Overcoming the Urban-Rural Divide, Part 2
By Anthony Flaccavento
“Overcoming the Urban-Rural Divide, Part 1” is linked here
The four-week period since the November 3rd election has demonstrated more than Donald Trump’s complete self-absorption and utter contempt for Democracy. Far more disturbing has been the willingness of nearly half of Americans to support him and to readily accept his lies that the election ‘was stolen’. Trump voters, we now know, include white women and men; the very rich and working- and middle-class people; suburban and rural. For some of these folks, Trump’s appeal is obvious, from lower taxes on the wealthy to reduced regulations on banks and businesses to the choice of judges aligned with the values of the Christian religious right.
But what about rural people? With the exception of a relatively small number of large-scale farmers who have benefitted from Trump’s massive subsidies (instituted to compensate for their Trump-driven loss in export markets), most rural communities have seen little to no benefit these past four years. The coal industry has continued its decline, new jobs in manufacturing have largely been offset by factory closings, and long-standing problems of underfunded schools, declining infrastructure and opioid addiction have been given only fleeting attention. So why is Trump’s support so strong in the countryside?
Here’s what I think: A lot of folks love Trump because of who and what he hates. The media. Academics and experts. The ‘liberal consensus’ and the language of inclusion. The Washington establishment and its insiders. And all the snooty liberals who embrace these things. These people, these norms and institutions have, in the view of many rural people, dissed and marginalized them for decades. Seeing belief systems and ways of life ridiculed for so long, and new ideas and other people embraced by the same liberal elite, many have come to feel like strangers in their own land, as Arlie Hochschild explains in her book of the same name. This deep sense of alienation constitutes our fourth underlying cause of the urban-rural divide.
I’m not arguing here that the confederate flag is about “heritage, not hate” as some bumper stickers in my area proclaim. Nor do I contend that the neglect of rural needs and communities is somehow greater than what many historically marginalized people have faced across our history. Rather, as Ms Hochschild shows through the testimony of rural Louisianans, their own lived history is one of declining incomes and wealth, increasing health and social problems, and a steady march by the wider, dominant culture away from many of their core beliefs and values. Is their plight comparable to that of the native peoples of the Americas, or of African Americans who’ve lived through enslavement, Jim Crow, federal policies of intentional exclusion, and mass incarceration? Certainly not. Rural, mostly white people have been privileged by comparison. But the history of their own lifetimes is, mostly, quite the opposite: steadily declining fortunes, stature and privilege. Rural people have never been at the front of the line in this country, but now that they see themselves falling further back in the line (paraphrasing Ms Hochshild), they’re pissed.
The broad sense of alienation from the mainstream has been furthered by two shifts among Democrats and liberals more broadly: An embrace of wealthy elites and their priorities and culture; and the steady growth in contempt for those outside the elite liberal consensus. This dramatic shift among liberal leaders, pundits, media and organizations has fueled and justified the deep sense of alienation and the “us vs them” outrage it has spawned. This is our fifth underlying cause.
For more than a decade, Thomas Frank has been documenting this shift in the culture and priorities of Democrats. In Listen Liberal, he details the more than four-decade long march that has transformed the Democrats from the party of the working class (primarily) to the party of the professional class. In Frank’s analysis, liberals and Dems have too often minimized the collateral damage of a growth-obsessed global economy of transnational corporations, instead embracing the academic and technological superstars who have either justified or been enriched by this transition. Michael Lind goes a step further, characterizing the professional class as a “managerial overclass” of bureaucrats, academics and assorted experts whose job it is to make and enforce the rules that the rest of us must live by.
For liberals who can’t fathom why so many rural people dismiss the warnings of experts – whether about climate change or pandemics – part of the answer is that they do not trust those whom they see as spokespersons for liberal elites. And their skepticism is not always unfounded. We need look no further than the promises of Bill Clinton and his top economists that NAFTA would create a million net jobs within five years. The experts aren’t always right.
The parallel component of this shift has been the sharp increase in what author and activist, Erica Etelson calls the language of contempt. In her book, Beyond Contempt, she begins with the realization that her own communication was often steeped in contempt for Trump voters and others who just didn’t get it. She provides many examples of dismissive, contemptuous language from liberals, while also quoting numerous right-leaning moderates to show how this language creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here’s part of one such quote, from a young white man: “I am very lower-middle class. I’ve never owned a new car and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money. I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege.” Speaking of the pull of right-wing narratives, he says, “It baffles me that more people on the left can’t understand this, can’t see how they’re just feeding, feeding, feeding the growth of this stuff…”.
The sixth and final factor underlying the urban-rural divide is the politics of incrementalism that has increasingly dominated the Democratic Party over the past four decades. This is of course hotly debated within the Democratic Party and I am sure that many liberals will disagree with me on this. Yet there can be little doubt that Centrist, ‘new Democrats’ have embraced Wall Street, investor-driven trade policies, Silicon Valley elites and a kind of monopolistic technological determinism that has little use for farmers, mom and pop businesses and rural places. Given this tide of ‘progress’, the party has essentially offered two solutions to the millions who’ve been left out or wiped out: Get with the program, either by moving to urban centers of innovation or by upgrading yourself to 21st century competencies; or grin and bear it, because, well, at least we aren’t trying to cut your food stamps or privatize your Social Security.
Incrementalism assumes that the system basically works, that it just needs a few tweaks to include more folks in its ever-growing pie of prosperity. For a party increasingly in thrall of educational and tech superstars, this makes sense. For this mostly urban, generally affluent crowd, “the benefits of globalization are myriad, and the downsides invisible,” to quote Etelson. Ditto that for the politics of incrementalism. That’s why, to the oft-asked question from liberals, “Why do those people vote against their own interests?”, I now respond, “Exactly who can they vote for who really has their interests?”.
These then are our six underlying causes of the urban-rural divide:
- An economy that has failed 80% of Americans and most rural communities
- A hatred of elites and resentment towards those in power
- A profound distrust of government, generally, and regulations in particular
- The sense of alienation among rural people, of being strangers in their own land
- The loathing of liberals and Democrats, in part because of the shift away from working people’s priorities and in part due to the language of contempt that is now commonplace
- The embrace by Democrats of centrist politics and incrementalist policies that do little to address the deep economic and political failures that got us here.
“What would happen if the local Our Revolution chapter joined with community banks and independent businesses in a buy-local campaign supporting home grown companies?”
If this is a reasonably good explanation of how we got to such a powerful divide, what can we do to overcome it? Or more to the point, what can we progressives, liberals or Democrats do to change course and begin to win back working folks and rural communities? This is exactly the challenge we are now grappling with in workshops and community forums we’re doing with a range of liberal and progressive groups around the country. The content builds on the writers quoted in this series, some of whom have joined me in this effort. For our purposes here, I’ll share the rudiments of the three-pronged strategy we’re recommending to change course:
Think differently
Act Differently
Talk differently
Thinking differently begins by getting outside of our echo chambers and deliberately challenging the assumptions we bring and conclusions we’ve drawn. That can, and should happen in conversations with neighbors, co-workers or family members. But it probably won’t happen just by following our Facebook feed, or from the pundits with Daily Kos, MSNBC, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Even NPR rarely explores this issue in depth. One place to start is with the articles and books cited in this series, or by linking on any of a number of articles in the Urban-Rural Divide GuidebookI’ve assembled. This is just scratching the surface, but it’s a great place to start reconsidering long-held beliefs and gaining a bit of empathy.
Acting differently can take many forms, but in this context I’m suggesting something quite specific: Join or launch local community development projects, and do it as the liberal or progressive organization of which you’re a part. All kinds of incredible things are happening to revitalize local economies, to build healthier food systems, to transition to clean energy. Many are happening – or could be – in your local community. What would happen if the local Our Revolutionchapter joined with community banks and independent businesses in a buy-local campaign supporting home grown companies? What if the county Democratic Committee helped launch a “farmacy” program, through which prescriptions are written for fresh local produce, helping people eat better while expanding markets for farmers? Or a peace and justice organization worked with local contractors to make energy efficiency improvements more affordable for working families and lower-income households? At a minimum, important things will get done in your community. If enough of us take this approach, we might even begin to change the image of liberals among rural people. Think of it as an outreach strategy with short term tangible benefits.
Talking differently begins with a simple but challenging rule: Talk less. Much less. We liberals and progressives are a wordy bunch. We contextualize; we reiterate our reiterations; we love nuance and complexity and avoid simple, direct statements. Our desire to be inclusive and our embrace of the terminology of academia and tech too often plays out as vague, non-committal pronouncements. We talk about “co-morbidities” and “the community of health care professionals” rather than just saying “health problems” and “doctors and nurses”. I get it; we want to be accurate in our representation of reality. But I assure you from more than 40 years in rural communities, it ain’t working. People tune out when we go on and on; and if we let a little contempt seep into our erudition, the door slams shut. Maybe it’s time to start talking like a neighbor rather than an advocate.
There are no easy answers to how we got to this place of profound division and animosity. There are no simple or fail proof strategies for how we get out it. But surely we can agree on this: What we’ve been doing clearly has not been working, and almost surely has been making things worse. If we acknowledge this, and then begin to try new ways of thinking, of acting and of communicating, maybe we’ll finally begin to undo and reverse the urban-rural divide.
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What We Must Do: Understanding and Overcoming the Urban-Rural Divide
By Anthony Flaccavento
Context
I live in the southwestern corner of Virginia, the Appalachian part of the state that borders North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. Like all of these neighboring states, we went overwhelmingly for Donald Trump on November 3rd, with margins in most of our counties between 75 and 80%. Five days after the election, comments on the Facebook page of our primary daily newspaper ran about seven to one that the election was fraudulent, stolen from Trump.
So, how did we get here? How did we get to such a strenuous divide, one that has many dimensions, but is in large part geographical?
A third or so of this region is ‘coal country’, communities whose economies have been dependent on the coal industry for generations, even as it declined inexorably for more than forty years. Trump’s pledge to bring coal back has, like most of his boasts, proved to be an empty promise. There are fewer coal jobs now than there were in Obama’s last year in office.
The many thousands of small farms throughout the region don’t do a lot of exporting to China, so they’ve missed out on those federal payments that have kept bigger farms afloat. A fair number have embraced new enterprises or shifted to selling local food at local markets. Still, the last four years has been a struggle for small farmers. But then, there’s nothing unusual about that.
Several efforts to diversify local economies – from downtown revitalization in Bristol to an “ecological education campus” in the tiny town of St Paul – are beginning to bear fruit. Most of these have been helped along by a range of investments, including grants from the Appalachian Regional Commission. ARC is popular among businesses and economic developers and has continued in spite of Trump’s repeated efforts to zero out its budget.
You’re probably starting to get the picture. My part of the world is full of people who, according to most of my liberal friends, “vote against their own interests”. It is true that this once-Democratic stronghold has shifted to Republicans over the past dozen plus years, and that Trump has cemented that support to a degree we’ve never seen before. It’s also true that a region whose people are known for their neighborliness and readiness to pitch in for whomever needs help, is increasingly defensive about its guns, deeply suspicious about government and ready to believe the worst about people with different views or politics. Which is to say, Democrats, liberals, progressives. Me. Us.
All of this is true, and it’s pretty damn depressing, especially when you realize that southwest Virginia is not the exception to the rule. This is the reality in most of rural America.
So, how did we get here? How did we get to such a strenuous divide, one that has many dimensions, but is in large part geographical? How did country people come to see themselves as so alienated from and dissed by their fellow citizens, to feel like, as Arlie Hochschild put it, “strangers in their own land”?
One major reason, of course, is the relentless campaign on the right to fundamentally change our view of what it means to be an American, a citizen, a neighbor; and more specifically, to denigrate and even demonize liberals, progressives and Democrats. From Glen Beck to Tucker Carlson, from Sarah Palin to Marjorie Taylor Greene, right-wing politicians and pundits have been remarkably successful in building an alternate world view in which liberals are actively working to destroy the nation, a worldview held by nearly half the population. Trump’s remarkably loyal base comes in part because he’s so uncompromising in his attacks on these nefarious liberals.
Another major contributor to the urban-rural divide, and to the enduring allegiance to Trump is of course race and racism. Our sordid history of state-sanctioned racial exclusion has been interrupted by periodic efforts to reduce systemic racism. Every one of these periods precipitated widespread backlash among white people, both those in power and everyday folks. Clearly, we are in yet another period of this backlash.
Race is deeply woven into the right-wing narrative of grievance and together, these two elements have propelled and exacerbated the urban-rural divide.
But everyone on the left already knows this. What I’m asking us to do is to look closely at our own role in fostering this divide, our own failures of policy, action and words. Having worked for almost four decades to build stronger local economies in mostly rural areas and having run for Congress – twice – in rural southwest Virginia, this issue has become something of a preoccupation for me. I’ve come to believe that there are six underlying causes of this divide, which I’ve described in much more detail in The Urban-Rural Divide: A Guidebook for Understanding the Problem and Forging Solutions. In this two-part series for Stansbury Forum, I’ll briefly touch on each of those underlying causes, and then offer what I hope is a way forward.
One last caveat: As you read these two pieces, I ask you to consider the possibility that many rural people who support Trump may simultaneously have both a greatly exaggerated sense of grievance and real and long-standing grievances that have not been addressed; disproportionate rage and plenty of reasons to be angry. White privilege and almost none of the trappings of privilege.
Six underlying causes
It begins with a failed economic system, or more accurately, an economic system that has worked pretty well for roughly 20% of the population, but mostly failed the other 80%. Our trickle-down economy, obsessed with the GDP and global ‘investor confidence’ has failed plenty of people in New York and Chicago, to be sure. But among the 20 percenters who’ve done pretty well the past four decades, the great majority are in cities. The vast, vast majority of country folks are among the 80 percent of people who’ve either lost ground economically or simply tread water to stay afloat. Stagnant wages, outsourced jobs, depressed and declining farm incomes, and the flight of young people to cities have become the norm in many rural places.
I know, I know, the average income of Trump voters is higher than the national average. But that’s the average, a figure inflated by the very wealthy people who commonly support Trump. In truth, the biggest economic commonality among rural Trump supporters is economic insecurity, the terrible uncertainty about what the future holds, for themselves and for their children. Seeing your own economic situation stagnate is bad enough. Recognizing that the future may yet be worse lays the foundation for mistrust of those in charge, the politicians and experts who claim to be making your life better.
Declining prosperity, household insecurity and heightened economic inequality have proven a powerful foundation for mistrust of ‘the system’, helping to foster the second underlying cause of our divide, a deep and pervasive anti-elitism. In The Politics of Resentment, Katherine Cramer shares the stories of scores of rural Wisconsinites, most of whom supported Scott Walker in large part because he disparaged ‘elites’: Academics and intellectuals, urban liberals in Madison and Milwaukee, government employees overseeing environmental regulations, even public school teachers. For many of the rural men – and it was mostly men – who spoke to Cramer, they felt disrespected by these elites. Speaking of how these folks saw the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cramer says “…it was not that UW-Madison ignored their communities but that it ignored the knowledge and the norms of the people living in their communities.”
When most liberals think of ‘elites’, they focus on Wall Street executives, corporate CEO’s and other economic elites. For many people in the countryside, elites are cultural snobs, intellectuals who talk a lot but don’t say much, city folks with desk jobs who’ve never picked up a chain saw; and they are also the ‘experts’. Cramer discovered, as have I, that many rural people are sick and tired of these folks telling them what to say, how to eat, shop and think, how to manage their own land, and what they need to do to catch up to the innovators in town. It should be clear that politically, this caricature of elites fits the modern-day Democratic Party and most of its best-known leaders.
The third underlying cause grows out of the strong anti-elite sentiment but is a critical factor in and of itself: a profound distrust of government, generally, with a particular contempt for regulations. This regulatory aversion, as I’ve come to call it, is not limited to rural people, but it is especially commonplace in the countryside. It’s not surprising that people who don’t trust the government would view government regulations with skepticism. But there is also the widespread belief that regulations are intrusive, cumbersome, even ridiculous. And that they protect the powerful, not the little guy.
Liberals and Democrats often try to persuade rural working folks that regulations are necessary, that they protect all of us. When we do that, we miss the point. If you fundamentally mistrust the government and if you view experts and academics as out-of-touch elites, you’re very unlikely to be moved by the argument that more government involvement in your life is a good thing.
An economy that has failed so many rural communities, a sense of being routinely disrespected by urban and liberal elites, and deep mistrust of government, especially regulations, these comprise the first of three underlying causes of the urban-rural divide. In the second segment, we’ll explore three more underlying causes, and then discuss what we can do to change course.
…
This is the first in a two-part series. The second segment will run next week
Canvassing Back Country Maine – A Few Hard Observations
By Ken Geiser, PhD
“The land is rough and rocky. The weather can be brutal—too dry, too cold, too variable. The economy is depressed, and many backcountry Mainers hold down more than one job and commute long distances. Still they display a silent dignity, a stoicism, a belief in fairness and compassion at least for their neighbors. They also vote Republican.”
While canvassing for voter turnout in the back hills of Maine this fall, I met a 16-year-old at the door of a small village house who refused to let me talk to his parents. With teen-age defiance he said, “We are not voting!”. I asked why. He told me that voting was stupid, and it did not change anything. The candidates were all liars, and they did not care about people like him.
I came to like door to door canvassing, and I did a lot of it this fall. I chose to do canvassing, because I found that direct person-to-person conversations are often helpful in clarifying issues, correcting false information and encouraging potential voters to see what is really at stake in their decision-making. I met people at their homes, in their yards and around their communities. I saw the poverty and insecurity of backcountry rural life. I also saw the strength and stubbornness that rural Mainer are known for. Some were enthusiastic and thankful for my help and reminders about the voting. Most were more withdrawn and clipped — “I’m all set”. And some were outright hostile — “I’m voting for our President!”.
I saw how my experience differed from the polls and the pronouncements of pundits sitting in comfortable home offices who were predicting Donald Trump’s electoral defeat in the November election. I saw what Donald Trump meant to back country people who had few champions or honest leaders. “I don’t like his tweets, but he did what he promised, and I liked that kind of honesty”, was a refrain I heard often.
I have lived part time in these hills for nearly 50 years. I know and care for the rural people of Maine. I admire their directness and their hard work. The land is rough and rocky. The weather can be brutal—too dry, too cold, too variable. The economy is depressed, and many backcountry Mainers hold down more than one job and commute long distances. Still they display a silent dignity, a stoicism, a belief in fairness and compassion at least for their neighbors. They also vote Republican.
Now, with the national election results complete, there are a host of questions in the air about why nearly half the electorate voted for the incumbent. Nearly 70 million people voted for Donald Trump. It might have been little more than a protest vote in 2016, but this fall most Americans were well aware of who this man is and what the Republican Party stands for. For those who voted Democratic that knowledge has been the cause of four years of continual pain and disgust, but not so for the Republican voters. They liked what they saw.
People did not necessarily like Donald Trump. Some said, “I don’t like his tweets, but I like his policies,” or “I wish he would shut up”, but they were willing to differentiate his personality from his actions. They spoke of him like they would a crass and objectionable uncle who says ugly things, but one who gives big gifts. People I spoke with seemed aware that Donald Trump often lies, that he is misogynistic and openly disparaging of vulnerable groups and that he occasionally defends violence and white supremacist organizations, but they were willing to withhold their personal judgments on such behaviors in order to support a leader who is tough on immigrants, challenges liberals, advocates for law and order and is bellicose in foreign relations.
My neighbors who voted Republican focus on these virtues. They viewed the President as good on his word. He promised to be tough on immigrants, to build a southern wall, to lower taxes, to extricate the country from foreign obligations, to bring jobs back to America and to grow the national economy and they praised him for moving forward on all these fronts. “I like the fact that he did what he said he would do,” reported one of these neighbors. This is Maine. Mainers are known for being sullen, blunt, and direct. They are likely to judge candidates more for what they do than what they say. They are independent minded, voting more for a person and less for a party. It was not surprising that the election results in Maine revealed a significant proportion of split party ballots.
My brief chats at the door during the campaign revealed a solid localism. Although my prescribed talking script encouraged me to discuss national issues and the fate of the U. S. Senate, such issues seldom were foremost on respondent’s minds. Central issues were the economy, health care access and “keeping Maine for Mainers”. Rural Mainers can be critical of their local officials, but they believe in and often participate in local government. They are willing to engage state politicians, but they do not trust the federal government. To win a federal office a candidate must feel like “one of us”. Arguments for replacing the current Senator were met with softly worded comments like, “Susan has been our Senator for so long”.
Throughout my dooryard chats there was a notable conservatism, a nostalgia for “the way things used to be”. The backcountry of Maine has long been losing out. The mill economy, the pulp and paper economy, the dairy economy, even the potato economy have been on a long decline. Small towns display boarded up retail shops and each year a portion of the youth move out to college-dependent careers and more prosperous cities. The state population is among the oldest and poorest in the United States. Looking forward, people want better services and more local jobs, but they fear loss—loss of their community, loss of their church, loss of their schools, and loss of their Maine way of life.
Fear marked the comments heard across the region. The nightly news brings a flood of disturbing stories from across the country. Concern about the covid-19 virus, the collapsing national economy, disorder and turmoil in the streets and a rising tide of diverse segments of the population tinge comments about the rest of the country. Fear of others, particularly those of different races and religions, breaks through in comments about welfare recipients or those who are out of work. Such comments align with the often-covered racism that lurks broadly across the country but can be seen more un-cloaked among rural Maine people who seldom see people of color and are prone to speak openly about their prejudices.
Nationalism also plays a role here. Locals would call it patriotism and they are defiantly proud of their country. The American flag in a window or on a flagpole is common at many homes in rural Maine. Military service and the National Guard offer an attractive alternative to young people who are under educated and cannot find jobs. Parents of those folks praise the President for pulling troops out of the Near East and refusing to commit to any further military engagements. Some of my neighbors speak highly of Donald Trump’s blunt and bellicose comments about other countries and his arguments for putting American interests first. Making America Great Again rings sweetly to folks who believe in the moral superiority and military might of America.
Finally, there is the news media. Small city newspapers struggle on in back country Maine, but many of these are now owned or syndicated into the ideologically conservative Sinclair media network. However, many rural Mainers receive their news from Fox News and base their opinions on right-wing talk radio shows that continuously blast out misleading information and analysis only acceptable to right leaning audiences. Some of my chats at the door included statements so unfathomably untrue that they could only have come from these blatant propaganda-peddling sources. If the only news one gets is Fox News, it is easy to come to prize opinions and doubt facts. “Why do you listen to this stuff?” I ask a neighbor. “Oh, I don’t believe it,” he responds, “I just think it’s funny”.
The largely white and often poor people of rural Maine voted for Donald Trump. Sitting in comfortable coastal homes, it is easy for those who voted Democratic to ask. “How could they vote for such a monster; a monster who has done so little for them?” Up close, knocking on doors that seldom open, living in a small rural town with barely more than a post office to give it identity, the answer to that question is clear. Rural Mainers did not vote irrationally. They voted for what they saw and what they heard. The stories that my neighbors hear daily are not based on fair and fact-checked journalism, but they shape the narratives common in rural Maine. Fox News misinformation and expensive negative television ads were certainly factors in determining the electoral results and they did so effectively because they gave words to painfully held feelings among their audience.
Many backcountry people of Maine feel hurt and angry. They are mostly jobless, and many are nearly destitute. The winters are cold, dark, and bleak. They have little food or health security. They feel left behind and disrespected by a national economy symbolized by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, hedge fund speculators and high-fluting professionals. They see non-white people as beneficiaries of government protections, which seem unfair. And they feel betrayed by a string of national governments that have done very little for their country and almost nothing for them. As the 16-year at the door said, voting is stupid, it does not change anything, the candidates are all liars and they do not care about people like him.
Many of these people are searching for a leader, gentle or crude, who can speak to and for them; someone who is bold and courageous, someone who stands proud for their country, someone who can put cozy liberals out to lunch, and someone who can protect their way of life. Donald Trump appeared to them to be all of that—he was tough, daring, iconoclastic, and patriotic, and more— he put on a good show.
These folks are not going to easily convert to more progressive perspectives. They have little incentive to do so. Programs for increasing job opportunities and economic stimulus funds to help small and struggling businesses would be appreciated. But such largess does not go deep enough. Rural Mainers want to be respected and defended. They believe that their lives and their communities are valuable and that given the opportunity they could contribute to a better society. Reaching these people starts with listening—deep, patient, and respectful listening. Door to door canvassing this fall offered a good starting point.
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“Free Shipping”, a review
By Anonymous
“The Cost of Free Shipping” by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson
and Ellen Reese
The Cost of Free Shipping arrived on my doorstep in a blue and white Prime envelope, or a “jiffy” as we call it in the warehouse. A yellow sticker was affixed to one side, reading “C-8 2.B.” That brief sequence was enough to tell me exactly where it was pulled from the conveyor belt, stowed on a shelf of raggedy bags, and later hauled onto a cart and wheeled over to a delivery van. I might’ve handled it myself, but I hardly have time to glance at the stickers, let alone notice my name and address on a label. So it goes working in one of Amazon’s last-mile delivery stations, where I report five days a week to ship customers their oh-so essential boxes of Fiji water and organic dog food. I know free shipping is not free, because I feel the toll it takes on my mind and body every day.
Authors Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Ellen Reese bring together 17 essays that provide a comprehensive analysis of the myriad externalities generated by Amazon’s trademark perk. The essays dig deep to capture the overt and covert mechanisms of control Amazon applies towards its workers and host communities. Amazon’s tentacles are rapidly extending their reach into every nook and cranny of daily life, making the authors’ framing of “Amazon Capitalism” all the more important. While monopolistic control is nothing new to the American economy, the corporation’s degree of control over workers and consumers via constant surveillance, data-tracking personal devices and all-powerful algorithms is. The behemoth’s marketing campaigns present this as progress toward a more convenient and efficient workplace and marketplace, but it is also a very real consolidation of power.
This has become abundantly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, as there is now a camera and monitor in our break room. A green circle is depicted around each employee as they pass through the field of view; it turns yellow if they get close to six feet from another employee, and then red once they are within six feet. Inevitably, my circle turns red on occasion: when I have to pass through a tight space, hand something to a coworker, or simply be able to hear them. Initially, I thought it was merely a tool to help us be more aware of social distancing. But then I saw “pictures of social distancing violations: 37” written on a manager’s whiteboard. While this type of surveillance is ostensibly conducted in the name of employee safety, I expect these images could easily be used against us if we ever made management’s life more difficult by organizing.
Conveniently, this camera is never focused on aisle E, which is inexplicably narrower than every other aisle in the facility. When it comes time to haul the bags of sorted boxes and jiffies (which can weigh up to fifty pounds) off their shelves and onto rattling carts, a massive traffic jam occurs. Bags partially block the aisle, and the algorithm dispatches a dozen or so “pickers” to the aisle at the same time, forcing us to scrape by one another with inches to spare, let alone six feet. One day when I was assigned to do social distancing (which comprises yelling at people for getting too close while holding a six foot pole) I pointed out to a manager how much of a health hazard this was. He said he had already escalated the issue to higher management, but they said nothing could be changed since we were almost in “Peak” season. That moment solidified my belief that Amazon will always prioritize productivity over worker well-being.
The authors note the unfortunate, though unsurprising fact that most customers still “relate to Amazon simply as a convenient and affordable place to shop,” while workers must labor furiously to deal with the corresponding demand. In my experience, however, this breakneck pace is driven not by overwhelming demand but by an intentional scarcity of labor in the name of profit. When work slows down, management offers us “VTO,” or voluntary time off, either before or during the shift. While my coworkers are understandably pleased to occasionally take advantage when the opportunity arises, we also all know the consequences: those left behind are subsequently overworked. Amazon presents VTO as a worker benefit, but we all know that it’s a double-edged sword, part of an exhaustive effort to “establish a perfect on-off switch for labor.” In addition, management deploys VET (voluntary extra time) and MET (mandatory extra time). The latter is deployed during peak season, where any permanent employee is required to work an additional shift on what is usually their first day off.
While these accounts may be grimly fascinating to readers observing from afar, the book could become truly important to workers inside Amazon. Several chapters provide insightful power analysis, identifying weak spots and the subsequent opportunities presented for organizing. Fulfilling our daily responsibilities on the job informs a general idea of these weaknesses, but there is much to learn from reading this book. For example, I know that we could interrupt the flow of packages if we went on strike, but the fact that built-in redundancy might allow Amazon to circumvent our site by rerouting, and the subsequent way in which that weakens our would-be leverage, is something I hadn’t accounted for prior to reading. Further, the description of the high “cost of obstruction” due to fixed costs in logistics infrastructure was emboldening, and not something I had factored into our power beforehand.
The brief history of Amazon organizing in Europe was also inspiring, it provides a vision of what might be possible here in the United States if enough people are truly committed to the cause. The German trade union Ver.di’s focus on shop-floor activism, and intentional avoidance of “third partying” language cultivated an understanding amongst workers that “we are the trade union,” to be viewed as “a tool for company organization, to which everyone has to contribute,” rather than a mere service provider, as unions have been more commonly viewed in recent decades. Correcting that perception amongst workers will be difficult, but not impossible, and thus it is crucial to learn from the efforts of our international comrades.
These lessons, and the path forward detailed in the final chapters by veteran organizers and current Amazon workers alike, make this book absolutely essential reading for every driver, warehouse associate, and tech worker at Amazon. Establishing a bulwark against the most powerful company in the world won’t come without an energized, organized, and sustained effort of resistance. Amazonians United is spearheading that effort and all Amazon workers are encouraged to join us!
…
Anonymous is an Amazon employee
“The Cost of Free Shipping is published by Pluto Press as a paperback, hardback and ebook.
Renew and Rebuild
By Stewart Acuff
Only six percent of private sector American workers are in unions.
Worse, the percentage is steadily declining year after year.
Worse yet, there is neither a labor plan nor effort to reverse or retard decline. I wonder if there is the will.
I’ve been deeply disappointed by organized labor’s refusal to resist fascism and fight rising racism. I could hardly believe there wasn’t a union presence except for scattered unionists like me at the amazing, ground shaking Women’s March Jan. 21, 2016.
The AFLCIO had to work to avoid resistance to Trump as he and his train of racism and fascism has rolled over and across America leaving only cruelty, pain, and destruction.
There are five things American labor must do to begin reacting to our survival crisis:
1) First, organized labor should immediately unite with young progressives calling for Bernie Sanders to be Secretary of Labor. Young progressives and labor are a great and essential coalition with a constituency we need. BERNIE IS OUR BEST ASSURANCE AN ECONOMIC JUSTICE AGENDA WILL BE A PRIORITY FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION. Bernie will carry an economic agenda that meets needs of unions and workers who’ve never had a chance to be union.
2) With or without Bernie, the AFLCIO would be wise to once again look outward instead of focusing only internally. Start by pushing an economic agenda to address not only unions’ needs but the needs of all American workers–$15 minimum wage, healthcare, workers’ rights, organizing rights, paid paternity leave, paid sick leave, and on and on. An economic agenda that addresses the entirety of America’s working class is the best road to unity.
3) Rebuild member mobilization capacity. Our members in motion has always been labor’s only source of real power.
4) Broaden the idea, concept and reality of the American labor movement. Unions are steadily hemorrhaging members, and consequently, power. Organizing only under unfair legal processes and protocol is not enough. We must embrace and join with all organizations and movements of workers for economic justice. Worker centers, women workers rights groups, independent unions, and other organizations of workers belong in a broader, bigger and more diverse labor movement.
5) Organizations of human beings have organic properties including the necessity of growth, adaptation to change, resources invested in a secure future. All of labor must prioritize organizing across every sector of the economy, especially every element of new sustainable and green energy. And we gotta fight like hell for every worker trapped in a dying industry.
We know how to reverse labor’s decline. In 2007 and 2008 when I was Organizing Director of the AFLCIO we grew union membership for the first time in a generation, but it is hard work. Hard work that must be done.
…
Georgia – The road leads back to you!
By Robert Gumpert and Peter Olney
Prior to the November election The Stansbury Forum raised money for Swing Left, an organization dedicated to flipping states that had voted Trump in 2016 to the Democratic column in 2020. Donors to Swing Left received a boxed set of photographer Robert Gumpert’s photo note cards. The Swing Left project was extremely successful in helping to swing Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and seemingly Georgia to blue Biden in the Presidential. Less successful were efforts to flip the Senate, and now control of the Senate has come down to a special election on January 5 in Georgia to elect both of the state’s US Senators. If the Dems can pick up both seats then the Senate is a 50-50 body with VP elect Kamal Harris breaking ties. Progressive forces in labor and communities of color that hope to push the new Prez to do Medicare for all, Green New Deal and racial justice will have a lot better terrain to fight on if the Dems wrest the senate from Mitch McConnell.
It appears that after a hand recount demanded by Trump that Biden will carry Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. This should not surprise our readers who have followed the demographic transformation of the state. 2019 census estimates tell us that that 52% of Georgians are white, 32% Black and 10% Latinos. But demographics do not automatically lead to electoral victory. It takes organizing, and Stacey Abrams, who ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 2018, has done a huge service to all of humanity by running a stellar voter registration project called Fair Fight Action. The Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) has also done stellar work in combating racist anti-immigrant sheriffs who gleefully collaborated with ICE in two Georgia counties. It appears that the labor union UNITE HERE whose members in hospitality have been laid off in massive numbers during the pandemic will be engaging effectively again on the ground in Georgia as they did in AZ, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Florida.
So again friends of The Forum, it is all hands on deck to win these two Senate seats. Help Jon Ossoff beat incumbent Senator David Perdue and help Reverend Raphael Warnock beat Sen. Kelly Loeffler. Texting, phoning, post carding are all in the mix again. Seed the Vote, a California based organization that did great work in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania will once again be on the ground in Georgia probably integrating their volunteers with the HERE program.
Once again Bob Gumpert has agreed to roll out his boxed photo card sets to support the battle upcoming in Georgia. If you make a $100.00 contribution to one of the organizations listed below you will receive a boxed ten-card set of Gumpert cards.
Once you’ve made your contribution, pick any 10 images from the contact sheets below and send your selection, receipt of contribution and an address to send the cards to:
gumpert@ix.netcom.com
If you have trouble reading the numbers below the image, you can “drag and drop” the jpeg to you desktop.
Thanks to you all and victory on January 5, 2021!
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The Black Vote and Mr. Trump
By Gary Phillips
“Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me.”
— President-elect Joe Biden
If not for rapper and entrepreneur Ice Cube’s interactions with the Trump administration about the president’s so-called Platinum Plan for Black American economic advancement, a lot of people, including me, would never have heard about the plan. Unveiled on the eve of the first and raucous debate between Trump and now president-elect Biden, at no point in that debate did Trump mention “his” plan. Not that any believe he had a hand in crafting its language. Still, you would think he might have tried to stay on message, but his own lack of self-discipline was his undoing in that outing – and a factor overall in his defeat.
To be fair, Cube was part of an effort called the “Contract With Black America” (CWBA) that dropped last July. It was, and still is, intended in the words of Professor Darrick Hamilton, executive director of the Kirwan Institute at The Ohio State University outlined in the preface:
“This Contract with Black America strikes at the heart of racism and presents a blueprint to achieve racial economic justice. It was written in the backdrop of the killing of George Floyd, which set off a wave of protests not seen since the Civil Rights Era of the 1950’s and ’60’s, and a global pandemic in which the Black mortality rate is more than double the White rate and in which 45% (nearly half) of Black-owned businesses closed.”
The CWBA was sent to both campaigns. The Dems said they’d deal with it after the election while the GOP apparently altered some of the precepts in the Prez’s 2-page Platinum Plan to reflect the aspirations laid out in the CWBA. Though it wasn’t as if the CWBA or the Plan was much discussed leading up to the election. The latter in particular wasn’t a sincere effort but rather a bid to try and gin up votes for Trump among “the Blacks,” as he would say.
“He calls it a ‘Platinum Plan,’ but it’s more like a Nickle Plan offered by a zirconium president,” said Lawrence Brown, an associate professor with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
Be that as it may, even given his racialized appeal to law and order; his studied ineptness handling the pandemic, let alone not acknowledging its disproportionate impact on the Black and Latinix communities and the poor and working poor; subscribing to and re-tweeting tinfoil hat conspiracy theories; and enacting policies such as separating undocumented children from their parents, more white women, a one percentile, and more black men, voted for Trump this time around than in 2016.
In particular according to AP VoteCast, Trump won 8 percent of the Black vote (some sources state twelve percent), up almost 2 percent from before. In a piece by Frank Newport on the Gallup website, there was nineteen percent job approval for Trump among black men and eleven percent among Black women. Too, Biden’s support among Black folk was less than Obama’s ninety percent, though better than Hillary Clinton’s by some four percent more.
On the surface, this support among Black men (and Black women at 6 percent according to the AP) seems stupefying. It’s not as if Trump remained an unknown quantity as a politician these last four years. Is it as some have speculated the “strong man” has a kind of appeal despite reality? This military school graduate who ducked Vietnam by claiming bone spurs yet has managed to craft an image over the decades as someone who is tough, laconic in the way Hollywood has presented the tough guy since before John Wayne strapped on a six shooter as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach? A guy who can cut through the bullshit and get the job done. None of that cerebral pontificating like Obama or lack of clarity like “Dubya,”
It is the case that prior to taking office, Trump had a favorable image he didn’t cultivate per se but did exist among segments of Blacks and Latinos. His time on The Apprentice reinvigorated an impression of him among a wide swatch of viewers as a wealthy corporate shark despite a string of bankruptcies, his goofball university and failed real estate deals. Bearing in mind that by numerous accounts it took hours of taping that had to be culled and edited together as if he were coherently analytical. Such illusory good will carried over when he finally decided to run for the highest office. But a degree of his attraction for people of color had to diminish given his continued vilifying of the Central Park Five, a quintet of then Black and Latino young men who were railroaded into prison. Their stories the subject of both a well-done documentary and a fictionalized miniseries, When They See Us.
Or when he glommed onto the birther movement. At one-point Trump called in to Fox saying his people were in Hawaii uncovering amazing things about Obama. The tease being he was about the bust the whole thing open and prove Obama hadn’t been born in the U.S. Of course no such evidence was produced since it didn’t exist. Yet his positioning with the racist bunk artists of birtherism earned him admiration among a base including those who now slavishly follow the messages from the mysterious Q. These cryptic communiques tout Trump’s supposed battle against the Deep State and purport that Democrats drink the blood of children – an old anti-Semitic trope revived for the modern age.
Yet it certainly does seem as though Trump was able to accomplish a Jedi mind trick when it came to how he was perceived in various quarters despite reality; a reality star who defied such. As is pointed out in several articles, rappers have cited Trump in their lyrics in positive ways over the years. “Bigged Up” in phrases like 2018’s Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar’s “Determined”: from 2012, “Homies on the block can say whatever they want/I don’t wanna be a dealer, I wanna be a Trump—Donald that is.” By the time he came to office, as Allison McCann noted on her July 14, 2016 piece “Hip-Hop is Turning on Donald Trump” on fivethirtyeight.com, “Rappers love Trump’s money but hate his politics.” For sure YG’s and Nipsey Hussle’s “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)” resonated, but Trump would nonetheless find allies in the likes of Kanye West and Lil’ Wayne in this year’s bid to stay in office. Along with a muscular gentleman named Stephen Davis, who goes by MAGA Hulk. An African American who has waved his Trump flag high and has spoken at rallies for him, as of course he’d be the darling among these mostly white crowds as a “right thinking negro,” in Beverly Hills and Huntington Beach.
While I find comfort in Malcolm X’s observation to better have a processed head than a processed mind, this election reminds us of the often stated point that African Americans are not a monolith any more than other ethnic or racial groups on any given issue. Several factors contributed to Trump getting the numbers he did among Black voters. Not all Black people are down for Daca, choice, trans rights or with Black Lives Matter. Between a Justice Clarence Thomas on the far right and Congressperson Ilhan Omar on the left, there’s a lot in play socio-politically along that continuum.
Guess MAGA Hulk will wave his Trump flag on. Because sadly, while he’ll be out of office, Trump will no doubt continue to tweet his verbal hand grenades from the sidelines. It remains to be seen how many will continue to rally around him or tire of his antics.
…
Turning Arizona Blue – On the Ground in Maricopa County
By Peter Olney
Choices about where to work the elections are always a mixture of strategic judgment and family circumstances. In 2016 my wife Christina and I decided to work for Hilary Clinton in Rockingham County New Hampshire. My mother lived at the time in North Andover Massachusetts right across the border. So election work trying to stop Trump was combined with time with Elinor Olney and a free place to stay. We correctly saw the danger that Trump posed and we worked alongside many others to successfully to flip New Hampshire to Hillary and a Senate seat to the Democrats.
In 2018 it was time to flip the House of Representatives to put a check on Trump’s dangerous agenda and actions. California CD 39 in Orange County was a perfect fit for me because I could commute 25 miles from El Monte, the hometown of Christina and where my mother-in-law lives. My mother-in-law Ramona Pérez became the darling of the campaign as she baked lasagna-sized trays of oatmeal raisin cookies for volunteers who I coordinated.
Pre Covid 2020 I was headed to Tucson and Pima County because my 96-year-old cousin Sig Olney resides in Oro Valley north of Tucson. But Covid dictated a shift in plans and Maricopa County, where Phoenix is the county seat, became the destination for my Dump Trump activity this year.
Arizona with its 11 electoral votes was designated a “Tri-Fecta” state. We had the opportunity to flip a historic red state to blue, a Senate seat to Democratic control and gain a majority in the state legislature – crucial to redistricting post census. Maricopa County is the big prize in Arizona. Over half of the state’s residents, 4.9 million, reside there. No Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948 has carried the county or the state. In 2016 Trump carried the County by a margin of 45,000, and it was the largest county in population nationwide that he won in his election triumph. But Maricopa is changing. The population is 31% Latinx. Labor, community and immigrants’ rights groups battled to rid the County of racist Joe Arpaio who delighted in humiliating Latino immigrants in his 24 years as Sheriff. Organizations like LUCHA (Living United for Change in Arizona)) played a major role in the winning battle to dump Arpaio in 2016 and were geared for election 2020. The fact that Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 11 based in Los Angeles had absorbed the union’s hospitality members in Arizona and were committed to working the Arizona election was a good sign for activists interested in achieving the Trifecta. And in the midst of the pandemic HERE announced that it was deploying staff and members to key swing states like PA, FLA, NEV and AZ to work the doors. This fact alone was what drew me to their operation.
The HERE was the only labor union “on the doors”. Direct discussions with voters to commit them to candidates and more importantly to commit the supporter to actually vote by mail, early or on Election Day are crucial to winning. No other national union in America committed to going to the doors of voters. I think this is one big mistake that labor made even factoring in the pandemic. Voters in Maricopa County welcomed us at the doors.
HERE ran a program with strict health protocols – daily temperature checks and pre-screening. We wore masks and visors appearing often to look like medical personnel or riot police. All briefings were carefully conducted outdoors and partners riding in cars looked like Uber fares as the driver sat in front with a partner in the back, windows open and AC on in 95-degree heat. HERE did two months of doors without casualties. My wife quarantined me when I returned from Arizona and I tested negative for Covid at Kaiser.
We were assigned 80 doors a shift working for up to eight hours into the evening. Our job was to first ID support then commit supporters to vote immediately by mail or to commit to a plan to do early voting prior to November 3. A plan was recorded with the canvasser then we followed up with a reminder text:
“Miguel I talked with you yesterday about voting. Hope you were able to deliver your ballot! Thanks “Peter for Biden”
“We did it this morning. Thanks for following up! Two more for Biden”, Miguel
Privacy and anonymity were not an issue. As in union organizing, the key is public commitment and execution. It belies all the American norms of respecting the privacy and sanctity of secrecy in voting. This aggressive approach may rub some the wrong way, but it wins union representation elections and it is key to winning political elections. I believe that if some of the other major unions with strong organizing programs had hit the doors in swing states our margins would have increased considerably. Fortunately we have hung on for a squeaker, but a squeaker victory due to forces like HERE, LUCHA and Seed the Vote an activist organization from California, which flooded battleground states with committed volunteers. Seed the Vote mobilized over 7000 volunteers nationwide and deployed them with partners in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida. In Georgia the group Stacy Abrams’ group “Fair Fight” may well have flipped the state for Biden and forced Senate races into runoffs (one Senate seat was a special election).
My son Nelson, an IBEW union electrician, decided to join me on this mission. He and I made the 12-hour trip from SF to Phoenix in his car on October 21. Without his attention to detail and his energy I would not have been able to handle the grueling regimen. He was so inspired by the program on the ground in Maricopa County that he decided to stay beyond October 31 and work the doors through Election Day. He committed to returning to his local and teaching his sister and brother union members the canvassing techniques that he learned in Arizona.
Our turf in Maricopa County was the City of Chandler with about 250,000 inhabitants in the southeast corner of the County. It is home to the largest domestic manufacturing facility of Intel where prototype computer chips are fabricated. The city has a surging Latinx population of Mexican immigrants accounting for about 30% of the population.
We found ourselves one day in neighborhoods that were trailer parks with large Latinx communities. The next day we would sneak through automatic security gates to penetrate neighborhoods that had luxury homes on golf courses. We found Biden supporters in both neighborhoods largely because we had lists of Democratic registered voters and newly registered voters. I had a retiree testify to his support for Biden fresh from the golf course where he had shot an 86, a pretty fair handicap for a senior. One of the interesting features of many neighborhoods was the battle of the yard signs.
My favorite hand written yard sign was: Flush the Orange Turd on November 3rd!”. Trump signs and flags were always the biggest and most prominent however, and we ran into a three-mile-long car and truck caravan for Trump on Sunday, October 25th.
In the end our work contributed to the flipping of Maricopa County (plus 46,000 for Biden) and thus the whole state of Arizona by 18,713 votes (as of 8:35 PST 8 Nov). We flipped the Senate seat aiding ex-astronaut Mark Kelly to victory. Our efforts to complete the Trifecta were not successful however as the Republicans continue to hold the state legislature.
Perhaps the biggest victory beyond individual candidates was the victory for Proposition 208, which taxed the rich to raise money for teacher salaries and the Arizona schools.
The heroes of this election season are the millions of citizen volunteers throughout the country who texted, phoned and post carded, but perhaps the biggest contribution nationally was the work of the beleaguered HERE which lost 80% of its members in the hospitality industry because of the pandemic. They bet all their remaining resources on working the doors to great effect in Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Susan Minato, Co-President of HERE LA local 11 summed up the union’s work in Arizona:
“UNITE HERE Local 11 has been running political campaigns in Arizona since 2007. During this pandemic, this cycle has been no exception. We knocked on 800,000 doors, made 2.5 million calls, and talked to 250,000 Arizonans. More important than any demographic changes, it is the face-to-face conversations with voters that has made Arizona turn blue in 2020.”
There will be extensive commentary on the left in the coming days about the fact that the Biden campaign and program did not offer anything in the area of economic or racial justice but rather a “Return to Normalcy”. This is no doubt true and the passage of a $15 minimum wage in Florida where Biden lost is symptomatic. However once Biden became the nominee the die was cast and aggressive campaigning and support for the Biden/Harris ticket was necessary to “Dump Trump”. Trump’s utter disregard for public health and safety meant that he was free to run an aggressive ground game with “spreader” rallies and car caravans. Labor’s failure beyond HERE to get on the doors early and often was a huge hole in our operation and accounts for some of the tightness of the vote in many states. Going forward …….
Georgia on My Mind:
Next stop is Georgia. Let’s make sure that Biden is not tempted to “Reach Across the Aisle” to make deals with Mitch McConnell. January 5th in Georgia we will have the chance to flip two Senate seats and create a 50-50 Senate with Kamala Harris casting the deciding ballot! All eyes are on Georgia, and all hands need to be on deck to flip both those seats. Georgia activists may not want Yankee carpetbaggers, but they will want texting, phoning, post carding and money. And hopefully this time labor unions will all unite to bang the doors. If volunteers for the doors are needed, my bags are already packed!
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Trump evicted but work remains
By Robert Gumpert
It’s been a long road and in about two months he’ll be gone.
But there remains in Georgia TWO U.S. Senate seats to be determined in a special election on January 5th, 2021, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff need your help in whatever way you can give it.
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A Common Defense: Mobilizing Veterans in Labor To Beat Trump and the GOP
By Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump dissed a Gold Star family that lost a son in Iraq. He called Senator John McCain, America’s most famous prisoner of war, a “loser” for being captured in Vietnam. When asked about widespread sexual assault in today’s military, he dismissed it as a problem. He had to be publicly shamed into making a promised donation to veterans’ charities.
His opponent, Hillary Clinton, was backed by more than 100 former high-ranking officers. Trump was endorsed by only a few. Nevertheless, on election day four years ago, most military veterans ending up voting for a wealthy recipient of five draft deferments. Among former military personnel, Trump beat Clinton by a 26-point margin, a bigger percentage of the “vet vote” than McCain’s own share when he ran against Barack Obama in 2008.
A Pew Poll conducted last Fall showed that Trump remained popular among veterans, even as his ratings began to sink among other constituencies. U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan– which Trump criticized as a candidate in 2016 and, again at West Point this year—is now viewed unfavorably by a majority of the vets surveyed. In blue collar communities in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin which suffered some of the highest post 9/11 combat-casualty rates, veterans and their neighbors helped Trump carry those decisive swing states four years ago.
To repeat that regional sweep and give Trump a second term, the Republican Party has again targeted the nation’s 20 million veterans as a key voting bloc. Among the groups trying to prevent the GOP from out-organizing the Democratic Party among veterans and military families are the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and Common Defense, a national organization of progressive veterans.
Veterans for Social Change
CWA and Common Defense unveiled their joint initiative in the fall of 2019, when CWA President Chris Shelton, an Air Force veteran and former telephone worker, launched a “Veterans for Social Change Program.” Its purpose is to “develop and organize a broad base of CWA activists who are veterans and/or currently serving in the military.” As the union notes, veterans, active duty service members, and military families “are constantly exploited by politicians and others who seek to loot our economy, attack our communities, and divide our nation with racism and bigotry so they can consolidate more power amongst themselves.” CWA seeks to counter these Trump-era threats by encouraging veterans in its own ranks to engage in grassroots campaigns with community allies and increase awareness of veterans’ issues within CWA, like the need for a strong fully funded veterans’ healthcare system.
Last October, CWA local leaders who served in the military joined veterans from around the country at a Common Defense sponsored Veterans Organizing Institute (VOI). Previous weekend sessions of the VOI had helped train a network of hundreds of younger veterans to organize more effectively in their own communities, counter the influence of big money in politics, and make politicians more accountable to poor and working-class people. At the training conference attended by CWA members, union activists from swing states like Ohio, Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas shared organizing experiences and learned new skills useful in electoral campaigning and day-to-day advocacy for fellow workers and veterans.
“The VOI provides a great introduction to getting a grassroots movement started and getting veterans, labor, and the community all working together,” says John Blake, a Brick N.J. electrician who attended the training. After Blake left active duty in 2004, he used the GI Bill to go to vocational school. His step-father is a union electrician so he also got strong family encouragement to join the apprenticeship program of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). Blake is now a member of IBEW Local 400, where he chairs veterans’ committees in his own local and the AFL-CIO central labor council (CLC) in his area.
On the organization chart of the AFL-CIO, its national affiliates, and local CLCs, the dual identity of union members who served in the military has long been acknowledged via the existence of such committees. But their level of activity may be low unless an activist like Blake takes the lead in “making our union brand more appealing to vets coming out of the service.” His Local 400 does this by participating in local events like “Operation Ruck It,” an annual fundraising walk to raise awareness about veteran suicide,
Vet Organizations, Old and New
According to the Economic Policy Institute, about 16% of all veterans—1.2 million men and women–are covered by a union contracts (compared to 10.3% of all workers). They are most heavily represented in the American Federation of Government Employees and American Postal Workers, where veterans have a strong collective identity and internal union presence. On an individual basis, union members who are veterans may also belong to local posts of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, or AMVETS. But these old-line groups tend to be conservative on military and foreign policy issues and not much engaged with issues affecting veterans as workers. Common Defense, in contrast, proclaims its commitment to “progressive values” and seeks partnerships with like-minded unions working for social and economic justice.
Last year, Will Attig, who leads the AFL-CIO’s Union Veterans Council, invited both Common Defense and VoteVets, an advocacy group more closely aligned with the Democratic Party, to discuss their work at a meeting of national union political directors. Attig is a combat veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who joined a southern Illinois local of the Plumbers and Pipefitters after he left the military. He did legislative/political work for his own union and then the Illinois state fed before moving to AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington. After the presentations he helped arrange, both CWA and the IBEW contacted Common Defense about sending members to VOI training.
Common Defense grew out of anti-Trump organizing in 2016. Co-founders of the group first met during protests over Trump’s failure to donate money to veterans’ charities, as promised during a campaign event in Iowa. One of the protestors was ex-Marine Alex McCoy, then attending Columbia University on the GI Bill. He and a group of like-minded vets “felt really strongly about Trump constantly using veterans as props while running a campaign that was so founded in hate and division.” During Trump’s first term, Common Defense rallied its 20,000 supporters to call for his impeachment. The group endorsed Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for president, during the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries, after both helped solicit other Congressional signers of a pledge to end “forever wars” in the Middle East. One particular target of Common Defense lobbying is military veterans now serving on Capitol Hill after mid-term election victories that gave Democrats control of the House in 2018.
Veterans Organizing Institute trainings, conducted by Common Defense staff members like McCoy, are designed to hone the political skills of veterans involved in unions, community organizations, and electoral campaigns. Four months after his VOI training, Frank J. Cota, a Marine Corps veteran and vice-president of CWA Local 7026 in Tucson was in Washington, DC., as part of a group of CWA veterans urging Congress to pass the PRO Act, legislation that would strengthen private sector organizing and bargaining rights. McCoy believes that Common Defense can play a key support role in workplace organizing, particularly at firms like Amazon and Wal-Mart which brand themselves as “veteran friendly” and hire tens of thousands of former military personnel, while pursuing “anti-worker policies,” which often violate federal labor law.
For Racial Justice
When nationwide protests developed last June, after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Common Defense leaders vigorously opposed military deployments in Washington, DC and other cities. Kyle Bibby, a former Marine Corps infantry officer and graduate of Annapolis, urged fellow veterans to stand against “Trump’s authoritarian plan to use the military as his personal storm troopers to suppress dissent.” A co-founder of the Black Veterans Project, Bibby condemned the “use of force by uniformed police and a culture of violence that seeks to dominate communities rather than serve and heal them.” Recalling his own past interactions with law enforcement, in and out of uniform, Bibby declared that “the police don’t care that I’ve gone to war to protect this country — I could be the next George Floyd solely due to the color of my skin.”
Common Defense activists, including Bibby, launched a new campaign, called “No War On Our Streets,” against police department use of $7 billion worth of hardware obtained from the Pentagon. “It was our equipment first,” says Bibby, who served in Afghanistan. “We understand it better than the police do … It’s important that we have veterans ready to stand up and say: ‘These weapons need to go.’”
The educational efforts of veterans’ advocates allied with labor, like Common Defense and VoteVets, appear to be paying off. Not only is Trump faring poorly in presidential preference polls conducted among all likely voters, his stock is dropping among military personnel who helped him gain office in 2016. Forty-one percent of the active duty personnel surveyed by Military Times said they were voting for Biden, while 37 percent still favored Trump. In 2017, 46 percent of the troops polled by the same publication, had a favorable opinion of the president. Three years later, half of the respondents (49.9 percent) now held an unfavorable view of him, compared to just 38 percent who still liked him. Among officers, the disapproval rate was even higher—59%–with more than half expressing strong disapproval. Nearly ¾ of those surveyed—officers and enlisted personnel—opposed Trump’s threatened use of the military to help police American cities during their civil unrest.
Progressives wooing the “vet vote” saw a similar shift in political sentiment in other states. As Nov. 3 nears, the Biden campaign is clearly making inroads among post 9/11 veterans who are younger, female, and non-white, while ex-soldiers who are older, white males living in longtime Republican strongholds remained a harder bloc to crack. Angel Wells, an African-American Army veteran who works for AT&T in Arizona and belongs to CWA Local 7050, was among those union members protesting White House efforts to suppress voter turn-out by discrediting mail ballots and undermining Postal Service capacity to deliver them. As she pointed out, in an election year when 800,000 service members and their families stationed abroad were scheduled to vote that way, “mail in ballots for veterans is not that foreign a concept.” With a pandemic still raging, the economy cratering, and millions of workers, including veterans, finding their jobs, unions, or health care at risk, there were many reasons for voters who served in the military to choose a new commander in chief.
…
On 2 November Ken Casarez sent a this response, printed below:
November is Veterans Month…protecting our democracy through the ballot box.
Voting is still precious in many places
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For some reality based thoughts through the airwaves:
Deep and lasting Peace starts closer than we might think. Teach tolerance and respect.
And The Dude has cancer and Sir Sean is gone, wtf?
“It’s about the trees, man”;
“I’m an easy target because of my political opinions”
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extra credit:
Conspiracy Nation with a Badge–
Just how low is the bar in law enforcement hiring?
Barney meets Ernest T. Bass in real life…but both of them were imaginary, thus supposedly harmless.
Way too many of these types with real badges, lot’s of bullets, and a bizarre attraction to breaking the laws and orange tinted skin.
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/10/27/44929992/facebook-is-the-reason-we-have-loren-culp
Keeping with the retro theme, turning the dial on my clock radio, as the big numbers flipped, this AM station crackled in…and the 70’s was heard faintly in the background, you might catch it:
Conspiracy nation…
conspiracy fraud…
too scared to learn…
way beyond just simple and dumb…bum bum bum bum bum bum
and when your judgement day does come…
with DNA links to pond scum….
as you argue against science ’til kingdom comes…
…bum bum bum bum bum bum
Yeah, yeah..it’s kinda funny, but ok…apologies to everyone(especially the People)…except, well..you know those CT whackos listening in through my ear hair antenna with energy generated from my house socks on carpet which is transferred to the finch nests near my house by attaching to tiny feathers then carried around the globe on migrating birds and dwarf mongoose (don’t ask, it’s really scary stuff)…and, there is a good chance, a really good chance, that this is what really happened to Dr. Gonzo, and some suggest DB Cooper embroidered spotted owl feathers into his parachute…that’s right not finch feathers, so who knows what other birds are involved in this plot with mongeese.
Many people have said…
Yeah…
Is Trump a programmed zombie droid, rejected as junk by the Kazakh Space program, fell to earth and secured in a bunker in the Nevada desert, but escaped and perma-marked with explosive powdered Cheetix orange, supposedly to aid in it’s recapture? Highly venomous, stuck on repeat, appeals to 4th grade bullies, prone to high crimes, do not aid and abet, etc…
Many people have said, I dunno?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a24152/area-51-history/
(and what about the whole story with Pop Mechanics too?)
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Thank you
Kenneth Casarez
November 3, 2020 LAST DAY TO VOTE
Protect yourself with education, ballots–and music;
“…out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train”
–Yusuf-the Cat