Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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As part of my comment here, dated October 20, 2011, I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the “new world” we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work checks and balances form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one. In that sense previous historical models come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
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Recently (see October 22, 2011 comment above) I noted the following while arguing for the General Assembly concept as a form of alternate government using historic examples like the Paris Commune (1871), the early soviets in Russia (1905 and 1917), and the early days of the antifascist militias in the Spanish Civil War (1936-37):
“However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.”
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lesson Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Ernest Belfort Bax
Gracchus Babeuf
IV. The Society of the Pantheon
THE constitution of the year III, drawn up by the Abbé Sièyés, and adopted by the Convention, abolished universal suffrage, reimposed a high property qualification, and created two chambers, a lower house, called the Council of Five Hundred, and an upper house, called the Council of the Ancients, composed of two hundred and fifty members. It further provided that two-thirds of the representatives in the new Assembly should consist of members of the Convention itself. The executive government was to consist of a directory of five, nominated by the two chambers. This constitution was the final expression of the Thermidorean reaction. It is needless to say that the old democratic principles and revolutionary organisation, which had found their expression in the Constitution of 1793, were thus swept away by a stroke of the pen. The Constitution of 1793, which had never come into force, had now become the rallying-cry of the people’s party. The last of the popular insurrections, that of the 1st of Prairial, ann. III (May 20th, 1795), had as its cry the “Constitution of ’93 and the release of the patriots”.
This insurrection, in spite of its momentary success, was defeated the same day, and had as its upshot the definite proscription of the old party of the Mountain, who having, on the expulsion of the other members of the Convention, accepted the demands of the insurgents, were now treated as rebels. As may well be imagined, Babeuf’s indignation at the new constitution, which tricked the people out of all the political rights which it had won during the Revolution, knew no bounds. In a letter written to the patriots of Arras, shortly before his removal to Paris, he points out the effect of the new constitution. “According to this Constitution,” he writes, “all those who have no territorial property and all those who are unable to write, that is to say, the greater part of the French nation, will no longer have the right to vote in public assemblies; the rich and the clever will alone be the nation ... According to this Constitution you have two chambers, an upper and a lower, a chamber of peers and a chamber of commons; it is no longer the people who sanction the laws, it is the upper chamber that has the veto; they might as well have left it to the chamber of Louis XVI.”
As we have seen, Babeuf had many friends and sympathisers in the departments, notably in his own department of the Pas-de-Calais, where his Tribun was much read. Many of these were now in Paris. With them, and with the considerable following he had already obtained among the Parisians, Babeuf started in October of this year (1795) a political society, having for its avowed aim the triumph of Economic no less than of Political Equality. A little later this society amalgamated with another similar body with revolutionary objects, and the two organisations, merged into one, now received the title of the Society of the Pantheon, from its meeting-place. It was not long before all that was revolutionary – Jacobin, as the phrase went – attached itself to the new movement. Of this movement Babeuf’s Tribun became the official organ. On his release from prison, Babeuf had at once taken up the paper at the point, No.34, where it was dropped eight months previously. We have already quoted passages in these later numbers, showing that the vigour of its denunciation of the dominant parties had lost nothing from the interval of its suspension. The new movement grew daily in strength during the following autumn and winter; nightly meetings were held, at which articles from the Tribun would be publicly read and discussed. The government began to get seriously alarmed. Neither the Tribun nor the Society of the Pantheon affected any longer to conceal the true aim of the movement.
A word should be said here as to the causes which led the new executive Directory to tolerate so long the public meetings of the Society of the Pantheon. It was founded, it should be premised, immediately after the defeat and the suppression by Napoleon of the royalist insurrection of October 1795 (13th Vendémiaire). On this occasion the government had armed a certain number of Jacobins, under the name of the “Patriots of ’89”, against their new royalist enemies, whose hopes of triumphs at the elections had been foiled by the decree of the Convention that two-thirds of the old Convention members were to be retained in the new legislative body. The royalists, who had recourse, in their turn, on this occasion, to an armed insurrection, had to be immediately defeated at all costs. The regular troops momentarily available being inadequate for that purpose (the insurgents under arms numbering something like 125,000), the aforesaid Jacobins were enrolled, and acquitted themselves manfully in dispersing the royalist insurgents. In consequence of these events, it occurred to the Directory, which had now come into being, that the temporary policy of conciliation towards the extreme parties was desirable. In the first place, they might require their services again in a similar way; and in the second place, they could be played off as a bogey to the other parties, thereby strengthening the hands of the government by showing it up in the light of the only bulwark against anarchy and Jacobinism.
The society, on its formation, first of all met in the old refectory of the Convent of St Géneviève, of which the tenant of the now secularised religious house, himself a Jacobin, granted the gratuitous use. Later on, after it had increased in numbers, the society’s meetings were transferred to a large subterranean vault in the same building, where, according to Buonarroti, the flare of torches, the hollow echo of voices, and the attitudes of the audience standing, leaning against pillars, or lying on the ground, produced a weird effect, well calculated to impress those present with the magnitude and the dangers of their enterprise. From the first the constitution of the society was very irregular, no provision being made for the keeping of books or minutes, and the only condition of admission to its membership being the sponsorship of two persons already members. This looseness of organisation was largely due to a fear of coming into conflict with the new law concerning the right of public assembly, which imposed many restrictions, and especially to a desire not to give colour to the notion that the Pantheon Society was a revival of the Jacobin Club under another name, which, it was felt, would at once arouse hostility in influential circles, and lead to suppression of the society and to the persecution of its members. On the other hand, the looseness of procedure was the fruitful cause of many undesirable persons being admitted, although the nature of the movement at the outset, not being a wholly secret society, but avowedly a political party (albeit with well-nigh undisguised insurrectionary aims), rendered anything like a strict scrutiny of candidates for admission a practical impossibility.
The society had not been long in existence before it counted over two thousand constant members. But it might have been remarked that it was not altogether homogeneous in respect of principles. There seems to have been a right. and left wing, the first composed of miscellaneous Jacobins, calling themselves “Patriots of ’89”, many of whom had fought against the royalist insurgents on the 13th of Vendémiaire, and who, in consequence, had some influence with the government, and the more thoroughgoing and definite adherents of the doctrine of Equality, as understood by Babeuf and his friends. While the latter were untiring in agitating against the constitution recently come into force, and the fraudulent manner in which the small middle and working classes had been cheated of the fruits of the Revolution, the former were more concerned to get places for themselves and their associates. Nevertheless, for a time all worked fairly harmoniously together. A demand was made for the giving effect to a decree passed during the Terror, according to which one milliard of the proceeds derived from the sale of the national lands should be distributed among the “defenders of the country,” to wit, those returned from the wars; and in the case of those slain, for their families. The application of the poor law of ann. II was also demanded. Other similar societies to that of the Pantheon now began to be formed, and to hold meetings in various parts of Paris.
Babeuf, as already intimated, boldly proclaimed in his paper, the Tribun du People, the doctrine of equality, scathingly criticised the Directory, and continued unremittingly to denounce individual property – holding as the principal source of all the evil weighing on society. It was not long indeed before a new mandate of arrest was launched against him. Early in February 1796 the Directory decided to take vigorous measures for the suppression of the Tribun. Accordingly, an officer of the Court repaired to the Faubourg St Honoré No.29 to execute the warrant. Babeuf, however, resisted, eventually succeeding in shaking the officer off, and dashed down the street, with the government representative at his heels shouting “stop thief!” Babeuf was successful, however, in getting away to a shelter afforded him by Darthé and another friend. Foiled in their attempt to seize the person of Babeuf, the authorities consoled themselves by ordering the arrest of his wife and two children, one of whom was ill at the time. Members of the Society of the Pantheon subscribed financial aid, as did also his friends and followers at Arras. The prosecution, however, succeeded in its object; and although Babeuf managed to issue a few more numbers from his retreat, the journal came to an end in a few days with the 43rd issue, which exceeds in boldness all that had gone before it. The Tribun du People, after criticising the proclamation of the Directory, its severe penal laws recently enacted against the liberty of public meeting and of the press, winds up: “All is finished. The Terror against the people is the order of the day. It is no longer permitted to speak; it is no longer permitted to read; it is no longer permitted to think; it is no longer permitted to say that we suffer; it is no longer permitted to repeat that we live under the reign of the most abominable tyrants.” The “abominable tyrants” were the Thermidoreans, Barras, Merlin de Thionville, Tallien, Fréron, Legendre, etc., the would-be austere republicans of yesterday, to-day for the most part the wealthy parvenus, who had become possessed of vast portions of the national property, confiscated from the Nobility and the Church.
But even now Babeuf did not give up hope. “O people!” he exclaims, “do not despair; we shall break all the chains to prevent thee dying the victims of those who torture thee, who plunder thee, and who abuse thee these twenty months past.” But the prophecy of Babeuf was not to be fulfilled. The Republic of the Rich, in which the new class that had entered into the spoils of the feudal and ecclesiastical aristocracy of old was to play the dominant role, was, before many years were over, destined to cast off even its republican form, and become an undisguised military despotism. Not for nothing had the young artillery officer won his spurs in the royalist insurrection of the 13th of Vendémiaire.
Hard upon the final collapse of the Tribun du People, at its 43rd number, followed the publication of the celebrated Manifesto of the Equals, which proved decisive for the fortunes of Babeuf and his friends. To this important document we shall revert again shortly. The following was the order of the meetings held by the Society of the Pantheon: the public reading of journals, the reading of correspondence, the collection for unfortunate “patriots”, the discussion of steps to be taken to liberate those in prison, debate on questions of legislation and of general principles. Agents of the government worked their way into the confidence of the society, preaching non-resistance and submission to the Constitution of the year III. The policy of these government agents reached its climax in a motion proposing the sending of an obsequious address to the Directory, in which the society should formally declare its adhesion to the new constitution; and the influence of the section formed within the society by them was sufficiently powerful to overcome the stormy opposition with which the motion was received by that portion of the society which remained true to the principles on which it had been founded, and to get the motion of subservience carried. The tactics of the government in their dealings with the Pantheonists were distinctly clever, since it made evident an unmistakable cleavage in their body, which showed plainly who were those constituting the irreconcilable section and who were their leaders. The latter seemed to have regained their ascendancy in the society, as also in the branches scattered over Paris.
Among the many practical questions of the hour which occupied the attention of the Pantheonists, and were the subjects of the petitions of the partisans of the society to the legislative body, was the burning one – the fall in the value of the assignat. This was so violent that the price of the necessaries of life often doubled in the course of a single day, thus rendering it impossible for wages to keep on a level with them. Hence the handicraftsman, small trader, and the proletariat found ruin staring them in the face. Nevertheless, Babeuf and his friends deprecated any ill-considered and immature attacks upon the government, urging the discussion of the principles of the rights of man and of peoples rather than a too eager application of them to the tyrants of the hour, until public opinion should be sufficiently formed to admit of more drastic action. With the spread of their views in popularity, the leaders of the movement began to bethink themselves of means for extending still further their propaganda. Being many of them deists of the traditional eighteenth-century type, it was decided to present the political and economic doctrine of the Equals in a religious guise as part of the divinely ordained order of nature. They therefore decided, through the society, to apply to the authorities for permission to use one of the larger vacant churches in Paris for the purpose of celebrating a deistic festival.
It should be explained that the government itself, under the auspices of one of its members, Larivellière-Lépeaux, the “Theophilanthropist”, at this time was introducing popular festivals once a decade in the churches in place of the Mass and the abolished services of the Catholic Church. The government, of course, at once saw through this demand and refused the application, on the pretext that the popular services mentioned, which were about to be officially instituted, would meet the needs of the situation. But the project was not given up; the subject was discussed during many meetings of the society, and eventually the friends of Babeuf got their way. It was decided that the society should occupy “the decades” (the tenth days) in honouring in public the divinity by the preaching of the “natural law”. A commission was then appointed to hire a church and draw up regulations for the new cult. The project, it should be said, met with considerable opposition in the society, as being a return to forms of superstition, and it had to be explained to the members, as plainly as possible, consistently with safety, that the religious form was merely a disguise, hiding a social and political object.
By this time the Directory had become thoroughly alarmed at the progress of the discussions of the Society of the Pantheon. Henceforward the police were instructed to spy upon every movement of the orators. All that was wanting now was a colourable pretext for government action. The convent near the Pantheon where the society met was now known, in respectable and moderate circles, as the “Cave of Brigands”. By the beginning of February 1796 most of the doubtful and reactionary elements of the movement would seem to have left, and the influence of Babeuf and his friends dominated the whole body. There still remained, however, within the fold, a few police spies, whose function it was to report all that occurred at the meetings, and any private information they could obtain from individuals, to the authorities. The pretext sought for by the government was furnished by Darthé in the reading of a number of the Tribun of Babeuf, in which the Directors and the leading members of the legislative body were vigorously attacked. Darthé was applauded to the echo when he had finished, but a few days after, on the 29th February 1796, the closure of the meeting – place of the Pantheonists and the dissolution of the society was ordered by the Directory, and was carried out in person by General Bonaparte. He it was, indeed, as is alleged, who was the leading spirit in the affair, and who, by means of spy – information he had obtained as to the real aims of the society, succeeded in inspiring panic in the Directory. As stated, he came in person, and compelled the keys of the meeting-place to be given into his hands. The usual attempt was made to discredit the Babouvists, as we may now call them, in public opinion, by representing their leaders as disguised royalist agents, seeking by means of anarchistic exaggerations to discredit the Republic.
The closing of the Pantheon was succeeded by the suppression of popular societies and public meetings throughout the city.
Babeuf’s paper, as we have seen, died at this time (the 5th Floreal, year IV; 16th April 1796), in spite of a desperate attempt to carry it on in secret after his arrest.
At the same time that Babeuf was conducting the Tribun du People, he seems to have written articles in another journal of revolutionary principles published by Display, and entitled L’Éclaireur du People, which was conducted by his friend Sylvain Maréchal, but of which only a few numbers appeared.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-The Embryo Of An Alternate Government-Learn The Lessons Of History- From The Pages Of The French Revolution- Ernest Belfort Bax-The Last Episode of the French Revolution Being a History of Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals (1911)- IV. The Society of the Pantheon
5th ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND SOCIALIST CONFERENCE-FEBRUARY I1th AND 12th(SATURDAY AND SUNDAY)
5th ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND SOCIALIST CONFERENCE-FEBRUARY I1th AND 12th(SATURDAY AND SUNDAY)
UMass-Boston
(JFK / UMass on Red Line, Exits 14-15 off 93) McCormack Building, 3rd Floor, Ryan Lounge
*FEATURED EVENTS*
DEBATE - SHOULD THE LEFT SUPPORT DEMOCRATS?
FORUM-INTERNATIONAL CRISIS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THE 1%
WORKSHOPS INCLUDE:
Occupy and Labor
Dismantling Sexist Culture
Racism, Prisons and Police Brutality
Book Launch: Lessons of Wisconsin
For further details, see Boston.SocialistAlternative.org as the event approaches.
Call: 774-454-9060
Email: Boston@SocialistAlternative.org
Visit: SocialistWorld.net or SocialistAlternative.org
-Labor Donated-
UMass-Boston
(JFK / UMass on Red Line, Exits 14-15 off 93) McCormack Building, 3rd Floor, Ryan Lounge
*FEATURED EVENTS*
DEBATE - SHOULD THE LEFT SUPPORT DEMOCRATS?
FORUM-INTERNATIONAL CRISIS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THE 1%
WORKSHOPS INCLUDE:
Occupy and Labor
Dismantling Sexist Culture
Racism, Prisons and Police Brutality
Book Launch: Lessons of Wisconsin
For further details, see Boston.SocialistAlternative.org as the event approaches.
Call: 774-454-9060
Email: Boston@SocialistAlternative.org
Visit: SocialistWorld.net or SocialistAlternative.org
-Labor Donated-
The Hills And Hollows Of “Home”- “The Hills Of Home: 25 Years Of Folk Music On Rounder Records”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Hazel Dickens performing her classic hills and hollows mountain classic, The Hills Of Home.
The Hills Of Home: 25 Years Of Folk Music On Rounder Records, two CD set, various artists, Rounder Records, 1995
Rumor, family rumor anyway, has it that I was in the womb when my parents went back down south to my father’s birthplace in Kentucky, Hazard, Kentucky to be exact, a place storied in song and hard class struggle. I “rebelled” against listening to that old-time nasal drear mountain music that my father used to play back in childhood days, much preferring first be-bop, doo wop, Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck rock, then the blues, urban and country, and then urban-based folk music. A few years back, maybe more now, I heard some old-time sounds on the radio coming from Hazel Dickens, probably Working Girl Blues or the title cut from this CD, The Hills Of Home. And, strangely, I was “home.” Home down in the wind-swept ragged old hollows (yes, I know the correct word is hollas but what can you do), the coal-dusted hills, and the tar paper shacks that my forbears called their place in the sun.
So naturally, as is my wont when I am on to something seriously, I had to run out and buy some mountain music. And having been familiar, very familiar, with the efforts of the people at local Rounder Records to do in modern times what Charles Seeger and John and Alan Lomax did in their times-preserve the basic American songbook- I picked up this 25th anniversary compilation. Partially because it had The Hill of Home on it but also to give a good cross-section of what this “down home” music looked like to a novice, eager or not. And that is good place to end. Except to note several very good stick outs in this two CD set.
They include: Norman Blake’s Church Street Blues; Rory Block’s Joliet Bound; Mississippi John Hurts’ Worried Blues; Etta Baker’s One Dime Blues; the above-mentioned The Hill of Home by Hazel Dickens; Woodstock Mountain Revue’s Killing The Blues; and Laurie Lewis’ Who Will Watch The Home Place. Okay.
The Hills Of Home: 25 Years Of Folk Music On Rounder Records, two CD set, various artists, Rounder Records, 1995
Rumor, family rumor anyway, has it that I was in the womb when my parents went back down south to my father’s birthplace in Kentucky, Hazard, Kentucky to be exact, a place storied in song and hard class struggle. I “rebelled” against listening to that old-time nasal drear mountain music that my father used to play back in childhood days, much preferring first be-bop, doo wop, Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck rock, then the blues, urban and country, and then urban-based folk music. A few years back, maybe more now, I heard some old-time sounds on the radio coming from Hazel Dickens, probably Working Girl Blues or the title cut from this CD, The Hills Of Home. And, strangely, I was “home.” Home down in the wind-swept ragged old hollows (yes, I know the correct word is hollas but what can you do), the coal-dusted hills, and the tar paper shacks that my forbears called their place in the sun.
So naturally, as is my wont when I am on to something seriously, I had to run out and buy some mountain music. And having been familiar, very familiar, with the efforts of the people at local Rounder Records to do in modern times what Charles Seeger and John and Alan Lomax did in their times-preserve the basic American songbook- I picked up this 25th anniversary compilation. Partially because it had The Hill of Home on it but also to give a good cross-section of what this “down home” music looked like to a novice, eager or not. And that is good place to end. Except to note several very good stick outs in this two CD set.
They include: Norman Blake’s Church Street Blues; Rory Block’s Joliet Bound; Mississippi John Hurts’ Worried Blues; Etta Baker’s One Dime Blues; the above-mentioned The Hill of Home by Hazel Dickens; Woodstock Mountain Revue’s Killing The Blues; and Laurie Lewis’ Who Will Watch The Home Place. Okay.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Celebrate The Centenary Of The Great "Bread And Roses" Strike In Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912-Come to LAWRENCE in 2012!
Celebrate The Centenary Of The Great "Bread And Roses" Strike In Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912-Come to LAWRENCE in 2012!
In January 1912, Lawrence, Massachusetts mill workers launched a strike over a pay cut. Soon over 20,000 workers, mostly immigrants, were involved in a work stoppage that captured worldwide attention. Now known as the Bread & Roses Strike, it prompted an investigation by the US Congress into working conditions while national and international publicity helped lead to a win in March.
Today a broad-based group of organizations is planning a year-long series of events for 2012 to commemorate the strike and place it in the context of current community and labor struggles. Activities include: a Labor Day 2012 festival; an exhibit of Ralph Fasanella's art; a history conference; a year-long strike exhibit, and many others.
For information on planned events, how to get involved with us, and how to donate to our efforts visit:
www.breadandrosescentennial.org/
In January 1912, Lawrence, Massachusetts mill workers launched a strike over a pay cut. Soon over 20,000 workers, mostly immigrants, were involved in a work stoppage that captured worldwide attention. Now known as the Bread & Roses Strike, it prompted an investigation by the US Congress into working conditions while national and international publicity helped lead to a win in March.
Today a broad-based group of organizations is planning a year-long series of events for 2012 to commemorate the strike and place it in the context of current community and labor struggles. Activities include: a Labor Day 2012 festival; an exhibit of Ralph Fasanella's art; a history conference; a year-long strike exhibit, and many others.
For information on planned events, how to get involved with us, and how to donate to our efforts visit:
www.breadandrosescentennial.org/
Calls To Action Spring 2012- As danger to Iran grows Anti-war groups to hit the streets
Calls To Action Spring 2012- As danger to Iran grows Anti-war groups to hit the streets
By John Catalinotto
The following are three important anti-imperialist events scheduled for the coming months. Workers World Party is supporting and participating in each of them.
FEB. 4: Emergency protest in 48 cities to stop war on Iran
U.S.-based anti-imperialist and anti-war organizations have called for protest demonstrations to stop U.S. aggression aimed at Iran on Feb. 4, calling it a "global day of action." As of Jan. 29, the movement had grown to include protests in 48 U.S. cities, plus cities in five other countries.
The demonstrators demand, in a leaflet posted on a few of the endorsing organizations' websites: "No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations against Iran."
While the organizations involved have varied assessments of the Iranian government, they all see that any intervention by U.S. imperialism in the oil-rich Asian country not only threatens the Iranian people, but could also be a stepping stone to a much wider war in Asia.
Activists in Iran are also concerned about these dangers. The Iranian organization called The House of Latin America has been contacting its friends in the Western Hemisphere to work toward actions on Feb. 4.
Workers World spoke on Jan. 28 with Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, one of the original organizations to call for the Feb. 4 action.
"The quick response to the emergency action shows deep apprehension about the threat of war," said Flounders. "Different combinations of the endorsing groups have already called for actions in 48 cities around the United States. Each of these groups has its own political program and analysis of the world situation, but they have agreed to give priority to fighting against this new and possibly devastating war that threatens humanity.
"Sometimes people in the U.S. fail to see that sanctions are in themselves an act of war. Those the U.S. and the United Nations carried out against Iraq from 1990 to 2003 cost the lives of more than 1 million Iraqis, including at least half a million children. The Iran sanction measures also impose sanctions on any country that doesn't go along with the U.S. blockade. This drives up oil prices and threatens to unhinge the economies of the poorest countries.
"International support, considering the short time span, has been good," continued the LAC leader. "Demonstrations are planned in Ireland, Norway, India, Bangladesh and Canada."
People can follow developments on the Facebook link: No War On Iran: National Day of Action Feb 4, tinyurl.com/883f7jg. There will also be updates, giving times and places of demonstrations, at the International Action Center website: iacenter.org.
MARCH 23-25: UNAC national antiwar conference
Hundreds of anti-war activists are expected to attend the United National Antiwar Coalitions National Conference in Stamford, Conn., March 23-25.
UNAC established itself as a major anti-war coalition in the summer of 2010 when 800 people gathered for a conference in Albany, N.Y. At that meeting, a large majority voted to support UNACs anti-imperialist positions opposing U.S. intervention against Iran and condemning U.S. support for the Israeli settler-state.
The group held major anti-war demonstrations, a march of 10,000 people from Union Square to downtown Manhattan on April 9 and a march of 3,000 people in San Francisco on April 10. Demonstrations were also held on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
UNAC says this will be "a conference to challenge the wars of the 1% against the 99% abroad and at home" and to "say NO! to the NATO/G8 wars and poverty agenda." (un-acpeace.org) One of the main tasks of the conference will be to plan protest activities in Chicago when both NATO and the G8 are holding summits May 15-22.
A series of workshops and plenaries at the March 23-25 conference will take up questions including the Occupy Wall Street movement, the global economic crisis, anti-Islam bigotry, the movements that sprang up in Tunisia and Egypt and spread throughout the Middle East, and U.S. intervention in many parts of the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Latin America and Africa.
UNAC says its conference will highlight "the relationship between the wars abroad and the racist war at home on the Black Community" and "the way in which mobilizing around these issues is central to effective movement building."
May 19: Protest the G8 and NATO in Chicago
Whoever plans summits for the imperialist gangsters dominating and plundering the world decided that it was a good idea, after the October 2010 NATO summit, to hold summits for both the G8 economic centers (the old G7 plus Russia) and the NATO military powers in Chicago on May 15-22.
The summits were planned before the so-called debt crisis and austerity measures opened a new recession in Europe — and provoked a fight back from European workers along with the rise of the "Indignant People's movement." It was also long before the Oc¬cupy movement began to change the political discourse in the United States and put youth on the streets — with banners and political discussion — in more than 100 cities.
By last summer anti-war forces in the U.S., many of them in UNAC, began to organize protests for that week in May. They submitted requests for permits to the Chicago police. They organized a struggle around the right to demonstrate, appealing under the name of the Coalition Against the NATO and G8 War & Poverty Agenda (GANGS).
On Jan. 12, the City of Chicago granted the permit for suitable marches and rallies. Organizers took note, however, of a clause that allows the City to rescind the permit should there be a demand from Homeland Security to do so. CANG8 and all supporters of the right to protest say they will remain mobilized to fight for that right.
Meanwhile, the imperialists scaled down their summits so that the G8 will meet May 19-20 and NATO May 20-21. GANGS will hold a "Peoples Alternate Summit" on May 12-13 and a mass rally and march on May 19. The entire week will be filled with meetings and protests.
On Jan. 25, Adbusters, the Canada-based network associated with the Occupy movement, issued Tactical Briefing #25, urging massive support for the May actions.
Besides a growing movement within the U.S. that supports the protests in Chicago, the joint meeting of NATO and G8 has aroused international indignation. Already the organizers of the Chicago actions have opened discussions with anti-war forces in other countries to arrange solidarity actions — either to participate in Chicago or to hold mass actions in their home countries.
For more information, visit unacpeace.org, cang8.wordpress.com or iacenter.org.
By John Catalinotto
The following are three important anti-imperialist events scheduled for the coming months. Workers World Party is supporting and participating in each of them.
FEB. 4: Emergency protest in 48 cities to stop war on Iran
U.S.-based anti-imperialist and anti-war organizations have called for protest demonstrations to stop U.S. aggression aimed at Iran on Feb. 4, calling it a "global day of action." As of Jan. 29, the movement had grown to include protests in 48 U.S. cities, plus cities in five other countries.
The demonstrators demand, in a leaflet posted on a few of the endorsing organizations' websites: "No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations against Iran."
While the organizations involved have varied assessments of the Iranian government, they all see that any intervention by U.S. imperialism in the oil-rich Asian country not only threatens the Iranian people, but could also be a stepping stone to a much wider war in Asia.
Activists in Iran are also concerned about these dangers. The Iranian organization called The House of Latin America has been contacting its friends in the Western Hemisphere to work toward actions on Feb. 4.
Workers World spoke on Jan. 28 with Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, one of the original organizations to call for the Feb. 4 action.
"The quick response to the emergency action shows deep apprehension about the threat of war," said Flounders. "Different combinations of the endorsing groups have already called for actions in 48 cities around the United States. Each of these groups has its own political program and analysis of the world situation, but they have agreed to give priority to fighting against this new and possibly devastating war that threatens humanity.
"Sometimes people in the U.S. fail to see that sanctions are in themselves an act of war. Those the U.S. and the United Nations carried out against Iraq from 1990 to 2003 cost the lives of more than 1 million Iraqis, including at least half a million children. The Iran sanction measures also impose sanctions on any country that doesn't go along with the U.S. blockade. This drives up oil prices and threatens to unhinge the economies of the poorest countries.
"International support, considering the short time span, has been good," continued the LAC leader. "Demonstrations are planned in Ireland, Norway, India, Bangladesh and Canada."
People can follow developments on the Facebook link: No War On Iran: National Day of Action Feb 4, tinyurl.com/883f7jg. There will also be updates, giving times and places of demonstrations, at the International Action Center website: iacenter.org.
MARCH 23-25: UNAC national antiwar conference
Hundreds of anti-war activists are expected to attend the United National Antiwar Coalitions National Conference in Stamford, Conn., March 23-25.
UNAC established itself as a major anti-war coalition in the summer of 2010 when 800 people gathered for a conference in Albany, N.Y. At that meeting, a large majority voted to support UNACs anti-imperialist positions opposing U.S. intervention against Iran and condemning U.S. support for the Israeli settler-state.
The group held major anti-war demonstrations, a march of 10,000 people from Union Square to downtown Manhattan on April 9 and a march of 3,000 people in San Francisco on April 10. Demonstrations were also held on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
UNAC says this will be "a conference to challenge the wars of the 1% against the 99% abroad and at home" and to "say NO! to the NATO/G8 wars and poverty agenda." (un-acpeace.org) One of the main tasks of the conference will be to plan protest activities in Chicago when both NATO and the G8 are holding summits May 15-22.
A series of workshops and plenaries at the March 23-25 conference will take up questions including the Occupy Wall Street movement, the global economic crisis, anti-Islam bigotry, the movements that sprang up in Tunisia and Egypt and spread throughout the Middle East, and U.S. intervention in many parts of the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Latin America and Africa.
UNAC says its conference will highlight "the relationship between the wars abroad and the racist war at home on the Black Community" and "the way in which mobilizing around these issues is central to effective movement building."
May 19: Protest the G8 and NATO in Chicago
Whoever plans summits for the imperialist gangsters dominating and plundering the world decided that it was a good idea, after the October 2010 NATO summit, to hold summits for both the G8 economic centers (the old G7 plus Russia) and the NATO military powers in Chicago on May 15-22.
The summits were planned before the so-called debt crisis and austerity measures opened a new recession in Europe — and provoked a fight back from European workers along with the rise of the "Indignant People's movement." It was also long before the Oc¬cupy movement began to change the political discourse in the United States and put youth on the streets — with banners and political discussion — in more than 100 cities.
By last summer anti-war forces in the U.S., many of them in UNAC, began to organize protests for that week in May. They submitted requests for permits to the Chicago police. They organized a struggle around the right to demonstrate, appealing under the name of the Coalition Against the NATO and G8 War & Poverty Agenda (GANGS).
On Jan. 12, the City of Chicago granted the permit for suitable marches and rallies. Organizers took note, however, of a clause that allows the City to rescind the permit should there be a demand from Homeland Security to do so. CANG8 and all supporters of the right to protest say they will remain mobilized to fight for that right.
Meanwhile, the imperialists scaled down their summits so that the G8 will meet May 19-20 and NATO May 20-21. GANGS will hold a "Peoples Alternate Summit" on May 12-13 and a mass rally and march on May 19. The entire week will be filled with meetings and protests.
On Jan. 25, Adbusters, the Canada-based network associated with the Occupy movement, issued Tactical Briefing #25, urging massive support for the May actions.
Besides a growing movement within the U.S. that supports the protests in Chicago, the joint meeting of NATO and G8 has aroused international indignation. Already the organizers of the Chicago actions have opened discussions with anti-war forces in other countries to arrange solidarity actions — either to participate in Chicago or to hold mass actions in their home countries.
For more information, visit unacpeace.org, cang8.wordpress.com or iacenter.org.
MESSAGE FROM WORKERS WORLD PARTY-WHAT WILL STOP IMPERIALISM
MESSAGE FROM WORKERS WORLD PARTY-WHAT WILL STOP IMPERIALISM
Jan. 31 — These are dangerous times. The political and diplomatic maneuvering that precedes military action is growing, with the U.S. government in the forefront of trying to round up support for new imperialist interventions.
We in the United States have a special obligation to stay the hands of the war hawks, because the Pentagon, in our name and sucking up our money, is the most aggressive and destructive force in the world today.
That's why Workers World Party is in complete solidarity with all the anti-war actions that are demanding: No war on Iran! No intervention in Syria! U.S.-NATO out of Libya! End the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq now! Bring U.S. troops and special ops home from Korea, Guantanamo, Pakistan, Somalia and everywhere else!
But taking action to oppose imperialist wars and occupations is not an issue for the anti-war movement alone. Everyone in the United States who is suffering from or just worrying about the deep economic problems affecting the millions here needs to understand that the war threats are intimately connected with imperialist plunder abroad and capitalist exploitation at home.
Moreover, it is only when the war-makers in Washington fear a massive response to their lethal decisions that we can hope to pull them back from the brink.
It is clear from the many anti-war and anti-imperialist demands of those attracted to the Occupy movement that such a consciousness is growing in this country.
So we are in a race for time. Which will come first — another war or the explosive growth of anti-war sentiment among the people, especially the working class and oppressed?
Capitalist economic crisis fuels war drive
The deepening capitalist economic crisis is fueling an increasingly belligerent foreign policy by all the imperialist powers. The "scramble for Africa" that happened toward the end of the 19th century, when the European capitalists raced each other to grab the most territory on that great continent, is being repeated today — but now it is a struggle to recolonize countries in Asia and Africa that had, by the 1960s, won some measure of independence, aided by the existence of a bloc of socialist countries.
In today's scramble, the U.S. has blasted its way into Iraq and Afghanistan, with the British ruling class tagging along for their cut of the pie. The European imperialists and the U.S. collaborated on hammering down the Gadhafi government in Libya — like Iraq, a country that had used its oil revenues to greatly raise the standard of living of most of the people.
Now the U.S., Britain and France are hauling out their big guns — literally and figuratively — to try and get United Nations cover for an attack on Syria. As we write, the foreign ministers of all three imperialist countries are in New York putting pressure on Russia and China, which have veto power in the UN. Security Council. These two only abstained on the Libya vote early last year. The imperialists used the resolution allowing a "no-fly zone" over Libya as cover for an intensive bombing campaign that lasted more than six months and finally brought down the government of that North African country. Obviously, to them no-fly doesn't apply to their bomb-laden planes and drones.
China and Russia have said they don't want to make that mistake again. It takes an outright veto to block a resolution supported by the other three permanent members of the Security Council — the U.S., Britain and France. We hope that this time these two countries will do just that and emphatically vote no.
The irony is that the imperialists, the U.S. first and foremost, are pushing military solutions because they, in fact, are growing weaker economically. The capitalist system that has fattened off super-exploitation of the developing world is now choking on the highly efficient, high-tech global economy it has created.
This crisis brings to the fore a fundamental contradiction of capitalism that Karl Marx unraveled when it was still in its early stages. Capitalist competition drives forward technological innovation, which at first makes more profits for the owners because they can shed labor. But eventually the process overwhelms the markets for their products — workers have no money to buy the greater and greater quantities of goods produced! — and a crisis occurs. The privately owned profit system is at war with the socialized character of the productive process.
Today's crisis is worldwide and reflects the global character of the capitalist economy and the labor market. It will not yield to politicians' promises or some tinkering with credit or taxes or currencies.
The impasse the system is in can intensify all of capitalism's ugliest features: xenophobia, as seen in the vicious crusade against immigrants; racism, which deepens the immense suffering of the oppressed communities even if a few individuals are allowed to advance; jingoism and "America first" bombast against other countries, most notably China at this
time, concealing who the real enemies of the working class are.
It is U.S. corporations, and the banks behind them, that decide to move their operations to low-wage countries in search of even greater profits, even though they already possess the greatest riches in human history. Unfortunately, some union leaders are misdirecting the anger of their members against China at this time. That only feeds into the divide-and-conquer strategy of the boss class, which has an international outlook. It is time for U.S. labor leaders to also think globally and strengthen solidarity with workers around the world.
Solidarity and unity needed to fight the capitalist system
But political reaction can also arouse the instincts of solidarity and unity of all the workers and oppressed — instincts they need to fight the system. It is beginning to happen. Black, white, Latino/a, Asian, Native and Arab together are helping each other resist evictions, walk the picket lines and occupy public spaces in protest over poverty and injustice.
People here celebrated the struggles of the Egyptians in Tahrir Square. The Egyptians in turn cheered on the Wisconsin sit-in at the Capitol building and sent pizzas, via cell phone, to Occupy Wall Street.
Class struggles are growing in Europe as workers there fight back against the austerity measures imposed by banks and bureaucrats.
Decades ago, Longshore union workers in the U.S. refused to load apartheid South African ships and cargo destined for U.S.-sup-ported dictatorships in Central America.
This kind of solidarity is a direct challenge to the empire builders who would rip up our pensions, our jobs, our health care and other social services in their mad profit-driven attempts to control the world.
We must work to ensure that the anti-war movement deepens its roots among the people, especially the most oppressed, and becomes one with the class struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
Jan. 31 — These are dangerous times. The political and diplomatic maneuvering that precedes military action is growing, with the U.S. government in the forefront of trying to round up support for new imperialist interventions.
We in the United States have a special obligation to stay the hands of the war hawks, because the Pentagon, in our name and sucking up our money, is the most aggressive and destructive force in the world today.
That's why Workers World Party is in complete solidarity with all the anti-war actions that are demanding: No war on Iran! No intervention in Syria! U.S.-NATO out of Libya! End the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq now! Bring U.S. troops and special ops home from Korea, Guantanamo, Pakistan, Somalia and everywhere else!
But taking action to oppose imperialist wars and occupations is not an issue for the anti-war movement alone. Everyone in the United States who is suffering from or just worrying about the deep economic problems affecting the millions here needs to understand that the war threats are intimately connected with imperialist plunder abroad and capitalist exploitation at home.
Moreover, it is only when the war-makers in Washington fear a massive response to their lethal decisions that we can hope to pull them back from the brink.
It is clear from the many anti-war and anti-imperialist demands of those attracted to the Occupy movement that such a consciousness is growing in this country.
So we are in a race for time. Which will come first — another war or the explosive growth of anti-war sentiment among the people, especially the working class and oppressed?
Capitalist economic crisis fuels war drive
The deepening capitalist economic crisis is fueling an increasingly belligerent foreign policy by all the imperialist powers. The "scramble for Africa" that happened toward the end of the 19th century, when the European capitalists raced each other to grab the most territory on that great continent, is being repeated today — but now it is a struggle to recolonize countries in Asia and Africa that had, by the 1960s, won some measure of independence, aided by the existence of a bloc of socialist countries.
In today's scramble, the U.S. has blasted its way into Iraq and Afghanistan, with the British ruling class tagging along for their cut of the pie. The European imperialists and the U.S. collaborated on hammering down the Gadhafi government in Libya — like Iraq, a country that had used its oil revenues to greatly raise the standard of living of most of the people.
Now the U.S., Britain and France are hauling out their big guns — literally and figuratively — to try and get United Nations cover for an attack on Syria. As we write, the foreign ministers of all three imperialist countries are in New York putting pressure on Russia and China, which have veto power in the UN. Security Council. These two only abstained on the Libya vote early last year. The imperialists used the resolution allowing a "no-fly zone" over Libya as cover for an intensive bombing campaign that lasted more than six months and finally brought down the government of that North African country. Obviously, to them no-fly doesn't apply to their bomb-laden planes and drones.
China and Russia have said they don't want to make that mistake again. It takes an outright veto to block a resolution supported by the other three permanent members of the Security Council — the U.S., Britain and France. We hope that this time these two countries will do just that and emphatically vote no.
The irony is that the imperialists, the U.S. first and foremost, are pushing military solutions because they, in fact, are growing weaker economically. The capitalist system that has fattened off super-exploitation of the developing world is now choking on the highly efficient, high-tech global economy it has created.
This crisis brings to the fore a fundamental contradiction of capitalism that Karl Marx unraveled when it was still in its early stages. Capitalist competition drives forward technological innovation, which at first makes more profits for the owners because they can shed labor. But eventually the process overwhelms the markets for their products — workers have no money to buy the greater and greater quantities of goods produced! — and a crisis occurs. The privately owned profit system is at war with the socialized character of the productive process.
Today's crisis is worldwide and reflects the global character of the capitalist economy and the labor market. It will not yield to politicians' promises or some tinkering with credit or taxes or currencies.
The impasse the system is in can intensify all of capitalism's ugliest features: xenophobia, as seen in the vicious crusade against immigrants; racism, which deepens the immense suffering of the oppressed communities even if a few individuals are allowed to advance; jingoism and "America first" bombast against other countries, most notably China at this
time, concealing who the real enemies of the working class are.
It is U.S. corporations, and the banks behind them, that decide to move their operations to low-wage countries in search of even greater profits, even though they already possess the greatest riches in human history. Unfortunately, some union leaders are misdirecting the anger of their members against China at this time. That only feeds into the divide-and-conquer strategy of the boss class, which has an international outlook. It is time for U.S. labor leaders to also think globally and strengthen solidarity with workers around the world.
Solidarity and unity needed to fight the capitalist system
But political reaction can also arouse the instincts of solidarity and unity of all the workers and oppressed — instincts they need to fight the system. It is beginning to happen. Black, white, Latino/a, Asian, Native and Arab together are helping each other resist evictions, walk the picket lines and occupy public spaces in protest over poverty and injustice.
People here celebrated the struggles of the Egyptians in Tahrir Square. The Egyptians in turn cheered on the Wisconsin sit-in at the Capitol building and sent pizzas, via cell phone, to Occupy Wall Street.
Class struggles are growing in Europe as workers there fight back against the austerity measures imposed by banks and bureaucrats.
Decades ago, Longshore union workers in the U.S. refused to load apartheid South African ships and cargo destined for U.S.-sup-ported dictatorships in Central America.
This kind of solidarity is a direct challenge to the empire builders who would rip up our pensions, our jobs, our health care and other social services in their mad profit-driven attempts to control the world.
We must work to ensure that the anti-war movement deepens its roots among the people, especially the most oppressed, and becomes one with the class struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
OCCUPY 4 JOBS BLACK HISTORY FORUM! In Boston- Saturday-February 18th
OCCUPY 4 JOBS BLACK HISTORY FORUM! In Boston- Saturday-February 18th
February Is Black History Month
In his final days, Dr. King planned a mass OCCUPATION FOR JOBS
OCCUPY 4 JOBS BLACK HISTORY Forum!
Demand jobs/ housing, education and people's rights!
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18th 4:00 P.M.
Hear Larry Holmes, National Coordinator, OCCUPY 4 JOBS
SAVE GROVE HALL POST OFFICE - STOP POST OFFICE SHUTDOWNS!
NO THREE STRIKES LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS!
STOP MBTA FARE HIKES AND CUTS!
STOP THE RETURN TO RACIST, SEGREGATED "NEIGHBORHOOD"
SCHOOLS!
WPA-STYLE 30 MILLION JOBS PROGRAM - JOBS OR INCOME FOR
ALL
MONEY FOR JOBS, NOT FOR WAR AGAINST IRAN!
JOBS NOT JAILS!
Save the date - check iacboston.org for location
Occupy 4 Jobs Network c/o USW L. 875125 Colgate Rd, Roslindale, MA 02131
617-524-3507 Minister Don Muhammad, Temple 11, Nation of Islam
For info, call International Action Center 617-522-6626 or email occupy4jobsboston@gmail.com
February Is Black History Month
In his final days, Dr. King planned a mass OCCUPATION FOR JOBS
OCCUPY 4 JOBS BLACK HISTORY Forum!
Demand jobs/ housing, education and people's rights!
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18th 4:00 P.M.
Hear Larry Holmes, National Coordinator, OCCUPY 4 JOBS
SAVE GROVE HALL POST OFFICE - STOP POST OFFICE SHUTDOWNS!
NO THREE STRIKES LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS!
STOP MBTA FARE HIKES AND CUTS!
STOP THE RETURN TO RACIST, SEGREGATED "NEIGHBORHOOD"
SCHOOLS!
WPA-STYLE 30 MILLION JOBS PROGRAM - JOBS OR INCOME FOR
ALL
MONEY FOR JOBS, NOT FOR WAR AGAINST IRAN!
JOBS NOT JAILS!
Save the date - check iacboston.org for location
Occupy 4 Jobs Network c/o USW L. 875125 Colgate Rd, Roslindale, MA 02131
617-524-3507 Minister Don Muhammad, Temple 11, Nation of Islam
For info, call International Action Center 617-522-6626 or email occupy4jobsboston@gmail.com
A Call To Action In The Greater Boston Area-Say NO to MBTA Fare Hikes and Service Cuts!
A Call To Action In The Greater Boston Area-Say NO to MBTA Fare Hikes and Service Cuts!
No MBTA Layoffs! Help Stop T Fare Hikes and Service Cuts
Riders, Unions, Community Groups:Build a Mass Movement to
Stop Attacks on our Living Standards!
Tax the Corporations, Private Universities and the super-Rich for more revenue to Expand Service!
The MBTA board states that 30% of its yearly budget goes to debt servicing. This debt was created by Massachusetts during the Big Dig when the MBTA was legally mandated to upgrade stations and was given no Big Dig money to do it, instead being forced into massive debt.
Then in 2000, the State Legislature stopped funding the MBTA directly from the State budget, instead relying on fare increases and a portion of the sales tax - both are taxes on the working people who use public transit!
Now the MBTA board wants to eliminate bus routes, eliminate weekend service for the commuter rail, Mattapan line and E-line, eliminate The Ride (a service that many elderly and disabled people need to go about their daily routine), make the subway more dangerous by going to one conductor per train instead of two, and, in this terrible economy, eliminate over 500 good union jobs!
These cuts will hurt all working people. We should not be made to pay for the greed and short-sightedness of the corporate-dominated MBTA Board and State Legislature. Corporations and private universities could not exist without public transportation bringing their workforces to and from work on time every day, including weekends. Many corporations already pay nothing in taxes. The big universities, including Harvard, the richest university in the world, are "non-profits" and pay no taxes. The universities, who could not operate without T service, should drastically increase "in kind" payments in lieu of taxes. This would create added revenue that could expand T service and lower fares.
In order to defeat the fare hikes and service cuts, we will need to build a movement that reaches out into all affected communities. We need to do "Mic Checks" on morning and evening commutes - on the subway, commuter rail, and buses. We should engage with the MBTA unions and ask them to publicly support their jobs, wages, health care and pensions in solidarity with T riders and other unions. We need more good jobs for our communities. Union members who rely on the T to get to work should bring this movement to their union meetings and co-workers because T fare hike and service cuts mean a cut in disposable income, and hurt all union members. We should reach out to elderly communities who would have to pay the largest percentage fare increases.
Socialist Alternative calls for the building of an organized mass day of non-payment which would put massive pressure on the unelected MBTA board and Beacon Hill to consider other options such as use of the State's "Rainy Day Fund," taxing the corporations and private universities, bringing T funding back into the State budget and other alternatives that would not further erode the T and our living standards.
******
We Say:
• No Fare Hike, No Service Cuts, No
MBTA Layoffs!
• For an extension of MBTA hours and
services to create more union, living
wage jobs!
• Fund public transportation by taxing the
big corporations and rich private
universities.-
• Fund the contracts of the union MBTA
workers, our communities need more
jobs, not less.
• Organize mass demonstrations and
occupations of our public transit as part
of a movement that can stop the fare-
hikes.
• Set elections for the MBTA board within
a month. All positions should be elected
and subject to recall.
• Repeal the "Forward Funding'' law!
Bring back direct funding for the MBTA
by putting T spending back into the
regular State budget as it was before
2000.
Contact: boston.@SocialistAltcrnattve.org 774-454-9060 - "Boston Socialist Alternative" on Facebook
Labor Donated
No MBTA Layoffs! Help Stop T Fare Hikes and Service Cuts
Riders, Unions, Community Groups:Build a Mass Movement to
Stop Attacks on our Living Standards!
Tax the Corporations, Private Universities and the super-Rich for more revenue to Expand Service!
The MBTA board states that 30% of its yearly budget goes to debt servicing. This debt was created by Massachusetts during the Big Dig when the MBTA was legally mandated to upgrade stations and was given no Big Dig money to do it, instead being forced into massive debt.
Then in 2000, the State Legislature stopped funding the MBTA directly from the State budget, instead relying on fare increases and a portion of the sales tax - both are taxes on the working people who use public transit!
Now the MBTA board wants to eliminate bus routes, eliminate weekend service for the commuter rail, Mattapan line and E-line, eliminate The Ride (a service that many elderly and disabled people need to go about their daily routine), make the subway more dangerous by going to one conductor per train instead of two, and, in this terrible economy, eliminate over 500 good union jobs!
These cuts will hurt all working people. We should not be made to pay for the greed and short-sightedness of the corporate-dominated MBTA Board and State Legislature. Corporations and private universities could not exist without public transportation bringing their workforces to and from work on time every day, including weekends. Many corporations already pay nothing in taxes. The big universities, including Harvard, the richest university in the world, are "non-profits" and pay no taxes. The universities, who could not operate without T service, should drastically increase "in kind" payments in lieu of taxes. This would create added revenue that could expand T service and lower fares.
In order to defeat the fare hikes and service cuts, we will need to build a movement that reaches out into all affected communities. We need to do "Mic Checks" on morning and evening commutes - on the subway, commuter rail, and buses. We should engage with the MBTA unions and ask them to publicly support their jobs, wages, health care and pensions in solidarity with T riders and other unions. We need more good jobs for our communities. Union members who rely on the T to get to work should bring this movement to their union meetings and co-workers because T fare hike and service cuts mean a cut in disposable income, and hurt all union members. We should reach out to elderly communities who would have to pay the largest percentage fare increases.
Socialist Alternative calls for the building of an organized mass day of non-payment which would put massive pressure on the unelected MBTA board and Beacon Hill to consider other options such as use of the State's "Rainy Day Fund," taxing the corporations and private universities, bringing T funding back into the State budget and other alternatives that would not further erode the T and our living standards.
******
We Say:
• No Fare Hike, No Service Cuts, No
MBTA Layoffs!
• For an extension of MBTA hours and
services to create more union, living
wage jobs!
• Fund public transportation by taxing the
big corporations and rich private
universities.-
• Fund the contracts of the union MBTA
workers, our communities need more
jobs, not less.
• Organize mass demonstrations and
occupations of our public transit as part
of a movement that can stop the fare-
hikes.
• Set elections for the MBTA board within
a month. All positions should be elected
and subject to recall.
• Repeal the "Forward Funding'' law!
Bring back direct funding for the MBTA
by putting T spending back into the
regular State budget as it was before
2000.
Contact: boston.@SocialistAltcrnattve.org 774-454-9060 - "Boston Socialist Alternative" on Facebook
Labor Donated
A Call To Action-1st Mass Occupy General Assembly-Occupy Groups in the Greater Boston Area-UNITE!
A Call To Action-1st Mass Occupy General Assembly-Occupy Groups in the Greater Boston Area-UNITE!
When: Saturday, February 18, 2012 Time: 12:00pm until 4:00pm
Where: Boston Teachers Union Hall, 180 Mount Vernon Street, Dorchester, Massachusetts
Child Care will be provided.
Fight MBTA Fare Hikes and Cuts!
Other proposals on the proposed agenda include:
• International Women's Day action
• March 1st Solidarity actions for public education
• May 1st General strike actions
• Time will be allotted for all proposals.
Facebook link: htrps://www.facebook.com/events/177231922382590/
When: Saturday, February 18, 2012 Time: 12:00pm until 4:00pm
Where: Boston Teachers Union Hall, 180 Mount Vernon Street, Dorchester, Massachusetts
Child Care will be provided.
Fight MBTA Fare Hikes and Cuts!
Other proposals on the proposed agenda include:
• International Women's Day action
• March 1st Solidarity actions for public education
• May 1st General strike actions
• Time will be allotted for all proposals.
Facebook link: htrps://www.facebook.com/events/177231922382590/
A Call To Action-United National Antiwar Coalition Conference-March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
A Call To Action-United National Antiwar Coalition Conference-March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
SAY NO! TO THE NATO/G8 WARS & POVERTY AGENDA
A CONFERENCE TO CHALLENGE THE WARS OF THE 1% AGAINST THE 99* ABROAD AND AT HOME
March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers will meet in Chicago, May 15-22,2012 to plan their economic and military strategies for the coming period. These military, financial, and political leaders, who serve the 1 % at home and abroad, impose austerity on the 99% to expand their profits, often by drones, armies, and police.
Just as there is a nationally-coordinated attempt to curb the organized dissent of the Occupy Wall St. movements, the federal and local authorities want to deny us our constitutional rights to peacefully and legally protest within sight and sound range of the NATO/G-8 Summits. We must challenge them and bring thousands to Chicago to stand in solidarity with all those fighting US-backed austerity and war around the globe.
To plan these actions and further actions against the program of endless war of the global elite, we will meet in a large national conference March 23-25 in Stamford CT. This conference will bring to¬gether activists from the occupy movements, and the antiwar, social justice and environmental move¬ments. We will demand that Washington Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! and use these trillions immediately for human needs.
The conference program will feature movement leaders, educators, grassroots activists, 40 workshops, and discussion/voting sessions on an action program. A partial list of presenters include: Ann Wright, Bill McKibben, Glen Ford, Vijay Prashad, Saadia Toor, Cynthia McKinney, Malik Mujahid, Ian Angus, Monami Maulik, Elliot Adams, Bruce Gagnon, David Swanson, Lucy Pagoada, and Clarence Thomas.
A conference highlight will be the relationship between the Wars Abroad and the racist War at Home on the Black Community, addressing unemployment, the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration, police brutality, the prison industry, and the racist death penalty.
Workshop Topics Include:
Occupy Wall St. & the Fight Against War x Global Economic Crisis Climate Crisis and War oo Women and War oo War at Home on Black Community oo War on the U.S.-Mexico Border oc Islamophobia as a Tool of War oo War and Labor's Fight Back oo Defense of Iran oo Afghanistan after Ten Years of Occupation oo Is the U.S. Really Withdrawing from Iraq? oo War on Pakistan oo Updates on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen oo What Next for the Arab Spring? oo Occupation of Haiti oo U.S. Intervention in Honduras, Colombia, and the rest of Latin America x> Drone Warfare and Weapons in Space oo Fight for Our Right to Protest oo Civil Liberties oo Guantanamo, Torture and Rendition oo U.S. Combat Troops Involved in New Scramble for Africa oo Somalia oc Control of Media oo Imperialism oc Nonviolence & Direct Action oo Palestine: UN Recognized Statehood or Civil Resistance oc Breaking the Siege of Gaza & Ending Occupation oo Veterans Rights oo Immigrant Rights and War °o No War, No Warming oo Bring Our War $$ Home Campaigns.
www.unacpeace.org
**************
SAY NO! TO THE NATO/G8 WARS & POVERTY AGENDA
A CONFERENCE TO CHALLENGE THE WARS OF THE 1% AGAINST THE 99* ABROAD AND AT HOME
March 23-25,2012 - Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT
The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers will meet in Chicago, May 15-22,2012 to plan their economic and military strategies for the coming period. These military, financial, and political leaders, who serve the 1 % at home and abroad, impose austerity on the 99% to expand their profits, often by drones, armies, and police.
Just as there is a nationally-coordinated attempt to curb the organized dissent of the Occupy Wall St. movements, the federal and local authorities want to deny us our constitutional rights to peacefully and legally protest within sight and sound range of the NATO/G-8 Summits. We must challenge them and bring thousands to Chicago to stand in solidarity with all those fighting US-backed austerity and war around the globe.
To plan these actions and further actions against the program of endless war of the global elite, we will meet in a large national conference March 23-25 in Stamford CT. This conference will bring to¬gether activists from the occupy movements, and the antiwar, social justice and environmental move¬ments. We will demand that Washington Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! and use these trillions immediately for human needs.
The conference program will feature movement leaders, educators, grassroots activists, 40 workshops, and discussion/voting sessions on an action program. A partial list of presenters include: Ann Wright, Bill McKibben, Glen Ford, Vijay Prashad, Saadia Toor, Cynthia McKinney, Malik Mujahid, Ian Angus, Monami Maulik, Elliot Adams, Bruce Gagnon, David Swanson, Lucy Pagoada, and Clarence Thomas.
A conference highlight will be the relationship between the Wars Abroad and the racist War at Home on the Black Community, addressing unemployment, the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration, police brutality, the prison industry, and the racist death penalty.
Workshop Topics Include:
Occupy Wall St. & the Fight Against War x Global Economic Crisis
www.unacpeace.org
**************
In Search Of Lost Time- Short Course…
In Search Of Lost Time- Short Course…
....with apologies to the great early 20th century modernist French writer Marcel Proust whose most famous (and massive) work I am stealing the title from in this little sketch. Apparently I will steal any literary tidbit, from any source and from any time, just to round out some little word trifle of mine. I had also better explain, and explain right now, before some besotted, hare-brained, blue pencil-at-the-ever-ready school of novel deconstruction devotee, probably tragically childhood’d, post-modern literary-type jumps on me I know, and I know damn well, that an alternative translation for the title of Proust's six volume work is Remembrances Of Things Past. But isn't this In Search Of Lost Time a better title for the needs of this space. For wondering where it went and why this or that did or did not occur when we had the chance to do sometime, some big and courageous about it, or just do the right thing. In any case I promise not to go on and on about French pastry at teatime (which, by the way, brother Proust did do, for about sixty pages in the volume Swann’s Way, so there is the trade-off, the short course trade off. Okay?).
*********
As I, clumsily, pick up, or try to pick up some precious dirt to rub between my fingers from the oval in front of the old high school, blessed and beatified, not beat beatified but ancient memory beatified, North Adamsville High, on this bedraggled, prickly frigid, knife-like wind- gusting in my face, not fit for man nor beast, kind of a winter’s day as the shortly-setting sun begins it descent into night, I really do wonder what demons, what cast-out-of-the-inner-sanctums-of-hell demons, have driven me here, here to this worn-out patch of an oval, after so many years of statutory neglect. Not legally culpable neglect, maybe, but memory neglect, proper memory neglect.
Moreover, here I stand picking up dirt from an oval that I have not walked on, much less picked up gravel from, in over forty-five years, although I have logged many a mile around a larger version (I believe) of this oval either practicing during track or cross country season, or, and this may jog demographic brethren reader memory, running the 600 yard dash as part of the old time President’s National Physical Fitness Test. Something out of the Eisenhower red scare, cold war be-bop echo night. Yes, I thought mention of that event might bring ring a bell, a bell of anguish for some, as they puffed and chortled their way to the finish line in their tennis shoes, or whatever knee-busting sneakers we wore in those days, in order to be cool. Maybe even Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s black of course. Was the any other color? Kind of like today.
In any case, here I stand, and now you know, or have a pretty good idea where I am. What you do not know, at least do not know yet, is that I am not here, rubbing some funky old town dirt through my fingers on a cold winter’s day just for the joy of it. For raider red oneness, either. Or some such old man’s quirks. Rather, I am here, and you can start calling 911 right now if you like, to evoke, evoke mind you so there is no fooling around about it, the spirit, the long past spirit of days gone by at the high school. The spirit of the time of my time. Probably not since old Tommy Wollaston went looking for a suitable site for his maypole debaucheries, and stumbled on Merrymount has this town seen such a land grab, in a manner of speaking. See, what I am thinking is that some dirt-rubbing, a little kabala-like, or druid-like, or keltic-like, or Navajo-like, or something-like, dirt-rubbing will give me a jump start on this “voyage”.
I will confess to this much , as this seemingly is a confessional age, or, maybe just as a vestige of that hard-crusted, family history-rooted, novena-saying, stations of the cross walking, ceremonial high mass incense-driven, mortal sin-fearing, you’ll-get-your-reward in-the-next-life-so-don’t-expect-it-here, buster, fatalistic Catholic upbringing long abandoned but etched in, no, embedded in, some far recesses of memory that my returning to North Adamsville High School did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of years before my mother, Doris Margaret Markin (nee Riley), Class of 1943, had passed away.
For a good part of her life my mother lived in locations a mere stone's throw from the school. You could, for example, see the back of the school from my grandparents' house on Young Street. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to North Adamsville. To my, and her, roots. In part, at least, for the feel of roots, but also to figure out, or try to figure out for the 584th time, what went wrong in our old, broken down, couldn't catch a break, working poor, North Adamsville family. As part of that attempted figuring out, as I walked up Main Street from Chestnut Street (the site of the old, woe-begotten, seen better days, ram-shackled homestead still, barely, standing guard above part of the Newport Avenue by-pass) and swung down East Street I passed by, intentionally passed by, the old high school. And here I stand, oval-stuck, dirty-handed, bundled up not to well against the day’s winds, or against the fickle, shifting winds of time either, to tell my tale.
Now I will also confess, but without the long strung-out stuff that I threw in above about my Catholic upbringing, that in figuring out why ill winds blew across my family’s fate I was unsuccessful. Why, after all, should the 584th time bring some sense of enlightenment, or of inner peace, when the other five hundred, more or less, did not do so. What this sojourn did do, however, was rekindle, and rekindle strongly, memories of sittings, without number, on the steps of the high school in the old days, in the high school days, and think about the future, if there was going to be a future.
I tried to write this story, or a part of it, a couple of years ago so a little background is in order so the thing makes some sense to others. That now seemingly benighted story, originally simply titled,A Walk Down “Dream” Street, started life by merely asking an equally simple question posed to fellow classmates in the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 about whether their high school dreams had come true or not, as least for those who had thought about the issue, on the class website. I had “discovered” the site that year after having been pushed and pulled in ways that drove me back to memories, hard, hard-bitten, hard-aching, hard-longing, mist of time, dream memories, of North schoolboy days and of the need to search for my old high school friend and running mate (literally, in track and cross country, as well as “running” around town doing boy high school things, doing the best we could, or trying to), Bill Bradley. I posed the question this way there:
“Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives; our dreams of glory out in the big old world that we did not make, and were not asked about making; of success whether of the pot of gold or less tangible, but just as valuable, goods, or better, ideas; of things or conditions, of himalayas, conquered, physically or mentally; of discoveries made, of self or the whole wide world, great or small. Or, perhaps, of just getting by, just putting one foot in the front of the other two days in a row, of keeping one’s head above water under the impact of young life’s woes, of not sinking down further into the human sink; of smaller, pinched, very pinched, existential dreams but dreams nevertheless. I hope, I fervently hope, that they were the former."
Naturally, the question was posed in its particular form, or so it seemed natural at the time for me to pose it that way, because those old, “real”, august, imposing, institutionally imposing, grey granite-quarried (from the Granite City, natch) main entrance steps (in those days serious steps, two steps at a time steps, especially if you missed first bell, flanked by globular orbs and, like some medieval church, gargoyle-like columns up to the second floor, hence “real”) is a place where Bill and I spent a lot of our time, talking of this and that.
Especially in summer night time: hot, sultry, sweaty, steam-drained, no money in pockets, no car to explore the great American teenage night; the be-bop, doo-wop, do doo do doo ,ding dong daddy, real gone daddy, rockin’ daddy, max daddy, let it be me, the night time is the right time, car window-fogged, honk if you love jesus (or whatever activity produced those incessant honks in ignition-turned-off cars), love-tinged, or at least sex-tinged, endless sea, Adamsville Beach night. Do I need to draw you the big picture, I think not.
Or for the faint-hearted, or the merely good, denizens of that great American teenage night a Howard Johnson’s ice cream (make mine cherry vanilla, double scoop, no jimmies, please) or a trip to American Graffiti-like fast food drive-in, hamburger, hold the onions (just in case today is the night), fries and a frappe (I refuse to describe that taste treat at this far remove, look it up on Wikipedia, or one of those info-sites) Southern Artery night. Lost, all irretrievably lost, and no thousand, thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge), no, no million later, greater experiences can ever replace that. And, add in, non-dated-up, and no possibility of sweet-smelling, soft, bare shoulder-showing summer sun-dressed (or wintry, bundled up, soft-furred, cashmere-bloused, I would not have been choosy), big-haired (hey, do you expect me to remember the name of the hair styles, too?), ruby red-lipped (see, I got the color right), dated-up in sight. So you can see what that “running around town, doing the best we could” of ours, Bill and me, mainly consisted.
Mostly, we spoke of dreams of the future: small, soft, fluttery, airless, flightless, high school kid-sized, working class-sized, North Adamsville -sized, non-world–beater-sized, no weight dreams really, no, that’s not right, they were weighty enough but only until 18 years old , or maybe 21, weighty. A future driven though, and driven hard, by the need to get out from under, to get away from, to put many miles between us and it, crazy family life (the details of which need not detain us here at all, as I now know, and I have some stories to prove it, that condition was epidemic in the old town then, and probably still is). And also of getting out of one-horse, teen life-stealing, soul-cramping, dream-stealing (small or large take your pick on dream size), even breathe-stealing, North Adamsville. Of getting out into the far reaches, as far as desire and dough would carry, of the great wild, wanderlust, cosmic, American day and night hitch-hike if you have too, shoe leather-beating walking if you must, road (or European road, or wherever, Christ, even Revere in a crunch, but mainly putting some miles between).
We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember some of the more personal aspects of the content of Bill's dreams. If you want the “skinny” on Bill’s dreams he’s around, ask him. However, a lot of what Bill and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons, girls, the desperate need to get away from the family trap, girls, no money in pockets for girls, cars, no money for cars, girls. (Remember those were the days when future expectations, and anguishes, were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every runner does. Bill went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, giving myself much the best of it, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.
And, maybe, on my part, I also expressed some sketchily-drawn utopian social dreams, some fellaheen justice dreams. Oh, you don’t know that word, "fellaheen," perhaps. To have oneness justice for the "wanters" of the world; for the “no got”, not the other kind, the greed-driven kind, want; fear-driven, fear to go left or right or to put two feet in front of you want; for the misjudgment-making from having too little of this world's goods want; for all the cramp-spaced in this great big planet want; for the too many people to a room, one disheveled sink, one stinking toilet want: for the bleary-eyed pee-smelled, dawn bus station paper bag holding all your possessions want; for the two and three decker house no space, asphalted, no green between want; for the reduced to looking through rubbish barrels, or worst, want; for the K-Mart, Wal-mart, Adamsville Square Bargain-Center basement outfitted out of fashion, no fashionsista, no way, want,; for the got to have some Woolworth’s five and dime trinket to make a small brightness want; for the lottery, keno, bingo, bango, mega-bongo waiting for the ship to come in pay-out want; for the whiskey soaked, wine-dabbled, or name your poison, want; for the buddy, can you spare a dime want; for the cop hey you, keeping moving you can’t stay here, want; for the cigarette butt strewn pick-up streets want; for fixing, or fixings, to die want; and, for just plain, ordinary, everyday, non-descript want, the want from whence I, and, maybe, you came.
This is the sing-song of the fellaheen, the life-cycle of the fellaheen, the red masque dance of the fellaheen; the dance of the working, or not so working, poor, the day time dance. The dance that I will dance, at least it looks that way, until I draw my last breathe. For the night time, the "takers", stealth thief, jack-roller, pimp daddy, sweet-dark covering abandoned back alley streets, watch out behind you (and in front too), sweated, be-fogged, lumpen fellaheen night, the no justice wanted or given night, you will have to look to the French writers Genet, Celine, or one of those rough boys, the takers have no need of my breathe, or my tears. I have had my say now, and it was worth standing, as the night devours the sun, at this damn wintry oval to say it, alright.
....with apologies to the great early 20th century modernist French writer Marcel Proust whose most famous (and massive) work I am stealing the title from in this little sketch. Apparently I will steal any literary tidbit, from any source and from any time, just to round out some little word trifle of mine. I had also better explain, and explain right now, before some besotted, hare-brained, blue pencil-at-the-ever-ready school of novel deconstruction devotee, probably tragically childhood’d, post-modern literary-type jumps on me I know, and I know damn well, that an alternative translation for the title of Proust's six volume work is Remembrances Of Things Past. But isn't this In Search Of Lost Time a better title for the needs of this space. For wondering where it went and why this or that did or did not occur when we had the chance to do sometime, some big and courageous about it, or just do the right thing. In any case I promise not to go on and on about French pastry at teatime (which, by the way, brother Proust did do, for about sixty pages in the volume Swann’s Way, so there is the trade-off, the short course trade off. Okay?).
*********
As I, clumsily, pick up, or try to pick up some precious dirt to rub between my fingers from the oval in front of the old high school, blessed and beatified, not beat beatified but ancient memory beatified, North Adamsville High, on this bedraggled, prickly frigid, knife-like wind- gusting in my face, not fit for man nor beast, kind of a winter’s day as the shortly-setting sun begins it descent into night, I really do wonder what demons, what cast-out-of-the-inner-sanctums-of-hell demons, have driven me here, here to this worn-out patch of an oval, after so many years of statutory neglect. Not legally culpable neglect, maybe, but memory neglect, proper memory neglect.
Moreover, here I stand picking up dirt from an oval that I have not walked on, much less picked up gravel from, in over forty-five years, although I have logged many a mile around a larger version (I believe) of this oval either practicing during track or cross country season, or, and this may jog demographic brethren reader memory, running the 600 yard dash as part of the old time President’s National Physical Fitness Test. Something out of the Eisenhower red scare, cold war be-bop echo night. Yes, I thought mention of that event might bring ring a bell, a bell of anguish for some, as they puffed and chortled their way to the finish line in their tennis shoes, or whatever knee-busting sneakers we wore in those days, in order to be cool. Maybe even Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s black of course. Was the any other color? Kind of like today.
In any case, here I stand, and now you know, or have a pretty good idea where I am. What you do not know, at least do not know yet, is that I am not here, rubbing some funky old town dirt through my fingers on a cold winter’s day just for the joy of it. For raider red oneness, either. Or some such old man’s quirks. Rather, I am here, and you can start calling 911 right now if you like, to evoke, evoke mind you so there is no fooling around about it, the spirit, the long past spirit of days gone by at the high school. The spirit of the time of my time. Probably not since old Tommy Wollaston went looking for a suitable site for his maypole debaucheries, and stumbled on Merrymount has this town seen such a land grab, in a manner of speaking. See, what I am thinking is that some dirt-rubbing, a little kabala-like, or druid-like, or keltic-like, or Navajo-like, or something-like, dirt-rubbing will give me a jump start on this “voyage”.
I will confess to this much , as this seemingly is a confessional age, or, maybe just as a vestige of that hard-crusted, family history-rooted, novena-saying, stations of the cross walking, ceremonial high mass incense-driven, mortal sin-fearing, you’ll-get-your-reward in-the-next-life-so-don’t-expect-it-here, buster, fatalistic Catholic upbringing long abandoned but etched in, no, embedded in, some far recesses of memory that my returning to North Adamsville High School did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of years before my mother, Doris Margaret Markin (nee Riley), Class of 1943, had passed away.
For a good part of her life my mother lived in locations a mere stone's throw from the school. You could, for example, see the back of the school from my grandparents' house on Young Street. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to North Adamsville. To my, and her, roots. In part, at least, for the feel of roots, but also to figure out, or try to figure out for the 584th time, what went wrong in our old, broken down, couldn't catch a break, working poor, North Adamsville family. As part of that attempted figuring out, as I walked up Main Street from Chestnut Street (the site of the old, woe-begotten, seen better days, ram-shackled homestead still, barely, standing guard above part of the Newport Avenue by-pass) and swung down East Street I passed by, intentionally passed by, the old high school. And here I stand, oval-stuck, dirty-handed, bundled up not to well against the day’s winds, or against the fickle, shifting winds of time either, to tell my tale.
Now I will also confess, but without the long strung-out stuff that I threw in above about my Catholic upbringing, that in figuring out why ill winds blew across my family’s fate I was unsuccessful. Why, after all, should the 584th time bring some sense of enlightenment, or of inner peace, when the other five hundred, more or less, did not do so. What this sojourn did do, however, was rekindle, and rekindle strongly, memories of sittings, without number, on the steps of the high school in the old days, in the high school days, and think about the future, if there was going to be a future.
I tried to write this story, or a part of it, a couple of years ago so a little background is in order so the thing makes some sense to others. That now seemingly benighted story, originally simply titled,A Walk Down “Dream” Street, started life by merely asking an equally simple question posed to fellow classmates in the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 about whether their high school dreams had come true or not, as least for those who had thought about the issue, on the class website. I had “discovered” the site that year after having been pushed and pulled in ways that drove me back to memories, hard, hard-bitten, hard-aching, hard-longing, mist of time, dream memories, of North schoolboy days and of the need to search for my old high school friend and running mate (literally, in track and cross country, as well as “running” around town doing boy high school things, doing the best we could, or trying to), Bill Bradley. I posed the question this way there:
“Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives; our dreams of glory out in the big old world that we did not make, and were not asked about making; of success whether of the pot of gold or less tangible, but just as valuable, goods, or better, ideas; of things or conditions, of himalayas, conquered, physically or mentally; of discoveries made, of self or the whole wide world, great or small. Or, perhaps, of just getting by, just putting one foot in the front of the other two days in a row, of keeping one’s head above water under the impact of young life’s woes, of not sinking down further into the human sink; of smaller, pinched, very pinched, existential dreams but dreams nevertheless. I hope, I fervently hope, that they were the former."
Naturally, the question was posed in its particular form, or so it seemed natural at the time for me to pose it that way, because those old, “real”, august, imposing, institutionally imposing, grey granite-quarried (from the Granite City, natch) main entrance steps (in those days serious steps, two steps at a time steps, especially if you missed first bell, flanked by globular orbs and, like some medieval church, gargoyle-like columns up to the second floor, hence “real”) is a place where Bill and I spent a lot of our time, talking of this and that.
Especially in summer night time: hot, sultry, sweaty, steam-drained, no money in pockets, no car to explore the great American teenage night; the be-bop, doo-wop, do doo do doo ,ding dong daddy, real gone daddy, rockin’ daddy, max daddy, let it be me, the night time is the right time, car window-fogged, honk if you love jesus (or whatever activity produced those incessant honks in ignition-turned-off cars), love-tinged, or at least sex-tinged, endless sea, Adamsville Beach night. Do I need to draw you the big picture, I think not.
Or for the faint-hearted, or the merely good, denizens of that great American teenage night a Howard Johnson’s ice cream (make mine cherry vanilla, double scoop, no jimmies, please) or a trip to American Graffiti-like fast food drive-in, hamburger, hold the onions (just in case today is the night), fries and a frappe (I refuse to describe that taste treat at this far remove, look it up on Wikipedia, or one of those info-sites) Southern Artery night. Lost, all irretrievably lost, and no thousand, thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge), no, no million later, greater experiences can ever replace that. And, add in, non-dated-up, and no possibility of sweet-smelling, soft, bare shoulder-showing summer sun-dressed (or wintry, bundled up, soft-furred, cashmere-bloused, I would not have been choosy), big-haired (hey, do you expect me to remember the name of the hair styles, too?), ruby red-lipped (see, I got the color right), dated-up in sight. So you can see what that “running around town, doing the best we could” of ours, Bill and me, mainly consisted.
Mostly, we spoke of dreams of the future: small, soft, fluttery, airless, flightless, high school kid-sized, working class-sized, North Adamsville -sized, non-world–beater-sized, no weight dreams really, no, that’s not right, they were weighty enough but only until 18 years old , or maybe 21, weighty. A future driven though, and driven hard, by the need to get out from under, to get away from, to put many miles between us and it, crazy family life (the details of which need not detain us here at all, as I now know, and I have some stories to prove it, that condition was epidemic in the old town then, and probably still is). And also of getting out of one-horse, teen life-stealing, soul-cramping, dream-stealing (small or large take your pick on dream size), even breathe-stealing, North Adamsville. Of getting out into the far reaches, as far as desire and dough would carry, of the great wild, wanderlust, cosmic, American day and night hitch-hike if you have too, shoe leather-beating walking if you must, road (or European road, or wherever, Christ, even Revere in a crunch, but mainly putting some miles between).
We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember some of the more personal aspects of the content of Bill's dreams. If you want the “skinny” on Bill’s dreams he’s around, ask him. However, a lot of what Bill and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons, girls, the desperate need to get away from the family trap, girls, no money in pockets for girls, cars, no money for cars, girls. (Remember those were the days when future expectations, and anguishes, were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every runner does. Bill went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, giving myself much the best of it, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.
And, maybe, on my part, I also expressed some sketchily-drawn utopian social dreams, some fellaheen justice dreams. Oh, you don’t know that word, "fellaheen," perhaps. To have oneness justice for the "wanters" of the world; for the “no got”, not the other kind, the greed-driven kind, want; fear-driven, fear to go left or right or to put two feet in front of you want; for the misjudgment-making from having too little of this world's goods want; for all the cramp-spaced in this great big planet want; for the too many people to a room, one disheveled sink, one stinking toilet want: for the bleary-eyed pee-smelled, dawn bus station paper bag holding all your possessions want; for the two and three decker house no space, asphalted, no green between want; for the reduced to looking through rubbish barrels, or worst, want; for the K-Mart, Wal-mart, Adamsville Square Bargain-Center basement outfitted out of fashion, no fashionsista, no way, want,; for the got to have some Woolworth’s five and dime trinket to make a small brightness want; for the lottery, keno, bingo, bango, mega-bongo waiting for the ship to come in pay-out want; for the whiskey soaked, wine-dabbled, or name your poison, want; for the buddy, can you spare a dime want; for the cop hey you, keeping moving you can’t stay here, want; for the cigarette butt strewn pick-up streets want; for fixing, or fixings, to die want; and, for just plain, ordinary, everyday, non-descript want, the want from whence I, and, maybe, you came.
This is the sing-song of the fellaheen, the life-cycle of the fellaheen, the red masque dance of the fellaheen; the dance of the working, or not so working, poor, the day time dance. The dance that I will dance, at least it looks that way, until I draw my last breathe. For the night time, the "takers", stealth thief, jack-roller, pimp daddy, sweet-dark covering abandoned back alley streets, watch out behind you (and in front too), sweated, be-fogged, lumpen fellaheen night, the no justice wanted or given night, you will have to look to the French writers Genet, Celine, or one of those rough boys, the takers have no need of my breathe, or my tears. I have had my say now, and it was worth standing, as the night devours the sun, at this damn wintry oval to say it, alright.
***From The Annals Of The Class Struggle- From Art Preis's Labor's Giant Step, Chapter Four-"Three Strikes That Paved the Way" (The Great Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco Strikes of 1934)
From Art Preis's Labor's Giant Step, Chapter Four-Three Strikes That Paved the Way (The Great Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco Strikes of 1934)
The National Industrial Conference Board, in a survey of collective bargaining under the NRA, could boast in March 1934 of "the relatively small proportion of employees found to be dealing with employers through an organized labor union." At the same time, said the board, "Employee representation [company unions] appears to have made considerable progress" and "it is clear that individual bargaining has not in any way been eliminated by Section 7(a) of the Recovery Act."
In that same month, the American Federationist, organ of the top AFL leadership, complained: "In general there has been no increase in real wages...The codes will not safeguard real wages...The gov¬ernment monetary policy points toward diminishing real wages."
Worst of all, the wave of strikes following the enactment of NRA in June 1933 was ending in a series of defeats. Where the union leaders themselves did not rush the workers back on the job without gains—not even union recognition, the strikes were smashed by court injunctions and armed violence. Behind the legal restraining orders and the shotguns, rifles and machine guns of police, deputies and National Guardsmen, the scabs and strikebreakers were being herded into struck plants almost at will.
It was at this stage, when strike after strike was being crushed, that the Toledo Electric Auto-Lite Company struggle blazed forth to illuminate the whole horizon of the American class struggle. The American workers were to be given an unforgettable lesson in how to confront all the agencies of the capitalist government — courts, labor boards and armed troops — and win.
Toledo, Ohio, an industrial city of about 275,000 population in 1934, is a glass and auto parts center. In June 1931, four Toledo banks had closed their doors. Some of the big local companies, including several suppliers to the auto industry, had secretly transferred their bank accounts to one big bank. These companies did not get caught in the crash.
But thousands of workers and small business men did. They lost their lives' savings. One out of every three persons in Toledo was thrown on relief, standing in lines for food handouts at a central commissary. In 1933, the Unemployed League, led by followers of A. J. Muste, head of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (later the American Workers Party), had organized militant mass actions of the unemployed and won cash relief. The League made it a policy to call for unity of the unemployed and employed workers; it mobilized the unemployed not to scab, but to aid all strikes.
On February 23, 1934, the Toledo Auto-Lite workers, newly organized in AFL Federal Local 18384, went on strike. This was quickly ended by the AFL leaders with a truce agreement for negotiations through the Regional Labor Board of the National Labor Board, which had been set up under the NRA.
Refusing to be stalled further by the labor board or to submit to the special Auto Labor Board, which Roosevelt had setup in March to sidetrack pending auto strikes and which had upheld company un¬ionism, the Auto-Lite workers went on the picket lines again on April 13.
The company followed the usual first gambit in such a contest. It went to a friendly judge and got him to issue an injunction limiting picketing. The strike had begun to die .on its feet when a committee of Auto-Lite workers came to the Unemployed League and asked for aid. What happened then was described shortly thereafter by Louis F. Budenz, in the previously cited collection of articles, Challenge to the New Deal, edited by Alfred Bingham and Selden Rodman. This is the same Budenz who about a year later deserted to the Stalinists, served them for ten years and finally wound up as an informer for the FBI against radicals.
However, at the time of the Auto-Lite strike, Budenz was still an outstanding fighter for labor's rights and civil liberties. He had edited Labor Age during the Twenties and had led great battles against strikebreaking injunctions at Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Nazareth, Pennsylvania. It was he who suggested the tactic for breaking the injunction and he had addressed the thousands massed on the picket line after the injunction was smashed. While he was still uncorrupted, Budenz wrote about the Auto-Lite battle:
"The dynamic intervention of a revolutionary workers organization, the American Workers Party, seemed to have been required before that outcome [a union victory] could be achieved. The officials in the Federal Automobile Workers Union would have lost the strike if left to their own resources.
"The merit of this particular AFL union was that it did strike. The Electric Auto-Lite and its two affiliated companies, the Logan Gear and Bingham Stamping Co., were involved. But when the company resorted to the injunction, the union officers observed its terms. In less than three weeks, under protection of that court decree, the company had employed or otherwise secured 1800 strikebreakers in the Auto-Lite alone.
"That would have been the end, and another walkout of the workers would have gone into the wastebasket of labor history. The Lucas County Unemployed League, also enjoined, refused however to let the fight go in that way. Two of its officers, Ted Selander and Sam Pollock, [and several auto local members] wrote [May, 5, 1934] Judge R. R. Stuart, advising him that they would violate the injunction by encouraging mass picketing. They went out and did so. They were arrested, tried and released — the court warning them to picket no more. They answered by going directly from court, with all the strikers and unemployed league members who had been present, to the picket line. Through the mass trials, Selander and Pollock got out a message as to the nature of the capitalist courts. The picket line grew."
The unexampled letter sent by the local Unemployed League to Judge Stuart deserves to be preserved for posterity. It is an historic document that ranks in its way with the great declarations of human freedom more widely known and acclaimed. The letter read:
May 5,1934
His Honor Judge Stuart County Court House Toledo, Ohio
Honorable Judge Stuart:
On Monday morning May 7, at the Auto-Lite plant, the Lucas County Unemployed League, in protest of the injunction issued by your court, will deliberately and specifically violate the in¬junction enjoining us from sympathetically picketing peacefully in support of the striking Auto Workers Federal Union.
We sincerely believe that this court intervention, preventing us from picketing, is an abrogation of our democratic rights, contrary to our constitutional liberties and contravenes the spirit and the letter of Section 7a of the NRA.
Further, we believe that the spirit and intent of this arbitrary injunction is another specific example of an organized movement to curtail the rights of all workers to organize, strike and picket effectively.
Therefore, with full knowledge of the principles involved and the possible consequences, we openly and publicly violate an injunction which, in our opinion, is a suppressive and op¬pressive act against all workers.
Sincerely yours,
Lucas County Unemployed League Anti-Injunction Committee
Sam Pollock, Sec'y
By May 23, there were more than 10,000 on the picket lines. County deputies with tear gas guns were lined up on the plant roof. A strike picket, Miss Alma Hahn, had been struck on the head by a bolt hurled from a plant window and had been taken to the hospital. By the time 100 more cops arrived, the workers were tremendously incensed. Police began roughing up individual pickets pulled from the line. What happened when the cops tried to escort the scabs through the picket line at the shift-change was described by the Associated Press.
"Piles of bricks and stones were assembled at strategic places and a wagonload of bricks was trundled to a point near the factory to provide further ammunition for the strikers... Suddenly a barrage of tear gas bombs was hurled from upper factory windows. At the same time, company employees armed with iron bars and clubs dragged a fire hose into the street and played water on the crowd. The strike sympathizers replied with bricks, as they choked from gas fumes and fell back."
But they retreated only to reform their ranks. The police charged and swung their clubs trying to clear a path for the scabs. The workers held their ground and fought back. Choked by the tear gas fired from inside the plant, it was the police who finally gave up the battle. Then the thousands of pickets laid siege to the plant, determined to maintain their picket line.
The workers improvised giant slingshots from inner tubes. They hurled whole bricks through the plant windows. The plant soon was without lights. The scabs cowered in the dark. The frightened deputies setup machine guns inside every entranceway. It was not until the arrival of 900 National Guardsmen, 15 hours later, that the scabs were finally released, looking a "sorry sight," as the press reported it.
Then followed one of the most amazing battles in U. S. labor history. "The Marines had landed" in the form of the National Guard but the situation was not "well in hand." With their bare fists and rocks, the workers fought a six-day pitched battle with the National Guard. They fought from rooftops, from behind billboards and came through alleys to flank the guardsmen. "The men in the mob shouted vile epithets at the troopers," complained the Associated Press, "and 'the women jeered them with suggestions that they ‘go home to mama and their paper dolls.'"
But the strikers and their thousands of sympathizers did more than shame the young National Guardsmen. They educated them and tried to win them over. Speakers stood on boxes in front of the troops and explained what the strike was about and the role the troops were playing as strikebreakers. World War I veterans put on their medals and spoke to the boys in uniform like "Dutch uncles." The women explained what the strike meant to their families. The press reported that some of the guardsmen just quit and went home. Others voiced sympathy with the workers. (A year later, when Toledo unionists went to Defiance, Ohio, to aid the Pressed Steel Company strike, they found that eight per cent of the strikers had been National Guardsmen serving in uniform in the Auto-Lite strike. That was where they learned the lesson of unionism.)
On May 24, the guardsmen fired point-blank into the Auto-Lite strikers ranks, killing two and wounding 25. But 6,000 workers returned at dusk to renew the battle. In the dark, they closed in on groups of guardsmen in the six-block martial law zone. The fury of the onslaught twice drove the troops back into the plant. At one stage, a group of troops threw their last tear gas and vomit gas bombs, then quickly picked up rocks to hurl at the strikers; the strikers recovered the last gas bombs thrown before they exploded, flinging them back at the troops.
On Friday, May 31, the troops were speedily ordered withdrawn from the strike area when the company agreed to keep the plant closed. This had not been the usual one-way battle with the workers getting shot down and unable to defend themselves. Scores of guardsmen had been sent to the hospitals. They had become demoralized. By June 1, 98 out of 99 AFL local unions had voted for a general strike.
A monster rally on the evening of June 1 mobilized some 40,000 workers in the Lucas County Courthouse Square. There, however, the AFL leaders, frightened by this tremendous popular uprising, were silent about the general strike and instead assured the workers that Roosevelt would aid them.
By June 4, with the whole community seething with anger, the company capitulated and signed a six-month contract, including a5%wage increase with a 5% minimum above the auto industry code, naming Local 18384 as the exclusive bargaining agent in the struck plants. This was the first contract under the code that did not include "proportional representation" for company unions. /The path was opened for organization of the entire automobile industry. With the Auto-Lite victory under their belts, the Toledo auto workers were to organize 19 plants before the year was out and, before another 12 months, were to lead the first successful strike in a GM plant, the real beginning of the conquest of General Motors.
While the Auto-Lite strike was reaching its climax, the truck drivers of Minneapolis were waging the second of a series of three strikes which stand to this day as models for organization, strategy and incorruptible, militant leadership.
Minneapolis, with its twin city St. Paul, is the hub of Minnesota's wheat, lumber and iron ore areas. Transport—rail and truck—engages a relatively large number of workers. In early 1934, Minneapolis was a notoriously open-shop town. The Citizens Alliance, an organization of anti-union employers, ruled the city.
On February 7, 8 and 9, 1934, the Citizens Alliance got the first stunning blow that was to shatter its dominance. Within three days the union of coal yard workers, organized within General Drivers Local Union 574, AFL International Brotherhood of Teamsters, had paralyzed all the coal yards and won union recognition. The Minneapolis Labor Review, February 16, 1934, hailed "the masterly manner in which the struggle was conducted...there has never been a bet¬ter example of enthusiastic efficiency than displayed by the coal driver pickets."
The February 24,1934 Militant reported that Local 574 "displayed a well organized, mobile, fighting picket line that stormed over all opposition, closed 65 truck yards, 150 coal offices and swept the streets clear of scabs in the first three hours of the strike."
The most painstaking and detailed preparation had gone into this strike. The organizers were a group of class-conscious socialists, Trotskyists who had been expelled from the Stalinized Communist Party in 1928, and workers sympathetic to the Trotskyist point of view. Soon their names were to ring throughout the whole northwest labor movement and make national headlines. They included the three Dunne brothers—Vincent, Grant and Miles—and Carl Skoglund, later to head 574.
"One of the outstanding features of the strike," the original Militant report stated, "was the Cruising Picket Squad. This idea came from the ranks and played a great role in the strike." This "cruising picket squad" was the original of the "flying squadrons" that were to become part of the standard picketing techniques of the great CIO strikes.
The late Bill Brown, then president of 574, revealed another important aspect of the coal yards battle. "I wrote Daniel Tobin, international president of the union for an OK [to strike]. Two days after the strike was over, he wrote back that we couldn't strike. 'By that time we'd won and had a signed contract with increased pay."
The Dunne brothers, Skoglund and their associates proved to be a different and altogether superior breed of union leaders compared to the type represented by the craft-minded bureaucrats of the AFL who were content to build a little job-holding trust and settle down for life to collecting dues. After the first victory they set out to organize every truck driver and every inside warehouse worker in Minneapolis. A whirlwind organizing campaign had recruited 3,000 new members into Local 574 by May.
On Tuesday, May 15, 1934, after the employers had refused even to deal with the union, the second truck drivers strike began. Now 5,000 strong, the organized drivers and warehousemen promptly massed at a large garage which served as strike headquarters. From there, fleets of pickets went rolling by trucks and cars to strategic points.
All trucking in the city was halted except for milk, ice and beer drivers who were organized and who operated with special union permits. The city was isolated from all truck traffic in or out by mass picketing. For the first time anywhere in connection with a labor struggle, the term "flying squads" was used — the May 26, 1934 Militant reported: "Flying squads of pickets toured the city."
The Local 574 leaders warned the membership over and over to place no reliance or hope
in any government agents or agencies, including Floyd B. Olsen, the Farmer-Labor Party governor, and the National Labor Board. They preached reliance only on the mass picket lines and militant struggle against the employers.
From the start, the strike leaders summoned the whole working-class populace to their support. The very active unemployed organization responded at once. A 574 Women's Auxiliary, with a large membership, plunged into the strike, doing everything from secretarial work and mimeographing, to running the huge strike kitchen and manning picket trucks.
Some 700 of them marched in a mass demonstration to the Mayor’s office to demand the withdrawal of the "special" police. The march was led by Mrs. Grant Dunne, auxiliary president, and Mrs. Farrell Dobbs, auxiliary secretary and wife of a young coal driver who was a strike picket dispatcher. A decade later Farrell Dobbs became editor of The Militant and then national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.
The Citizens Alliance had called a mass meeting of small business men, junior executives and similar elements and steamed them up for an armed attack on the strikers. They were urged to become "special deputies" and strikebreakers.
They selected the City Market, where farm produce was brought, as the center of the struggle. The sheriff moved in deputies to convoy farm trucks in and out of the market square. The pickets were able to halt all but three trucks. Brutal terror was then the answer to the strikers.
"The Mayor doubled the police force, then tripled it," reported the May 26, 1934 Militant. "Gunmen were imported to get after the leaders of the strike. Determined attempts were made to break through the picket lines on Friday night and Saturday. Two hundred arrests were made... Saturday night the 'regulars' and 'special ' police rushed a truck load of women on the 'newspaper row' and beat them unmercifully, sending five to the hospital."
The next day some 35,000 building trades workers declared a strike in sympathy with the truck drivers. The Central Labor Union voted its support. Workers, many from plants which weren't even organized, stayed off their jobs and flocked to join the pickets.
On May 21 and 22 there was waged a two-day battle in the City Market that ended with the flight of the entire police force and special deputies in what was called by the strikers "The Battle of Deputies Run."
Word had come to the strike headquarters that the police and bosses were planning a "big offensive" to open the City Market to scab trucks on Monday and Tuesday. The strike leaders pulled in their forces from outlying areas and began concentrating them in the neighborhood of the market.
On Monday, a strong detachment of pickets was sent to the market. These pickets managed to wedge between the deputized business men and the police, isolating the "special deputies." One of the strikers, quoted in Charles Walker's American City, a stirring and generally reliable study of the Minneapolis struggle, described the ensuing battle:
"Then we called on the pickets from strike headquarters [reserve] who marched into the center of the market and encircled the police. They [the police] were put right in the center with no way out. At intervals we made sallies on them to separate a few. This kept up for a couple of hours, till finally they drew their guns. We had anticipated this would happen, and that then the pickets would be unable to fight them. You can't lick a gun with a club. The correlation of forces becomes a little unbalanced. So we picked out a striker, a big man and utterly fearless, and sent him in a truck with twenty-five pickets. He was instructed to drive right into the formation of cops and stop for nothing. We knew he'd do it. Down the street he came like a bat out of hell, with his horn honking sped into the market arena. The cops held up their hands for him to stop, but he kept on; they gave way and he was in the middle of them. The pickets jumped out on the cops. We figured by intermixing with the cops in hand-to-hand fighting, they would not use their guns because they would have to shoot cops as well as strikers. Cops don't like that.
"Casualties for the day included for the strikers a broken collar bone, the cut-open skull of a picket who swung on a cop and hit a striker by mistake as the cop dodged, and a couple of broken, ribs. On the other side, roughly thirty cops were taken to the hospital."
The strikers were victorious in another sense: no trucks moved.
The next day, the showdown came. The bosses' private army of 2,200 “special deputies,” plus virtually the entire police force, was mobilized in the market place to break the strike at its central point. A striker gave the following account in the June 2, 1934 Militant:
"A skeleton patrol was sent to patrol the market streets and to report any move to start delivery. Word quickly comes back; hundreds of special deputies, special police and harness bulls armed with clubs and guns, squad cars of police with sawed-off shot guns and vomiting gas. .A truck starts to move, but pickets jump to the running boards and demand that the scab driver stop. A hired slugger raises his club and slashes at a picket. Down the picket drops as if dead. The fight is on.'
"Phone rings at the concentration hall [Central Labor Union headquarters]: 'Send the reserves!' Orderly, but almost as if by magic, the hall is emptied. The pickets are deployed by their leaders to surround the police and sluggers. The police raise their riot guns but the workers ignore and rush through them. 'Chase out the hired sluggers,' is their battle cry. The cowardly sluggers take to their heels and run. The police and strikers use their clubs freely. Many casualties on both sides. The workers have captured the market!"
Two of the "special deputies" who had volunteered to club strikers to death were killed themselves in the wild melee. One was Arthur Lyman, Citizens Alliance attorney and vice-president of the American Ball Company. The market was strewn with deputies' clubs and badges. The police disappeared.
The employers then agreed to move no trucks. On May 25 the strike was settled, with union recognition, no discrimination in re-hiring of striker sand arbitration of wages, which the employers had increased previously to forestall a strike and avoid dealing with the union.
An interesting sidelight of the second strike was a leaflet issued by the Communist Party denouncing the Dunne brothers and Skoglund as "traitors" and "agents of the bosses" and calling for "rank and file leaders," although the strike committee was composed entirely of 75 workers on the trucks.
A significant observation was made by Walker in American City: "Throughout, the nub and core of dispute was a matter of fundamental principle and strategy—for both sides—known as "recognition of the inside workers.'... To the employers, the 'banana men, the chicken pickers, and the pork picklers1 who worked inside their warehouses were outside the jurisdiction of a truck union. But why did they care so much? They cared because their inclusion meant that a kind of industrial union would be set up in the trucking industry of Minneapolis. Without the Inside workers, they would be dealing with a pure and simple craft union of truck drivers, weaker in bargaining power, easier to maneuver and smash. To the union, the issue of the 'inside workers' meant the same thing, a step toward industrial organization, a strong union..."
Not only the Minneapolis employers were disturbed by the industrial union implications of Local 574's campaign. AFL Teamsters President Daniel Tobin was no less upset by the Minneapolis truck drivers' victories. For he, too, was a bitter opponent of industrial unionism. He was to play a key part in the AFL in blocking an industrial union policy. Meanwhile, he openly joined with the Minneapolis employers in the next stage of the struggle.
The leaders of 574 put no trust in the employers to live up to the agreement in the second strike. They promptly began preparing the union for another battle in the event the bosses reneged. They gave the employers a month or so to comply with the pact. When the employers stalled, chiseled and ignored the union, the firm answer was a strike, called July 16, 1934.
One of the reasons the employers were emboldened to force the union's hand was a declaration by Tobin in the Teamsters magazine denouncing the Local 574 leaders as "radicals and Communists." This red baiting had no effect on the Minneapolis workers. On July 6 a parade of some 10,000 AFL members had proclaimed in advance their support of the coming strike. The meeting of business agents of the Building Trades Council denounced Tobin's red baiting and affirmed their support of 574. Only the bosses and their newspapers took the cue from Tobin and began screaming "Reds" and "Bloody Revolution."
The blood, however, was drawn by the other side. Police and employers deliberately planned to lure isolated picket trucks into an ambush and shoot down the unarmed workers without warning. This was to be a pretext for sending in the National Guard to break the strike.
The trap was sprung on the fifth day of the strike—"Bloody Friday," July 20. American City quotes a strike picket on what happened that day in the wholesale grocery district:
"For two hours we stood around wondering what was up for there was no truck in sight. Then as two P.M. drew near a tensing of bodies and nervous shifting of feet and heads among the police indicated that ' something was up. We were right, for a few minutes later about one hundred more cops hove into view escorting a large yellow truck. The truck, without license plates and with the cab heavily wired, pulled up to the loading platform of the Slocum-Bergren Company. Here a few boxes were loaded on... At five past two the truck slowly pulled out... It turned down Sixth Avenue and then turned on Third Street toward Seventh Avenue. As it did a picket truck containing about ten pickets followed. As the picket truck drew near the convoy, the police without warning let loose a barrage of fire. Pickets fell from the trucks, others rushed up to pick up their wounded comrades; as they bent to pick up the injured, the police fired at them... One young worker received a full charge of buckshot in the back as he bent to pick up a wounded picket.
"The rain of bullets then became a little heavier so I and three other pickets hopped a fence and walked to headquarters... Pickets by the dozens lying all over the floor with blood flowing from their wounds, more coming in and no place to put them. The doctor would treat one after another who urged him to treat others first.
“The Minneapolis papers printed hundreds of lies about what had happened but none was brazen enough to claim that the strikers had any weapons at all."
This was substantially confirmed by the Governor's own investigating committee which, after the strike, found that the police had' planned the attack in advance and fired to kill on unarmed pickets.
One worker, Harry Ness, died shortly after the shooting. Another, John Belor, died a few days later in the hospital. Some 55 workers were wounded. Within 20 minutes of the massacre, the National Guard rolled into the area. It was their signal.
But if this terrorism was expected to smash the strike, the bosses got an unpleasant surprise.
All union-driven taxicabs, ice, beer and gasoline trucks, which had continued to operate by union permit, immediately went on strike. The police were cleared from all areas near the strike headquarters. Then, when Harry Ness was buried, the whole working class of Minneapolis turned out in an historic demonstration for his funeral. Some 40,000 inarched in the funeral cortege. They took over the streets. Not a cop was in sight. The workers themselves directed traffic.
Governor Olsen declared martial law. The military commanders began handing out "permits" for trucks to operate under the protection of the troops. Soon thousands of trucks were being manned by scabs and strikebreakers. The union did not take it lying down. The leaders gave an ultimatum to Olsen to withdraw the permits and to issue others only with the union's approval.
Then followed a war of attrition for several weeks. The strikers defied the troops and renewed their mobile picketing, keeping the military officials and cops on a merry-go-round. The guardsmen launched an attack in force on the Local 574 strike headquarters, arresting 100 members, including Bill Brown and the Dunne brothers, and throwing them into specially constructed military stockades. But the union rank and file, trained in democratic self-reliance, held firm and ran the strike as usual. So great was the outcry and protest—including another mass demonstration of 40,000 — that the union members and leaders were released in a few days.
Two of the tribe of Roosevelt's labor board mediators—"meditates" as the workers called them—were shipped into Minneapolis early in the strike. They were Father Haas, a Catholic priest, and E. H. Dunnigan. They had at once proposed a settlement based on some concessions to the workers which the bosses had flatly rejected. In the end, with the troops out in force —almost one soldier for every striker—Father Haas and Dunnigan tried to put over a watered-down version of their original proposals. When they went to sell the proposition to the rank-and-file Strike Committee of 100, they were subjected to such a devastating cross-examination that they were utterly routed. A new mediator was sent in and Father Haas had to retire to a sanitarium.
On August 22, after five weeks of the toughest battling against all the forces of the employers and government, the strikers won. The bosses capitulated and signed an agreement granting the union its main demands. This included the right to represent "inside workers," which the employers had threatened to fight to the bitter end as industrial unionism.
While the Minneapolis truck drivers were battling their way to victory, the San Francisco general strike—involving 125,000 workers at its peak — carried the American class struggle to new heights.
On May 9, 1934, from 10,000 to 15,000 West Coast members of the AFL International Longshoremen's Association went on an "unauthorized" strike. Soon the strike included 25,000 workers, many of them members of seamen's organizations who joined in sympathy.
The original demands had been for a coast-wide agreement, union control of hiring halls and a closed shop. The strikers added demands for $1 .an hour instead of 85 cents and the 30-hour week instead of 48.
From the start, the strike was waged with great militancy. Frederick J. Lang, in his book Maritime A History and Program, wrote: "It was a real rank-and-file strike, with the 'leaders' swept along in the flood. It encountered every weapon then in the arsenal of the employers. The ship-owners hired their own thugs who tried to work the docks and man the ships. The city police of every port on the Coast were mobilized on the waterfronts to hunt down the strikers. The newspapers, launching a slander campaign against-the strikers, called on the citizenry to form vigilante committees to raid strike headquarters, the actual organization of this dirty work being entrusted to the American Legion and other 'patriotic' societies."
ILA President Joseph Ryan hastily flew into San Francisco from New York in an effort to squelch the strike. Over the heads of the strikers and their local leaders, he signed an agreement giving up the main demand—the union-controlled hiring hall. He was repudiated by the strikers in a coast-wide poll.
The chief strike leader was the then unknown Harry Bridges, He was under Stalinist influence but fortunately, at that time, did not adhere so closely to Communist Party policies as to carry out its line, of not working inside the "social fascist" AFL unions. Under the radicalizing effect of the depression, maritime workers were influenced by various political tendencies — Stalinist, IWW> (Industrial Workers of the World) and others—with the Stalinists playing the dominant role.
Ryan — a consort of ship-owners, stevedore bosses, gangsters and Tammany politicians, who 20 years later was to be dumped by these elements when he was no longer useful to them—tried to split the strike by making separate settlements in each port. He succeeded only in Seattle. AFL President William Green joined in denouncing the strike and yelling "reds" and "communists."
On July 5 the bosses tried to smash the strike by attacking its strategic center, San Francisco's waterfront, with calculated force and violence. At the "Battle of Rincon Hill" the police blasted away with tear gas, pistols and shotguns at the waterfront pickets. They killed Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise and wounded 109 others. As in the third Minneapolis strike and the Toledo Auto-Lite battle, the deliberate massacres perpetrated by the police were the signal for sending in the National Guard.
The murder and wounding of strikers did not crush the workers. Instead, San Francisco labor answered with a tremendous counterattack—a general strike. For two days, the working class paralyzed the city. The workers took over many city functions, directing traffic and assuming other municipal tasks. On the third and fourth days, the general strike petered out when the AFL leaders, who were swept along in the first spontaneous protest against the killings, ordered an end to the stoppage.
The bosses and police, with the aid of organized vigilantes, vented their fear and hatred of the workers on the small radical organizations, not daring to hit directly at the unions. Thirty-five gangs of vigilantes, heavily armed, raided headquarters of Communist, IWW and Socialist groups. They smashed furniture, hurled typewriters and literature out the windows, beat up many defenseless workers. In some instances, the police who arrived after the vigilantes left completed the work of destruction. They jailed more than 300 persons.
After 11 weeks, the long shore strike was ended on July 31 with an agreement to arbitrate. It was a poor settlement, but the workers returned to the job in an organized body. Within a year, in job action after job action, they won the union hiring hall up and down the Coast. Their struggle gave impetus to maritime organization on the East Coast, leading in 1937 to establishment of the CIO National Maritime Union, and opened the way for organization of West Coast industrial labor.
Too little credit has been given to the Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco strikes for their effect on the subsequent industrial union movement, the CIO. But had these magnificent examples of labor struggle not occurred, in all likelihood the CIO would have been delayed or taken a different and less militant course.
It was these gigantic battles—all led by radicals—that convinced John L. Lewis that the American workers were determined to be organized and would follow the leadership that showed it meant business.
"Lewis watched the unrest and flare-ups of violence through the summer of 1934. He saw the Dunne brothers of Minneapolis lead a general strike of truck drivers into a virtual civil war. Blood ran in Minneapolis," wrote Alinsky in his John L. Lewis—An Unauthorized Biography.
"In San Francisco a general strike spearheaded by Harry Bridges' Longshoremen's Union paralyzed the great western city for four days.
"Before that year was out, seven hundred thousand workers had struck. Lewis could read the revolutionary handwriting on the walls of American industry. He knew that the workers were seething and aching to be organized so they could strike back. Everyone wanted to hit out, employer against worker and worker against employer and anyone else who they felt was not in their class. America was becoming more class conscious than at any time in its history..."
Of course, "civil war" was going on in towns and cities from coast to coast and blood was being spilled in scores of other places besides Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco. These latter cities were unique, however, in this: they showed how the workers could fight and win. They gave heart and hope to labor everywhere for the climactic struggle that was to build the CIO.
The National Industrial Conference Board, in a survey of collective bargaining under the NRA, could boast in March 1934 of "the relatively small proportion of employees found to be dealing with employers through an organized labor union." At the same time, said the board, "Employee representation [company unions] appears to have made considerable progress" and "it is clear that individual bargaining has not in any way been eliminated by Section 7(a) of the Recovery Act."
In that same month, the American Federationist, organ of the top AFL leadership, complained: "In general there has been no increase in real wages...The codes will not safeguard real wages...The gov¬ernment monetary policy points toward diminishing real wages."
Worst of all, the wave of strikes following the enactment of NRA in June 1933 was ending in a series of defeats. Where the union leaders themselves did not rush the workers back on the job without gains—not even union recognition, the strikes were smashed by court injunctions and armed violence. Behind the legal restraining orders and the shotguns, rifles and machine guns of police, deputies and National Guardsmen, the scabs and strikebreakers were being herded into struck plants almost at will.
It was at this stage, when strike after strike was being crushed, that the Toledo Electric Auto-Lite Company struggle blazed forth to illuminate the whole horizon of the American class struggle. The American workers were to be given an unforgettable lesson in how to confront all the agencies of the capitalist government — courts, labor boards and armed troops — and win.
Toledo, Ohio, an industrial city of about 275,000 population in 1934, is a glass and auto parts center. In June 1931, four Toledo banks had closed their doors. Some of the big local companies, including several suppliers to the auto industry, had secretly transferred their bank accounts to one big bank. These companies did not get caught in the crash.
But thousands of workers and small business men did. They lost their lives' savings. One out of every three persons in Toledo was thrown on relief, standing in lines for food handouts at a central commissary. In 1933, the Unemployed League, led by followers of A. J. Muste, head of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (later the American Workers Party), had organized militant mass actions of the unemployed and won cash relief. The League made it a policy to call for unity of the unemployed and employed workers; it mobilized the unemployed not to scab, but to aid all strikes.
On February 23, 1934, the Toledo Auto-Lite workers, newly organized in AFL Federal Local 18384, went on strike. This was quickly ended by the AFL leaders with a truce agreement for negotiations through the Regional Labor Board of the National Labor Board, which had been set up under the NRA.
Refusing to be stalled further by the labor board or to submit to the special Auto Labor Board, which Roosevelt had setup in March to sidetrack pending auto strikes and which had upheld company un¬ionism, the Auto-Lite workers went on the picket lines again on April 13.
The company followed the usual first gambit in such a contest. It went to a friendly judge and got him to issue an injunction limiting picketing. The strike had begun to die .on its feet when a committee of Auto-Lite workers came to the Unemployed League and asked for aid. What happened then was described shortly thereafter by Louis F. Budenz, in the previously cited collection of articles, Challenge to the New Deal, edited by Alfred Bingham and Selden Rodman. This is the same Budenz who about a year later deserted to the Stalinists, served them for ten years and finally wound up as an informer for the FBI against radicals.
However, at the time of the Auto-Lite strike, Budenz was still an outstanding fighter for labor's rights and civil liberties. He had edited Labor Age during the Twenties and had led great battles against strikebreaking injunctions at Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Nazareth, Pennsylvania. It was he who suggested the tactic for breaking the injunction and he had addressed the thousands massed on the picket line after the injunction was smashed. While he was still uncorrupted, Budenz wrote about the Auto-Lite battle:
"The dynamic intervention of a revolutionary workers organization, the American Workers Party, seemed to have been required before that outcome [a union victory] could be achieved. The officials in the Federal Automobile Workers Union would have lost the strike if left to their own resources.
"The merit of this particular AFL union was that it did strike. The Electric Auto-Lite and its two affiliated companies, the Logan Gear and Bingham Stamping Co., were involved. But when the company resorted to the injunction, the union officers observed its terms. In less than three weeks, under protection of that court decree, the company had employed or otherwise secured 1800 strikebreakers in the Auto-Lite alone.
"That would have been the end, and another walkout of the workers would have gone into the wastebasket of labor history. The Lucas County Unemployed League, also enjoined, refused however to let the fight go in that way. Two of its officers, Ted Selander and Sam Pollock, [and several auto local members] wrote [May, 5, 1934] Judge R. R. Stuart, advising him that they would violate the injunction by encouraging mass picketing. They went out and did so. They were arrested, tried and released — the court warning them to picket no more. They answered by going directly from court, with all the strikers and unemployed league members who had been present, to the picket line. Through the mass trials, Selander and Pollock got out a message as to the nature of the capitalist courts. The picket line grew."
The unexampled letter sent by the local Unemployed League to Judge Stuart deserves to be preserved for posterity. It is an historic document that ranks in its way with the great declarations of human freedom more widely known and acclaimed. The letter read:
May 5,1934
His Honor Judge Stuart County Court House Toledo, Ohio
Honorable Judge Stuart:
On Monday morning May 7, at the Auto-Lite plant, the Lucas County Unemployed League, in protest of the injunction issued by your court, will deliberately and specifically violate the in¬junction enjoining us from sympathetically picketing peacefully in support of the striking Auto Workers Federal Union.
We sincerely believe that this court intervention, preventing us from picketing, is an abrogation of our democratic rights, contrary to our constitutional liberties and contravenes the spirit and the letter of Section 7a of the NRA.
Further, we believe that the spirit and intent of this arbitrary injunction is another specific example of an organized movement to curtail the rights of all workers to organize, strike and picket effectively.
Therefore, with full knowledge of the principles involved and the possible consequences, we openly and publicly violate an injunction which, in our opinion, is a suppressive and op¬pressive act against all workers.
Sincerely yours,
Lucas County Unemployed League Anti-Injunction Committee
Sam Pollock, Sec'y
By May 23, there were more than 10,000 on the picket lines. County deputies with tear gas guns were lined up on the plant roof. A strike picket, Miss Alma Hahn, had been struck on the head by a bolt hurled from a plant window and had been taken to the hospital. By the time 100 more cops arrived, the workers were tremendously incensed. Police began roughing up individual pickets pulled from the line. What happened when the cops tried to escort the scabs through the picket line at the shift-change was described by the Associated Press.
"Piles of bricks and stones were assembled at strategic places and a wagonload of bricks was trundled to a point near the factory to provide further ammunition for the strikers... Suddenly a barrage of tear gas bombs was hurled from upper factory windows. At the same time, company employees armed with iron bars and clubs dragged a fire hose into the street and played water on the crowd. The strike sympathizers replied with bricks, as they choked from gas fumes and fell back."
But they retreated only to reform their ranks. The police charged and swung their clubs trying to clear a path for the scabs. The workers held their ground and fought back. Choked by the tear gas fired from inside the plant, it was the police who finally gave up the battle. Then the thousands of pickets laid siege to the plant, determined to maintain their picket line.
The workers improvised giant slingshots from inner tubes. They hurled whole bricks through the plant windows. The plant soon was without lights. The scabs cowered in the dark. The frightened deputies setup machine guns inside every entranceway. It was not until the arrival of 900 National Guardsmen, 15 hours later, that the scabs were finally released, looking a "sorry sight," as the press reported it.
Then followed one of the most amazing battles in U. S. labor history. "The Marines had landed" in the form of the National Guard but the situation was not "well in hand." With their bare fists and rocks, the workers fought a six-day pitched battle with the National Guard. They fought from rooftops, from behind billboards and came through alleys to flank the guardsmen. "The men in the mob shouted vile epithets at the troopers," complained the Associated Press, "and 'the women jeered them with suggestions that they ‘go home to mama and their paper dolls.'"
But the strikers and their thousands of sympathizers did more than shame the young National Guardsmen. They educated them and tried to win them over. Speakers stood on boxes in front of the troops and explained what the strike was about and the role the troops were playing as strikebreakers. World War I veterans put on their medals and spoke to the boys in uniform like "Dutch uncles." The women explained what the strike meant to their families. The press reported that some of the guardsmen just quit and went home. Others voiced sympathy with the workers. (A year later, when Toledo unionists went to Defiance, Ohio, to aid the Pressed Steel Company strike, they found that eight per cent of the strikers had been National Guardsmen serving in uniform in the Auto-Lite strike. That was where they learned the lesson of unionism.)
On May 24, the guardsmen fired point-blank into the Auto-Lite strikers ranks, killing two and wounding 25. But 6,000 workers returned at dusk to renew the battle. In the dark, they closed in on groups of guardsmen in the six-block martial law zone. The fury of the onslaught twice drove the troops back into the plant. At one stage, a group of troops threw their last tear gas and vomit gas bombs, then quickly picked up rocks to hurl at the strikers; the strikers recovered the last gas bombs thrown before they exploded, flinging them back at the troops.
On Friday, May 31, the troops were speedily ordered withdrawn from the strike area when the company agreed to keep the plant closed. This had not been the usual one-way battle with the workers getting shot down and unable to defend themselves. Scores of guardsmen had been sent to the hospitals. They had become demoralized. By June 1, 98 out of 99 AFL local unions had voted for a general strike.
A monster rally on the evening of June 1 mobilized some 40,000 workers in the Lucas County Courthouse Square. There, however, the AFL leaders, frightened by this tremendous popular uprising, were silent about the general strike and instead assured the workers that Roosevelt would aid them.
By June 4, with the whole community seething with anger, the company capitulated and signed a six-month contract, including a5%wage increase with a 5% minimum above the auto industry code, naming Local 18384 as the exclusive bargaining agent in the struck plants. This was the first contract under the code that did not include "proportional representation" for company unions. /The path was opened for organization of the entire automobile industry. With the Auto-Lite victory under their belts, the Toledo auto workers were to organize 19 plants before the year was out and, before another 12 months, were to lead the first successful strike in a GM plant, the real beginning of the conquest of General Motors.
While the Auto-Lite strike was reaching its climax, the truck drivers of Minneapolis were waging the second of a series of three strikes which stand to this day as models for organization, strategy and incorruptible, militant leadership.
Minneapolis, with its twin city St. Paul, is the hub of Minnesota's wheat, lumber and iron ore areas. Transport—rail and truck—engages a relatively large number of workers. In early 1934, Minneapolis was a notoriously open-shop town. The Citizens Alliance, an organization of anti-union employers, ruled the city.
On February 7, 8 and 9, 1934, the Citizens Alliance got the first stunning blow that was to shatter its dominance. Within three days the union of coal yard workers, organized within General Drivers Local Union 574, AFL International Brotherhood of Teamsters, had paralyzed all the coal yards and won union recognition. The Minneapolis Labor Review, February 16, 1934, hailed "the masterly manner in which the struggle was conducted...there has never been a bet¬ter example of enthusiastic efficiency than displayed by the coal driver pickets."
The February 24,1934 Militant reported that Local 574 "displayed a well organized, mobile, fighting picket line that stormed over all opposition, closed 65 truck yards, 150 coal offices and swept the streets clear of scabs in the first three hours of the strike."
The most painstaking and detailed preparation had gone into this strike. The organizers were a group of class-conscious socialists, Trotskyists who had been expelled from the Stalinized Communist Party in 1928, and workers sympathetic to the Trotskyist point of view. Soon their names were to ring throughout the whole northwest labor movement and make national headlines. They included the three Dunne brothers—Vincent, Grant and Miles—and Carl Skoglund, later to head 574.
"One of the outstanding features of the strike," the original Militant report stated, "was the Cruising Picket Squad. This idea came from the ranks and played a great role in the strike." This "cruising picket squad" was the original of the "flying squadrons" that were to become part of the standard picketing techniques of the great CIO strikes.
The late Bill Brown, then president of 574, revealed another important aspect of the coal yards battle. "I wrote Daniel Tobin, international president of the union for an OK [to strike]. Two days after the strike was over, he wrote back that we couldn't strike. 'By that time we'd won and had a signed contract with increased pay."
The Dunne brothers, Skoglund and their associates proved to be a different and altogether superior breed of union leaders compared to the type represented by the craft-minded bureaucrats of the AFL who were content to build a little job-holding trust and settle down for life to collecting dues. After the first victory they set out to organize every truck driver and every inside warehouse worker in Minneapolis. A whirlwind organizing campaign had recruited 3,000 new members into Local 574 by May.
On Tuesday, May 15, 1934, after the employers had refused even to deal with the union, the second truck drivers strike began. Now 5,000 strong, the organized drivers and warehousemen promptly massed at a large garage which served as strike headquarters. From there, fleets of pickets went rolling by trucks and cars to strategic points.
All trucking in the city was halted except for milk, ice and beer drivers who were organized and who operated with special union permits. The city was isolated from all truck traffic in or out by mass picketing. For the first time anywhere in connection with a labor struggle, the term "flying squads" was used — the May 26, 1934 Militant reported: "Flying squads of pickets toured the city."
The Local 574 leaders warned the membership over and over to place no reliance or hope
in any government agents or agencies, including Floyd B. Olsen, the Farmer-Labor Party governor, and the National Labor Board. They preached reliance only on the mass picket lines and militant struggle against the employers.
From the start, the strike leaders summoned the whole working-class populace to their support. The very active unemployed organization responded at once. A 574 Women's Auxiliary, with a large membership, plunged into the strike, doing everything from secretarial work and mimeographing, to running the huge strike kitchen and manning picket trucks.
Some 700 of them marched in a mass demonstration to the Mayor’s office to demand the withdrawal of the "special" police. The march was led by Mrs. Grant Dunne, auxiliary president, and Mrs. Farrell Dobbs, auxiliary secretary and wife of a young coal driver who was a strike picket dispatcher. A decade later Farrell Dobbs became editor of The Militant and then national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.
The Citizens Alliance had called a mass meeting of small business men, junior executives and similar elements and steamed them up for an armed attack on the strikers. They were urged to become "special deputies" and strikebreakers.
They selected the City Market, where farm produce was brought, as the center of the struggle. The sheriff moved in deputies to convoy farm trucks in and out of the market square. The pickets were able to halt all but three trucks. Brutal terror was then the answer to the strikers.
"The Mayor doubled the police force, then tripled it," reported the May 26, 1934 Militant. "Gunmen were imported to get after the leaders of the strike. Determined attempts were made to break through the picket lines on Friday night and Saturday. Two hundred arrests were made... Saturday night the 'regulars' and 'special ' police rushed a truck load of women on the 'newspaper row' and beat them unmercifully, sending five to the hospital."
The next day some 35,000 building trades workers declared a strike in sympathy with the truck drivers. The Central Labor Union voted its support. Workers, many from plants which weren't even organized, stayed off their jobs and flocked to join the pickets.
On May 21 and 22 there was waged a two-day battle in the City Market that ended with the flight of the entire police force and special deputies in what was called by the strikers "The Battle of Deputies Run."
Word had come to the strike headquarters that the police and bosses were planning a "big offensive" to open the City Market to scab trucks on Monday and Tuesday. The strike leaders pulled in their forces from outlying areas and began concentrating them in the neighborhood of the market.
On Monday, a strong detachment of pickets was sent to the market. These pickets managed to wedge between the deputized business men and the police, isolating the "special deputies." One of the strikers, quoted in Charles Walker's American City, a stirring and generally reliable study of the Minneapolis struggle, described the ensuing battle:
"Then we called on the pickets from strike headquarters [reserve] who marched into the center of the market and encircled the police. They [the police] were put right in the center with no way out. At intervals we made sallies on them to separate a few. This kept up for a couple of hours, till finally they drew their guns. We had anticipated this would happen, and that then the pickets would be unable to fight them. You can't lick a gun with a club. The correlation of forces becomes a little unbalanced. So we picked out a striker, a big man and utterly fearless, and sent him in a truck with twenty-five pickets. He was instructed to drive right into the formation of cops and stop for nothing. We knew he'd do it. Down the street he came like a bat out of hell, with his horn honking sped into the market arena. The cops held up their hands for him to stop, but he kept on; they gave way and he was in the middle of them. The pickets jumped out on the cops. We figured by intermixing with the cops in hand-to-hand fighting, they would not use their guns because they would have to shoot cops as well as strikers. Cops don't like that.
"Casualties for the day included for the strikers a broken collar bone, the cut-open skull of a picket who swung on a cop and hit a striker by mistake as the cop dodged, and a couple of broken, ribs. On the other side, roughly thirty cops were taken to the hospital."
The strikers were victorious in another sense: no trucks moved.
The next day, the showdown came. The bosses' private army of 2,200 “special deputies,” plus virtually the entire police force, was mobilized in the market place to break the strike at its central point. A striker gave the following account in the June 2, 1934 Militant:
"A skeleton patrol was sent to patrol the market streets and to report any move to start delivery. Word quickly comes back; hundreds of special deputies, special police and harness bulls armed with clubs and guns, squad cars of police with sawed-off shot guns and vomiting gas. .A truck starts to move, but pickets jump to the running boards and demand that the scab driver stop. A hired slugger raises his club and slashes at a picket. Down the picket drops as if dead. The fight is on.'
"Phone rings at the concentration hall [Central Labor Union headquarters]: 'Send the reserves!' Orderly, but almost as if by magic, the hall is emptied. The pickets are deployed by their leaders to surround the police and sluggers. The police raise their riot guns but the workers ignore and rush through them. 'Chase out the hired sluggers,' is their battle cry. The cowardly sluggers take to their heels and run. The police and strikers use their clubs freely. Many casualties on both sides. The workers have captured the market!"
Two of the "special deputies" who had volunteered to club strikers to death were killed themselves in the wild melee. One was Arthur Lyman, Citizens Alliance attorney and vice-president of the American Ball Company. The market was strewn with deputies' clubs and badges. The police disappeared.
The employers then agreed to move no trucks. On May 25 the strike was settled, with union recognition, no discrimination in re-hiring of striker sand arbitration of wages, which the employers had increased previously to forestall a strike and avoid dealing with the union.
An interesting sidelight of the second strike was a leaflet issued by the Communist Party denouncing the Dunne brothers and Skoglund as "traitors" and "agents of the bosses" and calling for "rank and file leaders," although the strike committee was composed entirely of 75 workers on the trucks.
A significant observation was made by Walker in American City: "Throughout, the nub and core of dispute was a matter of fundamental principle and strategy—for both sides—known as "recognition of the inside workers.'... To the employers, the 'banana men, the chicken pickers, and the pork picklers1 who worked inside their warehouses were outside the jurisdiction of a truck union. But why did they care so much? They cared because their inclusion meant that a kind of industrial union would be set up in the trucking industry of Minneapolis. Without the Inside workers, they would be dealing with a pure and simple craft union of truck drivers, weaker in bargaining power, easier to maneuver and smash. To the union, the issue of the 'inside workers' meant the same thing, a step toward industrial organization, a strong union..."
Not only the Minneapolis employers were disturbed by the industrial union implications of Local 574's campaign. AFL Teamsters President Daniel Tobin was no less upset by the Minneapolis truck drivers' victories. For he, too, was a bitter opponent of industrial unionism. He was to play a key part in the AFL in blocking an industrial union policy. Meanwhile, he openly joined with the Minneapolis employers in the next stage of the struggle.
The leaders of 574 put no trust in the employers to live up to the agreement in the second strike. They promptly began preparing the union for another battle in the event the bosses reneged. They gave the employers a month or so to comply with the pact. When the employers stalled, chiseled and ignored the union, the firm answer was a strike, called July 16, 1934.
One of the reasons the employers were emboldened to force the union's hand was a declaration by Tobin in the Teamsters magazine denouncing the Local 574 leaders as "radicals and Communists." This red baiting had no effect on the Minneapolis workers. On July 6 a parade of some 10,000 AFL members had proclaimed in advance their support of the coming strike. The meeting of business agents of the Building Trades Council denounced Tobin's red baiting and affirmed their support of 574. Only the bosses and their newspapers took the cue from Tobin and began screaming "Reds" and "Bloody Revolution."
The blood, however, was drawn by the other side. Police and employers deliberately planned to lure isolated picket trucks into an ambush and shoot down the unarmed workers without warning. This was to be a pretext for sending in the National Guard to break the strike.
The trap was sprung on the fifth day of the strike—"Bloody Friday," July 20. American City quotes a strike picket on what happened that day in the wholesale grocery district:
"For two hours we stood around wondering what was up for there was no truck in sight. Then as two P.M. drew near a tensing of bodies and nervous shifting of feet and heads among the police indicated that ' something was up. We were right, for a few minutes later about one hundred more cops hove into view escorting a large yellow truck. The truck, without license plates and with the cab heavily wired, pulled up to the loading platform of the Slocum-Bergren Company. Here a few boxes were loaded on... At five past two the truck slowly pulled out... It turned down Sixth Avenue and then turned on Third Street toward Seventh Avenue. As it did a picket truck containing about ten pickets followed. As the picket truck drew near the convoy, the police without warning let loose a barrage of fire. Pickets fell from the trucks, others rushed up to pick up their wounded comrades; as they bent to pick up the injured, the police fired at them... One young worker received a full charge of buckshot in the back as he bent to pick up a wounded picket.
"The rain of bullets then became a little heavier so I and three other pickets hopped a fence and walked to headquarters... Pickets by the dozens lying all over the floor with blood flowing from their wounds, more coming in and no place to put them. The doctor would treat one after another who urged him to treat others first.
“The Minneapolis papers printed hundreds of lies about what had happened but none was brazen enough to claim that the strikers had any weapons at all."
This was substantially confirmed by the Governor's own investigating committee which, after the strike, found that the police had' planned the attack in advance and fired to kill on unarmed pickets.
One worker, Harry Ness, died shortly after the shooting. Another, John Belor, died a few days later in the hospital. Some 55 workers were wounded. Within 20 minutes of the massacre, the National Guard rolled into the area. It was their signal.
But if this terrorism was expected to smash the strike, the bosses got an unpleasant surprise.
All union-driven taxicabs, ice, beer and gasoline trucks, which had continued to operate by union permit, immediately went on strike. The police were cleared from all areas near the strike headquarters. Then, when Harry Ness was buried, the whole working class of Minneapolis turned out in an historic demonstration for his funeral. Some 40,000 inarched in the funeral cortege. They took over the streets. Not a cop was in sight. The workers themselves directed traffic.
Governor Olsen declared martial law. The military commanders began handing out "permits" for trucks to operate under the protection of the troops. Soon thousands of trucks were being manned by scabs and strikebreakers. The union did not take it lying down. The leaders gave an ultimatum to Olsen to withdraw the permits and to issue others only with the union's approval.
Then followed a war of attrition for several weeks. The strikers defied the troops and renewed their mobile picketing, keeping the military officials and cops on a merry-go-round. The guardsmen launched an attack in force on the Local 574 strike headquarters, arresting 100 members, including Bill Brown and the Dunne brothers, and throwing them into specially constructed military stockades. But the union rank and file, trained in democratic self-reliance, held firm and ran the strike as usual. So great was the outcry and protest—including another mass demonstration of 40,000 — that the union members and leaders were released in a few days.
Two of the tribe of Roosevelt's labor board mediators—"meditates" as the workers called them—were shipped into Minneapolis early in the strike. They were Father Haas, a Catholic priest, and E. H. Dunnigan. They had at once proposed a settlement based on some concessions to the workers which the bosses had flatly rejected. In the end, with the troops out in force —almost one soldier for every striker—Father Haas and Dunnigan tried to put over a watered-down version of their original proposals. When they went to sell the proposition to the rank-and-file Strike Committee of 100, they were subjected to such a devastating cross-examination that they were utterly routed. A new mediator was sent in and Father Haas had to retire to a sanitarium.
On August 22, after five weeks of the toughest battling against all the forces of the employers and government, the strikers won. The bosses capitulated and signed an agreement granting the union its main demands. This included the right to represent "inside workers," which the employers had threatened to fight to the bitter end as industrial unionism.
While the Minneapolis truck drivers were battling their way to victory, the San Francisco general strike—involving 125,000 workers at its peak — carried the American class struggle to new heights.
On May 9, 1934, from 10,000 to 15,000 West Coast members of the AFL International Longshoremen's Association went on an "unauthorized" strike. Soon the strike included 25,000 workers, many of them members of seamen's organizations who joined in sympathy.
The original demands had been for a coast-wide agreement, union control of hiring halls and a closed shop. The strikers added demands for $1 .an hour instead of 85 cents and the 30-hour week instead of 48.
From the start, the strike was waged with great militancy. Frederick J. Lang, in his book Maritime A History and Program, wrote: "It was a real rank-and-file strike, with the 'leaders' swept along in the flood. It encountered every weapon then in the arsenal of the employers. The ship-owners hired their own thugs who tried to work the docks and man the ships. The city police of every port on the Coast were mobilized on the waterfronts to hunt down the strikers. The newspapers, launching a slander campaign against-the strikers, called on the citizenry to form vigilante committees to raid strike headquarters, the actual organization of this dirty work being entrusted to the American Legion and other 'patriotic' societies."
ILA President Joseph Ryan hastily flew into San Francisco from New York in an effort to squelch the strike. Over the heads of the strikers and their local leaders, he signed an agreement giving up the main demand—the union-controlled hiring hall. He was repudiated by the strikers in a coast-wide poll.
The chief strike leader was the then unknown Harry Bridges, He was under Stalinist influence but fortunately, at that time, did not adhere so closely to Communist Party policies as to carry out its line, of not working inside the "social fascist" AFL unions. Under the radicalizing effect of the depression, maritime workers were influenced by various political tendencies — Stalinist, IWW> (Industrial Workers of the World) and others—with the Stalinists playing the dominant role.
Ryan — a consort of ship-owners, stevedore bosses, gangsters and Tammany politicians, who 20 years later was to be dumped by these elements when he was no longer useful to them—tried to split the strike by making separate settlements in each port. He succeeded only in Seattle. AFL President William Green joined in denouncing the strike and yelling "reds" and "communists."
On July 5 the bosses tried to smash the strike by attacking its strategic center, San Francisco's waterfront, with calculated force and violence. At the "Battle of Rincon Hill" the police blasted away with tear gas, pistols and shotguns at the waterfront pickets. They killed Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise and wounded 109 others. As in the third Minneapolis strike and the Toledo Auto-Lite battle, the deliberate massacres perpetrated by the police were the signal for sending in the National Guard.
The murder and wounding of strikers did not crush the workers. Instead, San Francisco labor answered with a tremendous counterattack—a general strike. For two days, the working class paralyzed the city. The workers took over many city functions, directing traffic and assuming other municipal tasks. On the third and fourth days, the general strike petered out when the AFL leaders, who were swept along in the first spontaneous protest against the killings, ordered an end to the stoppage.
The bosses and police, with the aid of organized vigilantes, vented their fear and hatred of the workers on the small radical organizations, not daring to hit directly at the unions. Thirty-five gangs of vigilantes, heavily armed, raided headquarters of Communist, IWW and Socialist groups. They smashed furniture, hurled typewriters and literature out the windows, beat up many defenseless workers. In some instances, the police who arrived after the vigilantes left completed the work of destruction. They jailed more than 300 persons.
After 11 weeks, the long shore strike was ended on July 31 with an agreement to arbitrate. It was a poor settlement, but the workers returned to the job in an organized body. Within a year, in job action after job action, they won the union hiring hall up and down the Coast. Their struggle gave impetus to maritime organization on the East Coast, leading in 1937 to establishment of the CIO National Maritime Union, and opened the way for organization of West Coast industrial labor.
Too little credit has been given to the Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco strikes for their effect on the subsequent industrial union movement, the CIO. But had these magnificent examples of labor struggle not occurred, in all likelihood the CIO would have been delayed or taken a different and less militant course.
It was these gigantic battles—all led by radicals—that convinced John L. Lewis that the American workers were determined to be organized and would follow the leadership that showed it meant business.
"Lewis watched the unrest and flare-ups of violence through the summer of 1934. He saw the Dunne brothers of Minneapolis lead a general strike of truck drivers into a virtual civil war. Blood ran in Minneapolis," wrote Alinsky in his John L. Lewis—An Unauthorized Biography.
"In San Francisco a general strike spearheaded by Harry Bridges' Longshoremen's Union paralyzed the great western city for four days.
"Before that year was out, seven hundred thousand workers had struck. Lewis could read the revolutionary handwriting on the walls of American industry. He knew that the workers were seething and aching to be organized so they could strike back. Everyone wanted to hit out, employer against worker and worker against employer and anyone else who they felt was not in their class. America was becoming more class conscious than at any time in its history..."
Of course, "civil war" was going on in towns and cities from coast to coast and blood was being spilled in scores of other places besides Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco. These latter cities were unique, however, in this: they showed how the workers could fight and win. They gave heart and hope to labor everywhere for the climactic struggle that was to build the CIO.
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