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Labor Day Weekend in Dallas — Wow!

September 6, 2016
politics, strategy, unions
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The best part of my Labor Day weekend was when City Councilman Phillip Kingston told the AFL-CIO Labor Day Breakfast crowd that Dallas is experiencing a “progressive upsurge!”

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Councilman Kingston at the Breakfast. More photos at Gene Lantz Facebook

He’s absolutely right, I’m proud to have been part of it over the last decades and proud of how it’s all coming about. I’d also like to tell him and all, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

My weekend

I can’t separate everything that happened from my own experiences, so I’ll just tell it from a personal point of view. Labor Day weekend started at 9 AM on Saturday, Sep 3, for me. That’s when my radio show “Workers Beat” proudly hosted Arthur C Fleming, President of the Dallas NAACP, on the air. Fleming talked about some of the things the great civil rights organization is doing here. He sounded very practical, very businesslike.

It started getting really good when he talked about taking Confederate monuments off taxpayer-provided property. Now that’s a subject that I love! But I had to leave the show with my buddy Bonnie Mathias while I ran for the Martin Luther King Jr center in South Dallas.

Reverend Ed Middleton and Lauren Tenney had organized the annual Workers Rights Board Forum and march at the King Center. They let me host the show because I guaranteed them that I am the most strict chairman in all the progressive movement. Overstated as usual, but I’m pretty strict.

All the speakers were great. The high point, for me, was when Herb Keener of CWA 6215 gave a short summary of the wonderful new book, “Runaway Inequality,” which I’ve been raving about on this blog. Herb announced that he and I were organizing a class on the book. Later, we decided to call it for noon on Saturday, September 17, at 1408 N Washington.

After all 4 speakers and a short Q&A, we marched. Lauren led us about 4 blocks away and then back. All on the sidewalk. We’re scared of the Dallas police of course, but not really that scared. I carried my guitar and led “Solidarity Forever” as we marched. Lots of passersby honked and waved their approval!

The AFL-CIO breakfast was the best ever. They sold out of tickets! They honored women in labor and came up with the Linda Bridges award. Bridges led the Texas teachers union until she died. My dear friend Sherron Molina won the award.

Next came the Democrats’ picnic. It was great big, extremely diverse, and confusing all around, just like the Democrats. County Judge Clay Jenkins got a tremendous ovation when he was introduced, but the biggest ovation of all came for my friend Sheriff Valdez.

What’s It Mean to Me?

There really is a progressive upsurge in Dallas. I’ve been there watching it grow. When Sheriff Valdez first ran for office, I was the one who made the motion that the AFL-CIO support her. She got the support and is now one of the most famous sheriffs in America.

The Democrats didn’t always have a picnic on Labor Day. Long before they turned Dallas County blue, Dr Theresa Daniels organized the first picnic. She asked me to lead “Solidarity Forever,” and I did. The Democrats actually took over the idea from a much smaller one in Kiest Park run by the Jobs with Justice group which Elaine Lantz and I had started and run.

The Dallas AFL-CIO didn’t always have a Labor Day Breakfast. There were a couple of years in the 1990s when the unionists just didn’t think it was worth doing. During those years, Jobs with Justice put on Labor Day events just to make sure something happened. The AFL-CIO started it up again and it’s been a growing success since then.

Dallas didn’t always have a Workers Rights Board hearing and a march on the Saturday before Labor Day. Jobs with Justice started that, too.

What’s the Progressive Upsurge in Dallas?

There are several good reasons that Dallas is now a blue county with a successful labor movement. One small contributor is the 25 or so years of steady solidarity work by North Texas Jobs with Justice. Another one is the Texas Organizing Committee, which started as ACORN even before JwJ. Another one is the recent addition of the Workers Defense Project to the Dallas progressive milieu. Another is the great organizing work done by the Dallas Democratic Party. Another is the big change in the national labor movement that came in the leadership elections of 1995. Another one is the three-year-old local leadership of Mark York of the Dallas AFL-CIO.

Put them all together, you get a progressive upsurge!

What’s Next?

Elaine Lantz has proposed, and Mark York has agreed, that Dallas needs some kind of labor/community mobilization committee. We need to consult with a lot of people to decide exactly how it should work, but I’ve found a darned good place to start that discussion: Herb Keener’s class on the book, “Runaway Inequality” by Les Leopold at noon on Saturday, September 17, at 1408 N Washington in East Dallas.

Be there, and let’s keep up the momentum of the progressive upsurge in Dallas!

–Gene Lantz

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Pick Your Path to Change

September 1, 2016
economy, elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
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I’m completely optimistic in believing that fundamental change will come to world societies. Further, I believe it will happen before the present rulers destroy us and the planet. It’s because I realize that I’m not any smarter than others, and I’m not stupid. So they’re not stupid either, so we’ll get together and win some day.

Once I was sure that we will be victorious, I began to speculate as to how our victory might come about.

I think there are basically three versions:

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  1. People will gather their torches and pitchforks and force the misleaders out
  2. We’ll elect better and better candidates until we actually have a set of good ones
  3. We’ll carry out a worldwide general strike

Torches and Pitchforks

Probably the idea of some kind of violent overthrow of the existing powers is the oldest scenario. It sounds the easiest and the fastest. It’s also the most dangerous, because it’s easy to start thinking that the rest of the world’s villagers only need some kind of a “spark,” — one heroic act of an individual or small group — and then they’ll grab their weapons.

So they try one ultraleftist act of terrorism after another, hoping to get the right “spark.” But it never happens and they just get a lot of people killed or jailed.

Electing Our Way to Power

When President Obama was elected, some people thought we had done all we had to do. He would take care of the rest. Other people thought electing Obama was good and that he could take us part way, then we’d elect somebody even better the next time. In the course of a few elections, we would end up with Judges, Legislators, and Administrators who would save us.

I imagine they felt the same way in 1931 when they elected Franklin Roosevelt. Maybe also in 1859 when Abraham Lincoln took the White House. George Washington?

I think it’s the most popular idea because one doesn’t really have to do much besides vote and a little bit, maybe, of phone banking or neighborhood canvassing. No risk in any of that, and it’s not too hard. If it doesn’t work, then they’ve still earned the right to gripe about everything until the next election.

Stopping the Economy Until We Get What We Want

The idea of a worldwide general strike isn’t as un-historical as it might sound. Workers actually tried it, with considerable success, in 1886. Railroad workers practically shut the nation down in 1877. They might have won their strike if the soldiers hadn’t started killing them. There have been successful city-wide general strikes in several cities, including Seattle and even Houston!

The Industrial Workers of the World was once a big organization that terrified the bosses. Their idea was to organize all workers at their worksites — in every industry — and then shut down the economy. Hundreds of them were deported, arrested, or killed in the bosses’ backlash.

I don’t want to pretend to know more than they did, but they might have done better if they had gone in for organizing communities, civil rights organizations, church groups, and other kinds of affinity groups instead of just workers at worksites. They might also have done better if they hadn’t been so hell-bent on not participating in politics and not forming alliances with other progressives.

The downside of this “stop the economy” idea is that a substantial number of workers and working families would have to be organized. There would have to be unions in critical work places, plus community groups and a lot of other kinds of organizations. And they’d have to work toward co-ordination with the others. It would take political work as well as organizing. That’s a tremendous amount of hard work.

The upside to all that hard work is that leadership would develop. Leadership would also be tested along the way, and we’d end up with the kind of leaders who could actually run a new, better society. Neither of the other two scenarios has that advantage.

What’s the Catch?

There are players on the other side.

It’s easy to think that everybody wants social progress just because we do and almost everybody we know does. But we don’t hang around with the Koch brothers, do we? We don’t hold memberships in the National Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers or the National Right to Work Committee. We’re not listed in the Forbes 500, but other people are, and they don’t want change just as much as we do want it.

If we were to grab our pitchforks, they’d grab their bombs and drones.

If we were to elect good candidates, they’d pour billions into electing bad ones.

The wealthy people clinging to the status quo know what they’re doing. Do we?

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It’s Just Capitalism

August 22, 2016
elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
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For weeks now, I’ve been raving about “Raging Inequality” by Les Leopold. Not so much because it’s a great book, which it is, but because the powerful Communications Workers of America (CWA) union is promoting it, teaching classes, and giving away copies. But I’ve been holding something back.

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In essence, the book uses economic data and graphs to show how rotten things have been in America since 1980 in contrast to the period 1945-1980. Then it goes on to suggest how we can return fairness to our nation.

What’s wrong with that?

We’re looking at the wrong end of the graphs. The right side of each graph, the period 1980-2016, isn’t the period that’s out of kilter. It’s 1945-1980, the left side of each graph, that was un-historical. That “American century” of 35 years was downright peculiar in the entire 400-year old history of capitalism. It was the only time in history when the working class of any capitalist country ever held its own against the bosses! All the other periods, including the present one, were just business as usual.

Business as usual means constantly increasing the exploitation of the workers. It’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just the only way that capitalism can work. The only thing that can even slow the process down is resistance from the working class.

The post war period in America began with over 1/3 of all American workers in unions. There were more successful strikes in 1946 than in any year before or since. The unions, especially those led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), were integrated, practicing solidarity with one another and with the community at large, and even internationalist in their outlook! They were a real force to be reckoned with, and their power took decades to dwindle down to the skeleton that the new progressive AFL-CIO leadership picked up in 1995.

Shouldn’t we be fighting?

Of course we should be fighting every day. That’s why I tout the book so much. It shows where we are now and some of the steps we could make that would take us forward. My objection to it is that we don’t really want to return to 1945-1980, nor can we. We must bear in mind that we are fighting for something entirely new: an end to boss rule.

Until then, every advance that working people make can be taken away, because the bosses are still in power.

Read the book, please!

Let’s do our best to expand this marvelous educational project that the Communications Workers have begun. Let’s read the book and get everyone else to read it.

–Gene Lantz

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Where Labor Went Wrong

August 19, 2016
civil rights, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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Everybody should read “Runaway Inequality” by Les Leopold. Don’t wait for somebody from the Communications Workers of America to invite you to one of their classes on it.

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Some of the best stuff is in the beginning. The forward is by Chris Shelton, President of the CWA. The middle parts of the book are mostly statistics about how inequality rose after America selected a new business friendly government policy in 1980. The other really great stuff is near the end

I particularly like Chapter 22: “When unions decline, inequality soars and we all lose.” On page 288 Leopold says, “Wealth inequality and unionization levels are intertwined.” You probably knew that but it’s good to see it in print.

What happened?

Then he goes into the reasons for the great union decline from its heady power of 1946, when Americans won strikes more than ever before or since. Leopold apparently doesn’t have the nerve to say it outright, but he lists, in a dispassionate way, several “theories” about how union leadership could have done better. I’ll shorten them and make them more blunt:

  • The decline started in 1947 when unions cooperated with the anti-communist witch hunt and expelled some of their best leaders.
  • Unions shouldn’t have worked closely with the CIA
  • The merger of the AFL and the CIO didn’t work out for the members
  • Unions shouldn’t have supported the War in Vietnam
  • Unions became bureaucratic and undemocratic
  • All unions haven’t learned community organizing techniques
  • Unions aren’t linking up with unions in other countries

Even though Leopold didn’t really commit to it, I thought it was a pretty good list. It probably should have included something about how unions largely ignored and still ignore the civil rights movement, but it’s still a pretty good list.

Right after the list, the author gives the underlying reason for all the problems: “Unions and the rest of us are on the losing side of a gigantic class war — a war that we have to recognize, discuss and address if unions are to grow again.”

In other words, we can list the things union leaders did wrong all we want, but the underlying reason for the decline was aggressive anti-worker policies of the boss class. Even if we’d had the best leadership in the world 1947-1995, it would have been very very hard to withstand the combination of government/boss aggression and the post war “good time” prosperity that allowed opportunist labor leaders to get pretty good contracts for their members — while slowly sinking into isolation from everybody else.

By 1979, unionized American workers were the envy of the world, even though our numbers were dwindling fast. In 1980, the party was over. I don’t think many union leaders figured it out, and some of them still haven’t. They still expect the bosses to act “reasonably.”

The essence of the problem

What it boils down to is this: From 1947 to 1995, the bosses were able to isolate the organized sector of the American working class from the rest of us. I picked this up from an earlier book by a prof in California named Lipschitz, “Rainbow at Midnight,” and from talking to people who lived through it. The new book, with CWA backing, will force unionists to look at the problem and see what we did wrong. Even if it did nothing else, the book would be worth the $20.

But Les Leopold actually does a lot more in “Runaway Inequality.” He makes serious suggestions as to how we can turn the situation around and return to the kind of militant union progressivism that succeeded for the CIO 1935-1947. The progressive leadership of the AFL-CIO, 1995 to present, can and probably will implement these ideas.

I can’t wait!

–Gene Lantz

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