Tioga is 50 miles north of Dallas. Politically, it may be in another world.
When we made our little road trip, the first thing we noticed were the big campaign signs for Don Huffines hanging on barbed wire fences. He seems to think that Governor Abbott is a liberal. HIs main slogan for getting votes in rural areas, based on an outright lie, seems to be “Stop Giving Our Money to Illegals!”
Our second clue came when we arrived at Tioga and stopped for barbecue. By the way, we liked the food, and apparently lots of other people like it, because the crowd was pretty good for a town with population 803. While we were scarfing it down, though, we noticed that we hadn’t seen a mask anywhere on the trip. Pandemic or not, they just don’t wear them up around Tioga!
Tioga is the birthplace of the great singing cowboy
After the restaurant, we tried to fit in by taking off our masks for our walking tour. We went right down Gene Autry street. We thought there might be some kind of statue, plaque, or other tribute to the great singing cowboy who is, among many other things, who I’m probably named after. The tribute is probably there, because being the birthplace of Gene Autry is Tioga’s only claim to fame, but we couldn’t find it. Right next to the street sign where we paused for a photo, a sign hung from a tree: “Trump: Make America Great!”
By then, we city people had begun to get a little uneasy. A couple of blocks further, we saw our first “Trump 2024” yard sign of this political year. By the time we got to Race Street and saw a certain house, we were downright nervous.
Stars and Bars flies in Tioga
When we saw the confederate flag and the posted threat of violence, we decided that it might be good to get back to the car before anybody noticed my “Bernie” bumper sticker. As soon as we got back to City Hall, where we had parked, we checked the car for possible painted swastikas. Then we got out of Tioga.
Does anybody remember when Adolf and Barack made a joint statement?
On the way home, we wondered if there were any dark-skinned people in Tioga. More importantly, we wondered why people in the rural areas of Texas seem committed to the Republican Party despite all facts and information. We think it might be racism.
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. KNON posts my weekly blog “Workers Beat Extra” Wednesdays on http://soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.
Every New Years, I’ve tried to get people to make predictions. Hardly any of them will. The best I have received so far is a stock broker who called KNON. After I prodded him, he responded, “The rich will get richer.” That’s about the safest prediction I ever heard.
My 2022 Predictions:
Massive evictions will put millions into the ‘homeless’ category.
Vigilantes and illegal militias will flourish.
Political violence will become commonplace.
Police will tend to allow the anti-worker outrages to flame, while suppressing any activity of pro-worker forces. This was the precedent set in Germany in the 1920s and has generally held.
Poverty and hunger will grow, especially among children.
The formal educational system will continue to deteriorate as Republicans undermine them with schemes like “charter” schools and assaults on officials. More and more parents will begin to seek out internet solutions.
Big corporations will try to privatize the internet and everything else, including all utilities and municipal services.
Persistent inflation will force the federal reserve to cut back on “quantitative easing” and near-zero interest rates. Stocks and bonds will crumble but the “real economy” won’t be hit so hard.
Little if anything will get done about the environmental crisis. Freak weather disasters will increase and worsen.
As world economies teeter, governments will advocate new wars.
Omicron will hit early and hard. After it peaks early in the year, a solid majority of Americans will have some immunity from vaccination or from having already suffered through COVID. By late summer, it will no longer be the top of every news story
The democratic party will continue unraveling while the Republican Party will grow more homogeneous and harder.
Independent movements, particularly the women’s movement, will grow. We will see a revival of unemployed and homeless advocacy groups similar to those of the 1930s.
These independent movements will be larger, better informed, and better integrated than anything we have ever seen in history. This is because people are better informed and have infinitely better communications.
Unions will not initially lead these powerful independent movements. Unions will be drawn into the larger movement. They will play an important role in guiding and financing the movement.
The 2022 elections will show people voting increasingly for 3rd or 4th parties, Greens, Working Family, Democrats, and Independents.
One thing that the strong progressive organizations will agree on is this: vote for no Republican!
Americans will begin to experiment with the kind of political strikes that have been known in other countries.
And slowly, the way forward will begin to show itself.
–-Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. The program and a supplemental “Workers Beat Extra” are podcast on Soundcloud.com every Wednesday. My January 5 podcast includes these predictions. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site
The rich rulers of America have not chosen fascism at this time. That’s the only reason we don’t have it yet.
Today’s endless stream of denunciations of the January 6th fascist riots in Washington are excellent as far as they go. All of them blame Donald Trump. Some of them call for his removal. Some call for the removal of Senator Cruz and the other Republicans within Congress who provided the “legitimate” cover for the rioters and looters. One of those Republicans made videos of himself breaking into the Capitol with the rioters!
But every outraged denunciation I have read so far misses the point. The January 6th fascist uprising is just one of many such outrageous political acts around the world. There is a universal fascist movement, and it is gaining power.
Like any political development, there are reasons for the burgeoning fascism. Those who lay the blame on individual demagogues, even truly disgusting opportunists like Donald Trump, haven’t made a proper analysis. Without a proper analysis, a practical remedy is impossible.
The root of the crisis is unbounded inequality. The prevailing economic system is making the rich obscenely richer and the poor even poorer. Logic infers that the remedy is a different system, but there has been inadequate leadership in that direction. Instead, the world’s discontented are being channeled toward racism and supernationalism.
Instead of understanding that the system we live in can only make inequality worse and does not have the capacity to do otherwise, we are told to blame peoples of other nations, ethnicities or skin coloring.
Racists rioted and attacked their capitol in Germany last August. They rioted and attacked their capitol in Washington in January.
As we live in the U.S., we must primarily concern ourselves with the fascists here at home. They are not so hard to understand, because their political tendency has always existed and was made most clear during the American Civil War. They lost that war but won the peace and continued to dominate people of color.
Their political home was the Democratic Party until the civil rights movement became victorious (1965). After that, the Dixiecrats re-aligned with the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan announced his run for the presidency in a notorious racist town, Philadelphia, Mississippi. Powerful Senator Phil Graham of Texas quickly changed from Democrat to Republican, as did many other reactionaries.
But the Republican alliance of rulers and racists was always unstable. It only needed the pinch of a worsening crisis and an unstable demagogue like Donald Trump to split the coalition with violence. The racists ransacked the Capitol, the rulers piously tried to pull their skirts up out of the muck they had created. In the immediate future, they will likely emphasize their other political party.
That is what happened on January 6th, and it is far from over.
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s ‘Workers Beat’ program at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. We also podcast “Workers Beat Extra” on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, take a look at my personal web site
Tomorrow, October 26, reaction will likely firm its grip over one of the three branches of American government. Assuming that the votes reported from November 3 favor Mr Biden but are sufficiently close, Mr Trump will begin maneuvers to have democracy set aside. The people will respond.
Democracy is growing less and less convenient for the people in power.
When it first began to spread to the working masses, around 1651, it worked out great for the rich. The new kind of workers, prematurely named “free labor,” was far superior to the slaves, serfs, and peons of before. The new merchants and manufacturers could employ “free labor” to run their complicated machinery. Slaves, serfs, or peons had been okay as long as plows and wheelbarrows were their highest technology, but intercontinental travel and high-level manufacturing needed workers who could be highly trained and organized.
If we wanted to talk “isms,” we would say that capitalism created “free labor” and increased democracy. But “isms” are a distraction. We are just talking about groups of people bound together by their common economic interests. The big group was “free labor,” but the smaller group of bosses was running things.
The “free labor” group believed, as all exploited people must believe, that they were part of an ageless and unchangeable system, for better or for worse. Through the generations, they studied and they toiled, they believed, for their own benefit and for the benefit of their children. Actually, the main beneficiaries were in the other group.
Democracy was a blessing to the working people and not entirely inconvenient for the bosses, as long as they still controlled the major economic levers. Workers could be allowed to vote for some of their representatives in government, but they were allowed very little say-so about major economic decisions or government policy. Decisions about war, in particular, had to be reserved for the elite.
Here in America, partial democracy had barely begun before it began to be challenged. Slavery became intolerable, not only to the slaves but to a significant part of the population. Landless workers wanted democracy. Women wanted to vote. People “of color” wanted freedom. Younger people insisted on a fair share. Everybody wanted more education for their children and independent news agencies sprang up everywhere.
The elite rulers found themselves with the Frankenstein dilemma. They had created and nurtured both “free labor” and its concomitant democracy, but both were getting out of control.
The changes were gradual over time. Ordinary people became better educated, more information sources became available, communications improved, organization opportunities grew. Democracy was ascending, and the tight grip of the ever-smaller group of big bosses was threatened.
Even though change is gradual, it is highlighted in certain events and periods. The Vietnam War was one of them. From the bosses’ point of view, the decision was a simple one: they were going to destroy their enemies and perpetuate their control, just as they were accustomed to doing. But democracy and the people began to interfere. When the civil rights movement joined hands with the anti-war demonstrators, even the bosses could see that change was coming.
Since then, education has exploded, information sources have multiplied, communication has headed for the stratosphere, and organizing opportunities are going through the roof. The people see democracy as more than a comfort. It is a necessity and must be extended!
Many of the bosses no longer see democracy as tolerable. It has to be fought. It has to die.
What Will Happen
What will happen, sooner or later, is what must happen. The immovable object and the irresistible force must confront one another. Progress and reaction cannot reconcile. A small group of secret rulers will not willingly cede control. Ascendant democracy for all cannot tolerate a small group of secret rulers. Progress and the people will prevail.
Book Review: Reuther, Victor G. “The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW / A Memoir.” Canadian Edition, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976
Sophie and Victor Reuther wait for a verdict in a critical UAW election around 1989
Victor Reuther was an outstanding communicator. He wrote a good book detailing the roles of Roy, Walter, and himself in the American labor movement. Whether one thinks, as nearly all UAW members do, that Walter was very close to God himself; or if one thinks that Walter Reuther was largely responsible for turning the American labor movement toward a very sorry period for working people; one still has to admit that the Reuther brothers had exciting lives and etched deep marks into history.
Historians can use Victor’s memoir to bolster either the dark or the illustrious view of Walter Reuther.
I knew Victor because he helped my local union in a contract fight between March, 1984, and July, 1985. I emceed a fund-raising dinner and introduced Victor as the main speaker. I spent some time with Victor at the UAW’s Black Lake educational center and took advantage of an occasion to interview him about the past. In answering my most critical question, Victor told me that the communists had to be ousted in the UAW because they “had a separate agenda.”
Over the years, I have had occasion to talk to many knowledgeable history buffs and UAW members about the Reuthers. Even the ones who have a dark view of Walter Reuther’s historical role nevertheless agree that “Victor was the best of them.”
Here is a little bit of the narrative of the book: the Reuthers were raised as democratic socialists. In the early 1930s, Walter and Victor took a bicycle tour of Europe which included a stint in a Russian auto manufacturing plant. They returned to America just as the sit-down strikes began sweeping the nation. Walter won a seat on the executive board of the UAW.
Victor had a key role in the great Flint sit-down strike that established the UAW and won their landmark contract with General Motors. He drove the sound truck and was, thus, the chief orator during the entire fight. Walter distinguished himself with a proposal to use auto plants for airplane manufacture during the Second World War.
At the end of the war, Walter led an anti-communist faction to victory in the UAW. He remained President for more than two decades. Victor took on international affairs for the increasingly powerful union. Walter eventually took over the CIO and led it into the merger with the AFL. Walter was an important part of many important policy decisions in the labor movement. Roy rounded up votes for UAW political candidates. He died a natural death in the 1960s. Walter died in an airplane crash in 1971. Victor retired in 1972 in order to write this book.
To his great credit, Victor includes detailed accounts of the AFL-CIO’s deep involvement with the ugly deeds of the Central Intelligence Agency. They helped overthrow democratic governments and install dictators regularly, and Victor writes it down.
UAW members think that Walter Reuther created the UAW and led the strike at Flint. He created pensions, health care, and unemployment insurance. He raised the standard of living for auto workers and, consequently, for the entire nation.
Reuther’s detractors, like me, think that he turned the American labor movement away from its natural inclination to fight the bosses. As a social democrat who was neither a coward nor a traitor, he was probably the best of the entire layer of opportunists who took advantage of the government’s harsh anti-labor turn and unprecedented prosperity after the World War. As social democrats, the Reuther brothers helped destroy the most progressive elements in the American labor movement and, working in harmony with the government, throughout the industrialized world.
Reuther’s detractors think that employer-provided health care and pensions were a giant step backward from a national health care program and improved Social Security – both of which had been CIO policies. Reuther’s detractors think that the CIO’s commitment to civil rights was destroyed during the witch-hunt and, even though the Reuthers were the best of them, union leaders essentially gave up on progressive politics.
Reuther’s detractors think that, at best, none of them were historically better than their good friend Hubert Humphrey, the “happy warrior” of cold war fame.
I think that Victor meant his book as a tribute, but he was a straight talker and a gifted communicator.
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. I podcast “Workers Beat Extra” on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, you can check out my personal web site
Some of My Notes:
Pg 110 Estimation of USSR. “Historians will probably debate for centuries whether so vast a country could have made the transition from feudalism to an industrial state without great sacrifice of individual freedom. But in the thirties, we were constantly disheartened at the price that was paid, while at the same time we were astonished at the progress manifest not only in factory production but in the rise of the standard of living.”
Pg 144 VP Wyndham Mortimer went to Flint to bring the auto workers together as Local 156. His mimeographed leaflets were too advanced for Flint, Reuther says, so a delegation from the local asked that he be replaced by Bob Travis. Travis then asked Roy Reuther to help him organize Flint. This contradicts Mortimer’s book mightily.
Pg 145 Kraus Henry, started the Flint Auto Worker. He wrote his own history of the union
Pg148 Mortimer And Homer Martin asked Victor to come to Flint to join staff. He did it on Jan 1, 1937, the day after the Fisher Body sit-down began. Quite a bit about how inadequate and traitorous Martin was
Pg 151 Travis “The great contribution of Bob Travis cannot be underestimated. He inspired confidence and loyalty everywhere he went. Though not an effective public speaker – he left the orator to Roy and me –…” // Carol Travis said that Victor complimented Travis’ speaking style. In Victor’s account, the ruse that Travis used to win an important GM department was brilliant. He doesn’t mention what Carol told me, which was that Victor was not party to this strategic decision//
Pg ? Bill Mckie mentioned as a close adviser to Walter. McKie had been fired from Ford and used an assumed name. There is another book on Mckie
Pg 209: Homer Martin in cahoots with Harry Bennett, the hoodlum running Ford’s anti-union gangs
Pg 211 “It was not until March 1941, however, that the death blow was given to Bennett and his antiunion army. By direction of the Supreme Court and the NLRB … “ //He credits some lawyer with this great achievement, but doesn’t mention Nat Wells, the lawyer who got the goods on Ford in Dallas. I have Wells’ remembrances//
Pg212: Ford agreed to checkoff for his own reasons
Pg236: CP blamed Reuthers for not wanting merit pay. Browder attacked both brothers for opposing the war effort. Said that Vic was consistently anti-war, but that Walter flip flopped as his ambitions suited.
Pg 237 Color barrier: “I remember that 2,400 Packard workers went on strike when three black girls were hired, after consultation with the UAW, the War Production Board, and the War Manpower Commission. Our International officers stood firm, and the strike was ended with those three girls still on the job and many other blacks on the employment muster.” //There is another account of an anti-black strike at Studebaker. UAW broke the strike and stood up for civil rights//
Pg 246 6 hour day: “[Walter] saw an urgent need for a thirty-hour week with the take-home pay of a forty-hour week:…” //This slogan was in UAW conventions up until 1957 and then disappeared//
Pg 247 Socialist Plan: /post war/ “The government-owned war plants should be leased to private industry, but with guarantees from those industries that would protect both labor and the consumer.”
Pg292 Texas “The UAW turned to two highly qualified investigators…Heber Blankenhorn… “When Blankenhorn was with NLRB, he almost single-handedly broke the case in Texas involving the violence provoked by Harry Bennett and His Ford Service Department.” //not Nat Wells?//
Pg293: Reuther shootings. Vic lost an eye, Walter nearly lost an arm. Vic complains mightily that police did not investigate underworld connections of auto companies. All they wanted to do was investigate communists.
Pg 295 Vic overseas. //in 1950??// “…a year after I had been shot…I was then back in full swing and had ahead of me many missions overseas.” //Victor’s role was to build “independent” (read anti-communist) unions in Europe.
Pg 308 pensions
Pg 312 Social Security increase. Pensions asked for in 1950
Pg 315 Sub Pay Supplemental unemployment benefit plan: Walter wanted this because auto work was intermittent. They got it I think in 1955
Pg 321 Democracy
Pg 325 Meany “…imagine Walter’s horror when in February 1970, he read the Washington Post headline ‘Meany would end union votes for ratification of contracts.’” //Victor has a lot of disparaging things to say about Meany and the AFL-CIO that he ran for many years//
Pg 327 flower funds OK
Pg 328 Trotskyites tolerated at UAW Convention
Pg 331 ICFTU founded 1949. Walter was an early delegate. AFL and CIO both in it //It was set up deliberately to counter the World Federation of Trade Unions, which included unions from socialist nations//
Pg 341 Walter explained to Truman why German industry had to be rehabilitated instead of being deprived. One of his arguments, “A major goal of your foreign policy is to prevent the spread of Communist totalitarianism and to preserve and strengthen democracy throughout the world.”
‘pg 357 Health Care “The success of the British National Health Service was to have a deep effect on Walter. Some years later a national committee of distinguished health experts drafted, under Walter’s chairmanship, the basic elements of what has become the Kennedy-“Gorman-Griffiths Health Bill.”
Pg 358 Environment, internationalism, and disarmament
Pg 366 Merger “Though the merger actually failed to strengthen the labor movement…” Victor thinks the merger of CIO with AFL was “premature”
Pg367 Meany bragged about spending so much on foreign affairs while only 2-3% expenditures were for organizing in U.S.
Pg 392 Peace corps Walter had proposed Peace Corps at least 7 years before Kennedy did it. Walter said, “The more young Americans are sent to the places in the world where people are hungry… the fewer of our sons we will have to send with guns to fight Communism on the battlefields of the world.”
Pg 411 CIA “The seduction of the AFL-CIO by the Central Intelligence Agency” poem. Victor actually details the involvement of the labor federation with the CIA. There are dollar amounts, names of conduits, and quite a bit of how it all worked.
Pg 423: “Thus the AFL-CIO became, quite literally, a disbursement agent for the State Department.”
Pg 426: “It was not until he fully understood the corrupting role of the AIFLD in Brazil, and heard Meany hail the overthrow of the Goulart regime, that Walter understood what he had, in all conscience, to do.” //I think this might have been 1964// Victor asserts that UAW’s international work was never financed by govt but came from the interest on the strike fund. The AFL-CIO was using government funds for their “international work.”
Pg 429 Democratic Party: Roy said that they never intended to capture the Democratic Party
jPg 449 “The Reuthers, all of us, had had a long and close friendship with [Hubert] Humphrey over the years.”
Pg 452: [Walter] countenanced the vigorous antiwar views of Emil Mazey, Paul Schrade… and me.”
Pg 488: Appendix B “Agreement between the AFL-CIO and the State Department.” Details allocation of $1,300,000 from named unions to American Institute for Free Labor Development, African-American Labor Center, and the Asian American Free Labor Instruments for “strengthening free trade unions throughout the world.”
Pg 490: Appendix C: Budget for AIFLD
Pg491 Appendix D: Memo to Atty Gn RF Kennedy prepared by VG Reuther, WP Reuther and Joseph L Rauh Jr. Explains the danger of the radical right in America. This was the days of Goldwater and the John Birch Society.
Smith, Page, “Trial By Fire. A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction.” McGraw-Hill, NY, 1982. 995 pgs
This is Volume 5 of Page’s series on history of America. There are a lot of facts in the book, but factual reporting is not his method. Mostly, he compiles diary entries from people on both sides of the period. He tries, that way, to reflect what people were thinking as the years passed.
It is particularly effective when we try to un-puzzle what happened during Reconstruction. Did it succeed or did it fail? Should they have even tried or would it be better to have left the Southerners to do what they wanted? Who were the good guys and who were the bad? What difference did it make at the time?
Nothing is clear-cut in political history. It’s all a matter of point of view and opinion. Reconstruction may have been a good idea at the end of the Civil War, but a lot of people were against it. As time wore on, fewer and fewer people in the North really cared. The Southerners were adamant, and they thought they could re-assert the same relationships they had before the war.
One reason that Southerners were so optimistic about re-asserting racist relationships is because President Johnson had 3 years to re-instate them after Lincoln’s death. If there’s a bad guy, I mean a really awful bad guy, it was Johnson.
If there’s a good guy, a really good guy, it was President Grant. When he assumed the presidency in 1868, he made a genuine effort to protect African American people and give them a chance to thrive. When his second term ran out, reconstruction was over. The Republicans just gave it up. The strongest of them were the abolitionists, who had pretty well died out by 1876.
Page’s account of Reconstruction is the bloodiest I have seen. Black people were murdered and raped all over the South all through the decades following the war. Some died fighting, but most of them were simply murdered. There were large massacres and small massacres, but the Southerners eventually prevailed and civil rights went from a hopeful era to very dark times that persist today.
—Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. We podcast it, and “Workers Beat Extra,” on Soundcloud. If you are curious as to what I really think, check out my personal web site
The series examines what happens to the lives of those associated with an immigrant detention center that is operated for profit. This one is in Australia, where they unfailingly make great dramas, but the ones in the Rio Grande Valley are also run for profit.
Two of the main characters are inmates: an Afghani trying to save his daughters from the Taliban and an Australian citizen who is trying to hide her identity. The other two administrate the place: an immigration specialist and an ordinary working dude trying out a new job as a prison guard. The place works its wonders on them. Even more, the world system that creates 70 million dislocated asylum seekers and then mistreats them miserably works its wonders on us, the audience.
Part of the story, Wikipedia says, is directly true. All of it sounds true, seems true, hurts truly.
A word about the quality of the presentation: the penetrating insight into every character could only have been revealed by women. Both directors and both writers were women. Their sensitivity is a marvel.
By way of explaining how good the acting is, let me ask you if you’ve ever seen a Cate Blanchett picture where her acting didn’t overshadow everybody else? Cate Blanchett is very good in “Stateless,” but her role is limited. She is listed as one of several Executive Directors. If you’re a fan of Australian TV, let me ask if you’ve ever seen Marta Dusseldorp in anything in which her skill didn’t dominate everybody else? In this series, Ms Dusseldorp and Ms Blanchett are just part of a wonderful ensemble of players. Everybody is excellent. The actors for the four main characters are beyond excellent.
Top acting kudos has to go to Yvonne Strahovski. Her role is the most demanding, and she pushes each of her emotional portrayals beyond limits. After the first few scenes, you may recognize her as the cold hearted Commander’s wife in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” or maybe you won’t recognize her, but you won’t forget her again after you see her in “Stateless!”
Yvonne Strahovski
The Australian immigration/detention system takes a beating in “Stateless,” but several characters, including some administrators, give the impression that they are doing the best that they can in a rotten situation. At least they are trying. My movie buddy and I agreed, several times as we watched the series over a few nights, that the worst of the miseries “Stateless” encountered must be far worse here at home in the United States, where what they are trying to do with the immigration situation isn’t just rotten.
–Gene Lantz
I’m still on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. We podcast the program and “Workers Beat Extra” on Soundcloud. If you are interested in what I really think, check out my personal web site
American union federations should not accept police associations as members.
Everyone knows that the American labor movement has diminished in size and influence since the mid 1950s. The pandemic, the economic crisis, and a hostile government are accelerating the erosion today. Two doors to labor’s revival are open to us:
More of the kind of workplace organizing that we have always done or tried to do.
Improving our connections with broader communities that can add to our negotiating and electoral clout
We have to pass through both of those doors, but one of them is endangered by our association with police unions. The broader community, the broader electorate, distrusts police unions and anybody associated with them. A leading civil rights activist in Dallas today commented on the possibility of allowing the Police Association to affiliate with the Dallas AFL-CIO. He said, “If they do, I will never have anything to do with them!” He meant what he said.
Oddly, a lot of the public argument seems to be about whether or not police unions are really unions. If a union is a group of people organized together to advance their aims and defend their members, then certainly the police associations are unions. No argument.
Using the same definition, though, a lot of other associations are also unions. They advance their aims and defend their members. The Chamber of Commerce, arguably labor’s worst enemy, meets the definition. The Business Roundtable is a union. So is the White Citizens’ Alliance. They are unions, but they are not on the side of working families — and neither are the police.
TOPSHOT – Police officers clash with protestors near the White House on June 1, 2020 as demonstrations against George Floyd’s death continue. – Police fired tear gas outside the White House late Sunday as anti-racism protestors again took to the streets to voice fury at police brutality, and major US cities were put under curfew to suppress rioting.With the Trump administration branding instigators of six nights of rioting as domestic terrorists, there were more confrontations between protestors and police and fresh outbreaks of looting. Local US leaders appealed to citizens to give constructive outlet to their rage over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, while night-time curfews were imposed in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and Houston. (Photo by Jose Luis Magana / AFP) / ALTERNATE CROP (Photo by JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AFP via Getty Images)
Even the editors of the Dallas Morning News, historic enemies of working families, argue that police unions are reactionaries. The combined constituency groups of the AFL-CIO issued a statement that contains this:
“We demand local schools, colleges, universities, and all public institutions cut ties with the police.”
It is entirely possible, given the desperate financial situation of many actual unions, that members might want to affiliate with the police associations just for the money. They would argue that unions would benefit from additional workplace organizing; door number 1 above.
But door number 2, our hope of harnessing labor’s power along with the broad progressive community and electorate, would be swinging closed.
American labor should not affiliate with police associations.
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9 Central Time. They podcast the program plus other statements on Soundcloud. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site
Are today’s protests really going to change America? Will racism come to an end?
One thing I have really liked about the last 11 days of international protest is that it seems to be evolving from unfocused outrage toward serious demands. One recent local demand I’m hearing is to fire the Dallas mayor, city administrator, and police chief. I’m pretty sure there’s no real change in that one because we’d just end up with 3 new faces, just as likely worse as better.
The police themselves are coming up with some reforms. Dallas police, for example, say they will no longer use choke-holds against us and that they will announce their intentions before they shoot us. Individual police will be asked to restrain other police who are doing things illegally. The Democrats have a bill in Congress that would theoretically change police from “warriors” to “protectors.” All non-transitional reforms are welcome, but they don’t change the fundamental relationship between police and the population.
Most recently, I hear the demand “defund the police” and re-allocate the money to developing poor communities. According to today’s Dallas newspaper, some City Councilpersons seem to be in favor! That demand might actually be transitional.
When I was a Trotskyite, we argued that transitional demands were those that could not be met while capitalism remained intact. We used to say that our Vietnam anti-war demand “Out Now!”, a very powerful and successful demand, was transitional. The argument was that capitalism could not exist without successful imperialism. With hindsight, we have to say that we were wrong, because America withdrew from Vietnam and went right on with imperialism.
In the 1960s we had a similar youth movement. Possibly bigger, although it’s hard to tell because there are literally hundreds of smaller demonstrations every day. But that was during a time of prosperity. Those student activists had very little chance of actually connecting with the working class, and in truth we didn’t.
Today, we probably have at least fifty million American families in dire economic straits. Most of the world is even worse off. The young activists won’t find it very hard, if they try, to connect with the rest of the working class. Nobody, except the affluent, like what is happening and is about to happen in America.
As the American labor federation, AFL-CIO, has already called for a “Day of Action” on June 17, which will include a demand for racial justice, we are likely to find out sooner rather than later about this worker/youth connection.
Today’s young activists, if they try, will not find it difficult to connect with the rest of the world working class, either. The most impressive thing about today’s demonstrations is their worldwide reach!
Could local governments “defund the police” and still maintain capitalist control over our giant working class? That’s the question that makes it all so interesting!
I don’t think we’re going to find out because I don’t think that police are likely to be defunded anytime soon, even though the demand will not disappear. It’s more likely that this demand will be added to future consciousness-raising economic demands that, considered together, will truly change the world!
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. The program is podcast along with “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts every Wednesday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.
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