What Makes Teachers so Tough?

March 10, 2019
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Almost all of the good news in American contract negotiations has been brought to us lately by school employees. Can you think of a strike victory to match what the Oakland teachers just did? How about Denver? The trail of stunning victories goes back through West Virginia (two big recent victories) and to the Chicago teachers a couple years back.

I hope you agree with me that America’s school employees are leading the labor movement. But why?

Our Texas teachers are having their lobby day Monday, March 11 in Austin. Affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are putting aside all differences and joining together to send buses from all over the state. Bonnie Mathias and I had Delna Bryan on the “Workers Beat” radio program this Saturday at 9 AM Central Time.




Gene Lantz, Delna Bryan, Bonnie Mathis at KNON on 3/9/19

I asked Delna how she accounts for the leading role of school employees and she responded that teachers make good tacticians because they are resolute. I’m not buying that. Lots of working people are resolute.

Long ago, I belonged to a sectarian radical group that owed most of its membership to the student movement. But when they saw an opportunity, they correctly started getting union jobs. At first they were convinced that the Steelworkers were the place to be. Then they changed to the Autoworkers. Last time I saw them, they were all changing to the Meatcutters. I don’t think anybody ever imagined the school employees would be taking the lead. Heck, I was a schoolteacher when all this “turn to industry” business started.

Here’s a couple of good reasons

I’ll give you two good reasons for the leading role of school employees, but not THE reason. First, school employees tend to be better educated and, consequently, better communicators than other workers. Heck, most of the factory workers I worked with couldn’t even use a keyboard. I believe I wrote the first computer program ever used in a union struggle in Texas, and that was at a time when my local didn’t know the first thing about data management or advanced communications. They had to borrow a guy from another big local just to lay out their leaflets. The other good reason, whether you agree or not, is that school employees are largely women. American women are more organizable and more organized than men. I said it and I’ll stick to it whether you agree or not. Now, here’s the REAL reason school employees are showing the way.

Here’s THE Answer

School employees are part of their communities. They no sooner start a strike or any kind of concerted action than they start getting parents’ auxiliaries, student auxiliaries, church auxiliaries, civil rights supporters, and community supporters. They do not fight alone.

During the spontaneous West Virginia school strike of last year, I interviewed on KNON the guy who set up their fund raising and raised tens of thousands of dollars and nationwide support. He wasn’t even a school employee. He was just a parent!

The Lesson for the Rest of Us

Organizing unions by workplace has been on a long downhill statistical slide since we peaked in 1957 with 30% of the workforce. Actually, the slide probably began in 1947 with the Taft-Hartley union busting law and the opportunistic union movement’s subsequent accommodation to it.

Even the wonderful new AFL-CIO leadership that began in 1995 hasn’t been able to completely staunch the outward flow of membership. and our failure to win new replacement union members.

What the new leadership did, though, has great potential payoff. They adopted Jobs with Justice and started pushing their state and local federations, along with union locals, to reach out for allies. Many of us at the state and local level haven’t learned the lesson yet, and even today we don’t do a lot of outreach beyond our own members. Some do it better than others, but nobody so far has developed the kind of outside support that the school employees get.

Making friends outside our immediate union organization is the key to winning. That’s what we must learn from the teachers, and we’d better learn it fast!

–Gene Lantz

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

Horrors of Yesterday and Tomorrow

March 2, 2019
democracy, history
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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
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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
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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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
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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
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“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.

Why Confusion Reigns

February 5, 2019
politics, strategy
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Our masters rule us because we are confused. They want it that way. That’s the main reason for it.





What is your aim?

The process of improving our human condition, the only process worth living for, benefits as confusion diminishes. But how can we diminish it?

We often find ourselves unable to distinguish between the many choices offered. This may particularly be felt during elections when we are trying to choose candidates. But it also true, more generally, when we try to distinguish between organizations that seem progressive. Which of them will actually set things right?

There are no good answers to the question, but that is not a reflection on the possible answers. It’s the question that was wrong.

Ask the right question

If our goal is to improve the human condition, then it should be obvious that none of the candidates in an election will be able to bring about a great transformation. It should also be obvious, in a more general sense, that none of the various organizations seeking our time and money can, by themselves, create a better world.

Great changes come about because of great mass movements. The biggest lie repeated on the internet, and repeated so often that people think it is true, is that individuals or small groups cause historical changes.

When we ask which candidate to work for or which organization should get our donations, we should be asking how they will affect that great mass movement of working families that will, eventually, bring the change we want.

Demagogues and sectarian organizations will end up on the bottom of our list. Those who promote progress and working class unity will rise to the top.

–Gene Lantz

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

The Truth about the Children

February 4, 2019
art
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Movie Review:

“Capernaum,” Directed by Nadine Labaki, 121 minutes






Tough guy

The hero is a tough, profane, street-smart guy. But he’s not from New York’s Lower East Side as in our usual gangster films. He’s not from Capernaum either. It was an ancient city where Jesus and several of his disciples once lived. Jesus put a curse on it when he left, and that’s probably why the film maker chose the name for this story that takes place in the dusty slums of Beirut.

The tough guy says he might be 12 years old, but he looks 8. He’s already stabbed a bad guy and is serving a five-year prison sentence when he first begins to explain his story. The story is about someone so tough that he bears the worst of betrayals and deprivation. He even makes the horrible lives of refugees and other underground non-persons better than they would have been.

The villains are the tough guy’s parents, the human traffickers, the system of misery, and most of the people he meets. One of the most heart-rending lines in the entire movie is when he expresses his surprise to another child, “Your mother is even worse than mine!”

The star of the movie is the genuine article. He’s a Syrian refugee named Zain Al Rafeea.  His resolute little angel face tells most of the story. He and the film are winning international awards.

We had seen one other Nadine Labaki film. “Caramel” was about a beauty salon operator with relationship problems, not about misery and poverty. Both films, though, have a certain inventiveness that makes me think that Labaki is a trailblazer. She’s a young woman. According to the credits, her face is the first one you see in this film, so watch for it if you’re curious.

I think Labaki had some sympathy with movie audiences when she started writing this screenplay. I think she smoothed off some of the edges to make it a happier, or less miserable, viewing experience. The truth about the world’s children is almost certainly worse.

–Gene Lantz

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

Remember the Holocaust

January 29, 2019
art, democracy, history, politics
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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