Tom Morello has a message for Obama on Real Time with Bill Maher
Fellow Worker Tom Morello on Real Time.
“Tom Morello and Michael Moore on Bill Maher talking about Obama, Occupy Wall Street protesters, and standing up for democracy (originally aired September 23, 2011)”
Ed Hill, Pres IBEW nominates Liz Schuler Secretary Treasurer at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh, PA September 17, 2009
Look no further than the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to measure the price that Democrats are paying for the decision to hold their national convention in union-hostile territory without labor’s input.
Traditionally a generous supporter of Democratic conventions, IBEW contributed $1 million to fund the festivities in Denver in 2008. This year, it will instead be writing its check for a “Workers Stand for America” rally in Philadelphia on Aug. 11.
The rally, financed in part by money from IBEW and other unions that would otherwise be going toward the Sept. 3 convention in Charlotte, N.C., will showcase a “second bill of rights” intended to refocus attention on middle-class concerns—jobs, living wages, energy, and educational opportunity. At a Thursday afternoon press conference announcing the initiative, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said both President Obama and top Republican candidate Mitt Romney will be asked to sign the document, along with other elected officials and candidates as a barometer of where they stand on worker’s issues.
The road to the rally began almost a year ago, when IBEW President Ed Hill requested a meeting with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and other top DNC officials about their choice of Charlotte.
It wasn’t just that North Carolina was a right-to-work state with the lowest rate of unionization in the country, Hill said. Nor was it the fact that delegates, lobbyists, and bigwig Democrats would be hobnobbing at nonunion hotels and listening to speeches at the nonunion Charlotte Convention Center.
For Hill, it went beyond that. “There was no discussion really with the leadership of the AFL-CIO or with the building trades,” he told National Journal. “Maybe it was just a wake-up call to the fact that no one was really asking us, no one was really talking to us, no one was really discussing our issues that have been laying out there for a long time and eating at people.”
Had labor’s concerns fallen so far off the radar that they were an afterthought for the party? That was the impression Hill left with after his July 25, 2011, meeting with Wasserman Schultz, DNC Executive Director Patrick Gaspard, and aide Jason O’Malley.
“It didn’t seem to bother her any, frankly,” Hill said of Wasserman Schultz’s reaction to his grievances. “There was no offer of solution; there was no discussion of much of anything else—we said what we were planning to do, and we excused ourselves.”
At Thursday’s press conference, Hill said he had met with Wasserman Schultz earlier in the day and that she had agreed to participate in the rally in Philadelphia and sign on to the worker’s bill of rights, as well as attempt to incorporate pieces of it into the Democratic platform.
“We had a very good meeting,” Hill said.
The rift was never with Obama—Hill for one says he’s an avid supporter, and unions will play their customary key role in turning out Democratic voters this fall. But the sour state of relations between convention organizers and labor has had some concrete ramifications. Like IBEW, other unions have scaled back or zeroed out their financial contributions to the convention, citing unease with the location, changes in their internal strategy, or their own strapped finances.
Earlier this week, in a memo to member presidents and the executive council, Trumka indicated that the AFL-CIO would proceed in a similar manner. He encouraged them to support the Philadelphia rally and laid out the thinking on Charlotte.
“This year, we will not be making major monetary contributions to the convention or the host committee for events or activities around the convention,” Trumka wrote. “We won’t be buying skyboxes, hosting events other than the labor-delegates meeting, or bringing a big staff contingent to the convention.”
An AFL-CIO official said that the decision was motivated solely by the organization’s strategy of focusing on grassroots efforts this election cycle, and the outcome would have been the same regardless of where the convention was held. In 2008, the AFL-CIO contributed a relatively modest $100,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The Laborers’ International Union of North America, by contrast, kicked in $1.5 million—making it the second-largest contributor to the Denver convention. This year, the organization is significantly pulling back.
“We saw Denver as a significant opportunity at a very historic time to raise the visibility of the work of LIUNA and all men and women who build this country,” LIUNA spokesman Richard Greer wrote in an e-mail. “This cycle, we’re focusing our resources on informing, organizing, and mobilizing our members and their families to reelect President Obama and progressive candidates at the state and federal level.”
The list goes on: The Communications Workers of America will only be offsetting the costs of members attending the convention, not contributing directly as it did by giving $52,000 in 2008. Unite Here told The Wall Street Journal in May that it will be keeping its $100,000 this time around. A dozen other labor organizations are boycotting the convention altogether, although many others are still planning to send delegates.
While the idea for the Philadelphia counter-rally was born initially from dissatisfaction with the Charlotte decision, Hill insists that the event is not meant to challenge or distract. Instead, organizers said they hope their bill of rights becomes a subject of discussion at both the Republican and Democratic conventions in the weeks following.
“We’re disappointed in not necessarily the way the campaign is going or any one individual or party. We’re disappointed that the middle class is being decimated,” Hill said. “There’s all kinds of issues laying out there that we can’t seem to wrap our hands around because of all of the infighting, and we need to get back on track.”
Trumka, too, downplayed the connection between the Charlotte convention decision and the Workers Stand for America rally.
“They’re two separate things,” he said. “This is a campaign to focus on the needs of working people.
“I can’t think of a single convention where there weren’t issues that had to be dealt with,” he added.
Democratic National Committee press secretary Melanie Roussell said that the convention committee was happy to have broad support from organized labor, but declined to comment on the rally in Philadelphia, IBEW’s decision to redirect its convention money, or Hill’s characterization of the meeting.
Democrats’ struggles to raise money for their Charlotte soiree have been widely publicized. Bloomberg News reported in late June that Democrats have only managed to lock in less than $10 million of their stated $36.6 million goal. Perhaps the shortfall is not all too surprising when you consider that unions put up $8 million for the convention in Denver.
“The trade-union movement has always been of the principle that we reward our friends,” Hill said. Something that the Democrats might want to keep in mind in 2016.
There is No Substitute for Organizing: How Unions Might Help Win Future Battles
By Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jane McAlevey, The Nation
Before Wisconsinites voted down the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker, and certainly since, principled progressives inside and outside of unions have disagreed on whether or not the campaign should have happened. In fact, between the two of us, we don’t fully agree about whether or not the recall was the correct tactic. But with the defeat in the rear view mirror, two clear lessons can be drawn from Wisconsin: unions need to reinvest in mass participatory education—sometimes called internal organizing in union lingo; and, unions need to stop focusing on “collective bargaining” and actually kick down the walls separating workplace and non-workplace issues by going all-out on the broader agenda of the working class and the poor.
Once you get past the reports that Walker outspent the Wisconsin workers by 7:1, the next most startling fact is that 38 percent of union households voted to keep the anti-worker Governor. That’s slightly more than one third, and had the pro-recall forces held the union households, Walker would no longer be Governor. With major media outlets drubbing us with the 38 percent number, the liberal political elite seem stuck on a rhetorical question: why do poor people and workers vote against their material self-interest? Actually, in our own experience, the poor and working class don’t vote against their self-interest—but there’s a precondition: we have to create the space for ordinary people to better understand what their self-interest is, and how it connects with hundreds of millions in the US and globally.
Participatory education can best be carried out within unions through an on-going organizing program. We know from years of experimenting that adults learn best through taking direct action. Actions themselves are often transformative. And how to calibrate the learning and action dialectical is the work of good organizers—paid and unpaid. But today’s unions have all but abandoned organizers, educators, organizing and radical, participatory education. Why?
First off, many union leaders, despite their rhetoric, do not believe in the critical importance of worker education. Instead they believe in “PowerPoint.” They invest truckloads of money into pollsters who perfect their quick and fancy presentations with graphics which all too often aim to dazzle rather than educate. They believe that worker education cannot be quantified and does not necessarily translate into a specific, tangible outcome, thereby making it worthless.
A second reason for the anemic internal education is the legacy of the Cold War and McCarthyism. “Big Picture” education that truly examines the roots of the current economic crisis and the nearly forty year decline in the living standards of the average US worker leads to a fundamental critique of capitalism. This conclusion scares many leaders who fear being red-baited, or may even harbor a fantasy that that they will at some point be re-invited to the ruling circles of the USA.
A third reason is that an educated and empowered membership can be unpredictable. They may start asking questions that many leaders wish to avoid. They may start suggesting different directions. And, horror of horrors, they may actually run for office in the unions themselves.
The second big lesson from Wisconsin is that we can’t do it alone. While the attack by Walker was a frontal assault on women, people of color, workers, the poor and more, unions all too often kept the focus on collective bargaining. When unions allowed the battle in Wisconsin to go from mass collective rage over the excesses of the One Percent to a battle for union rights, it was all but game over. Criticism of Democratic candidate Barrett’s refusal to go along with labor’s messaging on collective bargaining is beside the point—in our opinion, the campaign was lost before the May primary. Reassured by polls showing a majority of Americans (61 percent) support the “right” to collective bargaining, union leaders failed to anticipate the power of a barrage of wedge messages about over-paid government bureaucrats, taxes, union bosses, the unfairness of why public sector workers get pensions and so-called private sector ones don’t and much more. Walker had the apparatus of the state and he had bought the media—he essentially turned Wisconsin into one big captive audience meeting, subjecting Wisconsites to the kind of unbearable pressure that workers in private sector union elections are all too familiar with. We don’t poll in elections where workers are going to vote as to whether or not to form a union because we understand polling is useless in a hotly contested, deeply polarized fight.
In union elections, the sophisticated union busters want to ratchet the tension up so high that everyone associates the new tension in their life with this thing called “the union.” And the boss drives a message that if the union goes away, everything will go back to normal. And normal, which wasn’t OK before the campaign, suddenly sounds good because the venom and hate feel much worse. To have any chance of beating these kinds of campaigns, the campaign can’t be about “collective bargaining” or “the union.” It has to be about a bigger fight for dignity and economic justice that can deeply appeal to a much wider audience.
It is true there’s been an uptick of unions declaring the importance of building allies and “working with the community,” but still the community is too often treated as if it’s a separate species from “the workers.” The workers are the community, and yet union leaders act like ‘the community’ is some foreign land that requires visas, formal paid ambassadors and a Rosetta Stone language learning kit. The reason most labor leaders don’t understand the community is because they stopped trying to understand their members and the unorganized workers who live side by side in every union member’s house. The way back to winning big majorities of Americans to the cause of labor is for labor to take up the causes of the majority. This isn’t rocket science, it doesn’t require pollsters or power point—it requires thousands of meaningful conversations with tens of thousands of people. It requires rebuilding our organizing muscle.
But the phrases, “organizing doesn’t work, it’s too slow,” or the variant, “organizing doesn’t work, it’s too expensive,” have become like a mantra in union headquarters (and the offices of foundations). And yet for our entire adult lives, almost every time we have seen workers and poor people given the opportunity to stand up and fight back, they did.
What about the recall? Wisconsin was a wicked short timeline—unions and their supporters were trying to overcome forty years of no real education or organizing among the rank and file. The recall failure has led to an open season on unions, but this isn’t just a problem with unions. Multiple institutions have failed workers for decades, starting with the Democratic Party. And if that’s not enough, there’s our public school system—including universities and legions of intellectuals—that fail to teach students how to understand the actual power structure in our country or what unions are or have done. And, corporate owned media that have long distorted the real story of unions.
The reason that unions themselves, not front groups, need to take up the key issues facing their base when they aren’t at work is because this model of community work helps to develop even more worker leaders—it provides an ongoing action-learning program for the members when their contract has been settled. And, pedagogically, it helps the members to better understand all the forces keeping them down. “The boss” becomes the economic and political system rather than simply the swing shift supervisor or the foreman or the CEO.
There are plenty of important structural issues that the rank and file could be engaging, including the on-going housing, credit, climate, public transportation, and child care crises. And there’s the matter of bringing the worker’s sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters home from unwinnable wars of aggression. The very best way for unions to build real alliances with non-union groups is via their own members—the very people who make up “the community.” If unions expanded their issue work by engaging their own rank and file, we could develop even more skilled leaders, not simply ‘worker faces’ for a press conference. The organizing-education model assists people in creating better lives for themselves, rather than relying on paid professionals to do the work for them. And the results are that we build mini social movements, not special interest groups.
Organizing is incredibly hard work. And it’s messy work. And the liberal elite, including most union leaders, are constantly investing in everything but deep organizing. The real reason we lost in Wisconsin is the same reason that progressives have been on a four decade decline in the US: it’s because of a deep and long-term turn away from organizing and education and towards something that more resembles mobilizing. Organizing expands our base by keeping our energy and resources focused on the undecideds, and on developing the organic leaders in our workplaces and communities so that they become part of an expanding pool of unpaid organizers. Mobilizing focuses on the people who are already with us and replaces organic leadership development with paid staff. That and the split between “labor” and “social movements” account for the failure of progressive politics, the loss in Wisconsin, the ever shrinking public sphere, and the unabashed rule of the worst kinds of corporate greed.
The work we are describing isn’t an election 2012 program, it’s not a 12 month program; it must happen every day, every month and every year. It’s ongoing. Workers are every bit courageous enough and smart enough, but they experience a lifetime of being told they are not worthy, not smart, and not deserving. In other words, sit down, shut up and listen. Unions have to challenge this paradigm, not reinforce it. When conservatives suffered their own strategic defeat and lost the election in 1964—by much larger margins than the recall in Wisconsin—they didn’t say, “well, no point trying.” They instead built for the long haul and in 1980 it paid off with Reagan.
And with the Supreme Court edging eerily close to a ruling that will make all of America governed by “Right-to-Work” laws, unions have to start acting like they are already operating in a “right-to-work” environment. The education-organizing program outlined here is the very same program unions will need to survive let alone thrive under the current Roberts Court. The sooner unions stop acting like a special interest and start behaving like a social movement; the closer we will be to making lasting, positive change.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com. He is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. He was a co-founder of both the Center for Labor Renewal and the Black Radical Congress. He is the co-author of “Solidarity Divided” (University of California Press, 2008).”
Jane McAlevey, a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center, spent two decades as an organizer in the labor and environmental justice movements.
Posted on July 2, 2012, Printed on July 7, 2012
The following article first appeared in the Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their email newsletters.
Reprinted with permission.
Also; See Bill Fletcher and Steve Lerner on Bill Moyers this week.
How’s that Democratic Party reform working out for you?
Headlines coming out of Wisconsin and Indiana about the politics of organized labor are nothing new. Both states have Republican governors who’ve taken on union power - over wages, benefits and organizing rights.
And it’s easy to see how organized labor reacts when either Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker or Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels visit Illinois, as they did in recent weeks.
When Daniels visited Champaign, Ill., on April 19, he was greeted by union members protesting his push and support for right to work legislation in his state.
Meanwhile, when Walker visited Springfield earlier that week, union organizers chanted “Scott Walker go home” because of his efforts to take away bargaining rights for Wisconsin state employees.
But while Illinois is considered a union-friendly state, unions have been taking it to the chin lately, sometimes from the very Democrats who they helped get elected. Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposing cuts to state pensions and thousands of unionized state workers could lose their jobs at prisons and state mental health facilities. That’s leaving some to wonder whether the tight relationship between unions and Illinois is hurting.
Take this ad, for instance:
“Governor Quinn’s new budget plan takes our state in the wrong direction. In all, the Quinn budget would wipe out 3,000 Illinois jobs. It’s time for our legislators to stand up for us. Say no to Pat Quinn’s plan.”
Illinois unions are running more and more radio ads like this which is odd because for years unions and top state Democrats were either on the same page, they settled their differences in the background or they united to fight anti-union policies.
Daniels and Walker were elected in part because of their stance on organized labor. It’s just the opposite for Illinois’ Democratic Governor Pat Quinn.
“Gov. Quinn doesn’t get elected without the labor movement. That’s no secret there. He absolutely needed them,” Bob Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, said to WBEZ.
Bruno said the state’s fiscal crisis is bound up with rising Medicaid costs, costs for state pensions, and public jobs. It’s enough to cause some friction in the once happy marriage of unions and Illinois Dems.
“At the end of the day, it certainly does leave organized labor fighting with its friends just as it fights with its political enemies and that has certainly made labor relations in a state like Illinois much more hostile,” Bruno said.
So far, major Illinois unions are not calling for the ouster of the Democratic governor or other Democratic Illinois lawmakers that they’ve given thousands of campaign dollars to. But they are having to fight for their interests and against proposed budget cuts to public employee pensions.
“It was real disappointment. We’ve been consistent in the three measures of any pension solution and this falls short in all three of those,” said Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 (AFSCME).
Lindall declined to answer WBEZ’s questions about whether there’s a growing rift between one of the state’s largest public unions and Quinn or other Democratic lawmakers. But Lindall did address the state pensions issue on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight program last week.
“What we need is for everyone to sit down and have substantive discussions in which public employees have an equal seat at the table and their voices heard through their union,” Lindall said.
Others say whether it’s in Republican-leaning Wisconsin, Indiana or Democratic-lead Illinois, unions are going to have a tough go at it.
“That’s a challenge that organized labor has to face everywhere whether that’s in the city of Chicago, State of Illinois or on the national level. There aren’t many politicians, they’re aren’t very many political parties whose sole interest is the interest of organized labor and working families,” said Jacob Lesniewski of Arise Chicago, a community and labor advocacy group.
Lesniewski said lawmakers from both parties have to deal with constituents beyond just organized labor. Business groups want lower taxes, and public school districts want more state money. And hospitals want to keep as much state money for Medicaid as possible. Unions are stuck in that mix, according to Lesniewski.
“The politics of austerity have either forced or caused a number of labor friendly politicians to have to make cuts on the backs of organized labor and organized labor constituency is in working families,” Lesniewski said.
But while unions here are taking hits, the University of Illinois’ Bob Bruno says any division between powerful state Democrats and organized labor can only get so wide. Just compare what’s happening in Illinois with other states.
“In some places, obviously in Wisconsin, Indiana being two glaring examples where the attack is frontal on collective bargaining, on the actual institution itself,” U of I’s Bob Bruno said. “In a state like Illinois, or a state like California, or a state like New York, the viability of the institution itself is not being challenged.”
Maybe not but the chants aren’t likely to die down against Quinn. So, he’s trying to smooth things out with unions. Here’s what he had to say on “The Ed Show” on MSNBC late last week.
“You have to honor the workers of our country, whether they work in the private sector or the private sector, they are the heart and soul of America and made in America are my favorite words,” Quinn said.
Quinn’s going to have to keeping saying the right words since he still has to negotiate a new contract with AFSCME and its 30,000 state employee members. AFSCME is also upset with Quinn’s decision to hold back promised raises in the current contract. The legislative session goes through the end of May.
@AFLCIO @RichardTrumka saw this last night at the @LansingLabor1 council meeting. Meet Mr. 1%: @MittRomney #Labor2012
Hilarious flip flops. Romney’s got one thing right though: Michigan is a great state, and our trees are in fact “just the right height.” Great video by the AFL-CIO. Time to shut down the 1% vulture capitalist with a little 99% power.
Once again I find my desire to vote for Obama waning. May 1st is International Workers’ Day, it’s May Day. It is most certainly not “Law Day” or “Loyalty Day” or whatever ridiculous day someone wants to proclaim it. It is May Day. A day for the 99% to let the 1% know that they can take their system built upon racism and low wages and cram it where the sun don’t shine. I’ll hold off on pledging allegiance to the flag, and pledge allegiance to the workers of this country (and all countries) by stand up for their rights. Their right to fair wages, to form a union, and participate in democracy!
Obama is lucky that I’m willing to play the game of lesser evil politics and probably still vote for him. Dems couldn’t pass EFCA, now they’re going to sign a free trade agreement with Columbia that the AFL-CIO fought against tooth and nail (right after the AFL-CIO gave Obama its endorsement mind you). There are many more Dems disappointments from labors view, too many to list. Most of the Democratic Party isn’t worth of labors money. I love that the AFL-CIO’s super PAC, Workers Voice, will focus on softening up the GOP rather than handing over bundles of cash to Dems. Hell, with the way Dems have been acting toward Labor, most of them probably deserve an attack ad or two.
I deeply regret giving money to the DCCC, and odds are I’m not going to be volunteering for any non progressive Dems.
absurdity to ensue:
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The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
LOYALTY DAY, 2012
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
More than two centuries ago, our Founders laid out a charter that assured the rule of law and the rights of man. Through times of tranquility and the throes of change, the Constitution has always guided our course toward fulfilling that most noble promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve the chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. America has carried on not only for the skill or vision of history’s celebrated figures, but also for the generations who have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our founding documents. On Loyalty Day, we reflect on that proud heritage and press on in the long journey toward prosperity for all.
In the years since our Constitution was penned and ratified, Americans have moved our Nation forward by embracing a commitment to each other, to the fundamental principles that unite us, and to the future we share. We weathered the storms of civil war and segregation, of conflicts that spanned continents. We overcame threats from within and without — from the specter of fascism abroad to the bitter injustice of disenfranchisement at home. We upheld the spirit of service at the core of our democracy, and we widened the circle of opportunity not just for a privileged few, but for the ambitious many. Time and again, men and women achieved what seemed impossible by joining imagination to common purpose and necessity to courage. That legacy still burns brightly, and the ideals it embodies remain a light to all the world.
Countless Americans demonstrate that same dedication to country today. It endures in the hearts of all who put their lives on the line to defend the land they love, just as it moves millions to improve their communities through volunteerism and civic participation. Their actions help ensure prosperity for this generation and those yet to come, and they honor the immutable truths enshrined in our Nation’s founding texts. On Loyalty Day, we rededicate ourselves to the common good, to the cornerstones of liberty, equality, and justice, and to the unending pursuit of a more perfect Union.
In order to recognize the American spirit of loyalty and the sacrifices that so many have made for our Nation, the Congress, by Public Law 85-529 as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as “Loyalty Day.” On this day, let us reaffirm our allegiance to the United States of America, our Constitution, and our founding values.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2012, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.
BARACK OBAMA
Over the past several weeks, a broad coalition of progressive organizations—including National People’s Action (NPA), ColorOfChange, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), MoveOn.org, the New Bottom Line, environmental groups like Greenpeace and 350.org, and major unions such as SEIU and the United Auto Workers—has undertaken a far-reaching effort to train tens of thousands of people in nonviolent direct action. They have called the campaign the 99% Spring.
Starting this week, many of these same groups will be rallying their members and supporters to use newly honed skills to confront the shareholder meetings of corporations across the United States—charging executives with abusing workers, the environment, and communities in pursuit of profits for the 1 percent. They are calling the drive 99% Power. With prominent actions gearing up this week—starting with major protests at Wells Fargo meetings in San Francisco—the campaign may soon be coming to a city near you.
Although this month’s 99% Spring trainings have taken place in the shadow of the Occupy movement, the coalition building behind them actually predated the emergence of Occupy Wall Street. Last summer, a handful of organizers from groups such as Jobs with Justice, NPA, and NDWA had discussions in which they lamented the lack of direct action in recent years. As NPA Executive Director George Goehl explains, “We felt what was missing in terms of organizing and in terms of the broader fight was that there wasn’t enough energy pointed towards challenging corporate power: That’s not going to government and saying, ‘Reign these guys in,’ but actually going toe-to-toe with big corporations.”
The groups envisioned bringing together organizations to work across single-issue lines, using more confrontational strategies. For the fall, they planned overlapping weeks of action in eight major cities—which resulted in arrests from Boston to Los Angeles of activists demanding accountability for the big banks and protesting foreclosures. Since the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park exploded into a nationwide phenomenon at the same time, these protests were largely covered in the media as part of the Occupy movement. Participants from the Occupy encampments joined in the demonstrations, and actions that had been organized by community groups, in turn, helped to create a sense of national scope and escalating drama for the movement.
The idea for spring trainings as a follow-up to these efforts coalesced early in 2012, and a wide range of groups signed on to make them happen in a remarkably short period of time. During the week of April 9-15, more than 980 trainings took place, covering communities throughout the country.
The plan for the 99% Spring was ambitious in several respects. First, the organizers aspired to train a massive number of people: 100,000 total, roughly half in person and half through an Internet version of the curriculum. (Final numbers are not in, but more than 40,000 had signed up for the mid-April events. Online trainings continue.)
Second, the curriculum for the full training covered seven hours of material. It combined elements that might typically be presented in three different sessions: By way of introductions, participants started with a version of the public narrative exercises developed by Marshall Ganz. Public narrative provides a method for talking about one’s own experiences that motivate participation in collective action and for identifying a common story of struggle. Next, the trainings included a teach-in about inequality in the American economy and about the growing power of the 1 percent. This information was similar to that commonly provided by groups like United for a Fair Economy. Finally, the events featured a brief history of nonviolence in the United States and instruction in some skills that might be used in direct action—the type of material that is often covered by groups like Training for Change.
As the 99% Spring trainings neared, they attracted some controversy. Significant debate arose about whether the drive was an attempt by established organizations to co-opt the Occupy movement. In particular, the involvement of MoveOn.org, which some occupiers consider part of the mainstream political establishment, drew fire from more radical activists.
The magazine Adbusters warned that the trainings were an attempt to “neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaign of donor money and cooptation,” and that the goal of the effort was to “turn our struggle into a… reelection campaign for President Obama.” Occupy Oakland activist Mike King similarly charged that the true motivation of the campaign was to neuter the movement and divert it into electoral efforts. “We should not have our tactics determined by the Democratic Party,” he wrote.
Joshua Kahn Russell, a trainer and action coordinator with the Ruckus Society and 350.org, responds, “I think it’s healthy for grassroots movements to question involvement of bigger organizations. At the same time,” he says, “we need to see that groups like unions who might support the Democrats are not our enemies. We need to be building across some of these differences if we’re really going to be talking about the 99 percent.”
The large number of trainings offered, and the fact that different local groups were responsible for hosting different events, meant that the tone of the trainings varied. While one participant reported seeing Obama buttons for sale at an Upper West Side Manhattan training, many other events, including one in downtown Philadelphia, featured vocal criticism of Democrats and open airing of disappointment with the current administration. For its part, the 99% Spring curriculum did not include electoral material, and the economic education video used at trainings showed Bill Clinton repealing Glass-Steagall regulations on banks—an act depicted in a profoundly negative light.
Moreover, while the coalition that backed 99% Spring includes MoveOn.org and major labor unions, which have significant involvement in electoral politics, it includes many scrappier groups as well, such as the Ruckus Society, the Rainforest Action Network, the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, and NPA. “As an organization that’s been taking over bank lobbies and doing direct action for 40 years, some of the criticism is a little tough to hear,” says NPA’s Goehl. “We’ve been as critical of the president as basically any progressive group.”
“Our main message is, ‘We’re all in this together,’” adds Tracy Van Slyke, co-director of the New Bottom Line. “This is about working across geography, race, creed to build an economy and democracy that works for the 99 percent. There’s a lot of appreciation for Occupy, and a lot of people from Occupy are participating. But there’s a really wide range of groups involved. We’re focused on what we can all do together.”
A May Day Like No Other
What to expect from Occupy’s next big action.
In many locations, Occupy activists were involved in organizing or were active participants in the trainings. “This is not an Occupy project,” Kahn Russell says of 99% Spring. “At the same time, there’s obviously a lot of crossover because our movements are interdependent. I personally have done trainings in support of occupations in many parts of the country since well before the 99% Spring, and I identify with the Occupy movement tremendously. I think there’s a lot of people who are playing that bridge role.”
In an election year, it is highly unusual to see many of the larger, established progressive organizations investing in training members for wide-scale direct action instead of in electoral campaigning. Given this, some have commented that it might be more accurate to see Occupy as having co-opted MoveOn.org, instead of the other way around. Particularly striking, as Josh Harkinson at MotherJones noted, is an e-mail that MoveOn.org Executive Director Justin Ruben sent to his staff earlier in the month. “It’s clear that the sorts of tactics we’ve engaged in in the past are no longer enough,” Ruben wrote. He subsequently stated, “We know that whoever wins in November, they are still going to be listening more to the 1 percent than to the rest of us because our political system is completely broken. So we don’t have the luxury of not engaging in this kind of action.”
Apart from its engagement with Occupy, the 99% Spring brought together a remarkably diverse collection of organizations. Many of these rarely have occasion to see their work as part of a common cause. As Kahn Russell notes, “The thing that’s most exciting to me is that 99% Spring is putting union members together in the same room with environmentalists, with domestic workers, with peace and justice people, and they’re talking with each other for the first time.”
“Big alliances like this are challenging,” he adds. “So seeing so many different groups agree on the need for street heat, to act directly without having power-holders dictate to us the rules of engagement—all that is remarkable to me.”
Owing to the wide range of coalition members, organizers decided that the 99% Spring trainings would not be intended as preparation for any specific action, but rather to give skills that could be applied to a range of campaigns. In some sessions, participants felt that the actual nonviolence training provided seemed truncated (especially since it came at the end of a long agenda) and that next steps seemed unclear. This contributed—as one report back from a training in lower Manhattan described it—to a sense of “aimlessness.”
Yet, in other cases, the trainings led immediately into action. As one example, in Des Moines, Iowa, more than 100 people—including a large contingent of family farmers—marched directly to the house of Mike Heid, a top official at Wells Fargo, to oppose the bank’s investment in private prisons and its mistreatment of immigrants.
“For some people, that’s a pretty big step,” says Goehl of the rally at the banker’s home. “It’s not getting arrested. But it is breaking the ‘be nice’ rule.”
While the 99% Spring itself did not agree on a common agenda for action, many of the same groups are involved in 99% Power. This campaign will involve confrontations at more than three-dozen shareholder meetings taking place between now and May. The New Bottom Line’s Van Slyke calls it “the largest mobilization around shareholder meetings in U.S. history.”
Describing the campaign’s goals, she says, “We want to go directly to the board members and executives of the 1 percent who are behind these corporations. We want to bring a unified set of demands that they stop pillaging our environment, that they create good jobs, that they get their corporate money out of our democracy.”
Things will get started in earnest at Wells Fargo meetings in San Francisco this week. There, Occupy activists and community groups alike will be coming together to confront the corporate gatherings and possibly even shut them down. Subsequently, major targets will include meetings of General Electric in Detroit; of Verizon in Alabama; Bank of America in Charlotte, NC; Walmart in Arkansas; and Sallie Mae in Delaware—which student activists are making a special focus. “At a lot of the meetings you’ll see a thousand-plus people doing actions, and at almost all the meetings there will people inside the meetings as well as outside,” Goehl explains.
Since these efforts are not exclusive with other spring protests, such as Occupy’s May 1 actions, the coming weeks promise to be a busy season. Trainings will also continue, but some of the most pertinent lessons may be gained through direct experience. “I believe the best way to train people to do nonviolent direct action is to go do nonviolent direct action,” says Goehl. “And that’s what’s going to happen.”
Mark Engler wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Mark is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books). He can be reached via the website DemocracyUprising.com.
by Bill Fletcher.
I was recently asked to participate on a panel regarding the Left and electoral politics. I declined. For many people this may seem strange since I have been a very strong proponent of the Left looking at electoral politics strategically. Well, that is all true but I have encountered a problem and maybe you can help me resolve it.
Most Left “debates” on electoral politics take a very predictable route. It looks something like this:
. Electoral politics will not bring about socialism and freedom.
. The Democrats have consistently sold us out. They are the party of the rich.
. The Republicans and the Democrats are two wings of the same evil bird of prey.
. We need an alternative.
. Therefore, either:
Abstain from electoral politics and wait till the masses, in their millions rise up against capitalism, or…
Create a pure, anti-corporate (if not anti-capitalist) third party right now and start running in elections even if we do not have a snow-ball’s chance in hell of winning.
What I have found striking about this line of thought, and the so-called debates that unfold around it, is that they are actually un-political and lack any sort of concrete analysis.
Let’s be clear so that we do not have a needless exchange. Electoral politics under democratic capitalism will not result in our freedom. Second, the Democrats are not the party of the working class. So, now that we have that out of the way, what do we do?
Electoral politics is a field of struggle. It is an arena. On that arena, however, we on the Left can do two things: participate in the struggle for popular power and raise issues that have the possibility of gaining greater attention. Much of the Left focuses on the latter and ignores the former. Many who focus on the struggle for power, however, abdicate being Left altogether. Therein exists the challenge.
Given the undemocratic nature of the US electoral system, a concrete analysis of the USA (rather than other countries) means that we have to grapple with what it means that in most elections independent, third party candidacies fail and are viewed as spoilers. There are certainly historical exceptions, but those exceptions prove the general rule. This means that a concrete examination of US electoral politics must focus on the notion that a third party movement on the Left will more than likely result from an “insurrection” within the Democratic Party and a major section of its base (with the character of such an “insurrection” being more of a united front rather than a pure, Left challenge). This is to be counterposed with the idea that such a party arises out of nothing, or to put it in its best case, out of generalized popular discontent.
So, if we on the Left really want to discuss electoral politics we must examine a concrete question: what do we do in the USA given the nature of the electoral system? If your answer is to simply raise the red flag of radicalism to see who salutes, with all due respect, you are not serious about politics; you are stuck in the world of pure ideology.
The larger challenge for the Left in electoral politics is conducting the fight, in and through our mass organizations, for the recognition of the need for an independent, progressive program that represents the interests of the downtrodden and the dispossessed. We should not start with organization in the abstract, but with program. We then need to figure out under what conditions we run people within Democratic Party primaries and under what circumstances we run independently. Always, I should add, recognizing that this is a fight within the context of democratic capitalism for structural reforms, thereby laying the basis for the longer-term struggle for socialism…
…That is, if we are interested in the fight for power rather than just being ‘correct.’ But, alas, it will mean that we will need to get a bit untidy in the alliances we will need to build.
Show me a ‘purist’ revolution and I will show you a bridge that you can buy for almost nothing.
Bill Fletcher;
Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a longtime labor, racial justice and international activist. He is an Editorial Board member and columnist for BlackCommentator.com and a Senior Scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and a founder of the Black Radical Congress. Fletcher is the co-author (with Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided, The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice (University of California Press).He was formerly the Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the George Meany Center of the AFL-CIO. Prior the George Meany Center, Fletcher served as Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. Fletcher got his start in the labor movement as a rank and file member of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America. Combining labor and community work, he was also involved in ongoing efforts to desegregate the Boston building trades. He later served in leadership and staff positions in District 65-United Auto Workers, National Postal Mail Handlers Union and Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
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