Former Pro Athlete Explains His Support For a Ceasefire in Gaza
By Dave Zirin
This piece originally ran in The Real News Network
Former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad says athletes have a responsibility to speak out in solidarity with Palestinians.
The sports world has largely been silent in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Yet former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad is standing up and speaking out in support of a ceasefire and the rights of Palestinian people. Tariq Abdul-Wahad joins Dave Zirin to discuss his support for Palestine and the responsibilities of his fellow athletes in this moment.
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Transcript
Dave Zirin: Welcome to Edge of Sports TV, brought to you by The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. We are going to speak to former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad, who has done what few in the US sports community have done, and that’s come out publicly for a ceasefire in Palestine and to free the people of Gaza. Let’s go to him right now.
All right, so Tariq, just from the start, how did you come to publicly support a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Well, Dave, this is a no-brainer. I mean, historically, for me it’s a little bit different. Being from France. Growing up, France has always taken a stance to protect the Palestinian people. So we always understood this relationship between the state of Israel and the Palestinians as an occupation situation. Do you understand?
In Europe, we don’t see it… It’s closer to us. So we grew up with it, understanding that Palestinians lost the war, but there were still many injustices still going on.
So my relationship with this conflict is not… The lens with which I’m looking at it is way more European than it is American. We understand what the situation is. Israel, in this case, is an occupying force.
So we understand that wars are going to happen in the world, but there are still laws and rules. And when you start to carpet bomb children and women, I don’t care who Hamas is, I don’t care where they are, what’s wrong is wrong.
Dave Zirin: Now, did you come to these ideas by growing up in France, by growing up in Europe, or was this a political awakening for you later in life?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Well, it’s a combination of things. I graduated from San Jose State University.
Dave Zirin: Yes!
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: And athletes at San Jose State, thanks to Dr. Edwards, have always been, to some extent, politically active. So it’s the tradition. When Tommy Smith every year comes back to the campus and talks to the student athletes, you don’t miss those speeches. You make sure you attend.
And so it’s really a combination of the area where I lived, where I went to school, being an athlete, and being politically active was almost the norm. It’s not an exception. It’s what you are expected to do.
Dave Zirin: Dr. Harry Edwards, of course, a former guest on this show, as was Dr. John Carlos. It’s amazing to hear that historical continuity because people forget that in ’68 they had an internationalist outlook. They were against apartheid and occupation all over the world. It wasn’t just for the United States that they raised their fist. Actually, it’s very heartening to hear you standing in that internationalist tradition.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Well, the Speed City. Yes. That’s the name of the track team back then.
Dave Zirin: Speed City.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Yeah, Speed City. Yeah. That’s what they used to call San Jose. Speed City, because these guys, not only were they fast on the track, but they were also very fast with their brains. These are trailblazers. These people are our leaders, technically. Every athlete in America should read Dr. Edward’s book, should read the history of Tommy Smith and John Carlos. We should know this. This is part of American sports heritage as much as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, all these people played a role.
Dave Zirin: You played in the league for years. You know NBA players. You’re standing for a ceasefire. Can you see other players signing on to such a statement? The horrors are just every day, but we also know that athletes can be fearful or live with some tunnel vision. But do you think we have the chance to break through and get some brave fellow superstars to sign on to something that calls for a ceasefire?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: I sure hope so. I mean, I sure hope so. This is not, listen, this is a no-brainer. This one is obvious. I don’t know what to tell you, Dave. I have children. I have three kids. We’re bordering on insanity at this point. Because first of all, it’s very hard to function as a regular human being on your day-to-day when you know that America is basically funding this madness.
And then you also have to put the things in true perspective, whether you’re an athlete or not, sports are not important in such situations. So if you’re an athlete and you play sports and people listen to what you have to say, the least you can do as a part of the human race is to say something. Is to say something.
So yeah, I hope and pray that athletes across the board, not just basketball players, not just athletes in the NBA, but athletes across the board, anybody who has a platform should use it to say something.
Dave Zirin: And the number one block to them saying something right now, the number one block for there not being a thousand Tariq Abdul-Wahads standing up to make a statement right now, what do you think that block is? Money?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Dineros. It’s money. They’re afraid. They’re probably afraid that it’s going to hurt their bottom line.
Dave Zirin: We can’t live that way though. There’s too much crisis right now.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Well, yeah, you and I, we understand that, but that’s why we still have to be active. We still have to reach out. We have to teach them.
A lot of them too, though, they don’t really understand what’s going on. They don’t understand the scope and the gravity of the situation, even though I’m sure a lot of them do. But sometimes it takes organizing in the background. It takes courage. It takes a few to step out and then a few more to join. And then if there’s more of a coalition and there’s a group of athletes who can come out and stand, they will definitely stand stronger.
Dave Zirin: Right. I totally agree with you about that. Without organization, fear will flourish, but organization is a great hedge against fear because people feel a sense of their own power.
What’s it been like for you since you spoke out? You’ve been very active on social media. Actually it’s harrowing to go to your page because you’re very, very astute about listing the various horrors that have been taking place. What has that been like for you?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Well, my page was starting to get some momentum and then I got shadow-banned, I think. So that’s the first thing. So they’re going to limit your reach.
But for me, it’s nothing. I’m no one. I’m just another voice. I don’t think I’m more important than the next man or than the next lady or the next child. Just gotta say what you see.
I’m a retired player, so obviously I don’t feel the same pressure as someone who is playing. I don’t have these economic pressures. But I honestly believe, from the bottom of my heart, that I am on the right side of history on this one. It’s clear.
Dave Zirin: Right. Have you heard from people in France… Because it’s been interesting, like you said, in France, there is a culture of standing for Palestinian liberation, but there’s also been a crackdown in France on protesters, on people trying to speak out.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Absolutely, they have. But remember the French president — I’m not supporting him in any way, but I’m just saying. He called for a ceasefire weeks ago. So even he realized that this was too much.
But France now wields very little power. So France is not the country it used to be. It lost a lot of its influence in Western Africa. It lost a lot of its influence to Russia and China. So it’s not the voice that it used to be on the international stage.
And locally, they are fighting against Muslims and minorities. France is not… Even though Macron called for a ceasefire before any American politician even pronounced the word, France is still, at its core, also a racist country. Let’s not get it twisted.
Dave Zirin: What do you say to, say, your kids or to somebody you’re mentoring who says to you, I’ve been told that the United States is the land of the free, the home of the brave, a place where justice reigns, and yet we’re underwriting this brutal total war on a civilian population. How do we square those two ideas?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Well, that’s the question that this country has been asking itself since its inception. Yes, it’s cool. It’s the land of the free. You and I are free to talk about it. We’re free to discuss it. We are free to debate it.
But the strength of freedom is not in the opportunities we have to voice our opinion. It has to go further than this, and this is why the political system in this country is becoming flawed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed. It’s becoming more and more… What’s the word I’m looking for in English?
Dave Zirin: I think it’s broken.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: It’s become more and more obtuse. The choices are less. And so it is a free country, in a sense, but we cannot forget that, in this country, money rules. Money rules and influence rules.
What’s happening right now, it’s actually going to be very interesting, because a lot of people who did not participate as much as they should have in the political process in this country are now going to be very active.
And I’m going to give you a very simple example. There are a few states that are going to be swing states in this election, in the presidential coming up, in which many Muslim Americans and Arab Americans live. And I guarantee you that Joe Biden is not going to get these votes. I know this for a fact. These votes are gone. So either he can replace the votes or these votes are going to be his undoing. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Dave Zirin: Yes.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Pennsylvania and Michigan, we’re talking about differences less than 10,000 votes, 20,000 votes in some cases.
Dave Zirin: Look, you’ve been so generous with your time. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you just two more questions if I could.
First, I want to give you the chance to put a message out there for all the athletes who want to say something, who want to speak out, but are fearful for a whole host of reasons. What do you have to say to them?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: Grab your courage. You are extraordinary people. These athletes, you guys and ladies are extraordinary. You are the 0.1%. And if you think that this is wrong, you should speak out, whether you’re going to pay the price or not.
I’m going to be honest. This is one of those where you might have to sacrifice something, but something must be said. And as exceptional as you are, you only — And I’m talking to these athletes — As exceptional as you are, you are only as exceptional as your moral fiber.
Dave Zirin: And I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you go without pointing out to our audience, in case they’re not big international basketball fans, that you were an absolute pioneer in coming here from France and succeeding as you did. France is on the leading edge of the world right now when it comes to basketball. And I’m in DC where we watch Bilal Coulibaly.
I ask you, how has France made this leap to becoming this kind of basketball powerhouse? And do you ever feel this sense of pride that you laid this groundwork for the basketball culture in the country?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: It’s cool because you are part of something special, obviously. But it’s also a reminder of history. Let’s not get it twisted.
The reason why France has top-notch athletes is because these athletes come from African countries, or their parents immigrated, their grandparents immigrated, and they were born in France. The younger guys who were born in France and raised in France and whatnot. But without the African and Caribbean diaspora, French sport would be run-of-the-mill. The reason why it’s exceptional is because of its relationship with Africa and its relationship with the Caribbean.
Dave Zirin: I was going to say, so no colonialism, no basketball success is one of the things you’re saying?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: It’s a weird statement, but it’s very accurate as well.
Dave Zirin: Like so many things in our upside down era, weird but true.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad, it’s been such a gift to be able to speak to you. Thank you so much for joining us on Edge of Sports TV.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad: No problem, Dave. Have a good one. Stay safe out there.
…
“Let’s Watch Mays”
By Howard Isaac Williams
Sunday, February 4, 2024, Was Willie Mays Day in San Francisco – A Tribute
Willie Mays was one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Many who know the game call him the greatest.
Every Giants fan from New York and San Francisco who enjoyed the game in the 1950s and 60s has vivid memories of Mays delivering a clutch hit, making a leaping catch or throwing out a baserunner from deep in the outfield.
Or making a daring dash along the base paths.
One of the most difficult plays in baseball is to score from first base on a single. A fan is far more likely to see a batter swat a pitch 400 feet than to see a runner successfully dash 270 feet from first to home on a one base hit.
Near the finish of the 1966 season, the Giants were battling the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League pennant. It would become another illustrious chapter in what many consider America’s paramount sports rivalry. That heritage had started in New York City when the Giants played in Manhattan and the Dodgers in Brooklyn. By 1958, when both teams decamped from the Big Apple and moved west – the Giants to San Francisco and the Dodgers to Los Angeles, their legendary rivalry had already transformed baseball and America. In 1947, in the first great postwar triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, the Dodgers had broken baseball’s color line when Jackie Robinson joined them. The Giants quickly signed Black ballplayers and by 1949, both teams had become the first National League teams with two Black players on the field.
America’s first nationally televised baseball game was the third and deciding game of the 1951 National League playoff series between the two teams. The entire season that had seen the Giants whittle down the Dodgers 13 1/2 game lead in mid August to a tie, and at the end of regular play it came down to the last of the 9th inning with Brooklyn leading 4 to 2. Two Giants were on base and Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca faced the Giants’ Bobby Thomson at the plate. Twenty year old rookie Willie Mays waited on deck.
Even if you know what happened next, you should go to Youtube, look up “Russ Hodges announces Bobby Thomson, 1951.”
(One “person” who never found out what happened next was Sonny Corleone. That was the ballgame that Sonny was listening to on his car radio when he was gunned down at the toll booth in The Godfather.)
After the two teams moved west, their historic rivalry intensified in the 1960s as one or both teams were in every pennant race from 1961 to 1966. In 1965, their fight for the pennant became a literal one on August 22 when the two teams brawled at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Both teams’ dugouts emptied after Dodger catcher Johnny Roseboro was injured when a Giant struck him with a bat. Willie Mays quickly intervened to save Roseboro from more serious injury and halt the brawl.
“Let’s watch Mays!”
In September 1966, the two teams were again in a close race for the National League title when the Giants came to Los Angeles for a three game series. The teams split the first two games. The third game was played at night on September 7. At the end of the 9th, the score remained 2-2, forcing the game into extra innings. The 10th and 11th innings passed without any scoring and at the top of the 12th the first two Giant batters were retired. But then Willie Mays came to the plate and singled. Now rookie Frank Johnson stood at bat. The 23 year old outfielder had just been called up from the minor leagues and was playing in his first major league game. He had been hitless in his first at bat. Sixty feet and six inches away on the pitcher’s mound stood Dodger reliever Joe Moeller. Mays took a safe leadoff from first. At the relatively “old” age of 35 and with two outs, he was not a threat to steal. He had slowed down a step or two but had compensated with a daring born of experience yet tempered by the shrewd judgement developed during his amazing career.
In the announcer’s booth was Russ Hodges, the same man who had broadcast Bobby Thomson’s historic home run in 1951. Like all Giants games played in Los Angeles, this one was televised throughout most of Northern California. Games on TV allow the announcer to choose which camera to broadcast the game’s action. Announcers usually direct the cameras to “follow the ball,” showing the pitcher throw to the batter and then following the ball’s course after it’s hit. But good announcers sometimes improvise.
With two outs, Mays would take off if Johnson’s bat made any contact with the pitch.
Moeller threw and Johnson cracked a single into right field.
Up in the broadcasters booth, Hodges directed the camera crew: “Let’s watch Mays!”
In just an instant longer than it took to say that, Mays had covered the 60 yards between first and third bases. The camera showed him round third and look toward right field. Home plate lay about 30 yards away.
“He may try it!”
Mays hesitated, then took off.
“He’s gonna try it!”
The throw from right field was perfect. Catcher Johnny Roseboro made a sweeping tag as Mays slid into home. The umpire’s right hand came down hard and fast like a judge’s gavel.
“He’s out,” Hodges said.
But Mays jumped up and pointed at the ground. The ball was rolling away! Coming at the end of his 90 yard sprint from first base, Mays’ power slide had knocked the ball away from one of the game’s best defensive catchers. The umpire changed his mind and quickly waved both arms wide.
“He’s safe! The Giants lead!”
And the Giants went on to hold their lead in the bottom of the 12th to beat the Dodgers 3 to 2.
The greats make others better. On that night in Los Angeles, Willie Mays had shown us a measure of his greatness but had also given young Frank Johnson a chance to make his first major league hit a game winning one. He had given the veteran sports announcer Russ Hodges a chance to use his broadcast skills to showcase the Hall of Fame player’s base running virtuosity.
And the greats even make their opponents better. Although the Dodgers lost that game, they bounced back to win the pennant on the last day of the season, finishing a scant 1 1/2 games ahead of the Giants.
…
This piece originally appeared in The Howard Isaac Williams Newsletter. To receive the newsletter email howardisaacwilliams@yahoo.com
Book Review – “The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work” by Mark Erlich
By Peter Olney
As I matured politically my searing impression of building trades unionism was the hardhat mob that attacked peace protesters on Wall Street in New York City in May of 1970. Peter Brennan head of the NYC Building Trades Council and later Secretary of Labor under Nixon led the attack.
But many strange personal, political and professional twists in intervening years brought me to a great appreciation of tradespeople and their unions. My oldest friend in the world, Hugh Kelleher, who I met in the spring of 1965 when we arrived at Philips Academy in Andover, MA , decided to become a union plumber in the 1980’s eventually turning out as a journeyman from Local 12 in Boston.
As my son Nelson was finishing high school in San Francisco, he indicated at a certain point that he didn’t want to go to college. He was doing fine in school so my wife and I were a little concerned. I told him, “Look, finish high school, go to college and get your degree. Then you can do like your “Uncle” Hugh and become a union plumber.” A few years after graduating from UCLA with a degree in philosophy he enrolled in an apprenticeship program with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 617 in San Mateo and turned out in 2015. Now he makes a great living, loves the work and is currently in Tokyo enrolling in a technical school that will enable him to work as an electrician anywhere in Japan. My friend Hugh’s son Cameron is also a union electrician out of IBEW Local 103 in Boston. Not bad for the sons of two Andover Academy graduates!
I think a better title for Mark Erlich’s book would be “Preserving and Extending the Dignity of Construction Work”. For our two sons, there is tremendous dignity and economic security. They work out of the hiring hall so they have flexibility in pursuit of their interests beyond work, and the pay and benefits are excellent. The question and challenge that Erlich describes is one of extending that dignity, the good wages, and benefits of the unionized trades to the vast non-union sector. This, of course, is not a charity mission, but a matter of self-preservation because if trends continue, the unionized trades will represent a tiny sliver of the market and their superior wages and conditions will be undermined.
In Chapter 1 entitled a Tale of Two Cities, referring to the contrast between union and non-union builders, Erlich presents stunning numbers that illustrate the decline of the unionized sector. In 1947 estimates had union construction at 87.1% of the market. Fast-forward to 2020 and that figure is a lowly 13.4%.[1] This decline is not some natural evolutionary phenomenon but the product of a concerted assault on construction unions begun in 1969. In Chapter 3 The Heavy Hand of the Business Roundtable, Erlich explains who was behind this concerted assault. The Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable was founded by giant energy and manufacturing firms like US Steel who were concerned about the costs of construction during the Vietnam War. These corporate forces eventually aligned into what today has become the Business Roundtable. [2]
Here is J.C.Turner, General President – International Union of Operating Engineers (OE) in 1979 warning about the nature of the Roundtable:
“It has become apparent that a systematic and well planned campaign is being conducted to totally destroy the building trades… the current attack is the result of a decade of planning and groundwork by the Business Roundtable acting in concert with regional and local construction user associations, the contractor associations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pro-business academic institutions and their allies in government… “
“Our real enemy is clearly these large industrial concerns, organized as the Business Roundtable, who are using the contractors and their associations as soldiers in the battle. Their purpose is to put the lid on costs by pressuring their construction contractors to slash wages… The Business Roundtable represents a threat not just to the building trades unions but to the trade union movement as a whole… “
“If corporate America can weaken the hard-won gains of this country’s construction unions, the ultimate target will be the entire trade union movement…” [3]
In this 112 page very accessible book Erlich describes the drop in union density and the relative decline in living standards. The construction unions still maintain their strongholds in major urban markets building high-rise commercial buildings and public works projects. Representation among residential construction workers however is almost non-existent.
Chapter 6 on Technology and the Future of Construction Work is very valuable in light of the general furor over AI and robots replacing traditional work. Erlich examines modular construction and new production processes but concludes that, “many of these advances remain novelty items available only to a minority of firms that have the resources and inclination to experiment with equipment and systems that have not consistently been proven to be quality or cost effective” [4]Erlich points out that “most union training programs have incorporated Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) into their curricula”[5] However in the end there remains the need for a skilled mechanic albeit employing labor saving precision tools. Nevertheless would not the trades be well served following the knowledge based technology work and stretching their jurisdiction to include the programmers and algorithm writers who are fashioning the CAD and BIM tools. These workers too are part of the construction process and would most certainly benefit from the power of the construction unions and their solidarity. No reason not to dream beyond the immediate physical workplace and leverage the power you have to control work upstream.
Chapter 8 focuses on Many Rivers to Cross: Organizing and Diversity and acknowledges that “the rapid growth of the Latino workforce added another dimension to the issues of organizing, diversity and inclusion”.[6]
Nowhere is this a more dramatic challenge than in California. The California economy is now #5 in the world in GDP trailing only China, the US, Japan and Germany![7] In the Golden State there are approximately 900,000 workers in construction. 600,000 of those workers are Latinos and 500,000 of those Latinos are non-union.
Erlich unfortunately ignores one of the most exciting developments in the history of immigrant worker organizing, the strike and organization of drywall carpenters in Southern California in 1992. The 3,000 “drywalleros” self organized and struck residential construction sites from San Diego to Santa Barbara and assisted by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA) won an agreement with the drywall employer contractors. Their strike inspired Southern California labor as a largely Mexican immigrant workforce engaged in militant and provocative tactics even at one point blocking traffic on the Hollywood freeway at rush hour.[8]
The employers unleashed the police and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on the workforce and the Carpenters union provided training and attorneys to spring these workers from La Migra. This winning battle made a national name for Doug McCarron the SoCal Carpenters district director, and he rose to become national president in 1995 after Sig Lucassen retired. McCarron remains President to this day, and the UBCJA is controversial in the labor movement for its go it alone approach to construction jurisdiction. But the Carpenters, particularly in California, have been in the forefront of organizing immigrant workers.
The battle of the drywallers is instructive for organizers seeking to reverse the dramatic density drop in construction. The battle was waged as an area wide struggle against multiple contractors based in a regional labor market and supported by the Mexican community. The leaders of the effort were from a small village of 2000 residents in Guanajuato Mexico called El Maguey. The elders of the village had given “strike sanctions” to the workers and indicated that those who crossed the picket lines would not be welcome to return home at Xmas or Easter! [9] This phenomenon of immigrant workers is not unfamiliar to Erlich as he himself cites the presence of French Canadian immigrant workers in the New England drywall industry who filled a void left by “generalist carpenters who looked down on the work and left it to others to fill the vacuum.” Unfortunately the drywallers in this case did not self organize but were classified as individual contractors and super exploited.
Erlich was a reformer within his own union in New England having run for office and beat an incumbent based on his innovative approaches to organizing and politics. He does not however address the question of reform within the larger UBCJA union. Recently in Seattle, a reform group called the Peter J. McGuire caucus named after the original organizer of the UBCJA back in the 19th century, participated in a bitter strike in the Puget Sound.[10] Their role was controversial and the strike resulted in McCarron placing the regional council in trusteeship. It would be instructive to hear Erlich’s viewpoint on the questions of internal democracy!
Interest in this book has been largely confined to academic and industry circles. It needs to be read and discussed in trade union circles particularly in the construction trades.
Since my retirement from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 2013 I have been part of the adjunct faculty at the Building Trades Academy headquartered for accreditation purposes at Michigan State University. I have co-taught courses on organizing and bargaining for business managers and organizers from the Heat and Frost Insulators, Plasterers and Cement Masons and the Bricklayers. For Ironworker Lathers from NYC and the Central South Region of the UBCJA I taught classes on internal organizing. Erlich’s book would have been a perfect compliment to all those weeklong training sessions.
Now several national formations are springing up advocating for more democracy in the trades and for more focus on new organizing and green construction policies and projects.[11] Erlich’s “The Way We Build” is an instructive and engaging read for those just beginning to cut their teeth in construction organizing and union reform. …
[1] Erlich Page 6 and unionstats.com
[2] An excellent companion volume to Erlich’s work is Wars of Attrition: Vietnam, the business roundtable, and the decline of construction unions Marc Linder Fanpihua Press 2000
[3] JC Turner “The Business Roundtable and American Labor” May 1979
[4] Erlich Page 50
[5] Erlich Page 54-55
[6] Erlich Page 79
[7] https://www.forbes.com/places/ca/?sh=4ae284f73fef
[8] https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/0251c537-6a21-4081-bf90-7a5136bfbff9/content
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-24-me-3937-story.html
[9] I visited the village of El Maguey in the summer of 2000 and met with elders who were relatives of Jesus Gomez, the principal organizer of the drywall strike.
[10] https://council.seattle.gov/2021/09/19/rank-and-file-carpenter-nina-wurz-we-need-a-good-contract-and-rent-control/
[11] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-10/unions-making-a-green-new-deal-from-below-part-1/
“The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work” by Mark Erlich
…
Tech Workers Deserve a Union
By Peter Olney
Many of us have tried to follow the recent kerfuffle involving Sam Altman’s leadership of the company he founded, OpenAI. In mid-November 2023 he was abruptly fired, then returned to power just five days later. The business press highlighted the implications of this power struggle for the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence and the future influence of investors like Microsoft.
It appears, however, that the pivotal moment in the power struggle came when 738 out of OpenAI’s estimated 770 workers said they would resign if Altman remained ousted. Even if it only resulted in putting a CEO back in power (and to a company that represents a real threat to the labor movement), the revolt by OpenAI workers was nevertheless “one of the most successful collective actions taken to date in the tech industry,” writes Ethan Marcotte, and a reminder to tech workers of the power they have at work.
This story unfolded just as I was finishing up Marcotte’s excellent new book, You Deserve a Tech Union. Though Marcotte admits he is a self-employed web designer who has never been in or organized a union, he has consulted with some of the best and the brightest in union and tech-worker organizing to fashion a wonderful back-pocket book, perfect for any tech worker interested in powering up and getting a union. At around 150 pages it is full of clear advice on organizing, as well as some captivating history of technology.
Marcotte references the work of the scientist Ursula Franklin who presents a fascinating story of the evolving discourse that surrounded the invention of the sewing machine. When it was introduced to the general public in the middle of the 19th century the machine was welcomed as a device that would “banish ragged and unclad humanity.” The authors of an early manual promised that the “sewing machine would end poverty.”
Fast forward to a manual from top sewing-machine manufacturer Singer in 1910 where the emphasis is all on efficiency and speed. “Inside of five short decades, the sewing machine is no longer discussed as a technology that will liberate its users,” Marcotte writes. “Instead, it delivers productivity.” Marcotte sees a similar trend at work with more recent technology, such as the promise of the Internet to “connect humanity and reduce both poverty and armed conflict.” Yet the biggest web and tech firms have become major defense contractors.
A SHIFT TO FORMING UNIONS
Marcotte’s book is a forceful argument that if workers in tech want to improve their conditions, they can only do so collectively—and that means forming a union. He says that this is dawning on more tech workers in the last few years, but that it’s been given an added impetus by recent mass layoffs in the industry, with more than 160,000 tech workers losing their jobs in 2022.
The shift to forming unions represents a significant change from tech workers’ usual strategy of seeking out better pay or conditions by “voting with their feet.” By and large, Marcotte writes, “workers in the tech industry have come to expect that a bad job can only be fixed by getting a better job somewhere else.” But that’s changing—a change that is long past due, since employers have also come to expect that rather than improving conditions, they will always be able to find new workers.
Marcotte acknowledges that many tech workers are paid better than other workers and often receive better benefits. That’s especially the case at the biggest companies like Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google), which also offer lavish cafeteria meals, company gymnasiums, and health clubs.
But there are plenty of other issues that motivate workers in the industry: ever-increasing workloads; being paid less than peers; harassment and discrimination; a lack of opportunities for career growth; and worries about layoffs and severance pay.
Marcotte also stresses that organization is necessary to combat the unethical and destructive use of tech. He highlights the 2018 protest by thousands of Google employees over the company’s contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense. Similarly, Amazon tech employees organized a walkout over climate justice in Seattle headquarters.
Marcotte is careful to include in the community of tech workers such jobs as “content moderators,” who often work in remote offices for limited salaries sometimes even in far-off lands like India and Kenya. These workers must do the often traumatic work of spotting disturbing violent and offensive sexual postings that need to be policed and removed from websites. These are jobs that can lead to serious psychological trauma, and workers that do them are fighting for desperately needed representation.
He also emphasizes the many others who should rightly be considered tech workers, from Amazon warehouse workers to drivers for Uber, GrubHub, and Lyft. He notes that other tech workers can learn from the organizing by the Teamsters among Bay Area shuttle bus drivers for Meta and Alphabet and by UNITE HERE among contracted cafeteria workers at big tech firms.
BUT HOW TO GET A CONTRACT?
Chapters 4 and 5 are the heart and soul of Marcotte’s narrative. He explains what a union is and the process through which, under present U.S. labor law and practice, workers can form one. While many union activists may be familiar with these processes, 94 percent of workers in the private sector do not have unions, so this is necessary education for tech workers, among others. He relies on the teachings of veteran organizers to highlight the obstacles to organizing and the methods needed to overcome them.
As someone who has organized many groups of workers into unions over the years, from machinists to bookstore workers to dockworkers, I found this section illuminating, but a little lacking on the question of power relations, particularly with regards to getting a first contract. That’s why I found the Sam Altman saga so illustrative, because it appears to me that the key to reversing his ouster was the revolt by the bulk of OpenAI employees.
My experience over the years in bargaining for first contracts for newly organized workers who have voted for the union is that without a powerful exercise of worker (such as strikes or other job actions) or consumer power (like boycotts), no employer will just wrap up a first agreement just because the majority of workers voted in a union. To get a strong union and a worthy first contract, there needs to be the exercise of power that those OpenAI workers engaged in. In fact that kind of exercise of power could result in an employer willingly recognizing a union (without an election) and accepting a good first contract all in one fell swoop.
In 2022 in the Port of Tacoma, Washington, a group of chassis mechanics organized with the Longshore Workers (ILWU) and went on strike. They won the union and the first contract all within the space of a few days because the marine terminal had come to a halt. Mechanics won an average immediate wage increase of 29 percent, an improved medical plan, and, for the first time, a pension plan.
We need such an analysis of chokepoints in tech so that workers can consider skipping the bureaucracy of the National Labor Relations Board (the federal agency charged with enforcing labor law and conducting elections to determine whether workers want a union) and exercise power to lead directly to a union. Or even if workers go through the formal NLRB-election route, such analysis might be essential in helping win a first contract. (See the book Labor Power and Strategy by John Womack, Jr., which I co-edited, for more discussion of choke points and power analysis.)
That means a concrete analysis of concrete conditions:
- Who are the most skilled or essential workers whose work cannot be easily or swiftly replaced?
- Where in the process of “production” is the employer most vulnerable?
- Are there seasons of production and deadlines when delivery times give us greater power with production interruptions?
Maybe as more experience is accumulated in the tech industry Marcotte will deliver such a volume for us, but in the meantime this is a very useful tool and stimulating read for any tech worker contemplating improving their workplace and enhancing their power over their work life and the products they are fabricating.
The whole labor movement needs the solidarity and organization of these tech workers. Imagine tech workers acting in solidarity with warehouse or production workers dependent on their algorithms! What an awesome transformative power!
…
Pick up You Deserve a Tech Union at abookapart.com and organize for power.
This review originally ran in Labor Notes
Liz Cheney, the Anti-Fascist Conservative
By Carl Davidson
Since the recent publication of Liz Cheney’s new book, Wyoming’s former Member of Congress has been making the rounds of our top media outlets and news shows. If you have yet to watch one, do so. It’s well worth it.
Entitled ‘Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,’ the work takes a deep dive into former President Donald Trump’s attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. It not only covers that radical rupture with the usual ‘peaceful transfer of power’ in our country’s history, but Cheney also offers us a summary of the events that followed, especially the proceedings of the House of Representatives’s Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
But Cheney is making waves again because she’s delivering more than a history lesson. As her title states, she’s warning us that the battle against Trump and his GOP turned-fascist party is far from over. In fact, her claim is that greater violent battles may occur in the upcoming presidential year, and we would do well to prepare. We learn several things from her book we may not have known before, or at least, as the Bible says, we may have only known ‘through a glass darkly’ (1st Corinthians 13).
─ 1: Team Trump did not act alone.
─ 2: It really was a coup attempt, complete with armed backup.
─ 3: The attempt is ongoing and is getting worse.
─ 4: Cheney had to organize her particular media experts and armed self-defense to survive, get the initial story out, and continue her battle today. Let’s go over them.
Team Trump was not alone. The fact that Trump and his staff, with the help of the Secret Service, pulled off a large rally on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, was widely known, including Trump’s online assertion that it ‘will be wild.’ We could have guessed that it would march to the steps of the Capitol and even try to push through police lines. But what we did not know was a solid majority of House Republicans and a few GOP Senators had been organized in a deeper plot, one involving dozens of GOP-dominated state legislators as well. They were all in on it; they all knew it was illegal, fraudulent, or at least ‘extra-legal’ and unconstitutional, and they were willing to use violence to get their way.
Liz Cheney knew the vital technical details. She knew the GOP collaborators would have fake ballots of fake electors, and they would try to stuff them into the traditional mahogany box handed to Vice President Pence for the counting ceremony. Cheney conferred with the Senate and House parliamentarians and the Sergeants-at-Arms on how to thwart it. She succeeded, but barely so. The other technical detail was that with each state count that Pence reported, House GOPers could object, but unless a Senator also objected, there would be no debate. If there were debate, the Joint Session would be suspended until each House debated and voted the ‘objections’ up or down. They would then return to the Joint Session for Pence to continue. This adjourning could be repeated 50 times, possibly taking days or even more, ensuring chaos. In the chaos, Team Trump would try to throw the election to the states, where each state got one vote, and the GOP held the majority of states.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the mob breached the Joint Session after only one vote, Arizona, and one Senator, Josh Hawley, casting a vote to force the end of the session. Cheney saw to it that the mahogany box was secured. She also had seen to her personal security. Her father, Dick Cheney, the former Vice President and Secretary of Defense, had warned her ahead of time to do so, and insisted on it. She used a trusted ex-Secret Service agent who had guarded her as a child to make sure she was always secure and protected as she moved about or in undisclosed places. Dick Cheney also had a hand in getting all former living Secretaries of Defense to sign a widely publicized open letter warning of the necessity for a peaceful transfer of power.
Liz Cheney’s next steps were carried out closely and jointly with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They hardly knew each other before, but both knew exactly what had to be done: The Capitol had to be secured that day, and called back into session, even if in the late wee hours. In that session, they had to complete the Arizona debate and make sure there were no more. Still, even after the violence, 139 House GOPers stuck to the Trump plan and voted objections. But no Senator voted with them, meaning no interruption of the Joint Session. Under armed guard against any disruption, Cheney and Pelosi got it done. Pence finished the count, and the ceremony was completed. Biden would be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.
It really was an attempted coup. Trump insisted that his guards at the Jan. 6 rally turn off their weapon detectors because he knew large numbers of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were armed. Luckily, the Secret Service was tactically split. Trump planned to lead the assault himself, but the agents in his limo forcibly restrained him and delivered him back to the White House. The mob who did get into the Capitol, and a trained handful of them knew their several tasks: seize and detain Nancy Pelosi, overwhelm the Sergeants at Arms, get the mahogany box, and seize and detain Mike Pence. Pelosi, working with Liz Cheney, thwarted each tactical move.
But there was more. In the days before Jan. 6, Trump had fired and replaced several top Pentagon officials and replaced them with his hitmen with zero qualifications, other than personal fealty to him, to hold those offices. He was assisted by Gen Micheal Flynn, who he had pardoned earlier. Along with Roger Stone, Flynn was Trump’s liaison with the Oathkeepers and other armed units. Trump also acted to confuse and limit the intervention of the National Guard. Once the Electoral College count was thwarted, the plan was to use the Insurrection Act to put the country under martial law.
The ‘Election Denial’ attempt was, and remains, ongoing. By Jan. 11, even though Trump had only a few days left in office, Democrats introduced Articles of Impeachment. It passed the House but with only 10 Republicans voting for it. The GOP majority, while offering a variety of excuses, still stuck with Trump. Cheney was hopeful that Senator Mitch McConnell would back it in the Senate, but in the end, he wavered, and that meant less than the required two-thirds. In the following weeks, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago to flip-flop from his panicked Jan. 6 statements and get back on Trump’s side. The reason? His main job in the GOP was raising money. As a result of the coup attempt, many large corporate donors let it be known that funds to the ‘Freedom Caucus’ and its coup-plotting allies were drying up. The only other major source was Trump’s massive small donor lists. The price of access? McCarthy had to kiss ‘the Don’s’ ring and work to bring him back to the White House. Liz Cheney knew the Freedom Caucus were, for the most part, all surrendering and would work to sabotage any future joint investigation. Cheney knew the full truth had to come out, and it wouldn’t be easy.
With the prospect of a bicameral investigation cut off, Nancy Pelosi decided on the next best step: a bipartisan House Committee. She made an offer to McCarthy to name five Republicans to it. He did, but Pelosi objected to two of them as demagogic hacks, Reps Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, and told him to pick two more. Instead, McCarthy withdrew all five, leading her to quip that ‘Kevin won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.’ But Pelosi was not to be stopped and instead asked Liz Cheney, and while Liz was a bit surprised, she readily agreed and helped pick one more Republican, Rep Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who had stood against all the coup ploys. Pelosi had named Rep Bennie Thompson of Mississippi to chair the Select Committee, but then asked Cheney to be the vice chair. Somewhat surprised, Liz agreed.
From the start, Cheney knew the Select Committee had to be different. The last thing she wanted to see was a typical House hearing with dozens of reporters, glaring TV lights, and prima donna speakers trying to wring all the stage glamour they could out of an allotted five minutes. Average Americans would tune out. So, working closely with her husband, Philip Perry, an experienced trial lawyer, they planned a radical departure from the average hearing. In addition to legal experts, they hired top film and TV directors. They wanted a series of storyboards drawn up, each featuring a key element of the attempted coup. They wanted it to unfold as a dramatic series, with growing insights and suspense, with only the witnesses in the limelight. Moreover, they wanted nearly all the testimony to come from Republicans themselves, especially those who worked close to Trump and had initially supported him inside the Oval Office or his cabinet. And for any fearful for their lives, they had to do the recordings in highly secure facilities—and with no leaks.
As we know, Thompson and Cheney were successful and powerfully so. The Hearings became among the most widely watched and the most credible that anyone could name. Trump and the GOP attacked it as partisan trash, but the claim didn’t fly. All the testimony did indeed come from their own people. It did cause Liz Cheney to be purged from all her posts in Congress and then to be removed from Congress by a Trump diehard who defeated her in the next race in Wyoming. It didn’t matter.
Liz Cheney now probably has more political clout than she ever has had. And we need to note that she is still a solid right-wing conservative with a 95% rating by those who measure such things. The difference is in the remaining five percent: she is an anti fascist who sticks by the Constitution and her oath to defend it. She is not only making the rounds to every media forum she can to promote her book and tell the story behind it, Cheney has also formed a new PAC, The Great Task. Its aim is not simply to keep Trump out of the Oval Office, or any office. It is also organizing Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to take down every Trump enabler, not only in Congress but also in every state legislature. And if it means endorsing progressive Democrats to do so, so be it.
This last point has considerable importance for the left. We are not in a ‘united front’ with Liz Cheney, or any formal grouping along those lines. We know her politics too well, and there are too many points of importance to sweep under any rug. But in the current conjuncture and its terrain, we do share common ground and a common goal: the routing of the MAGA fascists in the upcoming elections at every level and in future rounds as well. We can encourage Republicans we know at the base, people we know who are not likely to join our coalitions and projects but who might join hers.
Things will undoubtedly change in the future, and for that matter, Liz Cheney may change, too. Nothing in the Universe stands still. But for now, work on the great task at hand.
…
This piece is republished from the substack “Liberation Road”
Six Challenges for the Tough Year Ahead
By Max Elbaum
A mass slaughter of genocidal proportions backed by the current administration is taking place in Gaza. A candidate espousing US-style fascism has energized his base and makes no secret of his dictatorial day-one agenda. The opposition to MAGA is divided (on Gaza and immigration policy especially) and is not displaying the momentum anti-MAGA displayed at this stage of the 2020 campaign.
The people-power, energy, and savvy exist to regain the initiative. Different parts of the social justice movement will contribute in different ways. Here are six challenges that I think progressives must take on if we are to emerge from 2024 stronger than we are today.
1. Hammer home the danger—and look to what we can gain.
Keep sounding the alarm about the danger of MAGA while giving every component of the anti-MAGA majority a positive reason to vote against Trump.
Ignore all the pseudo-scientific polls—they are really just “punditry in disguise.” Instead, follow Michael Podhorzer’s lead and look at the results of the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections to understand the behavior of the Trump-era electorate. The key takeaway is that there is an anti-MAGA majority in this country that wins elections when it is motivated to turn out.
One part of providing that motivation is hammering home the nature and danger of the MAGA agenda: The GOP “Mandate for Leadership” plan promises to overhaul government policy across the board to serve an agenda of “all wealth to the wealthy”; to-do lines include plans to expand use of fossil fuels, and to use the Justice Department against political opponents (which includes rounding up leftists). It’s not just Trump: Liz Cheney’s new book reports in detail on the depth and breadth of the Republican drive to break laws and overturn what remains of US democracy.
But fear of MAGA will not be enough. We will also need to convey what can be gained by a Democratic victory over MAGA and the ways defeating MAGA can increase the clout of grassroots-based and progressive organizations. To be effective, this kind of messaging must be focused and specific, sector by sector. For example, for winning workers of all racial backgrounds to vote against MAGA, stressing the pro-worker nature of the current NLRB and the prospect of it becoming an even more powerful defender of union organizing can be an important tool and something for other sectors to learn from.
On some issues, we can only make a strong case that there are gains to be made with a Democratic victory if we can push the Biden team to the left. Immigration policy, where the administration is considering caving to Republican pressure, and Biden’s “bear hug” backing of Israel (see next section) must be a focal point of progressive attention in the coming days and weeks. These issues are of special concern to constituencies that have made decisive contributions to the anti-MAGA front in the last few elections: Arabs and Muslims, youth and especially Black youth, peace and immigrants’ rights advocates. Only a broad progressive movement that throws down in the spirit of “an injury to one is an injury to all” can move the Democratic leadership on these issues, and thus help bring the energy of these too-often-marginalized sectors into the high-stakes 2024 electoral battle.
2. Ceasefire now!
Intensify the fight for a ceasefire and re-elect every pro-ceasefire member of Congress.
Intensifying pressure on Biden to join the rest of the world in demanding that Israel halt all military operations—with consequences if they don’t—is imperative. The pro-ceasefire movement continues to shift public opinion, and new initiatives such as the January 12-13 Emergency Summit for Gaza initiated by Jesse Jackson will squeeze the administration further.
Stepping up for elected officials who have come out for a ceasefire will be an essential piece of this fight. As of this writing, 56 representatives and four senators—all Democrats—have defied the administration and embraced the ceasefire demand. AIPAC and other Israel Lobby organizations, fearful that they are losing the “bipartisan consensus” that has long sustained blank-check-for-Israel policies, plan to spend over $100 million to defeat the most outspoken of these (Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Ilhan Omar) in Democratic primaries. As primary season comes closer, we can expect other pro-ceasefire representatives to be targeted too.
These primary battles will be the next major test of strength for the Palestine solidarity movement. If AIPAC’s assault can be beaten back, it will undermine the “fear factor” that is largely responsible for the big disconnect between sentiment at the base of the Democratic Party and the majority of its congress members. Such a victory would not just defend the foothold pro-Palestine sentiment already has in Congress, but provide a springboard to taking the offensive.
Gains in this battle would also bolster the case being made by this writer and others that our chances of beating MAGA are diminished unless Biden either changes course or steps aside in favor of a nominee not complicit in Israel’s genocide.
3. Don’t cede the fight against anti-Semitism.
Go on the offensive in fighting anti-Semitism.
Apologists for Israel—realizing that defending the country’s actions is a losing proposition—are steadily amplifying charges of anti-Semitism against the Palestine solidarity movement. In beating back those attacks, the Left has necessarily spent a lot of time and energy debunking the charge that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic. In doing so, however, we have too often let ourselves get locked into purely defensive posture, which has made it easier for the apologists to advance the false charge that anti-Zionists care about what happens to Palestinians but don’t care about what happens to Jews.
We need to break this dynamic and go over to the offensive, making the case that the forces who are backing Israel today include the most diehard and dangerous anti-Semites: Christian Zionists who see Israel as prelude to a “rapture” when Evangelicals will go to heaven and Jews to hell, and white nationalists who see Jews as part of a “globalist” conspiracy to destroy America via “great replacement” through immigration. Further, the program of even the most liberal elements in the Zionist camp—a state in which Jews have special privileges and exclusive control the military and police—is inherently flawed.
It is the anti-Zionist Left—we who fight for equal rights for all in racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse societies—who are the most consistent opponents of anti-Semitism. It is our program, not theirs, that in actual practice as well as in theory means more safety for Jews. The Israeli ethno-state —supposedly a guarantee of Jewish safety—provides no such thing, as its dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians is a recipe for constant violence and war. Diverse societies where fights for racial, gender, and religious equality have made even incomplete breakthroughs are safest for Jews. And it is these very gains that are now under attack in the US by white Christian nationalists who boast of how pro-Israel they are, as if this immunized them from being anti-Semitic
A lot more work is required to turn these thoughts into a coherent program and, more important, an action strategy. But now is the time to get serious about it.
4. Build internationalism.
Beef up our internationalism and rebuild an antiwar, antimilitarist movement.
The unprecedented upsurge of pro-ceasefire activism does even more than create conditions for a major leap forward in building a more unified and broad-based Palestine solidarity movement.
As the first sustained movement at scale with internationalism at its center in more than a decade, it underscores both the need and the potential to make an internationalist vision and practice integral to the life of progressive groups focused on domestic issues. It also has thrust the militarist and anti-human rights character of US foreign policy in general into the spotlight, spurring discussions of how to revitalize peace and anti-militarist activism in general.
Again, a lot of thought and work will be required to take advantage of these opportunities. But the door is open at this moment in a way that it has not been for many years.
5. Seize history to explain our present and light our future.
Popularize a narrative about US history that explains how we got to our current circumstances and points to the social forces that can drive a Third Reconstruction.
The capacity to “shape people’s conscious and unconscious understandings of the world, of what is politically possible, and of their own place in the world” is integral to the fight for political power. Developing and popularizing a compelling narrative about this country’s past, present and future—one that “makes meaning” out of people’s disparate experiences and points in a liberatory direction—is imperative for a Left that aims to lead a coalition that can govern the country.
The rise of MAGA has led to new experiments in crafting such a narrative, often building on W.E.B. DuBois’ work centering the experience of the post-Civil War Reconstruction, and on lessons from the Second Reconstruction embodied in the 1950s-‘60s Civil Rights breakthroughs. Peniel Joseph’s book, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century, makes a major contribution. A new effort directly tied to grassroots activism, Two Americas on Contested Terrain: Constructing a White Supremacist Nation vs. Reconstructing a Rainbow Democracy, comes from Carl Davidson.
As we work towards strategic clarity and engage in the battle over the story of this country and its future, work in this direction has a lot to offer.
6. Keep hope alive: courage is contagious!
It will be difficult to meet all the challenges flagged here as well as others that face us in the tough year ahead. We will have to be real about the power of our enemies while remaining confident that appealing to the majority’s “better angels” can create a force that overcomes that power. In this effort, stories of what individuals can do in the face of adversity tend to have more power than even the most insightful analysis of each side’s strengths and weaknesses. We are in a moment when such stories abound:
- Palestinian journalists working in Gaza are paying “a staggeringly high price these last two months for the twin perils of being Palestinian and covering the war. Those who have dedicated their lives to uncovering and sharing the stories of people who have suffered a 16-year blockade and have seen their Western and Palestinian colleagues killed, maimed, and imprisoned by the Israeli military and censored by its tech allies…‘It’s time for Gaza’s Journalists to be treated like the heroes they are.’”
- “A young Israeli man was sentenced Tuesday to 30 days behind bars for refusing to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces as it wages a genocidal assault on Gaza, a war the teen condemned as ‘a revenge campaign… not only against Hamas, but against all Palestinian people.’“
- “Black mother-daughter Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss stood strong against the most vile life-threatening danger” after Trump toady Rudy Giuliani and a host of right-wing media outlets falsely accused them of ballot tampering. “People called for the two to be hung at the Capitol where witnesses could ‘hear their necks snap.’” They may never receive any of the $148 million the jury awarded them, but they faced down their defamers and won.
These stories gain even more power in the context of the collective courage being displayed week after week by people standing up, sitting in, speaking out, risking their comfort and careers—and in Gaza simply struggling to keep their families, neighbors and themselves alive. All these stories bring our inspiration and hope. Let’s lift them up.
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This piece originally ran in Convergence
How Can Workers Organize Against Capital Today?
By Benjamin Y. Fong
John Womack’s labor strategy is about workers finding the capacity to “wound capital to make it yield anything.” But the massive challenge in today’s deindustrialized economy is locating where that leverage actually lies.
Labor Power and Strategy, the new book edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perušek, officially aims to provide “rational, radical, experience-based perspectives that help target and run smart, strategic, effective campaigns in the working class.” But by the end of it, it is difficult to avoid the sneaking suspicion that Olney and Perušek have a different goal: to make clear just how far organized labor is from having a strategic conversation about its present impasse.
The book is organized around an interview with economist and historian John Womack about the twin needs for an analysis of the weak points (or “choke points”) in contemporary industrial technologies and for the labor movement to exploit that analysis to cause disruption and gain leverage. Womack supports the struggles of all workers to organize for better conditions, but he also believes the labor movement should focus not on raising the floor for the “most oppressed” groups of workers but rather on workers and industries where it is possible to gain the kind of leverage to bring the capitalist class to heel. In his words, labor “needs to know where the crucial industrial and technical connections are, the junctions, the intersections in space and time, to see how much workers in supply or transformation can interrupt, disrupt, where and when in their struggles they can stop the most capitalist expropriation of surplus value.” To do this effectively, he urges continual network analysis, or “grubbing,” to reveal the vulnerable seams in the fabric of modern supply chains — the places where ports and rail and warehouses meet, and thus where production and distribution can be effectively blocked.
Union power before the 1930s was drawn mainly from skill, or certain groups of workers’ specific position within the economy and the leverage it offered. The American Federation of Labor was thus a self-limiting organization at the time, and it took the challenge of the Committee of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to overcome its commitment to that limitation. In the common understanding, instead of leverage through skill, the CIO sought and gained leverage at the “point of production.” For Womack, this idea was “a mistake then, but now ignorantly, thoughtlessly used.”
At large in a nationally defined economy, in any industry, in any plant where there are technical divisions of labor there’s not one point of production, but several, multiple points, connected, coordinated in place and time to make production, not a point, but as Dunlop [John Dunlop, whose Industrial Relations Systems heavily influenced Womack’s views] called it a “web,” or as we had better call it now for the sake of analysis, a network.
For Womack, key CIO organizers like Wyndham Mortimer understood well that there was no single “point” at which power could be gained. The CIO knew it had to figure out where things connect, “where they’re materially weakest, maybe politically, legally, commercially, culturally strong, protected, defended, but technically weakest,” and the challenge today is to do the same for a deindustrialized, logistical economy.
Womack is engaging and nimble in conversation, which makes the interview a fun read, but his basic points are often ones that the labor left of previous generations would have found straightforward and uncontroversial. Here’s Womack discussing leverage:
No matter what workers are mad about, unhappy about, indignant about, feel abused about, it doesn’t matter until they can actually get real leverage over production, the leverage to make their struggle effective. You don’t get this leverage just by feelings. You get it by holding the power to cut off the capitalists’ revenue. And without that material power your struggle won’t get you very far for long.
To which I imagine leaders of the CIO responding, “Yeah, obviously.”
The interview is then followed by ten responses from leading lights of the labor movement that make Womack’s claims seem anything but obvious. Rather than think alongside Womack or extend his claims in various directions, most of the responses take issue with the priority he accords to “technically strategic power” and the kinds of workers who are in a position to wield it.
Katy Fox-Hodess, Jack Metzgar, Joel Ochoa, and Melissa Shetler all take exception in different ways to Womack’s prioritization of strategic power over the “forms of power that accrue to workers as a result of their collective organization in trade unions, works councils, and the like” — in sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s terms, his emphasis on “structural power” over “associational power.” Fox-Hodess asserts that “strategic power (or structural power) is deeply rooted in associational power”; Metzgar that Womack misses “the impracticality of focusing strictly on strategic positions that can upend capitalist power relations.” All four agree that the labor movement cannot in any way deprioritize the cultivation of associational power.
Bill Fletcher Jr and Jane McAlevey lodge a related but slightly different complaint: that Womack’s focus on strategic industries does a disservice to workers in supposedly nonstrategic industries. Fletcher, in a contribution tellingly titled “Should Spartacus Have Organized the Roman Citizenry Rather Than the Slaves?,” believes those sectors of society that are already in struggle must be supported, rather than the ones that are ostensibly more strategic. McAlevey meanwhile asserts that only “the gendered bias that power is exercised by mostly men in the dated conception of the male-dominant private sector” keeps us focused on logistics, when it is in fact “women, often if not mostly women of color” in health care and education who have shown themselves most capable of “exercising strategic power that deftly harnesses economic and social power that can’t easily be pulled apart.”
Regarding the first criticism, that Womack unjustly prioritizes structural over associational power, it should be said first that he in no way practically deprioritizes associational power. Without collective organization and the exercise of associational power at the necessary moments, he asserts, workers simply are not going to be able to take advantage of any disruptive position they hold. Metzgar points to the example of the failed 1919 steel strike, where workers “had insufficient associational power to take advantage of their structural power,” to show that you cannot have one without the other, but here he’s knocking on an open door. Womack is clear that workers cannot effectively use strategic power without associational power.
The latter should nonetheless be considered secondary, in Womack’s view, because true solidarity flows from an understanding of strategic power. Most workers, most of the time, are not going to put their own material interest on the line just to be good comrades. A culture of solidarity can and should be built within any union, but that culture is only going to attract so many; if they don’t think they can win by seizing the necessary leverage over the company, most workers are not going to engage in the requisite struggle, and if they don’t see their technical and industrial dependence on other workers, they are not going to be convinced of the urgent need for solidarity. As Womack says,
You can’t count on ding-dong lectures or jingles or pamphlets, “I’m my brother’s, I’m my sister’s keeper.” Sweet idea, but within hours at work you’ve got dirty jokes about it. But once you see the technical connections of one job with another, who can foul or ruin or stop whose work, who can in fact endanger whom, high and low, back and forth, like a team sport, a firefighter company, the armed forces, I think you get real attention to how much mutual dependence means, technical interdependence, the practice value and real advantage of comradeship at work.
The bigger objection raised by Womack’s critics, however, is that his technical emphasis privileges some groups of workers over others. Indeed, underlying the objection to his prioritization of structural over associational power is a worry that workers without the former are just being written off. Thus Metzgar’s claim that workers “cannot be counseled to simply give up because they are not strategic” and Ochoa’s hope that “organized labor can create momentum by organizing in nonstrategic sectors.”
Once again, the critics are tackling a straw man: at no point does Womack say that “nonstrategic” workers simply shouldn’t organize. When he asserts that the focus should not be on the “most oppressed” workers but rather on workers’ ability to disrupt production and distribution, his point is twofold.
First, in any economic situation, there are always going to be industries that, if left unorganized, will hurt organized labor as a whole. John L. Lewis did not start the CIO because he privileged rubber workers over carpenters; he did it because he understood that organized labor would never exert any influence in society until General Motors, Goodyear, U.S. Steel, and the other major corporations of the period came to the table. The situation is similar today with Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc.: until these companies are organized, labor as a whole is going to suffer.
Second, it is less that Womack urges the narrow organization of strategic workers than that he wants workers’ power as a whole to be more strategically exercised. Sometimes this means seeing some workers as more proximate to the nodes of disruption than others, but mainly it means viewing all workers’ power through the lens of their capacity for that disruption. This is where his central challenge to the labor movement lies, and what I want to focus on for the remainder of this review. Curiously, the challenge is relatively unexplored by his interlocutors.
Dan DiMaggio, Carey Dall, Rand Wilson, and Gene Bruskin provide more sympathetic reads of Womack than the other six respondents, but it is not clear that even these readers really want to go where he is pointing. DiMaggio sees “the bigger context for thinking about Womack’s points [to be] that any revival of the US labor movement will require the revival of the strike,” though withholding labor per se is hardly Womack’s focus. Wilson thinks “workers are almost always the most knowledgeable source of information about who is in the best position to disrupt the production processes or services and where management’s weaknesses lie,” though Womack is at pains to show that the highly complex distributional flows of the present require something like a labor institute of industrial technology to understand them.
In many ways, the essential reticence to accept Womack’s basic orientation is a function of the fact that labor and the Left are still both focused on the need, in Wilson’s words, “to realize labor’s potential power in the workplace.” This is a fine position to hold if power really flows through the workplace, as it did when there were tremendous amounts of fixed capital invested in gigantic factories. But today, points of leverage are very often outside workplaces, at those distributional nodes far from the shop floor, between companies, workers, and union jurisdictions.
One might say then that, for the labor left, Womack offends the basic imperative to descend into the hidden abode of production. For him, it is not the workplace as such that is important but the kinds of connections that the workplace makes possible. Some of those connections will be in the workplace, but many will not.
Wherever you put things together, there’s a seam or a zipper or a hub or a joint or a node or a link, the more technologies together, the more links, the places where it’s not integral. It is parts put together, and where the parts go together, like at a dock, at a warehouse, between the trucks and the inside, between transformers and servers and coolers, there can be a bottleneck, a choke point.
“… is it possible to mobilize workers not simply to band together and withhold their labor but to seize these choke points in coordinated action?“
Womack challenges jurisdictional boundaries (he even suggests at one point the creation of a “US Transport and General Workers’ Union” combining the ILWU, ILA, IBT, and IAM), but more generally he questions the very basics of unions’ organizing orientation (insofar as they still organize). To be very simple about it, we might see Womack as wanting to replace the model of the strike with that of the blockade. Unions, of course, are not unpracticed in the latter, but it is not the organizing fulcrum that the former is typically made out to be.
Once we get here, a whole set of fascinating questions emerge: first and foremost, if many (though not all) of the strategic disruption points have moved outside of the workplace, is it possible to mobilize workers not simply to band together and withhold their labor but to seize these choke points in coordinated action? This would mean, for instance, turning one’s attention away from organizing particular stores to getting smaller cadres of employees to occupy key distributional nodes and getting masses of other workers to support them. Right off the bat, we can see that the distinction between supposedly strategic and nonstrategic workers begins to fade: longshoremen and rail engineers are not necessarily the only ones with access to the seams in industrial technologies.
Still, they’d need to be supported by research departments that have up-to-date and sophisticated analyses of particular supply chains. Is the labor movement up for such a task? What would it need to approximate something like Womack’s proposed labor institute of industrial technology? Somehow the “Freedom Convoy” found the one bridge where 25 percent of all trade between the United States and Canada is conducted. Why wasn’t it the labor movement that took advantage of this situation?
Then there’s the question of how to support workers at such critical junctures, when historically company and state violence have been exerted. If smartphones are recording every second of a blockade, will that prevent bloodshed? What does community support look like at warehousing sites far from any affected community? Consumer boycotts? Can they be timed effectively? Would such occupations only work if multiple nodes in a supply chain were seized?
There are also further questions around internal organizing that Dall raises in his helpful response. For Dall, activating already unionized workers at ports and in rail can help set the conditions for organizing other workers: “To organize Amazon workers, we must first internally organize union transportation workers whose labor on the seams enables Amazon to get cargo of Asian origin to their hellish warehouses and finally to the consumer’s door.” In the case of rail and airline workers, there is a particular law, the Railway Labor Act, that protects these transportation workers in some ways but heavily incentivizes them not to disrupt things in others. What are those ways? How can these unions be won over to the idea that they might need to break the law, or how can particular workers be convinced not to follow their unions’ dictates?
Finally, the basics of breaking the law — how, when, where, and why to do it — must be foregrounded in any execution of a Womackian vision. From roughly the 1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act until the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, labor had access to tools that are now off limits: recognition strikes, sit-downs, secondary boycotts. The postwar compromise was predicated on tolerating collective bargaining, provided those tools were put down for good. Experimenting with disruptive tactics again is likely to bring about forms of repression the likes of which we have not seen for a few generations. The possible benefits are enormous, but any action for which people might be put under the jail must obviously be undertaken with extreme caution.
At present, the Left is rent between those who emphasize the importance of disruption, rioting, sabotage, etc., and those who encourage us to stay the democratic course. The more anarchistic emphasis on dramatic disruption can often be fantastical, but given the constraints of modern labor law, where many ways of gaining leverage are straightforwardly illegal, it does seem necessary to start some conversation about the forms of strategic illegality that labor activists might want to take up. Womack allows us to begin to broach this question in ways that move beyond the dichotomy of blowing it all up versus working within the present institutions.
These questions, difficult and speculative as they can be, all follow from Womack’s analysis, and it’s notable they receive such little discussion in the responses. I have tried to get at the substantive reason for avoidance — that Womack moves us away from thinking about workplace organizing in the typical ways — but perhaps there are more personal and institutional reasons there as well. Some of what Womack articulates bears a resemblance to the vision behind SEIU’s “comprehensive campaigns,” which produced some impressive wins but fell far short of their stated goals. Some on the labor left still bristle at the “smart” strategizing of SEIU luminaries, and maybe Womack’s speculative hipshots are too reminiscent of former president Andy Stern’s thought.
But the stakes for labor today are too high for past grudges to lead to a dismissal of the need for broad strategic reconsiderations. At root, Womack’s labor philosophy is quite basic: “You have to wound capital to make it yield anything. And you wound it painfully, grabbing its attention, when you take direct material action to stop its production, cut its profit.” But how to make good on this idea, with a stolid labor movement in a deindustrialized, logistical economy, is a tremendously complicated matter. Operationalizing Womack would take not just a set of short responses but a research team with real resources. I cannot speak at present to the feasibility of many of Womack’s proposals or the possibilities latent in his thinking, but those proposals and possibilities should at least be recognized for what they are: a massive challenge to the usual ways we think about labor organizing.
What exactly would it take to wound capital today? Womack doesn’t provide all the answers, but he should at the very least get us thinking outside the typical boxes.
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First published in Catalyst
Labor Power and Strategy is available from PM Press
The Teamster Connection: Apartheid Israel and the IBT
By Joe Allen
At the December 17 monthly membership of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, a resolution was put forward by several members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I was told by several people present that while the resolution was voted down decisively, it was not overwhelming. They estimated on a voice vote that around 65% to 70% percent voted against it, while 35% to 40% voted for it.
While I was heartened to see that a sizable minority of the meeting was for a ceasefire, I was also saddened that my old local union couldn’t a make the smallest gesture towards opposing genocide. In sharp contrast, two decades ago, Teamsters 705 pioneered labor opposition to the Iraq War, when it passed a resolution condemning President George W. Bush’s war drive. I’ve written about this recently here.
The Teamsters 705 vote followed the tabling of a ceasefire resolution at the Teamsters for a Democratic (TDU) convention in early November, and many activists are wondering what comes next for Palestine solidarity in the Teamsters? Israel’s ongoing genocidal war shows no sign of abating. Opposition to the U.S. backed war is growing but also faces determined resistance from the Democratic and Republican Party establishments and slander from the media.
Many U.S. unions have longstanding ties to the State of Israel. What is the Teamster connection?
Jimmy Hoffa: “Critical support to a struggling Jewish state.”
One of the least known aspects of Teamster history is its long relationship with the State of Israel, right from its very origins. Something I was surprised to discover until I started looking into it over the past few weeks. During a 2008 fundraiser held in Washington, D.C. organized by the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported:
“A little-known chapter in the life of the legendary Teamsters leader [Jimmy Hoffa] is about to come to light in a tribute planned for Feb. 13, when the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center will have a commemorative dinner. Former President Bill Clinton will address the gathering.”
What was this little known chapter? General President James P. Hoffa, Jr, son of Jimmy, told the JTA:
“They were not only fighting for working people but fighting for independence,” adding that his father was influenced by Israel’s struggle against the British and the Arabs. “He became involved in that and in facilitating arms for the struggle.”
The JTA straightforwardly commented, “Facilitating” in this case is a euphemism for “smuggling.” Stuart Davidson, of the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center, said that Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters “provided critical support to a struggling Jewish state rising from the ashes of the Holocaust.”
Hoffa in the late 1940s was president of Local 299 in Detroit, as well as a prominent Michigan Teamster leader well-known for his political ambitions. He was still a decade away from becoming the union’s national leader, and two decades away from going to federal prison. Yet, he already had extensive ties to organized crime in Detroit, that were well documented in the 1950s by the Senate Rackets Committee, and later popularized by Dan Moldea for a younger generation of Teamster activists in his classic book The Hoffa Wars published in the late 1970s.
It was these connections to organized crime that most likely explain how Hoffa smuggled American weapons illegally into the hands of Zionist militias and nascent Israeli military. If these claims are true, they are disturbing because they mean that Hoffa smuggled weapons to Zionist militias involved in ethnic cleansingagainst Palestinians, during what Palestinians’ call the “Nakba,” meaning catastrophe. Over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their ancestral homes during this period of time.
Jimmy Hoffa also helped burnish Israel’s image internationally as a caring society during the 1950s, while Palestinians were struggling for their very existence in Gaza and other territories. The JTA reported:
“In 1955, Hoffa held a dinner that raised $300,000 – a phenomenal sum at the time – for an orphanage in Ein Kerem, a Jerusalem suburb. He visited Israel in 1956 to dedicate the orphanage; a year later he became Teamsters president.”
Hoffa visited the orphanage that during his 1956 visit to Israel he had his picture taken with then Minister of Labor and soon to be appointed Foreign Minister of Israel Gold Meier. Meir was a hardened Labor Zionist, who was later quoted as saying, “They [Palestinians] did not exist.” He also met with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, considered one of the “Founding Fathers” of Israel.
The Rabin Center: “Breaking the bones of Palestinians”
Hoffa Senior’s contributions to the creation of the Zionist state were honored in Washington by the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center. Soon after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, Teamster General President James P. Hoffa traveled to Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post:
The Younger Hoffa raised $2.5 million for the Yitzhak Rabin Center. During his visit, a room at the center will be dedicated to the Teamsters. Hoffa said he had been looking for a way to strengthen his ties to Israel, and began to work for the Rabin Center on the advice of friends. During his time here, he plans to visit the Histadrut-run Alumim Youth Village in Kfar Saba, whose original Jerusalem facility was built by a $300,000 donation from his father.
The Rabin Center, created by an act of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is a favorite of American trade union leaders, including the Teamsters. What makes it possible for U.S. trade union leaders to so enthusiastically embrace the Rabin Center? Along with their general subservience to U.S. foreign policy, it also has to do the with Rabin’s affiliation with the Israeli Labor Party and the thinning gloss of “Labor Zionism” covering some of Israel’s institutions, notably the Histadrut, Israelis racist trade union federation.
John T. Coli, the former head of the Teamsters in Chicago, soon to be released from federal prison, led one union delegation to the Rabin Center in 2013, where he enthused:
“There wasn’t a nation here. Now it’s totally different. [Tel Aviv] is a modern city. People have access to health care, to education. That’s what we want to build everywhere.”
Add to this Rabin’s image as a fallen hero for peace. He was assassinated in 1995 following the signing of the now discredited Oslo Accords. J. David Cox, the president of American Federation of Government Employees, who led another union delegation in 2013, couldn’t say enough about Rabin the peace maker, his “commitment to peace in not just Israel but the world is amazing.”
However, the image and reality of Rabin the peacemaker are two different things. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, in The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine, wrote of Rabin’s military and political career:
“Yitzhak Rabin who, as a young officer, had taken an active part in the 1948 cleansing [Nakba] but who had now been elected [1992] as prime minister on a platform that promised the resumption of the peace effort. Rabin’s death came too soon for anyone to assess how much he had really changed from his 1948 days; as recently as 1987, as minister of defense, he had ordered his troops to break the bones of Palestinians who confronted his tanks with stones in the first intifada ; he had deported hundreds of Palestinians as prime minister prior to the Oslo agreement, and he had also pushed for the 1994 Oslo B agreement that effectively caged the Palestinians in the West Bank into several Bantustans.”
Bantustans are a reference to one of the methods that the old Apartheid regime in South Africa used to divide and disenfranchise the majority Black population. As one online South Africa history website puts it succinctly, “Bantustans were established for the permanent removal of the Black population in White South Africa.” This was a model for the type of “peace” that Rabin offered the Palestinians.
The Times of Israel reported in 2013 that, “Members of U.S. labor unions raised $1.4 million for the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv last year, 45 percent of the center’s total 2012 fundraising. Since 2005, American unions have raised $12 million for the center.” It also reported, “Cox’s group met with Arab-Israeli union members, but did not meet with Palestinians despite visiting religious sites in Bethlehem, a Palestinian city in the West Bank. Coli’s delegation did not have any meetings with Palestinians or Arab-Israelis.”
A dinner in honor of Coli raised $700,000 for the Rabin Center in 2012, alone. He returned to Israel in 2015, with injury lawyer Michael Goldberg, who referred to “as a guest of the Teamsters union.” Goldberg’s firm donated a $750,00 to the Rabin Center. It should be noted that John Coli was sentenced to federal prison for extortion in 2019, and in the following year, J. David Cox resigned from office charged with misuse of unions funds and sexual harassment.
Teamster General President James P. Hoffa apparently screened a showing of a film made by Yitzhak Rabin’s daughter Dalia Rabin-Pelossof about her father to the union’s General Executive Board . He told the JTA that , “People were visibly moved by the story and the connection of the Teamsters” to the Zionist movement. At the end of the day, Hoffa’s gun running to Zionist militias may turn out to be exaggerated boasts from the Hoffa family or flattery from Israeli officials eager to curry favor, but Jimmy Hoffa established a connection that has continued for decades.
Israel Bonds: “Great PR value”
The purchase of Israel bonds have been an important method for financing construction projects, and more importantly demonstrating political support for the State of Israel. As the Israel Bonds website reports:
For 72 years, Israel Bonds has generated $50 billion worldwide. Additionally, Israel Bonds has doubled its annual global bond sales for 2023, surpassing $2 billion. Israel bonds are a smart investment, with strong rates, and are meaningful investments, serving as a symbolic connection with Israel and the people of Israel for Jews worldwide.
The Teamsters saw a big public relations value for themselves with purchases and selling Israel bonds beginning in the 1970s. In May 1973, then Teamster General President Frank Fitzsimmons accepted the 25th Anniversary Medal of the State of Israel on behalf of the Teamsters. The Black tie event in Washington, D.C. drew members of President Richard Nixon’s cabinet and the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, who presented the award to Fitzsimmons. Messages of tribute from Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to Frank Fitzsimmons were read.
The following month, Fitzsimmons boasted in his column in the June 1973 Teamster magazine:
“In conjunction with the dinner, $26 million in Israeli Bonds were sold. The money is an Investment in Israel’s ability to defend its freedom, and it is an investment that provides a secure return in interest paid on the bonds.”
Jackie Presser, the mobbed-up leader of the Cleveland Teamsters and future General President, was placed in charge of a public relations campaign by Teamsters to combat its negative image in the media with Israel Bonds. Steve Brill in his classic book The Teamsters recounted a 1975 dinner in Cleveland, Ohio,
“honoring Jackie Presser for his extraordinary work in selling Israel bonds. Supporting Israel had been a favorite, if not the only, Teamsters public relation strategy since the night in 1956 when [St. Louis Teamster leader] Harold Gibbons convinced Hoffa that $265,000 collected at a testimonial dinner should be donated for the construction of a children’s home in Israel. Since then [Brill’s book was published in 1978] the Teamsters have been the biggest union buyers of Israel bonds. By 1977, they had bought $26,000,000 worth out of a total of American union purchases of $100,000,000.”
Meyer Steinglass, an Israel Bonds spokesperson, said, the bonds had “great PR value…these people [the Teamsters] are looking for respectability and this is one way to get it…And, in this union the guys at the top can make the locals buy the bonds. I mean, you know what they say, ‘You can find yourself under a truck if you don’t obey.’”
All of this enhanced the reputation of Jackie Presser. “Just about everyone who was anyone in Cleveland politics or business turned out,” Brill wrote. “At the dinner, Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz inducted the guest of honor into the Prime Minister’s Club, a group made up of people who personally (or in Presser’s case, through his union) bought more than $25,000 worth of bonds.” At one point, the Teamsters owned more than a quarter of all Israel bonds held by U.S. unions.
Today
There is a lot we don’t know about the current relationship between the Teamsters and the State of Israel. Educating the Teamster membership on the long relationship between the U.S. labor movement, including the Teamsters, and Israel will be vitally important. Researching the financial investments that the Teamsters and its many pension funds may hold in U.S. based corporations and State of Israel Bonds that support Israeli Apartheid will also be crucial. There will be further opportunities to put forward for ceasefire resolutions in local union meetings in the months to come across the country.
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This piece originally ran in Counter Punch
Senate Hearings On the U.S. and Israel
By Mike Miller
Among major nations, only the U.S. and Israel voted against a UN General Assembly vote criticizing Israel’s action in Gaza. The U.S. is alone among major nations in its one-sided actual (as distinct from rhetorical) support for Israel, no matter what it does. U.S. policy now threatens regional and perhaps wider war. In some circles in the U.S. now, to be critical of Israel is to be anti-Semitic. This charge, once enough to silence many critics, is losing its impact.
AIPAC is gearing up its formidable fundraising apparatus to raise money for primary challengers to Democrats who are critical of Israel’s present war against Hamas and its unwillingness to come to terms with Palestine. These primaries will be an important test of whether there is a shift in American public opinion on this conflict—both viewpoint and salience to the voter of the issue.
On October 27, 2023, the Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution offered by an Arab group of nations. The 193-member world body adopted the resolution by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions after rejecting a Canadian amendment backed by the United States to unequivocally condemn the Oct. 7 “terrorist attacks” by Hamas and demand the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.
Then on December 12, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to demand a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
The U.S. had to veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning all violence against civilians in the Israel-Hamas war. This is not the first time our country has used its veto power to support Israel.
What is now different is that the almost-automatic favoring of Israel in the U.S. is shaken. Remembering the Holocaust and supporting Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people is not the same as uncritical support for Israel no matter what it does. Netanyahu’s disproportionate violence in response to the horrible Hamas attack of October 7 is leading to second thoughts on the part of many Americans.
Only the U.S. is in a position to effectively put pressure on Israel’s policymakers by placing a hold on arms funding and shipments until a cease-fire takes place. Following that, the U.S., along with others, must then play an honest broker role in bringing about negotiations between the parties that ends in a solution supported by each.
The question is whether those supporting a just settlement to the conflict between Israel and Palestine will develop a focus on what U.S. foreign policy toward that conflict will be, or will continue to argue about the attack of October 7 and Israel’s response to it. That is a no-win argument. People on either side of it can endlessly draw upon history going back to pre-Christian times to support Israel or Palestine.
Precedent: Vietnam Hearings. January 24, 1966
Here’s the Official Senate Report on the periodic Fulbright hearings on the Vietnam War.
Early in 1966, a journalist who had interviewed more than 200 U.S. troops in Vietnam wrote to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright. The reporter explained, “The war is not going well. The situation is worse than reported in the press and worse, I believe, than indicated in intelligence reports.” A recent military buildup seemed to be having little effect. One officer told the reporter, “If there is a God, and he is very kind to us, and given a million men, and five years, and a miracle in making the South Vietnamese people like us, we stand an outside chance—of a stalemate.”
On January 24, 1966, Secretary of State Dean Rusk appeared before a closed hearing of Fulbright’s committee. His assessment: “If the U.S. and its allies remained firm, the communists would eventually give up in Vietnam.” Rusk’s testimony convinced Fulbright that the administration of President Lyndon Johnson was blinded by its “anticommunist assumptions.”
Attempting to forestall a buildup of American forces, Fulbright launched a high-profile series of widely televised public “educational” hearings in February 1966. The all-star cast of witnesses included retired generals and respected foreign policy analyst George Kennan.
Kennan advised that the United States withdraw “as soon as this could be done without inordinate damage to our prestige or stability in the area” to avoid risking war with China. His testimony prompted an angry President Johnson to order FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate whether Fulbright was “either a communist agent or a dupe of the communists.”
Conducted in the Senate Caucus Room, the hearings reached their most dramatic phase when Secretary Rusk and General Maxwell Taylor arrived to lay out the administration’s case. Fulbright shifted from his earlier role as a benign questioner of supportive witnesses to a grim prosecutor, his dark glasses set resolutely against the glare of television lights.
The February hearings did not immediately erode Senate support for Johnson’s war policies. They did, however, begin a significant shift in public opinion. In the four weeks that spanned the hearings, the president’s ratings for handling the war dropped from 63 percent to 49 percent. The testimony of George Kennan and other establishment figures had made it respectable to question the war.
Fulbright’s biographer concludes that the hearings “opened a psychological door for the great American middle class. It was Fulbright’s ability to relate to this group, as well as his capacity for building bridges to conservative Senate opponents of the war, such as Richard Russell, that would make him important to the antiwar movement.
Now
Now is the time for a broadly-based group of labor, professional, religious, political, business and civic leaders, joined by notables, scholars, athletes and celebrities, to call for hearings on the efficacy of American foreign policy. A statement they sign could read something like this:
The United States Senate should hold hearings on the efficacy of United States post-Cold War and post-9/11 foreign policy. Having defeated the Communist bloc and its allies in the Cold war, U.S. political leaders promised an era of peace, freedom and economic development. We have seen little to fulfill that promise.
The United States is the single-most militarily powerful nation in the world. Our war and peace policy may outweigh in its consequences the policies of the rest of the world put together. It is time for a public review, discussion and debate on those policies.
We, the undersigned, call upon the US Senate to initiate such hearings, asking the question, “Is It time for a New American Foreign Policy?”
The first round of hearings could be on Israel-Hamas-Palestine. But the broader question now has an opportunity to be raised as left, right and center critics of our role in both Ukraine and Palestine, are now challenging the post-9/11 foreign policy consensus.
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Olney Odyssey #20
By Peter Olney
Photo Ed Warshauer March 1983.
In Olney Odyssey number 19, I met the beautiful Christina L. Pérez in San Francisco on Labor Day Weekend in 1982. I returned home to Boston and potential normalcy.
Olney Odyssey #20 traces the story of how Christina came to temporarily relocate to Boston in the winter of 1982-83 and how I decided to permanently relocate to Santa Monica, California in the spring of 1983. Writing about exciting developments in the labor movement and the urgency of fighting MAGA fascism has meant a delay in this memoir. Fortunately my dear friend and accomplished writer, Byron Laursen has rescued me from my inertia and helped me to proceed with this tale. Byron has written before for the Stansbury Forum, and he has ably captured my voice and sentiments in OO#20.
This installment was rigorously fact checked by Christina L. Perez
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Christina Hits Beantown
I met Christina on Friday, September 3rd, 1982, in a magical moment, which I described in Olney Odyssey number 19, but I had to return to Boston on Sunday, the fifth, and get back to work.
On the flight back I thought, “That was wonderful, but I’ve got to settle down and get to business here.”
Nonetheless, I told my roommate, Ed Warshauer, about this incredible woman I had met and what an amazing connection had happened.
But when I also told him that I thought the work I had in front of me took precedence over exploring a romance, he flipped. “What?” he said, “Are you kidding? Do you think something like that comes along so often that you can just let it go? You’ve got to think about pursuing this!”
He was right! Fortunately, while I thought things over, Christina lit a fire under me on Wednesday the 8th. when she called from out in California to ask, “Do you want to go to a Mexican wedding?”
“What?”
“My cousin is getting married on September 18th. Why don’t you come? I bet you’ve never been to a REAL Mexican wedding?”
I hesitated and hemmed and hawed and finally said, “I’ll think about it, I’ll think about it.” As I hemmed and hawed Christina sensed my hesitation and blurted out “ I’ll pay half your ticket!” Charmed and embarrassed, I repeated, “I’ll think about it.” Before hanging up, she said, “you won’t be disappointed.”
As soon as I got off the phone, Ed said “Are you nuts? Get your ass out there. This lady’s obviously very special!”
After a few back and forth calls I decided to catch a flight back to the Golden State, in time to be her date for her cousin’s wedding. It took place at Quiet Cannon, a beautiful venue east of Los Angeles in Monterey Park. It was a huge, extremely festive Mexican wedding – the whole extended family, hundreds of people, and mariachi musicians in their sombreros and regalia, and trumpets, guitars and guitarrones. To this day I don’t know the names of all the relatives who were there – cousins, aunts and uncles and so on – and how all their relationships intertwine.
Her parents were very pleasant to me, but I could also tell they were feeling skeptical and bemused. “Who is this Yanqui?” I imagined them thinking. “What’s he doing here? We’ve seen a lot of boyfriends. This is probably just another one.”
The whole weekend was a tremendously special time spent together, a quantum leap from the first visit, which itself had been fantastic. We went from Friday to Sunday evening, staying at her studio apartment in Santa Monica, 11th and Washington, in the Voss Conti Apartments, a Streamline Moderne building from 1937, with all the apartments overlooking a central courtyard. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places.
By the time she saw me off at LAX I had invited her to Boston for a long weekend during Oktoberfest where she could enjoy one of her passions at the time, long-distance running, and run the Bonnie Bell 10K race. And, I could introduce her to MY family! Not to be outdone, I stepped up to the plate and offered to pay half her ticket and she didn’t hesitate one bit. Christina was coming to visit Boston. It was another era in terms of travel in 1982. Family and friends could meet each other at the airline gate and that is what I did. Unbeknownst to Christina, the actor and Boston native Ray Bolger – the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz – was on her flight so there was a bit of pandemonium when she was exiting the plane that added a touch more excitement to her arrival. If she was nervous there were no outward signs.
I filled her in on the plans for the weekend: hooking up with good friends, the Bonnie Bell, meeting my parents and siblings and a trip with good friends to Northampton where more family including my grandmother were hosting a late lunch. As planned, she ran the Bonnie Bell and literally ran into a rude welcome by a young boy standing at the sidelines who pointed at Christina and yelled in apparent disbelief “Look mommy, an Indian!” She was aware of Boston’s racist reputation, but this was a kid, wow! Of course, she had to chalk it up to ‘out of the mouth of babes’ and ignorant parenting. Her own large extended family had often proudly praised her indigenous features as being like those of her maternal grandmother from Mexico. This kid’s comment felt weird. “Where was she?” she asked.
I’ve always told Christina that she was an exotic sight in Boston because pale-faced people like me were most of what there was to see. Whereas her gene pool features, and dramatic cheekbones are pretty common in L.A. Still, she rolls her eyes.
All in all, it was a great weekend. As it was winding down it became obvious that our feelings for each other had escalated. We knew we wanted to make it as a couple. But one of us would have move so we could be together. We devised our plan the day before Christina was to return to Los Angeles.
It was as we drove back from Northampton with our friends Ilene Handler and Bruce Fleischer that we decided, with their help, that it made more sense for Christina to move to Boston. My heating and air conditioning training program was finishing the following April, and because Christina had interstate reciprocity with her nursing license there were many job opportunities open to her. We reasoned I could finish my training and be more marketable if I decided I wanted to try living in Los Angeles. There was always the possibility, she would remind me, “we’re crazy about each other now, but maybe our relationship won’t work out.”
Up to then we had only been with each other a total of eight days across three months. Now we were to move in together across the country, and across cultures. But she would hold onto her Santa Monica apartment. “Just in case.”
I flew out to L.A. approximately four weeks later on World Airways. It was the cheapest flight across country and a nightmare! I guessed that they only had one plane that flew back and forth from Boston to L.A. In any case, there were flight delays. I was scheduled to arrive in LA at six PM but didn’t arrive until just before midnight!
Unbeknownst to me Rita, Christina’s older sister and her husband, Bahman, had at least 25 friends and family members waiting to meet me. They hung around eating dinner as the night got late! Later, Rita told me, laughing, that she had to discourage one of Christina’s ex-boyfriends from waiting around for me to arrive from LAX. It seems he got more nervous about meeting me as the hours ticked by.
When she and I finally got to Rita’s house it was the Mexican wedding all over again. with lots of people who cheered as Christina ushered me in. I didn’t know what to expect but it was clear I was the main event! Welcome to the Perez Family!
Early the next morning it took no time to load Christina’s belongings into her two-door Toyota Celica. She had gotten the dark brown beauty tuned up recently and because it was only three years old, we didn’t expect any trouble crossing the US of A. We had one stop however before heading East on Route 66, and that was to have a quick breakfast with her mother and father, Ramona and David, in El Monte. We received the traditional “despedida,” the Mexican blessing, which I would learn to appreciate culturally as I grew to understand Christina and her family.
After a couple of hours, we were east bound on Interstate 10, heading for Boston through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and beyond. We had to get me back in time for me to go to work early Monday at Boston City Hospital, where I was a refrigeration mechanic. We crossed North America in three days, almost non-stop, only staying in a motel for five hours in New Mexico and another in Maryland for six hours. We took turns catnapping on long stretches. We kept each other awake by talking and listening to the radio waves of the southwest. Sports, news and music kept us focused.
I was exhausted but ready to clock in at “City.” We also arrived in time for Christina to experience the crisp November Boston weather and to see her first morning snowfall. She moved into my third-floor attic room in a friend’s house on Perkins Street in Jamaica Plain, right down the street from the beautiful Jamaica Pond and Way, part of the “Emerald Necklace”, a 7-mile-long network of parks and parkways that civic visionary Frederick Law Olmsted laid out for the Boston Parks Department between 1878 and 1896.
Christina expected to eventually find a similar job as a nurse practitioner in women’s’ health, the work she had in L.A. But when she went looking she got a surprise: there was an unofficial, unstated hiring freeze for nurses throughout all of Boston’s hospitals and clinics.
She also realized competition was stiff for nursing jobs. HR people at the places she applied told her the competition for the jobs had bachelors, masters and PhD’s in nursing! She had none of the above, just a state license and national certificate in Women’s Health. She saw the writing on the wall, after practicing for 17 years without a bachelor’s degree it was time to go back to school.
One day, walking back from a job interview, she happened to walk into the Boston Indian Council (B.I.C.) near our home. She casually asked the friendly woman sitting at the front desk “What is the Boston Indian Council?’ An hour or so later, after a friendly exchange of information, Christina was offered a job there as a nurse. The woman at the desk turned out to be the director, and their friendly conversation had turned into a job interview. She was to be Nurse Case Manager for the Native American patient population of the B.I.C.
It was a very satisfying job, though she had some interesting encounters along the way. At one point a very elderly woman tried sizing her up over morning coffee and donuts and she asked Christina,
“Where are you from?”
“Los Angeles, California.”
“No,” the woman repeated, WHERE ARE YOU FROM?”
Realizing the elder woman was wanting to know the name of her ‘tribe, ’ Christina said,
“Chichimeca, Aztec.”
Without skipping a beat, the women looked at Christina with her good eye and said,
“Never heard of them!” End of conversation.
Christina was really impressed by the cold weather of Boston. In fact, she still hates it to this day. Among Christina’s friends I met at Rita’s gathering was her close friend Theresa Laursen, a film costumer. Theresa had spent her first two college years at Endicott College, in Beverly, Massachusetts, so she knew about winters in the Boston area. As a gift she mailed Christina a pair of electrified socks, designed for hunters and fishermen. She had to stow its batteries in her jacket pocket and run the wires down her trouser legs, and she had to endure merciless teasing. But on days when even the native Beantowners were complaining about their feet being cold, Christina had her secret weapon. Before long, people started asking her where they could get a pair.
When Thanksgiving came around, we went out to Andover, to my old family home, where my parents were still living. Not only did Christina get to meet my extended family, she played in our annual touch football game. As New Englanders we aspired to be at least a little bit like the Kennedys. She caught a couple of passes and made a great impression. Though I did find out later that some of my relatives were concerned that she might be a gold digger.
Not only was this as far as possible from the truth, it also begged some follow-up questions, such as: “What gold?” “Where is it?”
As a Californian, she had never dealt with a real winter. When the winter of ‘82-83 arrived,
she not only made use of her electric socks, but also began cooking up a storm. It was a great way to keep warm, and her fame began spreading for doing great things in the kitchen.
One of the people who benefitted was a newly acquired friend named Ginny Zanger, whom Christina met through a mutual friend. Ginny was the wife of Mark Zanger, the model for Megaphone Mark in the Doonesbury comic strip. Mark had gone to Yale and had been a frequent, prominent protestor and campus radical.
At the time we met the Zangers, Mark was working as a food writer for the Hearst paper in Boston, The Boston Herald. The Herald is a tabloid format paper you can conveniently read on the subway. With Ginny’s encouragement, Christina cooked a Mexican meal for Ginny, Mark and me. The Herald ended up running a centerfold feature on Christina with a stunning photo of her and some recipes, which she attributed to cooking skills learned from her father.
As soon as the Herald ran the feature, Mark alerted Christina that he got a phone call from a guy who wanted to know who this woman was and how they could get in touch with her because he was interested in putting her face on his can of products! Needless to say, Mark thankfully batted those types of calls away.
I have a wonderful picture of her standing over a hot stove and wearing a sizable woolen knit hat and a wool scarf which was her ruse for staying warm.
She also put a myth she had heard about shots of whiskey to the test. She was surprised to see that neighbors helped shovel snow out of each other’s driveways before heading off to work. The first morning she jumped in to assist the bone-chilling cold froze her brain. She had to run back into the house. Then she remembered hearing that people sometimes took a shot of whiskey to feel warm, so she drank a shot of whiskey and returned to the cold. Of course that didn’t work!
It was a demanding experience, but she got through the adversities of a Boston winter. However, we agreed that more such winters would be overdoing it. So I told her, “Since you’ve shown you’re willing to undergo hardship, I can face the challenge of being in Santa Monica.”
In April of 1983 we again packed up her Celica, this time with my belongings included. I didn’t have many. In fact, if there was a gold digger in the relationship, it probably had to be me.
We again made near-record time because she was due to go back to one of her jobs at a women’s’ health clinic in Santa Monica.
When we got past the Arizona border and were officially in California, Christina was so happy that she stopped the car so she could kneel down and kiss the pavement.
The way things worked out for both of us in the years since, there were no more Boston winters. I moved in with her at her little studio apartment on 11th Street, and then began wondering what I was going to do for work. I had worked as a refrigeration mechanic for a couple of years, using the skill set I’d learned in a technical school. But, frankly, I was a total klutz and I knew I was not going to make a career out of that trade. For starters, I never really got proficient at one of the baseline skills any refrigeration mechanic needs to have: soldering copper pipes.
I understood the science behind refrigeration, the heat and the pressure, but the touch required for soldering a joint was something that I couldn’t ever master.
Even so, I tried for work in that line, and put in applications at places like La Boulangerie in Westwood, as well as other restaurants in Santa Monica and Venice. Luckily for everyone’s sake, I didn’t get any of those jobs.
Instead, I met up with an old friend whom I’d known in Boston. David had worked in a machine shop that was organized by the United Electrical Workers, the union that I had organized into at Mass Machine shop. He’d relocated to L.A. a few years earlier. He knew my history of working at factories in Cambridge and Boston that had closed down and moved to New Hampshire. He knew that I had experience fighting against these factory closures.
“Peter,” he said, “there’s a job as the organizer with the Los Angeles Coalition Against Plant Shut-Downs (LACAPS). They’re fighting the closure of the General Motors plant in South Gate, the General Electric plant in Ontario, and the UniRoyal Tires plant on the 5 Freeway, and they need an organizer.
The Coalition was involved in various communities to fight these closures, so I interviewed for the job, and they hired me. I’d done plenty of protesting before, but this was my invitation to be a professional. The Coalition set me on the career path that has remained my focus ever since.
The office I reported to was at the First Unitarian Church on 8th street at Vermont. I met several union leaders and all these community leaders all at once. I made some lifelong friends as a result, including our friends Gary Phillips and Gilda Hass. She was on the board of the LACAPS.
On top of being a kick-start into a labor movement career, this job took me all over the Los Angeles Basin. It was how I learned up close about a city that was the polar opposite of Boston.
I was fascinated by Los Angeles. In terms of size, scope and layout, I don’t think you could find a city anywhere in the USA that’s more different than where I had grown up. In Boston, an historical house might be from 1683. In Los Angeles it might be 50 years old or less, and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Richard Schindler or any of the other numerous architects who evolved the modernism of Southern California, which spread around the world.
Because the history of Los Angeles was more recent, in some ways it was more compelling, and more part of the national discourse because of Hollywood and all the other media that radiate from L.A.
I was fascinated. I read everything Carey McWilliams wrote about California politics and culture and the history of the state’s labor movement.
I was so happy to be plugged into all this energy. I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten so deeply into the labor movement if I’d stayed in Boston. So that’s one more reason that my old roommate Ed was right when he said “Are you nuts? Get your ass out there.”
This is the story I tell to illustrate how the two places, Beantown and Shaky Town, are so different. As an organizer with this Coalition Against Plant Shut-Downs, I got involved in fighting the closure of a community hospital in Long Beach. I think it was called Long Beach County Hospital. Residents of Long Beach were doing all they could to keep it open. I was invited to come to one of their meetings. I came with a proposal I’d sketched out on how to fight this closure. They gave me the floor and they let me present what I had in mind. The chair said, “What do some of you feel about what he said?”
People said, “Those are great ideas. I think we should do that.”
I almost fell out of my chair. In Boston the reaction would have been “Who are you, anyway” and “which parish were you baptized in?”
Two months later I was invited back to a meeting. The chair was a wonderful man who was a retired pharmacist from New York, a Jewish-American guy who had helped found one of the great unions of America, 1199, a very progressive health care union based in New York City. He announced, “My wife Emma and I are leaving to go on vacation in Europe for a month and we need an interim chair for this group. What are we going to do?”
A woman raised her hand and pointed at me. “He’s got a lot of good ideas. Let’s make him the chair!”
For a second time I came close to actually falling out of my seat. Because again, coming from a parochial, small, insulated place like Boston, I found the openness of L.A. very liberating. As for Christina, she got back to her prior working life with ease, and our relationship – even in a small apartment – kept growing too.
…