Clinical Need, Not Ability To Pay
By Neil Burgess
London, England 1992: An NHS Midwife in the East London home of a new mother. NHS midwife’s provide help, care and instruction from prenatal, through birth, and on for several weeks there after. This midwife clients included immigrants, working class whites and several affluent families who had begun to move into her Docklands service area. Photo copyright: Robert Gumpert 1992
The pressures on the NHS’s resources are enormous and at the same time the austerity imposed by the Conservative Government means that staff have had a pay freeze that has seen the value of their salaries drop by 10% over a decade. And further, Brexit puts into doubt the position of 130,000 European doctors, nurses and technical staff who work in the NHS. Morale is at a pretty low ebb.
The British love their NHS, it offers fundamental peace of mind; security in the face of the worst-case scenario and no one has to worry about the cost, it’s free at the point of use. While naturally enough some Hospital Trusts are better managed than others and some doctors are better than others, everyone is, in theory at least; able to choose where they want to receive their treatment and care.
It’s first two founding principles where and are:
1. The NHS provides a comprehensive service available to all.
2. Access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability to pay.
These principles established by the Labour Government of 1945, are still held onto and are doggedly maintained. The NHS is paid for out of general taxation and at the time of writing the annual budget was around $150 billion making average costs for a family of four in the UK around $10,000 per year compared to $25,000 per year for a family of four in the USA (Forbes May 15th 2015).
So what do you actually get? Knowing some of the issues that have affected American friends and their families here is a far from complete list: all maternity care, pre and post natal, hospital or home deliveries, ‘c’ sections, neo-natal care and after care are provided free. All childhood vaccinations, dental plan to 18 years old, eye tests and glasses are provided free. Everyone has a right to join a General Practitioners surgery and receive free examinations and consultations and referrals; these practices are pro-active and call patients for examinations and assessment at key life points, which get more often as one gets older; for example regular smear tests and mammograms, tests for bowel cancer, cardiovascular revues, flu shots, all this is free. If you, or any member of your family or anyone, has an accident, whatever it costs: ICU, surgery, nursing care and rehabilitation, the NHS pays. If you have a long-term illness, preexisting congenital defect, or you’re struck by lightening, the NHS will aim to give you the best treatment and care available, and yes it’s free.
It’s true that some areas are limited, or that you’ll need to show special need to get in a programme, but fertility treatments, some cosmetic surgery procedures and gender reassignment treatment are all available on the NHS; yes for free.
Ten years ago a friend of mine in the US was diagnosed with liver cancer. He had a number of major operations paid for by the medical plan at his place of work. After a year or so and close to a million dollars worth of health care, his insurers decided there was a problem with his insurance and withdrew his care. There was still a lot of treatment needed. When he threatened to sue they said go ahead, knowing full well he’d be dead before the case was settled. Luckily he was an UK citizen though he hadn’t lived here for decades. He returned to the UK and the NHS took up his care. He lived a further 5 years. I asked once what the difference between the US system and the UK system was? He pondered a moment and replied, “The American doctors’ waiting rooms are nicer.”
Come to the UK, open any newspaper, any day of the week and you’ll almost certainly come across a horror story about the NHS. Over crowding, long waiting times, mad or bad doctors, or shortages of trained staff. Of course, 99% of people, or more, are perfectly happy with their treatment from the NHS, but in an organisation that employs 1.5 million people and treats 65 million, there are always going to be horror stories.
However generous you want to be there are practical limits of a nationalized health service and defining those limits is a complex ethical as well as financial problem. A few years ago an American Republican nominee made some remarks about the terrible healthcare in the UK, that the NHS had ‘death panels’ groups of people who would decide if you lived or died. He was picking up on an organisation with the rather ironic acronym N.I.C.E, that is, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. In the NHS, someone has to decide on the efficacy of treatments and drugs, against their costs. Stories involving NICE often revolve around a person with a terminal illness who has read on the internet that a new drug might give them another six months of life, unfortunately the treatment costs thirty grand a month and is effective in less than 40% of cases. Of course if it was you, you’d want the chance, but what is an NHS supposed to do? It’s tough, but of course some arbiter has to exist; you can check out NICE here. It’s a highly ethical, transparent organization that does a hell of a job, but do they make mistakes? Well, probably, but would I rather they or an insurance company decided the need for an expensive drug or procedure? What do you think?
There is no denying the strain being felt on the NHS at the moment. Supporters point out that if we increased our per capita spending to just the average of other main European states’ public health services, it would solve many of the outstanding problems. John Appleby, Chief Economist with the Kind’s Fund estimates that the UK would need to invest another £16 billion, about 10%, just to keep pace with growth and an increase of 30 % or £43 billion just to achieve the average spending of the top 14 European countries.
In Britain at the moment there is a movement towards the position that austerity is not the only way to balance the budget as has been suggested by the Tories; that taxing the richest in society can help bring stability and growth to the economy. People are realizing that the world class health service they were told they had, doesn’t quite measure up. The only way to achieve it will be through further taxing and spending and even the Tories are beginning to realize that is going to have to happen.
THE MEXICAN LOTTO
By Álvaro Ramírez
Photo: Alvaro Ramirez
If you follow the strange, magical realist politics of Mexico, you probably have noticed that lately the press has focused on members of the new millionaire club comprised of former governors of many states. This club is the result of a Mexican Lotto game in which only select politicians get to play and usually win big, really big jackpots. The downside is that afterward, the winners have to leave the country and play a game of hide-and-seek around the world. The governors lie low in places such as Italy, Guatemala, and the USA, not to avoid relatives begging for a piece of the jackpot or people urging them to invest their newfound money. Instead, they hide from the agents of Interpol who go chasing after them to force them to return El Gordo, o sea, the Lotto cash, the millions of dollars they actually stole from the coffers of the states in which they governed, needless to say, badly and left a long trail of financial shock.
Although the latest and most infamous Lotto winners belong to the PRI, a party synonymous with corruption, nowadays members from all political sides—including PAN, PRD, and Morena—are playing this lucrative game in Mexico. If you want proof of this, all you have to do is watch videos of the recent debates in the elections for the governorship of the state of Mexico, where the candidates spent most of their interventions accusing each other of some form of corruption.
These charges are common in Mexico, a country that is on anyone’s list of most corrupt in the world. Much has been made about the roots of this evil that seems to lurk everywhere, even in la sacristía of the church. One root is said to be deep in the pre-Columbian indigenous civilizations and another stretches back into the medieval institutions, which the Spanish transplanted with them to this continent. We inherited from these two worlds, el Mal Mexicano: the corruption that we all have to experience, that we cannot escape from, like catching a common cold. Everyone living in Mexico knows they will come in contact with some type of corruption, sooner or later, all through their life.
Maybe this is one reason why we like to say, los mexicanos aguantan. Yes, we do. Mexicans have learned to endure corruption and to see it as a part of their life. In the U.S. people have a famous saying: you cannot escape death and taxes. Well, in Mexico, you cannot escape death and corruption. Taxes can be dispensed with, as anyone working in the massive informal economy (such as taquerías and mom and pop tienditas) knows. La corrupción siempre está ahí, it is part of the landscape, like the Popocatépetl volcano, always looming in the background, ready to erupt at any moment. We just learn to live with this menace.
Photo: Alvaro Ramirez
Corruption is the Mexican people’s burden, institutionalized along with the Partido Revolucionario. We always knew that politicians were like pigs at the trough, but they kept a certain amount of decorum; they stole from the nation in, let’s say, a polite way, not making much noise. Bajita la mano and not over the top. This is no longer the case. In the new millennium, el Mal Mexicano has gone viral; it is out of control. As the governors’ millionaire club shows, nowadays politicians of every ilk take as many millions as they want. They openly display their ill-gotten wealth and, without the slightest consideration, rub it in the face of the nation. Which explains why in 2009 they dedicated in Mexico City, “La Plaza de la Transparencia.” Corruption is now as transparent as can be.
Let’s talk of crime and punishment. In Mexico there’s only crime, seldom is there punishment, that is reserved for the nacos of the popular class who populate the prison system. Politicians are aware of this and have revved up corruption to the max. They know the consequences they’ll suffer for enriching themselves illegally are negligible. Most people in Mexico don’t seem to care since they’re on survival mode, busy trying to get past the war against the cartels and a weak economy. Politicians are quick to realize they will only get a bit of blowback from some opinion writers in the press and television. The funny thing is that because of the absence of the rule of law in Mexico, politicians have become shameless to the extent that they’re willing to go on television to discuss the need to pass anti-corruption laws! Afterward, they probably go back to their offices and laugh their ass off, as they transfer millions of dollars into bank accounts in Switzerland and the Bahamas, or buy million-dollar houses in Miami.
So, in view of this phenomenon of the Mexican Lotto, what should we expect of the upcoming presidential elections of 2018? As I reflect on the corruption running rampant in Mexico today, I can’t help but to think of a story told about President Álvaro Obregón, who lost an arm in a battle of the Mexican Revolution. Perhaps the story is apocryphal, but it goes something like this. It is said that in the midst of his presidential campaign, Obregón encountered many people unhappy because of the widespread corruption in government. After giving one of his speeches, he was confronted by an angry voter who accused him, and the other presidential candidate, of enriching themselves at the expense of the government, a charge he had probably heard many times. Obregón is said to have jokingly answered: “Ok, it’s true. Everyone will steal from the government. But tell me, who is likely to steal more, my opponent who has two arms or I who have only one!”
That is the choice Mexicans will have to make when they go to the polls next summer. They will have to decide for whom to cast their vote not based on the merits of the presidential candidates, but on which of the candidates will steal less from the fast-fading nation that is Mexico.
This piece appeared originally on the blog “POSTCARDS FROM A POSTMEXICAN”
The UK Election: The End of May came on June 9th.
By Neil Burgess
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said, “A week is a long time in politics.” Never has that statement seemed truer than right now in the UK. Barely more than a week ago most commentators, journalists, pollsters, politicians and public thought we were headed for an increased Tory majority, the disintegration of the Labour Party and the end of their leader Jeremy Corbyn (HERE and HERE). Today the Conservative Government has lost its majority, Labour MP’s are uniting around a triumphant Jeremy Corbyn and the only reason Mrs May is still in place as Prime Minister is because nobody in their right minds would want to be leader of a minority Government dependent on the support of the ultra conservative Democratic Unionist Party.
Theresa May had warned that in a hung Parliament we could be in danger of being governed by a ‘coalition of chaos’, and one with connections to terrorist groups; she just didn’t mention that it was going to be led by her.
The UK introduced fixed term Parliaments of five years in 2010. Elections can only be held before the completion of term if two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons agree. With the Tories 20% ahead in the polls, Mrs May 60% ahead of Corbyn in approval ratings, the PM and her cabinet decided to call a snap election which would give them a landslide majority, with a solid mandate to dictate their policy of a hard Brexit from Europe and wipe out the Labour Party at the same time. When Jeremy Corbyn instructed the Labour Party to vote for it, we thought, here is the turkey voting for Christmas.
Mrs May and her advisers thought all they had to do was stay out of any shit storm public debates and present her as a “strong and stable” leader while attacking an incompetent Leader of the Opposition. It was a miscalculation of epic proportions, not least in that May was completely unsuited to being cast as the Churchillian figure they tried to make her out as; the “strong and stable” mantra soon had to be dropped for fear of ridicule, as she conducted policy u-turns. Mrs May seemed more weak and wobbly.
With the public sector pay freeze brought in, in 2010, limiting pay rises to 1%, and with inflation running at more than double that, large numbers of people have seen a very real decline in their living standards. Meanwhile top private-sector executives have seen a 50% increase in salaries in the same period. At a public meeting a nurse told Mrs May she hadn’t had a pay rise since 2009, her reply, “There isn’t a magic money tree.” didn’t go down well with the public.
Since the banking crisis, public sector and low paid workers have seen their standard of living steadily undermined: pay freezes, welfare cuts, bedroom tax, reductions in funding for the ’Sure Start’ programme for young children. The Tory manifesto seemed to offer just more of the same, but now taking away free school meals for school children, means testing pensioners’ universal benefits, and revising the amount of money people would be expected to contribute towards their own care in the case of long term care, the so called ‘Dementia Tax’.
In Britain the National Health Service is almost universally admired and loved. Through a slight of hand the Conservatives since 2010 have continued to increase funding directly to the NHS, but slashed funding to local authorities who were responsible for social care. So that, especially older people, who say, had had an operation, once ready for discharge, might not find a care-home or home support to help them convalesce and so have to remain in the hospital. What became known as ‘bed-blocking’ is one of the NHS’s major issues and has thrown many hospitals into crisis. The Tory manifesto sought to deal with this problem by making people with assets responsible for their own care costs, forcing them to effectively mortgage their homes to pay for their home care. The elderly home owners, the bedrock of Tory support went ape, and Mrs May stumbled through an interview insisting nothing had changed in her policy, clearly changed in direction by 180 degrees.
All the way through this debacle the cartel of the right-wing national press in the UK, kept insisting that Mrs May was the only leader capable of running the country and getting a good deal from the negotiations with the EU for Brexit. At the same time Corbyn’s long history as a peace and anti war campaigner, someone who insisted it was better to talk than to fight, was portrayed as consorting or even colluding with terrorists. The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Express, The Times and The Telegraph, amounting to about 75% of the national press sales took this line. It’s worth noting that none of the proprietors of these publications, that also strongly advised people to vote Brexit from the EU, actually lives or pays tax in the UK.
While the UK press can be as partisan as it’s proprietors like, there are very strict rules around broadcast media reporting on elections and referendum. They must follow strict rules on impartiality and accuracy. In these arenas and on social media Jeremy Corbyn started to make an impact; even UKIP leader Nigel Farage praised his commitment, passion and that he was standing up for something.
When the Labour manifesto was leaked to the Tory press who gleefully attacked it as irresponsible fancy with no basis in reality, a lot of Labour supporters held their head in their hands and cried. But then, slowly, as people read the manifesto in detail and the careful costing for the programmes was released, they began to see that actually it was a manifesto that dealt with the real issues facing ordinary people and that it offered hope.
Labour would raise taxes but only for people earning over £80,000 per year, about 5%, and they would raise Corporation taxes, which the Tories were cutting to 16% back to 2010 levels of 28%. They would increase spending on education and on the NHS. They would re-nationalize the rail transport system and other privatized utilities: Thatcher had promised better services and cheaper prices from privatized industries and it hadn’t happened. All people saw were the huge salaries and bonuses that executives were getting for running essential services which bled the customers. And Labour would borrow money at historically low rates of interest to invest in housing and other capital infrastructure projects. It slowly dawned on people that here was an unapologetic, socialist manifesto that ordinary people were supporting and getting behind.
Arguably, one of the most successful proposals was the abolition of college fees. It would be expensive, it would be paid for by taxes on corporations and the rich, but it was massively popular amongst young voters and their families. One Tory MP admitted that all of her children and their friends were voting for Labour. Alongside the positive policies Corbyn has a young leftist support group called Momentum. Established only two years ago, it boasts 25,000 members all of whom it seems are adroit and experienced with social media. While the perceived wisdom is that older citizens read newspapers and get out and vote while the younger ones don’t read newspapers and stay in bed, Corbyn and his Momentum supporters seem to have turned that on its’ head. Latest estimates are that a million new 18-24 year old voters registered to vote in the run up to the election and an estimated 72% of the group actually voted. There main concerns: education, housing, jobs and a fair world; all issues Corbyn was addressing.
So. A massive step forward for the Labour left and Jeremy Corbyn. A humiliating defeat for Theresa May and the Conservative Party. But, Labour did not win and Theresa May will lead the next Government. There is little doubt that at the right time the Tories will replace May; they are famously unsentimental about their leaders. It’s unlikely that their minority Government will see out a five year term. Already there are signs that a softer Brexit will result and perhaps even a cross-party committee to negotiate, but will this election have fundamentally changed anything? As Chairman Mao answered when asked about the impact of the French Revolution, he replied, “It’s far too early to say.”
Editor’s note for transparency: Neil Burgess was my agent for about 20 years.
Be Careful About What You Wish for: Impeachment v Paralysis
By Robert J.S. Ross, PhD
So be careful what you wish for
‘Cause you just might get it
And if you get it then you just might not know
What to do wit’ it, ’cause it might just
Come back on you ten-fold
Eminem
Liberal cyberspace is in a frenzy of impeachment fever. NPR, though its commentators keep saying it won’t happen, keeps talking about what kinds of considerations would lead to impeachment. Metropolitan newspapers could not avoid comparing the firing of Comey to Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. For those who aspire to a more just, equal and peaceful world, now is a time to be careful about what we wish and act for. Before you sign that petition consider its consequence.
Given the gerrymandered nature of Congressional districts, there is but slim hope of changing the House of Representatives in 2018. While many commentators focus on the 23 seats held by Republicans in Congressional Districts Clinton won, these are mainly Republican suburbs that couldn’t swallow Trump. It is unlikely Democrats could take all or even most of these in 2018; but if Trump were impeached, and the Democrats could not run against Republicans claiming they are his proxies, this seems almost impossible.
The hope for a more progressive and representative House of Representatives after 2020 rests in the ways state governments process the results of the 2020 census. In the meantime, in the presidential race of 2020 the Democrats’ biggest single resource will be Trump’s unpopularity.
Impeaching Trump before November 2018 makes unlikely the already difficult task of nudging the House of Representatives to a more progressive (or anyhow less reactionary) complexion. Having him in office through the election season of 2020 gives the Democrats a big fat target they have a good chance of beating.
Impeaching Trump sooner rather than later puts Mike Pence in the Presidency. His policies are arguably worse than Trump’s – he is consistently reactionary – on everything, women’s rights, civil rights, labor law, social security, health care – in places where Trump is occasionally ambiguous and confused. That said, Pence is an experienced politician, a former governor, in sync with Congressional Republicans. His White House would most probably be a far cry from the whacky Comedy Central to which we are now subject. The Congress might actually get some work done. Would that be good for the country?
Repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare)? A good thing for whom? Tax cuts for the rich? More inequality? If and when things “calm down” in Washington these things could come to pass and more. By contrast, a long drawn out siege in which Trump suffers a “death of a thousand cuts” lasting into 2020 might reduce the list of disasters on whose brink we are now perched.
A Boston NPR talk show host, the esteemed and former liberal activist Jim Braude, observed on Thursday, May 18, that the appointment of an independent counsel might enable the actors in Washington to “get over it” and cooperate, and do some work. His otherwise more centrist co-host, Margery Eagan pointed out that paralysis might be better for the country. One is reminded of the principle to which medical doctors try to adhere: “First do no harm.” Margery wins on points.
Class, race and political strategy in the rust belt
By Glenn Perusek
“This used to be a thriving hillbilly town”
1. Elections in abnormal times
Elections are complicated Rorschach tests for voters, particularly in abnormal times. We like to reduce them to a single issue; we use locutions like “this election was about X,” as if there were a single factor determining which candidate voters selected. But in political analysis too-quick generalizations can be misleading.
One doesn’t have to be especially sophisticated about politics to see that candidate Trump was a crude, bombastic, least-common-denominator showman. When candidate Trump’s negatives piled up—to his jaw-jutting hubris; openly delusory prevarications; venomous xenophobia concerning immigrants was added in early October “grab ’em by the pu**y” misogyny, many commentators believed that Clinton’s victory was assured.
But voters had other things on their minds. How else do we account for the significant number of Obama voters who swung to Trump? Were they cosmopolitan globalists in 2008 and 2012, only to turn reactionary white nationalist in 2016? Or is a better account this: For a significant slice of voters in key swing states, 2016, like 2008, was a referendum on the status quo. The status quo wasn’t working for them in 2008; nor was it working in 2016. When voters in the rust belt said in 2016 that “the Clintons had their chance,” they were referring to two terms in the 1990s that brought NAFTA which, plausibly, accelerated deindustrialization.
2. Pollster fail
The pollsters didn’t help: Failing to measure intensity of support, they predicted a more than 80 percent chance of Clinton’s victory. Better polling, in principle, could have shown a closer race. Those without access to expensive large-N methodology but who had their finger on the pulse in the rust belt were generally unsurprised by the outcome.
3. Mistakes of the Clinton campaign
The Clinton campaign failed to excite and mobilize (and in some cases even speak to the concerns of) hundreds of thousands of voters in the traditional Democratic base. It is arguable that the campaign had—and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has—little to offer voters in the rust belt. The Employee Free Choice Act, organized labor’s key legislative ask, has not even come to the floor for a vote, even in the 111th Congress (2009-2011)—with strong majorities in both houses and a Democratic supporter of the measure in the White House. Elements of President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, such as the pre-existing conditions and age 26 provisions, are popular. But by permitting insurance companies to write a bill that failed to cap costs, the bill can arguably be portrayed as burdening working families without solving the most important problem. No wonder working and middle-class voters are suspicious of corporate Democrats!
The Clinton campaign failed to focus on a ground game—mobilizing voters in crucial cities and towns in key states. They were certainly warned of the danger of neglecting this work. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the campaign was so convinced of an overwhelming victory that they did not believe such a mobilization was necessary. Anecdotally: Apparently one major union that offered full-throated support for Clinton sent seven buses full of volunteers to Detroit on the eve of the election for GOTV (get out the vote—that is, eleventh hour mobilization). The Clinton campaign diverted the activists to Iowa, as a feint, to force the Trump campaign to devote resources to the Hawkeye State. Knowing as we do now that Clinton lost Michigan by just 11,000 votes, was this a miscalculation? Did it stem from overconfidence?
After her defeat, Clinton suggested that the campaign had no response to FBI director Comey’s announcement of the revival of the email investigation at the end of the campaign. If this is true—and there is no reason to doubt it—it is an indictment of a professionally run presidential campaign, which should have had solid and well-developed contingency plans for half a dozen potential “October surprises.”
4. Trump’s victory
Certainly candidate Trump’s xenophobia appealed to a hard core of far-right white nationalist supporters. But his victory by mostly razor thin margins in key swing states—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin—resulted from a broader combination of factors.
First, traditional Republican voters did not boycott him in the general election. Romney voters from 2012 for the most part came out for Trump. Noted historian Mike Davis is right to emphasize the importance of the fact that the predicted aversion of “normal” Republican voters to the candidate at the top of their ticket never materialized. (1) One way to interpret this would be to say that they voted for Trump’s xenophobia and misogyny.
Second, the Clinton campaign failed to run up necessary majorities among traditional supporters of the party. There was not a significant gender gap in the outcome.
Third, a small but significant slice of working class rust belt voters voted against business as usual. Again, as Davis points out, “several hundred thousand white, blue-collar Obama voters, at most, voted for Trump’s vision of fair trade and reindustrialization, not the millions usually invoked.” In a narrow race, that provided the margin of defeat.
Top row, L-R: Youngstown, OH 1976. Foundry worker. Youngstown, OH. 1976. Foundry worker. Bottom row: Youngstown, OH. 1976. Foundry worker. All copyright Robert Gumpert
5. Keys to the rust belt
The rust belt—the Upper Midwest—remains of vital political importance. As demographic and political patterns presently hold, a handful of crucial states (actually, a handful of vital counties inside those states) hold the keys to presidential electoral success. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Allegheny County in Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh); Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties in Ohio (metropolitan Cleveland); Wayne County in Michigan (Detroit); and Milwaukee County in Wisconsin now determine the outcome in close presidential elections in America.
Through much of the United States, Washington is viewed with deep suspicion. When unconnected with a higher purpose, said Augustine, the state is nothing more than highway robbery on a larger scale. (2) When was the last time the American state seemed connected to higher purpose? This sensibility is acute in the rust belt, with our towering hulks of shuttered steel mills, machine shops, auto assembly plants and so on. (3)
What, indeed, is rust belt experience of their national state? The US Postal Service: cool efficiency. Social security? Ditto. The military? “Thank god it is there because since the plants and mills closed, it is one of the few decent tickets out of this dying town.” But for the rest—the expensive machinery of the federal state is a distant, inefficient, unresponsive bureaucracy. You cannot control it; you cannot even get a response from it.
6. Rust Belt Anger: A Moment or a Secular Shift?
What are these “Trump Democrats” angry about? I am asked this question time and again, by serious people, activists and analysts and academics, based in Brooklyn, Washington, Paris. What were white, working and middle-class rust belt voters thinking?
A dramatic transformation of the economic landscape has been underway for a generation. The American economy emerged from World War II in a distinctive position. Productive plants in Europe and Japan was devastated by wartime bombing; meanwhile the “arsenal of democracy” meant that American industry was built up during the war. The United States held a dramatic hegemony in industrial production for a generation after the war. Meanwhile, CIO-led organizing, which accomplished the organization of basic industry only on the eve of the war, gave distinctive bargaining strength to U.S. workers. Consequently, from the 1940s to the 1970s—with up to about 35 percent of the workforce unionized—workers’ real (inflation adjusted) wages overall doubled or tripled.
But U.S. economic hegemony could not last; by the 1970s key industries such as steel and automobiles were being challenged by European and Japanese rivals. U.S.-based manufactures spread out to recovering and developing global markets. Global trade in general increased—from about 10 percent of U.S. economic activity in 1960 to about one-third by the turn of the century. Relatively higher wages in American industry put firms, now exposed to global competition, at a disadvantage. The openness of U.S. industry to intense international competition was one factor that led to the broad front attack on unionization; union density has declined to below 7 percent in the private sector. One consequence was that the real wage peaks achieved in the 1970s have been eroded in the decades since, overall by about ten percent.
Top row L-R: Detroit, MICH 1982. Shift change at the Firestone plant. Steelworker picket line, Braddock, PA. 1986
Bottom row L-R: Detroit, MICH 1992. In the shaddow of the old GM world headquarters. All Photos: copyright Robert Gumpert
Still, as late as 2000, there were still more than 17 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. Both before and after the Great Recession (2007-2009), these jobs disappeared at an astonishing rate. 30 percent of manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000. Of course, there was a long-run trend away from agricultural jobs and manufacturing jobs, toward what is termed the service sector. But the 17 million job plateau, achieved during the Vietnam War, was not “permanently” lost until 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks.
The dominant narrative is that globalization and “rotten trade deals” were the culprits. The notion is that “politics” is responsible for globalization and that a different political orientation could protect or even return manufacturing jobs to the United States. This dominant narrative has been pressed by the old-line manufacturing unions in auto, steel and related industries and was of course vital to the message of candidate Trump.
A counter-narrative is that technological change is responsible. (4) The soundbite (ITALICS)du jour is that new technology is responsible for 85 percent of manufacturing jobs lost in the United States since 2000.
In fact, it is not easy to ascribe job loss to (BOLD)either the richer articulation of the economy on a global scale (BOLD)or technological change. Changes in transportation and communication technology—such as containerization; computerized inventory control; and ever-more-efficient supply chains—were necessary preconditions for rapid-paced globalization. It isn’t “globalization” or “technology” but both. (5)
Nevertheless, Trump’s effective message on trade resonated with enough voters in the old industrial heartlands of the United States to help swing a close electoral college victory away from Hillary Clinton, whose husband’s name is associated with NAFTA, the 1994 trade agreement. Clinton = NAFTA = devastation of our communities is etched-in-granite common wisdom in the rust belt.
Note that the devastation of whole swaths of the rust belt does not hit white workers or a white “aristocracy of labor” alone. It affects whole communities. When a car plant, steel mill or shipyard is boarded up, all workers in the community—white, black, Latino; men and women—are affected. So are small businesses. Isn’t this one reason why so many blacks and Latinos in the rust belt voted for Trump?
Top row L-R) Detroit, MICH. 1992. 1986: Duquesne, PA. 2nd row: Braddock, PA 1986. US Steel ET works in the background, left. Duquesne, PA., 1986 The Duquesne Steel Works, closed. 3rd row: Braddock, PA. 1986. Detroit, MICH. 1992. Chyrsler plant. All Photos: copyright Robert Gumpert
7. Wrenching adjustment
The wrenching adjustment to global competition has proved difficult throughout the United States. But in the rust belt, the adjustment has been acute. The closure of one or two major plants can devastate a rust belt community.
As a friend who commutes past Ford’s shuttered Lorain Assembly plant on the west side of a quintessentially rust belt community said to me recently, “This used to be a thriving hillbilly town.” The plant, which opened in 1958, attracted thousands of workers, many from the rural south. Some eight million vehicles rolled off its assembly lines before it was shuttered in 2005. Everything in the local economy was buoyed by the presence of the plant and its relatively decently paid unionized workforce. But the next generation faces a stark reality.
Joining a branch of the military is one ticket out of economic despair. Sports scholarships to college are prized because the high cost of education means that individuals and families who have to pay typically take on onerous debt. While a college degree opens some professional opportunities—work for big health insurance companies or banks or mortgage firms, or in high tech—it is hardly the all-but-guaranteed ticket it was a generation ago. Plenty of college graduates languish for years, now, in a string of part-time jobs, often defaulting on loans. Those who remain economically active often work multiple low-wage jobs to make ends meet. In Lorain, a bartender at Scorchers, a sports bar—one of the few going concerns on Broadway (the main street downtown)—told me she works four part-time jobs to make ends meet.
For the generation before the advent of the CIO, it was common to work 60 or 70 hours/week in the steel mills of towns like Lorain or Youngstown or Canton. (6) Now, with the demise of auto and steel, the political economy has come full circle: The grandchildren of those who formed the CIO unions now work, once again, 60 or 70 hours/week to make ends meet.
And those are the lucky ones: Every neighborhood knows people who have dropped out of the regular economy. (7) When the jobs on offer are for minimum wage without health or pension benefits, is it any wonder that a portion of the population turns to the illegitimate economy (drugs; prostitution; illegal gambling; small-time robbery, etc.)? Or that another slice self-medicates with drugs or alcohol to deaden the pain of failed dreams? In Ohio, even stable communities have witnessed a rise in drug use. It is common for high school students to know people who have died of drug overdoses. Ohio, the bellwether state, leads the nation in overdose deaths. (8)
8. A different model of politics
Beltway insiders in the Democratic Party are ready to throw over the traditional Democratic base in the rust belt. (9) They can dismiss working class Trump supporters as inveterate racists, as “deplorables.” (10) Their road to victory in 2020 is to mobilize women and African Americans and Latinos. They have the idea that the white working class—or the rust belt segment of the class—is beyond hope, beyond reaching. This dovetails with their GOTV view of “doing politics,” a view that I believe we must reject.
Beltway insiders see voters in general merely as a means to getting themselves elected. Business as usual politically has entailed bombarding citizens with slogans—a kind of least common denominator politics that, in the United States, is particularly personalistic. This works fine for the Democrats as long as they have a personally appealing candidate, such as Obama. But a candidate with baggage such as Clinton could not overcome the anger and disgust that many ordinary Americans have toward Washington (and Wall Street).
We need a different model of doing politics—an organizers’ approach. (11)
Analysis matters. If you believe Trump’s working class base voted for him (BOLD)because of his racist appeals, and all you are interested in is electoral victory, then looking away from this fraction of the working class makes sense.
This is certainly true of a portion of them but it is our contention that a significant element of that base voted against Clinton, against Washington, against business as usual. They were, in fact, so disaffected with Washington that they were willing to overlook Trump’s racism and misogyny: They voted Trump in spite of his crass scapegoating and hubris, not because of them.
But the ordinary Democratic Party, interested solely in winning electoral power, may well decide to look away from Trump voters. They reason that U.S. elections are merely about turnout. We can look forward to a strong argument for getting “back to basics” in 2020—a robust GOTV operation.
But the GOTV orientation is insufficient for changing the political culture, which is what we must do if we are to build a social democratic current in American politics. For a whole generation, Democrats and labor organizations have come to working class America, on politics, only during GOTV. As long as Democrats and labor treat ordinary workers as walk-ons in a drama that has politicians and a handful of labor leaders or interest group heads at center stage, workers will feel alienated from the party, from their organizations and from the national state it self.
The different model would be an organizers’ approach to working class communities. Organizations such as the Progressive Caucus in Cleveland, a successor to the grassroots Sanders campaign in 2016, are involved in neighborhood-by-neighborhood organizing of a democratic membership formation, animated by broadly social-democratic politics. Such groupings can combine electoral aspirations with activist, direct action and civil disobedience style tactics. There is no reason that such formations cannot—once they become strong enough—establish workplace or industry-wide groupings based on the militant minority who are ready, today, to become organized and active.
9. An inside-outside orientation to the Democratic Party
No matter how disaffected with Washington, U.S. workers are not prepared to break with the two-party system. This system will for the foreseeable future necessitate that even radical reformers run campaigns within the broad arenas of the Republican and Democratic parties. This has hardly hindered the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus wing of the Republican Party; it certainly shouldn’t hinder the Sandersist wing of the Democrats. (12)
10. What kind of organization?
We should resist the blandishments of any leaders who contend that the be-all and end-all of our organizing should be re-electing ordinary Democrats (or even Sanders-style social democrats). To push back against global corporate power, the building of strong grassroots organizations is needed everywhere. (13) Whether they are activist unions or community organizations or proto-party style groupings like Progressive Caucuses, these grassroots groups need to be characterized by:
a. Regular meetings aimed at regular action (on issue campaigns such as the Fight for Fifteen or against environmental degradation);
b. Self-funding;
c. An educational component;
d. Maintenance of a proper perspective on electoralism.
In short, we are advocating the creation of an organized social democratic (broadly progressive) force, both inside and outside the Democratic Party. This force should certainly participate in elections. But if it has one foot in Democratic Party electoral politics, it must have another foot firmly planted in movement-style activism: civil disobedience, direct action, workplace organization, etc. This stems from our theory of change—that significant political, social or economic reform does not come from elections but from direct action. Is this not the lesson of the CIO and the Civil Rights Movement?
One danger is that the Democratic Party and organized labor, even if they adopt some of Sanders’ rhetoric going forward, will not alter their approach to “politics.” We need to challenge this. We need to stop treating workers as means (to getting elected) and start treating them as ends. We need to be organizing all the time; and building active involvement from a significant minority of members and their families. This means that the center of gravity of our work will not be inside electoral campaigns–it will be going on all the time. We can and should be building organizations that meet regularly to determine a course of action—be it strengthening union locals or engaging in external organizing or supporting other groups of workers. Both union locals and the incipient Sandersist organizations need to be doing this.
Footnotes:
1) “The ‘miracle’ of the mogul’s campaign…was capturing the entirety of the Romney vote, without any of the major defections (college-educated Republican women, conservative Latinos, Catholics) that the polls had predicted and Clinton had counted upon.” Mike Davis, “The great God Trump and the white working class,” Jacobin, February 7, 2017 (acc. April 22, 2017).
2) Augustine, The City of God, Books I-VII (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1950), Book IV, ch. 4. Augustine was the most influential of the western (Roman) church fathers.
3) Bill Fletcher, Jr., and Bob Wing, “Fighting back against the white revolt of 2016,” Verso Press, November 28, 2016, (acc. May 17, 2017), is a generally strong, insightful article, which should be required reading for anyone who cares about the progressive movement. In my view, it is, however, incorrect on this point: Fletcher and Wing contend that candidate Trump did not play to “legitimate concerns of the masses.” “Trump did not address the concerns of most voters. He addressed the fears of many white voters. Those fears…are both economic and racial. The economic fears focus largely on the potential for economic disaster.” As the following section contends, the fear of economic devastation is grounded in the rust belt reality of the past generation. The mills have been closing or radically downsizing since the late 1970s, a trend that accelerated after 2000.
See also Peter Olney, “Go red! Thoughts on the labor movement in the age of Trump,” Stansbury Forum, December 27, 2016, (acc. January 14, 2017), which takes issue with Fletcher/Wing’s use of wages as proxy for class and which advocates constructive engagement with a segment of the white “populist” working class as a task for the labor left.
4) Michael J. Hicks and Srikant Devaraj, “The myth and the reality of manufacturing in America,” Ball State University, Center for Business and Economic Research, June 2015, (acc. April 23, 2017); Federica Cocco, “Most US manufacturing jobs lost to technology, not trade,” Financial Times, December 2, 2016.
5) I owe thanks to Peter Olney for this insight concerning the logistics supply chain. See also Glenn Perusek, “Cleveland: City of Tomorrow?” Belt Magazine, March 2015, (acc. September 10, 2015) on the social consequences of the ongoing development of technologically-based unemployment.
6) In 1919, half of all workers in the steel industry in the United States worked 72 hours per week. See U.S. Senate, Report Investigating Strike in Steel Industries, 66th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Reports, vol. A, no. 289 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 14, cited in Samuel Yellen, American Labor Struggles, 1877-1934 (New York: Monad Press, 1974), 254.
7) Alarming statistics on the decline in workforce participation, particularly among men, are an indicator.
8) “Ohio leads nation in overdose deaths,” Columbus Dispatch, November 29, 2016, (acc. May 16, 2017). The broader case concerning “deaths of despair,” the stunning rise in mortality for white working class men, is put by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century,” Brookings, April 10, 2017, (acc. April 13, 2017).
9) I mean this term “Beltway insiders” to apply to the broad swath of Democratic staffers and those who share their worldview: the corporate wing of the party. Of course not all loyal Democratic staffers, whether or not they literally work in Washington, deserve the following characterization.
10) A strong statement of the position: Mehdi Hasan, “Top Democrats are wrong: Trump supporters were more motivated by racism than economic issues,” The Intercept, April 6, 2017, (acc. April 8, 2017).
11) GOTV is frenetic grassroots “get out the vote” efforts by rank-and-file activists and volunteers in the stretch-run of campaigns—knocking on doors, handing out flyers at workplaces, and making calls from phone banks to critical voters and districts. The premium is on talking to as many people as possible, having the thinnest, most superficial discussions possible (“don’t get into it with anybody”). Is it any wonder that ordinary workers feel abused by such a system?
12) A side point is the issue of naming things. I myself am convinced that “Labor for Our Revolution” won’t fly in the heartland. It is an ultra-left slogan. Yes, workers are angry. Yes, they want dramatic change. But they are not ready to vote for a left alternative outside of the two major parties. We have ample demonstrations of this—in, for instance, Green Party candidacies. Today we have a chance to build mass-based social democratic organization. We will squander this opportunity with ultra-left slogans and organizational names.
The adoption of “Our Revolution” and the talk about a political revolution in America is woefully naïve—ahistorical. Does it mean a political revolution like 1776? Is the rewriting of the U.S. Constitution hinted at? Of course not. Sandersism is an effort to revive American style social democracy.
In a blush of enthusiasm for Sanders’ success in the 2016 primaries, let us not forget decades of anti-communism. This has had an effect, and not only among those who came of political age before 1989. We cannot defend “Labor for Our [Socialist] Revolution.”
13) There is of course a tendency of long-standing that insists on remaining outside the Democratic Party on principle. The Democratic Party is the “graveyard of social movements” and the pull of electoralism is inexorable. To change a system dominated by the titans at the head of the firms that dominate global capital, the ultra-lefts contend that a new party must be built (or that protest politics are all that is possible). This is noble purism, honorable but wrong, predicated on a refusal to take responsibility for overall policy. I believe we can hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should be able to do better than merely to decry “corporate welfare” or environmental degradation. We should be able to offer both an immediate program of policy reforms and advance a vision—a maximum program—of a decent social-democratic society. Those who would build a labor or left party outside of the Democratic Party (that is, reducing a tactical question to the level of principle) commit an error of orientation. It is a tactical matter to establish a pole of attraction inside a wing of the Democratic Party. In contrast, purist abstentionists want to stand on the sidelines. See Glenn Perusek, “Between Abstention and Accommodation: Progressives and the Democratic Party in the General Election and Beyond,” Stansbury Forum, July 2016.
Longtime Southwest Side activist leaves legacy of building people power
By Curtis Black
Editor’s note: This piece is reprinted from the Chicago Reporter, 25 May 2017, with the kind permission of Curtis Black. Bill was one of the Stansbury Forum’s “contributors”.
Bill Drew and his wife Gloria. Photo courtesy of the Drew family
My old friend Bill Drew died on May 14, and I’ve been reflecting on the impact he had on his community – in particular on the movement for political independence on the Southwest Side – as well as the impact he had on my life.
In many ways he reminded me of Milt Cohen, the political organizer who helped elect Harold Washington as mayor (and who also recruited me to journalism), whom I wrote about in my first column in this space. Both Bill and Milt were old radicals who immersed themselves in neighborhood issues. Both were white activists who devoted themselves to the empowerment of people of color. Both had a remarkable tenacity, both had constantly searching, questioning minds, and both dedicated themselves to energizing and inspiring people to get involved.
Bill left a record of his quest, a memoir he published online after he learned he had cancer shortly before his 66th birthday. It’s a testament to his rigorous self-honesty and realism, and it’s a redemption tale – the story of a pugnacious kid from an Irish Catholic family in Waukegan who got swept up in the anti-war movement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and who spent a decade in Milwaukee organizing support for factory strikers, victims of police brutality, and everyone from farmers to local Native Americans. He spent a year in prison after jumping a police lieutenant who had a young demonstrator in a chokehold.
Only after his memoir was published did I learn how Bill had first touched my life. As editor of a left-wing paper, he had learned about and publicized the campaign of the United League of Mississippi, which was boycotting businesses in Tupelo to protest police brutality and demand jobs for blacks. It was 1978, and I was a college student and joined a campus group that travelled to Tupelo for a solidarity march.
It was definitely educational. I still remember the huge church meeting that greeted us, the haunting melody sung by a contingent of striking poultry workers – “Walking that picket line a mighty long time, I’m not tired yet” – and the confrontation with a column of about 40 masked Ku Klux Klan members who tried (and failed) to force United League marchers off the road. And at a rally in front of city hall, I remember seeing Klansmen in full regalia stepping out of the police station to observe and menace.
Bill had moved to Chicago by then, and I met him around that time. He was a jovial, enthusiastic, salt-of-the-earth type guy. But after the movement that he’d thrown himself into began to falter in the 1980s, Bill descended into a downward spiral of drinking and drugs. His memoir gives an unsparing account of that descent, of hitting bottom and digging himself out. He taught himself computer programming and built a successful career. He married Gloria, a hospitality worker whose emergence as a leader of Chicago Public Schools lunchroom attendants he recounts with pride. He raised two excellent sons.
I heard from Bill again in 2009, when he began organizing support for a local art student who’d been charged with murder after he defended himself – with the Exacto knife he carried for the purpose of sharpening pencils – when he was jumped by a carload of kids. At Bill’s urging, I attended the student’s sentencing hearing, where his teacher and minister were joined by neighbors including a former cop and a Chicago Fire Department lieutenant speaking on his behalf. Bill also organized a block party to raise funds for the young man’s legal defense and promote positive activities for youth.
His memoir says this event represented “activist Bill reborn.” The next year, he was organizing precinct workers for the campaigns of Rudy Lozano Jr. for state representative and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia for Cook County Board. He put his computer skills to use building the database for the TIF Illumination Project. That project, which has schooled thousands of people across the city in how tax increment financing works, wouldn’t have been possible without Bill, according to Tom Tresser of Civic Lab.
A couple of years later, Bill was diagnosed with inoperative pancreatic cancer. He faced the news with incredible courage – he would tell me that he viewed it as an opportunity, a spur to double down on his political efforts and deepen his appreciation for his family. At a 66th birthday party after the news, scores of old comrades travelled from Milwaukee and elsewhere to pay him tribute.
He fought the cancer with the same determination he’d fought the powers that be over the years, and he won five additional years of a purposeful life. His main focus was on building the McKinley Park Progressive Alliance and expanding that into the 12th Ward Independent Political Organization. He was proud that in the 2015 election, that group had full contingents of volunteers staffing every polling place – and that, unlike many progressive campaigns, the volunteers were folks who lived there.
Here’s part of his clear-eyed assessment of the 2015 election, in which Garcia forced Rahm Emanuel into a runoff: “When all the votes were counted, we were not the kind of movement that could that could topple Rahm Emanuel’s coterie of global power brokers. We are a populace fragmented by the cunning of the One Percent. We rose up to fight back. We lost. And yet we gained a lot.”
Bill had a vision – and it is slowly coming to fruition – of a network of IPOs across the Southwest Side. The organizational form harks back to the small-d democratic political organizations that emerged to fight the Democratic machine in the 1970s, under independent aldermen on the North, West, and Southwest Sides. (The only IPO continuously operating since then is in Garcia’s 22nd Ward.) It was necessary to remain active between elections, he maintained, and his groups held educational forums year-round. One issue he highlighted was the questionable practices of the national charter school network run by the Turkish Gulen movement, whose Concept chain opened a school in McKinley Park in 2013.
That’s what was special about Bill Drew. He looked beyond the daily grind that bogs down progressive activists. He asked how we could take things to the next level – and he was a consummate master of figuring out the next step, and the step after that, and inspiring people to move forward together.
I am among many people who will miss him. But he left a strong legacy – and many people in place to continue his work.
Reflections on the State of The Union Prompted by the Los Angeles School Board Election
By Mike Miller
In the absence of these “mediating institutions”, everyday people are disconnected from civic life as citizens.”
In the recent (5/16/17) Los Angeles Unified School District—second largest district in the nation—Board election, pro-private charter/voucher candidates defeated the incumbent school board president and a candidate who shares his basic views. Some $14 million was spent, most of it by the winners—which will no doubt be the reason given by many for their victory. I think it is more complicated than that.
Here is a framework for understanding the Los Angeles school board election (a framework that I think is also applicable to Trump’s victory and other electoral results with which most readers of these comments are not pleased). The framework has three parts: (1) the crippled programs syndrome; (2) the erosion of civil society, and; (3) the failure of organized labor to be much more than another interest group, and of broadly-based, multi-issue, community organizing to reach what I think is its potential.
1. The crippled programs syndrome
I wish I could claim this appellation as my own, but it comes from a paper with that title written in the early 1970s by Steven Waldhorn (a long-time friend of mine) when he was at Stanford University. The paper’s essential argument is that government programs for the poor are often inadequate because of crippling legislative, guideline and appropriations constraints imposed upon them at the outset by conservative legislators and administrators. Having crippled them, these conservatives then widely trumpet the failures of government programs.
Inner-city schools are among the crippled programs. (Imagine the difference in outcomes if teacher salaries were doubled, classroom size halved, breakfast and lunch provided for all students, and program monies were abundantly available for things like the Algebra Project.)
2. The erosion of civil society
This subject is at the core of what I do and think. We cannot have a vital democracy without vital voluntary associations, democratically constituted and funded by their members. It is these groups that are the underpinning of democratic politics. Without them, politicians are dependent upon media to reach voters, and media costs lots of money, which as few would deny, makes those politicians increasingly dependent upon those who fund their campaigns.
Without these associations there is nothing standing between individuals and families, on the one hand, and on the other mega-institutions like large corporations, government and large nonprofits (as in the health-care system). In the absence of these “mediating institutions”, everyday people are disconnected from civic life as citizens. Instead, they are “recipients” or “beneficiaries” of programs about which they have little voice. Their voicelessness makes them prey to demagogues who exploit it and promise to stand for “the people” against the mega-institutions that dominate society.
(Note that this framework excludes from civil society the typical nonprofit which—whatever its merits, and they are often many—is part of the problem, not the solution. In the low and moderate-income communities in which I worked during the years of the poverty program, model cities, and a number of other federal programs aimed at alleviating poverty, there emerged a plethora of “community-based non-profits”. In general, the purpose of each was good. And many of them did a good-to-excellent job implementing that purpose; others were simply part of a patronage machine. Whether excellent or worthless, their cumulative effect was to erode voluntary civic associations which had a “bottom-up” character and substitute for them the particular structure and character of most nonprofits: self-perpetuating boards of directors, no or non-voting membership, total dependency on external funding—all of which resulted in no participation and no community accountability.) Cumulatively, they are an example of the sum being less than its parts.
The self-identified “labor movement” has become another “interest group”
3. The labor “movement” and broadly based community organizing
When I was a boy my parents did not miss voting in elections. Their guide to how they cast their ballot was the west coast longshoremen’s union slate card. The International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) was a Communist influenced, left-wing union; it was expelled from the CIO during the post World War II red-scare period. My folks were part of that left-wing world. Even though not members of ILWU, they trusted it. They had personal relationships with members and leaders in it. They were part of a vibrant community in which politics was regularly discussed, social gatherings took place, educational activities were numerous, and action for social and economic justice was central. My parents voted for those slate card-recommended politicians no matter how much campaign money was spent by their opposition.
That ILWU was part of the John L. Lewis led Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and the CIO of the 1930s was part of a broad “progressive” movement that spoke for the common good and general welfare. Whatever its weaknesses, and they were surely there, these unions cared about more than the narrow, though important, workplace interests of their members.
When Saul Alinsky organized “Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council” (BYNC), one of its principal activities was to support a strike of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC). And BYNC, whose members were for the most part eastern European “ethnics”, was an outspoken supporter of racial justice—for example, providing testimony for fair employment practices.
Sad to say, most parents don’t see teacher unions as outspoken supporters for the education of their kids. And for good reason. If it were otherwise, there would be no way in which the 25,000+ teachers (60,000+ total employees) in the LA school district couldn’t have been the base for a door-to-door/home visits/small house meetings face-to-face election campaign that would have convinced the number of voters needed to win: 31,000 for Zimmer, and 14,000 for Imelda Padilla (the union-supported, anti-voucher/private charter candidates). Nor would there have been a mere 11% (that’s not a typo!) voter turnout in the election. And that doesn’t even count unions with no direct relationship to public schools.
The self-identified “labor movement” (which isn’t moving very much, and sometimes moves backward rather than forward) has become another “interest group”. Its word doesn’t mean much to the general electorate, and in some cases not even to its own membership.
Broadly-based community organizing in what might broadly be defined as “the Alinsky tradition” is now almost 80 years old. The current veterans in the field have been engaged in the work for 50+ years. I count myself among them. For reasons that are beyond the scope of what I want to say here, we have not reached the people power capacity, nor broadly expressed the vision, that characterized the CIO at its best.
Without substantial change in these two arenas, the present situation in the country is likely to persist. Electoral victories by even the most “progressive” of candidates are not sufficient to turn the country around; they don’t have the power to combat things like capital strikes that are likely to follow any significant efforts at reform.
The Result
Combined these three factors – crippled programs syndrome, erosion of civil society, and failures/weaknesses of organized labor and community organizing – create the circumstances in which “neo-liberalism” is now the dominant ideology of the country (and the western world). While I think it rests on shaky foundations, this point of view is the underpinning of shrinking government (except for the security-military industry complex), charter schools and vouchers, market solutions to all human problems, rugged individualism and a consumer culture. The results are the present vast inequalities of income and wealth, the largely unrestrained power of corporate and Wall Street America, and growing hostility toward “The Other,” whomever she or he may be.
Fortunately, a majority of Americans do not agree with significant parts of this ideology, and they want something different from their politicians than they are getting. In poll after poll, voters express views that are far more consistent with a notion of the public welfare and common good, as well as unity in diversity, than they are with “watch out for number one” or any of the “isms”.
So I do not despair. But there sure is a lot of organizing work to be done.
For Home
By Roger May
“What will you do for your hills, You mountain boy?”
Aunt Rita Mingo County WV.jpg – Roger May’s aunt, Rita Vanhoose, looks out over the valley below from the King Coal Highway in Mingo County Photo and copyright: Roger May
I moved back home at the end of January this year. It was a tumultuous time in my personal life, never mind the charged political landscape of both the nation and state. My last day of work in North Carolina was a Friday and I had my car loaded so I could leave and drive straight to West Virginia. Monday morning, I was first in line at the DMV in Princeton to get my drivers license.
Not just a driver’s license, but a West Virginia driver’s license. The woman at the desk told me she’d never seen anyone as excited as me to stand in line at the DMV.
Over the course of my first few weeks, I watched the president sign executive orders that repealed regulations designed to protect the coalfields of central Appalachia. I attended an ill-publicized town hall meeting with Senator Joe Manchin (who refers to West Virginia as the Extraction State rather than the Mountain State) in Peterstown.
When it was time for questions, I raised my hand first and asked him to look me in the eye and tell me, as a West Virginian, how he could vote to confirm Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA. Although he did look me in the eye, the next seven minutes were dedicated to everything but answering my question.
So why come home now? I believe in West Virginia.
A person close to me once told me West Virginia was in my DNA. I know I’m not alone when it comes to this place being woven into the very fiber of my existence, of who I am. I have never encountered prouder people in all the places I’ve traveled in the world. And I mean the kind of pride a mother has for a son, not the kind of pride the Bible warns us about.
I believe in West Virginia despite being told at an early age that if I wanted to make something of myself I had to move away. I believe in West Virginia because we are more than extraction state. I believe in West Virginia because I owe to it my forebears and my children. I believe in West Virginia because my inheritance, our inheritance, is more than surface-mined mountains, valley fills, polluted streams, and being ranked at the bottom of too many lists. I came home to West Virginia to fight for the future.
Keystone McDowell County WV.jpg – Mike and Asia Brooks wait for a ride to church in Keystone, McDowell County. Photo and copyright: Roger May
Our young folk are tired of not being heard. They’re tired of being told what’s best for them, where they should go, why they should stay, and they’re tired of not having a place at the table. They’re tired of being talked at. My granddad, Richard Watson of Chattaroy, once told me that I have two ears and one mouth and that meant I should listen twice as much as I speak. I came home to West Virginia to listen to young folk.
Our forebears, whether they marched and organized or wrote songs and taught school and stood for what’s right, showed us a way forward. They created hope in times that were dark and sometimes bloody. I came home to West Virginia to honor my forebears.
In 2014, I photographed the aftermath of the Freedom Industries chemical spill in the Elk River for The Guardian. After working for three days, I got in my car and drove 300 miles back to North Carolina, to clean water, and to a place where hardly anyone knew about the spill. I struggled with leaving and with not doing more. I came home to West Virginia to do more.
I came home to West Virginia because I couldn’t not come back. Kentucky writer Bell Hooks wrote in her beautiful essay To Be Whole and Holy, “Hence we return to the unforgettable home places of our past with a vital sense of covenant and commitment.”
I now have the incredible opportunity to direct the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia. Founded by Don and Connie West in 1965, the ASFC was founded to educate young people about their mountain heritage and to focus on “the restoration of self-respect and human dignity lost as a consequence of the region’s colonial relationship with industrial America.”
We didn’t get here overnight and we won’t get out of this overnight. There is no quick fix, no easy button, no campaign promise to fix what is broken. What remains is you and me. What is possible is what we choose to do. In Don West’s poem Mountain Boy, he writes, “What will you do for your hills, You mountain boy?”
What will you do for home?
Editor’s note – For a look at what greed and corporate dominance as done, specifically to West Virginia, watch “Blood on the Mountain” now streaming on Netflix.
“With an impressive historical scope, “Blood on the Mountain” is a documentary with information that rhymes, of workers who themselves become destroyed natural resources, often at the greed of political and industrial figures who render miners and their families as disposable..” Nick Allen at RogerEbert.com
It is a document of the greed and callousness of corporations and politicians that have exploited and then abandoned not just Appalachia but also the South in areas like Cancer Alley; the Southwest with contamination of the land of the Navajo Nation, Arizona, New Mexico by uranium and copper mining; and the destruction of Northern California’s forest lands, to name but a few.
A California Fix From Out of Old Massachusetts?
By Tom Gallagher
A disreputable chapter of California legislative history, when consideration of single payer health insurance was banned, has ended with the filing of a single payer universal healthcare bill. The question now, can the legislature be prevented from similarly embarrassing itself by evading its responsibilities to conduct the people’s business on matters of substantial importance. Perhaps the nation’s largest state might consider an idea from one of the oldest states – the Massachusetts “right of free petition”.
Having twice passed single payer legislation, the Democratic controlled California legislature four years ago disappeared the bill. There is no record of the legislative leadership telling members they couldn’t file the bill, it’s just that none, in either branch, did even though a bill had been filed in each of the seven previous two-year sessions. The salient fact here is the legislature had actually put the bill on the governor’s desk when the governor was Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now it’s Democrat Jerry Brown and as one observer bluntly put it, “A Democratic legislature will pass single payer when there’s a Republican Governor but not when there’s a Democratic Governor — unless he wants it.” The legislative leadership’s previous support for single payer had been for show only.
Unless California’s current legislative leaders (who change rapidly due to term limits) have a better grasp on the question than the state’s chief executive – whose most recent take on state-level Medicare-for-all ideas was: “I don’t even get it. How do you do that? …,”, California is could be in for more flim-flam from the legislature. In Massachusetts the legislature could not even entertain foisting off such a travesty upon the populace because that state’s 1780 constitution guarantees its people the “right … to … give instructions to their representatives, and to request of the legislative body, by the way of addresses, petitions, or remonstrances, redress of the wrongs done them, and of the grievances they suffer.” This language is universally understood to grant Massachusetts citizens “the right of free petition,” that is, the right to file any bill they deem worthy. This situation is unique among the fifty states – but maybe it shouldn’t be.
This right does not work miracles. It’s just a part of a Massachusetts legislative culture, broader and more open than in many other states with as many as 8,000 bills considered in a legislative session. If an individual wants to file a piece of legislation widely considered beyond the pale, that A couple of couner-changes: bill is filed “by request,” indicating that the Senator or Representative sponsoring it does not actually support it, which renders its chances of passage nil. Nor can the right of free petition guarantee that a meritorious bill won’t be voted down, or shunted off to a study. It does, however, at least guarantee that important issues can get a hearing in the state capitol.
California ironically enjoys a national reputation for broad citizen access to the law-making process, due to its well utilized initiative and referendum mechanisms, adopted to counter corporate dominance of the legislature in 1911. But not only has the initiative process become an extremely expensive business, but its simple up or down vote precludes the possibility of refinement and improvement in the hearing and amendment process.
Doubtless California, a state of 39 million, will never adopt whole-cloth a right promulgated by a state whose populace numbered little more than a quarter million at the time – in 2017, any consideration of creating a new citizen right of free petition would likely involve a threshold number of supporters higher than one. But California’s recent suppression of normal democratic legislative procedure does suggest that the state’s voters would be well served by considering the concept in some form. Likewise, the growing national alienation from government suggests that more than one state might benefit from considering it.
Thinking Through “Resist Deportations”: What’s the End Game?
By Mike Miller
1985: El Centro, CA. Undocumented workers waiting for deportation at the El Centro Immigration Detention Center. Photo: Robert Gumpert
Of course we should resist Trump (and Obama and all those who preceded him) in their efforts to deport “illegals”, most of whom came to this country because U.S. negotiated “free trade” agreements eliminated their jobs or farms in their home country. How are we to do this in a way that goes beyond symbolic protest?
In what follows I want to briefly outline what I think will be the likely sequence of events to the present course of action that seems to have the full attention of the resist movement, and consider a different course, or at least an additional course, that might have a different outcome.
Non-Cooperation and the Likely Trump Response
Across the country local, and now state, governments are adopting policies to refuse cooperation with ICE. In response, the Trump Administration is rattling swords and threatening dire consequences, the most likely of which will be cutting of federal funds to state and local governments that don’t back down from their non-cooperation positions.
Will Trump follow through? There is little reason to think he won’t. Will court challenges to what Trump does stick? Even if upheld in District and Circuit courts, there is little reason to think they will when they reach the Supreme Court new majority with Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch.
If I am right in that appraisal, who will get hurt when funds are cut? For the most part, poor people, and those public employees whose salaries are paid by the grants that will no longer be. Here’s the dilemma: if it were their decision to take the cuts—as, for example, it is the decision of workers who vote to strike to forego their wages and risk their jobs—that would be one thing. But it’s not. Those who are hurt are not those taking the action.
The local and state governments responsible for the loss of their programs and jobs are likely to fold under this pressure. And the argument against folding is not all that strong. We are talking about national policy. There is just so much that state and local governments can do to buck it. Even the once powerful Dixiecrats finally had to crumble in the face of federal intervention against legally sanctioned racial discrimination in the south. Further, if these governments don’t fold they are asking very vulnerable people to make a sacrifice in whose decision they played no part.
Could these governments make up the loss in revenues? Maybe. It would probably require adoption of new taxes, which would have to be substantial to compensate for hundreds of millions of lost federal income. Will they do it? And even more pertinent, will they do it with “progressive” rather than “regressive” tax measures? None of them have adopted in any substantial way that kind of tax reform thus far.
Conclusion: the end game doesn’t look very good in the present scenario.
Divide and Conquer From the Bottom Up: An Alternative Or At Least A Complementary Strategy?
Our side cannot win this fight or, for that matter, any major fight in the national political arena at the present time, and the picture isn’t a lot different in the states. The cards are stacked against us: conservative Republicans control all three branches of the federal government, as well as a majority of state houses where they are using their authority to devise ingenious measures to limit the franchise for historically Democratic Party voters—particularly African-Americans.
To use a pool analogy, if we don’t have a direct shot at the corner pocket, is there bank shot on the table? I think the possibility for other targets lies in the corporate sector, in particular in businesses or business associations that were public supporters of Trump, in general, and of his immigration policy, in particular.
What would be done in relation to such businesses? Call upon them to publicly demand that the Administration back off its family-breaking policy. What if they won’t go along? Boycott their products and/or services, and use non-violent direct action tactics to publicly shame their executive officers. (A symbolic “don’t buy” day might be used to supplement the “don’t work” day that is now to be engaged in on May 1 by immigrant workers and their allies.)
Could this work? I don’t know. Neither does anyone. But in the 1960s and 1970s when boycott activity seriously damaged the profits of California agribusiness, growers suddenly became friends of collective bargaining legislation. (Up to that time, farm workers were able to engage in secondary boycotts because New Deal legislation creating the national collective bargaining framework excluded them—the direct result of the Dixiecrats who were protecting the near-slave status of southern black plantation workers. But 30 years later, in California, the shoe was on the other foot. Governor Jerry Brown got an excellent collective bargaining law passed by the legislature. (In fact, Cesar Chavez, leader of the United Farm Workers of America, initially opposed legislation. He had the power, via national boycotts, to directly force growers to the bargaining table; he didn’t want to give it up to a third party. History proved him right when a newly elected Republican governor appointed pro-grower votes to the Commission that implemented the law.)
If profits are the leverage, then a whole new set of demands on government is possible. Local and state governments or substantial purchasers of all kinds of goods and services from the private sector; they are depositors in banks; they invest in pension funds; they subsidize various businesses. More research would no doubt uncover more levers.
A General Point
On a broader front, I think those who are now fighting defensive battles over affordable housing, budget cuts in social programs, job losses to off-shoring and similar issues should consider direct action aimed at corporate targets—not symbolic action, like picketing a building where a corporation is located—but action that hurts the bottom line. To do that will require mobilizing on a level not yet reached by most protest action. Those who consider themselves the organizers of these actions need to look at how to add a zero to their numbers.
Government in the present time is not a likely arena for victories. Perhaps head-on confrontation with business is.