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When Should We Strike?

February 5, 2017
economy, education, history, strategy, unions
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To go on strike basically means to stop working until some particular demand is met.

strikelondon

Since Trump was elected, I have received two calls for a general strike. One was for January 21, the other is pending, February 17.  No exact demands accompanied on either one. I think it’s dangerous business, but must be considered.

What Is a Strike?

The word comes from British sailors who would “strike sails” and refuse to take their ships to sea. A “general strike” in a given area means that everybody, not just one particular organization or category of people, stops working until their demands are met. General strikes may not be over economic issues, but political.

Since the U.S. government moved against the union movement in 1947, the only union strikes we have seen were limited to one union, the few other unions legally able and willing to participate, and whatever community support a local union could get. Usually since 1947, American union locals have faced their employers virtually alone.

Prior to 1947, in fact in 1946 in Houston, there were general strikes in America. Probably the most dramatic and best-remembered was the strike for the 8-hour day, worldwide, May 1, 1886. Like most general strikes with potential for change, it was met with armed violence from the employers and their government.

We hear of general strikes in other countries from time to time. Over there, unions are involved but it is unlikely, given their legal situation, that organized labor would call any  general strike in America today. That doesn’t mean somebody else couldn’t!

Strikes Are Part of Economic Struggle

A strike is not the only form of economic struggle, as differentiated from armed struggle or electoral struggle. Any kind of refusal to cooperate with the employers’ system of production fits the description. Workers might, for example, try a “slowdown.” Lately, union leaders call it “work to rule” and ask employees to do only what they are required to do legally and by contract, nothing more. In modern strikes, especially since Reagan, people sometimes lose their jobs. With slowdowns, there’s less risk of job loss. But a slowdown is a harder to organize and carry out.

Economic boycotts are economic struggles. The United Farm Workers carried out an effective one in the early 1970s against grape growers. Economic boycotts, like general strikes are very easily called by some unthinking hothead, but extremely difficult to carry out.

The employers and the government may be counted on to team up quickly against any kind of economic struggle by workers.

Who Wins? Who Loses?

According to the employers, workers always lose every strike. Even if the strike has short duration, the workers at minimum have to go some time without income. The strain on families and friendships is terrific. Nowadays, when many workers are carrying heavy loads of debt, the thought of a strike, even for a few days, terrifies everybody.

According to the workers, we win pretty much every strike. Even if our demands weren’t met, we feel that we’ve stood up for our dignity and for the dignity of all working people.

But putting points of view aside, the actual winner of a strike is generally the side that holds out one day longer than the other side. “One Day Longer” makes a good workers’ slogan and is the title of one of my songs.

“Winning” for us means getting whatever we wanted. “Winning” for the bosses means getting whatever they wanted plus the ability to take retaliatory action against every worker that crossed them.

A Strike Is Serious Business

A successful strike is one that grew out of careful analysis of the situation and had good planning and strong leadership. A good example was the three-month strike recently carried out by the Fort Worth Symphony Musicians. Somebody needs to write a book about that one.

Calling a strike without careful analysis, good planning and strong leadership is irresponsible and likely to get lose and get people fired. It isn’t much better than calling “fire” in a crowded movie theater.

But We Need Economic Struggle, and We Need It Now

I can only think of one thing worse right now than an irresponsible call for economic struggle — and that is no call for economic struggle.

Every American who is not a fool knows we need to resist the attacks underway. Economic struggle is, right now, our best option.

Don’t Go Off Half-Cocked

We need careful study and careful planning to win any economic struggle. Fortunately, we have the ability to do that thanks to modern communications. We could, for example, call for a “virtual strike” over a certain demand and for a certain day. We could make our preparations virtually. We could sign up the people willing to participate and, afterward, evaluate the results. Then we could call another one and see how it goes.

Study up, think it through, and share your thoughts.

–Gene Lantz

I talk about these things on KNON.org’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 Central Time every Saturday. 89.3FM in Dallas. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Who Understood International Relations?

February 1, 2017
economy, history, politics, unions
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At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a popular theory that the capitalists of the Earth had reached some sort of detente and would have no further use for war.

earthdivided

Another theory said that the capitalists were no different from gangsters fighting over their “turf.” Creating world wars was an intrinsic part of their very nature.

World War I and then World War II validated the second theory and completely discredited the first. Modern monopolistic capitalists were willing to kill millions in wars to establish their financial control over different parts of the planet. Their national armies were basically at the service of the bankers. Each “nation” was in fact a separate military operation, each opposed to the others.

This was explained in 1916 in a very important booklet named “Imperialism” by V.I. Lenin. There’s a short version on-line.

The big wars temporarily worked out great for the victorious bankers, despite having been hard on the millions killed, imprisoned, or maimed and on the nations who lost.

The New Theory Was Really the Old

Then in the 1980s, a new version of capitalist peace on Earth began to circulate. It was especially boosted when the Soviet Union failed. Opponents of the new theory called it “neoliberalism” rather than the classic name “imperialism.” Those who promoted the idea, which included virtually all the information sources in the rich countries, called it “globalization.” (I called it “gobblelization”).

The new theory, like the old one, held that the capitalists of the world had brought about a new world order based on extending the benefits of the “invisible hand” of capitalist markets to all the world through “free trade.”

Is It “Free?” Is It “Trade?”

The name “free trade” was a tremendous publicity success. Who’s against freedom? Who’s against trade?

Through long hard work, a few workers’ organizations, particularly unions of the world, explained that these so-called trade deals were nothing but agreements between capitalists at the expense of the workers in their respective territories. Time and a flood of actual data proved we were right. The capitalists were only agreeing among themselves that they would move their operations around to obtain the lowest possible wages and the fewest possible pollution controls.

Just as they had previously used their government’s armies to obtain their wishes, the bankers were now using their respective government’s negotiations. The ends were the same. The bankers from the countries with the biggest armies obtained more advantages over the countries with less clout. Only the 1% of any country benefited.

A Lot of People Bought Into the “New” Theory

Nevertheless, the idea that capitalism had established a new and lasting peaceful relationship persisted, and a lot of people thought it was true. Then, in 2016, came super nationalism, came Brexit, came Donald Trump.

The British poked a hole in the European Union from which it may not recover. The Scots tried to leave the British. Polls showed that near-Nazi nationalists were gaining electoral power in several major capitalist states. President Trump declared “America first” and spit in the faces of several other nations.

Will Capitalism Ever Bring Peace?

People must now review the two theories of international relations. We have to ask ourselves, “Are the bankers who control the major capitalist countries creating a peaceful world, or are they actually no different from gangsters fighting over turf?”

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9 Central Time. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Sort Out the Issues on Immigration/Refugees

January 30, 2017
civil rights, politics, strategy, unions
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January 28 was significant for learning about immigration and refugees.

dfw-e-1

On the day after President Trump spit in the face of a large world religion, we were confronted with a dramatic historic page-turning and an opportunity to learn a lot.

There are a wide range of positions

Americans are divided on this issue. Positions range from outright racism and jingoism — hating all foreigners — up to my guest on the “Workers Beat” program on http://knon.org and 89.3FM in Dallas. Joshua Hatton gave his position as “abolitionist” and compared it to the brave Americans opposing slavery before the Civil War. They, too, helped people move from South to North, and they, too, opposed any effort to deport people back. The Fugitive Slave Act, tested in the Dred Scott decision, is said to be a major cause of support for the Northern side in the Civil War.

There were so many calls that I didn’t get to ask him if there were any difference between his “abolitionist” position and the old “sin fronteras” socialist position. “Sin fronteras” means “no borders.” In other words, workers could move back and forth across national borders with the same ease that capital does.

The argument is that national borders were created and operated by capitalists to defend their interests and are actually a hindrance to working people on both sides of the border. In 1999, the new leadership of the AFL-CIO labor federation, changed from “deport them all” to “let them in and then organize them.” In other words, solidarity is our strength and division is our weakness. Still, I expected most union people, and most politicians, too, to duck the issue as much as they could, since nobody wants to fight when your own people are divided.

Some politicians really stepped up

Congressman Marc Veasey of Dallas/Fort Worth has been saying for some time that he opposes Trump’s anti-immigrant actions. He held a meeting on that fateful day, January 28, at Kidd Springs Park. The subject was DACA — Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals. He had a young woman, Diana Radilla, tell what it was like to be raised undocumented. He also had Congresswoman Linda Sanchez from California. They spoke up strongly on keeping DACA intact.

inmig-veasey-1

I didn’t realize that morning that crowds were forming in airports. That evening, when I did find out and went to the DFW airport to join the protests, the first person I saw was Marc Veasey. The second was our Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. Here were two leading Democrats going far beyond electoral politics to stand with us, 1000 members of the rabble more or less, against anti-immigrant racism!

Would the unions duck?

Contrary to what the bosses like to tell us, unions are scrupulously democratic. Elected union leaders have to consider every move in terms of how much flak they are going to catch from their members. Consequently, I would have expected them to “lay behind the log” on immigration issues as much as they could. I was wrong again.

On the night that we were at the DFW airport, my good friend Rick Schoolcraft turned up. He’s from my own aerospace local. Gary Livingston, from another aerospace local, had been there all day. His aerospace local probably leans as far right as mine does, but there he was.

The next day, I asked permission to use the Dallas AFL-CIO communications network to encourage more participation at the airport. I couldn’t reach the principal leader, Mark York, but his political director, Lorraine Montemayor, told me immediately to go ahead. So I put it on the web site, sent out 4,000 emails, and used labor’s social media to encourage more turnout.

An hour or so later, I found out why I hadn’t been able to reach Mark York. He was already out there, injured ankle and injured shoulder and all, in the middle of the airport protest! Mark was live-streaming the protests and complimenting other unionists, including Darryl and Stacy Sullivan from the Teamsters, for joining the protests. So much for ducking!

What’s Next?

There is a lot of political space between “reasonable immigration/refugee policy” and “Welcome all.” I don’t think the American public is nearly as pro-immigrant/refugee as my radio guest Joshua Hatton or my fellow protesters at the airport. But people are learning fast as we are being prodded by President Trump and incipient fascism.

We learn quickest when we take action. Policy and leadership are emerging, so don’t count out the American people, even on the complicated and difficult issues!

My video of the DFW protests, 3.5 minutes, is on You Tube.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on http://knon.org and 89.3 FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9 Central Time. If you are interested in what I really think, click here.

 

 

 

 

Are You Afraid of Your Government?

January 25, 2017
history, politics, strategy, unions
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There are probably two reasons for Americans to not be afraid of their government.

price-of-dissent

One of them is that they are just good, clean, honest people who can’t find it in their heart to think ill of others. The other is that they probably just never did much of anything.

Those who have stepped, even a tiny toe, outside the ring of expected behavior have probably been spied on and  recorded at the least. They may have also been intimidated, smeared, fired from their jobs, blacklisted, beaten, shot, and/or murdered.

Our government, local and national, has been doing those things all along.

Book review: Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, editors, “The Price of Dissent. Testimonies to Political Repression in America.” University of California Press, 2001.

The book is a collection of original testimony from people who stepped outside the ring and found Big Brother waiting there. It also mentions things that happened in earlier times, such as the wholesale murders, whippings, arrests, deportations, and illegal persecution of labor activists throughout American history. The chapter titled “The Unrelenting Campaign against the Industrial Workers of the World” is especially enlightening.

The first hand explanations from activists of the 1950s-1980s, though, aren’t just history lessons. They are up close and personal, hard hitting and sometimes a little difficult to read. Witnesses to the Black Panthers murdered in Chicago, the students shot down at Kent State, and civil rights victims of murder and mayhem in the American South are especially effective. I don’t know why they left out the time that the Houston police fired 1,000 bullets into the dormitory at Texas Southern University and the police sniper who killed Carl Hampton a few blocks away, but I guess there were just too many episodes to fit into one book.

Texas isn’t left out completely, because they interviewed my good friends Jose Rinaldi and Linda Hajek about the FBI agent in our Dallas CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) anti-war group. Agent Frank Varelli was commissioned by the Dallas FBI to do nasty things to our friendly little group of peaceniks. Among the horrors he committed was informing the murderous death squads in El Salvador about the names and arrival dates of deported Salvadorans and visiting Americans from here.

He told us his name was Gilberto Mendoza, and he gushed gratitude to our group for standing up for Central Americans. As I remember it, he gushed that over and over again, every time he showed up. I got tired of him and thought he was an idiot, but I didn’t spot him as an agent. In fact, I interviewed him for The Hard Times News. I never look for agents, I just ask everybody I know to do a lot of work. Agents never want to do any actual work.

In 1987, the Dallas FBI got behind on Varelli’s paychecks. To pressure them, he went to the Dallas Morning News, and they ran a full front-page expose! I think Varelli liked the notoriety, because the next thing you know he came to one of our meetings, without his Mendoza disguise, and explained the entire thing!

Varelli did ugly things, and most of the folks were shocked. I wasn’t, because I had already participated in an ACLU lawsuit against the Houston police and a national lawsuit against the Justice Department. I wanted to sue the pants off the FBI over Varelli, but was outvoted.

Our government does ugly ugly things and always has, but they always say, as the book shows, every time they get caught, that they won’t do it any more.

–Gene Lantz

Hear “Workers Beat” on 89.3FM in Dallas and knon.org everywhere every Saturday at 9 central time. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Recommended Herd Behavior

January 18, 2017
politics, strategy, unions
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I just can’t get away from these cow metaphors. I grew up in the country and worked, for a while, in a dairy. You can learn a lot from cows.

stampede-cows

But what I’m actually trying to wrap my mind and yours around is how to deal with the difficult political situation we’re in. The question came up because of one of my earlier posts. It drew a comment, more or less, to the effect that one of the major tasks confronting progressives is re-educating or replacing our union leadership.

I Used To Be a Lot More Intelligent Than I Am Now

Long ago, I was a member of an organization that didn’t like the union leadership. In fact, I don’t think we liked any leaderships. Not in the women’s movement, not in the civil rights movement, not in the anti-war movement, not in any of the progressive movements. It’s not that we were anti-leadership anarchists, it’s just that we thought we alone knew best. We only liked one leadership, ourselves. Everybody else, everybody in leadership of any organization, was just wrong. We were the smart ones!

The result was that we almost always got into squabbles with the leadership of any organization we tried to relate to. We had a reputation for it, and knowledgeable activists didn’t look forward to our company.

Build Up Our Side, Don’t Tear it Down

I don’t think that we need, at this time, arguments with the leaders of the unions or of any progressive organization as a way for the progressive movement to go forward. I can’t say that I actually agree, point-by-point, with the leaders of any of the organizations that are doing so much and moving so many people into action right now. But I’m sure glad they are building the movement!

We should be deliriously happy to see so many people starting to get active, and we should encourage it in every way possible. When it’s appropriate, we can make our suggestions on program, on tactics, on strategy, or even on broad ideology. But we should do it in a friendly helpful cooperative way, not an argumentative or confrontational way.

Arguing and confronting are what we do to our enemies, not our friends.

How to Get Cows to the Right Place

Cows tend to meander along. It’s kind of hard to figure out why they go where they go, what influences them, who they look to for leadership, what they try to avoid. We’ve all seen the stampedes in the western movies, where some poor old cowboy gets killed while trying to “turn the herd.” Death by stomping.

It’s mighty hard for a cowboy to do it. But it’s even harder for a single cow. And in this metaphor, we aren’t cowboys. We’re cows, stampeding right along with everybody else. It would be inadvisable to get in front of a mad stampede and try to argue. We’d get stomped and maybe hurt some of the other cows, too.

We’ll be more effective if we go along with the herd and do our best to nudge one here, poke one there, moo loudly when appropriate, moo softly if it will work better, and try to get the herd over where we all need to be. That’s leadership in a cow stampede. Also in a mass movement.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9AM central time. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

Is the Working Class Staying Alive?

January 12, 2017
economy, history, politics, unions
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Book review: Cowie, Jefferson, Stayin’ Alive. The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New Press, New York, 2010.

travolta

According to this author, the American working class met its death in the 1970s. Some of it was suicide, some of it was homicide, some of it was chronic depression.

He goes to great length to talk about how America’s powerful labor unions lost their clout, but he spends a lot more time and energy talking about the culture of the 1970s. “Saturday Night Fever” gets about as much play as the Hardhat attack against anti-war protestors.

Combining political and cultural changes isn’t a new approach. One of my favorite books is George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight. Labor and Culture in the 1940s. University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1994. Lipsitz explains where labor went wrong, 1940s and 1950s, while Cowie merely comments at length on the resulting shipwreck in the 1970s. Of the two books, Lipsitz’s is by far the stronger and more informative.

Cowie weaves a fascinating tale with very few heroes, but some stunning villains. One of the biggest reasons given for labor’s downfall is AFL-CIO President George Meany, who deliberately split the Democratic Party and destroyed the hopes of presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. The vivid description of these events is the strength of Cowie’s book, but its weakness is that he doesn’t explain why. He says that Meany hurt the union movement very substantially because he was a “cold warrior” who didn’t want a peace candidate to carry the Democratic Party standard. But he doesn’t explain why Meany was such a “cold warrior.” Maybe Cowie didn’t know.

Back in those days, and for some time before and after, the AFL-CIO got a lot of money from the CIA. That’s why Meany was a cold warrior.

Cowie also explains that a lot of labor’s strength disappeared when steel plants were shuttered and when other American industries went overseas. He doesn’t say why. He doesn’t explain that international competition had recovered from World War II by the early 1970s and American corporations were forced to compete with excellent German and Japanese imports.  Maybe he didn’t know.

Cowie explains that labor was blindsided by clever politicians like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He explains that they made mistakes of commission and omission and they just weren’t farsighted leaders. He didn’t say why. He didn’t explain what Lipsitz’s book had explained so well, that the militant leadership of the American union movement had been expelled and blacklisted during the post war witch hunt. Maybe he didn’t know.

The unions may have squandered their basic strength and their political clout in the 1970s, or at least they may have done better than they did. But the inference that the American working class just evaporated is just wrong. People still work, nearly all of us still work, and the working class is just what it was and has always been — the only people who can stand up to capitalism.

Cowie’s great strength is in vivid description. Whether you lived through the 1970s or are just curious about how things got as bad as they did for working people, this is a good book to read. The AFL-CIO promotes it through Union Communications Service. That’s how I found it and I’m glad I did.

–Gene Lantz

you can hear me on knon.org or 89.3fm at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. If you want to know what I really think, click here.

 

Beware of Spies and Saboteurs

December 31, 2016
history, politics, strategy, unions
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I’m about to celebrate 50 years in the progressive movement.

spy

When I began, we still had Ku Klux Klan trying to attack our activities. We had federal agents around all the time. Some of our own people were the most dangerous of all.

Lookout! Times are Changing!

We are entering upon times unlike those with which we have had experience. We’re about to inaugurate the most anti-worker, pro-corporation government of our lifetimes. It is likely that democracy is their enemy and violence a close friend.
The progressive movement needs to think our actions through. We can’t just throw together a mob on the street and call it a picket line. We need trained marshals with clear marking, we need legal (ACLU) observers, we need written rules for our street actions. Above all, we need responsible leadership and careful planning.
We have all studied, or at least seen in movies or TV, when fascists and communists battled in the streets of Germany. Note that the fascists, being better equipped and organized, won. After they took state power, the street fights became executions.

Who Is Out to Ruin the Progressive Movement?

The opposition has a great deal of money and can hire all kinds of agents to oppose the progressive movement. Informants, spies, agents, and provocateurs are cheap for them. They may or may not organize street fighters, because they don’t necessarily need them, but the reactionary interventions of one kind and another are certain.
In my period of activism, agents primarily had two goals: gathering information and looking for ways to discredit groups and activities. I always found that cameras were the best defense against them — they’re deathly afraid of exposure! I once had the pleasure of chasing an agent all over inside a bank that we were picketing. He finally got a local cop to stop my trying to take his picture. We never saw him again.
The other “best defense” for an organization is to do a lot of work. Agents want to be involved  in discussions, but they don’t like to work.

It is Insufficient to Fight…

As long as an organization stays on the “peaceful and legal” side, they don’t have to worry as much about agents as they have to worry about some of their own enthusiastic members. “Ultraleft” activists are people who have more courage than brains. They don’t necessarily care about accomplishing anything as long as they put on a great show or have a really wonderful time. Some of them are agents seeking to discredit a group, but most of them are just idiots.
I quote Trotsky at them, “It is insufficient to fight, Comrades,” Leon Trotsky said, “It is also necessary to win!”

National Leadership Is Needed

I greatly admire all the spontaneous outbursts of local activities since November 8. But the coming storm is a national problem that needs national leadership and coordination.  Local groups would be wise to work more on coordination and planning than knee jerk activism.
It’s a little bit embarrassing today to see every group going this way and that, all of them asking everybody else and each other for money, none of them with a plan. We can do better.
It seems to me that everybody is going every whichaway. While I consider that a whole lot better than periods when nobody does anything, it’s also kind of a mess and a little bit perilous. I would have a liked it a lot better if national AFL-CIO had come out with some guidelines — but so far they haven’t. I’m giving them more time, because unions work slowly.
One thing I’m hoping is that the Jan 16 MLK events will tend to shake out the leadership tangle and give us a better idea of how to create a responsible movement. Meantime, I intend to encourage activism — but I also intend to encourage thinking!
—Gene Lantz
I’m on “Workers Beat” radio 89.3FM in Dallas and http://knon.org everywhere each Saturday at 9AM Central Time. If you’re interested in what I really think, click here.

Why Bernie Sanders’ Wonderful Book Is No Good

December 26, 2016
civil rights, economy, education, elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
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Bernie Sanders, “Our Revolution—A Future to Believe In.” St Martin’s Press ebook, September 26, 2016. Available from Amazon Books and on Kindle

sandersberniefragmented

S’Wonderful, S’Marvelous!

This must-read book details two important political contributions:

  1. A blow-by-blow account of the miraculous Bernie presidential campaign
  2. Detailed explanation of legislation needed to rescue and advance the people of our nation

The account of the campaign answers the question about how they managed to get so far toward the Democratic Party nomination when they started with virtually nothing and refused to sell out to big contributors. Most of America and even Bernie seem to be surprised at how well people responded to a truthful, direct, approach to America’s actual needs. It’s an inspiring story that needs to be studied.

Part Two, “An Agenda for a New America: How We Transform Our Country” details the problems we face and proposes practical solutions in the form of legislation needed. In many cases, Bernie Sanders had already proposed proper legislation in Congress. In general, his proposals are designed to:

  • Restore and advance democracy
  • Remedy injustices, including racial injustices
  • Restore equality
  • Fix the economy

But It’s No Good

The big problem with Bernie’s wonderful book is the last line, “September 26, 2016.” He completed the book before Donald Trump’s upset victory for the presidency and before Republicans completed their take-over of all three branches of the federal government plus the majority of state governments.

So what do you do with wonderful proposals for legislation when progressive legislation has almost no possibility of passage? What do you do with an inspirational story of a hopeful electoral campaign when our foundation of democracy is crumbling?

Apparently, Bernie thought, on September 26, 2016, what most Americans thought – that the Democrats would have a big victory on November 8. The glaring fact that they didn’t, and the anti-democratic trends already underway, put new perspective on politics in 2017. Bernie’s thoughts of September 2016 are certainly good to know, and actually kind of miraculous to behold, but not much actual use, are they?

We’re going to have to do some thinking of our own.

Some Positive Suggestions

Rather than leave off on such a negative note, let me make a couple of general proposals that might be helpful in 2017

  1. Electoral politics is not the only form of struggle. The most important power that working people have is our ability to withhold our economic cooperation. It is essential, therefore, to dedicate ourselves to organizing workers – to vote, yes, but to work together in other ways too.
  2. We may think that history only repeats itself, but it doesn’t. Bernie Sanders (and also Donald Trump) campaigned on the idea of re-setting the calendar to some earlier date, but we can’t go backward even if we tried. We have an entirely new situation that needs entirely new proposals. For example, we don’t need to fix the Electoral College or even the electoral system as it exists. We need direct participation in government decisions, and for the first time in human history, direct participation is now possible!
  3. Economies can’t be re-set to earlier times. Sanders, and other writers, seem to want to move us backward to pre-Reagan days. Trump apparently wants us some time before the Civil War. We actually need proposals that account for our present situation and then advance into a better future. For example, if certain financial institutions are “too big to fail,” Bernie Sanders suggests that they are “too big to exist” and need to be downsized to the levels of the 1990s. With our present technological abilities, we don’t need them in the downsized version either. If they are “too big to fail,” certain banks and insurance companies need to be taken over and run for the public good.

We must be grateful to Bernie Sanders and others who have taught us so much. A great future awaits!

–Gene Lantz

Hear “Workers Beat” on KNON radio, 89.3FM and knon.org every Saturday at 9 CST

Click here if you want to know what I really think

How Shall We Hang?

December 22, 2016
civil rights, education, history, politics, strategy, unions
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We can hang together or separately, as the saying goes.

benjamin-franklin

We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately!

 

Almost everybody I’ve talked to wants to “do something” right away as concerns the anti-worker government anticipated  for January 20, 2017. For several nights after the election results were announced, thousands protested in the streets of several cities, including mine. As far as I could find out, they had a lot of enthusiasm but no program, no structure, and no strategy.

A month and a half later, we still don’t.

I’ve been asking around about inauguration weekend. So far, it sounds like there will be three rallies, one march, some people going off to the state capital and others going to the national capital. There are probably several more activities being cooked up.

The problem is that there is no coordination among them. As far as I’ve been able to find out, each of them is sponsored by one separate group of people and has demands created by and for solely that group.

Can We Afford to Stay Divided?

As far as I know, the progressive movement in my town (Dallas) has always been divided this way and that.  Every naive young innocent who ever got involved has said, “We’ve got to get together!” And of course it’s true, but I’ve never seen anybody do it.

The book I’ve been promoting, “Runaway Inequality” talks about “silos” and says that all the progressive groups are in their own silos. The solution, says author Les Leopold, is that we have to come out of our silos and start working together. He doesn’t say why we’re in those silos to begin with, nor how to get out.

The basic reason for the silos is funding. Nearly all “progressive” organizations have to raise money. In that sense, they are competitors for the almighty dollar, not partners in any real sense. No matter what high-minded reasons people may have had for creating an organization, their main purpose in life soon becomes raising enough money to pay staff salaries, not whatever they originally intended to accomplish. In a very real sense, they are exactly like churches, most of whom seem to have lost their sense of purpose centuries ago, and they have to raise money or die! How do you change that?

You have to appeal to individuals. Bernie Sanders showed us that it can be done and how to do it.

Why Can’t We Just Hit the Streets?

The main problem with “knee jerk” activism is that it doesn’t go anywhere. Witness the Occupy movement that had thousands of charged-up protesters. They had no program, in fact they deliberately avoided having a program. As a result, they left nothing behind but some really good slogans and memories. But there’s another, very serious, reason to be cautious about spontaneous street actions.

Leftists may not continue to own the streets in America. Remember, that the progressives in Germany tried to take on the better-organized, more unscrupulous, and better financed Storm Troopers in the streets, but it didn’t work out well for them!

In our lifetimes, leftists and leftist causes pretty much ruled the streets. The fascists have stayed inside the corporate boardrooms and left picketing, street rallies, and marches to the riff-raff (us). But Mr Trump regularly puts together rallies of tens of thousands of hotheads today, and he has already shown that he’s willing to encourage violence against any detractor!

I’m not saying we shouldn’t rule the streets. But we aren’t in the same situation we were in before November 8, 2016. It’s different now.

One Proposal for Unity

Progressive people who want to survive and thrive during the Trump Administration need serious strategies for coordinated activity. My proposal is a series of “teach ins,” conference calls, and, possibly, “retreats” to work on programs and to coordinate activities. At the very least, we could set up a “clearing house” function so that different groups would know what the others were planning.

Labor, as the most responsible and most consistently progressive part of the left, needs to center itself in this process.

Everybody going their own whichaway isn’t affordable any more.

–Gene Lantz

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