Escaping from, or with, Joe Biden

July 8, 2023

The American people have zero say-so on foreign policy. None of us ever wanted to die in wars, nor to send our sons and daughters to die, but the people in charge, whose sons and daughters are safe, keep creating havoc around the world. None of us wants our tax money spent on killing everybody’s children anywhere, but we have no say-so. We have to rely on Joe Biden.

Biden and the Democrats created the proxy war in Eastern Europe. All the Russians asked was to stop NATO to stop creeping up on them, but the U.S. would not even discuss it. When a crime like this war is committed, the detectives are supposed to ask “Who benefits?” But our detectives, the public “news” persons, are just house pets who faithfully repeat everything that the state department tells them.

Who benefits?

It’s not the Russians nor the Ukrainians. They’re just doing all the dying. It’s certainly not the Europeans who are paying through the nose for oil and gas now that they can’t get it from Russia. It’s clearly not the starving people who can’t get grain and fertilizer from Ukraine and Russia.

It’s the American oil companies! Anybody who stops and thinks about it will see it! In fact, if they think their way through “who benefits” from the proxy wars in Syria, Iraq, and Libya; they’ll get the same answer: American oil companies.

What’s next?

As the war drags on, the U.S. and the Westerners under U.S. control keep upping the ante. They send just enough weaponry and guidance to keep the automated conflict going because keeping it going, not ending it with any outcome, is in the interests of the oil companies. Possibly, the U.S. oil companies might consider ending the war once they have established, once and for all, that they have taken over all of Russia’s former oil customers. There’s no telling how long that may take.

The most recent development is Biden’s announcement in early July that he will send the illegal cluster bombs that have been condemned all over the world. They come in rockets that explode in the air and send smaller bombs that explode at about eye-level for all the people they will kill. 6% of them fail to explode right away and are left for little children to find and detonate for several years to come.

The war isn’t anywhere close to ending. Just to make sure Russian doesn’t pull out, Biden has made sure to keep NATO creeping up on their borders. Even the pacifists in Sweden have been conned into the game. Ukraine can’t quit because they are defending their homeland. Russia can’t quit for the same reason, they are defending their homeland against certain attack from NATO.

An editorial in the July 8 Washington Post suggests a way to end the war: get Ukraine to join NATO. They would probably do it if they NATO would let them. Biden might let them, too, if the much-vaunted Ukrainian counterattack is failing, and I suspect it is although no one can tell because the state department hasn’t told the American “newspersons” to say anything about that.

If Ukraine joins NATO, then all the Western Powers are obligated to attack Russia. Russian, surrounded sure to lose, would have only two choices: surrender and let the Western powers do anything they want with them, or nuclear war.

Biden could stop it

Joe Biden has a long history with Ukraine. He was there when they were still friendly with the Russians. He helped engineer a new government takeover to be hostile to the Russians. He was there when the Russians said they would invade if the NATO threat continued. He’s been there to promote and aggravate this ongoing war all along.

If the oil companies decide that they have taken over enough (unlikely) or if Joe Biden decides he can stand up the the oil companies, this proxy war could be stopped. In fact, Biden could come out of it looking pretty good if he “suddenly” decided that the U.S. could “intervene” (as if they hadn’t been involved all along) for the sake of peace.

Biden could call a meeting and mediate the peace. At his behest, NATO could pull back. The Ukrainians and Russians could negotiate their territories. People could stop dying. America’s military could spend a lot less of our money. Biden, hero of the hour, would assure his re-election. And the world could take a breath.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” talk show every Saturday at 9AM. My “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts are usually posted on Wednesdays on KNON and Soundcloud. If you are curious about what I really think, you might look at my old personal web site.

July 4 Means What?

July 4, 2023

civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy

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What does Independence Day mean to you? For Gerardo Contreras, pictured above, it’s a time for serious celebration. He decked out a beautiful float for labor’s participation in the 2023 parade in Arlington, Texas. Saint Gerardo is always making such tremendous contributions to North Texas labor.

In one of his most famous speeches, Frederick Douglas told white America, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine, You may rejoice, I must mourn.” Douglas said that the Declaration of Independence was not a statement of fact, but only a promise for a better future. Martin Luther King Jr used that same theme in 1963. Dallas civil rights activist Kenneth Williams re-affirmed it on KNON radio last Saturday.

Labor organizer Eugene Victor Debs had harsh words for those who wave the flag while promoting pain and suffering:

As for me, I’m wiling to accept Frederick Douglas’ hopeful interpretation of Independence Day as a promise that is so far unkept. The problem is, and what everybody needs to figure out for themselves while musing about it, is this: Is the U.S. moving closer to keeping that promise or further away?

Who’s Promise?

Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration being celebrated, was a member of the ruling class of his day. In fact, he was an unapologetic slave owner who talked about everyone being equal while piling up wealth from the misery of Black people. If the Declaration was a promise, was it a promise from Jefferson’s ruling class or a promise from someone else?

If the Declaration was a solemn promise from the small layer of rich colonists who signed the Declaration, they are defaulting today. Americans are losing our constitutional rights. Americans are losing our economic rights. Americans are being pushed down into deep and inescapable poverty. Americans are suffering from climate change. Americans are being taxed so that the oil companies can take over European markets. Americans are dying on battlefields and incurring the guilt of killing many others. Americans are getting shot in their own neighborhoods, even on Independence Day!

The small layer of the ruling rich is betraying every promise made to the 99% of us who are forced to work for them. If the Fourth of July is their holiday celebrating their promise, they can stuff it!

Or Is the Promise One of Our Own?

If the promise in the Declaration of Independence is a promise we made to ourselves, then celebration might be in order. Even while our bosses shred our rights, heat up the Earth, and create new wars; we are learning and organizing. The younger generations carry more knowledge and organizing ability in their pockets than Jefferson or anybody in history ever dreamed of. It only remains for us to use it, and our 4th of July promise will be fulfilled!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. KNON posts my podcasts on Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think and how I came to think it, check out my personal web site.

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Labor Party: Shall We Just Forget It?

June 16, 2023

elections, history, politics, strategy, unions

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As long as I have been around the progressive movement, well over 50 years, we have expected to see some kind of American Worker’s Party break the two-party stranglehold over politics. Working families, then, would have a real alternative at the polls, we imagined. But it didn’t happen and isn’t closer to happening today. Maybe it’s time to give up on it!

Take a quick look at the history of 3rd parties. The last successful one was the Republican Party around 1859. What a thrill it must have been for the progressives of those days, most of them abolitionists, to have a new political party that offered real hope of ending the very worst of all ingrained American practices, slavery!

Then, let’s see, there were the Populists, mostly farmers, of the 1890s. They died when they endorsed the Democratic Party candidate for president. Gene Debs and the Socialists were able to get 1 million votes while their candidate was in prison, and it was sensational but not threatening to the system. President Theodore Roosevelt tried to get his career restarted with the Bull Moose Party before WWI, but didn’t get far. In 1947, former Vice President Henry Wallace tried to save the Franklin Roosevelt “New Deal” program. I recently read that he received a paltry 2.8% of the popular vote. Billionaire Ross Perot was effective enough in getting Republican voters to make sure that Democrat Bill Clinton won the presidency. The Greens have made some small inroads on Democrat voters, but were embarrassed when people learned that they were taking money from the Republicans.

In 2016 and 2020, lots and lots of American young people thought Bernie Sanders would either take over the Democratic Party from inside or create a powerful new progressive party, but Bernie has already endorsed Biden/Harris and I don’t know what those young revolutionaries may be thinking. Today, the Democrats are worrying that the “No Label” Party, financed by mysterious dark money, will take some of their votes and throw the 2024 election to Trump. But nobody is worried that we’ll end up with three viable parties nor that one of the two “main” parties will get replaced.

Side note: There is a party in existence called the “Working Families” party. They are interesting in states where they are allowed to endorse Democrats or Republicans, but not so much when they have to run on their own.

When I first heard of it, a Workers Party made sense. The unions still had over 20% of the workforce organized and were much stronger in politics than they are today. There were labor (or labour) parties here and there in other countries that were in and out of power from time to time. It just seemed like a natural intermediate step. But there are several reasons, today, to consider giving up the idea.

For one thing, we were just wrong about labor parties. We didn’t analyze the “winner-take-all” aspect of American politics. Other nations generally have parliamentary systems that allow proportional representation in governing bodies based on their percentage of the popular vote. They might win a few seats one year, add a few the next year, and eventually rise to power.

Not us. With America, nobody cares anything about proportions. It’s winner take all! If a party wins 49.9% of every vote in America, they still get nothing. The party with 50.1% gets everything.

For another thing, the organized unions that we were expecting to move up to the next stage of political power have diminished. We had about 35% of the workforce organized in the early 1950s, and we have about 10.1% now. Even if they wanted to launch a workers party, they might not have the strength.

The Bright Side

The positive way of looking at American electoral politics is to consider that progressives may not need any kind of political party to win power. Stages may not matter. With modern technology, especially mobile phones, smart people with a good program and a winning organizational model could organize almost anything in a matter of days. That’s what happened in the “Arab Spring” countries. They had no need for an interim political stage, but went straight from powerless to empowered!

Did the Labor Party Idea Just Wear Away?

Not so many years ago, I can remember top labor leaders saying that they, too, wanted a workers party. They said that building our political strength year by year within the two-party system would eventually give us the power to move off on our own. Now, I wonder if they were serious. I also wonder if the hope for a labor party is still alive among the top union leaders. I tried to find out this morning (June 16, 2023) when they were getting ready to vote, by a big margin, to endorse the Democratic ticket earlier than ever before in history. I was watching them on a webinar, so I asked innocently in the chat box, “Does this mean we’re giving up on the workers party idea?”

I didn’t get an answer. I was kicked out of the meeting and couldn’t get back in. It might have been an error. People make errors in webinars.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. They post my podcasts on Soundcloud.com, usually on Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my old personal web site.

Secret Police Hate Folk Singers!

June 10, 2023

art, civil rights, democracy, history

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Book Review:

Leonard, Aaron, “The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956.” Repeater, 2020

Some of the first songs I ever learned were “Good Night, Irene” and “On Top of Old Smokey.” I still sing them. They were top-of-the-chart popular songs by The Weavers in the late 1940s. Then the Weavers disappeared and I didn’t hear anything about any of them until the late 1960s, when everybody knew and loved Pete Seeger, Lee Hayes, and Ronnie Gilbert. I didn’t know much about how J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI secret police hounded and threatened them and everybody who listened to them until I ran across this book.

Thanks to the young man who joined our “flying pickets” action for telling me about it. I think his name was Gregory something or something Gregory. He said I could get it through the public library, but I failed at that and bought it for Kindle from Amazon for $8.95. Good investment.

Attacking artists like the Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Sisco Houston, Hudie Ledbetter and others was supposedly justified by Hoover as part of his lifelong campaign against communists. The funny thing is, it’s kind of hard to call these artists reds. Sure, they were in and out of the CPUSA, but so were thousands of progressive and liberal-minded people in those days. I think what really pulled Hoover’s chain was the plain fact that they sang the truth, and fascists hate truth passionately.

I appreciate the author’s speculations, near the end of the book, as to just how much the world might have benefitted if these artists had been allowed access to audiences, recording studios, TV, and movies during those dreadful anti-communist witch hunt years.

Also, I appreciated the way the author gave the background of America’s witch hunt. Like most historians, he makes sure that the readers know that he doesn’t agree with nor approve of communists. People are still too afraid to say anything positive in print, but he does tell the truth about why CPUSA fell from a very large political force down to a miniscule one: government persecution. Not that they didn’t make some mistakes.

Leonard’s criticisms of CPUSA errors during the period ring true to me, because I have talked to old reds who lived through it. Their errors in dealing with the witch hunt came directly from misunderstanding the economic and political situation at the end of World War II. I can see why they would think that American fascism was imminent, but they were wrong and it led them to make unnecessary mistakes.

The folk singers didn’t make any of the decisions nor any of the mistakes. They just sang the truth and sang it well. That was plenty of reason for J.Edgar Hoover!

–-Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show every Saturday at 9AM. They usually post my weekly podcast on KNON and on Soundcloud during Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think, you might look at my old personal web site.

Which Do You Want: Revolution Now or More Work?

June 7, 2023

politics, strategy

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Make your choice:

Revolution today

Massive march and general strike

Labor Party

Phone banking to win a City Council seat

Did you pick one of the top three? Too bad, the fourth one is the only one available to you right now in my town of Dallas. Those who disdain the hard work of building toward a better world while day-dreaming about choices they don’t have are making the classic mistake called “ultraleftism.” It is also called the “Infantile Disorder.”

Ultraleftism comes in very handy for armchair socialists who want to sit around and talk all day instead of doing anything. It’s common in so-called “revolutionary” organizations. The wonderful biblical satire “Life of Brian” had an unforgettable scene where the revolutionary zealots bring up some really important development and decide, “This calls for immediate, emergency, discussion!”

Posturing about revolutionary action is nothing but a shameful excuse for supporting the status quo!

I’ve got more bad news for the motormouths. Even if they somehow got the magical transformation they dream of, it wouldn’t work. How would they run this wonderful world they have imagined? The kind of leadership we would have to have in that better world someday is the kind of leadership that we are developing right now in today’s struggles. We have to have them, and we don’t have them now, but the very process of transforming the world also transforms us, the real activists, into the kind of leaders that will be needed!

BTW, and this is a purposeful digression, developing the leadership for a new world is exactly what my four sci-fi novellas are about. They’re on http://lilleskole.us.

In summary, we don’t need infantile rhetoriticians in the movement for a better world. But we sure could use some phone bankers!

–-Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. They post my podcasts on KNON.org and Soundcloud every Wednesday. If you are curious about what I really think, take a look at my old personal web site.

A Long and Lousy Book About Lenin

May 29, 2023

democracy, history, politics, strategy

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Book Review: Medhurst, John, “No Less Than Mystic. A History of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for a 21^st Century Left.” Repeater Books, London, 2017. Second review

I found out who gifted me this lousy book, but I did not strangle him on the spot. It’s just a very old friend from 50 years ago who made a lot of money but lost track of things and made peace with the bosses. He meant well. Because another old friend of 50 years ago, who has also lost track, urged me to, I finally finished the darned thing.

My opinion of the book hasn’t changed since I first saw the cover page endorsement by armchair socialist Noam Chomsky and wrote my pre-review. https://wordpress.com/post/genelantz.org/7644

The book is anti-revolutionary and pro-idealistic-backbiting all the way through, just like Chomsky.

There are many interesting historical dates and events in there, but the interpretation is wrong from beginning to end. Medhurst seriously wants to prove that all revolutionaries in history were wrong, and that all the armchair socialists, who sat back and criticized, were right.

In the first chapters, Medhurst exposes his basic thesis: The Bolsheviks failed to create Heaven on Earth 1917-1921. The reason, as he explains for 594 pages, is not because of the desperate fight against reactionaries. Medhurst has a psychological explanation: Lenin was an egotistical monster.

The book lauds the Medhurst’s great men of armchair ideas: Bernstein, Kautsky, Martov, Orwell, and Chomsky. He might as well have added Nixon and Reagan, because their aims and effects were the same, even though their methods differed.

Medhurst’s basic thesis against Marx and Lenin gets greatly muddled as he reviews a pageant of middle-class scholars with a panoply of themes that include everything except that the workers must oppose the bosses. Examples are too many to list. Here’s just one from page 54: “Marxism had too much about the hours of work and not enough about sex and celebration.”

As one might expect, the Red Terror that Lenin unleashed takes up a considerable portion of the book. To be sure, there is one line in there somewhere that says that the White Terror from the imperialist forces was just as bad or worse. Elsewhere, there is one line that says that the American CIA has been worse than all of them. That doesn’t keep the single-minded Medhurst from raving on throughout the book about the great Mensheviks and the horrible Bolsheviks.

If one looks carefully, one can find, on page 380, two sentences that validate Lenin and condemn both Martov and Medhurst: “On 17^th October Yudenich’s [white army] forces were only twenty five miles from the city [Petrograd]. On 19^th October they were 9 miles away.” Despite having taken extreme measures, the Russian revolution almost lost to imperialism! The revolution barely survived.

Armchair socialists, then and now, are forever condemning revolutionaries for taking strong measures. But if they hadn’t, they would have made no progress against imperialism. Trotsky would have lost to Yudenich at Petrograd. Stalin would have lost to Hitler at Stalingrad. Castro would have lost to Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs. Alternately, if stronger measures had been taken in Chile in 1973, Allende might have prevailed over Kissinger.

–Gene Lantz

I”m on knon’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show at 9AM every Saturday. Podcasts go up on Wednesdays under name “Workers Beat Extra.” If you are curious about what I really think, chcck out my personal page.

The Ongoing Fights Among Lenin, Martov, Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao; and How Stupid It Is

May 15, 2023

democracy, history, politics, strategy

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Mao Zedong died in 1976. The other titled characters were long gone decades earlier. And yet, young “revolutionaries” of today are still spending their time and resources arguing about them instead of dealing with the awful crises at hand. As early as this Summer, a world-wide economic crisis may begin. An ice shelf may drop into the ocean and drown millions of people who live on coastlines. The Supreme Court may take away our legal right to strike. State legislatures are clamping down on all aspects of democracy. Fascism may take us into its icy grip. And young people are still arguing about Lenin, Martov, Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao!

V.I. Lenin was the pen name of the revolutionary who created a split in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the early part of the 20th century. He insisted that revolutionaries had to recognize that the people ruling Russia, and the people ruling all nations, had to be fought and removed from power. Martov and his followers believed that no such fight was necessary, or if it was necessary, it would be wiser to put it off and wait for a more propitious time. Lenin’s group eventually took the name “communist,” while Martov’s followers continued with “social democrat.”

Lenin believed that the war against the ruling class was necessary and had to be ruthless. His followers emphasized “necessary” and Martov’s emphasized “ruthless” in their arguments over the ensuing years. Following the success of Lenin’s formulation in 1917, the split continued around the world. The Leninists believed that class war was inevitable; the Social Democrats believed in gradualism and, specifically, that they could eventually be elected to power through conventional democratic processes. There are still a few communists in America and a few more social democrats, especially since social democrat Bernie Sanders stirred the pot with more-or-less independent campaigns in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party primaries. Incidentally, I’m not sure what will happen with the American social democrats now that Bernie has endorsed Joe Biden for 2024. I think I can explain that.

When fascism triumphed in Germany, the social democrats blamed the communists and the communists blamed the social democrats. Each of them said that they could have united in the 1932 German elections and out-polled Hitler, and each of them says, to this day, that it’s the other’s fault. There’s a pretty good treatment of that election on Wikipedia. I think it shows that no such coalition was ever possible. The social democrats did not even run in that election. They supported General Paul Von Hindenberg in the erroneous belief that he could stop both Hitler and the communists.

When the beleaguered Soviet Union eventually collapsed, the social democrats said “we knew it all along,” and the communists said, “they lasted 7 decades against overwhelming odds!” That was 3 decades ago, and yet the arguments continue.

Stalin, Trotsky and Mao enthusiastically supported Lenin’s view. Trotsky was deported around 1928 and started his own world movement that said, basically, “Lenin was right, but Stalin ruined it.” Over the years, they even began saying that Trotsky had never supported Lenin’s ruthless Red Terror, but he did.

Stalin certainly supported the Red Terror and continued similar policies as head of the Soviet Union until he died in the early 1950s. Mao of China sincerely supported the Soviet Union until he started a split in the early 1960s. After that, he encouraged a worldwide “Maoist” movement based around the idea that “Mao Thought” was the only prescription for revolution. They were quite popular among students for a while.

About Bernie

I think Bernie Sanders was probably right to endorse Joe Biden for president in 2024. The danger of fascism is too near and too awful for anybody to deliberately split the electorate. Biden is no revolutionary and, some would say, neither is Bernie; but working families need to get past the 2024 elections without instituting fascism, and all of us should be able to agree to that.

The funny part

Ironically, all the aforementioned historical figures called themselves Marxists. Even though they argued against each other and, in some cases, even killed each other, all through history, they all claimed the same ideology. All of them claimed that they were adamantly opposed to the bosses who run things. If they really were Marxists, one would think that they would take to heart one simple sentence from the best-known work of Marx and Engels, “We communists have no interests outside those of the working class.”

It isn’t very hard to figure out the interests of the working class, both short term and long term. It wasn’t hard in the old days and is certainly not difficult today. Working families need better living standards and more democracy. Both are being threatened by the bosses who are running things. Worldwide, the bosses are slashing living standards and democracy. The process, often called “the race to the bottom,” grows more clear every day. Working families around the world, to one degree or another, are trying to fight back, but they desperately need coherent revolutionary leadership.

But the leaders are too busy arguing with one another about things that happened last century.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. They post my “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts on their websight and, long term, on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, just look at my personal web site. BTW, I just posted my 4th Sci-Fi novel there.

Getting Shot in Texas

May 8, 2023

democracy, politics, strategy

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I was surprised, just now, to learn that Texas is not the worst state in America when it comes to gun killings, at least we weren’t in past statistics. This weekend’s massacre in Allen and the Uvalde bloodfest will surely boost the state in the next polling. I suppose that all Texans are wondering today, just as I am, will I die by gun violence in the near future?

After all, I am known somewhat as a union spokesperson. Every week on FM radio, I espouse progressive causes. When crazy reactionaries call in, I can nearly always lead them in discussion until they reveal how ridiculous they are. On the air, I often joke about MAGA extremists and denounce American foreign policy. Does that make me a target for the crazies?

Even now, I’m extra cautious when I drive up to the KNON studio parking lot on Saturdays. I look to see if there are any white men sitting in cars or pickup trucks. Usually, it’s only African Americans waiting for their appointments at the barber shop in the building. They’re OK. Hardly any Black people have carried out massacres.

For a while, I considered packing heat. It’s legal in Texas even without a license nor any training. I was raised in the country, so I’m not the worst shot in the world and could probably hold my own, I hope, in a gunfight. So I considered putting a pistol in my car. I thought better of it, partly because I might not fare so well in a gunfight against several assailants, and partly because I don’t think I could ever feel good about it, even if I won.

So I made a plan. If I see any white men waiting in the parking lot, I put my phone on “Facebook Live” before I get out of the car. A few gunmen, I suppose, might think that they can kill me and get away with it; consequently, they might be deterred once they see that I’m broadcasting on Facebook. If they see that they won’t get away with it, my reasoning goes, maybe they won’t do it. Maybe they will settle for a few threats and insults, but let me live another day. And if they murder me, at least I’ll be their last victim because Facebook will provide witnesses and pressure on the police to arrest the perpetrators.

It was the best plan I could come up with. I’m a little scared to live in Texas today. I imagine that everybody is.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on knon.org’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. They post my weekly blogs “Workers Beat Extra” to soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, you might look at my personal web site

What Has to Happen in the UAW

April 10, 2023

strategy, unions

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I am a long-time member of UAW 848 and currently serve as President of the retirees. I wrote this in hopes it might get seen by UAW members.

Our bosses know that the turnout in our national UAW election was less than 15%, with the tiniest sliver of a majority on the winning side for Shawn Fain. Fain starts his presidency with the sure backing of less than 7.5% of the members!

The whole world now knows what observant members have known for years — that UAW members are not following the union’s leadership. I don’t think that “apathy” is the correct word to describe this problem. The words we probably need are “neglect” and “distrust.” Leadership has neglected the UAW membership for decades; consequently, the members distrust them.

Corporations are sure to try to break the back of our union in the current round of negotiations. Every concerned member needs to

1) recognize the dangerous situation and

2) begin to re-organize.

Solidarity among members

I was on a call with national AFL-CIO leaders on April 10. They were proud of Michigan leadership because they got rid of “right to scab” and won a bunch of other union and civil rights victories in their legislature.

Most of those AFL-CIO guys just talk about how many phone calls they generated or how many doors they knocked on, but the Michigan guy, the most successful one of them, Ron Bieber, talked about mobilizing the membership.

Communications need improving. For decades now, workers have moved further away from their workplaces and union halls; consequently, on-line communication is a necessity.

Over the last few decades, our union has shifted from print media to digital. However, we have not fully utilized the digital capabilities. In our local 848, Region 8 has provided a very nice web site, but nobody in the local has been given a password. The web site lists officers from past times. In fact, the listed president passed away years ago. The only digital presence we have is our Facebook page. Some UAW locals don’t even have that.

Even when the pandemic was at its worst, our local, and many others, did not utilize on-line meeting programs like ZOOM. So far, attendance has not recovered.

Suggestions for improving our on-line work

1. Train officers and staff on digital platforms

2. Encourage members to get on-line

3. Utilize ZOOM or Google Meets on “hybrid” meetings with in-person and on-line attendance encouraged

Unions need more activities. Our business meetings should include updates of interest to union members. It isn’t hard to organize parties, dinners, talent shows, classes, special speakers, receptions, and discussions. They can be on-line as well as in-person.

We could do more to encourage our members to wear red on a certain day. Currently, the UAW International has chosen Wednesdays, but they might want to review that decision and look to see what day other unions chose. In my area, the Dallas AFL-CIO adopted Thursdays as the day to wear red because the CWA and AFT were doing it successfully.

Solidarity among retirees

There are significantly more retired than active UAW members. Currently, they may have less money and less commitment to their unions, but they have more time. Also, they are pound-for-pound more important in politics because they vote at much higher levels than active members. The UAW set up an excellent network for retirees in the 1960s. It has been allowed to fray in the last few years, but it is still among the best retiree networks in the nation.

Solidarity among political figures

Bosses listen to political leaders. Many political leaders listen to union members. Keeping those channels open is critical. The Labor Steering Committee that Congressman Veasey held at UAW 848/129 hall on April 5, 2023, was an excellent example of what to do.

Solidarity among potential allies

The size of the UAW has been diminishing, as has the entire American labor movement, for decades. The good news, though, is that unions have recently become more and more popular with the general public. We currently enjoy an approval rating over 70% while no other organization nor political figure can top 50%. Congress can’t get to 30%!

In my area during the last General Motors strike, there were unsolicited supporters on the picket lines every day. If our supporters had been prepared in advance and invited, we’d have had a lot more. Another way to get a lot more support is to let people know the issues and how they might be affected. We can build up contacts through social media and participation in other people’s events.

The first place to look for potential support is other unions. Our auto contracts will be expiring this summer in the same time frame as the Teamsters’ UPS contract with 340,000 members.

We need to be active with our AFL-CIO organizations and constituency groups. Special days like May 1 and Labor Day are good times to get together with other unions and union supporters. The leadership group that marched in the 2023 Dallas MLK parade set a good example.

Solidarity with organizing efforts

Every time a union tries to organize, labor moves forward. Our members should be looking for organizing opportunities and opportunities to help anybody, from any union, organize.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. My weekly podcast is on the web site or “Workers Beat Extra” on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my old personal web site