bridge the divides among the electorate?
The Democrats have basically kicked away a key component of the New Deal coalition.
I live in an area where a lot of factories have gone overseas and we lost jobs. I remember listening to Trump on satellite radio in 2016, and he was talking about trade and the disaster of shipping jobs overseas. And I’m thinking, boy, he’s going to appeal to a lot of people with that message.
But it’s not just economics anymore. It’s culture. It’s our whole attitude and how we talk to people.
Too many Democrats have a condescending attitude and basically call people stupid if they vote for a Republican or a Trump-type candidate. That’s the message that was delivered this time to Black voters. We’ve lost an ability to really listen to people and meet them on their own terms.
Here’s exhibit A of how damaged the Democratic brand is in rural America: look at what just happened in Missouri.
Missouri passes two statewide referendums, one on abortion rights and one raising the minimum wage. And several years ago, Missouri defeated a right-to-work amendment. Now, if you’ve got a candidate in Missouri like Lucas Kunce with those same policies, who is running for the Senate against Josh Hawley, how does Kunce end up with only 42% of the vote?
Don’t tell me voters in rural areas don’t back progressive policies. They do. But look at the numbers. When you put a D next to the name, they vote against it more. Why? Because they don’t like Democrats.
And I think it’s got a lot to do with the attitude of the party and a lot of these cultural issues that we’re forcing down people’s throats. I talked to so many people who said they didn’t really like Trump, but the Democrats have driven them away.
So, what is to be done?
Part of the solution is going to be remaking the face of the party. If the Democrats are going to rise back, it’s going to have to be local. The Democrats are going to have to go out and organize again and find people locally to be the face of the party instead of Nancy Pelosi or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. That’s where it’s got to start.
One of the keys to people winning in rural areas is nonstop door knocking. In our 2017 report, people that won told me that not only is door knocking the best strategy to get to know people, it also provided inoculation against negative attacks.
When somebody hits you for being the antichrist or whatever in a TV ad, people would say, well, I know this guy. He came to my door. The key is to start from the ground up and make the effort year around.
Former congresswoman Bustos used to do a variety of events. As a member of Congress, it’s hard to go knock doors. And town halls became circuses with the right wing disrupting them. So she came up with new ideas.
One idea was a supermarket Saturday where she would go stand in supermarkets and talk to people. She also did job shadowing where she would go work different jobs and learn about people and how hard they work.
When’s the last time somebody did that?
I admire Jeff Smith up in rural Wisconsin. He’s making sure he stays in touch the old-fashioned way with people, face to face. We’re losing that through social media.
One of the biggest surprises in the last several years is a congressman from Silicon Valley who connected with me.
His name’s Ro Khanna. Here he is, an Indian American representing Silicon Valley. He took an interest in what was going on out here and wanted me to set up meetings the last couple of summers in factory towns in the Midwest. He flew out on his own dime. He wanted to hear from these people. And he listened.
This guy really gets it. He gets it better than a lot of Midwestern public officials do.
He came up with an idea of investing in American steel plants and putting them in these towns like Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or Youngstown, Ohio, that have suffered. He calls our trade policies one of the biggest avoidable policy mistakes Democrats have ever made. I agree. And we need to own up to it and try to invest more in these towns, places where people feel left behind. So Ro Khanna is someone I admire.
Believe it or not, someone who is never mentioned is Tammy Baldwin. She did well in rural Wisconsin in both of her elections. That was a shock to me.
I’m thinking, this woman is gay and you never hear her name. Did anybody ever go to her and ask, “Senator, what did you do? What’s the secret sauce in rural Wisconsin? How did you do so well?”
Prior to becoming chair of the Democratic National Comittee in 2021, Jaime Harrison was a corporate lobbyist. In 2020, Harrison, who has never held elective office, raised more than $130 million in his challenge to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and lost by more than 10 percentage points.
No. Instead, the media was chasing around Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rourke and Jaime Harrison. And I’m looking at the numbers. They got killed in rural parts of their states.
But the media portrayed it as if they did really well. They didn’t. Not unless you define 30% of the vote as doing really well.
How do you see the current constellation of the Democratic Party—on the one hand the Clinton free traders who gave us NAFTA, and on the other those who are more radical on social issues—relating to rural America and their policies?
I don’t look at it that way. I look at who wins. Do you win or lose? I don’t want to hear about somebody who agrees with me on everything but loses. The Democrats need to rise above these ideological battles. If somebody needs to be pro-gun, pro-life and win a rural district, the party should welcome them. The party says it’s a big tent. It’s not. You’re not going to do well in rural areas unless you welcome candidates that may not agree with you on a lot of these issues. Identity politics is killing the party. I know that won’t make me popular in a lot of places, and that’s fine.
If a far-left progressive wins in a rural area, then great. Learn from it, see how it adapts to your local area. If the party can’t welcome diverse views, then you’re looking at semi-permanent minority status. A lot of people don’t want to hear that.
What do you think of Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington State?
It looks like she’s going to win again. And Jared Golden won in Maine. There are a few Democrats left who represent rural areas. A lot of the ones Bustos and I talked to who won in 2016 have now lost. You can’t build an enduring majority just winning cities, university towns and some progressive suburbs.
Nobody inside the party wants to hear this message.
That Senate race in Nebraska was interesting. I can’t wait to get the final numbers. That guy, Dan Osborn, ran without a D behind his name, and he outperformed the other Democrats on the ticket by six or seven points. There’s something to be learned there, if the party’s willing to listen.
Last year, I was listening to a session with some Democratic group, and they bring on this guy, and he’s trying to coach candidates in rural areas how to talk to voters. Think about that: teaching rural candidates how to talk to rural.
If a candidate came to me for advice and said, “Robin, what should I say to voters?” I’d say, you’re not knocking enough doors. Go knock on some more doors. You’ll be okay. Listen to what people say and how they say it.
The pollsters come in and test language to see if it resonates, and use that language in TV ads and print pieces. “Build Back Better”? Are you kidding me?
Here’s an idea:Deep canvassing. Why don’t we do more of that?
There’s not much money to be made by political consultants in canvassing, is there?
Bingo. That’s why it won’t happen.
People, not just rural voters, but all voters, have had it with the poll-tested language. That’s part of why Trump was popular—as well as Bernie Sanders. When people heard Bernie Sanders speak, they knew he didn’t have a pollster whispering in his ear. And Dan Osborn in Nebraska—watch him talk. That’s not a guy talking with poll-tested language. He came across as authentic, and that’s what people are wanting.
When I hear Kamala talk I didn’t know what she was saying. Hillary, I think, fell victim to that, as well. There’s value in just talking directly to people. As much as I disagree with Bill Clinton on NAFTA, he had that gift of being able to communicate complex policy issues to voters in a way that made sense.
I live out in the country. I have neighbors here who are Trump voters. I listen to them, how they talk. It’s not how the politicians talk.
My next-door neighbor is a Trump voter. He’s very conservative, a gun owner. We get together and have a beer on his porch about once a week and talk. When I go out of town, he comes over, checks my house out, helps himself to a beer. That’s the way it should be, but we’ve gotten away from that.
As a society, we’ve got to try to get that sense of connection back where politics isn’t everything. I remember a time when politics was boring, and I wish we’d get back to that.
Jaime Harrison, who is stepping down as the chair of the Democratic National Committee, is one of those Democrats who ran for elected office, the U.S. Senate in South Carolina, and lost and is now a rural expert. Do you have any advice for whoever the next chair of the DNC is on how to approach rural voters?
Jaime Harrison is a nice guy, but a lot of money was sent down to South Carolina, and he got clobbered. The Democrats, every cycle, have somebody they fall in love with and spend an inordinate amount of money on, and they don’t even come close.
If the DNC is serious about trying to do better in rural America, find somebody who actually won out there. The motto needs to be that of the old Oakland Raiders football teams of the 1970s, when Al Davis ran them. His motto: “Just win, baby.”
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