Go Red! – Thoughts on the Labor Movement in the age of Trump – Response to Fletcher and Wing – Portside December 5, 2016
By Peter Olney
Bill Fletcher and Bob Wing have written an important post election analytical essay with many excellent recommendations on the path forward. “Fighting Back Against the White Revolt” is a must read for all people of good will concerned about the future of humanity. Throughout the election period, both authors provided clear and clarion voices on the importance of uniting all to vote for Hillary to stop Trump and did education on the left to convince skeptics in the movement to vote for the lesser of two evils to stop the racist, misogynist, xenophobic, authoritarian Donald Trump. Everything in Trump’s behavior since November 8 upholds the wisdom of that advice.
Serious engagement in electoral politics is not the sum total of the struggle, but as we are witnessing in the aftermath of November 8, elections do have real consequences. Therefore any strategy must take into account the winner take all and electoral college features of our politic. As Fletcher and Wing point out, Trump won the election by a razor thin margin in three battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by the margin of 77,000, the size of a large union local. Labor’s turnout effort and union household votes clearly could have made an enormous difference in the outcome. That’s why it is so important to critically examine how organized labor failed to carry union households to the degree that Barack Obama did in either 2008 or 2012.
I argue that a defection of working class voters to Trump was key to the loss of historic battleground states, and thus the election. The change in Ohio is stunning: from a 23% margin for Barack in 2012 to a Trump margin of 8% in 2016 among union households. These are voters who have been voting for change at least since 2008 and they haven’t gotten it from a corporatist Democratic party.
The problem in Fletcher and Wing’s analysis of working class support for Trump is that they resort to income as a proxy for class. The working class is a many splendored thing, but the traditional Marxist definition of someone who works for a wage and does not own the means of production still resonates for me. But let’s put any doctrinaire disputes aside and look at the income argument. Fletcher and Wing assert that there was no massive defection of working class voters to Trump by pointing to the fact that Clinton won the majority of voters earning under $30,000 and under $50,000. By that line of reasoning, half the unionized workers in American would be cut out of the working class! My son, a fourth-year IBEW apprentice has just been displaced from the proletariat because his income is $30,000 over the threshold that Wing and Fletcher use. The pollster Nate Silver used the figure of $70,000 to debunk the working class support for Trump argument. Do the math. Divide $70,000 by 2087 annual work hours and you get $32 dollars per hour, hardly an outrageous hourly rate and not even a labor aristocrat’s rate! The defection of union households is an important number and accounts for the marginal shifts that proved definitive in those mid Western states.
The distinction is important because going forward there is plenty of work to be done among these workers who voted for Trump, many of them good union members. Fletcher and Wing acknowledge that: “A key starting point (in combating racism) will be to amplify the organization and influence of whites who already reject Trumpism. Unions will be one of the key forces in this effort.” There is cause for hope in the fact that the largest group in the more than 100 local unions that broke with their parent bodies to support Bernie Sanders were IBEW locals, (the union my son belongs to) where a journeyman in the Bay Area can make $125,220 a year. Of the thirty-six IBEW locals that endorsed Bernie, twenty-eight were construction locals.
None of this means that the points that Fletcher and Wing raise are to be negated, but it does mean that there is potential on the margins to shift significant sections of the electorate as the Trump anti-worker, anti-union realities set in.
Below is a slightly different and more narrowly focused trade union-based program. I modestly call it “Go Red!”
“Without re-establishing an allegiance with members who supported Trump, progressive electoral victories backed by working class union members will be much harder to achieve”
Organizers must go to the Red states, the Red counties, and to the Red members! “Organize or Die!” doesn’t just refer to external organization; it also applies to the singularly important task of organizing our existing members. Ignoring this challenge led us to the colossal disaster of a Trump presidency.
Look at the electoral map. We see slivers of blue on the coasts. And while there are a few exceptional inland pockets of blue, they are surrounded by a sea of red. What is to be done in these massive areas of Trump and Republican dominance in the most recent election? Unions have members who span the entire political spectrum. This is especially true in 25 states that are not yet “Right to Work,” where membership is a condition of employment.
The first part of “Going Red” is being willing to work in the “red” states, that is, those that Trump carried. Many of those who voted for Trump are good and loyal trade unionists. Before the hammer of legislative and court initiatives (ala “Friedrichs Two”) shatter compulsory membership, we have a superb opportunity to speak to the sons and daughters of New Deal Democrats who voted in key electoral states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for Trump and helped him carry those states. These discussions cannot be approached as rectification and remedial sessions with “wayward” members, but must be part and parcel of massive internal organizing involving their issues, their contracts and their concerns. It’s time to come home and patiently build organization from the bottom up. And when union leaders and activists do, they should be prepared to hear some harsh critiques and serious questions.
This internal organizing cannot be accomplished by inviting members to meetings. Rather, we need to embed newly trained worker leaders into our work sites. Those leaders (Business Agents, Field Reps, Shop Stewards) responsible for contract enforcement cannot carry out this task. New armies of internal organizers are needed to talk to their sister and brother members about unions, politics, and the future of the working class. This internal organization on a massive scale must begin immediately to move this program because the resources for it may be considerably diminished within a year after the onslaught of “right to work” under the NLRA and the Railway Labor Act.
The second part of “Going Red” is labor’s new political project. Union leaders’ comfort with — and access to — the Democratic Party’s neo-liberal establishment just isn’t going to cut it. Our future lies with the exciting political movement within labor that we witnessed in support for Senator Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialist from Vermont. Not since Eugene Debs and his 1920 race from prison for President has there been a candidate who espoused our anti-corporate, pro-working class values like Senator Sanders. He captured 13 million votes, won the endorsement of six major unions and was supported by more than one hundred local unions — many of whom defied their International’s support for Clinton. Many Clinton supporters now realize that Bernie, with his “outsider” message, an uncompromising record, and decades of political integrity, would have been a far better choice to beat Trump.
Bernie Sander’s new Our Revolution organization needs a strong union core in order to sustain itself financially and organizationally. Unions that supported Bernie should consider coalescing in a new formation around Our Revolution. Unions that didn’t support Bernie should do some serious self-examination, consider a new path forward, and hopefully join with the Bernie unions. A new “Labor for Our Revolution” could be a network of national and local unions that actively engage their members in electoral politics at both the primary and general election levels to support Our Revolution endorsed candidates who reflect labor’s values. The Labor for Our Revolution network could link its political work with member mobilization around local and national labor struggles to defend workers’ rights and contribute to building a broader movement for social and economic justice.
“Going Red” by having a face-to-face conversation with all our members and launching a new political project are two tasks bound up with each other. Without re-establishing an allegiance with members who supported Trump, progressive electoral victories backed by working class union members will be much harder to achieve. Without giving those members an alternative political vision, like that of Bernie Sanders, there is no moving them politically. That alternative political vision must include the fight for multi-racial unity by recognizing and combating the pervasive effects of systemic racism.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, “Going Red” means being ready to make sacrifices to defend our brother and sister immigrant workers, Muslims, People of Color and all those who are hatefully targeted by the Trump administration. We can take inspiration from the recent efforts of thousands of veterans to stand with the Standing Rock native peoples. We can take inspiration from unions like the ILWU that sent their members to the Dakotas to stand in defiance of the energy companies. More of these kinds of sacrifices will be necessary to win the allegiance of all people to the cause of labor and the defeat of Trump.
“Go Red” to grow and win power!
This piece originally ran in the 26 December 2016 issue of Portside
More Than I Bargained For
By Gene Bruskin
It was 1978 at the swank Boston Park Plaza Hotel. The company was late. Our team sat in a fancy conference room with crystal chandeliers and a long dark wooden table with leather chairs around it. A gold-plated tray with ceramic coffee cups and a brass water pitcher sat in the middle of the table.
We were a motley crew of ten. Marlin and Davon kept their hats on and their below-the-knee length brown leather-like vinyl coats. They hung back, quiet, maybe a little uncomfortable in such a high-class hotel. Liza, the Local’s financial secretary, had a big pocket book on the chair next to her and her gypsy-like scarf draped over her shoulders. She looked busy and serious with lots of papers in front of her but that didn’t prevent her occasional raucous laugh from joining in the non-stop chatter in the room.
Lew sat quietly in his standard worn out plaid black sports jacket with a ruffled shirt and plain tie. Nothing on Lew ever seemed to look up to date but he always tried his best to look right in his old-fashioned way, maybe to hide his lifelong membership in the Communist Party.
Connie sat quietly with her beau, Cliff, somewhat out of place as a mom from Southie, but having earned her stripes when she went to jail after me during our December strike for a quick election.
Ray was the boss-man, in theory, representing the national USW and the only one in the room who had ever bargained a union contract. Ray was white-haired and old in everyone else’s book, and the only one in a coat and tie, except for Lew. We all agreed he was a nice guy. Poor Ray – god knows what he thought of us, but we certainly didn’t see him as our leader. He was just the official union rep although, after all, we were in his union now.
It was awkward for me to be in charge, Ray aside, but on the other hand perfectly natural. I was the local union president and had an Ivy League degree of fairly recent vintage, although I hadn’t told most of the drivers. But it would be up to me, I assumed, to articulate our demands – I mean I had done the survey and then written up the results and made them into proposals, with Ray’s help, and despite his skepticism that we were asking for too much in a first contract.
But we weren’t to be denied. I was sure of that – a gut feeling of invincibility. After all, we had taken on everybody in our December strike for a quick election – the two companies, the city, the governor, the mayor, and the courts. We were national news – “Boston school bus drivers’ strike closes schools at the height of desegregation busing.”
And they backed down after Connie and I were thrown in jail and the drivers started chanting “jail one you jail us all,” all the while knowing that half of them had previous or outstanding offenses that would prevent them from defying the injunction. And we kicked butt in the election two weeks later-250-11. So it was time for them to cough up some money and other stuff for our folks.
Of course I had zero bargaining experience and knew nothing about it that I hadn’t learned very recently, but I was a radical guy and didn’t want to get tied down by the way things had been done before or were supposed to be done now. That was against the whole spirit of the 60s and 70s. We were too busy making history to be reading it. I didn’t even ask Lew who had been a veteran of the Mine Mill and Smelters Workers struggles in the Southwest.
It was my job, with Ray, to explain to the team how it all worked. Ray talked about contract language and how we would make a proposal, and they probably would too, but the first session might just be to set the whole process working. I gave my speech about how, when at the bargaining table, we were all equals. They couldn’t tell us what to do or what to say and, although Ray was our designated spokesman, we could all chime in if we had something to add. We were all equals under the law. But the next day, when we clocked in back at the yard, they were the boss again and we were the workers – the power shifted back. So we didn’t have to take any shit at the table or let them insult us or lie to us. My speech went over well. Marlin really liked that idea and laughed and nodded knowingly to Davon. Others on the team made a note of it, too.
Finally the company arrived. Fitzsimmons led the company’s team – a white haired, well-dressed lawyer, with a warm professional smile. He shook hands all around the table obviously a pro at this kind of meeting. The three Anzoni brothers trailed awkwardly in his wake – Antonio, Michael and Mario. Mr. Wilson, the grizzled yard manager, stayed in the background looking out of place. They were all in their 40s or 50s, except maybe Wilson, much older than our bunch of mostly 30 somethings. There were some strained hellos. The Anzonis hadn’t ever talked to any of us in person throughout the whole fight to win the union, but they were the owners after all.
The company’s team sat down on their side of the table and lots of paper shuffling began and note pads came out. Ray led the introductions of our side and they went next – just the names. We already knew who was who. The battle to get to the table was ugly and public and there were no secrets about the antagonists and antagonisms that clogged the air under the delicate chandelier.
Fitzsimmons cleared his throat and said “So, let’s begin.” Anthony Anzoni, sitting by his side, put a large worn leather briefcase on the table. Ray seized on the moment, staring at the briefcase: “Mr. Anzoni, I realize you aren’t familiar with the bargaining process but you don’t bring the cash to the first meeting.” Our team burst into loud and unrestrained laughter. Anzoni, taken aback, pulled his briefcase off the table. Fitzsimmons pretended it hadn’t happened and passed some papers across the table for us to look at. Maybe Ray did know something, I thought. Strike one for our side.
The up and back preliminary talking happened between Ray and Fitzsimmons. Checking on dates to meet in the future, talking about times and the formalities of how the negotiations would proceed. One of the proposals from the company said that the bargaining group for each side would be no more than 5. Davon looked at it and burst out “Hey, what is this about only five of us being able to come to a meeting. We don’t go for that shit.”
The room tensed. Michael Anzoni shot back authoritatively—“We won’t have that kind of language in this room.” Devon was defiant: “you got your language and we got ours. If I want to say shit I will say shit. Shit, shit, shit.” It sounded like a battle cry. Fitzsimons wisely suggested that his team caucus and they left quickly. As the door closed Devon turned to me: “Right Gene – you said they aren’t the boss of us here, so that means they can’t tell us how to talk. We don’t agree to no five people“ Lots of “amens” in the room. Ray was wisely silent. “You got it Devon” I said, not sure what I thought but not about to disagree with the moment.
Within a short time the company returned and we all acted as if nothing happened, with Fitzsimmons picking up where we left off. He stated that the company was just suggesting a number for each team but didn’t really think it was that important if we wanted to leave that issue open. Strike two!
We moved on, asking for clarification about some of the items in the company’s initial proposal. I was following Ray’s lead and inserting comments occasionally where I thought they were needed. Most everyone else on our team just listened, taking in the process and the vibes.
Tension hung in the air but things seemed to have calmed down slightly, with quiet conversations among the teams on either side of the table. Suddenly Marlin, sitting at the end of the table closest to the Anzouni brothers jumped up and pulled his long coat back. “I heard that,” he shouted angrily looking directly down at Michael Anzoni, seated about 3 feet away. “I heard you say nigger. I heard it. We aren’t going to take that shit.”
I froze, thinking “holy shit – what the hell is he going to do.” Anzoni recoiled and Marlin began to take his long coat off, sneering at Anzoni and repeating that nobody talks to him like that. The Anzoni brothers, with their backs to the door, began to gather their papers up and slide their chairs back. Marlin stepped forward. Ray leaped to his feet but said nothing. I was paralyzed, trying in a quick second to decide how to intervene but coming up with nothing.
Suddenly Devon was behind Marlin, holding him back by wrapping his arms around him and telling him to calm down – the two biggest guys in the room pushing and pulling. The company’s side by now had grabbed their papers and headed out the conference room door into the hallway and down the hall to their caucus room. Our whole team looked stunned.
The minute the door slammed Devon let go of Marlin who turned and they both let out huge grins and slapped each other five. “We taught those motherfuckers didn’t we” said Marlin. I was aghast. They staged the whole thing. They had picked up on the tone that the company had set and decided to assert themselves with their street smarts. The rest of us didn’t have a clue what was happening. I had gone through so many emotions in the last couple minutes that my head was spinning. But how could I do anything but smile and shake my head. After all, I had framed this whole power relationship as legal equality and they weren’t going to miss this moment to establish actual equality. Soon we were all laughing, except Ray, and joking about the looks on the company’s faces and how quickly they had grabbed their papers and run.
Finally, after a long pause, Fitzsimmons poked his head in the door and then entered. In his gentlemanly legal tone he suggested: “What if we reconvene as scheduled on Tuesday.” Ray replied to the affirmative and Fitzsimmons bid our team good night and closed the door. Strike three – they were out!
Another round of slapping-fives broke out all around – even Ray seemed pleased if a little off balance. We reverted to meeting mode and talked briefly about bargaining schedules and next steps. I was reviewing in my mind again and again what just happened, wondering if I did anything wrong by not knowing what Marlin and Devon were up to and missing their obviously successful strategic intervention.
As we walked out through the fashionably old and luxurious hallway of the hotel I noticed Liza had her shawl draped over something. “What’s that?” I asked. She pulled up a corner and I saw it was the gold plated tray that was the centerpiece on the bargaining table. “Are you shitting me?” I asked, nervously looking around. “Hey” she answered. “I am the financial secretary. I am saving us money. We need this for our executive board meetings.” Home run!
I had a lot to learn.
A bit of background to this article:
Gene Bruskin is a labor organizer and campaigner who dates his first experience in the labor movement to the 1977 strike by Boston school bus drivers for a union election. The drivers organized a union during the tense and violent atmosphere in the city that resulted from the implementation of school desegregation in Boston created by mandatory busing. The union organizing had gone on unsuccessfully since busing began in 1974 and created a new and diverse workforce of hundreds of drivers coming from every neighborhood in Boston. The final spur to organizing was an 88 cents an hour cut in wages which brought drivers pay to under $6 an hour with no benefits or guaranteed hours. After months of delay the drivers defied court subpoenas and struck in zero degree temperatures in December 1977 for a quick election. Two weeks later they voted overwhelmingly to join the Steelworkers Union (USW). This article is a personal reflection by Gene on the first bargaining session with one of the private companies contracted by the School Dept. to handle the busing. Boston school bus drivers now are paid well over $20 and hour with benefits and job protections.
For additional background, read The Stansbury Forum’s co-editor Peter Olney piece OO #9 Odyssey Interrupted – Boston Busing 40th Anniversary.
The “No” Vote in Italia
By Lepoldo Tartaglia
At the end there was not a lot of suspense. A few minutes after the Italian polling stations closed on Sunday evening, 4 December, the mainstream TV and newspaper web sites delivered different but quite unanimous exit polls: the gap between the “No” and “Yes” vote ranged from ten to fifteen points. Half an hour later, the second battery of exit polls even enlarged the pro “No” advantage. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called a press conference for midnight. Actually, he came to the pressroom around thirty minutes later and, in a short but very intense speech, conceded defeat, and announced his resignation from the office of Prime Minister.
At 1 a.m. I was in my bed, sleeping very peacefully. The result was resounding. With a very high turnout (65.5%) more than 59% of the voters said “No” to the so-called constitutional reform, obstinately pushed by Renzi. Despite the previous defeat of his Democratic Party in the recent run-off voting in local elections (losing 19 second ballots out of 20 votes), Renzi was sure that he would get a popular plebiscite – to legitimize his government, one never elected by the people – that he transformed the vote on the constitutional reform into a referendum on himself. It was very difficult, during the electoral campaign, to discuss the actual contents of the reform. Renzi occupied every single TV and newspaper, every town square all over the country talking about the choice between the “new” and the “old”, talking against the political caste, and for reducing the costs of politics, etc., as though he was something different than the main representative of this kind of caste or this kind of politics.
On the eve of the vote there was not the debacle of mistaken pollsters that we saw in other countries (recently in the UK and USA) or in previous Italian elections. Practically all the polls predicted the “No” victory. However, no one was able to understand the very high turnout, particularly in a referendum without a required quorum (voting threshold), and the widespread popular sentiment for “No”.
So is the Italian vote like the Brexit, or like the Trump victory? Is this another episode of “populism” spreading all over the world, or at least the western world?
The media, the opinion leaders, many politicians, before and after the vote, are unanimously talking about a wave of “populism”.
Pierre Dardot, a French scholar who along with his colleague Christian Laval, is studying and writing about the neoliberal “war” against democracy, is nauseated by the use of a term, “populism” that doesn’t explain anything. In Europe, “populists” would be the Greeks of Syriza and the Italians of the Five Star Movement(HERE & HERE), as well as the French National Front, the Italian Northern League, as well as Podemos and Ciudadanos in Spain, and so on. These are all very different political movements and parties. Particularly, Dardot is outraged by the media “escamotage”(trickery) in their avoidance of calling the French National Front (and the Northern League, may I add) with its correct name: fascist, racist, and xenophobic. He is also outraged by the negative meaning the mainstream media and politicians extend to the people by defining their political behavior as “populist”. It is another way to avoid taking seriously the issues people are raising with their vote or their abstention or other actions.
The Italian “No” vote is the result of many different motivations and political positions, even if similar to the Brexit and Trump votes, in that it stems from the deteriorating living and working conditions of the majority of the people.
The narrative of the Italian government, pretending that the country has exited from the crisis, is completely irrelevant to the daily experience of workers, trapped in precarious and poorly remunerated jobs, young people, most of them unemployed or inflating the ranks of the so called Neet generation, pensioners, more and more unable to reach the end of the month with their allowances. No doubt, the “No” vote is anti-establishment, given the perverse continuation of the neoliberal and austerity policies, without any visible difference between the center-right and center-left parties and governments.
The Italian “No” vote is not only a right-wing vote. Certainly, the rightist parties and leaders (starting with Berlusconi) stood on the “No” front, but very important albeit weakened leftist mass organizations stood there too. The largest trade union confederation, CGIL, the largest free time, culture and leisure association, Arci, and the ancient organization of the Partisans (combatants who founded the Republic and the Constitution fighting against fascism and Nazism), in recent years renewed with a large young democratic membership, all of them were very active in informing their members and the citizenship as a whole on the democratic risks of the reform and calling for a “No” vote.
So, what will happen now? Not one of the disasters the “Yes” front predicted in the case of a loss is going to happen. The political instability of the Renzi resignation, and the path to build up a new government is part of a normal political process, quite ordinary in Italy.
The problem, for the workers and the people clamoring for a real alternative, is very profound and independent from the referendum result. Contrary to the concrete hope the Sanders campaign has opened in the United States, in Italy for many years there is not the prospect of a left wing political organization able to represent the demand for social justice that this vote also highlights. The road is hard, and discussion is beginning. But at least, the Italian workers may still count on a strong and well-oriented trade union confederation, the CGIL, which is immediately launching three referenda to fundamentally change the worst legislation on labor market and workers’ rights. They will be voted on next year and covered in The Stansbury Forum.
Danny Lyon – Message To The Future
By Mike Miller
I met Danny Lyon in 1963 in Ruleville, Mississippi. I was on the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) visiting the Delta town in Sunflower County (home of Sen. James O. Eastland, one of the most notorious racists of the period) with Bob Moses, SNCC’s Mississippi Project Director and Martha Prescod, a young African-American University of Michigan student volunteer who was there for the summer. Danny took a picture of us talking with a local woman sitting on her porch. The picture became well-known because it was used on the cover of a widely distributed SNCC flyer. The story it told was that we were trying to convince the woman to register to vote. But Martha recently reminded me that we were asking directions!
Danny Lyon, “Arrest of Taylor Washington, Atlanta,” 1963. Gelatin silver print, Image: 24 x 16 cm (9 7/16 x 6 1/4 in.); sheet: 25.4 x 20.3 cm (12 11/16 x 8 in.). Collection of the artist, L64 © Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
From those beginning photographer days, Lyon went on to become one of the major photographers of the civil rights movement, and then on to 50 years of using photography to tell the stories of the marginalized, discriminated against and left-out, as well as other important subjects. Along the way, he branched out to make 16mm documentaries and videos. All these are now on display at San Francisco’s De Young Museum, having come here from the new Whitney in New York’s West Village. (Unfortunately, these are its only two stops.)
Danny Lyon, “Clifford Vaughs, another SNCC photographer, is arrested by the National Guard, Cambridge, Maryland,” 1964. Gelatin silver print. 20.32 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 in.). Collection of the Corcoran/National Gallery of Art, CGA1994.3.3 © Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
Of his civil rights movement photos, Julian Bond said, “They put faces on the movement, put courage in the fearful, shone light on darkness, and helped to make the movement move.” Lyons was one of a number of photographers assembled by SNCC Executive Director Jim Forman to be chroniclers of The Movement (we always capitalized the letters “T” and “M”); he and Matt Heron are the best known of them.
Among his subjects after the civil rights movement: biker subculture, Texas Department of Corrections prisoners, the destruction of Lower Manhattan to make way for the World Trade Center, his friend noted sculptor Mark di Suvero, New York City subway riders, Uptown Chicago Appalachians, the tattoo artistry of Bill Sanders, undocumented workers in the southwest, “Occupy” in Oakland and Los Angeles, workers in a Chinese coal producing area, Bolivian campesinos, street boys in urban Colombia and revolution in Haiti.
One of my favorites is of the yet-unknown sculptor Mark Di Suvero’s Fulton Fish Market loft. I was there with Mark’s younger brother Henry, a co-conspirator in the early days of the UC Berkeley student movement (1956/58). At the time, Mark was poor as a church mouse. It showed. The huge loft (a whole floor of what had once been a warehouse), where Mark both lived and worked, was barren except for his working tools and sculpting materials. At its center a bed was atop four hefty beams. Under the bed was a pot-belly stove, the only heating in the place. “Dear Mark” is one of the films. Less than five minutes, you can see it on YouTube.
Most of the photos are black-and-white. Many capture individual faces in moods ranging from joy and pleasure to trials and tribulations. The continuously screened six films range from five minutes to more than an hour. My favorite was tattooist Bill Sanders at work in his artistry, and philosophizing with his clients and with Lyon. He’s an alcoholic, and he’s consuming during the filming. Sometimes he can barely speak. When he does, he has surprising things to say: he’s against the war in Vietnam; he’s not a bigot.
Danny Lyon, “Bill Sanders, Tattoo Artist, Houston, Texas,” 1968. Gelatin silver print, Image: 20.7 x 20.7 cm (8 3/16 x 8 3/16 in.); sheet: 35.6 x 27.9 cm (14 x 11 in.). Collection of the artist, L170 © Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
Many of the pictures are of people in distressed situations. But these are not photos of despair. The vitality and durability of the human spirit shines through them, as does Lyons’ compassion and empathy.
Danny Lyon, “Young Man About to Be Released from Ramsey Unit, Texas,” 1968/1975. Gelatin silver print (decorated). Image: 18 x 17.8 cm (7 1/16 x 7 in.); sheet: 20.3 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 in.). Collection of the artist © Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
One wish. The photos from Lower Manhattan show the skeletons of buildings. While you can infer from their destruction that a community was destroyed, I would like to have seen the faces of the displaced in at least some of the shots.
Danny Lyon, “Stephanie, Sandoval County, New Mexico,” 1969/1975. Gelatin silver print (decorated), Image: 16.7 x 25 cm (6 9/16 x 9 3/4 in.); sheet: 27.9 x 35.6 cm (11 x 14 in.). Collection of the artist, L108 © Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
Lyon does more than take photos. He makes friends with his subjects, in some cases lifetime friends. He writes, “You put a camera in my hand, I want to get close to people. Not just physically close, but emotionally close, all of it.” He succeeds. Stupendously! See this show if you can, and leave yourself enough time not only to wander through the galleries but to watch the couple of hours of films and videos.
Danny Lyon: Message to the Future is at the San Francisco De Young Museum, November 5, 2016 – April 30, 2017. Adults $22, seniors 65+ $17, students with current ID $13, youth 6-17, $7, members and children 5 and under free.
Why did Trump win? And what’s next for labor in the US
By Peter Olney and Rand Wilson
Rand Wilson and Peter Olney have penned another in a series of commentaries on American politics and labor. This article first appeared in Sinistra Sindicale, an internal newsletter of the Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori (CGIL), the largest trade union federation in Italy. This article deals with the US election result.
European elites were shocked at the surprising victory of “Brexit” last June. American elites — and especially the pollsters and major media outlets — were similarly shocked by the results of the U.S. elections on November 8.(1)
While Brexit was a straight up “Yes” or “No” vote, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but lost because of the Electoral College system of electing our national presidents. The Electoral College is an arcane constitutional provision intended to protect smaller states from the population power of larger states and the rule of the “mob” over the perceived wisdom of elite electors.
This is the fifth time in U.S. history that a presidential candidate has won the popular vote, but lost the election because of the anti-democratic Electoral College. The last time was in 2000 when George W. Bush became President after a Supreme Court ruled that he had won the vote in the state of Florida. That state’s electoral college vote gave Bush the election, even though a plurality of the American people voted for the Democratic nominee, Al Gore.
Trump heralded his election as “Brexit on steroids” and appeared at a rally in Mississippi with Nigel Farage from the British Independence Party. Both Brexit and Trump’s triumph tapped into a distraught white working class buffeted by globalization and new demographic realities. In many cases Trump’s appeal was pure and simple racism, attracting alt-right and overt racist elements. Yet while all racists, misogynists and xenophobes most likely voted for Trump, not all of his 60 million votes were racists, misogynists and xenophobes.
The Electoral College system made winning the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin key to either candidate winning the White House. Why did Secretary Clinton lose in these three states that her predecessor Barrack Obama carried in 2008 and 2012? Workers in all three states have suffered huge job losses in basic industry and in the case of Pennsylvania, the closure of coalmines. The sons and daughters of “New Deal” Democrats many of whom supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 were looking to make a statement against the ruling elites and voted for change.
Exit polls in Ohio tell the story. In 2012 when Obama carried Ohio, he won union households by a 23% margin. In 2016, Trump, the New York billionaire, carried union households by a 12% margin. Similar voting patterns took place in the crucial battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In short, many white working class voters simply deserted the Democratic Party.
After the election, a railroad worker from Ohio who is a member of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (a division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters) and who voted for Trump said, “I didn’t vote for my retirement. I didn’t vote for my healthcare. I didn’t vote for my union membership. I voted for my son. Because I just didn’t see a future for him if we elected Hillary. I actually voted for Obama in the last two elections. Now, I stand here and tell you that if we lose our retirement, I will not bitch. If I lose my healthcare, I will not bitch. If my tax rate goes through the roof, I will not bitch. I cast my vote and I will stand behind it.”
An SEIU member in Massachusetts felt betrayed, “I’m a registered Democrat, but they have let me down,” said Peter Blaikie, a custodian and shop steward in the Somerville Public Schools. “I expect Republicans to screw me, but the Democrats take our money and do worse, so I voted for the lessor of two evils. Clinton just looked like Obama’s third term. She just seemed entitled. And it was also a matter of how I feel about right and wrong. Hundreds of her emails were mishandled. She should have been charged with treason. If you do something wrong with classified information you should be held accountable. Others have been severely punished for lessor crimes. I obey the law, so should she.”
In the run-up to Election Day, pollsters and pundits talked of re-configuring the electoral map because of the anticipated strength of the Latino vote. In the end, Trump polled as strongly among Latinos as the Republican candidate in both 2008 and 2012. The Black vote — without Obama at the top of the ticket — polled below the last two election cycles in cities like Detroit that are crucial to winning industrial states like Michigan.
After the election, Sen. Bernie Sanders summed up Clinton’s defeat: “Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very rich become much richer.”
Many people believe (including these authors) that Sanders would have won against Trump. The Sanders’ campaign (and many down-ballot victories on 8 November) showed that an explicitly anti-capitalist campaign can succeed.
Now the Neo-Liberal wing of the Democratic Party (the Clintons and their Progressive Policy Institute think tank friends) is completely discredited. The Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren populist wing of the party is challenging its national leadership. Even New York’s Chuck Schumer, the ranking minority leader in the Senate, acknowledged the need for a new approach. He is supporting Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim African American from Minnesota, and a supporter of Senator Sanders, for Chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Perhaps more importantly, grassroots activists inspired by Bernie Sanders’ campaign are challenging the leadership of the party at the state and local levels across the country. Sanders is backing a new group, “Our Revolution”, formed to build on the movement that he started. “Our Revolution” backed over 100 new progressive leaders in the November election and hopes to transform American politics to be more responsive to the needs of working families.
Trump’s victory, although made possible by an angry white working class, has also elevated working class issues to a degree not seen since the 1930s. Ironically, it also led to the defeat of the Trans Pacific Partnership, the trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration with Pacific Rim nations.
“The movement we built has brought down, at least for now, the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” said Larry Cohen, the past president of the Communications Workers and now Board Chair of “Our Revolution”. “This was because of the work of union members and environmentalists, farmers and immigrants. This was the work of the political revolution. Our defeat for now of the TPP is a bright spot in a bleak week for our country. Let’s celebrate our victory, and get ready for the fights to come.”
Going forward, workers and the unions that protect them, will likely be under a heavy attack by Trump and the Republican Party majorities in both the House and Senate. The labor movement will have an opportunity to organize more workers while also attracting more militant leaders if it can offer a “port in the storm” to those who are most vulnerable in the Trump era.
The unions that backed Sanders — and hopefully many others — will help lead the fight against Trump and by doing so, build the strength of a more militant, class conscious wing of the labor movement.
Footnotes:
1) For a more thorough discussion of the election’s similarities with Brexit, see, “Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit,” by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept, Nov. 9, 2016.
Continuing the Discussion: Comments on Stansbury Forum Election Articles
By Kurt Stand
The articles by Mike Miller, Garrett Brown and Bill Fletcher Jr.(found below) on the elections form part of what needs to be a wide-ranging look at the implications of Trump’s victory. What follows are comments that I hope form a contribution to continuing the discussion.
Mike Miller speaks to an important truth — working class support for Trump grew out of anger at deteriorating economic conditions and lack of a political voice in our country. In consequence: many were willing to overlook his racism and misogyny. So too, Hillary Clinton lost because she failed to address basic concerns of working people and embodied the corruption and self-serving nature of the political system. Yet I would add that millions of workers voted for Clinton, notwithstanding a total lack of enthusiasm for her, because they feared the implications of a Trump victory and because they saw value in the possibility of expanding democratic rights by building upon the legacy of the Obama’s Administration. These two truths need to be held in mind or else we fall into a zero sum game of posing social rights and economic rights against each other. Furthermore, while it is certainly true that many who voted for Trump are not racist (and that Clinton’s characterization Trump supporters as “deplorables” was of a piece with her decades earlier characterization of black youth as “super-predators”), it is also true that they were willing to overlook his racism and sexism and thus acted in disregard for those whose plight is worse than their own. People may have immigrant neighbors and friends whom they like and respect and for whom they wish no harm. But harm will come their way. This isn’t to wag a finger at people from a standpoint of moral superiority, but simply to state the obvious that solidarity isn’t a choice — it is a necessity not only to movement building but even more critically to the task of organizing in the tradition of the models Miller suggests. Absent that, right-wing demagogues will reap the benefits of discontent by pointing the blame away from the real culprits.
Miller’s conclusions are reinforced by Garrett Brown’s information — his breakdown of election results paints a picture of people responding in anger to a world spinning out of control. The assault on “government” (in reality, an assault on democratic rights and public control over public resources) led by the right has so devalued politicians in the public mind, that people could see themselves voting for someone “unqualified,” for what difference does it make if one is disenfranchised anyway. That said, it is important to note that people who are genuinely in danger of being disenfranchised, those whose economic and living conditions are most dire, rejected the demagogue. It is not irrelevant to note that Clinton won more votes than Trump; that her vote total would have gone up had their been no voter suppression, that Bernie would have in all likely have done even better. There is a crisis in the system, and as Brown notes, there is an opportunity in Democratic Party politics, in progressive politics more generally, to break out of this impasse and address our society’s structural crisis. Yet we must recognize that the other side has more power and is willing to use it. The threat to civil liberties, civil rights and union rights are palpable and have to be soberly considered as we search for common ground upon which to move forward.
Bill Fletcher’s analysis was, frankly, inspiring — he addresses these nuances and provides a framework to conceptualize resistance. And he is correct that Trump’s appeal is based on a false nostalgia for a mythical past in which every one “knew their place,” and in which the “American Dream” was possible. I will add that we need to be careful about slipping into a liberal version of this (as many unionists do) when we look back on the 1950s as a golden time for the American working class — because that feeds into a subtext that social struggles (i.e. civil rights/black freedom, women’s liberation, anti-war movements and the counterculture) were in some ill-defined way responsible for decline; rather than seeing those movements themselves as active agents creating new rights (and indeed, new opportunities) that benefited all working people. We can and should mourn the loss of industrial jobs that have devastated communities from Michigan to West Virginia and fight to rebuild manufacturing, without for a minute forgetting or ignoring the oppressive conditions, low pay, health risks, discrimination, ever-present on those jobs. We do not contest myths of the right by substituting myths of our own.
At the same time, I would add to Fletcher’s analysis the important point that we have too readily allowed the right to wrap itself in the American flag. US history is complicated, its birth inseparable from slavery and the destruction of Native lives. Yet that is not the whole story; for people have fought to build and create a more equal and just society and thereby created a heritage that we can and should build upon. The universal rights inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution’s “We the People,” the words of the Gettysburg Address and on the Statue of Liberty — all form a part of our heritage that we should claim as our own. Struggles throughout US history have largely been defined by those prevented from enjoying such rights demanding that they be made real to them. Again, this doesn’t mean forgetting the structures set up to preserve a “white republic,” it does mean that we can hold that two clashing truths are valid at the same time: the racism and oppression at our founding and the promise of inalienable rights that are also part of our founding. . Anti-Trump protestors holding up signs that proclaim that Trump doesn’t speak for “my America” does that — for it defines the tradition we seek to realize in the future.
And a last point: we need to put opposition to war abroad and militarism back into the center of progressive, labor, left organizing. Trump’s election — in a complicated way — speaks to the coarsening effect of perpetual war, of the undermining of democratic rights it has entailed. The acceptance of violence as inevitable is an inevitable outcome of perpetual war. On the other hand, it has engendered a war weariness that has been misplaced. This is important because Trump’s election raises the danger of war in a new way, contained in the promise of a narrow assertion of US power abroad — a danger which coexists even with his “peace-making” noises. Those noises (similar to those Hitler made, notwithstanding his bellicosity) contributed to Clinton’s loss of the vote of many veterans, many soldiers, who are tired of “nation-building.” Too little recalled is that Obama’s initial victory over Clinton was because he was seen as an anti-war candidate (at least compared to her); Trump too played that card. The left needs to make non-intervention and peace part of every aspect of our resistance.
On all the above we need further thoughts and proposals — Stansbury Forum is providing a valuable service by giving space to this discussion.
Quick Thoughts on the Trump Victory
By Mike Miller
A note from the editors: To say many of us were taken aback by the election results would be an understatement. We believe understanding and progress comes with exposure to a number of ideas, thoughts and arguments and with that in mind The Stansbury Forum is breaking with it’s once weekly postings schedule (at least our efforts to do so) and posting the following by Bill Fletcher, Garrett Brown and Mike Miller in quick secession. We encourage readers to read all three and to post their thoughts.
When you ponder Trump’s victory, consider this e-mail from a union member to one of his union’s leaders:
“You and me have went back and forth on this election. I want you to know this:
I didn’t vote for my retirement. I didn’t vote for my Healthcare. I didn’t vote for my union membership. I voted for my son. Because I just didn’t see a future for him if we elected Hillary.
I actually voted for Obama in the last two elections. Now, I stand here and tell you that if we lose our retirement, I will not bitch. If I lose my Healthcare, I will not bitch. If my tax rate goes through the roof, I will not bitch. I cast my vote and I will stand behind it. No matter what.
What I say to you and every elected Union Leader is this: “The majority of your membership just voted against what you all thought was in our best interests. Our Union Leadership has lost it’s base. But now we need you more than ever. Fight like your the third monkey up the ramp to Noah’s Ark and its just starting to rain. Protect what’s important to us. Do you want the membership back? Then do what you say you will. Fight for us.”
The essential point is that Trump was a vessel in which people could place their anger at what has happened to them over the past ten, twenty…fifty years.
“Both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years…since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.” Vincent Bevins, Los Angeles Times.
Some Details On Why He Won
On a more technical level, these are factors that I think led to his victory:
• his turnout was big because he had enthusiasm on his side;
• her turnout was small because she had little-to-none in much of the constituency she targeted for her votes; indeed she had the opposite; turnout numbers tell the tale;
• people didn’t tell pollsters they were going to vote for him because that was the “wrong answer”;
• Republicans who said they wouldn’t vote for him “came home” to their party–they couldn’t abide Hillary;
• Bernie couldn’t deliver for Hillary because American voters don’t transfer their vote on the word of their loser, no matter how much they supported her or him;
• third party candidacies–Libertarian for some Millennials, and Green for others and for some on the left–eroded Hillary’s vote in key places;
• black clergy couldn’t deliver their vote at the levels it came out for Obama–for understandable reasons;
• most of what The Establishment did to support Hillary strengthened the resolve of Trump’s constituency and activists; it confirmed his anti-Establishment stance and demonstrated to them that his claim of an elite conspiracy against him were correct. Hillary’s support sometimes had precisely the contempt (“deplorables”!) for Trump’s voters that they feel from mainstream Democratic and Republican Party politicians.
Racism
I think it’s an oversimplification to view the Trump election as an expression of racism in the country. No doubt among his constituents there are racists, and no doubt some of the things he said were racist.
There’s nothing on the face of it that makes the Trump voter whose letter I’ve reproduced above a racist. On the Terry Gross NPR radio show, on the day after the election, she interviewed Atlantic writer James Fallows. He’s spent the last three years visiting small town, middle America. His account was different. In some places, there are significant numbers of relocated immigrants from the Middle East — he cited Erie County, PA as one of them. In his conversations with them, they described a welcoming atmosphere there. Erie voted Trump. In another small town, a near-majority of Latinos exists where there was a shrinking older Anglo population in what was a dying town. The old-timers attribute the town’s re-birth to the new immigrants; they like the new Mexican restaurants and taco trucks. They vote for school bonds even though none of their kids are now in public schools.
Fallows had more to say along these lines. Having spent several years in and out of rural Nebraska at the height of the farm crisis, his stories of these towns rings true to me.
Trump demagoguery will give legitimacy to public expression of views that were held privately, or only shared among friends. At the same time, he spoke in some black churches in the last week-or-so of the campaign—hardly something any true-blue racist would have done. He made a point of asking for Ben Carson when he addressed his supporters on election night. It’s far too simple to conclude he is going to pursue a racist agenda as president. He might, but let’s see.
As one journalist put it:
“Low-income rural white voters in PA voted for Obama in 2008 and then Trump in 2016, and your explanation is white supremacy? Interesting.”
Which isn’t to deny that racism is a major issue in the country, nor that he did a lot to give it legitimacy.
Strategically, minority community and immigrant rights organizations should ask themselves how they can develop relationships with this constituency. A serious discussion of that question is a pre-condition to building left-populist coalitions that can win legislative and electoral victories that address economic and racial injustice.
Most of what I’ve said above applies to the other “isms” – sexism, ageism, ableism, etc.
Positives In The Negative?
Organizers always look for the positive in the negative, and vice versa. I think there may be some:
• There is now an opening in the Democratic Party for the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren forces that want a return to New Deal economics, and recognition of the legitimacy of populist claims. Can they mobilize the popularity their views have against the discredited neo-liberalism of the Old Guard? To do so will take patient work. The “Bill Clinton” Democrats are deeply entrenched in the Party. On the other hand, nothing so discredits politicians as losing.
• The likelihood of a new conservative majority on the Supreme Court is now a certainty. Too often, minorities have relied on a court strategy to win rights. The likelihood that the Supreme Court will no longer be a likely place to defend and advance rights should push advocates to acting more politically, and less legally. In this case, by politically I mean making allies so that new majorities can be created around human rights and economic justice. Indeed the alliances made around the latter are key to winning the former.
• Most importantly for the long run, will small “d” democratic organizers seek to develop real relationships with, and build organizations among, the white working class people who voted for Trump when it becomes clear that he has no program to meet their concerns? That opportunity hasn’t existed for some time. It soon will.
Note that I distinguish between mobilizing and organizing. That’s deliberate. The two are too often conflated — a serious mistake. We need a mobilizing organization that can build upon the Bernie Sanders campaign and the Hillary Clinton defeat. Mobilizing is what Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference did in the south (he did it through the strongest organization in the community — the black church).
We also need vital union locals and community organizations that can express the values and interests of this group in a continuing way, and create a sense of community among them that is not based on fear of, and contempt for, “The Other”. Organizing is what the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee did in the south, and what Saul Alinsky, Fred Ross and others did in the north.
Why Trump Won the Electoral College Vote
By Garrett Brown
A note from the editors: To say many of us were taken aback by the election results would be an understatement. We believe understanding and progress comes with exposure to a number of ideas, thoughts and arguments and with that in mind The Stansbury Forum is breaking with it’s once weekly postings schedule (at least our efforts to do so) and posting the following by Bill Fletcher, Garrett Brown and Mike Miller in quick secession. We encourage readers to read all three and to post their thoughts.
There has been and will be a flood of analysis as to how Donald Trump won the electoral vote and what that means about the American electorate. The lessons that left and labor organizations and activists draw from this experience will be key to whether an effective response to the impending Republican onslaught is developed and successfully launched.
I think it is important to avoid jumping to conclusions – as some already have, suggesting American working people are hopelessly bigoted and sexist. A deliberate assessment of the polling numbers is in order before drawing conclusions that will impact how we proceed in defending truth, justice and the other values we hold dear.
The articles listed below – hardly an exhaustive list – include some interesting facts that run counter to the “it’s all racism and sexism” analysis:
• Donald Trump actually LOST the election – Clinton received more votes and, in any other country but the US, would be president-elect. That is not the case because of a 18th century mechanism developed by white male property owners (including human slaves) to maintain their control and prevent popular power.
• The media is reporting that Trump received the votes of 53% of white woman who voted;
• The media is reporting the 33% of Latino men and 25% of Latino women voted for Trump;
• The media is reporting that the people who decided the election in Trump’s favor were voters who had voted for Obama in previous elections, some of these voting for Obama twice;
• The media is reporting that 21% of people who voted for Trump did so while at the same time agreeing that he is “unfit to do the job.”
Clearly a significant section of Trump voters are racists and sexists. But not all of them. The rush by some to blame voters rather than the political system that produce a deeply flawed Democratic Party candidate who epitomized for millions everything they hate about the 1% and their rule is a mistake, in my view.
It appears that many Trump voters were so intent on shouting “FUCK YOU” to the political/economic elites that they were willing to vote for Trump despite believing he is “unfit” and a racist bigot, a misogynist, a serial liar, and a vicious bully.
One can only imagine what the results might have been if the Democratic Party candidate was Bernie Sanders – a genuine opponent of the billionaire class for decades. That did not happen, of course, because the Democratic Party is owned lock, stock & barrel by the same 1% that has caused so much misery and anguish to millions of Americans.
Obviously the fact that significant sections of key groups – blue-collar workers, women, Latinos, previous Obama voters – are willing to overlook all the racism, misogyny, bullying that was wrapped around Trump’s “core anti-establishment message” is sobering, and needs to be carefully analyzed.
I think one reason why many Trump voters of all colors and genders were able to ignore the unforgiveable is that their real-life experience has taught them that no matter what, they are always screwed, always abandoned, whether it is by Democratic elite liberalism or Republican social conservatism. Millions of Americans over the last decade – middle class as well as working class – have seen their lives, and the lives of their children, turn very dark with no light on the horizon. If the political and economic systems are rigged against them – as they are – then they can at least have the satisfaction of giving the elites the middle finger. They will, of course, get screwed once again by Trump, or whoever actually runs his administration.
But in a weird sort of way, the fact that so many working class people now want to say “fuck you” to a system that has survived so long not by force of arms but by force of illusion, is a positive thing. This is a point of departure for all of us to have a discussion. They are not all “beyond redemption,” assuming we learn how to see the world from their perspective, and that they learn from their mistakes and we learn from our own mistakes.
A selection of useful articles:
“Politics is the solution,” Jacobin magazine, November 9, 2016
“Democrats, Trump, and the ongoing dangerous refusal to learn the lesson of Brexit,” Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept, November 9, 2016
“It was the rise of the Davos class that sealed America’s fate” Naomi Klein, The Guardian, November 9, 2016
“Revenge of the forgotten class” Alex MacGillis, Pro Publica, November 10, 2016
“What I learned after 100,000 miles on the road talking to Trump supporters” Chris Arnade, The Guardian, November 3, 2016
“How Democrats killed their Populist soul” Matt Stoller, The Atlantic, Oct 24, 2016
“You can dress him up, but Trump will always be Trump” Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post, October 21, 2016
“Why the media blitz on Trump isn’t working” Charles Lane, The Washington Post, September 21, 2016
Quick Reflections on the November 2016 Elections
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
A note from the editors: To say many of us were taken aback by the election results would be an understatement. We believe understanding and progress comes with exposure to a number of ideas, thoughts and arguments and with that in mind The Stansbury Forum is breaking with it’s once weekly postings schedule (at least our efforts to do so) and posting the following by Bill Fletcher, Garrett Brown and Mike Miller in quick secession. We encourage readers to read all three and to post their thoughts.
Had it not been for the Electoral College, at this moment we would be discussing the plans for the incoming Hillary Clinton administration. That’s right. She actually won the popular vote. Thus, once again, that institution created by the founding slave owners has risen from the grave and prevented our exit from the cemetery.
I begin there to put the election into context and to suggest that commentary needs to be quite nuanced. No, I am not trying to make lemonade out of lemons. But I do think that it is important to recognize that the Trump victory was far from a slam-dunk; the election was very close. One might not get that impression, however, when one looks at news headlines as well as Electoral College maps.
What are some of the conclusions we can arrive at from this election?
The election was a referendum on globalization and demographics; it was not a referendum on neo-liberalism: It is critical to appreciate that Trump’s appeal to whites was around their fear of the multiple implications of globalization. This included trade agreements AND migration. Trump focused on the symptoms inherent in neo-liberal globalization, such as job loss, but his was not a critique of neo-liberalism. He continues to advance deregulation, tax cuts, anti-unionism, etc. He was making no systemic critique at all, but the examples that he pointed to from wreckage resulting from economic and social dislocation, resonated for many whites who felt, for various reasons, that their world was collapsing.
It was the connection between globalization and migration that struck a chord, just as it did in Britain with the Brexit vote. In both cases, there was tremendous fear of the changing complexion of both societies brought on by migration and economic dislocation (or the threat of economic dislocation). Protectionism plus firm borders were presented as answers in a world that has altered dramatically with the reconfiguration of global capitalism.
The election represented the consolidation of a misogynistic white united front: There are a few issues that need to be ‘unpacked’ here. For all of the talk about the problems with Hillary Clinton-the-candidate and the failure to address matters of economics, too few commentators are addressing the fact that the alliance that Trump built was one that not only permitted but encouraged racism and misogyny. In point of fact, Trump voters were prepared to buy into various unsupported allegations against Clinton that would never have stuck had she not been a woman. Additionally, Trump’s own baggage, e.g., married and divorced multiple times; allegations of sexual assault, would never have been tolerated had the candidate been a woman (or, for that matter, of color). Trump was given a pass that would only be given to a white man in US society. All one has to do is to think about the various allegations, charges and history surrounding Donald Trump and then ask the question: had the candidate been a woman or of color, what would have happened? The answer is obvious. (Additional reading: “Yep, Race Really Did Trump Economics: A Data Dive on His Supporters Reveals Deep Racial Animosity”)
Also in connection with this matter is that for all of the talk about economic fear, there is this recurring fact that many people seem to wish to avoid. Just as with the Tea Party, the mean income of the Trump base is higher than the national mean (and was higher than the mean for Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters). Thus, we were not dealing with the poorest of the poor. Instead, this was a movement driven by those who are actually doing fairly well but are despairing because the American Dream that they embraced no longer seems to work for white people.
This is critical for us to get because had the Trump phenomenon been mainly about a rejection of economic injustice, then this base would have been nearly interchangeable with that of Senator Sanders. Yet that was not the case. What we can argue, instead, is that this segment of the white population was looking in terror at the erosion of the American Dream, but they were looking at it through the prism of race.
Hillary Clinton, as candidate, was flawed but we should be careful in our analysis: Though Clinton had expected a coronation, the Sanders campaign pushed her to be more than she expected. The platform of the Democratic Party was shifted to the left in many important respects. Yet Clinton could not be champion of an anti-corporate populist movement. Yes, she correctly argued to tax the 1%. Yes, she articulated many progressive demands. But in the eyes of too many people, including many of her supporters, she was compromised by her relationship with Wall Street.
That said, what also needs to be considered is that Trump had so many negatives against him. Yes, he was an outsider, so to speak, and used that very skillfully to argue that he would bring another pair of eyes to the situation. Yet, this is the same person who is in the upper echelons of the economy; refused to share his tax returns; has numerous allegations against him for bad business with partners and workers; and engages in the same off-shoring of production as many of the companies he criticized! Yet, none of that haunted him in the way that various criticisms haunted Clinton. Fundamentally this was a matter of sexism, though it is certainly true that Clinton’s being perceived as an insider did not help.
We don’t know whether Bernie Sanders would have done any better but we do know that his message is the one that needs to be articulated: It is impossible to accurately predict whether Sanders would have done better in the final election. He certainly would have been subjected to an immense amount of red-baiting and suggestions of foreign policy softness. Yet his message did resonate among millions, especially younger voters. And it was younger voters who did not turn out in force to back Clinton.
In entering the Trump era it is the movement that Sanders was part of coalescing that becomes key in building a resistance that has a positive vision. One of the weaknesses of the Sanders message was its failure to unify matters of class with race and gender. This is not an academic exercise. This is about telling the right story about what has been happening in the USA. It is also a matter of taping into significant social movements, e.g., Occupy; immigrant rights; LGBT; environmental justice; movement for Black Lives. These are movements that are focused on the future and a future that is progressive. This, in fact, is where the hope lies.
In the case of the USA, right-wing populism seeks a return to the era of the ‘white republic,’ and it is this that the Trump campaign was so successful in articulating.”
I have argued for some time that right-wing populism—with the Trump campaign exemplifying an aspect of this—is a revolt against the future. It is a movement that is always focused on a mythical past to which a particular country must return. In the case of the USA, right-wing populism seeks a return to the era of the ‘white republic,’ and it is this that the Trump campaign was so successful in articulating. It did so through disparaging Mexicans, suggesting them as a source of crime, completely ignoring criminal syndicates that have historically arrived in the USA from Europe. It did so through demonizing Arabs and Muslims, suggesting them as sources of terror, completely ignoring that the greatest sources of political terror in the USA have been white supremacist formations.
Right-wing populism has grown as a result of both the ravages brought on by neo-liberal globalization as well as the demographic and political changes within the USA. It is the latter—demographic and political changes—that have unfolded over the decades as previously disenfranchised groups have asserted themselves and articulated, to paraphrase the poet Langston Hughes, we, too, sing America.
Yes, let us lick our wounds and reflect on the future. This election result was one that more of us should have anticipated as a real possibility. In either case, that the results were so close and that we did not have the ideal candidate to represent the new majority emerging in the USA remains for me a source of immense hope.
The struggle certainly continues.
Once Again on the November Election and Beyond
By Glenn Perusek
From the point of view of the left in the rust belt—I am based in Cleveland—the November 2016 election is between two unacceptable candidates.
One is of the Washington establishment that has pretty systematically failed to understand the impact of its policies, such as NAFTA, on the rust belt cities like Lorain and Youngstown and Flint. She is the candidate of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
But also, let us not forget, a candidate of reason and (a brand of) feminism.
Unfortunately, much of the progressive community (environmentalists; feminists; civil rights organizations) has taken an uncritical posture toward her. (This happens every four years with clock-like regularity).
Her opponent is an arrogant demagogue of the populist right, a man who plays to racist or at least xenophobic fears of his base (Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers; ban all Muslims), a candidate of unreason (“I’ll make up whatever facts I want”). A staunch advocate for the Second Amendment, sure, but the First Amendment? Not so much.(1) Peaceful succession from one regime to the next—a cornerstone of democratic society—is beyond him, as he indicated in the third debate. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” he said when asked about acceptance of the result.
Mr. Trump gets mileage with his base when he speaks of rigged elections in America, a breathtaking expression of how disaffected that base—a good twenty percent of the American population—is.
It also now appears that Trump is a boastful advocate and most likely a seasoned practitioner of sexual assault against women. Talk about setting a good example for the next generation.
Should Trump be elected, global capital will likely take flight to quality investments, crashing stock markets and throwing us into at least a momentary recession (this a prediction of international financial analysts and students of global risk, not me).(2)
How this man would handle the responsibility of the mantle of foreign policy leadership is beyond speculation (“we’ve got nukes, we should use them”).(3)
“It’s the economy, stupid”
True, Trump has been picking out tunes from Sanders’ economic populist songbook but he has been playing them in ugly, discordant keys. So, even here, where he often sounds good, his populist message is transposed into a selfish appeal to the worst elements of American society.
The vital issue for America—indeed, for the developed world—is the economic dislocation of working people caused by accelerated globalization and technological change.(4)
As a friend in Lorain, Ohio, a city hit hard by deindustrialization, said to me recently, “The Clintons have had their chance. Things didn’t get better around here in the 1990s. They got worse.” This is one of the reasons that Secretary Clinton is so unpopular with working class people.
But let’s be honest. Another part of why Secretary Clinton is unpopular with working- and middle-class men is that she’s a strong woman. This is worth considering carefully. She is a woman candidate—admittedly a Washington insider representing big capital—opposing an arrogant, sexist businessman who stokes racism.
Yes, Trump sounds an economic populist note. If Trump were a decent, reasonable economic populist; if Trump spoke in terms of uniting working class people instead of dividing them—if, if—well, then he wouldn’t be Trump. He would be Bernie Sanders. But Sanders is not on the ballot.
Taking a longer view
The economic problems that have brought us to this pass in 2016, with a good 40-50 percent of the electorate ready to throw over the mainstream of both major parties and back someone or something new—further left OR right—will only deepen in the coming decade. We will likely see more structural unemployment, more dislocation of workers.(5)
The hopelessness of the inner cities will therefore spread to working- and middle-class suburbs. Young people saddled with student loan debt will find it increasingly difficult to retire as decent-paying jobs for 20- and 30-somethings become ever rarer. Older workers will become discouraged in greater numbers, leading them out of the workforce.
All of the social problems attendant on large scale structural unemployment are likely to grow worse—demoralization; alcoholism; broken families; domestic violence, and so forth. I wish this were not the case and I look for countertrends but I’m afraid this is what is in store in the 2020s and 2030s.
It is not unreasonable to ask: Are we going to be running through a version of the interwar period of the twentieth century? The differences are clear—for instance, we have not been through anything as traumatic as the Great War (1914-1918). But economic dislocation characterizes both periods, as does the nativist response.
Elections don’t change the world, argue abstentionists. True, social movements and underlying economic metamorphoses are far more important in transforming fundamental economic, political or social conditions.
But elections do have an impact on the political mood of the country. A Trump victory would be a victory for the racists, the jingoists, the sexists, the “Second Amendment crowd.”
A Clinton victory should not be seen as an endorsement of Obama’s years in office which, let’s face it, have produced disappointingly precious little, legislatively. True, the Clinton center—including the middle-class feminists who are her strongest supporters—will tout this as the first election of a woman to the American presidency. True, that’s a milestone, just as Obama’s election was.
But from the point of view of the progressive left, there are stronger arguments for an anti-Trump vote than there are for a pro-Clinton one. Millions of voters will be turning out November 8 to vote against someone, not for someone at all. This should be a sobering wake-up call for the leadership of both parties. Instead, given their incapacity to plan much beyond the next legislative session, leading Democrats and Republicans will likely go back to the business of governing. They’ll be hiding their heads under the covers, hoping that’ll keep the scary ghosts from the heartland at bay.
But it won’t work. The ghosts, the potential for the return of a militant, class-based movement throughout America, have been stirred. The question for organizers on the left is: Will this opportunity be taken advantage of?
For the left to organize is a vital responsibility in the rust belt. The leadership of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus—an organization that issued from a strong pro-Sanders grassroots campaign in Northern Ohio—argues that wherever they were able to put organizers into communities, they delivered votes for Sen. Sanders against Sec. Clinton. These were the same communities where candidate Trump ran so strongly on the Republican side.
In other words, working class people seek answers. Economic populism can be argued from the left and people can be won to a coherent progressive or social-democratic outlook.
But those same communities are breeding grounds for economic populism wedded to hate.
Vote for Stein?
The left abstentionist conclusion for November 8 is a protest vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. If this were connected with a sober effort to build a party-like organization of the left, it would make good sense. But I’m afraid the Green Party, at least in Ohio, has been studied in its unwillingness (incapacity?) to build solid grassroots organization. Greens should be part of the wider process of reassembling a social democratic left in America. But organizational chops matter. And one vital element of organizational capacity is the recognition that no matter how disaffected American workers are with the Washington establishment, they still are far from ready to break with the two-party system. The progressive left needs to be working in the arena of Democratic Party elections precisely because that is where its potential mass base is today. We need to create a pole of attraction around progressive political principles, in both electoral and issue-oriented campaigns.
Voting and organizing
I’m advocating a critical vote for Clinton (essentially a vote against Trump’s racism and sexism). But this vote must be connected with efforts, however tentative and preliminary, at forming a steady, solid, grassroots organization of progressives that will do far more than attempt to elect progressive candidates to office. We need an organization that mobilizes people of conscience for issue-oriented battles, from the “Fight for Fifteen” to the fight for clean energy, to the fight against violence in the black community. We need an organization that links these struggles together, that builds alliances, and that advances a worldview—a broadly social-democratic worldview—that makes sense of these disparate phenomena.
Young people in particular are calling for a kind of systematic political education that the left has not seriously offered in more than a generation.
Reasonable progressives disagree on what to do on election day. That’s fine, as long as we have a civil discussion of the issues, something that candidate Trump has proven most uninterested in.
The questions facing working people in the United States are not going to be answered on election day. The answers to the fundamental questions are to be found in the self-organization of working people and people of conscience.
That’s why the most important thing is what the left does after election day.
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Footnotes:
1) Adam Liptak, “Donald Trump could threaten U.S. rule of law, scholars say,” New York Times, June 3, 2016, (acc. Oct. 21, 2016).
2) Economist Intelligence Unit, “Global risk: Donald Trump wins the US presidential election,” October 19, 2016, (acc. October 21, 2016). The fact that the well-respected EIU puts a Trump presidency up there with a prolonged Chinese recession and the break-up of the European Union as threats to the global economy should give anyone with any concern about economic activity—and the lives of ordinary people who always suffer most in recessions—pause. Furthermore, “electing Trump could also start a trade war, hurt trade with Mexico and be a godsend to terrorist recruiters in the Middle East,” wrote Daniel Lippman, “The Economist rates Trump presidency among its top 10 global risks,” Politico, March 16, 2016, (acc. Oct. 21, 2016).
3) Matthew Belvedere, “Trump asks why US can’t use nukes: MSNBC,” CNBC, August 3, 2016, (acc. Oct. 21, 2016).
4) “It’s the economy, stupid,” was the stay-on-message mantra of James Carville, strategist for the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton in 1992.
5) For a more detailed treatment of the problem of technologically-based structural unemployment, see Glenn Perusek, “Cleveland: City of Tomorrow?” Belt Magazine, March 2015, (acc. Oct. 21, 2016).