“Note to Readers” On a Narrative Account of a Strike
By Heath Madom
The experiences recounted here grew out of the efforts of a small group of Oakland United School District (OUSD) educators to encourage Oakland teachers and community members to tell their stories about the 2019 strike. The goal of that effort was—and continues to be—for individuals to share personal stories in order to promote communication, understanding, and healing in the aftermath of a strike that was incredibly powerful and unifying, yet also bitterly divisive and heartbreaking. Composition wise, the idea was to use an oral history structure similar to what Jacques Levy used in Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa, but with individuals writing their own stories.
What follows is a narrative account of the strike as I experienced it as a teacher at Oakland Technical High School. I did not initially plan on writing as much as I did, but once I got started, the project sort of took on a life of its own. I did my best to capture and represent my experience of the strike as honestly and accurately as my memory would allow. Any errors—factual, grammatical, or otherwise—are my fault alone. I hope that by sharing my story, others who were involved in the Oakland strike, or any of the recent teacher strikes across the nation, will be motivated to share theirs as well.
And with that, click HERE
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State of Resistance – California Fights Back
By Fred Glass
State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future, by Manuel Pastor (New Press, 2018, 278 pages)
California Fights Back: The Golden State in the Age of Trump, by Peter Schrag (Heyday Press, 2018, 112 pages)
“California is America fast-forward,” says Manuel Pastor in State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America’s Future. I hope he’s right, and the author gives us reason to think so.
So does former Sacramento Bee editor Peter Schrag in California Fights Back: The Golden State in the Age of Trump. Schrag foresees an attainable national future in the state’s self-assigned role as lead organizer of the opposition to Trump: “Given California’s size, demographic diversity, economic heft, and its (mostly) blue political hue, it’s not surprising that the state is both the leader of the resistance […] and, at the same time, a bright model of an alternative.”
Although each book largely presents latter-day California history with accuracy and insight, State of Resistance provides a deeper dive into the state’s complex social relationships, while California Fights Backfeatures a thinner but useful empirical recitation of how the state’s political actors have fought the Trump regime’s offense against immigrants, facts and common decency.
In both books we learn how, by the late twentieth century, the once lustrous Golden State had lost its sheen. When Governor Pete Wilson found himself behind in the polls in 1994, after his first term in office, the hitherto moderate Republican came up with an explanation for the state’s economic doldrums: illegal immigrants. He fashioned a ballot measure, Proposition 187, to deny undocumented immigrants and their children most state sponsored services, including public education, and sailed to reelection on these mean-spirited winds. (Prop 187 was soon found unconstitutional.)
A decade later, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t plausibly finger immigrants as the source of his failure to deliver on bombastic campaign promises to “blow up the boxes” of government bureaucracy, since he had arrived on these shores from elsewhere himself—although, with Wilson, Iago-like, whispering in his ear, he briefly tried. Instead, the wealthy governor made scapegoats of public employees and their unions, and called a special election to deal what he imagined would be deathblows to these mortal enemies of the people. His ballot measures proposed to dismantle pensions, strip away job protections, and wrest for himself dictatorial control over the state budget.
But the electorate didn’t see things his way. Instead, teachers, nurses and firefighters, powered by grassroots organizing and a much smarter media strategy than Schwarzenegger’s, molded themselves into a secular Holy Trinity, and their union-funded campaign solidly defeated the once and future movie actor’s nasty ballot measures. Their cause was helped along by the Governator’s contemptuous demeanor, transparent lies about his opponents, and abrupt policy zigazgs.
Both authors see this as a turning point, or at least the moment that revealed California’s tectonic shift from celebrity media politics, conservative gutter ideologies and austerity policies a couple decades ago, to the present day when the state stands as a bulwark of ethnic tolerance and serious, if insufficient efforts to address the threats of economic inequality and climate change. Pastor in particular digs below the surface of electoral politics and personalities to diagnose the structural problems that led to the state’s decline and analyze its path to improvement in ways that might help others.
Thus two-time governor Jerry Brown often received plaudits, especially outside California, for the state’s phoenix-like rise from the Great Recession, during which time right-wing pundits enjoyed calling liberal California a “failed state.” (They still do, not having noticed, or choosing to ignore, the changed circumstances.) At the moment he was elected in 2010, public education was losing ten thousand K-12 teaching positions a year; services to seniors and the poor were slashed to the bone; and four of the top ten counties in the country hit hardest by the sub-prime housing crisis were to be found in the Central Valley.
During Brown’s tenure the state added
more than two million new jobs; the enormous and perennial budget deficits
carefully nurtured by tax-averse Republican administrations were supplanted by
substantial state surpluses and rainy day funds; and much (if far from all) of
the damage to the public sector wrought by long term systemic underfunding and
the Recession was repaired.
Brown deserves some credit. But as State
of Resistance explains, California’s return from the precipice depended
less on Brown and more on the evolution of four interlocking factors:
population demographics; the tech economy; progressive strategies; and the
ascension of a cohort of seasoned activists to the helms of unions and
community-based organizations, as well as to political office. These leaders’ lengthy trial by fire
during the slash and burn days of Wilson and Schwarzenegger forced them to
rethink where the state needed to go and how to transform the state’s politics
as usual in order to go there.
As Pastor puts it, their “work became more intersectional, linking immigrants and labor, environmentalists and social justice proponents, and community actors and policy makers….[R]ather than merely arguing against the newest inane right-wing idea, groups were rolling out concepts like living wages, community benefits agreements, immigrant-friendly policing, and environmental equity.”
Key to these developments was what Pastor calls “integrated voter engagement” with low-income communities of color, whose self-interest would line up with progressive goals—if the members of these communities voted. California Calls, a foundation-supported progressive advocacy coalition of community organizations, saw this voter recruitment and education project as one of two essential goals, the other being to reverse Proposition 13, the 1978 property-tax cutting disaster that exemplified Pastor’s vision of California as America fast-forward, only in the wrong direction.
This template for small government, reduced tax, anti-social welfare and anti-union ideology, initially a California export in the early days of neoliberalism, today of course reigns supreme in Republican-controlled states as well as within the Trump administration. And this supposedly immutable California political preference was one of the favorite clubs wielded by conservative and liberal political consultants alike for decades to beat back any suggestion for progressive tax proposals that might fund investments in the state’s languishing public sector.
In 2010, Brown received a gift during the same election in which he became governor for a second time. A gathering sense of possibility among like-minded progressive groups led to passage of Proposition 25, which reduced the undemocratic legislative requirement for a two-thirds supermajority to pass a state budget each year, to a simple majority. This broke the toxic legislative power of the minority Republican caucus, which hovered just over one third, that had systematically underfunded public services and created the cynical anti-government smokescreen (typically accompanied by a “what can we do?” shrug) that “Sacramento is dysfunctional” when it was actually a conscious conservative scheme that kept the state gridlocked and its services starved.
The success of Prop 25 encouraged public sector unions and community groups like California Calls to move forward with plans to place a progressive tax measure on the 2012 general election ballot. Although ultimately supported by Jerry Brown, what eventually became Proposition 30 was quite different from the contours of his regressive initial proposal, which featured a one-cent sales tax increase as well as an across-the-board income tax bump.
Based on opinion research conducted by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), a determined and rowdy labor-community coalition created a “millionaires tax” movement, and invited Brown to jettison his regressive proposal and join with them. After he refused to partner, the dueling ballot measures gathered signatures separately for several months while the contending forces waged a high-profile series of skirmishes in the media. Brown peeled away all the unions but one—CFT—from the coalition, threatening to veto any legislation they sponsored if they didn’t come over to his side.
But alongside CFT in the Millionaires Tax coalition remained California Calls, the Courage Campaign, and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (the former ACORN). It had just enough funding combined with its grassroots street and online capacities to propel its simple, radical message—”tax the rich for schools and services”—before the public eye and test out the thesis that together, bold progressive ideas and organizing the new electorate could change the state.
The coalition pressed its case in news-catching demonstrations, marches, news conferences, op-eds, and a steady barrage of endorsements by school and college districts and higher education student organizations organized by the coalition. This nimble juggernaut beat Brown in five straight matchups in opinion polls and put ten thousand demonstrators in the streets of Sacramento with Millionaires Tax signs outside his window. He finally sued for peace, agreeing to merge his effort with the coalition’s.
“If it can be done here, why not elsewhere?
Prop 30, a compromise measure that leaned more to the left than Brown’s earlier proposal, overcame an opposition campaign funded by right-wing billionaires in November 2012. With the governor on board, the entire labor movement and the state Democratic Party supported Prop 30, and beat back an anti-union salvo, Proposition 32, as well. These victories were critical for the health of the state. Prop 30 and its successor in 2016, Prop 55, which extended the measure for twelve years, brings California eight to ten billion dollars a year, essentially saving the public sector.
Props 30 and 55 boosted the top marginal income tax rates on families making half a million dollars a year, providing desperately needed relief to the strapped schools and social services that enable low income communities to survive—while similar populations are being hammered elsewhere in states run by Republican regimes propped up by gerrymandering, repressive voter restrictions and a mountain of political cash from wealthy conservatives.
This is the crux of the argument in these two books. At the same moment that Trump was riding his horse Xenophobe through a narrow passageway in the Electoral College to the presidency, California elected only Democrats to statewide offices, extended progressive tax revenues and decisively locked out a left-over anti-immigrant policy sharply limiting help for English learner students (Prop 58). If it can be done here, why not elsewhere?
The path of the nation’s population growth, despite the Trump administration’s efforts, is into this demographic future: majority minority and immigrant, and California got there first.
Both authors understand that the California model, while infinitely preferable to what’s happening on the national stage, does not represent Utopia. They note that big problems remain to be resolved on the Lower Left Coast. Its own version of economic inequality features the largest proportion of poverty dwellers in the country alongside an insanely rich tech elite. Transportation infrastructure is crumbling amid housing stock falling farther and farther behind the bulk of the population’s need for shelter, with that scarcity driving housing costs beyond reach. Despite Prop 30’s assistance, California continues to underfund education and services measured against real needs, thanks in part to various provisions of Prop 13.
(This will be addressed directly in November 2020 by the same coalition that passed Props 30 and 55, with the “Schools and Communities First” ballot measure, now collecting signatures.)
And yes, substantial pockets of resistance to the Resistance remain to be eradicated in traditionally conservative areas of the state from urban San Diego to agricultural-cum-suburban central valleys to the far northern cow counties. Eyeing the distance still to travel, Pastor says,
“The real need is not for a great leader but for many leaders, not for winning at the top of the ticket but for winning across the board, not for pinning our hopes on one speech, one candidate or even one big march but rather counting on the grassroots organizing that brings people together face to face, race to race and place to place to see their common future.”
Here is where Pastor and Schrag diverge. Pastor, a USC professor and participant-observer sociologist, helped provide some of the research fueling the leftward push from progressive organizations that breathed new life into the California Dream, and his book’s proposals are undergirded by his direct experience with organizers and activism. Schrag, liberal author of a number of books on the state and former newspaper editor, marshals a veteran journalist’s care with specifics, but in enumerating many actions taken by California actors and institutions to resist the Trump agenda, focuses on elected officials, state institutions and law suits. For people who still believe at this perilous moment that facts can help win political arguments, Schrag offers ammunition.
He is not immune, however, to the occasional glib platitude, crediting Brown, for instance, with Prop 30, not knowing—or, if aware, not thinking it important enough to mention—what Pastor spends a fair amount of time carefully delineating: the convergence of strategy, organizing and leadership development on the broad left that turned the state’s finances around, representing for Pastor a significant part of what California has to offer the rest of the country as a model.
So how do these books, meant to provide a guide out of the Trumpist nightmare and into a brighter day, measure up to their intentions?
There is a slapdash quality to California Fights Back, as if in the haste to get the book out Schrag glued together the events and actions with liberal (and not so liberal) pieties, rather than digging into the more careful exposition we get from Pastor.
Conversely, Pastor’s view is that of the more thoughtful elements of the Democratic Party left since November 2016; in many ways that would be the natural audience for his book. Of course, it would be better if the centrist wing of the party were to be persuaded by State of Resistance, and by California Fights Back, too, in their shared arguments for following the lead of California toward a more inclusive and progressive United States. But Pastor’s focus and insistence on the long-term hard work of organizing for progressive change might not win over that particular audience.
That would be a shame, because the thrust of both books, especially State of Resistance, should be taken very seriously. Just as the xenophobic overreach of conservative policies and politics twenty years ago provided the wakeup call to California’s “sleeping giant” immigrant voter ranks, and seeded a new generation of progressive leadership that arose from struggles against such abusive politics, we may well be witnessing something similar arising on the national stage with the Trumpian assaults on democratic traditions, law, reason, and decency, and the consequent progressive surge—electoral and in other spheres of political life—in response to these insults.
Where we go as a nation from here—and whether it takes these California lessons to heart—remains to be seen. At least part of the tale will be told in November 2020. Meanwhile, I live in California, the State of Resistance, and for the reasons laid out in these two books, I’m not leaving any time soon.
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“The Million Dollar Organizer: 365 Tips for Professional Union Organizers”, 2019 Bob Oedy
By Peter Olney
My son Nelson turned out as an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) journey electrician in June of 2018. I was inspired by his graduation at which 44 apprentices were advanced to journey status. The majority of his flight were women and people of color. Not your daddy’s lily white all male cohort of thirty years ago. Progress indeed. I also was heartened that in 2016 when Bernie Sanders ran for President, the largest number of locals of any national union that endorsed him and supported him came out of the IBEW: 25 locals to be exact!
Since 2016 I have been conducting classes for the Building Trades Academy out of Michigan State University. My colleague Glenn Perusek and I teach basic organizing skills to mostly newly minted building trades organizers. Several of our students have been impressive young organizers from the ranks of the IBEW. When I saw a book on line called Bigger Labor: A Crash Course for Construction Union Organizers by Bob Oedy I ordered it and read it. I am always intrigued to share the art and craft of organizing with women and men in the field. I am particularly interested to read books about organizing in the construction industry because my own 45 years of experience is in organizing in industrial settings. I reached out to Oedy who comes out of IBEW 11, the big Los Angeles construction local. We had lunch at the historic Original Pantry restaurant in downtown LA.
Oedy is an impressive, personable guy with all the people skills that go with a successful organizer. In his life away from the labor trenches he is a punk rock musician. I liked Bigger Labor but Bob encouraged me to read his latest work, Million Dollar Organizer. The title and the cover, which pictures the watch-bejeweled sleeves of a very well dressed cuff linked man sitting in a posh leather chair, put me off. Whoa, I thought! Is this a manual for business unionism? A million dollar organizer and 365 tips, kind of hokey, no? Definitely not! The million dollars refers to a unionized worker’s cumulative earnings over the long haul and the 365 tips are an amazing assemblage of guidance for organizers. How anyone could come up with one tip on organizing for every day of the year amazes me. It also makes me wonder does Oedy have 365 more?
Nevertheless the great quantity of tips makes for some strange juxtapositions. Tip #283 gives instructions for the affiliation of employee associations and is followed by tip #284, which instructs an organizer on healthy eating habits. And then #285 instructs the organizer on how to master speaking tone in oral delivery. Harry Bridges, the legendary leader of my old union, the ILWU, is quoted on always trusting the rank and file, and Oedy translates that into Tip #237 “Make People Feel Important.” I learned several new terms including the word “koozie” which is an insulator for beverages! There are tips that advise organizers on personal conduct and avoiding burnout. The mechanics of the organizing process and NLRB regulations are precisely described. Record keeping, information gathering and banner making are all spelled out in great detail. This is not the kind of grand advice that one finds in Jacobin or other left labor and political journals. These are tips for the trenches but they are not without vision and heart. Tip #365 is “Pray for Guidance.” Oedy is a deeply religious man in the best sense of the word: He finishes the volume with these words: “Even if you are not religious at all, it’s easy to find inspiration in the knowledge that your life’s work will benefit your community and make the world a better place for future generations.” Combining detailed guidance with spiritual passion is a unique achievement.
Another resource for organizers that combines big picture with practical tips is of course The Troublemakers Handbook published by Labor Notes, the monthly journal that has been promoting rank and file organizing for almost forty years. Oedy gets deep into the practical weeds of the construction industry and his book is an invaluable companion for any organizer – veteran or novitiate.
When I lunched with Bob at the Pantry in September, I acknowledged his work, and then I asked him what his view was on the big strategic challenges facing the construction union trades. I cited the decrease of unionized workers from 60-70% of the construction market in the 1960’s to 13% today, and the horrifying fact that even in Manhattan the trades are only at 35% of the workforce in high rise construction (over 35 stories). Oedy told me that his work was not intended to address that macro issue and that he too was frustrated that there was not a master plan to deal with those precipitous declines in union power. He described the aborted attempt to organize the giant non-union electrical contractor, Helix. He too is anxious to see that big picture strategic discussion happen. Maybe we can impose on Brother Bob Oedy to make his next book a vision volume for mass organizing in the building trades? Meanwhile every organizer can benefit from his 365 tips. Order up “Million Dollar Organizer” .
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Tijuana truly is a sanctuary city
By Myrna Santiago
This is the fourth and last in our current series “Reflections on The Border”
Tijuana was the hometown of my childhood. I was born in the US, but I lived across the border in Tijuana until I was 12 years old. My memories of the city, therefore, are those of a girl: sleeping late because I went to elementary school in the afternoon session, playing with my younger brother and our friends in a dusty yard where not even weeds grew, visiting my aunt and cousins about ten blocks down the neighborhood, enjoying the special aroma of moist earth after the rare first winter rain, feeling sorry for the poor children who lived in cardboard hovels in the dry river channel. We rarely crossed over al otro lado, to the other side, the United States, because immigration officials had refused me entry once, thinking that I was not really a US citizen because I spoke no English even though my mother showed them my US birth certificate. They suspected my mother was smuggling me with a borrowed document and thus they protected the homeland from me and sent me back to where I came from, Tijuana. When I finished sixth grade, my mother decided it was time to migrate for good. As a single mom, she could not afford secondary school for me, so we moved to Los Angeles. After that, visits to Tijuana lasted one day: leaving LA early in the morning, spending the day with my cousins, shopping at one of the supermarkets for our favorite chocolate, cookies, pan dulce, and mole, and returning to East Los late at night when the line to cross did not take hours. I carried that blue US passport and my English was pretty good, so la migra could not keep me outside the country anymore.
Fast forward some twenty-five years later. I return to Tijuana as a professor of history, focused on would-be migrants subject to US immigration policies going from bad to worse, from Obama as the “Deporter-In-Chief” to “Trump the Cruel” who tears families seeking refuge apart and puts the children in cages. And Tijuana is one of the stages where much of this suffering and drama is taking place. Haitians walked to Tijuana from Brazil when their visas to build sports venues ran out in 2016 and they could not return to an island so ravaged by colonialism, earthquakes, hurricanes, and US support for coups and dictators that they ended up in my childhood hometown. Tijuana is home to some 3,000 Haitians now, adding to its diversity, working in restaurants, selling cold agua fresca to motorists waiting for hours to cross the border. The first time I went to Tijuana with a colleague from Saint Mary’s in February 2017 there were signs in restaurant windows along the strip, Avenida Revolución, reading: “Haitians welcome here. Jobs available. Inquire within.” If migrant shelters existed when I was a child, I never knew about them. But now there were two literally around the corner from my elementary school. In 2017 they housed men from southern Mexico heading north and an increasing number of deported Mexicans from California, Oregon, and Washington, not knowing where they were heading, not knowing when they would see the families left behind in the US, not knowing what Mexico meant for them after ten or fifteen years living and working in the US.
But especially bewildered were young men who were my opposite: they were Mexican citizens by birth, but they had grown up in southern California. They spoke no Spanish, but lacking the proper documentation to live in the US, ICE captured them and tossed them over the wall to Tijuana. At my neighborhood shelter there were few people for them to talk to, to pass their wisdom about life in the US, since they shared no language in common. From other deported American Mexicans they heard they had a good shot at getting jobs in Tijuana because they spoke English. The call centers, the American maquiladoras (assembly plants), and the “hospitality industry” all wanted English-speaking employees. The growing foodie scene in Tijuana was eager to test out the restaurant skills deported men brought with them as well. Making some money gave young men hope of finding an attorney who might know enough about immigration law to help them return to their parents, friends, and girlfriends in LA or Orange County. In the meantime, Tijuana welcomed them.
“ICE delivered them to Tijuana–the irony that Tijuana used to be a pleasure center for US servicemen clearly lost in translation.”
Tijuana, too, hosted veterans of the US armed forces who were being deported right and left. They had never had the proper paperwork to live in the US, but the armed forces were happy to take their lives and bodies and deploy them to Iraq, Afghanistan, the war du jour. The service promised them citizenship but never delivered. Instead, ICE ushered them into armored vans if upon their return to civilian life they found the adjustment difficult, slipped, and ended up serving time. When their sentences were done, ICE delivered them to Tijuana–the irony that Tijuana used to be a pleasure center for US servicemen clearly lost in translation. The veterans’ cave in a northern colonia was a slice of Americana: an extra large US flag pinned to the wall, medals and insignia scattered throughout, camo bunk beds, a tight schedule posted on a whiteboard for those staying at “the bunker,” with exercise, prayer or meditation, work, dinner, lights out. Their most pressing demand: access to the VA in San Diego for health care, particularly mental health services. The men were grateful for Tijuana, who honored them with murals painted on the wall that divides both countries and part of the Pacific Ocean at Playas de Tijuana, but they expected the country which they served to take care of them. After all, they had put their lives on the line for the US. Since last fall, 2018, Tijuana has witnessed the arrival of an exodus of biblical proportions from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. These are no longer men alone seeking opportunities to send remittances home, but entire families fleeing from unimaginable violence. Tijuana has its share of narco-violence, but it has not become the daily bread for an entire population. Gangs, narcos, paramilitary groups, police, private armies protecting monocrop plantations or cattle ranches—you name it, the Central American countries have all the above in spades. And none of those groups hesitate to kidnap, torture, rape, disappear, and execute men, women, children. So the people flee as far as they can go and Tijuana is the end of the line. There they meet a wall, 30 feet high, with barbed wire on top sometimes. Tijuana does its best to assist. Shelters bring out more cots. Neighbors contribute more diapers. Solidarity groups from San Diego send more clothes. The religious community in Tijuana responds lovingly, asking the citizenry to not give in to donor fatigue, to listen to their hearts, to open up their wallets and donate groceries one more time. They find teachers for the children to learn their ABCs while they await word from the mighty ICE on high. But they are deeply concerned. Local politicians blame the victims, traffickers lurk in wait to exploit the refugees, and corrupt officials try to make a buck off the suffering of the Central Americans. The shelters are terribly overcrowded. A volunteer at a women’s shelter asks, “if the US government carries out the massive deportations it is threatening to do and sends thousands upon thousands of people to Tijuana, where will they stay?” The city is not prepared for them. For now, however, that dusty patch of desert at the farthest northwest corner of Mexico, Tijuana, does not turn away those seeking a manger to lay their babies to rest. My childhood town has indeed grown up in ways it never imagined. Tijuana truly is a sanctuary city. Its people are generous toward the refugees despite their own poverty. That is a story that is yet to be told, a story that merits not only attention but emulation. That all other cities, on both sides of the border, would follow Tijuana’s example.
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“Open mind, Open heart”
By Nekesha Williams
“This is the third of four in the “Reflections on the Border” a series
“For those migrants that we spoke to, migration was akin to survival.”
Why did I choose to participate in the Migrant Lives Border Immersion (MLBI)? To learn about the lives of migrants on both sides of the border. I wanted to create my own narrative about migrants as I saw it, heard it and hopefully understood it. I didn’t want to be held captive by any type of rhetoric espoused on migration issues specifically regarding individuals from Mexico and Central America. I wanted to see this issue from the perspective of those who are most impacted and those in service of this issue. My personal motto for this trip was “Open mind, Open heart”.
CALIFORNIA, THE AGRICULTURAL STATE
Migrant farm workers are a highly specialized workforce that play a crucial role in the agricultural industry in California. Without them, it would be impossible to sustain this billion-dollar industry that exports produce to various international markets. The increase restrictions on hiring workers that reside outside of the United States have resulted in worker shortages. As a result, there have been cases where acres of crops are lost due to an insufficient workforce during harvest time.
Farm work is hard work as described by a representative at the Monterey County Farm Bureau (MCFB), one of the organizations we visited on the first day of the immersion. Very few natural born Americans seek out this type of employment. Why? Because it is hard work that is performed often times in unfavorable conditions and long hours in the fields. So, why would someone leave their native lands to do this type of work? Because despite the challenges, this “opportunity” is a step forward for many to build a decent life for themselves. One migrant worker we spoke to was asked “From 1-10, how would you rank your life?” His response, “seven”. Why? He has a car and fridge full of food, things he didn’t believe he would be able to attain in his homeland.
CAN WE LIVE? MIGRANTS SOUTH OF THE BORDER
The stories/lives of migrants on both sides of the border are varied, but the one commonality is the desire to build a decent life for themselves and their families.
We had an opportunity to speak with various sojourners in Tijuana that are temporarily housed at shelters. The two stories that stuck with me even after the trip were from two young men. One, in his early 30s and another only 21 years old. Both had made the months long journey to Tijuana. The young man in his early 30s, originally from El Salvador, shared with us that he is a mechanic by trade and once owned a mechanic shop. However, the gangs took his shop. It was unsafe for him to stay there so he left his partner, young son and mother behind to establish himself elsewhere. The 21-year old male, traveled from Guatemala to Tijuana to escape violence as well. In his case, a foreign mining company came into his community sparking protests. Gang members, allegedly hired by the government, came in and killed all those who protested against the company including his uncle, a local pastor.
The Global Witness, a British nonprofit reported that 164 environmental activists were killed in 2018. About 51% of those murders took place in South and Central American countries with Guatemala experiencing a recent surge. The mining (and other extractives) sector is believed to be associated with the highest number of activist deaths.
THE HELPERS
Who are the helpers? I am in awe and also inspired by the work organizations such as Instituto Madre Asunta (IMA) (Editor note: no link provided because a warning of potential security issues comes up – make of that what you will given what the organization does), Casa Del Migrante (CM), and Border Angels (BA) are doing to meet the needs of migrants. The IMA serves primarily women and children. CM, a men’s shelter, has now opened its doors to women and children and provides a wide range of social services in addition to food and shelter. The BA are at the forefront, advocating for human rights and immigration reform, at the US-Mexico Border. Each of these organizations are using what little they have, stretching it to meet the needs of the most.
It is hard work, but each director we have spoken to is fully committed to the people that come to them for help. Sometimes, at the risk of their own lives and well being.
LINGERING CONCERNS
For those migrants that we spoke to, migration was akin to survival. I am concerned about the criminalization of migration for the sake of those who are seeking better circumstances.
Presently, we are witnessing an exodus of people primarily from Central and South America moving northwards in search of a conflict free life, a life that they believe is untenable right now in their native homes. Compounding this present issue with environmental migration as a result of natural disasters and a changing climate, will governments continue to close their borders towards those that are in need? Will those seeking refuge be criminalized?
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What Does It Look Like To …
By Alicia Rusoja
This is the second in the current series of four reports from the US-Mexico border.
What I witnessed with my colleagues on our visits to shelters and community organizations during our week-long border immersion trip in Tijuana, Mexico, answered the following questions:
What does it look like to regard the life of another human being as you would regard your own life, your loved one’s own life, your child’s, your mother’s, your brother’s?
What does it look like to view your life as dependent on, and interdependent with the life of a stranger, on the life of a child or parent or sibling of another human being?
What does it look like to have respect and admiration for the life and the strength of someone else, a migrant who is willing to put their life on the line in every conceivable way for the sake of their dignity, survival and their family’s ability to be well?
What does it look like to say: “you have the same rights I have, and whatever resources this earth gifts aren’t my own but instead are equally yours and mine”? What does it look like to view earth’s resources, such as land, water, food and shelter, as communal and not as finite things to be owned and used as commodities, controlled only by a few for a few?
Wherever I sleep, you may sleep, whatever I eat you may eat, whatever I have is ours to have. I do not ignore your death, your struggle, your strength. I do not pity you. I put my life on the line as you put yours.
What does it looks like to say and act upon this statement: Your struggle is my struggle: Tu lucha es mi lucha, as my undocumented friend Olivia says.
What I witnessed in the Instituto Madre Asunta shelter, at the Centro del Migrante shelter, at Border Angels shelter, at Dreamers Moms and Deported Veterans bunker, at Ollin Cali’s tour of the housing, labor and environmental violations experienced everyday by migrants working at maquiladoras (transnational corporations’ factories) in Tijuana, answered all the questions I note above. The immersion nourished in me deep heartbreak and awe for all the ways in which people in Tijuana everyday defy the hegemonic imperialistic capitalist discourse of scarcity and individualism.
Trump has forced migrants aiming to make a life in the U.S. to remain in Mexico and from there follow an unofficial, unregulated, metering system where migrants are assigned numbers that correspond with their place in a months-long waiting line to obtain a U.S. immigration court date. Trump also threatened Mexico with tariffs if it does not ensure a reduction in the number of migrants crossing into the U.S. Forcing migrants to remain in Mexico and follow this unregulated and unofficial metering system known for its corrupt practices (where migrants pay Mexican officials between $700-1000 USD per person to be moved up the list) has directly led to shelters reconfiguring their practices and capacities. Places, like Casa del Migrante, which traditionally have only sheltered single men now accept fathers and even mothers with their young children. They also now offer support to migrants for finding work and rented housing in Tijuana, as well as for applying for permanent residency in Mexico, understanding that most migrants will have to overstay the very short-term humanitarian/migrant visas Mexico now gives out to migrants since waiting for their turn to speak to a U.S. immigration judge through the metering system always takes more than the 40-90 days these humanitarian visas are valid for. We met migrants in early July 2019 whose numbers in the metering system were not expected to come up until October 2019 or even until March 2020. Trump’s pressure on Mexico to completely stop migration into the U.S. has led the Mexican government to choose to completely cut funding for migrant shelters. Lack of funding has caused the closing of many shelters we were told. Against all odds, and defying Trump’s and the Mexican government’s goals, many shelters remain open, with migrants, volunteers, and community members ensuring they work.
Border Angels, a volunteer-run organization supporting the functioning of many smaller unfunded shelters (in churches and other non-registered places), including one of their own, told us of dozens of shelters functioning informally with volunteers (including migrants themselves) doing everything they can do provide migrants with shelter, food, and clothing, without a formal infrastructure.
At Border Angels, we learned of an ongoing practice by the Mexican military: walking around Tijuana asking anyone close to the border wall, including Border Angels staff, for identification papers (which would show whether or not they are migrants and whether they have overstayed Mexican humanitarian visas and are due for deportation), targeting pro-migrant Mexican activists, threatening to take them away for their activism. The Mexican military multiple times has come knocking on the door of the Border Angels shelter to check the papers of those inside, essentially aiming to conduct raids (completely over stepping their role) to decrease the number of migrants waiting to immigrate to the U.S. We learned of Mexican and U.S. citizen volunteers refusing to show their papers to military, refusing to let the military enter the shelters to criminalize migrants.
“Their t-shirts said: “have you seen my child?” or “have you seen my mother?”.
Dreamers Mothers, a group that partners closely with Deported Veterans, has successfully supported deported mothers living in Tijuana, through grassroots fundraising to hire lawyers to fight custody cases in the U.S. With immense support, some of the mothers have been able to appear in their custody cases by video using Skype (though this isn’t being allowed anymore by courts in the U.S.) and win their ability to remain in contact with their children (having “visitation rights” by phone, for example) even while remaining deported. We heard of cases of deported mothers who do not know where their children are now in the U.S. because the government put their children in foster care and never respected their legal right as the children’s parents, of deported mothers whose partners denied them the right to speak to their children for years (one for over 15 years!), of deported mothers who are now processing U-Visa cases because they were victims of a crime (including kidnaping and rape) in the U.S. and aided authorities in solving such crime yet purposefully were not told they qualified for U-Visas. We were told by the founder of Dreamers Mothers that when we meet children in the U.S. whose mothers have been deported to please given them a big hug and tell them their mothers love them and are fighting to be able to see them again. This was really heart breaking. Their t-shirts said: “have you seen my child?” or “have you seen my mother?”.
Yolanda, the founder of Dreamers Mothers talked to us about art-based healing workshops she and others are co-facilitating to help the migrant children process the trauma they are experiencing, including separation or imminent separation from their mothers and/or fathers. She told us in great detail about puppetry workshop she had just come back from and how very hard it had been for the adult facilitators to prepare migrant children to be separated (in past, now, and most likely in the future if allowed to cross into the U.S.) from their parents.
Through these stories and our witnessing, we saw how the city of Tijuana and its inhabitants (migrants and Mexicans alike) have maintained a pro-immigrant & welcoming stance, continuing to shelter and care for migrants even when the Mexican government has taken away funds to run shelters, when prevalent stigma portrays migrants and deportees as “criminals” who deserve violence, when here and across the world politicians argue that “receiving” cities are full, that there aren’t “enough” resources for everyone.
Tijuana’s inhabitants’ approach to sheltering and caring for immigrants made me consider what it would really mean for all cities to offer sanctuary to migrants, to challenge the capitalist, imperialist and oppressive idea that one’s worth only comes from one’s ability to produce capital. We saw people stretching and sharing all resources; demonstrating humanity and hope are fiercer than the hegemonic discourse and practice of imperialism, xenophobia and the criminalization of life.
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Border Immersion Reflection
By Zahra Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Politics
In July, eight professors from Saint Mary’s College traveled to the San Diego – Tijuana border on a fact-finding mission to learn about the migration crisis on the border first-hand. Over the course of five days, the group met with multiple organizations and had the opportunity to meet with migrants themselves at several shelters. This project lives out Saint Mary’s College’s commitment to social justice, providing the opportunity for its faculty to go deep into issues of contemporary importance. Four of the participants have written short reflections about their experience on the border, which The Stansbury Forum will feature over the next few weeks. Here is the first one.
When I visited the US-Mexico border as part of St. Mary’s College’s Migrant Lives immersion program, I expected to encounter suffering and chaos. Given the actions of the current presidential administration, which are designed to denigrate and dehumanize immigrants, I expected the migrants I encountered and the people who work with them to be immobilized by the repeating and continuing traumas they have encountered. The horrible stereotypes perpetuated by the current President and his underlings, the violence perpetuated by the state as well as individuals acting out their hatred, the inhumane family separation policy which continues to be enforced despite claims to the contrary – I expected the knowledge of these conditions to permeate the lives and experiences of the migrants I met. However, that was not the case. One of my lasting impressions from this experience was actually a feeling that migrants and refugees as well as their allies and advocates are stronger and more resilient than I gave them credit for.
The migrants I talked with in the camps of the Central Valley and in the shelters in Tijuana had experienced multiple traumas ranging from family members hurt or killed in their home countries to deportation and separation from loved ones in the U.S. The migrants in the Central Valley live hard lives, working essentially from sun up to sun down. The refugees in Tijuana had either been deported from the U.S. or they had recently made it to Tijuana as they fled violence and political repression in their home countries. Yet everyone I encountered had quick and easy smiles, optimistic spirits, and a belief that we can create a more just society. This was especially true of those who work to help migrants and refugees on the Mexico side of the border.
“She spoke about the increasing number of migrant and refugee men who, due to family separation policies and other factors, are now travelling alone with their children”
When we visited Casa Del Migrante (a men’s shelter in Tijuana) and Centro Madre Asunta (a women’s shelter right next door), the two women we met who run these facilities showed a clear and strong commitment to addressing the needs of their communities. Valeria, the administrator at Casa Del Migrante, told us that they had recently changed their policies to allow men travelling with children to stay in the shelter. She spoke about the increasing number of migrant and refugee men who, due to family separation policies and other factors, are now travelling alone with their children. Although this change drastically increased the number of migrants and refugees they needed to serve, they recognized that these men were in need of resources, so they adapted the facility to meet the needs of men and children.
Both Valeria and Hermana Salome, the Catholic Sister who runs Centro Madre Asunta, told us that the local government had recently made drastic cuts to the social safety net system, which affected all of the shelters in Tijuana. Many shelters had to close their doors. But Valeria and Hermana Salome also told us that other shelters responded to the cuts by relying more on one another and forming networks to share resources and advocate to restore the funding to the government’s budget. Their passion and their commitment to working with those who came to their doors needing help in the face of diminished state support was inspirational to me.
I also felt connected to the mission and the work of the Border Angels, a non-profit organization with chapters in both the U.S. and Mexico. I was introduced to this organization through the Migrant Lives immersion program, and I came to admire the organization’s focus on migrant rights, immigration reform, and prevention of deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border. During our trip, we talked with the Co-Directors of their Tijuana office, Hugo and Gaba, who shared the beautiful and painful experiences they’d had while attempting to help migrants and refugees. Gaba told us about her amazing photography project that she created while living with refugees for several months at one of the camps. As she talked, she showed us photos of some of the people she lived with intending to document their stories. Some of the people in the photos had died, either from violence in the camps or from violence when they returned to their home countries. I was honored to listen to Gaba’s reflections about them and her experience in the camps.
Hugo also shared stories of his work helping refugees and deportees. When they deport individuals, the U.S. government drops people off in the middle of the night at an undisclosed location. They are dropped off with no clothes other than what they are wearing, no supplies, and no connections with any social support systems to help them survive and figure out their next steps. Hugo told us how he followed the busses to find out where deportees were being dropped off and then connected with them to share information about services and resources available to them. He told us about being picked up by the police and beaten because of his work helping and advocating for migrants and refugees. He even mentioned that he’d had to go to the hospital after one of the beatings and it took him several months to recover. He told us that he is still traumatized and he feels fear and anxiety now whenever he sees the police. And yet, with his next breath, he told us about how he plans to expand the resources offered by the Border Angels by creating a shelter as well as a social entrepreneurship in the form of a cafe where migrants and refugees can make music, create spoken word poetry, photography, and other art forms as a means of healing and advocacy. Gaba termed this activity “artivism” and both she and Hugo seemed energized by the thought of feeding creativity among the migrant population.
My experience with the Migrant Lives border immersion program was transformative because it allowed me to see first-hand what migrants and refugees are enduring in California’s Central Valley as well as at the US-Mexico border. It also served as a reminder that all human beings are deserving of love, respect, and to be treated with dignity. Valeria, Hermana Salome, Hugo, and Gaba showed me that, as long as we remember this truth and commit to demonstrating it in whatever professions or fields we represent, we will transcend this crisis with our morals and our humanity intact.
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In a Time of Disparity a Teacher Reflects on community and an encompassing union
By Heath Madom
“are you willing to fight for [someone] who you don’t even know as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?” Bernie Sanders
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A few months ago, one of my former students F, who is now a Senior, came by my classroom before school to ask for help in deciphering some legal documents that had been served on his family. Their landlord, it seems, is trying to evict them because their apartment, if renovated and put back on the market, could be leased out to new tenants for triple the current rent. Over the course of that morning, and many others since, I’ve been doing what little I can to support F through what can only be described as a deeply traumatizing experience: Referring him to legal and housing resources, talking him through his anxiety and panic attacks, letting him just sit in my room and cry. After he exits my room and goes off to class, trying to pretend like he cares about his schoolwork when his family might, at any moment, end up out on the street, I often feel like hurling a chair through my classroom windows.
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The homelessness crisis in Oakland and beyond just seems to be getting worse and worse. Tent cities have become so common they’re now a normalized part of the landscape. I drive past one every day on my way to school, and it seems to grow larger and larger with each passing week. The injustice of people living in such brute poverty amidst the staggering wealth of the Bay Area fills my chest with an anger I can’t quite fully describe. Still, all I can do as I cruise by in my car is clench my jaw and tighten my fingers around the steering wheel.
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In the months and weeks leading up to the Oakland teachers strike, I would often ask myself how we might make the dual crises of homelessness and housing affordability part of our campaign, how we might transform our struggle for better schools into something bigger, something that encompassed everything that should be done to make our society decent and just and right. Whenever I looked through my car window at the homeless encampment’s rows of tents near the high school where I teach, the logic of uniting their struggle with our struggle made perfect sense. Yet when it came to the question of how to actually make that happen, the logic grew murky. I just couldn’t imagine how it would work. I was familiar with the concept of Bargaining for the Common Good from my time working in organized labor; but upon any amount of sustained reflection, the idea of teachers making demands around affordable housing struck me as, at best, a flight of fancy. Because even if we could solve the difficulty of adding in new bargaining demands at the eleventh hour, demands for which we had laid no groundwork, we still faced the problem that everyone was already at capacity trying to prepare for the strike. Getting our own house in order meant we didn’t have the time or energy to advocate for our brothers and sisters living on the streets. As the strike drew nearer and the logistics of preparing for it took up more and more of my own bandwidth, the idea of making affordable housing part of our platform of demands receded from my mind.
Fast forward a few months: the Oakland strike is over, but news spreads that Chicago Teachers are preparing to strike. I read an article from In These Times and am astounded to learn (though not really surprised) that CTU, ever in the vanguard, has done the very thing I had merely daydreamed about: they made affordable housing a major demand of their contract campaign. From a historical perspective, it was not groundbreaking. As Rebecca Burns notes in her subsequent article about the aftermath of the CTU strike, unions have a long history of fighting for laws and policies that benefit the entire working class. It’s why phrases like “Unions, the folks who brought you the weekend” exist in the public consciousness. In the modern era, however, such visionary leadership has been rare. CTU’s extraordinary push for rent control and affordable housing has opened the door to a more ambitious agenda for us all as we move forward.
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On Saturday, October 19th, Bernie Sanders was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a mass rally in Queens, NY. He ended his speech to the 26,000 attendees by asking “are you willing to fight for who you don’t even know as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?” It was an inspired and inspiring moment that brilliantly framed the question of solidarity in personal terms. In light of Bernie’s speech, an analogous question we could—and should—pose to unions is: are we willing to fight for everyone in our class just as much as we’re willing to fight for our members? If the answer is yes (and I hope it is), then we have to be willing to risk fighting for things that are not directly connected to our working conditions.
Fighting for affordable housing and rent control in Oakland will not be easy. Teachers don’t bargain directly with the Mayor or the City, like they do in Chicago, and the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995 blocks local jurisdictions in California from passing rent control ordinances. But as the Chicago experience once again demonstrates, it’s not always about winning in the short term. While CTU did not make tangible gains on affordable housing and rent control more broadly (the major gain on this front appears to be a commitment from Chicago to hire more counselors to address the needs of homeless students) they were able to shift the conversation and lay the groundwork for broader change on housing affordability in the future. All because they had the courage to dispense with the traditional approach to bargaining and instead do what they believed was necessary and right.
We can do the same here in Oakland, where the housing crisis is just as dire and also at the top of people’s minds. As public school educators who witness the damage wrought by the housing crisis every single day, we owe it to ourselves to do so. We also owe it to the casualties of the system who are forced to sleep in tents just blocks from newly constructed luxury condominiums. And most of all, we owe it to our students, people like F, who cannot be expected to learn, let alone flourish in the long term, if they don’t have a stable place to live.
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Do images of dangerous prison labor expose exploitation or build a myth of boot-strapping redemption?
By Pete Brook
In recent years, there’s been a noticeable uptick in stories about California prisoner-firefighters–features by Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, The Marshall Project and New York Times Magazine among others. Besides a dramatic increase in the number of fires, the uptick can be attributed to the convergence of factors–prison administrators providing journalists with broader access, editors responding to increased public interest in criminal justice (reform), and photographers sating their own curiosity.
For the most part, the photographs in these features reset common assumptions about incarcerated people and reveal elements of this lesser-known strand of modern-day servitude. Absent bars, cells, and razor wire, it’s not immediately obvious that these images depict prisoners. In boots, overalls, and gloves, men and women traipse along hillsides and forested trails. They carry picks, chainsaws, and hose lines. They move through dust, smoke, and shafts of golden-hour light. They are cast as heroes. Make no mistake: for the lands they save and the risks they take, they are heroes.
In one respect, the photographs can be read as redemption in action; prisoners doggedly pursuing self-worth and making sacrifices for the greater good. A hero narrative is always seductive but it can also mislead or allow for complacency. Might this new breed of representations distract us from the reality of the tortured conditions in which hundreds of thousands of other U.S. prisoners exist? If these prisoners are heroes, they must be empowered, no? If they are represented as dignified and productive, can’t only good come of these images? If they are not under the yoke of constant surveillance, are they not somehow free, or freer, than they were?
Prisoner-firefighters account for 2% of the California state prison population. Might the recent prevalence of photographs of this minority skew our perceptions and distract us from the gross abuses, waste, and failings of the prison industrial complex?
Brian Frank’s documentary work uses a mixture of candid portraits and work scenes, relying heavily on grain and an earthen palette to evoke grime, smell, and haze. By comparison, Peter Bohler’s images are shot under clear ocean blue skies that make the orange uniforms pop. Both Frank and Bohler shot crews damping remains or cutting fire-breaks; no raging fire in either’s portfolio. The muddied faces of Frank’s subjects are reminiscent of Don McCullin’s portraits of soldiers, or Earl Dotter’s images of Appalachian miners. By contrast, Bohler’s magazine-y approach turns the women into pin-ups. One lounges in the dirt beside her chainsaw, peering over cocked tinted sunglasses. Another stands against a pink backdrop of flame retardant–covered brush. It looks like a constructed set.
Bohler’s pristine composition of four women meditating, eyes closed, in the lotus position, sits in stark contrast to the baggy, slouching, slumbering men during downtime in Frank’s photos. Bohler raises up his subjects by affording them editorial photography’s best treatment, lighting, and concern, whereas Frank raises up his subjects by baking in the caked-on dirt and sweat. Both photographers turn their subjects into heroes; they just get there by different means.
It is understandable that Americans–who live within a racist, economically violent, and traumatic social reality–might seek solace in images of useful, nonviolent, and pro-social correctional conditions. But the truth is that no other nation in the history of humankind has imprisoned more citizens during peacetime. Over the past 40 years, the U.S. prison system has exploded from approximately 400,000 prisoners to 2.2 million. Men, women, and children are sent down for longer sentences under harsher laws that have come to define America’s shameful failed experiment in mass incarceration. Prisons offer scant and irregular access to rehabilitation and education. They disproportionately warehouse people of color. The vast majority of U.S. prisons are overcrowded. While characterized by very occasional spikes in serious violence, more often prisons are sites of boredom and trashed potential.
Serving time at a fire camp is better than doing time in any of California’s other state prisons. Comparably “the conservation camps are bastions of civility,” wrote Jaime Lowe for the New York Times. “They are less violent and offer more space. They smell of eucalyptus, the ocean, fresh blooms. They provide barbecue areas for families who visit […] They have woodworking areas, softball fields, and libraries full of donated mysteries and romance novels.”
Bohler’s image of prisoners practicing yoga and Frank’s images of TV and card games speak to this relative freedom. But it is possible to acknowledge the benefits of the fire camp’s relaxed living culture while simultaneously rejecting the wretched economics of the work culture. Mobilized out of 30 CDCR fire camps, 3,700 prisoner-firefighters are paid 32 cents per hour ($2.56 per day) and $1 per hour when they work the fire-lines. They also get 2 days of their time for each day on the job. The number of workers spikes each wildfire season. As our climate crisis advances, drier weather patterns extend, and blazes grow more severe, prison labor will take up more of the fight against fire. CDCR estimates that the fire camp program saves California taxpayers $100 million a year. Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wyoming also use prison labor to fight fire, but no state relies on prisoners as much as California. Continuously on call, prisoner-firefighters are a virtually irreplaceable resource in the Golden State.
Philip Montgomery’s work falls between that of Frank and Bohler. Montgomery captures action among the broken, charred ground but also secures a couple of formal-ish shots of men gazing toward the camera. All of Montgomery’s images are shot at night, and his subjects–rendered either by harsh flash or by digital sensor in muddy lowlight–stare into the dark beyond. If fire is not the prisoners’ backdrop, we know they are on the move, headed toward more flames. Like Bohler, Montgomery channels the fashion-magazine aesthetic, but his on-the-fly portraits always point toward the work the prisoners have completed and the work to which they’ll return.
Frank’s work is gritty, Montgomery’s is stylized, and Bohler’s is sexy. Tim Hussin’s photographs, which are the most recent, forgo any color theorizing and cast the damaged landscape in wider gray scale drama. If Robert Adams were to photograph fire abatement, it might look something like this. Perhaps Hussin deliberately moved away from the textured chromatic work of those who went before.
There are a few contradictory ways in which Bohler, Frank, Hussin and Montgomery’s images may function: Firstly, the state, by furnishing press access, pushes a soft propaganda of a purposeful prison system; secondly, activists, by opposing the prison industrial complex, adopt these images for didactic, targeted, anti-state messaging; and thirdly, the public may salve its conscience with easy-to-stomach images and convince itself that prisons aren’t too bad, prisoners get a fair shake, and we needn’t be concerned. But prisons are bad. And we should be concerned.
My inquiry is cautionary and somewhat speculative. I welcome prisoner-firefighter imagery, but I’d like to see it offset by raw footage of prisons’ tedium, manipulations, assaults and stresses. (Since this writing, there has been a large public debate about the ethics of publishing prison images of extreme violence.)
Each firefighting prisoner in these photos—through luck, will, coercion or a combination of the three—are seen, if only momentarily, as more than his or her worst mistake. Most prisoners are not afforded the perverse opportunity to work for slave wages in order to rehabilitate their lives and their image. Most prisoners are not seen. Most prisoners do not have the chance to work beyond the panoptic prison space. These prisoners working for pennies on the dollar in the great outdoors are outliers. We must applaud their labor but condemn the apparatus it serves. We must see them as individuals outside both the norm and the prison walls. Going forward, we must demand to see the many individuals inside the walls, too.
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Originally published as ‘Fire Inside’ in Propeller Magazine #3 (The Propaganda Issue) put out by Helice in Lisbon, Portugal Thanks to editor Sofia Silva and to photographers Peter Bohler, Brian Frank and Tim Hussin.
“The Moment Was Now” Needs Wheels!
By Peter Olney
Actors are Julia Nixon, Ari Jacobson, Darryl! LC Moch and Jenna Stein. Photo: Sean Scheidt
I was lucky enough to be in Baltimore, Maryland on September 13 for the opening of Gene Bruskin’s new musical play, “The Moment Was Now”. Maryland Council 3 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) had bought the house at Emmanuel Church on Cathedral Avenue where the play debuted for two weekends. This old staid Episcopal chapel built in 1854 was filled with a toe tapping, largely African American audience, members of AFSCME. The Moment’s message of the struggle for racial solidarity based on recognizing difference and fighting inequality was a great anti-dote to the President’s recent disgusting attacks on Baltimore. It felt good to be there and share in Bruskin’s triumph. I had previously interviewed Gene about his latest work here on the Stansbury Forum
But I have to confess that when I check out the work of a dear friend and comrade who ventures into the arts of writing or drama, I have a certain amount of trepidation. What if I don’t like the work? What do I say given my high respect for their work as an organizer and agitator? I have known Bruskin since Boston in the 70’s when he was organizing bus drivers during the Busing crisis. I know of his work in labor organizing at the giant Smithfield packing plant in Tar Heel North Carolina and as one of the co-conveners of US Labor Against the War (USLAW) after the Bush invasion of Iraq. He could have retired quietly with those signature achievements and ruminated on a sunny beach in Florida. Not Gene Bruskin. I read and saw his first musical play, “Pray for the Dead” about morgue workers who organize. It was humorous and entertaining. But “The Moment Was Now” is in another league, humorous, entertaining, inspiring but oh so topical and, as it name suggests, a perfect political fit for the moment and Trump’s presidency.
It is 1869 during reconstruction in Baltimore. Frederick Douglas convenes a fictional meeting of four historical figures who all have real links to that city:
William Sylvis – The white leader of the National Labor Union (NLU)
Isaac Myers (also spelled Meyers) – Black leader of a black shipyard workers union in Baltimore and founder of a National Labor Union for people of color.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper – a Black woman and prominent abolitionist and suffragette who was a poet and the first published Black woman novelist.
Susan B. Anthony – Famous suffragette and abolitionist.
The drama unfolds as these four figures discuss, in rhyming verse taken from their actual written remarks and in powerful song, the prospects for multiracial unity and gender equality. It is noted that while William Sylvis himself supports multi-racial unity and equality his National Labor Union has excluded black people from their convention. Susan B. Anthony supports equal rights for black people but because women are excluded from suffrage she opposes the 15th Amendment. Hovering over all these discussions is the menacing figure of Jay Gould the robber baron who is played skillfully by LeCount Holmes in a giant paper mache mask. Holmes also portrays Frederick Douglas.
The musical numbers are catchy with lyrics that don’t fade. “I Want it All”, “Does Your We Include Me?” and “Women Hold Up Half the Sky!” are three of the most memorable. So memorable that a union railroad worker told Bruskin in the aftermath of the second nights’ production that he attended with his wife that, “My wife won’t let me forget that “women hold up half the sky” I have been hearing it from her ever since we saw your play.”
All the actors are excellent, but the show stealer is Julia Nixon who portrays Frances Harper. A couple of her numbers are adventures in the power of Black gospel with her range and stage presence just knocking those numbers out of the proverbial park.
Bruskin is daring to take a form that is often culturally foreign to the working class and use it to convey a powerful political message. This is “Hamilton” with left politics although Lin Manuel Miranda is to be commended for his outspoken defense of Puerto Rico against the attacks and ignorance of Donald J. Trump. While the play is conceived and directed by Bruskin, it is a collaborative effort with able director and actor Darryl! LC Mooch, musical director Glenn Pearson and Chester Burke assistant musical director.
Unlike “Hamilton” Bruskin will need some help to get this play on wheels and out to venues all over the country. Bruskin is a union man who believes in paying scale to his performers and staff so this can’t be done on the cheap. Check out the video of the most recent production and contribute to the production of more “Moments”.
For a more extensive review of “The Moment” see Mike Miller’s review in Social policy.
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