Bigger Bill Haywood

The American Civil War Sesquicentennial

2011-04-27T15:34:00.000-04:00

“The past is never dead. It’s not even in the past”
--William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

On April 12, 1861, the first shots of the American Civil War were fired from Charleston, South Carolina across the harbor at Fort Sumter. Nearly four years and 618,000 American lives later, the war ended with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac at the crossroads called Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. Despite the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth six days later, the peace held, as another contentious period of American history known as Reconstruction began in earnest. These facts, however, tell us little about the importance of the conflict in the history of the United States. To understand the importance of the conflict, we turn to the voluminous number of books and other material that seek to explain the events and their importance.

Most importantly, the Civil War ended slavery, the right of a person to hold other people as property. Ending slavery was not the stated aim of the federal government at the beginning of the conflict; Lincoln requested the mobilization of the loyal state militias (which became most of the Union Army) “… to maintain the honor, the integrity, the existence, and the perpetuity of the National Union.” The issue of slavery was never far away, however, because “Without slavery, the rebellion could never have existed. Without slavery, it could not continue.”

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

2011-03-23T22:17:00.003-04:00

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire is one of the most important--and tragic--events in American Labor History. In the late afternoon of March 25, 1911--just before quitting time that Saturday, in fact--a fire broke out on the 9th floor of the building housing the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The Order Department, located on the 8th floor, immediately notified company management, located on the 10th floor, and persons on both of those floors escaped harm. But no one from the company thought to evacuate the workers located on the floor between, and as a result they were trapped. Some were able to escape to the roof of the building. Many more, fearing being burned to death in the fire, leaped to their death from the 9th and 10th floors of the building.

The factors that contributed to this tragedy were numerous--from New York Fire Department ladders that only reached to the 6th floor, to the cramped work quarters with wicker baskets full of scrap cloth and the oil impregnated floor in the factory. Many of the contributed factors may have been overcome, but a door the the stairway was locked (either to keep union organizers out, or to keep workers from leaving early); other doors that would have allowed the women to escape opened inward, and were blocked as the by now panicked women attempting to escape.

The fear of unionization was very much on the minds of the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. In 1910, the "Uprising of the 20,000" led to the unionization of many rival shirtwaist companies. Triangle was able to resist the unionization drive, and therefore also resist the demand of its workers to unlock the doors of the factory and to ensure that the fire escapes were functional. Those demands remained unaddressed on March 25, 1911.

This tragedy deeply touched many New Yorkers--one in ten, in fact, turned out to observe and participate in the memorial service held for the victims as many of them were taken to the cemetery in Queens. As a result of this tragedy, many new laws and ordinances were passed that attempted to address the concerns raised by this event--and unions were at the forefront, bargaining to gain many new workplace safety features.

The Cornell University Industrial and Labor Relations School has developed an online exhibit where a great deal of primary source material has been brought together--a terrific achievement, for which everyone involved gets a hardy thanks from this blogger. In light of the renewed assault on labor across the nation, this event should serve as a reminder of what life was like for workers without unions.

The "Incident" Over the Tea in Boston

2008-12-16T19:48:00.002-05:00

On this date in history, 1773, the "incident over the tea" took place in Boston Harbor, as a number of men, lightly disguised as "Indians," boarded a ship anchored in the harbor, broke open all of the chests containing tea, and dumped the contents and chests overboard--all while a crowd of several thousand watched silently from the docks.In response, the British government in London ordered the port of Boston closed. This in turn provoked the various colonies to call for a meeting in Philadelphia to formulate a protest. Eventually, events led to the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, and the establishment of the United States of America.

This act is generally portrayed as a reaction by the Americans to the ideal of "no taxation without representation; however, the Tea Act actually reduced the tax paid on tea. It did promise to vigorously enforce the prohibition on importing tea other than from the East India Company, and promise prosection of smugglers. Among the most prominent smugglers of tea (and other goods) was John Hancock (the guy with the big signature).

What often gets overlooked is the role of the "lower sort" in this protest. As Alfred Young demonstrated in The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, the support of these kinds of people was instrumental to accomplishing this particular incident, as well as enforcing the boycott that preceded it.

Pro-Labor Republican?

2008-10-01T11:22:00.003-04:00

Sarah Palin, the gift that keeps on giving, on the Hugh Hewitt radio show yesterday:

The money quote:

"We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs,"

The interviewer being Hugh Hewitt, there was no real follow-up on this point, of course.

Joe and Jill Six-Pack (aka Todd and Sarah Palin) benefited from their "good union jobs," so surely Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin supports the Employee Free Choice Act--right, Governor? Being in a union family, she must also be aware of how Taft-Hartley tilted the playing field in favor of management, and supports amending the Labor-Management Relations Act to rollback those stipulations--right, Governor? And Senator McCain, surely you agree with your veep choice, and believe that it is important enough to suspend your campaign to ~~parachute~~ return to Washington to introduce this legislation, right?

It's what Teddy Roosevelt would've done, after all.

The Billionaire Bailout

2008-09-29T14:26:00.003-04:00

Because of the "principled" opposition of an overwhelming number of Republican US House members, the Billionaire Bailout flamed out this afternoon. In my opinion, this is a desirable outcome--if Wall Street is really in need of a huge bailout, then they will have to accept some stipulations that they have resisted to this point. In my view, those stipulations should be (in order of importance):

1.) Changes in the bankruptcy law that allow judges to change the terms of mortgages, so that people in danger of losing their homes can find a way to stay.

2.) An equity stake for the taxpayer in any company that accepts money for this bailout, along the lines that the Swedish government imposed in the early 1990s. If Wall Street's losses are going to be socialized, so should the profits.

3.) Greater regulation of the financial industry, to prevent another fiasco like this happening ten years from now.

4.) Executive compensation should be brought in line with performance--no more Carly Fiorina-style golden parachutes.

Now is the time for tough bargaining on the part of Democratic Party leaders--put together a package that Main Street can support. As for the opposition from Wall Street, I'm reminded of one of my mother's favorite sayings: "Beggars can't be choosers."

Labor and the Civil Rights Act

2008-07-02T18:47:00.002-04:00

On this date in history, July 2, 1964, Lyndon Johnson cajoled and twisted the arms of enough congressmen to pass the Civil Rights Act. This landmark piece of legislation segregation in schools, public places, and employment. It also ensured that the Democratic Party would become the minority party in the South; despite Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater in November 1964, Goldwater won the in the formerly "Solid South" states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in addition to his home state of Arizona.

Since the ostensible subject this blog is suppose to cover is all things labor, I would like to focus on the effect of this legislation on the labor movement. As a means of combatting segregation in the workplace, the act provided for the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). During its early years of existence, the EEOC filed few cases.

Griggs v. Duke Power changed that posture dramatically. Duke Power before the passage of the Civil Rights Act had maintained a strictly segregated workforce, with African Americans relegated to the laborer occupations. To maintain this system after the passage of the Act, the company changed the requirement for any position other than laborer to be limited to high school graduates. This eliminated nearly all African American candidates, while "grandfathering" whites in better postions who had not earned a high school diploma. Because the requirement of a diploma was "race neutral," lower courts had ruled that the company was justified in making this change.

The US Supreme Court, however, ruled that the company had to prove that the requirements were "reasonably related" to job qualifications if these changes had a disparate impact on ethnic groups, and overturned the decision of the lower court. During this same time frame, the "Philadelphia Plan" was implemented. In Philadelphia, the construction trades were especially obstinate in removing obstacles to hiring more African Americans on construction jobs. In 1968, Johnson's Secretary of Labor, William Wirtz, attempted to implement the first Philadelphia Plan, which would set "affirmative action" goals to hire African Americans in greater numbers for projects paid for by the Federal Government. Wirtz backed down under pressure from the building trades, however.

Since labor unions had led the opposition to Nixon in 1968 (nearly succeeding in electing Hubert H. Humphrey), Nixon felt no such compunction to buckle under to union pressure. In fact, Nixon saw this as a "wedge" issue, to further divide the labor/liberal opposition--which it certainly did.

JAMES BROWN! Ladies and Gentlemen

2008-06-17T20:20:00.001-04:00

Just to counteract that little throw-up taste in you mouth from that last post:

The End of Racism

2008-06-17T20:09:00.002-04:00

Not so fast there, Dinesh D'Souza

Let the Texas Republican Party know how you feel about their marketing campaign.

"A Third-Rate Burglary"

2008-06-17T14:34:00.002-04:00

On this date in history, five burglars were arrested in the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on the sixth floor of the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Three of the men--Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio R. Gonzales, and Bernard L. Barker, were Cuban exiles who had taken part in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. The fourth man, Frank Sturgis, was described by DC police as a "soldier of fortune," who had led three three Cuban exiles during the Bay of Pigs incident. The fifth man gave police the name of Edward Martin; his real name, however, was James W. McCord, who was employed with Richard M. Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President, known by the acronym CREEP. Later, two co-conspirators, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were also indicted.

Hunt encouraged the men to plead guilty, as he planned to do, assuring them they would receive light sentences and that their families "would be taken care of." Hunt had readily supplied the Cuban exiles (whom he had led during the CIA-directed Bay of Pigs operation) with money, but had cut off funds when the men threatened to tell police what they knew. Hunt appealed to the men's patriotism, and promised that the money would flow again. Unfortunately for Hunt, however, his wife died in a tragic plane crash just days before with $10,000 in cash in a briefcase; this money is eventually traced back to CREEP.

Despite the scent of scandal wafting through the campaign, Nixon wins a landslide victory over the Democratic Party candidate, George McGovern, in the fall. The story of the attempted cover-up would not die, however, as two enterprising journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, kept digging for information and interviewing sources, guided in part by a source cultivated by Woodward known as "Deep Throat," after the adult movie popular in 1972. As the story "gained legs," it spurred investigations by the FBI, the US Senate, and the US House, culminating in this episode:

"A House Divided . . ."

2008-06-16T18:23:00.002-04:00

As a number of bloggers have noted, today is the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech, given in the "old" Illinois State House, which now serves as Lincoln's Presidential Library. This video will give you a flavor of how it went down:

The camera movement is a little stiff, but what do you expect for 1858?

Anyway, what inspired me to write about this speech was on opinion piece placed in today's local newspaper, the Toledo Blade. In an otherwise fine article about the signifcance of the speech, author Nick J. Sciullo hauls off and accuses Lincoln of being an abolitionist Um, not really. Lincoln was anti-slavery, but never made the leap to abolitionism until it became a war-time expedient. Historian George Frederickson, in one of his last publications, seriously considered Linclon's ever evolving position on race, and argues that, while Lincoln never publicly argued for the equality of the white and black race, he was Big Enough to be Inconsistent

Events this month also illustrate the complex drama of race as it has played out in this country, since in less than two weeks we will also observe the 30th anniversary of the University of California Regents v. Bakke, which established in law the concept of reverse discrimination.

1909 Hawaiian Sugar Plantation Strike

2008-06-11T20:28:00.002-04:00

On May 9, 1909, Japanese workers on the Aiea Plantation walked off their jobs, demanding higher wages and improved working conditions. Japanese workers had been imported to work on sugar plantations for the previous 15 to 20 years, to replace Chinese workers who began organizing for better wages and working conditions. The Chinese workers were imported to replace native Hawaiian, who had died off in alarming numbers since their exposure to European diseases in 1798; many who survived the invasion of the microbes succumbed to overwork when sugar cultivation was introduced to the islands.

By early June, some 7,000 Japanese workers and their families were on strike on Oahu. On June 12, these strikers were charged with inciting disorder. On the previous day, three strike leaders--Makino, Negoro, and Soga, according to the New York Times--were arrested. A large crowd of strikers peacefully assembled outside the jail in Honolulu, chearing loudly when any of the three appeared.

The strike continued into August, with the Hawaiian Sugar Growers Association hiring strikebreakers from the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere--and paying them $1.50 a day. That was more than double what Japanese workers were being paid at the time ($.60 a day), and fifty percent more than the $1.00 a day the Japanese workers were asking for. By the end of the month, most Japanese workers were back on the job, working under the new lower wage.

Factory Girls

2008-06-11T14:49:00.002-04:00

Ten years ago on this date, Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturer of America (MMMA) agreed to a $34 million settlement of the allegations that the company's female workers were insulted and groped and management did nothing to stop it. In 1994, 29 female employees filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that the company was complicit in allowing male workers on the shop floor to sexually harass them. In April 1996 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought suit on the behalf some 300 to 500 female workers at Mitsubishi's Normal, Illinois plant. The complaints were some of the most egregious that the EEOC had handled to that point; besides the groping of genital areas, women were also subjected to pornagraphy in the workplace, including graphic drawings on automobiles as they came down the assembly line.

The Mitsubishi plant is one of the few Japanese "transplant" factories that is unionized; UAW Local 2488 represents production workers at this location. Unfortunately, the union did nothing when female members of the local raised complaints with local officers. When the EEOC first filed suit, Mitsubishi bused hundreds of workers to the EEOC offices in Chicago to protest the decision. But afraid of the repercussions that "bad publicity" would generate for the already stuggling operation, the company hired former Bush I labor secretary Lynn Martin to study the company's labor relations practices, and by 1998 decided to settle the suit out of court.

"Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?"

2008-06-09T15:03:00.002-04:00

On this date in history in 1954, attorney Joseph N. Welch confronted Senator Joseph R. McCarthy during a hearing on the threat of communistis in the United States Army. McCarthy, using the bullying tactics that had proven so successful, "exposed" a young lawyer in Welch's firm as a suspected communist. Welch's reaction to McCarthy's reckless behavior is credited with giving courage to others to stand up to McCarthy, and is credited with beginning McCarthy's downfall.

What get overlooked in this sequence of events is the role that Roy Cohn played in this tragi-comedy. Cohn served as chief counsel for the Senate Subcomittee on Investigations, and therefore became responsible for feeding names of suspected communists to McCarthy. To assist him in this endeavor, Cohn enlisted the assistance of a long-time friend, G. David Schine. Many other staffers on the subcomittee suspected that Cohn and Schine were lovers, which may explain the vehemence with which they pursued other suspected homosexuals in the US government. Schine was drafted into the Army in 1952, soon after he and Cohn began an investigation into suspected communists in the Army.

Although it is difficult to ascertain from the video link above, the homosexual nature of the relationship between Cohn and Schine was widely suspected. Although this transcript does not clearly illustrate it, Welch during the hearing "baits" Cohn about his relationship with Schine. Although Cohn readily handles the questioning from Welch, McCarthy jumps to the defense of his chief inquisitor, and gets back at Welch by accusing a junior member of his firm of belonging to a communist "front" organization, the Lawyers Guild.

The Army-McCarthy hearings have long been credited with "bringing down" McCarthy, but a greater factor was the fact that the investigation and hearings never produced their own Alger Hiss moment; with know one ever brought to trial after being "exposed" by McCarthy, his momentum was impossible to sustain.

With the kangaroo court proceedings getting underway at Guantanamo Bay, it is perhaps more important now than it has been in the recent past to recall that, faced with similar circumstances, some Americans placed the importance of the rule of law before their fears of some bogey man that was used to further political ends.

Another "On This Date in History" post

2008-06-06T15:46:00.002-04:00

On this date in history, this performance took place at the Fillemore East in New York City:

When the Levee Breaks

2008-06-06T14:55:00.002-04:00

First, a refresher--

Then go here, and read the whole thing. I don't have much going on today, so I can wait for you ...

... dum da de da dum, or you're back!

I was in Gulf Coast Mississippi in June of the following year, where we (my wife, sister-in-law, and her husband) worked out of a Methodist church in Moss Point, Mississippi. In our one week there, we were able to get a family, whose home had only suffered flooding from the storm surge, close to being able to move back into their home. We replaced the lower half of the interior walls of their house with new drywall, killed the black mold that had grown in the space between the drywall and outside wall, and replaced the wall sockets that had been damaged by the salt water from the storm surge (the house, by the way, was about a half a mile from the Gulf--so that gives you an idea of the strength of the storm surge).

The point being, even without politicizing the Federal response to Katrina, the hacktastic Bush Administration's response was woefully inadequate; when they went looking for scapegoats to blame their failures on, it cost the lives of hundreds of people.

D-Day, the 6th of June

2008-06-06T06:30:00.001-04:00

The Allied attack on the fortified defense postions along the beach in Normandy, in northern France, began at dawn on this date in 1944. Officially known as "Operation Overlord," D-Day quickly became the widely accepted term for the commemoration of this event. I have chosen below less well-known footage of the invasion:

Roosevelt and Churchill had been under pressure from Stalin to open a new front on the war, to relieve the intense pressure that the Red Army, which had defeated the German Army to at Stalingrad the previous year.

Storming the beaches of Normandy was first a logistical difficulty, because of the resources needed to to put thousands of allied (British and Canadian, as well as US) troops necessary to take and hold the positions long enough to provide a jumping off point to re-take France. Most of the troops in the invasion were transported from the troopships to the beaches via the Landing Ship, Tank (LST). Most soldiers contended that the initials stood for Large Slow Target, which this footage from the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" amply illustrates:

I have used this footage several times in the classroom, because it allows students, I feel, to vicarously experience what the invasion felt like for the grunts--the seasickness, the fear, the fatalism. Then the doors open on the craft, and the soldiers are under such heavy fire that many do not make it out of the boat.

One also gets a feeling for the carnage the war caused, and the personal bravery, as well--but also, near the end of this clip--

the occasional war crime (shooting surrendering prisoners) as well.

Unwitting Iranian Dupes

2008-06-05T22:45:00.006-04:00

Or, maybe it should be Iranians dupe nitwits?

Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?
John Walcott | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: June 05, 2008 10:39:07 PM

WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that a small group of Pentagon officials who'd collected dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran from Iranian exiles might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the group's activities after only a month, and Pentagon officials never followed up on investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.

The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.

According to the Senate report, the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity unit concluded in 2003 that Ledeen "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar."

The counterintelligence unit said, however, that Ledeen's association with Ghorbanifar "was widely known, and therefore it should be presumed other foreign intelligence services, including those of Iran, would know."

Stephen Cambone, then the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, shut down the counterintelligence investigation after only a month, the Senate report said

Wait, wait, it gets better--

During the Rome meetings, Ghorbanifar also laid out a scheme to overthrow the Iranian regime on a napkin during a late night meeting in a bar. "The plan," said the Senate committee, "involved the simultaneous disruption of traffic at key intersections leading to Tehran that would create anxiety, work stoppages and other disruptive measures" in a capital city famous for its traffic congestion.

Ghorbanifar asked for $5 million in seed money, Franklin told the committee, and indicated that if the traffic jam plan succeeded, he'd need additional money.

"The proposed funding for, and foreign involvement in, Mr. Ghorbanifar's plan for regime change were never fully understood," the Senate committee said.

Nevertheless, Ghorbanifar's proposals grew more ambitious — and expensive. A February 2002 memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman referred to an unnamed foreign government's support for a Ghorbanifar plan that would cost millions of dollars. A later summary referred to contracts "that would assure oil and gas sales in the event of regime change". The U.S. ambassador to Italy said that DOD officials "were talking about 25 million for some kind of Iran program."

After Franklin and Rhode returned from the Rome meetings, the Senate report said, two series of events began to unfold in Washington that were typical of the gamesmanship that plagued the Bush administration's national security team.

"First," the report said, "State Department and CIA officials attempted to determine what Mr. Ledeen and the DOD representatives had done in Rome, and second, DOD officials debated the next course of action."

When the CIA and the State Department discovered that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar were involved, they opposed any further contact with the two. Ledeen's contacts, the Defense Human Intelligence Service concluded, were "nefarious and unreliable," the Senate committee reported.

According to the report, Ledeen, however, persisted, presenting then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with a new 100-day plan to provide, among other things, evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly had been moved to Iran — Saddam Hussein's archenemy. This time, the report said, Ledeen solicited support from former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and from three then-GOP senators, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Rhode and Ghorbanifar met again in Paris in June 2003 with at least the tacit approval of an official in Cheney's office, the Senate report said.

He reported back to officials in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, but "there is no indication that the information collected during the Paris meeting was shared with the Intelligence Community for a determination of potential intelligence value," the report said.

This is like hitting the motherlode of Republican stupidity--Cheney, Rumsfield, Feith, Cambone, Gingrich, Brownback, Kyl, Santorum--all under the spell of some self-styled "Middle East Expert"--Ledeen--who neither writes nor speaks neither Arabic or Farsi, and gets played like a Stradivarius by some two-bit con man. Move over, Doug Feith, there's a new stupidest f**cking guy on the planet

Hat tip to Atrios

Wonder why Feith left this little episode out of his book?

The 1998 Flint Strike

2008-06-05T15:11:00.002-04:00

On June 5, 1998, workers at the Flint Metal Center went out on strike.

The overriding issue is outsourcing-transferring work to low-wage or non-union shops in this country and abroad. Through plant closings and consolidations, speed-up, technological improve ments and increased overtime, GM has eliminated hundreds of thousands of union jobs over the last two decades.

Workers stayed on strike for 59 days, eventually costing GM more than $2 billion dollars, because the Metal Center and Delphi East (which also went out on strike over the same issues)supplied parts for 16 assembly plants--the result of GM's (then) new reliance on "just in time" parts supply. A more thorough examination of the implications of this strike is undertaken by geographer Andy Herod (warning: large pdf file).

The 1968 California Democratic Primary

2008-06-05T06:15:00.004-04:00

The 1968 California Democratic Party primary election took place on June 4, and is infamous because of the tragic assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel after his victory speech after midnight on June 5. In the days before 24 hour news channels, most Americans didn't find about about this event until the next morning in the newspaper.

Kennedy entered the Democratic primaries after Eugene McCarthy had proven Lyndon Johnson beatable after McCarthy's narrow loss in the New Hampshire primary in mid-March of 1968 (yes, kids, we use to have an primary election season that only lasted four months). Kennedy did not have enough delegates to win the nomination outright going into the July convention in Chicago, but he did have the backing of many old-line Democrats, including Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley.

That convention fight was ended by an assassin's bullet. Sirhan B. Sirhan, a Palestinian, sits in a California prison after being convicted for this crime; there are those who claim that he was not the triggerman, or that there were others involved. LA police found an entry in Sirhan's diary that noted "RFK must die before June 5"--the one year anniversary of the Six Day War. Sirhan was the one grabbed by eyewitness Roosevelt Grier, a member of the (then)-Los Angeles Rams' "Fearsome Foursome."

I would like to leave you with a speach that RFK made in the aftermath of an earlier tragic assassination in April of 1968.

We Remember

2008-06-04T09:39:00.002-04:00

... even if the government in China tries to erase the memories.

The events leading up to the massacre at Tianamen Square were a series of protests by labor organizations, students, and intellectuals against the economic policies of the Chinese government. While most of the western media attention focused on Tianamen Square in Beijing, like protests took place throughout the country. These protests were largely peaceful until the Chinese army moved in to crush the rebellion on this day in 1989. The resulting deaths ranged somewhere between 200 (the Chinese government figure) and 3000 (the high end estimated by student protest leaders--and the Chinese Red Cross.

The "lone protester" who stood in front of the tanks advancing on the square the next day became a symbol for the resistance showed by the protesters, but did not prevent thousands being swept up in a nation-wide dragnet which, along with continued use of brutal force, ended the protests.

If You Knew Suzi

2008-06-03T20:10:00.002-04:00

You wouldn't be hanging out here

9/11 Really Did Change Everything

2008-02-18T19:35:00.003-05:00

In looking for blogging fodder, I learned, courtesy of the Associated Press, that on this date in history ten year ago: President Clinton's foreign policy team encountered jeers during a town meeting at The Ohio State University while trying to defend the administration's threat to bomb Iraq into compliance with U.N. weapons edicts. On this very same date, five years ago: Declaring that America's security should not be dictated by protesters, President Bush said he would not be swayed from compelling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to disarm

Makes you wonder how different the world would be if we had a competant President and NSC chief on August 6, 2001.

The Bombing of Dresden

2008-02-13T15:55:00.002-05:00

>
On this date in history in 1945, the allied bombing attack on Dresden commenced. Between February 13 and February 15, 1,300 allied bombers dropped 3,900 tons (that's 7,800,000 pounds) of explosives and incendiaries on the city, creating a firestorm in the center of the city that completely detroyed that section; it also killed somewhere between 24,000 and 40,000 civilians--the greatest number of civilians killed in an attack until August of that year (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Did that attack constitute a war crime? Since the victors of wars define that, and rarely charge themselves, that answer is self-evident. There were truth-tellers who survived that attack, however, including a young American prisoner-of-war, kept safe in an underground slaughterhouse by his captors.

That witness went on to write a number of well-received books, including the one adapted into the movie above.

How Many More Have To Die for This Woman's Incompentence?

2008-02-11T18:17:00.000-05:00

Elaine L. Chao is the nation's 24th Secretary of Labor, proudly following in the wake of Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold this post. Except that Frances Perkins cared for the well-being of workers, and Elaine Chao could give a shit about them.

Under Sec. Chao, mining fatalies have spiked upward during her seven years in office. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), nominally in charge of promoting worker safety, has seen its budget continue to be slashed, despite the increase in worker injuries and deaths on the job in relation to the number of manufacturing jobs held in the economy.

Does Sec. Chao ever have to answer for her dismal performance in office. Has the New York Times or Washington Post ever questioned her when there is a workplace disaster? If somebody at those two newspapers cared about the fate of workers, maybe asking her those questions might be a place to start.

Nixon and Vietnam

2008-01-23T14:31:00.000-05:00

Today is the anniversary of Richard M. Nixon's announcement that an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War--"peace with honor" had finally been reached. Of course, this was much the same "peace" agreement that Henry Kissinger reached in October 1972, when he raced back from Paris in time for the fall election claiming that "peace is at hand." Only the "government" in South Vietnam was adamant that the agreement reached was unacceptable, since it left the National Liberation Front (popularly known as the "Viet Cong") intact and in place throughout the south.

Bargainers from North Vietnam with incentive to return to the bargaining table (they expected the US government to prevail upon their puppet regime in the south to accept the deal cut in Paris, and refused to re-negotiate the terms they initially agreed to), "Operation Linebacker II" dropped 15,237 tons of ordnance on the People's Republic of Vietnam between December 18 and 29--which is why the mission is popularly known as the "Christmas Bombing." Both Operation Linebacker I and II are used to justify the concept of "strategic bombing," military operations with "minimal" civilian casulties. Plus, the civilian casulties that result are the fault of the hostile government (in the American view, and the American view is the only one that counts) placing civilian installations too close to military targets.

The end result of this carnage was that the United States got the People's Republic to agree to the same terms they agreed to the previous October, and Nixon then prevailed upon the president of the Republic of Vietnam (the official name for the US-supported government in the south) to accept the terms agreed to by the US and North Vietnam the previous October.

The video above poses the question as to whether Henry Kissinger (and by extension, his boss, Richard Nixon), is a war criminal. The synchronicity between the events in Vietnam, and the largely ignored other news of today are always of interest to those persons looking for such connections.

Birthday greetings ...

2008-01-23T14:27:00.000-05:00

... go out to Robin Zander, singer for the Rockford's greatest rock 'n' roll band.

...Segregation Forever

2008-01-14T17:36:00.000-05:00

Today is the forty-fifth anniversary of George Corley Wallace's swearing-in for his first term as governor of Alabama. After being defeated in the 1958 governor's race by John Patterson, Wallace, according to some--and largely corroborated by Dan T. Carter in his excellent political biography of Wallace, The Politics of Rage--stated that he would never be "out-niggered" in another election. To this point, Wallace had been a protege of "Big Jim" Folsom, governor of Alabama in the 1950s notable for his progressive racial politics. With the rise of "massive resistance" throughout the South in the wake of Brown v. Board of Ed., racial tolerance was no longer tolerated in the white South. At his inauguration on this date, Wallace's speach ended famously, "...segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segegation forever!"

In June of 1963, Wallace made his famous "stand in the schoolhouse door," orchestrated by Wallace and the federal government so that Wallace could make good on his campaign promise, while avoiding the violence that swept the University of Mississippi the previous fall, when US Marshalls had accompanied James Meredith to register for classes at Oxford (the recently retired senior Mississippi senator, Trent Lott, was attending Ole Miss at the time, by the way--no doubt leading cheers). The man standing in front of Wallace in the photo is Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (with his arms folded, looking impatient), assigned by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy to see that the two students--Vivian Malone and James Hood--were allowed to register; after Wallace made his speech, he stepped aside and the two were allowed through the schoolhouse door.

Wallace is a seminal, if often overlooked, political figure in the 1960s. In his Presidential campaigns in 1964 and 1968, Wallace was the lightening rod for what we have come to call "white backlash." Nixon was fearful in 1968 that Wallace's run as an independent would siphon off enough votes from white voters to throw the election to Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey. The photo above, by the way, is of Wallace speaking at a Barry Goldwater campaign function. As Dan Carter argued in his book, Wallace and the path he blazed in national politics played a vital part in the resurgence of conservative politics--a role that you won't find mentioned in Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism(no link--you can find it on the remainder table at your local bookstore in a couple of weeks), even though Wallace's politics is perhaps the closest we have come to fascism in this country.

Wallace was particularly effective in courting white working-class voters, not only for his racial stance, but because of his economic populism and his derisive put-downs of "pointy-headed intellectuals." Both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (and their handlers), learned much from the two Wallace camapaigns in the Sixties. Wallace's national political career when he was shot and paralyzed by a demented loner from Milwaukee, Arthur Bremer. Wallace spent the rest of this life in a wheelchair, most of it in pain. He attempted another Presidential run in 1976, but the press concentrated on his poor health, and the try was quickly aborted. he was elected governor of Alabama again in 1982 as a born-again Christian, who had made amends with civil rights leaders in the state--and won. Wallace died on September 13, 1998, just weeks after his 79th birthday.

The French Bastard

2008-01-10T10:39:00.000-05:00

No, not Nicolas Sarkozy--William the Conqueror. Today is the 232nd anniversary of the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the little 46-page pamphlet that presented a philosophical underpinning for casting off the bonds monarchy, since "A French bastard landing with an armed Banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original." And those terms could not be expressed much more plainly than that.

A failed stay-maker (in the age of corsets), and an unsuccessful tax collector, Paine made his way to "the colonies" after a meeting with bon vivant Benjamin Franklin, who provided him with a letter of introduction. Paine arrived in Philadelphia late in the fall of 1775.
Using Franklin's letter, Paine quickly obtained a position with one of Franklin's printer friends. Paine rather quickly absorbed the rebellious spirit of the "lower sort" in the city, who were eager to throw off the yoke of monarcial repression; many of their "betters," then in session in the city as the Continental Congress, were more circumspect in this regard.

Paine's little pamphlet, published on this date in 1776, both distilled the sentiment on the street, and persuaded enough members in the Congress that seven months later, a majority of the members of congress were willing to sign a Declaration of Independence.

Flint Sit Down Strike, Part III

2008-01-03T14:48:00.000-05:00

Mich. governor Frank Murphy
Photo courtesy of Detroit News
Murphy's refusal to use the Michigan National Guard to remove the strikers meant that GM officials could not count on the government to assist them in breaking the strike, but was not enough to bring the corporation to the bargaining table. In order to accomplish that, the union had to prove not only that they could hold the factories that they already occupied, but that they had enough support among autoworkers in Flint to seize other plants.
Aerial view of the Chevrolet complex along the Flint River, ca. 1937
Photo courtesy of Detroit News

The difficulty in accomplishing this was that the membership of the union in Flint was rife with spys. In the LaFollete hearing after the strike, it was discovered that GM spent thousands of dollars on maintaining its spy network in the plants that it operated; while having no idea of the size of the operation, its was evident to those union officials running the strike in Flint that GM was aware of most things the union planned. In response to this situation, Bob Travis devised a plan to bait the corporation into protecting the wrong strike target. At a strike strategy meeting, it was made known that the next target for a strike attempt was Chevrolet Plant 9. After the committee broke up, Travis called back several trusted associates to fill them in greater detail--that the real target was Chevrolet Plant 4, which made nearly all the engines for the Chevrolet Division.

The next day, a large contingent from the union attempted to take Plant 9. They were met with an even larger contingent of GM security. While engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the plant, a second union contingent arrived at Chevrolet Plant 6, and were met my a detachment of security personnel from Plant 9, with backups from the security force at Plant 4--leaving the real strike target only lightly guarded. The union was able to occupy the plant with minimal resistance, and production of engines was shut off.

Bowing to reality, the corportation finally began negotiating with the union in good faith, and on February 11, 1937--a month after the Battle of Running Bulls--GM and the UAW signed their first contract agreement.

Flint Sit Down Strike, Part II

2007-12-31T13:27:00.000-05:00

The importance of the new governor, Frank Murphy, would become evident when GM chose to change tactics. Murphy, the former mayor of Detroit, took office on January 1, 1937. Because the situation in Flint remained peaceful, Murphy resisted pleas from Flint officials (particularly the mayor and police chief) and GM officials to mobilize the Michigan National Guard to remove the strikers from the plant. The situation remained peaceful for nearly two weeks--GM allowed the union to supply the strikers with hot food, the building remained heated, and the company security force made no move to attempt to interfere with the strike. The situation was relaxed enough that a number of strikers inside began to slip away to visit their families and sleep in their own beds, rather than on the car seats that served that purpose inside the factory.

This situation changed dramatically on January 11, 1937. Plant security turned off the heat, and prevented the delivery of a hot meal. By early afternoon, the Flint police force had massed in front of Fisher Body plant #3 (which supplied bodies for the Chevrolet factory across Chevrolet Avenue). The police began firing tear gas into the factory in preparation for their entry.

At this point, the Women's Auxilary Brigade (WEB) sprang into action. The WEB had provided support for the strike since the beginning, cooking meals and staffing a first-aid station; the group had also been enthusiastic picketers.
When the police began their attack, the women used the wooden handles of the picket signs to break the ground-floor windows of the factory to ventilate the building--which also allowed the men to throw the gas cannisters back out of the building. With the assistance of a fortuitous change in wind direction, the use of freezing water from the fire hoses and the prodigious use of door hinges from the roof of the factory, the Flint police withdrew from the "Battle of the Running Bulls" after a six-hour battle.

This changed the dynamic of the strike. Word of the battle was quickly relayed to Gov. Murphy, who was driven to Flint witha state police escort.

To be continued

The Flint Sit-Down Strike

2007-12-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

Today is the 71st anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down Strike, begun December 30, 1936. This strike flung open the door that had first been cracked by workers at the Chevrolet Transmission Plant in Toledo, Ohio in 1935. Although AFL Local Union 18385 was successful in gaining recognition and a contract with General Motors, during the Thanksgiving vacation GM moved half of the machinery in the factory to another location, costing many new union members their jobs.

It became obvious to workers outside of Flint and Detroit that without a strong union presence in those two locations, their attempts to form a viable union would have little effect. During much of 1936, Wyndham Mortimer of Cleveland (another early UAW stronghold), Roy Reuther, and a variety of volunteers began quietly organizing workers in GM's hometown of Flint, Michigan. After a falling out with newly-elected UAW president Homer Martin, Mortimer was replaced by UAW Local 14 (former LU 18385, now a part of the Committee of Industrial Organizations) Robert Travis, who continued the organizing plan. A sit down strike by the UAW local in Cleveland propelled events in Flint along more quickly than planned; after GM employees were paid a Christmas bonus, Travis, with a small trusted coterie of workers employed at the huge Fisher Body No. 1 plant on S. Saginaw Street, planned to close down and occupy the factory.

On December 30, Kermit Johnson, after receiving the secret signal, made his way to the power switch that controlled the assembly line, threw it, and shut off power to the line. Silence briefly reigned on the shop floor, which was quickly overtaken by whooping and yelling as workers realized that they had seized control of the shop floor. Foremen were quickly overpowered and "escorted" from the premises. After briefly barricading office workers, the union allowed them to leave, as were workers who did not want to actively participate in the strike. Women employed in the plant were made to leave, even if they wanted to remain, in order to squelch any rumors of licentious behavior on the part of workers. Strike captains the remaining workers to squads and set up patrols, stockpiled door hinges to use as weapons, and readying fire hoses in case the factory was invaded by plant security and/or Flint police.

GM officials decided to initially downplay the situation; while refusing to negotiate with the union while the Fisher plant was occupied, the company did not attempt to invade the plant, either. Workers then settled in for a quiet New Year's Eve--and the inauguration of a new governor.

To be continued ...

More Solstice Stuff

2007-12-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

Since I like to pretend to be a historian, let's look at the history of Christmas, to compliment yesterday's post. One of the treasured traditions of early Christmas celebrations was wassailing, when the peasants came to the lords' houses to seranade them, and then were "invited" in to partake of the lord's wine cellar (and usually whatever the lord had laying around the castle, as well). In return, the peasants were obsequious for most of the rest of the year. This kind of disorder was distasteful for our Puritan forefathers, but since they didn't control the political structure until establishing the "Citty on the Hill" in "New England", there was little they could do about it. Among the early laws drawn up in Plymouth, however, was the outlawing of public celebrations of Christmas (a law that remained on the books in Massachusetts until late in the 19th century). This new abscence of observation eventually won converts in England, as well, which provides a part of the backstory for Dicken's A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge threatens to make Bob Cratchit work for part of Christmas day.

I couldn't find a good video of wassailing (maybe I could wait until someone posts on office party? ...mmm), so this video will have to suffice, since it has "Here We Come a Wassailing" with footage of Stonehedge.

Now it is time, however, to recall what Christmas is really all about--"an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and 'this thing' which tells time"

The Battle for Christmas

2007-12-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

Since Winter Solstice is just around the corner, we should probably turn our attention to the holiday that usurped this grand celebration of the return of the sun, Christmas. Churches are now distributing signs for parishioners to put in their yards, urging their neighbors to "Keep Christ in CHRISTmas." This is certainly a noble sentiment; and indeed it would a better world if everyone kept the teachings of Jesus in mind year-round, as the clergy like to remind their audiences this time of year, as well. But I argue that is perhaps it is just as important to remember that there is only a 1 in 365 chance (or 366, if Jesus were born in a leap year) that December 25 really is his birthday.
Maybe that would assist in the effort to keep Jesus in our hearts all year long. In the meantime, let's just enjoy this little ditty from folkie Pat Godwin:

The Columbine Massacre

2007-11-22T09:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Nov. 21, was the 80th anniversary of the Columbine Massacre--not the one you remember, but the state-sanctioned and capitalist-funded murder of five striking miners in the company town of Serene, Colorado, home of Rocky Mountain Fuel Company. The strike began when the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) called for a general strike to protest the execution of Ferdinando Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in April 1927 for allegedly murdering an armored car guard during a hold-up attempt; in reality, they were probably killed for their anarchist political beliefs.

The strike was wildly successful in the coal fields of Colorado, principally because working conditions there were so poor; in the previous decade, hundreds of coal miners in the state had died in mining accidents. Conditions for a successful labor action were about as favorable as one could expect in a state that viewed the Ludlow Massacre of the decade before as a success.

The Columbine Mine was one of the few mines still open; the owner of the mine had died in the months previous, and his daughter, a social worker, had taken over much of the responsibility for operating the mine--although she had not been able to assume complete control. Which is why the Colorado "rangers," plain-clothes police recently recruited, were standing on the outskirts of Serene barring entry to the strikers. A striker determined to exercise his right of free speech approached the gate, where he was grabbed and struck with a length of gas pipe, which the rangers were using as billy clubs. When angry strikers burst through the gate, the police retreated to the entry to the mine, where they set up a skirmish line and began firing on the crowd--allegedly aided by machine guns that had been set up. In the end, five strikers were killed, and countless others, along with wives and children, were included in that total.

Nellie McKay

2007-11-21T23:12:00.000-05:00

Just because ...

in the Bush era, we should all do the Zombie

JFK and Labor

2007-11-21T22:44:00.000-05:00

The newspapers today will be filled with the question, "Where were you 44 years ago?" The day that the 35th president of the United States. As for myself, I was quite young, camped in front of the television, mystified as to the reason the usual fare of cartoons wasn't on the television. In fact, the assassination of Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, is much more vivid in my mind than the death that preceded it.

The observance of the Kennedy assassination is a good time to consider the Kennedy legacy on labor in the United States. Like his record on civil rights, Kennedy's record on labor is worse than is remembered. One must consider, for instance, the rather cool relationship between his attorney general--brother Bobby--and the labor movement; RFK is remembered for this confrontation with Teamster President James R. Hoffa, but he was also council for the McClelland Committee, which produced some of the legislation most harmful to the labor movement of any period in the twentieth century.

JFK also began the reapproachmente with business interests, which has led to the abandonment of the working-class by the Democratic Party

Why All Workers Need a Union

2007-11-20T19:34:00.000-05:00

Lets say that you are a high performance, high-value employee. Your contract has recently ended, but your employee places great value on your remaining with the firm, and to keep you, they pay you a substantial bonus. Three months before your contract is up again, however, you are badly injured. You are badly injured because your employer has put you in a dangerous, high-risk situation that leaves you vulnerable to such injury--in fact, a number of your comrades suffer such injuries nearly every day, and some die as a result.

As a result of your injuries, you're disabled, and have to leave your employer. But, you didn't fulfill the complete term of your contract, and now your employer wants some of that bonus money back. What kind of heartless entity would do that. The United States Department of Defense, of course. Just ask Jason Fox. That's some down home compassionate conservatism.

Labor Department

2007-11-19T23:34:00.000-05:00

I read on the AFL-CIO blog that they are looking for a new name for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)--or, at least, in the interest of truth in advertising, that they at least remove the word "labor" from their name--because nothing the Bush NLR Board has done can be construed as assisting either labor or workers.

The same is true for the Labor Department and its secretary, Mrs. Mitch McConnell, er... Elaine Chao. Labor Secretary?--to what purpose? The Worst President Ever should just shutter the place and make her Undersecretary of Commerce. Advocate for labor (that is suppose to be her role, by the way)? Let's look at one industry--mining. Under her watch, mining accidents have reached levels not seen since 1926. When there were tens of thousands more miners than work in the industry today. Her response to this surge in mining accidents? Cutting the budget of the Mine Health and Safety Administration, so that they can inspect even fewer mines. That's the way to look out for the well-being of workers, Mrs. McConnell!

In an administration of incompetents, she ranks only behind Bush himself. As the Master of Presidential Disaster would put it, "Heckuva job, Elaine."

Right-wing Racists

2007-11-19T16:15:00.000-05:00

The publication of Paul Krugman's latest book, The Conscience of a Liberal has provoked several columns in the New York Times, and a bit of controversey in the blogosphere, as well. Many critics point to Reagan's opening salvo in Philadelphia, Mississippi, as the critical point of proof. This is, in my opinion, the apex of rightwing racism, and a critical point in convincing racist white Democrats that the new Republican party was the new political home for them. But that process began in 1948, with Strom Thurmond and his run as a Dixiecrat. Thurmond was then stroked by the godfather of modern Republican conservatism, Barry Goldwater, who helped convince Thurmond to switch parties in 1964--the same year, not coincidently, that Lyndon Johnson convinced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. There is no conservative "movement" without the support of white racists. For more information, I suggest reading Dan C. Carter's The Politics of Rage and Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm; if those two works spark more curiosity, check out Kari Frederickson's The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South.

Pinky or The Brain

2007-11-18T20:25:00.000-05:00

Get a Cash Advance

Part of the inspiration to begin blogging again came from checking this rating for the blog posts yesterday, when the reading level was only undergraduate college level. I add one brief post, and I'm writin' like a freakin' genius. I'm going to keep this handy to show my dissertation committee.

Of course, it could also help explain why this blog has no readers. This should dumb it down sufficiently:

You'll have to excuse me now--I have to go plot how to takeover THE WORLD!

Narf!

The New UAW Contract

2007-11-17T14:29:00.000-05:00

Much ink (and bytes) has been spilled over the newly negotiated contracts between the UAW and the Big Three automakers--particularly the two-tiered wage structure, which cuts the starting pay for new workers in half. Many of the workers are not happy with the results, either, but voted for the contract because, in their view, a job at $12 an hour, with some benefits, is better than no job at all. That is the economic reality in today's post-industrial capitalist system--those who own the means of production get to make the rules.

Sago Mine Tragedy

2006-01-04T11:20:00.000-05:00

After the good news headlines of the morning papers, reality hits like a twelve pound sledgehammer. Twelve miners dead. Three hour delay in relaying this information to twelve families, while mine officials try to figure out how to spin reality, after relaying misinformation to those families.

I've checked numerous stories since news of this tragedy broke, but is the only one to carry the reason for these tragic deaths. The lede is buried, of course, but if you read far enough down into the story, you come to this bit: "We could get pulled over for speeding and pay more than that,'' said Smith, who said the mine was nonunion. ``The problem with the current laws is enforcement." The spokeman for the UMWA has it wrong, as well. The problem is that too many mines are nonunion. Earlier stories quoted a convenience store owner selling some cigars to a miner who didn't smoke, but was taking it up because he wasn't sure how much longer he was going to live working at the Sago Mine.

These twelve miners were killed by company negligence--of that there is little doubt, in my opinion. But they were also killed because in the last twenty-five years, protections for workers have been eviscerated; that has been the real legacy of the glorious Reagan Revolution. These men also died, however, because they did not have a union to protect them.

"An injury to One, is an injury to All"

What about Gulfport?

2005-09-14T15:05:00.000-04:00

Most of the attention in the aftermath of Katrina has rightly focused on the horrible human tragedy that has taken place in New Orleans, and how race and class may have affected the response on the part of the federal government. Most of the rest of the Gulf Coast, as a result, has fallen off the radar screen. Take Gulfport, Mississippi, for instance.

Gulfport is a medium-sized city (71,127), whose racial make-up is roughly 62 percent white and 33.5 percent African American. According to a story in the webzine Salon nobody in Gulfport has even seen anybody from FEMA yet--13 DAYS AFTER THE EFFIN HURRICANE. Most of Gulfport was detroyed in the hurricane, and the residents there have not been happy with the federal government's response to their situation, as Dick Cheney can attest. They can be no happier with their lard-ass Republican governor (and former chair of the RNC), Haley Barbour, who, despite his close connections with the Bush administration, has not been able to get anyone to pay any attention to Gulfport except for the occassional photo op (see Cheney link above--and after his reception there, they are probably having a difficult time even getting that). Gulfport is a working-class town:

The median income for a household in the city was $32,779, and the median income for a family was $39,213. Males had a median income of $29,220 versus $21,736 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,554. 17.7% of the population and 14.1% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 25.8% of those under the age of 18 and 13.7% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.

While Gulfport has a much smaller percentage of residents living below the poverty line, there are still a substantial number--and a substantial number who will find recovery from this disaster extremely difficult.

The point of all of this is not to try and diminish the effect that race has had in this fiasco; large numbers of poor Gulfportians are undoubtedly African American. It is to argue, instead, that class plays a role just as important.

New Orleans levees

2005-09-13T16:58:00.000-04:00

Michael Ledeen early this afternoon from his cave at NRO:

Rich: you are quite right to ask 'how come it was the new, reinforced, federally funded levees that failed?' and it is entirely plausible that the materials used were inferior. If NOLA were Naples (and you know that NOLA is 'our Naples') everyone would know, intuitively, that the levees were inferior because a lot of the money had been pocketed by the local pols and mafiosi. Maybe that's worth looking into?

Maybe Ledeen's daughter can debrief him on the nine billion dollars that "local pols and mafiosi" (also known as contractors) in Iraq skimmed while the Coalition Provisional Authority, with the assistance of the best and brightest from the Heritage Foundation, was in charge of the country.

The New New Orleans

2005-09-13T16:55:00.000-04:00

After yesterday's post on the faults of the Toledo Blade, today I have come to sing their praises--or, at least, the praises of one of their reporters. Jenni Laidman reports on the science beat for the paper, and her article this past Sunday, "Raising New Orleans," lays out the options for what should be done in the city as rebuilding starts. The key is overcoming the man-made problems that created the susceptibility in the first place.

"Experts in coastal geology, storm surge behavior, levee engineering, and other disciplines who focus on the unique coastal region of Louisiana point to the critical work that mud, sand, and river sediment must play in creating a city that would be able to withstand another devastating natural disaster."

In other words, the levees that have protected the city from flooding have also contributed to the city sinking below sea level. After raising most of the city above sea level, the levees must also be raised to levels that can withstand a Category 5 hurricane--but even that is not enough:

Mr. Suhayda envisions a rebuilding plan that begins with levees that are higher than the 14-foot levee needed for a category 3 storm. On Wednesday, he said he stood in the gap of one of the broken levees.

“The water that came through this spot flooded 80 percent of the city,” he said. “Let’s build a category 5 levee, but let’s assume it will fail,” said Mr. Suhayda. “We have to have back-up plans B and C.”

Plan B, in Mr. Suhayda’s view, would prevent the near total inundation of the city by a single levee breach, as happened in Katrina.

“We have to compartmentalize the city like waterproof chambers in an ocean liner,’’ he said.

“A majority of the levees performed exactly as they should,’’ he said, but that didn’t save the city. Compartmentalizing would allow the good levees to do their protective job.

Plan C, according to Suhayda, is for essential buildings like hospitals--which were never part of the evacuation plan--to get their generators out of the basement and above the possible flood.

A step that should be taken in conjunction with this is restoring wetland areas south and east of New Orleans, which would act as a buffer for New Orleans:

While improved levees seem a nearly inarguable condition for a rebuilt New Orleans, others see protection against future storm surges as a far more practical solution than raising a sinking landscape by filling in the lowlands.

“Geologically, it makes more sense to me to think about protection of New Orleans, rather than try to fill New Orleans with sediment,’’ said Mr. Roberts.

It’s a matter of restoring lost friction. Hurricanes slow when they cross land, and for centuries Louisiana’s 7,000 square miles of coastal wetlands acted as a natural brake on raging storms. But the processes that built the marshlands over 5,000 years are gone, victims of human settlement. The river no longer floods, and it was flooding that released sediment into the ever-renewing delta wetlands. Much of the sediment that would have maintained the wetlands now jets into the Gulf of Mexico.

Activities like oil and gas exploration and canal dredging compounded the sediment loss. So does the natural subsidence of the watery marshlands in an era of rising sea levels.

As a result, Louisiana lost 1,900 square miles of wetlands from 1930 to 2000. If nothing changes, another 700 square miles will disappear in the next 50 years, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report issued in 2003.

The problem, of course, is that all of this will cost hundreds of billions of dollars--and the political will to follow this course over the next ten to twenty years. Expecting this kind of leadership from the present Republican leadership, however, is about as intelligent as spitting into Katrina-force winds.

Jack Kelly--A National Disgrace

2005-09-12T17:33:00.000-04:00

In the past year, the Toledo Blade has earned a Pulitzer Prize for its series on the atrocities committed in Vietnam, and put themselves in consideration for another such award with their top-notch reporting on the still developing Coingate scandal. Why they still feel the need to carry the rantings of a fourth-rate Republican hack like Jack Kelly is beyond reason.

Kelly was a minor political appointee in the Reagan administration. He has been able to parlay that into a position on the national board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade, with a weakly (no, that is not a typo) column in each paper. This week's
topic was the Bush administration's (non)response to Katrina. Kelly cites an expert, Jason van Steenwyk, a "Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:'The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.'”

At first glance, this Steenwyk guy seems to have a lot of experience in hurricane response--until you do a little research. See, Hurricane Iniki occured in Hawaii in September 1992. Do you remember another big hurricane that occurred late in August of that year? Hint: it was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season. That's right--Hurricane Andrew. Don't worry if you got it wrong; so did Kelly
--"For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla., after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002 [emphasis mine]. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three days.

The point here is, you can't cite Steenwyk as a source of firsthand knowlege for both Iniki and Andrew, because he could not have been at both. To his credit, Steenwyk attempts to (slightly) correct the record at his blog, linked to above.

Back to Kelly, though. Don't you remember how the media praised the first President Bush for his administration's rapid response to Andrew? It was one of the reasons he was re-elected, wasn't it? Jack, buddy, did you have an acid flashback there, or did your memory just go selective? The slooooow response to Andrew was one of the factors that cost Bush pere the '92 election.

Not only is Kelly apparently a former drug-use, but he also imbibes wingnut kool-aid during working hours:
"A better question — which few journalists ask — is why weren’t the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?"
Yep, if only Nagin would have packed off 12,000 to 13,000 evacuees on those 2,000 buses, this whole disaster could have been averted. Then the rescue teams would have only had to handle 20,000 evacuees that would not have had seats on the buses, instead of the 32,000 that they ended up having to rescue off of rooftops. And all of this time, I thought it was the fault of the Bush Administration for repeated failures to address serious problems with the security of this country.

Katrina and Davis-Bacon

2005-09-11T15:03:00.000-04:00

After resting for six months, I've got a lot to say. It has become quickly apparent that George Bush is determined to rebuild the Gulf Coast on the backs of the working-class. In one of his earliest actions, Bush announced that he was revoking Davis-Bacon protections for workers employed on Katrina-related reconstruction projects, meaning that contractors can pay below the "going rate"--meaning, below the union rate--on these projects. Time magazine is reporting via Kevin Drum that the White House plan to boost the President's popularity (his approval rating is as low 38 percent in some polls)is to throw unlimited amounts of money into reconstruction projects down there. So, the Bush administration is going to spend huge amounts of tax dollars along the Gulf, but limit the amount of money that will be paid to workers--who will probably be risking their health, and possibly their lives, in the remnant of the "toxic soup" that now covers most of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. Hmm, sounds like Bush is once again taking care of his "base."

September 11 -- Four Years After

2005-09-11T13:51:00.000-04:00

As many have already noted, today is the fourth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentegon, and the crash in western Pennsylvania. This has also been widely noted as the defining moment of the first Bush term. Many Americans chose to overlook the fact that Bush ignored the warning of the impending attack, given during his month-long vacation at his compound in Crawford on August 6, 2001. After getting word of the first attack on the World Trade Center while on his way to a grade school in Florida, Bush sat in the classroom while Chief of Staff Andrew Card informed him of the second attack. After completing his PR responsibilities, Bush and his entourage spend most of the rest of the morning on Air Force One, while most of the rest of America (and the world)watch in horror as the twin towers collapse in New York City--killing nearly 3,000 tower workers and first responders.

With the help of the SCLM, however, most Americans have been able to willfully ignore these shortcomings, and see the strong leader that we wanted to see during that unsettling time. That image of strong leadership most Americans retained, despite the failure to capture Osma bin Laden, and despite the "failures of intelligence" that led to the vanity war in Iraq.

Since the Bush "mandate" in the November election, however, the scales have begun to fall from the eyes of many Americans. With nearly 1900 casualties in the Bush vanity war and the continual rise of gas prices, there has been good reason for Bush's steady fall in popularity. Events along the Gulf Coast during the past two weeks, however, have exposed Bush for the abysmal leader that he is. Despite being briefed on Saturday, before the storm hit, Bush continued on his merry way, west to Phoenix and San Diego, to a friendlier crowd to attempt to sell some more Social Security snake oil as well as some Iraq War oil. In the meantime, of course, the city of New Orleans drowns in one of the disaster scenarios that FEMA had previously warned against.

Which finally brings us full circle. We are perhaps more vulnerable to attack and disaster four years after the events of 9/11. Four years that should have been spent in shoring up government capabilities to respond to events like Katrina, have been instead wasted on public relations window-dressing by the Busheviks. Four years that should have been spent improving the levys in southern Louisiana were instead spent issuing nonsense terror warning meant to shore up Bush's poll numbers. Perhaps 10,000 mostly poor, and mostly black, Americans--three times the number killed in the terror attacks of 9/11--have had to pay the ultimate price for Bush's incompetence.

February Hiatus

2005-03-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

After taking most of February off, I am determined to be more diligent in posting my thoughts here. Much is occuring that affects the working world, and is deserving of comment. Plus, someday, someone may stumble across this blog and get a few laughs at its (and my) pretensions.

Financial Advice for Bush Little

2005-02-10T10:49:00.000-05:00

I'm concerned for the financial health of Fearless Leader, to the point of offering him some unsolicted financial advice. As many of your are probably aware, Bush Little has been self-employed most of his adult life, running several oil-related businesses into the ground, losing in his initial foray into the family business of politics, and snorting or drinking up most of the money he was able to scam--er, earn. It was not until the early 1990s that through the dint of the efforts of family friends that he was able to utilize his family's political connections (remember, when Bush I was his eminence) to gain the gift of a minor share of a baseball team, the Texas Rangers.

From this modest start, Bush Little was able to blackmail taxpayers in Arlington, Texas, to build a publicly financed stadium for the team by threatening to move it, and no longer allow fans to pay big money for the privilege of seeing the team lose more often than not. On top of this success, Bush Little and partners were able to find some dumbf*ck with too much money to wildly overspend to purchase this albatross. After paying back his "loan," Bush Little escaped with a nice little nest egg, and move back into the family business.

Upon being selected by the Supreme Court to be President, Bush Little placed his nest egg in what he assumed was a safe investment, Treasury notes. Just like the Social Security Trust Fund. Now President Bush Little jets around the country telling screened and hand-picked audiences that there is no trust fund, that by 2018--or at worst, by 2020 (well, okay it might be even a little bit later)--the system will be bankrupt, busted, broke. President George P. Bush (not a prediction, just a fact) will by then be reduced to selling apples on the street corner to finance our military occupation of Iraq. The point of all this being, Bush Little's nest egg is in the same sad shape as the Trust Fund. A worthless IOU that his government has no intention of honoring.

Maybe George P. can find him a good corner.

SS ... The Continuing Saga

2005-02-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

Bush Little has taken the Big Con that is his Social InSecurity plan on the road. In Nebraska, someone had the termity (and managed to stay off the Not Welcomed at Bush Functions List) to call the preznit a liar--a truth for which he was then shouted down. The response to ending Social Security as we know it continues to be extremely underwhelming, gratifyingly, despite the best efforts of the Busheviks.

SS and the Working-Class

2005-01-30T16:26:00.000-05:00

The worm is still turning on this issue, but it doesn't appear that Bush Little (the CRISIS is coming! the CRISIS is coming) has the votes to end Social Security as we know it. Whether democrats will retain their spinal cartridge (almost backbone, but not quite) on this issue is also unknown, but we can remain hopeful.

What remains largely undiscussed, however, is the class dimension of this issue. When those two champions of the working-class, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan, cooked up this reform of social security in 1983, payroll taxes (disproportionately paid by the working-class) were increased to set up the trust fund, which would invest the excess in treasury notes to create the "surplus," looking forward to the time when there would be more retirees than contributors to SS. This has allowed the federal government to maintain the lowest income tax (paid, disproportionately, by plutocrats) in the industrialized world. Kevin Drum, in the Christian Science Monitor, has the details here.

The proposed Stockbroker Welfare Act of 2005, on the heals of the Big Pharma Welfare Act of 2004, once again demonstrates Bush's contempt for workers in the United States.

The CEO Preznit

2005-01-29T18:21:00.000-05:00

Just asking--you thing the CEO Preznit learned union-busting as a MBA student at Haaarvaard, or is this something he picked up in his extensive business experience running all of those oil exploration companies into the ground? The report from the Times on the plans do away with civil service protections for federal employees, beginning with the Department of Homeland Security, and spreading like cancer to the rest of the federal government in the future. Contact your US reps/senators, and let them know this is unacceptable.

More on Workplace Violence

2005-01-29T17:16:00.000-05:00

The story continues to evolve at the Toledo Jeep Assembly Plant.

Production scheduled to resume today at site of
rampage

By JULIE M. McKINNONBLADE
BUSINESS WRITER

With 303 robots and about 1,000 employees building Jeep Libertys at any one
time in 2.1 million square feet, the Toledo North Assembly Plant is a massive
example of some of the latest manufacturing techniques used in the auto
industry.

On Wednesday, the plant's 522,500-square-foot body shop was the site of
a violent spree when 54-year-old Myles Meyers shot three co-workers and killed
himself.
Production at the Toledo Jeep complex was shut down Wednesday night
and yesterday, but is scheduled to resume today. About 3,800 people work at
Toledo Jeep, which is owned by DaimlerChrysler AG.

Meyers and the three men, one of whom, Roy Thacker of Oregon,
died of his wounds, were among about 125 employees who worked at the plant's
second shift in a shop roughly half the size of Westfield Shoppingtown Franklin
Park. More than two-thirds of the plant's robots are used for welding in the
highly automated body shop.

About 800 Liberty bodies are assembled daily in
the shop, where the process for building the compact sport utility vehicles
starts

.
Other articles from the Blade have reported that Meyers was arrested in Michigan late last year and charged with the possession of a small amount of marijuana and the possession of a shotgun. The bearing of this news on events remains to be seen; workers at the plant feel the same way:

Body shop workers wrestle with grief

By JULIE M. McKINNONBLADE
BUSINESS WRITER

Chuck White knew emotions were running high yesterday morning in the Toledo
North Assembly Plant's body shop.

Employees restarted Jeep Liberty production for the first time since
54-year-old Myles Meyers killed a supervisor, shot two other employees, and
killed himself.
A 22-year Toledo Jeep veteran who works on the chassis line,
Mr. White said he could tell by watching the number of Liberty bodies being
built that co-workers at the site of Meyers' Wednesday shooting rampage were
having a hard time.
Usually, the body shop finishes 50 to 60 vehicle bodies
an hour, but yesterday morning they were building about 28, he said.

The reaction was understandable, said Mr. White, who worked with Meyers for
several years a decade ago and was reluctant to return to the plant yesterday.

"I had a hard enough time myself at the other end of the plant," the
Toledoan said after he and other final assembly shop workers were sent home at
lunch because of a lack of painted bodies for them to finish.

"This is like something out of a nightmare."

Spooky and surreal were some of the most common words used by Jeep workers
to describe their return to DaimlerChrysler AG's Toledo North plant.

Second-shift employees were on lunch break when the shootings occurred.
Workers throughout the plant yesterday were briefed about what happened,
given time to ask questions, and urged to accept help from grief counselors at
the plant.

Additional time was spent with workers in the body shop area on the first
shift, causing a shortage of vehicle shells to be finished, prompting the
company to send some workers home early, Chrysler spokesman Ed Saenz said.

Production isn't likely to be at 100 percent on the second shift, either,
he said.

An information session will be held Monday for some body shop workers who
called to say they were not prepared to report to work yesterday, said Dan
Henneman, chairman of United Auto Workers Local 12's Jeep unit.

Both Toledo North, where Libertys are built, and the Jeep Wrangler's
factories on Stickney Avenue and Jeep Parkway were closed by Chrysler on
Thursday to give workers time to grieve and seek counseling.

Workers will be given bereavement pay for Thursday, and more than 100 have
requested counseling, Mr. Henneman said.

Although they don't understand or condone Meyers' actions, some workers are
upset that the repairman who had been at Toledo Jeep for 21 years is being
portrayed by the media and others as a gun-toting drug addict, Mr. Henneman
said.

Meyers was arrested last month in Tecumseh, Mich., for drug possession and
had a shotgun in his car.

Some workers said pressures run high at Toledo North, which started making
Libertys nearly four years ago and has employees working together in teams under
a fellow union member instead of on one job.

Some said union-management relations have been terrible, and they hope
supervisors will change their attitudes.

Many workers have talked about being surprised a violent incident hadn't
occurred before, said Toledoan Kelly Owens, who has worked at Jeep for more than
11 years.

"It's sad that it happened, but nobody's really surprised about it," Ms.
Owens said.

Management's response, besides grief counselers and closing the plant for the day, is to insist that this matter had been resolved amicably, that Meyers did not have to serve a suspension, that everyone parted with smiles and handshakes all around.

That may be the case; but then why did Myers target his immediate supervisors? One of the things that is clear about this incident was that Meyers had three specific people he was looking to shoot, one of whom he killed. Would Meyers take such a drastic action if this dispute were indeed resolved "amicably?"

Ironically, Daimler-Chrysler (DC) and UAW Local 12 were named recipients of an award for labor-management relations by the local Labor-Managment-Citizens Committee (L-M-C) for their negotiations during their last contract (also reported in today's Blade).

Workplace Violence

2005-01-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

Events here in Toledo have made starting a labor blog today a somber event:

Two dead, two hurt in Jeep plant shooting

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- An auto worker wired a shotgun to his
body and burst into a Jeep assembly plant, killing a supervisor and wounding two
other employees before killing himself.
The alleged gunman, Myles Meyers, had met with plant officials
to talk about a problem with his work the day before his fatal spree Wednesday
at a Jeep Liberty Plant, authorities said.
After entering the plant at about
8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Meyers had pointed the gun at a woman in the plant's body
shop office and ordered her to summon three other people, telling her he did not
plan to hurt her, police Chief Mike Navarre said.

"He gave her three names. He told her who he wanted and
who he was going to shoot," Navarre said.

She summoned one of the three men, Michael Toney, who was
shot and wounded. Supervisor Roy Thacker, who was on the list of three, was
killed after he went to the office on his own, while a third man who was not on
the list, Paul Medlen, was wounded later, authorities said.

...Meyers, 54, of Toledo did not show up at work as scheduled
Wednesday but used his employee access card to get into the plant, police Capt.
Ron Spann said at a news conference Thursday.
Meyers met a day earlier with
his bosses and union leaders to talk about a problem, but he was not
disciplined, said Mary Beth Halprin, a spokeswoman for Chrysler Group, a
division of Jeep's parent company, DaimlerChrysler.

"The issue had been resolved amicably," she said Thursday. "We had been
given no hint that something like this would happen."

Meyers, according to earlier reports published in the Toledo Blade, had been given a three-day suspension for arguing with his supervior, Roy Thacker.

Norm Reithmeier, a 21-year Jeep plant employee, said he was
working in the vicinity of the shooting but did not see it happen. He knew
Meyers — they both started work making Jeeps about the same time.Mr. Reithmeier
said there had been friction recently between Meyers and a supervisor, and a
verbal argument on Tuesday resulted in a written three-day suspension for
Meyers.But at the plant, suspended employees work during their suspensions, with
a record of their discipline placed in their personnel file. Accumulated
suspensions result in termination.
Several
hundred workers were in the plant at the time of the shootings. All were sent
home shortly after the plant was secured.

“I know Myles. Myles was a good dude. He didn’t have to go out
like that, but when you get pushed. … Roy [Thacker] was a good guy. He didn’t
need to go out that way, either,” Mr. Reithmeier said.

Part of the problem here, in my opinion, is the position that many unions now find themselves in after twentyy-five years of being whipsawed by corporations. Unions are no longer acting as advocates for workers, but as intermediaries between management and workers.

Earlier reports of this incident in the Blade mentioned that Meyers had been given a three-day suspension, but that such suspensions were now served in the plant (in a detention hall?). Management and Meyers obviously had different opinions on the resolution of this, and those diffences played themselves out tragically on Wednesday night.

Declaration of Independence for the Working-Class

2005-01-27T14:25:00.000-05:00

Ninety-nine and a half years ago, "Big Bill" Haywood declared the adoption of the constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the "Declaration of Independence for the Working-Class." While the One Big Union carries on the fight, Haywood's part in the struggle ended with his death and burial in Moscow in 1928. The aim of this blog is to take up Haywood's struggle by analyzing news and events from a worker's point of view. Nathan Newman (http://www.nathannewman.org/log/) has called for labor blogs, rather than blogs about labor (i.e., blogs that focus upon workers and their unions, rather than occasional blog posts about union politics). This site aspires to be a voice for such a direction.