Steve Early is a 25-year veteran of the labor movement, journalist and author of the new book Embedded With Organized Labor (Monthly Review Press, 2009). His is a voice for a more militant rank-and-file democratic form of trade unionism which attempts to challenge the bosses by re-energizing a mostly dormant labor movement. Steve provided this interview via email with Socialist WebZine correspondent Kristin Schall.
Kristin Schall: Having spent such a long time inside the labor movement, you must have seen a lot of changes occur both organizationally and in rank-and-file attitudes. What are some of the biggest changes you have a seen and how have these changes effected the role of labor organizers?
Steve Early: One of the biggest changes I’ve seen over the years is the erosion of workplace militancy—hopefully, a reversible trend! Thirty-five years ago, rank-and-file anger and frustration over discriminatory firings or other employer contract violations, and related grievance-handling delays, led to frequent “wildcat strikes” by industrial union members and others. These were unauthorized work stoppages, which occurred without official union backing or sanction, during the life of a collective bargaining agreement and in violation of its customary “no-strike” clause. Among miners, the mid-1970s wildcat strike trend even included a series of walkouts over being able to strike without risk of the fines, injunctions, and employer damage suits that inevitably followed wild-catting! This led to a wide-ranging debate in left labor circles about the need for more “open-ended” grievance procedures that would permit legal walk-outs over contract violations during the life of a contract.[1]
Today, the backlog of grievances or other accumulated workplace problems is no smaller in most unions now than it was then--and the pace of grievance resolution probably just as glacial. Yet who today in labor is arguing, as many did in 1970s, that the way to settle more individual or group grievances quickly and effectively is to get out from under the legal straitjacket of binding arbitration and “no strike” clauses? In an era when striking—even at contract expiration—has become increasingly rare, perhaps only the United Electrical Workers (UE) continues to call, officially, for preserving the right-to-strike over unresolved mid-term contract disputes. (Both the UE and IUE-CWA do retain the ability to strike during the life of the contract at one major employer, General Electric—a right that was last exercised, jointly and nationally in 2003, when 18,000 GE workers walked out for two days over contested medical plan changes.)
The closest thing we’ve seen to that kind of 1970s strike spontaneity and “self-activity” was the massive turn-out of immigrant workers, many of whom were not even in unions, at escalating week-day marches and rallies in the spring of 2006. By May 1, 2006, these job “stay-a-ways” were affecting many non-union employers and constituted the largest political strike in this country in more than a century.
But generally today, even strikes at the end of a contract have become a statistical blip on the radar screen of private sector labor relations. Every year, more than 20,000 union contracts are negotiated. Yet, since 1992, walk-outs by 1,000 workers or more have averaged less than 40 annually. In 2008, there were just 15, down from 20 in 2006 and 21 in 2007.
In contrast, at the peak of labor's post-World War II strike wave in 1952, there were 470 major strikes, affecting nearly three million workers nationwide. And, even thirty-five years ago, there were still 424 such job actions just in 1974 alone.
Today, hardly anyone strikes for union recognition either (although New York University teaching assistants did conduct a lengthy work stoppage in 2005-6 to regain recognition after it was withdrawn in the wake of a NLRB ruling that stripped private sector graduate student employees of NLRA protection.) Most unions who are able to organize new members via representation elections or card checks then try very hard to avoid having to strike for a first contract because of the current difficulty of doing so, in a bargaining unit where support for the union may not be strong enough and the threat of decertification, before getting a first contract, is still lurking.
The challenge for organizers in this environment is pretty clear, as I point out in Embedded. As strike activity continues to decline in the U.S., the pool of workers with actual first-hand strike experience, as leaders or participants, shrinks as well. That's why organizers need to analyze the strike victories and defeats that have occurred recently—and apply their lessons so past battles can become the basis for future success, rather than just add to a reoccurring pattern of failure. Maintaining "strike capacity" is no less important than shifting greater resources into organizing new members--and just as essential to union revitalization and growth. Unfortunately, developing creative new ways to walk out and win, developing new rank-and-file leadership in the process, has not been a big part of recent debates about "changing to win."
KS: It seems that historically creating a vibrant union culture has been a vital part of establishing strong unions. Presently, it seems most unions are lacking when it comes to cultural projects, worker education and other forms of organizing outside of contract related issues. This may seem like a kind of chicken and egg question but, In your opinion how important are these forms of organizing strategies and do you think the loss of these programs have helped create the decline in unionization or are the lack of these programs a result of the decline?
SE: I think cultural programs should definitely be part of education about past, present, and future labor struggles. Certainly in the past, a labor-oriented arts movement did go hand-in-hand with the organizational revival of unions. In the 1930s, for example, when the far more extensive federal “stimulus program” of that era—the Works Progress Administration— provided employment for out-of-work writers and artists, one controversial but helpful result was popular, political theatre productions like, “The Cradle Will Rock,” (the making of which was the subject of a very good Tim Robbins movie just a few years ago).
One small-scale contemporary example of this kind of labor theatre is a recent collaboration between the Labor and Community Studies program at City College of San Francisco, CCSF’s Theatre Arts Department, and a large group of hotel workers and union representatives from UNITE HERE Local 2. The students interviewed key rank-and-filers who participated in a 2004-6 contract campaign involving major hotel chains that was part of a nationwide struggle for organizing rights and common expiration dates. The idea was that “an oral history theater production” would celebrate the diversity and solidarity of the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual workforce that pulled together to win this fight, which culminated in a 53-day lock-out and citywide picketing. It would also help members prepare for 2009 bargaining with the same employers this Fall.
The resulting labor play, called “53 Days,” was performed before labor and community audiences and a very enthusiastic crowd of local hotel workers in June; in July, it was presented, on a smaller scale, as part of San Francisco’s month-long “Labor Fest,” an annual event that draws on the city’s rich labor history and continuing interest in labor-related film, art, theatre, and music.
The way workers’ stories and voices are presented in “53 Days” provides a great model for similar creative collaborations elsewhere.
The only union that’s done this kind of thing on more than an ad hoc basis in the past is District 1199, the New York City hospital workers union that is now part of an SEIU-affiliated regional entity, known as United Healthcare Workers-East. As I describe in Embedded, 1199’s Bread and Roses cultural program was launched years ago with both union and outside funding. It has tried to institutionalize and provide on-going support for labor theatre, art, and music—produced by both members and professionals. Reflecting its old left cultural roots, Bread and Roses keeps alive the idea that work and workers are suitable subjects for poster art, murals, photography, music, and dramatic performances of all types. It has a pretty impressive track record and is really worthy of emulation, on whatever smaller scale possible, by other unions.
The argument against this, of course, is who has the time? The money? Or other resources to be putting on plays when unions and their members are under such attack. But hotel workers Local 2 in San Francisco is a pretty busy union too, with no shortage of management enemies—so they could easily have brushed off the CCSF labor studies and theatre department folks. Instead, they grasped the importance of help from such allies and found a way to incorporate their helpful work into the union’s own on-going program of membership education and mobilization.
KS: The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) seems to have been taken off the table by the Obama administration. Do you see a possibility of the bill being brought back into consideration and if it is passed what effect do you think it will have on the labor movement?
SE: It’s more accurate to say that EFCA, overall, has been “put on the back burner” while labor’s putative allies, the Democrats in Congress and White House, make a hash of health care reform. But that current muddle does not bode well for the Senate Democrats ever taking a strong stand—in the face of strong business opposition and lack of “bi-partisan support”—in favor of legislation that’s just as controversial, if not more so. Behind the scenes, a process of watering down labor law reform has begun and what appears to have been “taken off the table,” although not officially, is card check—EFCA’s provision for requiring employers to recognize new union bargaining units based on a majority of workers signing union authorization cards,
It’s also been reported, by some labor officials, that the proposed new civil penalties for employer unfair labor practices have been scaled back or eliminated, and the language for first-contract arbitration modified to meet various objections (a compromise that’s still not going to satisfy business foes). That would leave a bill requiring quicker National Labor Relations Board elections and not much else—hardly, the kind of new, more “level playing field” that was the original goal of labor’s grassroots campaign for EFCA. Worse yet, until the Democrats are willing to get rid of the Senate rule requiring a super-majority (60 votes) to pass a bill like EFCA, a minority of Republicans can still hold things up pretty easily-- because, aging, ill, or near-dead Democrats (Kennedy, Byrd et al) can’t even be counted on to show up and provide that magical quorum of 60, to defeat a filibuster.
The short-term effect of this impasse—or, at some point, passage of a greatly watered-down measure—is that private sector unions will be forced to return to the strategy of “bargaining to organize,” if they are strong enough to do so. This means pressuring employers—whether hotel chains, cleaning contractors, or telecoms—to agree to more favorable ground-rules (like “card check” and “neutrality”) that by-pass the NLRB and permit workers to organize under EFCA-like conditions, with less management interference. Hopefully, the membership education and mobilization that has gone on around EFCA in some unions has also strengthened rank-and-file support for the organizing-oriented contract fights and “leverage campaigns” that will still be necessary. Because it sure doesn’t look like any great legal relief or protection from employer union-busting is coming our way from Capitol Hill, anytime soon.
KS: Throughout his campaign, Barack Obama promised to make labor issues a major concern of his administration, but so far in his presidency labor seems to be put aside as a focus. Do you think the lack of attention to labor issues by the Obama administration particularly and the Democratic Party as a whole, despite the fact that labor is a major supporter of Democrats is indicative of a larger problem with union political strategy over all? i.e. Is it still in labor's best interest to support Democrats or should unions consider other political strategies?
SE: The Obama Administration—and its inside-the Beltway labor boosters—would dispute that description of their track record so far. They would argue that, despite current uncertainties about the outcome of health care and labor law reform, labor issues have gotten a lot more attention and favorable treatment already as a result of more “union-friendly” people being named to top positions in the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board.
In any Democratic national administration, this is always true, however. Organized labor has more “access” and in-put when its “friends” control Congress and the White House. More union jobs are likely to be created or protected due to new federal spending, like that authorized, on a far larger scale than usual, in the still-trickling down “economic stimulus” and recovery package approved by Congress last winter. Some of the worst damage inflicted by the Republicans--through agency understaffing and lack enforcement in the areas of occupational health and safety, pension regulation, or fair labor standards--will get undone to some degree by the new Administration. But all of this then just becomes part of the mainstream labor argument for business as usual in politics—supporting, every four years, what some on the left describe as “lesser evilism,” rather than finding a way to work, at some level, for more fundamental change.
Interestingly enough, a few labor officials already seem to be getting restive about the limited results of this approach so far, this time around. A headline in the Las Vegas Sun just the other day declared, “Unions Want Their Money’s Worth From Politicians”—and the gist of the story was that they weren’t getting it after heavily bankrolling Obama and the Democrats last Fall. At least one union, the Sheet Metal Workers—not normally associated with gestures of labor independence in politics—has suspended all of its own campaign contributions to candidates for federal office as a protest against “pro-business” Democrats reneging on promises they made about health care or EFCA when they were running for office. It is urging other AFL-CIO affiliates to do the same, to send a message to “centrist Democrats” guilty of such back-sliding.
At the rank-and-file level, there may well be some questioning of “what was all that work for?” in political campaigns last year, if the pay-off for union members and their families continues to be so meager. But how that translates into new union approaches to political action is another question. The last major effort to create an alternative in this area—Tony Mazzocchi’s Labor Party—as discussed in my book, achieved quite a bit of momentum and then receded from view. It’s definitely time to start pushing that boulder back up the hill again because, it’s under Democratic administrations, that the most labor discontent with our two-party system usually sets in.
KS: What role, if any do you see the organized left playing in increasing union density, working internally to democratize existing unions, providing solidarity etc.?
SE: Our current and likely continuing economic difficulties provide all kinds of openings and opportunities for labor leftists to have an impact on efforts to rally the unemployed, organize the unorganized, and/or raise hell within existing unions not responding very well to the myriad challenges of this period. One of the most durable and reliable national networks of left-leaning activists engaged in activity on all three of those fronts is still associated with the 30-year old Detroit-based labor newsletter and education project, Labor Notes. Labor Notes acts as a unique clearinghouse for information and ideas about what works and what doesn’t in unions. It just sponsored a series of very successful “Troublemakers’ Schools” in cities around the country, with very large attendance, and a focus on new organizing, internal union reform activity, and building solidarity among workers, across union lines and internationally.
More than 1,100 of its supporters—of all political stripes—will be coming to Dearborn for a national conference next April. At these educational meetings, held every two years, all kinds of labor strategies and tactics are debated and discussed. For anyone just getting involved in the labor movement, thinking about getting more involved, or just needing to get their batteries recharged, Labor Notes is the best place you can go for inspiration and the opportunity to meet fellow labor and community activists from around the country and the world.
All the major union reform groups attend, and in April, I’m sure, there will be a lot of folks from the National Union of Healthcare Workers, the new union in California, that is challenging SEIU among hospital, nursing home, and long-term care workers. There will also be lots of people from workers centers and immigrant rights groups. To find out more about registration and the program, as it is developed, go to Labor Notes.
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Steve Early's Embedded With Organized Labor is available through Monthly Review Press.
Nothing is ruder than a dis-invitation, and this is just what single-payer advocates in Virginia experienced when they were informed that they were not welcome at an AFSCME sponsored healthcare reform rally. Lack of open democracy seems to be a common theme in town hall meetings and political rallies across the country. This does not just relate to the right wing. Left wing supporters of single-payer healtchare have also found it difficult to get a fair hearing for their healthcare reform proposal. Here, one single-payer activist describes the details of the dis-inviting.
by Brandon Collins
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive
Last week I received an e-mail sent by David Swanson, a well known activist in my area, inviting folks to attend a rally to support single-payer healthcare; the amendment to allow states to draft their own single-payer systems; and call for medicare to be an immediate public option. He had sent this call to board members of my local peace group, asking if any of us could speak at the rally. I jumped at the chance. As a socialist, I was thrilled to give my perspective, especially knowing that there is strong support in my community for single-payer. I diligently began research on my topic- "Profits over People- How private insurers are censoring single-payer and influencing reform to their advantage." I had some correspondence with Andrea Miller, a former congressional candidate and strong single-payer advocate who was also to speak
In the midst of becoming extremely grumpy with the issue of quelling support for HR 676, and the insurance capitalists crafting the current "reform" legislation, my phone rang. It was Andrea. She was convinced that AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union on tour for "healthcare") wanted her to tailor her message to support the corporate sponsored reform package, HR 3200. She let me know there was no way in hell she would do that. She also let the folks at AFSCME know that as well. The issue of single-payer had been discussed by David Swanson with union organizers, and had been cleared. The "sudden" change was puzzling, especially considering the call had been put out to thousands of people that this was a single-payer rally.
I let Andrea know that I understood her completely, and that I too, would not change my message. I quickly e-mailed David for some clarification. I also e-mailed the organizer of the rally asking when I should arrive, if they needed help, and that I was happy to be able to speak about single-payer!
The phone rang again, it was Sian Lewis from AFSCME telling me that they were all full on speakers, and that I was not needed. I was so taken aback I couldn't find the words to confront her. Instead, I told her, maybe I'll see you tomorrow anyway. A few moments later I got the news from David, he too had been dis-invited. The story they fed him was that they suddenly had too many speakers (originally they were hard pressed, that's why I got the gig!). David is no person to be yanked around. He got them to admit it out that all mention of single-payer was now forbidden, and any supporters of HR 676 were not welcome.
This ugly attempt to destroy all views at a rally for something so important was amplified by all of the research I had just done on how HR 3200 has been influenced by private insurance profits. Andrea was too upset to come to town, she was worried she might attack someone, and felt her time was better spent working on other matters related to healthcare. David Swanson and I diligently went to work notifying everyone we had sent the call to about how we had been duped. We asked that folks show up with single-payer signs and attitudes anyway (or not show up at all). David got to work blogging about the incident. For the record, David Swanson is extremely hard working, and a very vocal and well known activist, dis-inviting him to a rally is like telling Yo-Yo Ma he can't play in your string quartet.
I set about to quickly raising some rabble rousers. I alerted the Charlottesville members of the Socialist Party of Central Virginia, some good friends, and members of my local peace group. I grabbed some sign making material, printed out some pamphlets comparing the two bills in congress, and continued to stew in my own feelings of betrayal. This all happened in about a twelve hour time span, in the middle of the goings on of regular life.
In the morning, I headed downtown to the rally with a renewed sense of purpose. The first thing I noticed was a good friend sitting with his single-payer sign. And then I realized, all of the other people arriving early also had signs for single-payer! This was good news, these weren't people I knew. I figured word had gotten out about the betrayal. Nope, they had come prepared to support HR 676. I started talking to folks and told them what had happened, and most agreed it was awful, and that they would still wave their signs and be vocal about single-payer. A woman from one of the local television stations had arrived; I had already informed her about what was going on. She interviewed me. More single-payer folks arrived, and so did more friends, and our local Socialist Party contingent.
The AFSCME healthcare tour bus arrived; they passed out vague signs about public options. Half of the crowd already had signs for HR 676! The other half just seemed confused. A woman came out dressed like Flava Flav with a t-shirt reading public option (a la Public Enemy) and yelled "what do we want?" and before any other response could be given I shouted as loud as I could "SINGLE-PAYER". She didn't bother to continue on with the "when do we want it part". More grumblings from the crowd, "We want single-payer" "Why can't we talk about single-payer?" So she faced reality, and attempted to reason with the crowd. "I know we don't all agree on things, but we are here to have a rally for healthcare reform and shared responsibility". That didn't go over great. There was another attempt at the call and response cheer. At one point, a long time friend and former co-worker of mine very loudly pointed out some of the flaws of reform, and the tragedy of waiting for reforms. He pointed out that what AFSCME was supporting would make things worse. He demanded to be heard. She said they were here for their rally, and that they had a permit. My friend said "I have a permit too, I am a citizen". Other single-payer folks raised their voices periodically, but then kind of quieted to hear what the speakers might say.
There were only three speakers. I thought they had so many that they couldn't find room for me and David and Andrea? The speakers they had spoke about how insurance companies were greedy, that they needed reform, that HR 3200 made sense by supporting competition. The sentiment was genuine, but the policy being supported was written and paid for by private insurance profits to the tune of 1.4 million dollars per day, and is a plan not worthy of supporting. Certainly from a negotiating standpoint, including single-payer in the discussion would be a grand idea. From a moral and practical standpoint- single-payer covers more people, and is more cost effective than the "reform" and "public option" policy. It could be implemented quickly, and it doesn't require competition or profiting off of the suffering and deaths of others.
The rest of the rally I spent talking to the media and some old and new friends. I was very happy to have members of the Socialist Party of Central Virginia local show up and wave some signs at a moments notice. I was also very happy to know that I have friends willing to take a stand on something so important. Indeed, even more happy to know that a group of complete strangers could see through this attempt to dupe people into supporting something they don't want, and that they too, are willing to stand up and say what is right.
It was only for a brief moment afterwards that I felt a bit of guilt of having divided support among healthcare supporters. But the guilt went away, because it wasn't me who was divisive, one moment we were included in the conversation, the next we weren't welcome. It is this kind of event that convinces me that radical solutions and tactics are the best way to get real change. With friends like Democrats and AFSCME, who needs enemies?
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Brandon Collins is the Secretary of the Socialist Party of Central Virginia.
by Steve Bloom
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive
Arise, impoverished slaves of hunger
arise, ye wretched of the earth,
at last, erupting from our slumber
justice thunders its rebirth.
Sweep away this epoch of oppression;
our multitude must stand up tall
and shake the earth to its foundation
we have been naught, we shall be all.
‘Tis the final battle
march as one and we’ll see
the workers’ international
unite humanity!
‘Tis the final battle
march as one and we’ll see
the workers’ international
unite humanity!
by Billy Wharton
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive
The timing seemed perfect for Michael Mann’s new feature film Public Enemies. Faced with a global economic depression which has drawn comparisons with the 1930s, the movie might have posed interesting questions about the social role of crime and the development of illicit popular mythology. Instead, Mann employs the standard CSI cops-and-robbers treatment of the bandit John Dillinger. The authorities, armed with sophisticated crime investigation tools, chase down a criminal who appears more a threat to society than a symbol of popular frustrations.
Mann’s Dillinger is a person ruled by individual passions, which, inevitably, come into conflict with the overall social good. Despite a relatively solid performance by Johnny Depp, Mann’s Dillinger is reduced to shooting, screwing and jail breaking his way through a 140 minute slog. In turn, a unit of FBI G-men employs discipline and science to curtail Public Enemy No. 1. Any attempt at sustained dialogue is promptly stamped out by one of a seemingly endless string of gun fights. One ideological point is offered, though probably not intentionally. Dillinger was a reckless individual willing to put all of society at risk to satisfy his own individual desires.
One scene ripe with potential does manage to escape from this straight jacket of a script. After a string of high-profile robberies, Dillinger is informed by a Chicago mob boss that the mob will no longer extend protection or services to him. It seems that less violent forms of organized crime, in this scene bookmaking, draw far less attention from authorities. This raises interesting questions. What is the relation between illegal and legal aspects of commerce? How does the system draw the line on acceptable levels of violence? And, most importantly, why are Dillinger’s bank-holdups deemed such a threat to the public order? Instead of engaging with such questions, a gun fight explodes onto the screen.
John Dillinger was one of a series of bandits cast as public heroes in the 1930s. For a population so squeezed by the Great Depression, Dillinger offered a string of spectacular acts of resistance against institutions of popular hatred – the banks. For many everyday Americans, he was the Robin Hood of the 1930s. Dillinger became such a popular social deviant that his autopsy was opened to the public by authorities so that "John Dillinger's fate might be a lesson to the world." The economic crisis of the time offered not only a social basis for crime, but for the veneration of the criminal. Mann’s Public Enemies bypasses this point entirely.
However, social reality cannot be avoided for long. Interesting parallels are beginning to be offered by the current economic crisis. A recent rash of bank robberies in Spain, the hardest hit of European economies, may be producing new popular heroes. Citizens have begun to take things into their own hands. A 52 year old contractor, known only as Ausencio C.G., recently carried out a string of bank robberies in order to pay the salaries of his employees after being denied a bank loan. Faced with a sharp decline in the construction sector, four Argentine immigrant painters used their paint truck as a cover for armed robberies of banks. Clearly the social basis of crime; the connection between economic depression and criminality is alive and well. Perhaps, as so many did with Dillinger in the 30s, the public may even develop a bit of sympathy, if not affinity, for the new 21st century bandits. Little acts of resistance carried out against large structures of oppression.
Michael Mann’s Public Enemies takes a different tact. He prefers to pander to the very American notion of individual responsibility for social conditions. So, movie-goers wait for cinema bold enough to explore social issues raised by economic crisis instead of those which seek to reinforce regressive notions in the service of escapism.
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Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, Monthly Review Webzine, The Indypendent, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, the Bronx Times and Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
Comparative prison stats from a New York Times story titled
"Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’":
Number of prisoners per 100,000 people
United States 751
Russia 627
England 151
Germany 88
Japan 63
Median among all nations 125
Washington Post A1 story titled
"New High In U.S. Prison Numbers":
More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.
...And the report also documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they devote larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased 127 percent; spending on higher education rose 21 percent.
Five states -- Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware -- now spend as much as or more on corrections as on higher education.
Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz making a relevant point regarding the massive costs of mass incarceration:
Failures to promote social solidarity can have other costs, not the least of which are the social and private expenditures required to protect property and incarcerate criminals. It is estimated that within a few years, America will have more people working in the security business than in education. A year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard. The cost of incarcerating two million Americans – one of the highest per capita rates (pdf) in the world – should be viewed as a subtraction from GDP, yet it is added on.
For more information on the prison industrial complex and efforts to organizing against it visit Critical Resistance
from the Pierre J. Proudhon Memorial Computer
Count Leo Tolstoy was baptized Orthodox into a life of privilege and wealth in Czarist Russia in 1828. His young adulthood is best summed up with his own words from his book Confession:
I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder - there was not a crime I did not commit...Thus I lived for ten years.
Later in life, Tolstoy formulated a unique Christian philosophy which espoused non-resistance to evil as the proper response to aggression, and which put great emphasis on fair treatment of the poor and working class. Tolstoy also gave a strong plea for Christians to reject the State when seeking answers to questions of morality and instead to look within themselves and to God for their answers.
Tolstoy's books Confession (1884), What Then Must We Do? (1886), and most notably The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894) clearly outline his radical and well-reasoned revision of traditional Christian thinking. The Kingdom of God is Within You is the book which won over Gandhi to the idea of non-resistance to evil.
by Billy Wharton
from Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal
August 19, 2009 - The were two big winners at the recent “town hall” healthcare meeting held in the North Bronx, New York City, neighborhood of Parkchester on August 17 – the lunatic right wing and the private health insurance industry. These victories came despite the fact that the vast majority of those who lined up to participate in the meeting supported either a single-payer system or a public option. Most came away disappointed. I got kicked out.
The right wing won this contest without even participating in it. Sure there was one woman with a “Freedom Isn’t Free Shirt”, but there were certainly none of the antics that have come to typify other ``town hall'' meetings. Not even one “Death Panel” sign. How then did the right wing win? Democrat Representative Joseph Crowley, the organizer of the event, guaranteed this by closing off all space for public discussion.
Instead of a town hall meeting, where constituents can ask questions or make speeches from the floor, Crowley was only willing to meet people one-on-one in “private” meetings. Barricades on both sides of the Metropolitan Oval Park [see picture of the park below] sectioned off the crowd. A slew of private security guards and NYPD officers enforced the distance. The right wing's tactics had worked. Crowley was too scared to hold an open meeting.
Industry funding
Before I left for the meeting I did a quick Internet search to see who I was dealing with. Crowley has certainly dipped into the health industry pot for campaign funding. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that he received $5000 contributions from Pfizer, Abbott Technologies (a pharmaceutical company) and the private health insurance company Blue Cross/Blue Shield. No surprise then that Crowley has avoided the single-payer bill in the US House of Representatives (HR 676) and has provided only tepid support for the public option in the Bill. The literature he distributed makes no mention of a public option. It contains only vague claims about increased regulation and cost reduction.
Now to my story. For the last two years I have been organizing in support of single-payer healthcare. With more than 45 million people without health insurance, millions more underinsured and nearly 20,000 deaths from treatable conditions, the US healthcare system is clearly broken. The responsible party is the private health insurance industry. Single payer, or the National Health Insurance Act, would make private health insurance companies illegal and establish the federal government as the single-payer. As a result, every person in the country would be guaranteed access to healthcare regardless of their ability to pay.
As an organizer, this has been a complicated campaign. Everyone knows the healthcare system is a wreck. Yet few understand how this failed system continues to perpetuate itself through advertising, monopolizing market share and political campaign contributions. The language of ``reform'' has also served to confuse. The House healthcare bill and President Barack Obama continually talk about a “public option” and “universal healthcare”. Many conflate these terms with single payer. There is, in fact, no relation between them.
Obama initiated his healthcare campaign during the larger presidential campaign when he introduced the term “universal health care” to voters. Now that the time has come to shift from rhetoric to policy, we find that his version of universal only includes a “public option”. The public option would be a federally funded plan which would “compete” against other private plans in new “health insurance exchanges”. People not currently able to afford healthcare could either opt into the public plan or receive “credits” (read public funds) to buy a private plan.
Obama claims that the very presence of the public option in the exchanges will force the private health insurance corporations to reduce the cost of the insurance plans they offer. However, the only way for an insurance plan to reduce costs is to skimp on coverage or offer high deductible, high co-pay plans. In fact, a recent article in Mother Jones magazine described the “insurance exchanges” as a plan concocted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. These very same exchanges have been implemented and are in the process of failing in Massachusetts. Obama is therefore, once again, attempting to implement a right-wing scheme which uses taxpayers' money to save a failing private industry. There is simply nothing “universal” about the “public option”.
Thrown out of a public park
While in line to speak to representative Crowley, I met a blogger, Eve NYC, from the Daily KOS, who offered to video my talk with Crowley. She knew that my confronting him with his health industry campaign contributions might be the high point of the otherwise vanilla one-on-one meetings.
I told Crowley’s assistants that I wanted my session with Crowley taped by Eve. They refused, claiming that the press was not allowed to enter, that the public park was an extension of Crowley’s office. I argued that this was ridiculous, that it was a public park and that I, and the journalist, had 1st Amendment rights that could not be suspended by his edict. I was immediately descended upon by a team of aides and security guards. I demanded to see Crowley directly and was eventually allowed to enter.
Crowley and I engaged in a borderline juvenile back-and-forth, in which he claimed his folding chair in the park was his office. I went with the obvious – water fountains, dog walkers, tweeting birds, benches – it was a public park. And he was a public official who should be accustomed, if not willing, to be videotaped. What did he have to hide? After a few heated words of outrage, I was surrounded by security and decided to head off to the mini-stardom which awaited me back on the line. [You can watch Billy's encounter with the ``Democrat'' Crowley below.]
My conflict with Crowley demonstrates that single-payer activists and even democratic socialists have roles to play in the town hall meetings. We should first make sure that they are really democratic; that public officials are not hiding behind barricades, but are forced to face the public. We also have an important educational role to play – patiently explaining the universal benefits offered by single-payer healthcare.
Finally, we should expose both Democrats and Republicans for what many of them really are – paid spokespeople for pharmaceutical companies and private health insurers. The website OpenSecrets.org offers all the resources you need.
Educate, agitate and organize. Timeless injunctions that will serve you well at any town hall meeting, or even, at a town hall charade.
***
Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, Monthly Review Webzine, Dissident Voice, The Indypendent, Common Dreams and Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
by Brandon Collins
from Socialist Party of Central Virginia
Socialist Party of Central Virginia secretary Brandon Collins had a chance to question Tom Perriello at a town hall meeting in Charlottesville on August 11. The tea-bagger crowd was there, but they were overwhelmed by folks who came to limit the influence of the right-wing. Single Payer gets a big cheer, but the question is limited to whether he supports allowing states to institute single-payer.
Socialist questions Congressman Perriello in Charlottesville
by Stephanie Mencimer
from Mother Jones
August 13, 2009 - During his New Hampshire town hall meeting on health care reform in mid-August, Obama explained that under his plan, people who lack health insurance would be able to purchase it in a new exchange that offered a similar “menu of options that I used to have as a member of Congress.” Obama said that by creating a big pool of potential customers, the exchange would allow the uninsured and even small businesses to shop around, easily compare various private health care plans and get a better deal than they could on their own.
Most of the health care reform bills circulating in Congress contain some form of this concept. The exchange, in fact, is now the centerpiece of proposed plans drafted mainly by Democrats. It’s a curious development, because the concept was largely popularized by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank best known in recent years for advocating Social Security privatization during the Bush administration. Its track record ought to make Americans more wary of Obama's proposals than any talk of "socialized medicine."
Heritage is the source of a number of radical free-market and socially conservative policy plans that have occasionally worked their way into law, with questionable results. Among the most prominent: welfare reform, which it advocated in the mid-1990s as a means of reducing out-of-wedlock births and restoring “personal responsibility.” The idea—also embraced by a Democratic president—was considered a resounding success during the boom years of the late Clinton era when millions of poor single mothers went to work. But now that the country has hit a major recession, it has become clear that welfare reform mostly succeeded in shredding the safety net for poor children. (Incidentally, out-of-wedlock births have never been higher).
More recently, Heritage has promoted the idea that what poor women really need to get themselves out of poverty is a good man. At its urging, the Bush administration gave more than $100 million in grants to “marriage entrepreneurs” charged with encouraging poor single mothers to get hitched rather than to get welfare. Needless to say, the poverty rate is still on the rise.
Like many of the foundation’s ideas, a health insurance exchange looks better on paper than in practice. When Massachusetts launched its health reform experiment in 2006, it relied heavily on Heritage's policy prescriptions. Under then-Governor Mitt Romney, Massachusetts created a voluntary insurance exchange similar to the one Obama often promotes. Massachusetts outlines some basic requirements for plans that participate but it doesn’t set rates or reimbursement levels. And far from revolutionizing health care, the exchange—known in Massachusetts as the Connector—is demonstrating the limitations of relying solely on the market to solve the nation’s health care woes and rein in skyrocketing medical costs.
Trudy Lieberman, a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, has done a stellar job of reporting on the Massachusetts initiative. She recently found that the Connector had all but failed to create more affordable insurance options for people in Massachusetts as promised. Using a hypothetical family from Pittsfield in western Mass, Lieberman went shopping on the Connector website. She found that coverage for a 44-year-old couple with an income of $66,150, slightly over the eligibility limit for a state insurance subsidy, “All but three of the fourteen Connector policies cost at least $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year—eighteen percent of their income.” The cheapest policy, at $820 a month, was no bargain. Yet according to the state’s own guidelines, a Pittsfield family with kids could only afford $364 in monthly premiums.
Those prices also vary by age. Lieberman found that if she changed the age of her Pittsfield family to 54, the premiums jumped significantly. And Lieberman reports that it’s not just consumers who are complaining. Insurance companies have failed to garner the promised deluge of new customers, who’ve been deterred by the high prices.
In the reform bills currently pending in Congress, Democrats have modified the Connector model by introducing a public plan that would compete in the exchange to help keep costs down. But the public option seems increasingly doomed, in no small part to the Heritage Foundation itself, which is apparently horrified by Obama’s embrace of its pet policy.
In July, Heritage released a report warning that a public option would cause millions of people to lose their private insurance and serve as a Trojan horse ushering in a single-payer system. Heritage also has decried the way Obama and congressional Democrats have morphed its voluntary free-market concept into a vehicle for more federal regulation. Several of the congressional proposals would use the structure of an exchange to impose new requirements on insurance companies.
Robert Moffit, director of the foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, wrote in July, “If the objective of the President and Congress is to expand the role of the federal government in providing health insurance and determining the kind of health insurance that Americans will get, the national health insurance exchange is a convenient tool for that federal expansion and control.”
Obama, then, is running a big risk. The Massachusetts model suggests that if he fails to win a public option for his federal exchange plan, he could leave Americans with a largely useless shopping program cooked up by the same people who brought us marriage counseling as a poverty cure. It's hard to call that real reform.
by Todd Vachon
from Vachon for Congress
For progressives, folks on the left and especially socialists; it’s nothing new to see legislation we despise come to fruition. For example, we were opposed to both wars, the USA PATRIOT Act and countless forms of deregulation just to name a few. In 
each case we organized non-violent protests, wrote about our dissatisfaction and then respectfully took our losses, brushed ourselves off and got back up for the next round. Now, in the 9th inning, when it seems like some “liberal” policies might be making a comeback, we are all watching to see how the former titans of the right are handling it…. And, well frankly it’s been a raucous display of piss-poor sportsmanship. Attitude and behavior akin to booing, hissing, cursing, throwing bats and taking outright sucker punches.
The rash of disruptions at recent town hall meetings about health reform have been a serious hindrance to the small “d” democratic process. While we on the left will be the first to tell you that we do not live in a democracy, we do acknowledge a certain number of democratic mechanisms espoused in our current system. Public meetings, civil discourse and free access to information are among the cornerstones of democracy; practices that we are not willing to give up. No matter the circumstances.
Having a free and open discussion about policies and options is a necessary precursor for the public to make an informed and rational decision. The use of scare tactics and outright lies spinning through the media lately can only be combated with genuine facts and useful information.
Full text of all congressional bills is available online at the U.S. Congress website. They are very lengthy, not impossible to read, but most people haven’t the time to sift through them. Independent and public media have offered some valuable details on the various plans. Town hall meetings and informational sessions are the next best way to get the low down on potential legislation. The corporate media has unfortunately proved itself, yet again, to be essentially worthless when one is seeking useful and reliable info.
As citizens in a somewhat democratic society we must take our information very seriously; always with a grain of salt, and demand more. Important decisions are not best made in shouting matches. Nor in a state of fear.
Voters must be guaranteed the right to safely gather and discuss important decisions effecting all of us. Furthermore, conveners of these meetings must also detail ALL of the options on the table, including HR676, the single-payer National Health Insurance plan, that will be debated on the house floor this fall.
As it has so often been throughout history, some groups of people conjure up the very desirable ideals of democracy when it is in their interest, but proceed to suppress them when the table is turned. To these folks I say: “Stop being sore losers. The season is not over.”
by Kristin Schall
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive!
Will a rabid right-wing TV personality and a multi-national corporation help usher in a new era of social insurrection? Certainly not intentionally, but both Glenn Beck and Barnes and Noble have contributed to creating an international audience for a small, blue book loaded with incendiary ideas called The Coming Insurrection. Beck offered the book to FOX News viewers as a voyeuristic look into the “dangerous” world of the far-left. Barnes and Noble made their contribution to the promotional campaign only after fending off an attempt by New York City anarchists to stage an unofficial book release. Their customers were given the chance to pre-order the book. Consequently, before The Coming Insurrection was even released, right and left wing scrutiny had created an international platform for its authors to speak from. Is this, then the manifesto for the 21st century that the left has been waiting for? 
Written in the aftermath of the 2005 riots in France by an anonymous group calling themselves The Invisible Committee, this book immediately caught the attention of French authorities. It is “the principle piece of evidence in an anti-terrorism case in France directed against nine individuals who were arrested on November 11, 2008” for the sabotage of electrical lines on France’s railways. This mysterious act followed a mass strike carried out by French railway workers which crippled the country’s transportation system. Whether or not this book is connected to the sabotage it offers a thought provoking analysis of the current cultural and political climate.
Drawing on situationist and anarcho-communist theories, the book presents itself as a response to a global economic crisis that has sparked rebellion not only in France, but also in Greece, Iceland and Italy. Its authors see these seemingly spontaneous riots as “a vital impulse of youth” and “the sole place that can guarantee the essential: keeping the initiative” in a society where people are disconnected from one another because “there is no language left to express common experience with.” It is from this point – the point of the riotous energy of youth - that they base their social analysis.
True to their situationist roots, the authors emphasize the breakdown in social connections between humans. All interactions are now, they argue, mediated through the constructed norms of social groups, milieus, and, most importantly, consumerism. As such, they believe “work is no longer sustainable as a given of the human condition,” that work is yet another means of alienating people from one another. Here, the authors mark a theoretical distinction from various stands of Marxian analysis where labor and the working class are placed at the center of analysis. “We don’t work anymore,” they argue, “we just do our time. A particular business interest is not a place one exists in, but a place one passes through.” General social conditions, and not a distinct class position, form the basis of their call to action.
A major point of the book is that crisis control is often converted into a form of legitimizing state power. The Coming Insurrection argues, instead, that the political space created by crisis be used as a means to weaken the social control of the ruling class‘. They therefore valorize the tactic of disruption and urge the sabotage of the orderly flow of society--economic, social, political, cultural. Most of all, the manifesto is an injunction for its readers to act now instead of delaying political action until the elusive right moment. “There’s no more reason to expect or wait for anything,” they argue “To wait anymore is madness. The catastrophe isn’t coming; it’s here.”
Alongside supporting sabotage and the bearing of arms, The Invisible Committee envision a society organized around general anarchist values - mutual aid, horizontal, rather than vertical relations and shared experience. They see a future where communes work together to provide for one another thereby destroying capitalist hierarchy and hegemony. They urge leftists to begin to build these communes now; by any means necessary. Not doing so immediately merely furthers a culture of separation and alienation. “The truth,” they argue, “is that we have been completely torn from any belonging, we are no longer from anywhere, and the result, in addition to a new disposition to tourism is an undeniable suffering.”
Noble designs motivated the creation of The Coming Insurrection. Yet while action, even immediate reckless action may be necessary, the manifesto lacks a clear praxis that connects coherent sets of ideas with political and cultural endeavors. It largely contains fragmented pieces of cultural analysis and the beginnings of ideas yet to be elaborated on or put into practice. This may be a necessary point of departure, but political action needs to work beyond immediate, impetuous urges. General goals or concrete, even if as yet unrealizable, demands for social change need not be entirely deferred. A demand for critical analysis may, in some cases, be as vital as one to action.
A question of context also arises. The work is clearly a response to political possibilities offered by a relatively highly politicized French society. To attempt 
a wholesale transportation of such strategies to a society like the United States (US) would be to ignore the specific challenges offered by a depoliticized society. Elementary political organization, working from the local community or workplace level outward remains a pressing task in the US. Capitalist globalization may have linked economic zones, but it has yet to create integrated political fields of action.
Ultimately, what The Coming Insurrection offers readers is a window into an embryonic sense of insurrection; a politics which rages at current conditions by expressing desires for an unmediated re-connection with humanity. If readers are looking for a guidebook of insurrectionary tactics, this is not the book, but if they are looking for a spark of insurrectionary ideas to jar them out of political complacency than this book is worth reading. A note of thanks to Glenn Beck and Barnes and Noble may be in order.
***
Kristin Schall is the chairperson of the Socialist Party USA, NYC Local and is a member of the editorial board of The Socialist.. She has had work published on Commondreams and Dissident Voice.
from Wikipedia
Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He was murdered at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War by persons likely affiliated with the Nationalist cause. He is thought to be one of the many victims who 'disappeared' and were executed by the Nationalists. In 2008, a Spanish judge opened an investigation of García Lorca's death and his family dropped objections to the excavation of his possible grave.
Before the Dawn
But like love
the archers
are blind
Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm
lily.
The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.
Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!
by Josh Hatala
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive!
In recent months the health care debate has reached a fevered pitch as all sides clamber to be heard. This debate has centered around two options: the plan proposed by Obama which may, or may not, include a public option but maintains a system of for-profit insurance, or the continuation of the status quo with, perhaps, some “tort reform” and an unclear notion of developing greater competition within the for-profit insurance sector to drive down prices. Minor reforms or the unseen hand of the market? Myths that should have been shattered by the recent economic crisis are alive and well in the debate about health care reform.
Missing from this debate are the millions of us who support a single-payer system. The cost effective and truly humane plan proposed in House Resolution 676 for a National Health Insurance Program, now faces the possibility of being reduced to a footnote in the history of the early twenty-first century healthcare debate. So, what is to be done? My recent trip to a health care themed “town hall” meeting attended by about 250 people in New York State’s 20th district, represented by Scott Murphy (D), provide some answers to this question.
Most of us have by now seen media coverage of these “town hall” meetings: Elected officials make a case for Obamacare, right-wing protestors carry signs denouncing Obama as a socialist and make wild claims about the dictatorial hell “government healthcare” will usher in. Those in support of the president’s as yet unclear plan shout back and carry their own signs. Blows are occasionally exchanged. Single-payer advocates are rarely heard from.
At the town hall meeting I attended, I was surprised to see that the media’s coverage of these events was fairly accurate. One protestor’s sign alluded to the 1973 movie Soylent Green by suggesting that a government run plan might create a dystopian nightmare where patients stand in front of “Obama’s death panel” (as former governor Sarah Palin recently described it) waiting to be judged worthy of scarce, rationed health care. When the town hall was opened to Q&A, right supporters offered an ample serving of this fear-mongering and misinformation.
When I had my chance to speak I thanked the members of the military, firefighters, and police officers who had spoken (pause, wild applause from the right) – for being living testaments to the success of public services and government-run institutions (laughter and applause from the left and confused silence from the right). I then told my own story- of both of my parents passing away in the past four years, of being told their insurance had run out even after decades of working for the state, that they were denied needed care because of an inability to pay, and that this amounted to rationing health care- rationed based on those who can and cannot afford it. The feared nightmare, I said, is already here.
I asked Congressman Murphy why, despite the support of tens of millions of Americans, a single-payer option was not being discussed as a real alternative to the present system. Several members of the crowd applauded, expressing their agreement, but most were silent. In Congressman Murphy’s reply he claimed that he had not heard much support from within his district for a single-payer system and had a responsibility to reflect the wishes of his constituents.
The near silence from a crowd of approximately 250 people when I mentioned single-payer left me a bit confused. This crowd had been extremely vocal for over an hour, interrupting Congressman Murphy and nearly every speaker to interject their opinions either for or against the Obama plan. Why were there so few cries in support of single-payer and, even more strangely, why was the right-wing eerily silent when I suggested a plan that would bring us even closer to real socialism? Second, I think Congressman Murphy might have been correct: single-payer advocates have not been vocal enough in making their position known. This is not helped by others on the left who have abandoned hope for single-payer and instead support Obama’s plan because they see single-payer as an impossibility in corporate dominated America. The “lesser of two evils” mentality has apparently migrated from the ballot box to the health care debate.
After asking my questions, I moved around the crowd a bit, striking up conversations with the handful of single-payer advocates as well as Obamacare supporters. It turned out that few of the Obamacare advocates I spoke with had even heard of HR 676, but were very interested to learn more. It became apparent that the near silence I experienced after asking Congressman Murphy about single-payer was attributable to the fact that few there had even heard of HR 676. Most, it seems, had no idea what I was talking about. Congressman Murphy’s claim that few in his district had brought up single-payer started to become more believable. So, where does that leave us?
Fueled by half-truths and outright lies thousands of right wing meetup groups are springing up around the country, inspired by Glenn Beck and other so called “patriot” pundits. These are the people at the town hall meetings parroting the slogans of fear and divisiveness. Their strategy is working, their numbers are growing, and partly because of their influence the debate over healthcare is not moving beyond the two options mentioned at the beginning of this article.
If we advocates of single-payer have any chance at winning real change, or at least having our voices heard in this debate, we need to act quickly, act firmly, and act collectively to educate the public and make our voices heard. Some basic ideas came to mind as a result of my trip to a town hall meeting:
We should not assume that most people understand what single-payer means, or know that it even exists as an option. Always be willing and able to explain the benefits of HR 676, in comparison to the false options of the other proposals. Flyers with basic information on single-payer can be placed at local establishments such as coffee shops, bars or wherever people gather. We should use the media exposure to our advantage.
Let’s start seriously putting the screws to elected representatives. We should contact them to present single-payer as a viable option. If they reject this, we can escalate the pressure. Either way, the time to act is now!
Of course, we cannot go it alone in this struggle. Consider getting involved with organizations that advocate for single-payer, like the Socialist Party-USA or Healthcare-NOW. History shows that there is power in numbers.
We must always remain in motion. Get active and organize locally to protest, petition, and gain support.
Time is running out. We must act quickly and decisively if our voice is to be heard.
by Herman Benson
from Benson's Union Democracy Blog
An unwritten gentlemen's agreement seems to regulate relations among top labor leaders: "You can run your union as you see fit, even honestly, and I will never criticize you publicly. In return, you will never criticize me for running my union as I see fit." But that code of conduct seemed to be seriously breached when fourteen international union leaders and many local ones --- some AFL-CIO and some Stern's Change to Win --- publicly chastised Andy Stern for trespassing on the jurisdiction of UNITE/HERE.
In Labor Notes, Jane Slaughter takes a dim view of what motivated these top union leaders to blast Stern.
Stern has been accused by assorted critics of making sweetheart deals with some employers, of disrupting his own union and others by massive attacks on dissidents, of buttering up Chinese dictators, of standing together with an anti-union Wal-Mart, of suppressing exposes of nursing home abuse, of claiming a monopoly over healthcare organizing, of appointing armies of local officers, of demanding loyalty oaths, and who knows what other offenses, real or exaggerated.
But, Slaughter points out, it was not for such offenses against unionism and democracy that they berated Stern. “No,” she writes, “these union leaders’ outrage was prompted by Stern's flagrant violation of that hallowed labor principle: jurisdiction. Stern was not only attempting to take over hotel organizing drives begun by UNITE/HERE but also claiming the right to organize hotel workers in the future. That’s turf, and them’s fighting words.”
Of course, she does make a telling point. Top labor leaders, even those who trumpet calls for industrial democracy and justice in society, can never be counted on to battle for the democratic rights of members inside unions, their own or others. In every case where the union establishment has intervened in Federal courts cases involving the rights of members in their unions, it has invariably been on the wrong side, on the side of limitation and repression.
Still, I think that, in this case, Jane Slaughter has been a little too unsympathetic.
In is probably true that, from time to time, all of Stern’s top union critics have been guilty in at least part of that catalogue of derelictions listed against him. 
Yes, they do it, but unobtrusively, and they don't boast about it. What distinguishes Stern is his ability to slurp all this together and palm it off as a modern philosophy, as a program to save the workers of the world. And, in so doing, to induce the mainstream media to hail him as the great new hero-savior of the labor movement, trumping all the others. You can understand how it galls all the others. In part, they now seize upon his financing of an attack upon the jurisdiction of UNITE/HERE as a 'legal,' acceptable, conventional opportunity to vent a pent-up resentment, even fury. For some, I think (and hope), it could even serve as relief for a somewhat uneasy conscience. We can't demand that people always do the right thing for the right reasons in the right way at the right time. For that, you can wait forever.
Read Jane Slaughter's "Has Andy Stern Reunited Labor?"
from the World War 4 Report
August 9, 2009 - The five generals who lead the Honduran armed forces made a rare appearance on national television Aug. 4 to explain their role in the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya. They repeated that they did not act to take sides in the political fight that has polarized the country, but out of obedience to the law, and that history would judge them as patriots. They denied that they acted in the 
interests of an "oligarchy." They said that Zelaya was acting on behalf of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, and had become a threat to democracy throughout the hemisphere. Said Gen. Miguel Ángel Garcia Padget: "Central America was not the objective of this communism disguised as democracy. This socialism, communism, chávismo, we could call it, was headed to the heart of the United States."
Gabo Jalil, the vice minister of defense in the de facto government, said in a separate interview that international human rights groups have made baseless accusations that the military is using "death squad" tactics against Micheletti's opponents.
But Edmundo Orellana, who was defense minister under Zelaya, expressed concern that the generals' appearance signaled that the military, emboldened by its move against Zelaya, has decided to take more of a leading role in a government that has no legal international standing and only tenuous control of its institutions at home. (NYT, Aug. 4)
Repression escalates
The generals' denial of 1980-style repression came four days after Roger Vallejo, a teacher shot by security forces while participating in a July 30 roadblock on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, died of his head wound after two days in a hospital's intensive-care unit. (Reuters, Aug. 1)
On Aug. 2, another teacher, Martín Florencio Rivera Barrientos, was assassinated by unknown assailants while returning to his home in Tegucigalpa from Vallejo's funeral. Rivera Barrientos received 24 stab wounds.
That same day, several were arrested and reportedly roughed up by police as teachers protested against the coup regime in Comayagua and Santa Rosa de Copán. (Prensa Latina, Aug. 2)
The bishop of Santa Rosa de Copán, Luis Santos Villeda, in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service, came to the defense of the notion that the coup was on behalf of the Honduran oligarchy. "Some say Manuel Zelaya threatened democracy by proposing a constitutional assembly," he said. "But the poor of Honduras know that Zelaya raised the minimum salary. That's what they understand. They know he defended the poor by sharing money with mayors and small towns. That's why they are out in the streets closing highways and protesting."
Yes, it's the oligarchy
He said it is misleading to consider Honduras a democracy, either before or after the June 28 coup. "There has never been a real democracy in Honduras," he said. "All we have is an electoral system where the people get to choose candidates imposed from above. The people don't really have representation, whether in the Congress or the Supreme Court, which are all chosen by the rich. We're the most corrupt country in Central America, and we can't talk about real democracy because the people don't participate in the decisions." (CNS, Aug. 7)
