democracy

Play on Hughes was Sellout

March 11, 2019

art, civil rights, democracy, history, politics

Stage West Theater in Fort Worth Texas sold all their tickets for the last matinee performance of “Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been…” by Carlyle Brown. It’s about one of poet Langston Hughes’ testimonies to the McCarthy anticommunist committee in 1953.

“Are You Now…” in Ft Worth

People who attended because they wanted to get more insight into the great poet and his poetry, or people who just like to see a well-done one-man performance, were probably quite pleased.

Those of us who wanted to see an uplifting portrayal of America’s fight against fascism, or at least wanted to gather insight into what happened during the McCarthy period so we can avoid it now, were severely disappointed.

There were two acts. Djore’ Nance performed alone and made an effort to give an insight into Langston Hughes, his times, and his work. In other words, it was essentially a lecture. It was a very good lecture and well performed, but still a lecture.

In the second act, Christopher Dontrell Piper played Hughes’ lawyer and sat beside him while off-site questions came from, supposedly, Senator Dirksen, anti-communist spokesperson David Schine, top anti-communist prosecutor Roy Cohn, and the infamous McCarthy himself. Piper had about two lines, so the second act was about like the first, all Nance. The responses to the investigators were, apparently, mostly taken from the actual testimony in 1953.

Hughes did not stand up to Mc Carthism. He avoided any kind of confrontation. He didn’t defend his rights or anybody’s. He ended his testimony with a loving endorsement of the entire process. Yes, he probably had to. Dozens of otherwise good people caved in to McCarthyism and hardly anybody opposed it. But why make a play about it?

Why not, instead, make a play about Paul Robeson or Dashiell Hammett, or one of the others who fought back as well as they could and suffered the consequences?

The audience rose to their feet and applauded as the play closed, but they also headed for the door. I could hardly wait to get out of there. There was far more information, and more meaningful content, in the playbill than there was in the play. YouTube has dozens of more worthwhile works.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, see my personal web site.

Horrors of Yesterday and Tomorrow

March 2, 2019

democracy, history

Leave a comment

Movie Review: “The Photographer of Mauthausen,” Directed by Mar Targarona. 1 hour, 50 minutes. In Spanish and German with subtitles

Spanish Democracy in Shreds

In the news, we see that President Trump’s new best friend, the fascist President of Brazil, is involving himself in world affairs as part of Trump’s amen chorus. At the same time, the movies keep bathing us in the horrors about the last time the world lurched this close to fascism.

The 2018 Netflix film from Spain tells about a horror camp with a 50% survival rate. As in all of these many films, the Nazis humiliate, torture, gas, and otherwise murder an endless stream of victims throughout the film. The main protagonist is one of the fighters from the Spanish Republic who sought refuge after the fascist General Franco, thanks to the generosity of Mussolini and Hitler, ripped up democracy in his home country.

Some of the inmates of Nazi concentration camps, we already know from previous movies, were spared the worst of the hardships because they had a particular skill that the fascists valued. Francisco, or Franz as they call him, was a photographer.

As the inmates become aware that the German army is losing on the Eastern front, Franz convinces his fellow communist inmates that they must preserve the record of the horrors of Mauthausen. The Nazis order all incriminating photos and negatives destroyed, but Franz starts hiding them so that, he hopes, justice may someday be served. You can guess what images they select for the ending scenes of the movie.

There is a graphic novel and a movie sharing this story. I first heard about them in a review in a magazine, “The Volunteer,” about the Abraham Lincoln Brigades – the Americans who went to Spain in a hopeless attempt to preserve democracy. They appreciated both the graphic novel and the movie, even though they had some criticisms about what actually happened and yearned, as I do, for some stronger way to convey the truth. Graphic novels and movies, after all, are mostly entertainment. I think they preferred a documentary book, “Spaniards in Mauthausen,” by Sara Brenneis. She says that 10,000 who fought for the Republic ended up in Mauthausen. By now, those of us interested in fascism yesterday and tomorrow aren’t impressed even by numbers. Ten thousand tortured? Sixty million dead? How can we even imagine it?

The new movie teaches its lessons well. We learn what people have gone through and how the survivors survived. All the while, as I watched these Spaniards suffer for their heroism, I kept thinking that the most horrible of the horrors of fascism boils down to one main thing: it wasn’t necessary. There was nothing in the stars or the affairs of humankind that brought us to the holocaust. People, a few people, made it happen and other people, a few other people, were complicit because they could have made it stop.

I’m also reading a book about the United States and the Spanish Civil War, even though it wasn’t a civil war at all, and I look forward to reviewing it here. If I am too preachy, then I defend myself because this is a time for preaching.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program 89.3 FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time ever Saturday. If you are interested in what I really think, check out my personal web site

Opportunism Knocks

February 28, 2019

democracy, elections, history, politics, strategy

Leave a comment

It is getting harder to find a Democrat who is not running for president. I have found a few, but they were running for Mayor of Dallas.

So many candidates, so few choices!

I guess they think 2020 will be their electable year, because anybody could beat the presumptive Republican candidate, Donald Trump. But for the rest of us, the giant list of Trump-defeaters is a source of frustration. With so many candidates in the primaries, they are going to expend a large part of the resources and energy they would need to actually win in the general election.

So why are they all running?

One would like to think that each of the candidates running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination is doing it in order to defeat Trump and restore democracy. Or at least they could be running just because they think the Democrats are better than the Republicans.

But we know that’s not really it. If it were true, they’d be looking for the strongest candidate and trying to help him or her over the finish line, not cutting each other’s throats in the primary race.

The sad truth is that nearly all candidates for public office are doing it for opportunistic reasons of their own. In other words, they are advancing their own careers no matter how many times they say they are doing it for us.

The political term “opportunism” generally means sacrificing higher principles for personal gain. It sounds so awful that one would like to think that it’s rare, or at least not customary.

Followers of Bernie Sanders in 2016 are especially angry, and rightfully so, at all the candidates coming forward with most or part of Bernie’s trailblazing 2016 program. If they’re really for Bernie’s program, why aren’t they supporting Bernie?

Opportunism exists in many forms, not just in electoral politics. When a good union representative gets promoted into management, especially into the human relations department, that’s opportunism. It happens a lot. Stool pigeons in the progressive movement are opportunists, and so are so-called progressive leaders who sell out for personal gain.

It’s like polio, AIDS, or malaria, it’s awful and it’s everywhere.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program 89.3FM in Dallas at 9 AM central time every Saturday. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site

Minority Rule in America?

February 26, 2019

democracy, economy, elections, politics

Leave a comment

If you haven’t heard Kenneth Williams explain the Republican attempt to rule America as a minority, you can watch the full 2-hour video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj5-yDxnXQY.

Kenneth Williams “Why Republicans are determined to rule as a minority!”

Williams explained it carefully to the College of Complexes free speech meeting in Dallas on February 23. He began by pointing out that popular American opinion and Republican Party dogma are growing more and more disparate every election cycle. While people want women’s rights, Republicans go against. While people want gay marriage, Republicans go against. People want health care, Etc etc etc

Willilams explains that democracy is ultimately doomed under the Republican’s plan. They have to impose values that the American public doesn’t want. That’s why they work so hard at voter deception and voter repression. If nothing changes, fascism is virtually inevitable.

But Kenneth Williams predicts that something will change. In fact, it is already changing as witness the more robust turnout in the 2018 elections. People are waking up and taking a hand in things. Fascism cannot prevail against an enlightened and activated body politic. Kenneth Williams has great ideas, as you will see from the video, about how to grow democracy in our fair land.

Nevertheless, one can see from everyday politics that Williams is describing today’s situation accurately. On the immigration issue alone, the Republicans are varying further and further away from public opinion. Furthermore, they don’t seem to care!

Let’s figure it out

Our ability to fight against minority rule (fascism) is strengthened when we understand what we are up against. Here’s how to look at the two polarizing trends pulling away from each other:

In the first trend, Americans are more and more enlightened. That’s because we are better educated. The internet has given us lifelong learning. As people understand more, especially about people they previously would never have contacted, they become kinder, more flexible, and more forgiving. So people are getting smarter and, well, better.
The second trend has to do with the distribution of wealth. Currently, wealth and income inequality are at all-time highs in all the rich nations and especially in the United States. Fewer and fewer people have more and more of the money. Those are the people that the Republicans are catering to. The only way to please them, and to keep on pleasing them, is with minority rule.

Kenneth Williams is a brilliant speaker and I recommend you have him at your meetings soon. Enlighten and activate Americans so that fascism, minority rule, won’t stand a chance!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program 89.3 FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

The Immigration Solution

February 21, 2019

civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy

Leave a comment

What Immigration Laws Do You Want?

The Wall is no solution,
but what is?

I sat in on a very nice conversation about immigration the other day. All five of us didn’t like the way things are nor the direction they seem to be heading. At the same time, I don’t think we had very clear ideas about what we’d like to see.

One guy actually had some valuable historical information. He said that the United States hardly had an immigration policy before 1920 when immigration quotas were legally made proportional to the ethnic groups counted in the 1920 census. In other words, if 9% of Eastern Europeans currently live in the United States, then 9% of new immigrants in 1921 are supposed to be Eastern Europeans. That’s the quota system.

One exception, he said, was China. In the 1880’s, they passed the “Chinese Exclusion Act” specifically to keep companies from continuing to bring in Chinese.

He went on to say that the quota system no longer exists. They have some more complicated way of saying who gets in and who doesn’t. He also said that a great many of the undocumented workers in this country today first arrived here legally. Then, instead of going home when their visa was up, they just stayed.

While we were talking history, one participant brought up the fact that the entire Southwestern United States, where all the controversy is, was stolen from Mexico.

As the conversation went on, it became more and more apparent that the immigration “crisis” as described by President Trump and capable of being remedied only by a giant wall is pretty much all nonsense. A wall won’t stop drugs, it won’t stop crime, and it won’t even stop immigrants.

But, I asked everybody, “What do you want?”

Everybody didn’t answer, but one woman said that she wanted immigration matters to be handled more humanely and respectfully. I responded that any attempt to make immigration less unpleasant will result in more immigration. In other words, if things were nicer at the border, there would be more people trying to get in.

She went on to say that United States policies create a lot of problems in other countries. We cause our own immigration problems, she said, and nicer foreign policy would cause people to stay home and not trek to the U.S. border.

And that leads me to the crux of the matter.

Capitalism Creates The Problem

Of course capitalist countries exploit other countries. That’s how it works. Each capitalist nation is a gang’s turf, defended by the gang’s “muscle.” In other words, the very wealthy people of the United States operate within a certain territory that is guarded by their military and police forces. Their “muscle” protects their riches. They foray into other countries, into some other gang’s turf, for purposes of exploitation.

The people suffering the exploitation, rather than starve, tend to pick up and leave. They go where the money is. Right now, the gangs of the United States have the most successful turf the world has ever known, and the exploited peoples of other turfs often want to come here.

Capitalist nations are set up and run by capitalists. The entire idea of a modern nation comes from capitalism.

If we had open borders, which is the only long-term solution to the immigration “problem,” we couldn’t have capitalism. That’s the answer to “What do we want?” No immigration problem. No capitalism.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

“It Wasn’t The Wall!”

February 6, 2019

democracy, politics, strategy

Leave a comment

“It had nothing to do with the wall!” Kenneth Williams explained the recent 35-day government shutdown to the Dallas Chapter of Texas Alliance for Retired Americans meeting on February 6. Williams is a political activist from Rowlett, near Dallas. President George Nolan put Williams on the agenda first.

Kenneth Williams
explained the shutdown

The tipoff, Williams explained, was that Mr Trump had two years in which his party controlled both houses of Congress, yet he didn’t take such drastic action to get his wall. He didn’t do it until the Democrats won the House of Representatives. Williams asked, “If they really wanted money for the wall, why didn’t they do it when they had control of Congress?”

The real reason that Trump provoked the shutdown was to usurp power from Congress. Williams said that Trump was thinking, “We must do something to put them in their place.” But, Williams said, “They underestimated the unity of the Democrats in opposing them.”

Another lesson we learned from the shutdown is that so-called “middle income” job holders don’t have money in reserve. They live paycheck-to-paycheck. The shutdown put a terrible hardship on government employees and contractors. The contractors may never recover.

Will Trump provoke another shutdown? Williams thinks not, because the entire Republican party is not crazy. They know that they lost power and influence and they don’t want any more of it. Williams said, “The Republican Senators are terrified of going through this again.”

One of the activists asked, “How is Trump going to get out of this corner?” Kenneth Williams answered, “He is not going to get out of the corner… he will make up some facts.”

Other retiree activists at the meeting agreed with Williams. Some of them had even stronger statements.

Retiree Meetings Aren’t Just Social Events

The two-hour meeting covered a lot of analysis of the situation confronting retirees followed by recommendations as to how to fight back. Fernando Rojas gave announcements from Senior Source, the local dispenser of government help for retirees. Alliance Field Organizer Judy Bryant went over pending state and federal legislation affecting how retirees live.

Bryant then went on to organize delegations to local congresspersons, voter registration, and other ways that retirees may influence decision makers.

Remember the Holocaust

January 29, 2019

art, democracy, history, politics

Leave a comment

Film Review: “Who Will Write Our History,” Written, produced and directed by Roberta Grossman. Based on the book by Samuel Kassow

For Holocaust Remembrance Day in Dallas, people from all over the city gathered at the historic Texas Theater to see this documentary about the Warsaw ghetto and the small group of historians who risked their lives to document the tragedy.

They wrote down everything they could, and they saved photos, drawings, and printed (by the German occupation) materials. Then they wrapped it the best they could and buried it. The resulting account was dug up after World War II and constitutes a day-by-day account of the horrors they bore. The film says that the complete Warsaw Archives were buried in three separate parts of the ghetto, and that only two of these treasures have been found so far.

The documentary film has a lot of the footage that the occupiers shot, still shots of some of the archives, plus testimony and narration. It is interspersed with docu-drama film to make a seamless presentation that makes sense. Or rather, it makes as much sense as anything concerning the holocaust does.

We must cry when we remember, but remember we must. The film was shown all over the world on January 27. Its tour continues.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio program at 9 AM every Saturday Central Time. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Overthrow Venezuela?

January 28, 2019

democracy, history, politics, strategy

Leave a comment

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” — Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State, responding to why they overthrew the government in Chile in 1973

*Meeting Venezuelans during their 2006 election*

The United States has recognized the opposition leader in Venezuela as their rightful President. They are calling for an overthrow. They say that the elected president was illegally elected and that he disqualified some of his opposition. They have pulled their closest allies in with them.

Right in the middle of the crisis over whether or not Donald Trump can dictate his wishes to the American people, Trump is calling somebody else “a dictator!”

The fascist president of Brazil, who imprisoned his opposition and then “won” his election, is one of the happy club now calling for the overthrow of Venezuela. The U.S. efforts to take over Venezuela’s government and its oil didn’t start yesterday, it started when the great majority of Venezuelans elected, and then defended, an anti-imperialist president.

The pattern was set in Chile when the great majority of Chileans elected the mildly anti-imperialist Salvadore Allende. First they undermined the economy, then they organized the right-wing forces, then they permeated the military. Then they bombed the presidential palace, killed Allende, and installed a fascist government that murdered the remaining oppositionists.

Anyone not already familiar with what happened might just browse for “Chile Allende” on Youtube. There are dozens of videos. https://youtu.be/9h8deIN-OoU is one.

An earlier attempt to overthrow Venezuela is also available on Youtube. https://youtu.be/Id–ZFtjR5c.

Here in America, the silence is deafening. Mr Trump and his gang get to make their accusations every day on every information source. The “honest reporters” reach beyond the Trump Administration to interview leaders and experts from previous administrations, all of whom share the same imperialist views. I wish I could say that the only imperialists in America are Republicans, but you’d know better.

The Venezuelans get some criticism from the so-called “left” as well as from the outspoken imperialists. Certain leftists blame the Venezuelan (and the Chilean) leaders for being social democrats instead of real working-class advocates. In other words, they didn’t deal directly with the local capitalists who were bound to conspire with the United States against them and; consequently, should have known they’d be overthrown sooner or later.

Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. We in America aren’t responsible for decisions in other countries, but in our own. We might love the Venezuelans or hate them, but it isn’t up to us to overthrow their government.

I like the position taken by the World Federation of Trade Unions and its spokepersons in “Labor Today” here:

“The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), representing 95 million workers of the five continents as well as the world class-oriented labor movement, strongly rejects the attempted coup d’état against the legitimate government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

‘This interference, orchestrated by the US government, NATO and the EU and executed by the representatives of the transnationals and monopolies in the country, constitutes a flagrant violation of the most elementary rules of international law and of the Venezuela’s sovereignty. For the WFTU, it is an inalienable right of each people to decide for themselves, without outside interventions, on their present and future.

‘At the same time, the WFTU reaffirms, as it has already done on several occasions, its solidarity with the Venezuelan people, with the working class and our affiliated organizations in the country in front of this imperialist threat. In addition, we call on the Venezuelan people to reject the maneuvers of the imperialists and their lackeys in the region, to condemn the plans of the murderers of the peoples. We will continue to support the Venezuelan working class, for the deepening of the Bolivarian process, until the abolition of man by man exploitation, towards a new world, without wars and imperialist barbarism. This is the only way forward to repel the plans of the imperialists.

‘Long live internationalist solidarity!”

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 AM every Saturday Central Time. They podcast it on Itunes. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.

Gig Economy, You, and Me

January 15, 2019

democracy, economy, politics, unions

Leave a comment

There are lots of on-line comments about the gig economy. WhatIs says, “A study by Intuit predicted that by 2020, 40% of American workers would be independent contractors.” There are higher and lower estimates here and there, depending on how they define the jobs that have no benefits, no rights, no dignity, and no guarantee that employment will last more than one day. It’s maybe one step above serfdom.

We’d have to be stupid to ignore the gig economy

But every article I saw said that the gig economy is growing and will keep on growing. The reasons they give are so inadequate that they almost constitute untruths: they attribute the growing gig economy to the changing nature of work. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening.

More and more people are working part-time, split shift, “independent contractor,” no-future jobs because that’s what the employers want. It’s what they have always wanted, but they never had such power over the government as they have now. The gig economy is growing because employers do not want workers with guaranteed jobs, workers with health care, workers with any kind of rights at all. In several levels of government, but especially in state legislatures, they are moving to reduce all of us into the gig economy.

Uber Drivers Rally

Last Saturday, a woman walked into the KNON studios and said “Hi, I’m Edith.” We greeted her and I tried to find out why she wanted to be on the “Workers Beat” talk show. She said she was a driver, so I assumed she was from the Amalgamated Transit Union and there to talk about management’s privatization scheme. They want to let Dallas’ disabled people get transported by Uber and Lyft temporary drivers instead of the professionals from ATU.

About 20 minutes into the program, Edith started talking about Uber management, and I finally realized that she was the woman I had exchanged e-mails with during the previous week. She wants to organize Uber and Lyft drivers. She had some compelling reasons.

Uber has recently cut the percentage of fares that the drivers get, Edith said. Worse than that, they manipulate the hiring process so that newer drivers get more fares. That way the newer drivers will be more likely to stay with Uber until their other options have disappeared. Then they’re stuck.

I’m for organizing all workers, no exceptions, so we got right into the problems and solutions. Edith said there would be a demonstration at Dallas City Hall today.

After the program, I posted an “event” on Facebook for the Uber/Lyft rally. At noon today, I hurried down there. Nobody else showed up, not even Edith. She told me by email that she had gotten discouraged because nobody else would commit to come. I told Edith that the proof of a good activist in the period we live in is not how successful they are, but whether or not they give up. So we’re going to try again on the 2nd Monday next month, or at least I hope so.

What Do We Learn?

First of all, a job with absolutely no guarantees can change at management’s whim. That’s why management likes them so much. Thousands of out-of-work government employees are, right now, applying to go to work for Uber or Lyft. It may seem like a good option, or perhaps the only option, but it will change when management wants it changed, and they never willingly change things for the betterment of the employees.

Gig jobs will just get worse as more people depend on them.

Second of all, gig workers are extremely difficult to organize. It’s one of those impossible things that has to happen. That’s why Edith couldn’t get anybody to the rally. It’s also why the established unions aren’t trying very hard to organize gig workers.

But it has to happen because the gig economy will keep on growing as long as bosses are running “our” government. One might pretend to be “objective” and say it doesn’t have to happen because there are other alternatives like fascism. That’s not an alternative, it’s a disaster!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program 89.3 FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. They podcast on Itunes. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site