I’m writing to ask for your financial help to publish Herb Mills
By Mike Miller
Herb Mills: Family Man, Longshoreman, Student Movement Leader, Labor Leader, Strategist, Actor, Scholar, A Tribute
A Collection of his writing, stories about him, interviews with him, articles about him including analyses of his intellectual and public life, and tributes to him, with accompanying documents and photography.
A Collection of his writing, stories about him, interviews with him, articles about him including analyses of his intellectual and public life, and tributes to him, with accompanying documents and photography.
Mike Miller, editor
Joe Blum & Patricia Goudvis, photography
As many of you will remember, Herb was an important contributor to the Berkeley student movement. He played a major role in SLATE, the campus political party, and the 1960 student-led anti-HUAC demonstrations. He traveled throughout the country discrediting the right-wing film that claimed to document the HUAC events.
In 1963, he left a promising academic career to become a San Francisco Bay Area longshoreman, and a leader in the International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU)–one of the most progressive unions in the country.
During those years, and in his retirement, Herb wrote numerous articles, papers and monographs on the student movement, the ILWU, the pre- and post-containerization nature of longshore work, and related matters. Some of these have been published–usually in specialized labor history or labor economics journals.
During his leadership in Local 10, he was the chief organizer of the union’s actions against dictatorships in Chile, El Salvador, Philippines and South Korea. He was invited to the inauguration of Kim Dae Jung as President of South Korea—as a “thank you” for saving Kim’s life.
These stories and more are part of this book, as well as wonderful photographs by Joe Blum and Patricia Goudvis.
In addition, in 1999 Herb did an oral history with ILWU oral historian Harvey Schwartz. Excerpts from the oral history are part of the book as well.
The book is nearing completion. We are now raising funds for its publication and distribution (it will be self-published).
We’re writing to ask for your financial support for this project. Checks should be made to “OTC” and mailed to:
Herb Mills Legacy Project
442 Vicksburg Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
Please write “HMLP” on the memo line
Or:
You can use PayPal, HERE
If you do not want your donation acknowledged in the book, please let us know.
Many thanks in advance for your support, and for past support to those who have already given.
.
Note: Mike Miller is a contributer to the Stansbury Forum and Peter Olney, who has contributed an essay for the book, is the Stansbury Forum’s co-editor.
…
RIDING WITH CASSANDRA
By Mariana Mcdonald
THIS MOMENT
Truth is trouble…It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public.
Toni Morrison, The Source of Self Regard, vii-viii.
We are in a time of profound change. We are in a transformative moment when the Covid19 pandemic, uprisings against racial injustice and white supremacy, the unrelenting climate crisis, and rising forces of fascism and repression, all come together to force a shift that will either propel the world forward or drive it into a tailspin.
This moment pivots on how much and how well the United States deals with its past. As Joanne Freeman noted in her August 2020 essay in The Atlantic:
“…before the United States can move ahead, it has to reckon with its past… America’s national identity is grounded in a shared understanding of American history—the country’s failures, successes, traditions, and ideals. Shape that narrative and you can shape a nation.” (emphasis added).
How do we understand this moment? How do we address its urgency? How do we shape the US narrative? And what does this moment mean for artists, art, and the arts movement?
WHAT ARE ARTISTS TO DO?
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Bertolt Brecht
This is a time to reexamine and reflect on the role of art and artists, to ponder what artists should do. We need to be discussing this, debating it, and writing about it, not only among artists, but the whole community.
As a member of the community of artists, I offer my thoughts on what artists need to do.
First and foremost, we need to tell the truth. Artists tell the truth. We do not lie, cover up, obfuscate, gaslight, or avoid. Telling the truth in the United States, a nation rooted and rotting in lies, means we must directly and relentlessly fight the lies.
We also need to bring people together emotionally, spiritually, politically, geographically, and organizationally. We can play a role in uniting people, on racial justice (pro-Black Lives Matter and against racist violence), gender justice (women’s rights and rights of trans persons), and internationalism (pro-Palestinian, pro-Puerto-Rican independence, and against the Cuba blockade, for starters). We must also unite people to fight the climate crisis.
We can strengthen our communities through art. Art expresses the people’s anguish, sorrow, determination, pride, and joy, and helps us heal from trauma. We also need to get people to think. We need art that encourages questioning, art that promotes critical thinking in the tradition of Paulo Freire, whose theory and practice help people discover solutions to their problems. We need to reflect on our real history, rather than the white-washed one we’ve been fed. We need to unearth our peoples’ past contributions and realities.
Last but not least, we need to fight the fascist trends that are growing every day. These include, but are not limited to: voter suppression; racist anti-Black and anti-people of color violence; anti-intellectual and anti-science stances; anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-foreign language attitudes and policies; anti-women legislation and practices; actions that jeopardize the constitution-based courts system; and the wholesale obliteration of environmental protections. We must fight all fascist actions that curb our right to protest, and those that limit or simply refuse accountability for those in power.
A key step is deconstructing the lies.
DECONSTRUCT AND REFUTE THE LIES
I attest to this: the world is not white; it never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank.
James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro
To fight fascism and move toward the society we want and need, artists must confront, deconstruct, and refute what I call the Ten Big Lies That Blind US, 2020:
Lie Number 1: The United States was established based on freedom and equality; rather than forged in genocide and slavery. The Declaration of Independence was a document that belied the realities of its time. Certainly there were noble intentions among its drafters, who hoped the dreamlike vision they wrote about might one day be achieved. But as written, it is a kind of national creative non-fiction, a passage in a dreamed-of memoir about what might have been and what might be.
Even the country’s chosen name, made official on September 9, 1776, was equivocal. Long referred to as “the United Colonies,” the nation was on that day named the United States of America, in an action that decisively made official the erasure of both indigenous North America and indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.
Lie Number 2: White Supremacy. The fundamental, foundational lie of the United States was and is white supremacy, the ideology and system that allowed all subsequent lies to gain traction. White supremacy asserted, legalized, and operationalized itself based on the lie that Europeans persons were legally, morally, mentally, physically, and spiritually superior to all persons of color, be they indigenous peoples or kidnapped African people.
A lie based on a lie, white supremacy invented whiteness and considered persons who were “non-white” to be less than human, thus excluding them from standards of human treatment, rationalizing their captivity, and legitimizing genocide.
White supremacy can be likened to permafrost, frozen earth firmly held in place for centuries which now, due to earth’s increased temperatures, is disintegrating and destroying the stability of the land and everything rooted in it, while in the process releasing toxic gases that further poison the earth.
White supremacy is our nation’s permafrost. And it is melting.
Lie Number 3: The colonial settlers were helpful, kind friends of acquiescing natives; rather than murderers and thieves who oversaw the genocide of indigenous peoples that continues to this day.
Lie Number 4: Slavery was not so bad, and it’s over; rather than being the systematic, centuries-long oppression, torture, violence, murder, and genocide of Black people.
Lie Number 5: The United States colonized Puerto Rico to help the “savages” who could not govern themselves, rather than invading the island in 1898 to plunder its vast resources and use the island as a military outpost for intervention throughout the Americas.
What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment.
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism
Lie Number 6: “Manifest destiny” was a legitimate rationale for US expansion, rather than an excuse for outright theft of lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Lie Number 7: US worldwide interventions have been well-intentioned attempts to extend a helping hand to poor or disadvantaged nations; rather than a way to exploit populations and resources, establish and defend US hegemony, and control the planet’s wealth.
Lie Number 8: The United States is a unique, different, special, unparalleled, exceptional nation/geopolitical power; rather than using this essentially narcissistic lie as a veil to hide atrocities and excuse them, avoiding accountability for all crimes.
Lie Number 9: The climate crisis is a hoax to be exposed, rather than the global existential crisis that will determine the planet’s future.
Lie Number 10: Covid19 is a hoax, a little flu, and is under control; rather than a raging global pandemic that has sickened millions and killed hundreds of thousands.
We are rapidly approaching the figure of 200,000 US lives lost due to the lies of the current government, and by its incompetence and negligence responding to the pandemic.
What is happening now in the United States, with the high and disproportionate number of deaths among Black people and other people of color, is a painful echo of the past, when the genocidal system of slavery prevailed, when blankets infected with smallpox were given to indigenous peoples, and when one-third of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age were sterilized by force.
***
There are many other lies the country is based on, and they too should be addressed. These ten lies are essential to the nation’s DNA. These are lies that need to be pointed out, refuted, and replaced with the real history of how this country came about, and at what cost to what peoples.
What happens when we get rid of the lies?
We will need to arrive at a new narrative, one that acknowledges the grievous harm done, while affirming the positive characteristics of US history. It will not be a simple or brief or easy process. And it is bound to be fraught with contradictions and pain.
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one identity, the end of safety.
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
As Baldwin suggests, the disruption of the lies, the disintegration of the long-accepted narrative, is disorienting. It is at once breathtaking and breath-giving for those long oppressed by the lies. The exhilaration of truth is both shocking and empowering. It leaves one yearning to know the real history, the real story, the truth. That search is one in which artists can play a key role.
For those who have long benefitted from white supremacy and its quotidian goody-bag, white privilege, “the end of safety” is a source of extreme reaction, hatred and violence, which shakes the rustling robes of those deposed by the truth, and galvanizes their stubborn refusal to heed norms and laws, stoked by 45’s unrelenting calls for chaos.
This is the dangerous moment we are in. We are facing “anti-maskers” toting guns into state buildings rather than heed public health guidelines, and “pro-blue” armed gangs driving vehicles into throngs of peaceful protesters or gunning them down with rifles, both scenarios starkly absent appropriate responses from so-called “law enforcement.”
The “end of safety” is the source of cries to “go back to where you came from” directed at people whose ancestors were the first to till the land here hundreds of years ago, cries coming from people utterly terrified of 21st century US demographics, which are constantly and irrevocably changing.
The fundamental fear and outrage that MAGA supporters express with brute force—and unprecedented impunity—is that they will no longer be able to keep others down, to enjoy “birthright” advantages in housing, education, employment, and all arenas of social and economic life. Fears that they will no longer be able to convince anyone, including themselves, that they are “superior.”
If white supremacy were the underpinning of “only” extreme right-wing forces, this moment would be difficult, though not as daunting. But white supremacy is our nation’s foundation, its permafrost, and it’s not just the red-capped brutes who can feel the earth beginning to shift. The police—indeed, armed forces of all stripes—are working hard to keep their footing, and their allies in domed towers and halls of state are stepping up to throw them a lifeline, as whole chunks of disintegrating soil break apart and fall into the depths.
This is the fascism we have to fight.
ARCHAEOLOGISTS & CREATORS
History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us.
We are our history.
James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro
As we tackle the big lies, we quickly encounter the role of erasure in white supremacy. For just as white supremacy invents, privileges, and sings the praises of whiteness, it launches the systematic erasure of Blackness. That erasure has served as an essential tool for genocide. White supremacy disappears Black people (and indigenous peoples, and colonized peoples), their history and voices, their actions and contributions, and even their names.
For example, in “The Problem is White Supremacy,” Barbara Smith speaks of Ann Petry’s novella “In Darkness and Confusion” (about the 1943 Harlem Race Riot) in a way similar to how Toni Morrison discusses, in “The Foreigner’s Home,” Camara Laye’s “The Radiance of the King”—as works of literature that shed light on, and are examples of, the rich writing tradition of Black peoples in the USA and Africa, which has been for the most part buried and ignored.
What this means for US history is that it must be excavated.
We must become archaeologists, digging to unearth the real history of our country from the mass graves it was tossed in, from the incomplete parchment documenting who lived and who died, from the systematically promulgated canons that obliterate Blackness, and have made whatever little is permitted to be written in invisible ink. (How many important primary sources, such as the selected works of Puerto Rican leader Pedro Albizu Campos, quickly fall into out-of-print status, becoming unavailable to the next generations of readers?) Enter, into deep trenches with dusty clouds abounding, the artists. And art. And artistic movements.
Support Black Artists and other People of Color Artists
As we dig, we need to combat erasure intentionally and consistently.
We must defend and support Black artists and other people of color artists by supporting and sharing the art they create, but also by identifying and breaking down the barriers that exist to Black art being embraced as central to US culture. These are publishing industry barriers, music industry barriers, art industry barriers, film industry barriers, media and social media barriers, and others, as well as the fundamental economic barriers that impede the work and success of virtually all artists. We should give special attention to the philanthropic and nonprofit worlds and their contradictions, as they are a source both of opportunity and of perpetuation of white supremacy.
Art by and for the people
Fortunately, there is a long and multi-faceted tradition of arts serving and advancing social change around the world. We can learn from cultural movements of the world’s past, from Lang Son to Santiago and from San Juan to Cape Town, as well as in the United States.
For example, when the AIDS epidemic raged in the 1980s, activists envisioned how friends and family could create a quilt to honor their loved ones who died from the disease. The AIDS Quilt project grew rapidly into a national phenomenon, with thousands upon thousands of quilts being made and displayed, offering a healing and unifying activity to remember those lost to the disease, while helping shatter the stigma surrounding it.
In the seventies throughout the Americas, protest music became a loud and ever-present part of movements against dictators and foreign intervention. Victor Jara, the beloved Chilean poet-songwriter who radiated courage as he fought to his death in the 1973 US-supported Pinochet coup, was a leading figure in what would become known (in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, and elsewhere) as the Nueva Trova, or new song movement. In the United States the songs of Nueva Trova were sung and played in movements across the country, deepening bonds of solidarity and friendship while educating activists about neighbors’ struggles.
We can also learn from socialist countries, such as Cuba and Vietnam, that have for decades utilized the arts and culture to transform their societies. There are lessons to learn from their experiences achieving society-wide goals by utilizing culturally effective campaigns, such as Vietnam’s recent campaign against the coronavirus. As a result of their decisive efforts, cultural and educational offerings, and diligent handling of infections, Vietnam has defeated the coronavirus, with only 34 deaths to date.
A New Nuremberg
We also need artists and artistic movements to demand accountability. Artists can point to individuals and regimes that have committed crimes against the planet and peoples of the world, such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jair Bolsonaro, and Rodrigo Duterte. Artists can help create and advance the demand that these individuals and regimes be held accountable.
We need a global forum for accountability, justice, and consequences for those who have carried out genocidal crimes against people and terracide against the planet. We call on mechanisms and vehicles from the past century that were used to seek justice for crimes against humanity. Artists can and must declare that now, in the 21st century, we need a new Nuremberg.
ONWARD/¡PA’LANTE!
Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated.
If one refuses abdication, one begins again.
“Thinking with Jimmy.” Eddie Glaude, Begin Again, xxix.
History is not in the rear-view mirror. It is straight ahead, every day, if we can only see it. It may sometimes be in our peripheral vision—fleeting, uncertain, intuitive, even hallucinatory. Artists must strive for, and nurture in one another, characteristics that foster vision: boldness, courage, creativity, and innovation. We must defend and support artists with vision, and unleash it in ourselves. As artists, we are called upon to ask ourselves, “Can we have Cassandra-like vision? Can we imagine this world we want to see?”
At what point do fortune tellers become fortune-creators? That dream-into-reality process can happen when artists combine vision, clarity, determination, and skills with the galloping will of the people.
It will not be easy. It will be a bumpy ride. The potholes have been growing, and sinkholes show up where they’re least expected. Then there’s that ominous Hummer hogging the road.
But there is a path that can be taken now, and artists must take it. For even in the darkest moments, we can call upon our ancestors to guide us, so that when we stumble, we can begin again.
I’m holding Jimmy Baldwin’s words close to my heart.
And I’m riding with Cassandra
.
Originally appeared in
In Motion Magazine 28 September 2020
.
References
Baldwin, James. I Am Not Your Negro. Documentary film based on Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House. Directed by Raoul Peck. Velvet Film, 2016.
Baldwin, James. The Cross of Redemption. Uncollected Writings. Randall, Kenan, ed. New York: Vintage International, 2011.
Baldwin, James. “Faulkner and Desegregation.” Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. New York: Vintage, 1992.
Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.
Freeman, Joanne. “I’m a Historian. I See Reason to Fear—And to Hope.” The Atlantic. August 17, 2020. Accessed September 2, 2020.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1990.
Glaude, Eddie S., Jr. Begin Again. James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. New York: Crown, 2020.
Morrison, Toni. The Source of Self-Regard. Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2019.
Smith, Barbara. “The Problem is White Supremacy.” Opinion. Boston Globe. June 30, 2020. Accessed September 2, 2020.
Vietnam Coronavirus Video. You Tube. Accessed September 2, 2020.
Worldometer Coronavirus Tracking. Vietnam
Accessed September 2, 2020.
….
Letter to NFL players, active and retired: Choice means Dignity – Dignity means Choice
By David Meggyesy
In the fall of 1970 I was playing Harvard college football in the midst of continuing turmoil over US involvement in Vietnam and the denial of civil rights to people of color. I read a book called “Out of Their League” by Dave Meggyesy. It was an eye opener and an inspiration to me. Dave was a star defensive player at Syracuse University and then went on to a career with the St. Louis football Cardinals in the 60’s. He was the Colin Kaepernick of his era, refusing to “properly” salute the flag during the anthem to protest racism and militarism. He was benched and blackballed, but went on to become a leader of the NFL Players Association and its West Coast Director. The Stansbury Forum is proud to run Dave’s letter to NFL players on the eve of this important election.
Peter Olney, Co-Editor of the Stansbury Forum
.
The late Gene Upshaw, is a 16year Oakland Raider, NFL Hall of Fame member and 25 years Executive Director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA). I was the Western Regional Director of the NFLPA.
Gene used to say, “it is about our Dignity as players and men”. For us NFL players the issue was and still is, the Dignity of Choice as men, to play NFL football on any team. The NFLPA, the NFL player’s labor union, the players won the 11-year war against the 32 NFL owners in 1993. For the first time Free Agency, meant the players had a choice to play professional football and work for any NFL team.
Before 1993 NFL players were neo-slaves, because there was no Choice. College players were selected, drafted by NFL owners and told where they could to be employed for life and play football as one of the 32 NFL teams.
The Dignity of Choice is a state of mind that all adult individual human beings possess. It is basically saying YES or NO. I believe dignity is the destiny of choice for all people. The transition toward a better world in the future is every individual’s choice and is making a choice itself. And It is the most essential issue in our current lives.
Why we vote and can vote, because we have a choice, because we have and possess the dignity of choice, of choosing. So, teammates and friends, it is your choice.
VOTE!
…
The War On Drugs
By Mike Miller
A review of Chasing the Scream: The Search for the Truth About Addiction. Johann Hari. Bloomsberry paperback, 2019.
Once upon a time, about 100 years ago, there was no war on drugs. They were legal. Most people who used them weren’t addicts. You could buy some of them “over the counter;” others were routinely prescribed by doctors. Then Harry Anslinger arrived on the scene and began working at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Beginning in the 1930s, he “did more than any individual to create the drug world we now live in.” Amongst other things, he’s responsible for the death of Billie Holiday. He is a despicable character. But Hari wants us to understand that Anslinger could only pursue his dark agenda because of a widespread darkness in human beings, a susceptibility to fear, a willingness to find explanations in devils when there are no facts to support them.
This book is personal. Hari’s partner was an addict, as were good friends and members of his family. He takes us on a journey of discovery to find out why “war” replaced acceptance and treatment. He documents the tremendous cost of this war—to those upon whom it’s waged, those who fight it who are themselves dehumanized in the process, and to the larger society that tacitly or explicitly supports it. His travels take him to slum neighborhoods in major cities across the globe, the Mexican border with the U.S., Uruguay, Portugal, Britain, Australia and elsewhere. He is on a determined search to get to the root of the matter—the original meaning of “radical.” Thus this is a radical book though not in the way the word is now typically used.
Hari’s sources are addicts and those who love them, politicians on both sides of the battle, scientists who justify and criticize prohibition, social workers, dealers, cops and anyone else who might shed light on his quest. Along the way, he travels extensively, digs deeply, and reflects carefully. I think the book is a model for anyone who wants to explain complicated things to a general readership.
The war on booze was waged in the U.S. during Prohibition. Its result was the creation of a whole underworld of gangsters, killing, corruption of politicians and more. It didn’t work. People who wanted to drink found a way to do so. Only now, because it was illegal, they decided if they were going to take the risk they might as well go for more potent stuff. Beer suffered; high alcohol content gained. Prohibition didn’t work. It didn’t diminish drinking. Yet despite the fact that prohibition of drugs was so similar a scenario, no one had the combined wisdom and clout to stop Anslinger and his Joe McCarthy-like crusade. It turns out he was a friend of McCarthy’s, and that McCarthy had a dirty little secret: he was a user!
This is what Hari concludes: people use drugs recreationally because they like it. They don’t become addicted. A much smaller number, who were damaged emotionally in some way—usually in childhood, use drugs to escape their pain. It is the pain that is the source of their addiction, not the heroin, cocaine, crack, marijuana or whatever is their preferred escape hatch. Some fraction who use the chemically most potent of the drugs may become physically addicted, but it’s not hard in the right circumstances for them to quit.
Hari also introduces us to the politicians and public interest groups that are fighting to make drugs legal. Portugal was the first nation to do it. Cities across the world have done it. Now several states in the U.S. have taken the first step by legalizing marijuana.
You will meet some incredible people in this book; you will enjoy meeting them. They are the ones who are fighting for peace. They range from former addicts to major political leaders.
There are tragic stories as well. Billie Holiday’s most of all, though the fate of young people who get sucked up into drug gangs is a close runner-up.
The cure to addiction, Hari argues, is connection. That’s right. Not medication but meaningful relationships that provide support, community and purpose in people’s lives. Here I think he misses an important distinction. Most of his examples are programs in which health professionals, social workers or former users become support people for addicts. This is the normal provider-client relationship at its best. Its practitioners are fantastic human beings.
But connection has another dimension. In the coal mining counties of West Virginia where Hari goes to look at the widespread abuse of opioids, there were meaningful, well paying, jobs. Men who did the work were part of a powerful union that asserted, defended and extended their rights and benefits. Workers were part of an occupational community, the creation of both their isolation from others and their interdependence on the job. They were deeply connected. That’s what good organizing creates and good popular organizations provide. I wish Hari had given more attention to this.
Read this book! You will learn from, enjoy, and be inspired by it.
…
Dear Friends
By Molly Martin
Fall equinox 2020
I’m writing this after having learned that my hero RBG has died. What a way to top off a most distressing season! I’ve been telling my friends and repeating to myself that our primary job is to protect our own mental (and physical) health. My best antidote to depression is the outdoors and clean air, not an easy fix with pollution from fires that threaten to continue till the rainy season starts.
We work to influence the coming presidential election, calling and writing postcards reminding voters in swing states to vote. Of course, what we do in California is of little consequence nationally but I worry about the consequences on a state level. Polls show that proposition 16, the measure that would resurrect affirmative action, is headed for failure. The discussion has revolved around race preferences in state colleges, but no one thinks about women in the construction trades. Here’s the letter I just sent to local newspapers supporting Prop 16.
I am a woman who made a great career as a construction and maintenance electrician. I would never have gotten a job in the previously all-male all-white industry without affirmative action. I’ve devoted my life to helping other women achieve success in the construction trades. Why? Because these union jobs pay wages substantially above what women can make in traditional female careers, decreasing the number of women (and children) in poverty.
Women got a foot in the door but we are still being denied entry to these jobs because of entrenched sexism and racism, especially after affirmative action was made illegal in California by the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996.
Proposition 16 on the November 3 ballot will overturn the 1996 law. Right now only about three percent of construction workers are women. That’s not enough. Women still experience isolation and harassment on the job. Working conditions in construction will not truly improve until discrimination ends and the numbers of women increase.
So …
A YES vote on Proposition 16 will make programs like targeted recruitment for women and minorities possible again, restoring a level playing field for all.
Then there are a couple of other propositions on the state ballot I fear will fail, so I’m already getting prepared for election letdown, a familiar feeling for those of us who support peace, justice and human rights.
Please vote yes on Prop 15 to restore property taxes on large commercial property, and yes on Prop 21 to allow local communities to decide whether to enact rent control (which is now prohibited statewide). And vote no on Prop 22. Don’t let Uber & Lyft turn this into a gig world where all workers are “independent contractors” and get no benefits.
Please take care of yourselves.
Sending virtual hugs to all.
Love, Molly
…
Trade Raiding: A zero sum game
By Noah Carmichael
An organizer’s perspective:
It is no secret that building trades unions in the United States have been hemorrhaging members for over 40 years. Neoliberal economic reforms, abandonment of class-based politics, job outsourcing, legislative and cultural attacks on organized labor: All have challenged the trades. Our membership (and power) have been decimated as a result.
U.S. construction unions have long been divided on craft lines. There are 14 affiliates in North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU). These affiliates enjoy complete autonomy over their jurisdiction.
There are good and bad features to this specialization. Training, for instance, is specific to the individual trade. This makes union apprenticeships far more comprehensive and meaningful than whatever training non-union workers receive. Labor agreements are bargained by people performing the actual trade. An ironworker contract is not littered with provisions geared for electricians. Autonomy is given to these trades to conduct their affairs as they see fit.
One downside is organizational individualism. It is relatively easy to divide the building trades politically, and to pit them against each other fighting over pieces of “turf.”
Raiding as organizing
Spending time and limited resources by “organizing” workers who already operate in other craft unions—believing you are organizing when in fact you are raiding—is an old practice.
From an organizer’s perspective, I always found it to be an incredible waste of time for the labor movement overall.
Diagnosis; self-preservation
Before getting too far along, lets provide a bit of context. It is not being suggested that you do not defend your trade, or if you have work in your contract that is clear and another trade is doing it, to ignore that. That is not the case. I am also not referring to the occasional overlap of certain practices that are minor in detail that can be solved with a few phone calls between union business representatives. I am also not talking about organizing brand new non-union members who are not being approached or organized by other trades. The folks that need and are looking for representation are fair game.
What I am referring to is an all-out mass encroachment into already organized work, which just happens to be work that your organization isn’t performing. So, lets unpack exactly what that means, where it stems from, and how to stop it.
To coagulate and stave off declining membership numbers, some of our brothers and sister organizers and International Unions have turned to organizing work already being performed by other union members of another trade. To put it bluntly, this does not help organized labor. First, it adds not one single union member to the ranks. The person who was performing the work before, either bumps someone else’s job somewhere else, joins the raiding union, or often, is unemployed. The raiding union, then sends their already organized members to take over the work.
If it were an equation, it would look like this:
- Raiding trade 1 + raided trade -1= Labor movement 0.
If the larger scheme for unions is to gain political power through developing class consciousness (which it should be), this doesn’t help. Further, the amount of money that is spent litigating these encroachments can be staggering. I would be willing to bet if all legal expenses were added up by all the trades, it would be in the millions. Imagine if your organization invested that money instead into organizing training and programs, or internal political organizing. Trade raiding also creates further division between the locals and internationals culturally, making it impossible for combined political clout and cohesiveness- just the way our enemies like it.
Corporate mimicry
So where does this backwards approach to solidarity come from? To harken back to the previous point, it is a bit of desperate self-preservation for some organizers. They attempt to bolster their ranks to impress bosses, keep their job, and increase the coffers of their union. We could call the last reason “check-off grabbing”. Simply stated, one union is getting those checkoffs, and they want those check off dues. Not exactly solidarity forever, is it? Strategically, it has no place in the long-term game.
Financially, most international unions are in good health and in a position to do more with their wealth than at any time before. But these short-sided power grabs are more akin to the corporate world that all too often gets mimicked. Slogans like “value on display”, and that type of mentality has led far too many of our labor leaders into the confusing dogma of business unionism – a world were labor leaders look to be more like CEO’s and lieutenants of capital than working class unifiers. This is not a vision that sparks inspiration in the membership, nor fear in the anti-union corporate and political world. Our enemies bask in the warmth of that capitulation and are glad to see us try and join their club. They will invite labor leaders to golf so that they can ease their business tensions quickly, and once the relationships are close enough, undermine your workers. Its just a fact. I decided long ago – be cordial, do what makes sense, but know in the back of your mind that when you are dealing with the business leaders and their lieutenants (most public officials), you are on the other side. They would gladly eliminate your union if they could, so stop with the corporate impersonation. It is easy to see where “value on display”, and business unionism has gotten the building trades over the last 40 years – at record low membership, and weak political clout.
What to do?
First and foremost, focus on organizing nonunion craftworkers and real political education. Take every dollar that was spent litigating your trade’s encroachment on others, and spend it on organizers, organizer training, organizer education, labor history training and internal organizing. Notice that I did not tell the other trades to stop spending money on litigating your encroachment into their already organized workforce. They will not need to spend any if you stop. Problem solved.
Now, if someone wants to talk about unifying trades under an umbrella to click together for political power, that should be music to everyone’s ears. This would not require an abandonment of trade autonomy, but it would require more cooperation than there is now. There would no doubt be difficulties in transitioning from many different construction unions into a few, but it is not impossible. Combined organize labor happens in many other countries, and they are stronger for it. As I was told when I first got into union politics “let’s not let the 2% of things we disagree with tear apart the 98% on which we agree.” It is time to stop letting our enemies divide us up based upon that 2%.
…
Liberating Public Library Content
By Lincoln Cushing
The poster digitization project at the Oakland Public Library César Chávez Branch
On September 18, 1966, the Oakland Tribune headlined the dedication of the Latin-American Library, the first permanent library of its kind in the US. Located at 1457 Fruitvale Avenue, the library had received a $300,000 federal grant to convert the former branch library into a demonstration project, a bilingual facility with 4,000 titles for a Spanish-speaking community of the same number.
In 1972, the library moved to the underutilized Ina D. Coolbrith branch library 1449 Miller Avenue. That same year the National Commission on Libraries and Information Services held a meeting in San Francisco to explore the emerging impact of digitized content in libraries. Among those attending was LAL director Keith Revelle, who urged that Spanish-language collections and services get support as well.
Fast forward to 2019, when my San Francisco Public Library friend Laura Lent told me about a colleague of hers, Elissa Miller. Elissa worked at what is now called the César E. Chávez Branch (now at 3301 E. 12th St.), but had also been a branch manager when the library was called the Biblioteca Latinoamericana in the 1980s and early 90s. Laura knew that I was a poster scholar, and Elissa had some posters at their library, and maybe we should talk? So, we did.
My field trip there confirmed my basic thesis of independent community collections – they all have value.
Further meetings with Elissa and Branch manager Pete Villaseñor resulted in a collaborative project that would have made librarian Revelle proud.
I offered to shoot all their posters as high-resolution digital files. I benefit by adding images to my extensive digital research catalog, and they benefit by breathing new life into uncataloged stacks of paper in folders. I shot almost 250 posters during the early days of the pandemic, and we are now building the catalog record (year of publication, artist, medium, all the good stuff). Inexpensive digital prints can be displayed instead of original and images can be posted on their website.
The library has been a bilingual beacon of hope and resilience for a broad community. Poet/artist Jose Antonio Burciaga read from his new book Drink Cultura Chicanismo there in 1993, as did author Piri Thomas in 1999. The library hosted celebrations of Day of the Dead and Cinco de Mayo.
As do most public libraries these days, OPL-CCB supports a host of programs and services well beyond just books. One of these posters promotes free COVID testing, they distribute free food twice a week, and they are hosting a Mam Cultural Festival which celebrates the growing Mayan presence in Bay Area.
The posters are mostly local (Oakland and the broader San Francisco Bay Area), and cover a range of subjects including health care, the arts, labor, police violence, cultural pride, solidarity with Latin American struggles, and literacy. As the collection becomes fully cataloged, these treasures will be shared with the public.
[Language note: What’s the proper punctuation for César Chávez? Rules of Spanish require diacritics (accents), but the labor leader himself did not use them. Both are acceptable.]
.
…
A Call to Arenas! Defend the right to Vote! Defeat Trump!
By Peter Olney
In the aftermath of the August 23rd police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team shut down their playoff game with the Orlando Magic in protest. This triggered shutdowns of other NBA games and negotiations with the owners on practical steps that could be taken to deal with systemic racism. Superstar LeBron James has long been leading a campaign to promote voting. The NBA players got the owners to agree to use their arenas as giant polling places. THIS IS BRILLIANT! In the center of mostly urban areas there will be giant public polling places that can be sanctuaries for unimpeded and unintimidated voting, in buildings designed to handle large crowds quickly and efficiently. Imagine NBA Stars outside as poll watchers insuring that urban voters, Black and brown folks, file in unsuppressed by armed Para fascists.
This is crucial to winning the swing states where enthusiasm for Trump is still riding high, and that he carried in the 2016 election. The margins in each of those states would have been overcome if Black people had voted. Here are the margins for Trump and the numbers of blacks who did not vote:
Trump won Wisconsin by
23,000 votes
… but in Milwaukee,
93,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Florida by
113,000 votes
… but in Miami,
379,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Michigan by
11,000 votes
… but in Detroit,
277,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Pennsylvania by
44,000 votes
… but in Philadelphia,
238,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won North Carolina by
173,000 votes
… but in Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro and Durham,
233,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Georgia by
211,000 votes
… but in Atlanta 530,000 blacks didn’t vote
(By The New York Times | Source: analysis of black citizen population estimates (2016 American Community Survey) and black citizen non-voting rates by state (2016 Voting and Registration Supplement to the Census Current Population Survey) by Karthik Balasubramanian, Howard University)
Now imagine if football players and their union follow suit and liberate their giant stadiums as poling places monitored by hulking offensive linemen. Seems far-fetched in a league that did not back Colin Kaepernick in his protest for Black Lives Matter in 2016. But the times they are a changing and swiftly. Check out Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll’s moving interview calling out systemic racism.
And what could be the role of the rest of the US labor movement? The pro athletes have 100% membership in their associations (unions). The rest of organized labor – public and private sector combined, is at 10%. There is talk about national strikes and those should not be ruled out, but a more plausible course of action in every major American urban center would be to join with NBA stars and provide a cordon sanitaire of safety for voting at arenas. This plays to labor’s continuing urban presence in many of these urban centers and to the fact that a large part of its public sector urban membership is people of color. How can labor play a role in fighting voter suppression? Labor can mobilize its ranks to provide massive security squadrons for urban arenas and maybe even some football stadia on November 3!
Call to Arenas and Dump Trump!
…
The Mail – a personal way of reaching out
By Robert Gumpert
“There are few government institutions more comforting than the United States Postal Service. The high point of my day (even more so during the pandemic) is receiving physical mail by a human, mail-bearing being.” Steven Heller, in PRINT Aug 16
My thanks goes out again to Christina Perez and Peter Olney for choosing note card set 3 and donating to Swing Left.
The Stansbury Forum could not agree more! In these times of pandemic, lockdowns, and hate spewing neo-fascists, we think sending a personal note to friends, family, loved ones, and more is a way to bring a bit of hope and community into our lives.
Back in late July the Stansbury Forum offered a set of “note cards” in return for proof of donation through one, or more, of the avenues offered by Swing Left.
It was a big success and raised over $1000 for Swing Left. Now there are just short of 70 days left before the election, and because reaching out to friends, family and even strangers with a little note is a good thing to do, we are offering 3 note card sets which you can see below. There are 2 sets of black and white portraits of American workers and one set of color scenes I have photographed while walking around during the pandemic.
Each set consist of 25 cards, 25 envelopes and come in a box.
If you are one of the first 4 to respond and provide proof of your $250 donation to any of the Swing Left donation methods (such as the Senate Fund), made after 26 August, and we will send you the note card set of your choice.
Robert Gumpert, Peter Olney. Co-editors The Stansbury Forum
Worker Set 1
Worker Set 2
Walk Around Set
.
Remembering Eric Hoffer, working-class philosopher
By Howard Isaac Williams
.
I first met Howard Williams in early 1998 when he and a group of San Francisco bike messengers showed up at our International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) headquarters on 1188 Franklin Street. He and his comrades were members of the SF Bike Messengers Association and they wanted to join the ILWU. We told them that we would gladly affiliate the SFBMA and give them office space in our warehouse Local 6 on 9th street. But we all committed to working together to win bargaining rights for messengers – bikes, cars and walkers – in the Bay Area. Howard worked tirelessly with us to organize, and we were successfull in bringing two companies under contract: Pro Messenger and Ultra Ex. The collaboration between ILWU and the messengers also resulted in a “peace” agreement between Muni drivers of the TWU and the bikes which deescalated potential deadly clashes between the two groups. Many messengers think that the ILWU presence added a modicum of self respect and self worth that reduced rampant substance abuse in the bike community.
Howard remains an avid supporter of the ILWU and a striking figure on a bike with his distinctive head gear, beard and lanky physique. He is still a working messenger. He is also a thinker about many topics: politics, religion and philosophy. We are proud to run his essay on Eric Hoffer another ILWU member who had a lot to say about a lot of things. This article originally appeared in the June, 2019 issue of The Dispatcher, the newspaper of the ILWU.
.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the writing of Working and Thinking on the Waterfront by Eric Hoffer (1898-1983), an author and active member of International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 from 1943 until his retirement in 1964. Working and Thinking was the result of a journal Hoffer kept from June 1, 1958 to May 21, 1959. In his observations, Hoffer commented on a variety of personal matters and public issues, including the manner of social change. His statements that “Drastic change juvenilizes” and can even cause “dehumanization” may help explain Internet trolls, social media mobs and the polarization that now afflicts American politics and journalism. His 1958 claim that “If an American businessman had displayed a fraction of such megalomania [of foreign tyrants] he would have been made the laughingstock of the world” leaps off the page when we consider that such a businessman now occupies the White House.
Unfortunately, Hoffer’s insights into social change are limited to analysis of change in general. Nowhere in Working and Thinking does he mention the approaching containerization that would soon haunt the futures of longshore workers.
Hoffer was a working-class philosopher. Among ourselves, working people have always discussed issues of the day or of eternity with perspectives and insights unfamiliar to many professional scholars. Our wisdom rarely breaks out of our ranks. In addition to having limited time to write or otherwise express our experiential wisdom, we face prejudices from publishers and other cultural gatekeepers who often stereotype us. Hoffer was one exception who managed to break into the wider culture with The True Believer, his 1951 study of fanaticism. This book launched Hoffer on a successful career as an author. He wrote nine more books along with magazine articles and a syndicated newspaper column. Yet unlike most successful working-class writers and artists he never quit his “day job.” Indeed, in Working and Thinking, he credited his longshore work as an assistance to his creativity. And he used the flexible schedule made possible by the hiring hall to gain chances to write that workers in other trades did not have.
His statements about working people stand as vigorous assertions about our deeds and dignity. To Hoffer, “Honor Labor” was more than a slogan. It was an integral part of his artistic expression and daily life. In these times, media portrayals of working people are relatively few and rarely done with awareness or solidarity. Most newspapers and magazines no longer even print once obligatory Labor Day articles about working people and our unions. In contrast to today’s neglect of workers (especially those who do physical labor), Hoffer’s words from the past are a timeless affirmation of the inherent dignity of labor and a repudiation of postmodern corporate so-called values. Hoffer believes that in general, “common people have a better opinion of mankind than do the educated” and expresses “confidence in the competence of the run-of-the-mill American” while crediting “the masses” with the building of America. Much of this confidence comes from his experience in union meetings. And on the waterfront, he experiences “a strong feeling of belonging.” Hoffer does not over romanticize workers, either as individual persons or as a class; he finds shortcomings including some among himself and his colleagues.
The waterfront and America have changed much since the late 1950s. Rather than looking back nostalgically or endorsing all change uncritically, we might read Hoffer for what we can regain in order to face opposition to our basic rights as workers and as people.
…