*Don’t Mourn- Organize (And Maybe Sing A Song Or Two) - In Honor Of Labor Agitator/Songwriter Joe Hill

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

Every Month Is Labor History Month

CD REVIEW

Don’t Mourn-Organize!: Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill, various artists, Smithsonian/Folkways, 1990

The name Joe Hill evokes, or at least it used to, very strong emotions among militants of the international labor movement. A casual check of any of the old time labor songs will, more likely than not, find Joe’s signature on or influence all over them. Thus, it is no surprise that Smithsonian/Folkways was able to find plenty of material and plenty of singer/songwriters ready and willing to pay tribute to an early labor militant and Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW, Wobblie) member. As usual in a Smithsonian/Folkways production there are copious liner notes that give plenty of information about the Joe Hill’s life, his exploits, his influences and his frame-up execution in Utah in 1915. I will thus not spend much time on those areas but rather spend time on the highlights of the performances here.

By all indications Joe Hill was ready, as ready as a man (or woman) is ever ready to face his death by execution when the deal finally went down in 1915. That is the source of his legend and of the forthright admonition that he transmitted to fellow Wobblie the labor leader “Big Bill” Haywood- Don’t Mourn- Organize, or words to that effect. That sort of phrase gives the substance of what Joe was trying to do every since he had landed in America several years earlier. As Hill pointed out one of the key ways that workers then (and now) get a sense of their conditions of life and from there get inspired to action is through song.

The long term truth of that strategy is open to debate but not the premise that song, historically, has been important to every progressive social movement (and others, as well, but here I am concerned with the international labor movement). In the propaganda wars of the class struggle Joe Hill produced some memorable songs that were set to popular melodies of the day or old time religious tunes. Those efforts are on full display here in such songs as “The Preacher And The Slave”, “The White Slave” and “Rebel Girl”. So if you hear melodies that sound familiar, as well as words that express the social concerns of his day and ours (white slavery, wage struggles, the influence of religion, union organizing, the fight against the bosses, etc.) your ears are not deceiving you.

As to the performances here there is a virtual who’s who of the labor left cultural workers, from the past and the present. Billy Bragg on the late pro-labor folksinger Phil Ochs’ tribute Joe Hill. The recently departed old, unrepentant Wobblie Utah Phillips reciting Joe Hill’s Last Will. A nice piece about Joe Hill’s Ashes by Mark Levy. The Tramp by Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie’s old traveling companion and comrade (who was an important folk figure in his own right). The above-mentioned The White Slave by Hill contemporary old Wobblie Alfred Cortez as well as The Preacher And The Slave by “Haywire Mac” McClintock of Hard Rock Candy Mountain fame. That is enough to whet any labor historian or militant’s appetite. However there is more.

I want to pay special attention to three tracks. One is the powerful version of Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson’s Joe Hill done by Paul Robeson. Anyone familiar with that name knows what I mean both about the voice and about his commitment to the labor movement (as a supporter of the Communist Party and its various cultural organizations). If not, then you are certainly in for a treat. The other is a narrative by the old ex-Wobblie and later Chairperson of the American Communist Party, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, introducing the song that Joe Hill wrote for in 1915 just before his death, Rebel Girl. In the end she may have been less of a rebel girl than Brother Hill would have liked, but in those days she was a very effective militant IWW woman speaker (and pleasing to the male eye as well, a not unimportant trait in those days). Just hearing that voice from the history of the American labor movement talking about its heroic period was worth the price of admission. The then well-known mountain music singer and worker/woman’s rights advocate Hazel Dickens does the song. History, labor movement music and a tribute to Joe Hill. Nice.


Joe Hill’s Last Will

My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide,
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan-
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
My body? Ah, If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will,
Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill

Joe Hill was an IWW man. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was, and is a radical union dedicated to abolishing the wage system and replacing it with a democratic system of workplace organization.

Joe Hill was a migrant laborer to the US from Sweden, a poet, musician and union radical. The term “pie in the sky” is believed to come from his satirical song, “The Preacher and the Slave”.

Hill was framed for murder and executed by firing squad in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 19, 1915. His last words were, “Fire!”

Just before his death he wrote to fellow IWW organizer Big Bill Haywood a letter which included the famous words, “Don’t mourn, Organize”.

The poem above was his will. It was set to music and became the basis of a song by Ethel Raim called “Joe Hill’s Last Will”.

A praise poem by Alfred Hayes became the lyrics of the best-known song about Joe Hill, written in 1936 by Earl Robinson. This was sung so beautifully by Joan Baez at Woodstock in 1969:

Joe Hill

words by Alfred Hayes
music by Earl Robinson

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.

“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”

“The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”

And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes.
Says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize,
went on to organize”

From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where working-men defend their rights,
it’s there you find Joe Hill,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.

"The Preacher And The Slave"

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

And the Starvation Army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray,
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you’re on the bum

Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out
And they holler, they jump and they shout
Give your money to Jesus, they say,
He will cure all diseases today

If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, ’twill do you good
Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye

The chorus is sung in a call and response pattern.

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
In that glorious land above the sky [Way up high]
Work and pray [Work and pray] live on hay [live on hay]
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die [That's a lie!]

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry [How to fry]
Chop some wood [Chop some wood], ’twill do you good [do you good]
Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye [That's no lie]

THE REBEL GIRL

by Joe Hill /words updated/

There are women of many descriptions
In this cruel world as everyone knows
Some are living in beautiful mansions
And wearing the finest of clothes

There's the blue blooded queen and the princess
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearls
But the only and true kind of lady
Is the Rebel Girl

chorus:
She's a rebel girl, a rebel girl
To the working class she's the strength of this world
From Newfoundland to B.C.
She's fighting for you and for me

Yes she's there by our side
With her courage and pride
She's unequalled anywhere

And I'm proud to fight for freedom
With the rebel girl!


Pete Seeger Lyrics

Joe Hill Lyrics

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he

"In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
Him standing by my bed.
"They framed you on a murder charge."
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."

"The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
They shot you, Joe," says I.
"Takes more than guns to kill a man."
Says Joe, "I didn't die,"
Says Joe, "I didn't die."

And standing there as big as life,
And smiling with his eyes,
Joe says, "What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize,
Went on to organize."

"Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
"Joe Hill ain't never died.
Where working men are out on strike,
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side."

"From San Diego up to Maine
In every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize,"
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he.

Pete Seeger Lyrics

Talking Union Lyrics

If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, now, 'twont he long.
You'll get shorter hours,
Better working conditions.
Vacations with pay,
Take your kids to the seashore.

It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain
Just why you got to ride on the union train;
'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
We'll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
We'll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
Saint Peter'll be the straw boss then.

Now, you know you're underpaid, hut the boss says you ain't;
He speeds up the work till you're 'bout to faint,
You may he down and out, but you ain't beaten,
Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'
Talk it over - speak your mind -
Decide to do something about it.

'Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
But you can always tell a stool, though - that's a fact;
He's got a yellow streak running down his back;
He doesn't have to stool - he'll always make a good living
On what he takes out of blind men's cups.

You got a union now; you're sitting pretty;
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won't listen when one man squawks.
But he's got to listen when the union talks.
He better -
He'll be mighty lonely one of these days.

Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous,
They're paying you all starvation wages;
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
"Before I'd raise your pay I'd see you all in Hell."
Well, he's puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
He thinks he's got your union licked.
He looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
He's a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
Bet he beats his own wife.

Now, boy, you've come to the hardest time;
The boss will try to bust your picket line.
He'll call out the police, the National Guard;
They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card.
They'll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
Unpatriotic - Moscow agents -
Bomb throwers, even the kids.

But out in Detroit here's what they found,
And out in Frisco here's what they found,
And out in Pittsburgh here's what they found,
And down in Bethlehem here's what they found,
That if you don't let Red-baiting break you up,
If you don't let stool pigeons break you up,
If you don't let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don't let race hatred break you up -
You'll win. What I mean,
Take it easy - but take it!



Pete Seeger Lyrics

If I Had A Hammer Lyrics

If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a bell,
I'd ring it in the morning,
I'd ring it in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd ring out danger,
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a song,
I'd sing it in the morning,
I'd sing it in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd sing out danger,
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!-William Sylvis and The National Labor Union

Click On Title To Link To Information About William Sylvis And The National Labor Union.

Every Month Is Labor History Month.

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels--Don’t Mourn- Organize (And Maybe Sing A Song Or Two) - In Honor Of Labor Agitator/Songwriter Joe Hill

A YouTube's film clip of Joan Baez performing "Joe Hill"

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

Every Month Is Labor History Month

CD REVIEW

Don’t Mourn-Organize!: Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill, various artists, Smithsonian/Folkways, 1990

The name Joe Hill evokes, or at least it used to, very strong emotions among militants of the international labor movement. A casual check of any of the old time labor songs will, more likely than not, find Joe’s signature on or influence all over them. Thus, it is no surprise that Smithsonian/Folkways was able to find plenty of material and plenty of singer/songwriters ready and willing to pay tribute to an early labor militant and Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW, Wobblie) Joe Hill. As usual in a Smithsonian/Folkways production there are copious liner notes that give plenty of information about the Joe Hill’s life, his exploits, his influences and his frame-up execution in Utah in 1915. I will thus not spend much time on those areas but rather spend time on the highlights of the performances here.

By all indications Joe Hill was ready, as ready as a man (or woman) is ever ready to face his death by execution when the deal finally went down in 1915. That is the source of his legend and of the forthright admonition that he transmitted to fellow Wobblie the labor leader “Big Bill” Haywood- Don’t Mourn- Organize, or words to that effect. That sort phrase gives the substance of what Joe was trying to do every since he had landed in America several years earlier. As Hill pointed out one of the key ways that workers then (and now) get a sense of their conditions of life and from there get inspired to action is through song.

The long term truth of that strategy is open to debate but not the premise that song historically has been important to every progressive social movement (and others, as well, but here I am concerned with the international labor movement). In the propaganda wars of the class struggle Joe Hill produced some memorable songs that were set to popular melodies of the day or old time religious tunes. Those efforts are on full display here in such songs as “The Preacher And The Slave”, “The White Slave” and “Rebel Girl”. So if you hear melodies that sound familiar, as well as words that express the social concerns of his day and ours (white slavery, wage struggles, the influence of religion, union organizing, the fight against the bosses, etc.) your ears are not deceiving you.

As to the performances here there is a virtual who’s who of the labor left cultural workers, from the past and the present. Billy Bragg on the late pro-labor folksinger Phil Ochs’ tribute “Joe Hill”. The recently departed old unrepentant Wobblie Utah Phillips reciting “Joe Hill’s Last Will”. A nice piece about “Joe Hill’s Ashes” by Mark Levy. “The Tramp” by Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie’s old traveling companion and comrade (who was an important folk figure in his own right). The above-mentioned “The White Slave” by Hill contemporary old Wobblie Alfred Cortez as well as “The Preacher And The Slave” by “Haywire Mac” McClintock of “Hard Rock Candy Mountain’ fame. That is enough to whet any labor historian or militant’s appetite. However there is more.

I want to pay special attention to three tracks. One is the powerful version of Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson’s “Joe Hill” done by Paul Robeson. Anyone familiar with that name knows what I mean both about the voice and about his commitment to the labor movement (as a supporter of the Communist Party and its various cultural organizations). If not, then you are certainly in for a treat. The other is a narrative by the old ex-Wobblie and later Chairperson of the American Communist Party Elizabeth Gurley Flynn introducing the song that Joe Hill wrote for in 1915 just before his death, “Rebel Girl”. In the end she may have been less of a rebel girl than Brother Hill would have liked, but in those days she was a very effective militant IWW woman speaker (and pleasing to the male eye as well, a not unimportant trait in those days). Just hearing that voice from the history of the American labor movement talking about its heroic period was worth the price of admission. The then well-known mountain music singer and worker/woman’s rights advocate Hazel Dickens does the song. History, labor movement music and a tribute to Joe Hill. Nice.


Joe Hill’s Last Will

My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide,
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan-
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
My body? Ah, If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will,
Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill

Joe Hill was an IWW man. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was, and is a radical union dedicated to abolishing the wage system and replacing it with a democratic system of workplace organization.

Joe Hill was a migrant laborer to the US from Sweden, a poet, musician and union radical. The term “pie in the sky” is believed to come from his satirical song, “The Preacher and the Slave”.

Hill was framed for murder and executed by firing squad in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 19, 1915. His last words were, “Fire!”

Just before his death he wrote to fellow IWW organizer Big Bill Haywood a letter which included the famous words, “Don’t mourn, Organize”.

The poem above was his will. It was set to music and became the basis of a song by Ethel Raim called “Joe Hill’s Last Will”.

A praise poem by Alfred Hayes became the lyrics of the best-known song about Joe Hill, written in 1936 by Earl Robinson. This was sung so beautifully by Joan Baez at Woodstock in 1969:

Joe Hill

words by Alfred Hayes
music by Earl Robinson

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.

“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”

“The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”

And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes.
Says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize,
went on to organize”

From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where working-men defend their rights,
it’s there you find Joe Hill,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.

"The Preacher And The Slave"

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

And the Starvation Army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray,
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you’re on the bum

Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out
And they holler, they jump and they shout
Give your money to Jesus, they say,
He will cure all diseases today

If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, ’twill do you good
Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye

The chorus is sung in a call and response pattern.

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
In that glorious land above the sky [Way up high]
Work and pray [Work and pray] live on hay [live on hay]
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die [That's a lie!]

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry [How to fry]
Chop some wood [Chop some wood], ’twill do you good [do you good]
Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye [That's no lie]

THE REBEL GIRL

by Joe Hill /words updated/

There are women of many descriptions
In this cruel world as everyone knows
Some are living in beautiful mansions
And wearing the finest of clothes

There's the blue blooded queen and the princess
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearls
But the only and true kind of lady
Is the Rebel Girl

chorus:
She's a rebel girl, a rebel girl
To the working class she's the strength of this world
From Newfoundland to B.C.
She's fighting for you and for me

Yes she's there by our side
With her courage and pride
She's unequalled anywhere

And I'm proud to fight for freedom
With the rebel girl!


Pete Seeger Lyrics

Joe Hill Lyrics

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he

"In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
Him standing by my bed.
"They framed you on a murder charge."
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."

"The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
They shot you, Joe," says I.
"Takes more than guns to kill a man."
Says Joe, "I didn't die,"
Says Joe, "I didn't die."

And standing there as big as life,
And smiling with his eyes,
Joe says, "What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize,
Went on to organize."

"Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
"Joe Hill ain't never died.
Where working men are out on strike,
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side."

"From San Diego up to Maine
In every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize,"
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he.

Pete Seeger Lyrics

Talking Union Lyrics

If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, now, 'twont he long.
You'll get shorter hours,
Better working conditions.
Vacations with pay,
Take your kids to the seashore.

It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain
Just why you got to ride on the union train;
'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
We'll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
We'll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
Saint Peter'll be the straw boss then.

Now, you know you're underpaid, hut the boss says you ain't;
He speeds up the work till you're 'bout to faint,
You may he down and out, but you ain't beaten,
Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'
Talk it over - speak your mind -
Decide to do something about it.

'Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
But you can always tell a stool, though - that's a fact;
He's got a yellow streak running down his back;
He doesn't have to stool - he'll always make a good living
On what he takes out of blind men's cups.

You got a union now; you're sitting pretty;
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won't listen when one man squawks.
But he's got to listen when the union talks.
He better -
He'll be mighty lonely one of these days.

Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous,
They're paying you all starvation wages;
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
"Before I'd raise your pay I'd see you all in Hell."
Well, he's puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
He thinks he's got your union licked.
He looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
He's a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
Bet he beats his own wife.

Now, boy, you've come to the hardest time;
The boss will try to bust your picket line.
He'll call out the police, the National Guard;
They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card.
They'll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
Unpatriotic - Moscow agents -
Bomb throwers, even the kids.

But out in Detroit here's what they found,
And out in Frisco here's what they found,
And out in Pittsburgh here's what they found,
And down in Bethlehem here's what they found,
That if you don't let Red-baiting break you up,
If you don't let stool pigeons break you up,
If you don't let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don't let race hatred break you up -
You'll win. What I mean,
Take it easy - but take it!



Pete Seeger Lyrics

If I Had A Hammer Lyrics

If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a bell,
I'd ring it in the morning,
I'd ring it in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd ring out danger,
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a song,
I'd sing it in the morning,
I'd sing it in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd sing out danger,
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

*Don’t Mourn- Organize (And Maybe Sing A Song Or Two) - In Honor Of Labor Agitator/Songwriter Joe Hill

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Billy Bragg Singing Phil Och's Tribute To "Joe Hill".

Every Month Is Labor History Month

CD REVIEW

Don’t Mourn-Organize!: Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill, various artists, Smithsonian/Folkways, 1990

The name Joe Hill evokes, or at least it used to, very strong emotions among militants of the international labor movement. A casual check of any of the old time labor songs will, more likely than not, find Joe’s signature on or influence all over them. Thus, it is no surprise that Smithsonian/Folkways was able to find plenty of material and plenty of singer/songwriters ready and willing to pay tribute to an early labor militant and Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW, Wobblie) Joe Hill. As usual in a Smithsonian/Folkways production there are copious liner notes that give plenty of information about the Joe Hill’s life, his exploits, his influences and his frame-up execution in Utah in 1915. I will thus not spend much time on those areas but rather spend time on the highlights of the performances here.

By all indications Joe Hill was ready, as ready as a man (or woman) is ever ready to face his death by execution when the deal finally went down in 1915. That is the source of his legend and of the forthright admonition that he transmitted to fellow Wobblie the labor leader “Big Bill” Haywood- Don’t Mourn- Organize, or words to that effect. That sort phrase gives the substance of what Joe was trying to do every since he had landed in America several years earlier. As Hill pointed out one of the key ways that workers then (and now) get a sense of their conditions of life and from there get inspired to action is through song.

The long term truth of that strategy is open to debate but not the premise that song historically has been important to every progressive social movement (and others, as well, but here I am concerned with the international labor movement). In the propaganda wars of the class struggle Joe Hill produced some memorable songs that were set to popular melodies of the day or old time religious tunes. Those efforts are on full display here in such songs as “The Preacher And The Slave”, “The White Slave” and “Rebel Girl”. So if you hear melodies that sound familiar, as well as words that express the social concerns of his day and ours (white slavery, wage struggles, the influence of religion, union organizing, the fight against the bosses, etc.) your ears are not deceiving you.

As to the performances here there is a virtual who’s who of the labor left cultural workers, from the past and the present. Billy Bragg on the late pro-labor folksinger Phil Ochs’ tribute “Joe Hill”. The recently departed old unrepentant Wobblie Utah Phillips reciting “Joe Hill’s Last Will”. A nice piece about “Joe Hill’s Ashes” by Mark Levy. “The Tramp” by Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie’s old traveling companion and comrade (who was an important folk figure in his own right). The above-mentioned “The White Slave” by Hill contemporary old Wobblie Alfred Cortez as well as “The Preacher And The Slave” by “Haywire Mac” McClintock of “Hard Rock Candy Mountain’ fame. That is enough to whet any labor historian or militant’s appetite. However there is more.

I want to pay special attention to three tracks. One is the powerful version of Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson’s “Joe Hill” done by Paul Robeson. Anyone familiar with that name knows what I mean both about the voice and about his commitment to the labor movement (as a supporter of the Communist Party and its various cultural organizations). If not, then you are certainly in for a treat. The other is a narrative by the old ex-Wobblie and later Chairperson of the American Communist Party Elizabeth Gurley Flynn introducing the song that Joe Hill wrote for in 1915 just before his death, “Rebel Girl”. In the end she may have been less of a rebel girl than Brother Hill would have liked, but in those days she was a very effective militant IWW woman speaker (and pleasing to the male eye as well, a not unimportant trait in those days). Just hearing that voice from the history of the American labor movement talking about its heroic period was worth the price of admission. The then well-known mountain music singer and worker/woman’s rights advocate Hazel Dickens does the song. History, labor movement music and a tribute to Joe Hill. Nice.


Joe Hill’s Last Will

My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide,
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan-
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
My body? Ah, If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will,
Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill

Joe Hill was an IWW man. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was, and is a radical union dedicated to abolishing the wage system and replacing it with a democratic system of workplace organization.

Joe Hill was a migrant laborer to the US from Sweden, a poet, musician and union radical. The term “pie in the sky” is believed to come from his satirical song, “The Preacher and the Slave”.

Hill was framed for murder and executed by firing squad in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 19, 1915. His last words were, “Fire!”

Just before his death he wrote to fellow IWW organizer Big Bill Haywood a letter which included the famous words, “Don’t mourn, Organize”.

The poem above was his will. It was set to music and became the basis of a song by Ethel Raim called “Joe Hill’s Last Will”.

A praise poem by Alfred Hayes became the lyrics of the best-known song about Joe Hill, written in 1936 by Earl Robinson. This was sung so beautifully by Joan Baez at Woodstock in 1969:

Joe Hill

words by Alfred Hayes
music by Earl Robinson

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.

“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”

“The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”

And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes.
Says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize,
went on to organize”

From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where working-men defend their rights,
it’s there you find Joe Hill,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.

"The Preacher And The Slave"

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

And the Starvation Army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray,
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you’re on the bum

Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out
And they holler, they jump and they shout
Give your money to Jesus, they say,
He will cure all diseases today

If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, ’twill do you good
Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye

The chorus is sung in a call and response pattern.

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
In that glorious land above the sky [Way up high]
Work and pray [Work and pray] live on hay [live on hay]
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die [That's a lie!]

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry [How to fry]
Chop some wood [Chop some wood], ’twill do you good [do you good]
Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye [That's no lie]

THE REBEL GIRL

by Joe Hill /words updated/

There are women of many descriptions
In this cruel world as everyone knows
Some are living in beautiful mansions
And wearing the finest of clothes

There's the blue blooded queen and the princess
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearls
But the only and true kind of lady
Is the Rebel Girl

chorus:
She's a rebel girl, a rebel girl
To the working class she's the strength of this world
From Newfoundland to B.C.
She's fighting for you and for me

Yes she's there by our side
With her courage and pride
She's unequalled anywhere

And I'm proud to fight for freedom
With the rebel girl!


Pete Seeger Lyrics

Joe Hill Lyrics

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he

"In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
Him standing by my bed.
"They framed you on a murder charge."
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."

"The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
They shot you, Joe," says I.
"Takes more than guns to kill a man."
Says Joe, "I didn't die,"
Says Joe, "I didn't die."

And standing there as big as life,
And smiling with his eyes,
Joe says, "What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize,
Went on to organize."

"Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
"Joe Hill ain't never died.
Where working men are out on strike,
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side."

"From San Diego up to Maine
In every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize,"
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he.

Pete Seeger Lyrics

Talking Union Lyrics

If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, now, 'twont he long.
You'll get shorter hours,
Better working conditions.
Vacations with pay,
Take your kids to the seashore.

It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain
Just why you got to ride on the union train;
'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
We'll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
We'll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
Saint Peter'll be the straw boss then.

Now, you know you're underpaid, hut the boss says you ain't;
He speeds up the work till you're 'bout to faint,
You may he down and out, but you ain't beaten,
Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'
Talk it over - speak your mind -
Decide to do something about it.

'Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
But you can always tell a stool, though - that's a fact;
He's got a yellow streak running down his back;
He doesn't have to stool - he'll always make a good living
On what he takes out of blind men's cups.

You got a union now; you're sitting pretty;
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won't listen when one man squawks.
But he's got to listen when the union talks.
He better -
He'll be mighty lonely one of these days.

Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous,
They're paying you all starvation wages;
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
"Before I'd raise your pay I'd see you all in Hell."
Well, he's puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
He thinks he's got your union licked.
He looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
He's a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
Bet he beats his own wife.

Now, boy, you've come to the hardest time;
The boss will try to bust your picket line.
He'll call out the police, the National Guard;
They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card.
They'll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
Unpatriotic - Moscow agents -
Bomb throwers, even the kids.

But out in Detroit here's what they found,
And out in Frisco here's what they found,
And out in Pittsburgh here's what they found,
And down in Bethlehem here's what they found,
That if you don't let Red-baiting break you up,
If you don't let stool pigeons break you up,
If you don't let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don't let race hatred break you up -
You'll win. What I mean,
Take it easy - but take it!



Pete Seeger Lyrics

If I Had A Hammer Lyrics

If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a bell,
I'd ring it in the morning,
I'd ring it in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd ring out danger,
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

If I had a song,
I'd sing it in the morning,
I'd sing it in the evening,
All over this land.

I'd sing out danger,
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

*Labor's Untold Story- The Split In The Organized Labor Federations In The 1930s- The AFL-CIO Split

Click on title to link to some background information from a YouTube film clip, "AFL vs. CIO Split Of 1935", about the split in the organized labor movement in the 1930's that led the way to mass industrial unionism. Under most circumstances we want the labor movement to be unified under one roof. That is not always possible, nor given certain political realities wise. The split, for labor militants then, was necessary. The reunification of the two federations in the 1950's was something, given those changed political circumstances and with the bureaucratization and congruent politics of those organizations, that we would not have opposed. I will cover the 2005 split of the current two major organized labor federations separately.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-New York City-Bloomberg’s Snow Job on Working People-Beat Back Attack on Public Workers Unions!

Markin comment on this article:

I did not originally intend to post this article in this space but given the developments with the Wisconsin public workers unions over the last week the political points made in this article about the New York City public workers union struggles are appropriate.

Markin comment:
Sometimes politics, our working class-oriented politics, is a no-brainer. This occasion is one of those times. The lines are drawn very visibly now with the yahoos of the Tea Party movement entering the fray. “Which side are you on?” is the question of the hour. All out in support of the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions!
*******
Repost from American Left History

Friday, February 18, 2011

Victory To The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!- Hands Off The Unions! -Hands Off The Democratic Legislators

Markin comment:
I suppose we all knew that it would come to this. Probably the last serious bastion of organized labor-the public employees unions are starting to face the onslaught of governmental attempts to break those collective bargaining agreements, crying budgetary crisis- the heart of any union operation. With the demise of the industrial unions (representing less than ten percent cent of the workforce in the wake of the deindustrialization of America) the public employee union became the obvious target in the bosses' relentless struggle to break any collective working agreements. Wisconsin, as all sides agree, is the tip of the iceberg and will be closely watched by other states (and the federal government).

On the question of the Democratic legislators who have left the state (at least as of today, February 18, 2011), to avoid voting on the proposals. While it is unusual for those of us who consider themselves communist labor militants to demand hands off for this crowd under normal circumstances in this case we are duty-bound to defend their action. Stay the hell out of Wisconsin until this blows over. A good idea would be to put workers on the borders to make sure the State Police don't try to force them back. Okay. Strange times that we live in, strange indeed.
*******
Workers Vanguard No. 972
21 January 2010

New York City

Bloomberg’s Snow Job on Working People

Beat Back Attack on Public Workers Unions!

The administration of multibillionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg enraged working people throughout New York City with its criminally negligent response to the Christmas weekend blizzard. Having already reduced the municipal workforce, the city basically did nothing to prepare for a major storm that everyone knew was going to hit. While most Manhattan streets serving tourists and the wealthy were cleared within a day, many in the outer boroughs did not see a snow plow for days after the storm. Unplowed streets were littered with abandoned cars, along with 100 snow plows and over 200 ambulances. Some 1,000 buses were stuck, their drivers told to stay inside the vehicles for hours on end by Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) management. Untold numbers of the elderly and sick were trapped in the subways. At least two people died in the conditions created by city officials. Meanwhile, Bloomberg blithely encouraged tourists to take in a Broadway show!

As anger over the disaster mounted, the capitalist politicians of the Republican and Democratic parties cynically tried to pin responsibility on municipal workers. Along with the rabidly anti-union New York Post, Republican city councilman Dan Halloran, citing anonymous sources, accused sanitation workers of having staged a slowdown in solidarity with supervisors who were facing demotion, prompting one worker to tell the Daily News (5 January), “We don’t care about management on a good day, never mind during a blizzard.”

With outgoing Democratic governor David Paterson calling for a criminal investigation, four separate probes were launched—by the NYC Department of Investigation (DOI), by the Queens and Brooklyn district attorneys and by the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office. In addition to the “slowdown,” workers are reportedly being investigated for allegedly “padding overtime.” On January 3, the DOI issued a fink memo warning transportation workers that “they are obligated to come forward and report information about misconduct.”

Part of a nationwide drive against public sector unions, the obscene witchhunting of NYC public workers should be fought by every union in the city. It was the municipal workers who responded heroically under enormously difficult circumstances to help people get through the storm. Emergency medical service (EMS) workers, unable to drive their ambulances down snowbound streets, often carried stricken residents on stretchers for blocks. As for “padding overtime,” sanitation workers have toiled 21 straight days following the storm, often working at least 12-hour shifts, to dig the city out and remove trash.

As one sanitation worker told the Daily News, the city’s response to the blizzard was “a perfect storm of fewer men, inferior equipment, 70-mph winds and a political failure to declare a snow emergency,” adding, “this was all about money.” Snow plows were fitted with cheap, inferior chains that snapped, sometimes ripping tires off the rims. Sanitation workers were given shovels that were unassembled—and missing the bolts! Another sanitation worker, speaking to WV, summed up the problem in one word: “manpower.” The Sanitation Department has at least 400 fewer workers than two years ago, and Bloomberg plans to further reduce the workforce through attrition. Already last fall, Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association president Harry Nespoli warned that the city was “rolling the dice” by cutting the workforce (Daily News, 14 October 2010).

As the storm hit, EMS union officials urged the fire department to declare a snow emergency but were told that City Hall had turned thumbs down. Ambulances were not equipped with traction snaps for tires, and many ambulance battalions ran out of gas. As for the MTA, efforts by transit workers to confront the crisis—and the sheer ineptitude of the bosses—are described in the accompanying letter.

Many of the New Yorkers cursing Bloomberg recalled how then-mayor John Lindsay bungled snow removal after a 1969 storm, helping to bury his presidential hopes. One thing U.S. mayors are supposed to do with some competence is snow removal. But in order to do it, you need the personnel. That’s not how Bloomberg and his capitalist cronies see it. To cut costs, the mayor, whose personal wealth is greater than the state’s budget deficit, is pushing a scheme to further reduce the workforce via privatization of city services.

Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for operations, Stephen Goldsmith, made a name for himself as mayor of Indianapolis in the 1990s when he slashed the city workforce by some 40 percent through privatization and layoffs, while attacking health and safety regulations (and bungling a 1994 snow storm). In New York, Goldsmith is overseeing a “Workforce Reform Task Force,” which issued a January 7 report proposing wholesale attacks on workers’ rights and city unions. It called for rewriting union contracts and civil service laws to make it easier to fire and discipline workers, to gut seniority in order to lay off teachers and to extend probation for city workers.

The attacks against New York municipal workers are part of a broad assault by Republicans and Democrats alike on the wages, health benefits and (notoriously underfunded) pensions of public workers. With the continuing world economic crisis, governments in Europe as well as the U.S. are ramping up attacks on public workers, cutting wages and gutting pensions. The capitalist rulers are determined to further cut spending on social services, which they regard as “overhead” expenses that cut into the billions they make from exploiting labor.

In the U.S., the anti-union offensive takes its cue from Democratic president Barack Obama’s brass-knuckle attacks on the teachers unions, which are used as scapegoats for the sorry state of public education. The Obama administration, which recently imposed a two-year wage freeze on two million federal workers, got its start by showering billions on the banks and auto giants while wresting massive concessions from the United Auto Workers, meekly agreed to by the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy. After decades of attacks by the capitalists, abetted by the union tops’ concessions, the industrial unions, historically the powerful core of the labor movement, have largely been decimated. Now, for the first time, public employees account for the majority of union members in the U.S. But those numbers include cops and prison guards, who should have no place in the unions. Their job is to break strikes, terrorize blacks and other minorities and suppress opposition to capitalist rule.

In New York State, newly elected Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo promptly launched what the New York Post (24 November 2010) termed an “all-out war with the public-employee unions.” His first act upon taking office was to sign off on the layoffs of 900 state workers, followed by the announcement of a one-year wage freeze. In response, Stephen Madarasz, a spokesman for the largest affected union, the AFSCME-affiliated Civil Service Employees Association, declared: “We don’t have any problem doing our part.”

Here is a clear expression of the role of the union officialdom as capitalism’s labor statesmen. With the rulers gunning for the public sector unions, the response of the labor tops is to bargain over terms of surrender, or even to serve as willing tools for the bosses. Such is the case with Gary LaBarbera, a top union official of the NYC-area construction trade unions. With at least 20 percent unemployment among unionized construction workers in New York City, LaBarbera told the New York Times (9 December 2010) that “without a fiscally sound environment, we will not be able to attract new businesses to the city,” brazenly adding, “At times there will be competing interests between public- and private-sector unions.”

Next door in New Jersey, Steve Sweeney, an Ironworkers union organizer and the president of the state senate, is a staunch advocate of right-wing Republican governor Chris Christie’s drive to slash state workers’ pay and benefits. The treachery of these labor traitors prompted the Wall Street Journal (4 January) to gloat about “the first stirrings of a true American class war: between workers in government unions and their union counterparts in the private sector.”

Even to begin to turn around the anti-union offensive, there must be a struggle against the labor misleaders who aid the bosses’ divide-and-rule schemes. All labor—industry, transport, construction trades, services—must defend the public employees unions, and vice versa: An injury to one is an injury to all! The public sector unions must fight for their right to strike, currently barred under New York State’s Taylor Law. Down with the Taylor Law!

With their large black and Latino membership, the public employees unions provide a living link between the labor movement and the ghettos and barrios. A fight by public workers to defend their hard-won gains could mobilize broad support among working people and the unemployed, all of whom have a vital interest in fighting against attacks on social services. Like the fight for free, quality health care and education, for free mass transit and other vital services, this requires hard struggle against the capitalist class, a tiny fraction of society whose obscene wealth is gained from exploiting labor. No less than the Republicans, the Democratic Party is a party of and for the capitalist class. While the Republicans openly appear as enemies of trade unionists, blacks, immigrants and the poor, the Democrats pretend to be their friends, only to end up doing the same thing. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for a workers government!

Basing itself on the political independence of the working class from the Democratic Party and all other agencies of capitalist rule, a class-struggle labor leadership would fight for a shorter workweek at no loss in pay to spread the available work. It would call for a massive program of public works to rebuild the schools, hospitals, roadways and other infrastructure. By fighting for such transitional demands, a revived labor movement would win the support of the unemployed, of the ghetto and barrio masses, in struggle against the common capitalist class enemy. As revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky wrote in the 1938 Transitional Program:

“If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. ‘Realizability’ or ‘unrealizability’ is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what its immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.”

*In The Age Of The "Robber Barons"- A Witty Literary Take On The American "Republic Of Letters"

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia Entry For John Singer Sargent. His artwork, especially the portraits, seem to be a window that expressed the essence of this period.

Book Review

The Mauve Decade: American Life At The End Of The 19th Century, Thomas Beer, Carol and Graf Publishers, New York, 1926

Every once in a while one comes across a gem of book and is not quite sure what to do with it. That is the case with this gossip-laden, satirically biting literary book, “Mauve Decade”, that deals with the highs and lows of American culture in the last decade of the 19th century. You, know the time of the well-known "robber barons who until recently were the main villains in the on-going American saga. And they were! And their descendants, literally or not, still are!

As a matter of course I should explain that I picked this book up for the purpose, I thought, of taking a look at the period of the emergence of the American imperial presence that we continue to live with. I also was looking to round out the milieu in which the American labor movement was beginning to feel its oats. The period of the great trade union, and later Socialist Party leader, Eugene V. Debs-led Pullman Strike and other bloody labor battles that should have told even the most naïve militant that the struggle ahead was going to be long and arduous. Those 'robber barons" meant to keep their profits. That is the book I bargained for but I got something quite different.


What I got was one of the most obscure, but intrinsically interesting, takes on the American literary scene, the so-called ”Republic of Letters” movement that was being pushed at the time in order to create a separate and distinct American cultural haven. The author, writing in 1926 (at least that is when the book was published) is taking a broad look back at the 1890’s based on his own observations, the recollections of literary friends and those with some kind of ax to grind. Thomas Beer is not a name that I am familiar with either in my various reviews of American literary history or in any other capacity. I have not, at this point when this review is being written, taken the time to find out exactly who he was. That, I do not believe is necessary, in order appreciate what a little gem he has produced.

Most of the names that Beer drops, and there is a great deal of name-dropping in the book,, are very familiar to readers of this space-Mark Twain, William Cullen Bryant (these were the days when every other Brahmin used three names to beef up his or her resume), William Dean Howells, Charles Godkin, The James brothers-in short, the literary establishment, make that the Brahmin establishment, that coalesced after the Civil War and was entering, according to Beer, its decline. I will not argue that point here but merely point out that his style is to be droll and venomous as he lists the roll call of the famous that get recognition at the expense of his own favored authors.

Needless to say this book centers on the Boston/New York literary scene with a few passing remarks about the Westerners who would go on to create a very different type of literature. There are also many, many dry comments on the “Irish” problem, which is the fact that this ‘race’ has started to come into its own politically. Along the way Beer comments on the then new obscure and now long forgotten political scandals of the day, the literary sexual censorship that was being enforced by public officials and magazine/newspaper editors alike (I can only imagine what Beer would have made of the current wide open sexual references.), the fashions and watering holes of the rich and famous and their pet peeves. Wonderful stuff, all done in a rather arcane style that would not pass today’s rapid repartee standards. This guy knows how to skewer even from long distance. We can always appreciate a little of that no matter what generation we are in. Nice work, Thomas Beer.

The Struggle For A Labor Party In The United States-Part Two- The Efforts In The 1990s

Markin comment:

 

In part one of this two-part series I noted in the Introduction that I had originally intended to solely highlight the historical attempts to form a labor party in the United States going back through the annuals of earlier labor history, especially the efforts by the early American Communist Party and the early Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, and to place little emphasis on later efforts such as those that occurred around the Labor Party question in the 1990s.  After some debate with others interested in getting a fuller sense of the over efforts I have placed the following up for discussion. The rationale for this effort is that today’s young labor militants and other pro-labor allies might relate better to more contemporary efforts as we once again are painfully made aware of the need for such a party in today’s political environment and now have an audience interested in such efforts. In either my original conception or my current one we need to struggle for that workers party that fights for a workers government, and fight like demons for it.     

**********

 

The Founding National Convention and Issues Around Support For Labor Candidates

 

In June1996 a number of trade unionists and their allies met to form an organization that would fight for a labor party in the United States. The party was formed by the United Mine Workers, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, American Federation of Government Employees, California Nurses Association, and hundreds of other local labor unions. Backed by those labor unions and hundreds of endorsing and affiliating 300 other labor bodies, the party stood for a constitutional right to a job at a living wage (not less than $10 per hr.), free education, universal health care, and an end to bigotry and discrimination.

Membership at one point reached about 5,000.

 

 

 

 

The Party was based on the unions because that was (is) where the workers are presently organized.  Also, the unions are part of the AFL-CIO which still gives millions of dollars to the Democratic Party.  The Labor Party tried to get the unions to commit their resources to the Labor Party instead.

 

Moreover reflecting the steep decline in trade union membership, especially the private sector and the lack of unionization amount the most oppressed layers of the working class the labor party held itself  open to all working class people, whether in a union or not. Initially the Labor Party decided not to run any independent labor militant candidates until 1999 at the earliest. The Labor Party’s leaders felt that the Party needed to be much stronger before it could start to run for office. 

 

Many Party members, however, felt that running candidates in carefully selected and well-prepared campaigns would have been a good way of reaching new people and training the troops for actions. From the beginning a dispute over the Party's running of candidates arose with many of the official unions totally opposed to running candidates that might cause the defeat of their normal Democratic allies. Smaller locals and left union activists on the other had pushed for a clean break with the Democratic Party.

 

This issue was debated internally for years until 1999 when the Party's leadership agreed to some endorsements of Labor Party members running. In 2001 the Labor Party endorsed labor sponsored independent candidates in San Francisco and Ohio local elections. After the 2000 elections even symbolic support dripped away. The future of the party remains uncertain, particularly after the 2002 death of Tony Mazzocchi, the founding national organizer. All of the founding unions continued to actively support Democratic Party candidates.

 

As was to be expected of any pro-working class formation organized leftist militants including socialists, communists, and Trotskyists supported, held offices in and worked to increase membership in party as well as provide wealth of different programs for labor militants to argue about, or adhere to. Among the main socialist supporters of the party were those organized around the newspaper Justice (now Socialist Alternative, affiliated internationally with the Committee for Workers International (CWI). Supporters of JUSTICE helped create the Labor Party in an attempt to turn it into a real force in American politics.  At the time it was felt that the Labor Party might become a major player in U.S. politics, a party that fought for the independence of the working class from the two major parties

This grouping also was among those who felt that the Labor Party should run candidates sooner rather than later.

 

From a socialist perspective this grouping (and others) believed that the things the Labor Party was trying to achieve—such as good-paying jobs for all—would require an economy that is completely different from the capitalist economy we have now.  Also, the large banks and major corporations have done well by this system and they will fight like hell to keep things going their way.  They were working with other socialists and activists in the Labor Party who felt that the system can’t just be made worker-friendly by passing a few laws.  If elected, the Party will need to replace capitalism with a system based on a plan with democratic control of the economy by working people.

*******************

Local Labor Party Efforts In Ohio

 

The development of the U.S. Labor Party, as was to be expected from an amorphous organization that was not on sure footing in regard to its attitude toward running union militants in elections counterposed to the Democrats and was a loose affiliation of various tendencies was done in fits and starts. Many local efforts were ahead of the national organization in fielding local labor candidates. The following case in Ohio points to the nature of those local efforts.

 

On September 20, 1997 delegates representing several unions and community chapters in Cleveland and Toledo founded the Ohio State Labor Party (OSLP).  In the relatively short time span of seven hours, the new organization hammered out state by-laws, established an organizing plan, and debated political resolutions.

 

The speakers included John Ryan, Cleveland AFL-CIO Executive Secretary, Baldemar Velasquez, Farm Labor Organizing Committee President, Ed Bruno, Labor Party New England Regional Director, and Bill Burga, Ohio AFL-CIO President.  Labor bodies with delegations included the Cleveland AFL-CIO, GCIU locals 15N & 546M, CWA local 4340, Bakers Union Local 19, AFSCME local 3360, FLOC, UE District Council 7 and several more.  The two OSLP community chapters, Cleveland and Toledo, also participated.  In addition many individuals attended as observers or as at-large delegates, coming from all over the state.

 

Nearly seventy people attended the Convention.  With such a large number of union affiliations there could have been many more.  Unfortunately, while many union leaders have officially endorsed the LP, they do not build the LP on the ground, including campaigning among their own members.  Supporters of the socialist organization grouped around the newspaper Justice mobilized 14 people. 

 

As to be expected the debate centered around two issues.  Labor activist Mike Ferner, who several years ago ran a serious campaign for mayor of Toledo against the Democrats and Republicans on a union ticket, submitted a resolution calling for further discussion and debate in the Labor Party about the proper role of corporations in a democracy.  Delegates spoke in favor of the resolution, adding that the organization must examine the complete undemocratic nature of the American capitalist economy, the incredible economic power concentrated in the hands of a few big businesses to make economic decision that effect millions of working people.  The point was also raised that the LP must begin to seriously address the question of whether this scheme is a systemic product of our economic system, capitalism, and whether this system works in the interest of workers.  The issue of an economic alternative to the market was raised-the idea of a democratically worker -controlled central planning system. The rhetorical question was posed - What would be the Labor Party’s response if it took power and capital “went on strike”? The delegates agreed that this key question needed additional future debate and examination.

 

The main area of debate concerned the LP’s electoral strategy.  Delegates Jerry Gordon and Barbara Walden submitted a resolution stating the LP’s current and future commitment never to endorse or support any candidate of either big business party, Democrat or Republican, which easily passed.  More controversial was another resolution, which stated that the OSLP urges the upcoming second national LP convention to adopt a viable electoral strategy around clear political, organizational, and legal criteria, of running independent LP candidates where the party has sufficient resources and support, as a critical way to educate workers, publicize the LP program and build the LP.  This sparked a fierce debate lasting 45 minutes.  Many speakers spoke passionately for and against, with both sides receiving loud applause.  This proved to be the most memorable part of the convention.

 

 

Supporters of Justice strenuously argued that elections are the only platform with a large enough scope to build a party of several hundred thousand members.  The then current strategy was limited to a narrow field of trade-union activists.  This layer now knows of the LP, and many have joined.  How can the LP reach a wider layer?  The only way is by standing in elections (in selected areas where the party can run a serious campaign).  This would open many doors: corporate media would publicize the LP and we could directly debate the candidates of big business and force them to address our program.  Elections are a rare time in this country when most people are thinking about politics.  Many will not consider us a real party unless we stand in elections.  A small victory would be a tremendous encouragement and a concrete example to show to the labor movement.

 

The pro-electoral resolution was defeated, due to the union block votes (although in the voice vote, the delegates were evenly split).  More importantly, the resolution forced this key issue to be discussed and debated.  A surprising number of important LP activists voted for the resolution.  Baldemar Velasquez, President of FLOC and National Co-chair of the LP supported the resolution.  So did Mike Ferner, who originally was against the resolution, but was convinced in the course of the debate.

 

Many lessons can be learned to help other LP activists prepare for their state conventions.  The state conventions should not take place merely to set up formal bodies and structures, but as levers to build the party on the ground.  We must organize, mobilize, have public meetings, and bring car loads of activists and regular people to these events.  State conventions are an excellent opportunity to start an intensive campaign to win affiliations of new local unions to the LP.  They are a great forum for LP members to discuss the critical issues facing the LP.

 

**********

Local Efforts In New York

 

As it turned out, not unexpectedly given the historic roots of previous labor party efforts, the New York State  Labor Party  organization became the flagship for the national organization  and there again the convention that established the state organization met and discussed issues similar to those raised in the Ohio discussions mentioned above earlier in the year. In November of 1997 120 delegates and observers met in Schenectady to launch the New York State Labor Party. The launch of the state body on November 7-9^th attracted thirty union locals and a number of LP membership chapters from across the state.  A five person state executive committee was elected, and the body adopted a seven-stage plan to build the LP in New York state.  A UNITE official from New York City commented, “We were impressed.  This was a first for us.  I can see our local becoming much more involved in the future.”

 

 After debate the New York gathering overwhelmingly passed a resolution (see below) calling on the next full convention of the Labor Party, scheduled for Pittsburgh of November 1998, to pursue “a viable electoral strategy” and to establish clear “organizational and political criteria” for running candidates. 

 

 

At the time this resolution was considered an important breakthrough to get the national organization to move on the electoral front.  As one delegate commented, “This was an important breakthrough,” said health care worker Margaret Collins, “When I moved the resolution, I knew we would get support.  The union delegates were mainly rank and filers.  They understand that carefully planned electoral work can build the party and involve more people into our effort.”

 

Brought before the convention by the LP’s New York Metro Chapter, the pro-electoral resolution had called for an electoral strategy “independent of the parties of big business.”  However, an amendment moved by a CWA local – and carried by a large margin – called for LP candidates to simply “be members of the Labor Party and uphold the Party’s program.”  The debate revealed that some LP supporters still liked the option of endorsing Democrats or to involve the LP in fusion campaigns.  Several delegates spoke against the idea of fusion with “progressive Democrats” a strategy that has shipwrecked the movement for independent working class political action before. 

 

“We’ll continue to fight against the fusion illusion,” said Teamster member El Jeer Hawkins from Harlem.  “I joined the Labor Party because I want to put my efforts into building an alternative to big business politics.  If there are any good Democrats left, they should get out of their rotten party and help us fight for economic and social justice.”  Hawkins recently helped set up a LP committee in Harlem as part of the NY Metro Chapter.

 

 

One of the high points of the Schenectady conference was the keynote speech made by Noel Beasley, a leading UNITE trade unionist from the Midwest.  Beasley called on the Labor Party to remember the efforts of Eugene Debs, the great socialist leader, on behalf of the working class and explained how his ideas are relevant to the struggles of workers today.  The fight to wrest control of government from the established political parties will be difficult, Beasley said.  Moreover, “We have to create a culture of struggle where it is assumed we will fight, where it is expected we will fight and, most importantly, that we enjoy the fight.”

 

Many delegates commented on the open and democratic nature of the convention.  In a week when the New York Central Labor Council and most of the City’s unions had endorsed the re-election of Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the launch of the New York State Labor Party was a clear message away from normal bourgeois politics.  The new President of the New York LP, CWA 1180 President Arthur Cheliotes, an outspoken critic of Giuliani.  In a New York Chief Leader article covering the convention, Cheliotes commented, “I am more convinced than ever that this is a serious and viable effort… With the two major parties proving incapable of really representing working people’s needs, the facts are clear: labor needs a political voice, working people demand political representation, and labor activists confront the responsibility that flows from that.”

 

Text of the Amended Resolution on Electoral Action

 

Whereas the founding convention of the National Labor Party decided that the Party would not run candidates for office during the first two years of its existence, and

 

Whereas the question of running candidates will again be considered by the Labor Party at its second national convention scheduled for October 1998, and

 

Whereas the founding convention of the NY Labor Party regards carefully planned electoral campaigns to be critical way to educate workers publicize the party program and build the party, and

 

Whereas the Labor Party has established an Electoral Strategy Committee to explore the electoral options facing the party,

 

Therefore be it resolved that the (founding_ convention of the NY Labor Party calls on the Electoral Committee to develop a viable electoral strategy for the Labor Party,

 

Be it further resolved that the Electoral Strategy Committee develop this strategy around clear political, organizational and legal criteria, and

 

Be it further resolved that this criteria requires that Labor Party candidates to be members of the Labor Party and uphold the Party’s program, and

 

Be it finally resolved that the NY Labor Party urges the upcoming second National Convention to debate and adopt a viable electoral strategy for the Labor Party.

 

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The Second National Convention In Pittsburgh

 

The 2^nd national convention of the U. S. Labor Party addressed many of the same issues as the inaugural Cleveland convention and the two local conventions, Ohio and New York mentioned above.

 

As the Second Convention approached labor militants took stock of what had been accomplished in the previous two years. The June 1996 launch of the Labor Party in Cleveland had been the culmination of years of work and preparation that stretched over the course of a decade.  The launching of the party represented a response by a small section of the union movement to the 20-year impasse of the trade union leadership to deal with the offensive of big business on workers’ living standards and democratic rights, the further move of the Democratic Party to the right, the passing of NAFTA, privatization, and anti-union legislation.

 

It was also a personal triumph for Oil Workers union leader Tony Mazzocchi and a small army of trade unionists, rank and file as well as leadership, who brought the Labor Party into existence.  The 1400 delegates adopted the Party’s Constitution which remained an important experience for all those who took part in that political event.  At the time, Justice supporters (now Socialist Alternative) commented: “Working people now have an alternative political party, organized and funded by organized labor and other workers.  Even though the party is still small and non-electoral, its formation represents an historic step toward the political independence of the working class.” (September 1996)

 

However shortly thereafter came the political equivalent of post-natal depression.  At times, it seemed as if Cleveland had never happened.  Many union officials around the Labor Party resumed their normal business, business that included committing resources to re-electing Democrats and, not infrequently, Republicans.  It was not that the Labor Party was low on the agenda; it seldom got on the agenda at all.  As a result of the limited momentum in the unions, quite a number of Labor Party chapters slumped into virtual inactivity, as many activists got back into the regular struggle-to-struggle routine, perhaps wondering when “the Party” was going to happen, and why wasn’t somebody doing something to speed things up a little?  There have been moments when even the most determined militants wondered if the whole thing was just going nowhere.  Over time it had become clear that a convention does not necessarily made a party and that there were no magic formulas that meet the challenge of building a mass working class party in this country.

 

The Labor Party’s First Constitutional Convention (Pittsburgh) had attracted the participation of considerably more unions than showed up for the founding convention, and a greater number of elected delegates, which was cause for momentarily optimism.  Over 1,350 delegates had registered, a figure that reflected both the ongoing appeal of the Party and the dogged determination of its active supporters.  It was also encouraging that many union locals were affiliating to the Party, and not as simple endorsers.  This meant there was a growing degree of commitment to the process, although much work needed to be done to bring the Labor Party to the shop stewards and rank and file of these critical locals. As one militant commented at the time-“Unions are good at writing checks, and no doubt the Party could not function without this support, but what it needs is more active members.”

 

The union locals and internationals that had made it to Pittsburgh to support the Labor Party were standing up for working class political independence, and their numbers were growing.   This meant  that it was necessary to set up organizing committees for the Party, helping local chapters with in-kind support, committing staff on building the Labor Party, and, above all, helping the Party get ready to contest for political office.  Finally breaking with the Democrats and the Republicans requires the creation of an alternative option.

 

The break with the old politics will only occur when there is something to take its place, and the responsibility lies on the shoulders of those who have the resources, the influence, and, hopefully, the trust of the union membership to make this a real priority.  Justice applauds the UE, OCAW & BMWE for committing resources and staff to Labor Party work and for affiliating locals and recruiting serious numbers of new members.  They have set the pace, and the success of Party depends on others finding what it takes to follow their example.  We also salute the active membership in the chapters, for keeping up the fight during the last two years, for doing the mailings, making the phone calls, debating the resolutions, and for investing enormous time and energy into building the Party.  With little by way of resources or encouragement, the Labor Party chapters have, in instances like the Detroit newspaper dispute and the boycotting of the scab ship Neptune Jade, led from the front. 

 

 

The presence of socialists in the forefront of many Labor Party chapters has provided the Party with much-needed staying power.  Even in the unions, many Labor Party activists are rooted firmly in the left.  For socialists in the United States, the formation of the Labor Party presents a tremendous opportunity to create the type of working class politics that will draw organized and unorganized working class people into the struggle for a better future.  While many workers are at present unfamiliar or perhaps suspicious of democratic socialist ideas, they will see on the basis of their experience, beyond the limited horizon of capitalism’s economic madness to the need for a society where workers and social needs come before profit and private greed.  They will seek a society where the working class has democratic control over the economy.  And many young people, especially, will only participate in the Labor Party if those with radical ideas are permitted to organize and express themselves openly.

 

All the signs indicated that the Labor Party at the convention would adopt criteria for running its own candidates.  Justice supported the Electoral Committee’s report.  However, this group recommended delegates support changing the proposed requirement that asks for a chartered state Labor Party to be in place before we can contest the elections in a given area.  Under the Party’s rules, 1000 members are needed for a chartered state party to exist.  This figure is too arbitrary and fails to take into account states with small populations.  For now, we feel that the criteria should require a “recognized” state Labor Party, not a “chartered” state party.  This amendment, while it removes the 1,000 member limit, will not water down the Committee’s report because local electoral efforts will have to generate enough support to run credible campaigns.

 

A more flexible approach to electoral work will send the right signal to all those activists who are trying to balance Labor Party work with other activities.  It will also help us in recruitment efforts, and give an edge to the soon to be launched Just Health Care campaign.  But the electoral move will not be a cure-all; it will merely be a signal that all of us need to engage our creativity and resourcefulness to the historic task of getting this Party ready for battle.

 

 

The Pittsburgh convention takes place at a time when the labor movement continues to decline in size and strength.  The leadership of the AFL-CIO seems to be failing in its limited attempt to revitalize the labor movement.  And many unions seem more intent than ever to collaborate with the employers and their politicians.  It used to be said that the labor movement’s political strategy was based on “rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies;” now it rewards its enemies because it has so few friends.  Despite the rhetoric, labor’s political strategy has been reduced to a thousand back-room deals with mainly incumbent politicians from both parties.  Federation leader John Sweeney said labor will support any politician, including Republicans, “who will stand up for working families” (!)  Will the AFL-CIO support Labor Party candidates who come from the ranks of our movement?  Will labor pump the millions it presently gives to big business politicians into the war chest of the Labor Party, a party of working people standing up for themselves?  Not without a struggle.  This makes it necessary for the Labor Party to continue to campaign inside the union movement and argue against the false and utopian ideas of the AFL-CIO leaders.

 

The struggle to elect Labor Party candidates, to become a national party visible to the unorganized and all those fighting injustice and exploitation, cannot be separated from the struggle to mobilize all of labor behind a program of independent working class politics and to build a movement of resistance to Wall Street and big business.

 

The outcome of the struggle to build a mass working class party will determine if the working class will be prepared to conduct a successful defense of its living standards in the face of what could be the biggest economic crisis of capitalism in sixty years.

 

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A Post-Mortem On The Pittsburgh Convention

 

The most burning question confronting delegates to the Labor Party’s second national convention held in Pittsburgh in 1998 was: What is the most effective way the Labor Party can become a party of 50,000-100,000 members?  The strategy of building the Labor Party (LP) had previously focused primarily on getting unions to endorse and affiliate to the Party.  LP workplace committees and community chapters had recruited new members by campaigning for the right to a job at a living wage and by organizing solidarity to local struggles.   But how can we reach a wider audience and recruit more activists?  The best way is to stand candidates in local elections in selected areas that meet the LP electoral committee’s proposed criteria of having significant amount of support from unions and the community.  However, there is one criterion in the current proposal that should be amended.  The proposal requires a chartered state party with 1,000 members to exist before candidates can run for office which is unfair to Labor Party activists in states with small populations such as Vermont.  Elections are the only arena with a large enough scope to build a party of 50-100,000 members.  The LP current strategy is centered almost exclusively on the recruitment of labor organizations.  But well-organized electoral campaigns would allow the party to break into the struggles and issues that affect communities and young people as well as trade unionists.

 

Challenging the big business politicians would open many doors to increase our membership and bring the program and message of the Labor Party to thousands of people.  It would start to give us more of a presence in the media.  We could directly debate with the corporate and political machine politicians and have much greater success at forcing them to address issues in our platform and above all allow us to be involved in registering new voters to increase political participation.  Standing in elections would give us the opportunity to recruit more people during the rare time in this largely apolitical country when most people think and talk about politics.  If we select a number of areas and set a realistic goal of winning 15-30% of the vote and campaign to reach that goal, then it will be a tremendous encouragement and a concrete example to show the labor movement.  Running candidates would allow the Labor Party to go to union locals and Central Labor Councils to ask for endorsements and support and explain why they need to break with the Democratic Party.

 

 

The main argument against running candidates is that we have to recruit more people before we can take on an electoral system that is dominated by the corporations.  This argument assumes that the first time we run candidates, we will fail if we don’t get into office.  Realistically, it will be difficult to get a majority of the vote in a local area in one year if so few people have even heard of the Labor Party.

 

Another argument against running candidates is that the LP will lose all its finances because laws supposedly prohibits unions from donating to a political party that runs candidates.  However, at least three first-rate labor lawyers have been consulted on this issue, and they agree that unions can contribute financially to the Labor Party as a whole, but unions cannot support a particular candidate.  Polls in 1992 and 1994 showed that majorities as high as 63% of eligible voters would support a new party.  More than half of eligible voters did not even bother to vote in the 1996 presidential elections, which was the lowest turn-out since 1921 and preliminary results of the November ’98 midterm elections showed the trend of very low participation continuing as people see no real alternatives.  If the Labor Party does not act, candidates like Jesse “the Body” Ventura in Minnesota will move to exploit the anger that is developing against the politicians of big business.  An electoral strategy is not a panacea. F or example following the flawed examples of the New Party or the misnamed “Working Families Party” to endorse Democrats through a different party label would be disastrous for the Labor Party as it would identify the Party with the political establishment rather than highlighting the need for independent working class politics and candidates.  If the electoral resolution is passed at this Convention, the Labor Party will be taking an important step in the right direction and will open the way for local activists, chapters and unions to begin to put together the necessary forces for a working class political alternative.

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New York City Labor Party Woes

 

Troubles in the key New York City Labor party presaged further difficulties:

 

 

The NY Metro chapter of the Labor Party had a hotly contested election for the Executive Committee in November 1999.  The Metro Chapter was the largest chapter of the Labor Party with over 1,000 members  (there were over 50 delegates at the Pittsburgh  convention) and had a record of playing a trailblazing role in terms of initiatives, campaigns, public events and politics in the party.

 

The election was marred by fraud and a conscious violation of any sense of democratic process by a grouping (called New Directions—no relation to the genuine union opposition group that exists in the Transit Workers Union in New York) that in the end succeeded in defeating the former majority in the Executive Committee (who ran as the United Action slate) after an intense campaign.  Several members of Socialist Alternative and supporters of Justice ran and campaigned for the United Action slate.

 

Suspicions of fraud were aroused when the night before ballots were to be sent out; (November 12) membership coupons for scores of new members were handed to the Chapter’s Election committee.  A large portion of these—77—were the recruits of one individual candidate of New Directions, who had no record of recruiting anyone before becoming a candidate.

 

A group of United Action supporters visited those new “members” to try to give them election materials only to discover that the “recruits” included children as young as one year old, 7 years old, ten years old, instances of an address where 8 of the new recruits ostensibly lived there but there was only one person actually living there, and people who had no clue about being members of the Labor Party other than they knew or were related to the New Directions candidate.

 

A report detailing the fraud was produced with the findings and was sent to the National Office, the NY State Labor Party Council and the Election Committee demanding that action be taken against it in December.  At the same time, United Action and Justice supporters spread the word of what was happening and the need to organize the membership of the chapter to fight against it.  A United Action Bulletin was produced in the beginning of January and sent to all the members in the chapter detailing the situation and asking members to take action and join the opposition to the fraudulent election.

 

National Organizer Tony Mazzochi reacted to the report by deferring to the Election Committee, and the NY State Council ordered that the count go ahead along the lines of a union election, with the right to challenge ballots.

 

Two members of the Election Committee argued sharply that New Directions and the one candidate in particular was deliberately violating all standards of democratic process.  They were in the minority as the Election Committee chair demanded “proof” in order to separate the ballots that were challenged on reasonable grounds before the count.

 

The Election Committee chair, Larry Adams, (President of Mailhandlers Union Local 300) accepted only 8 challenges from the 77 from one New Directions candidate, ignoring the pattern of fraud indicated by the revelation that children and one dead person actually voted in the election, that most of the ballots were mailed the same day and from the same location, etc.  The result, in which New Directions candidates elected all 17 of their slate by an average differential of about 60 votes, was indelibly tainted and strongly suggests that they had to resort to these methods in order to steal the election.

 

Political Differences

 

While for some of the members in the chapter it appeared as if the dispute was over who was going to get elected and feuding groups of activists, the reality is that there are substantive political differences—mainly relating to the role and the political direction of the Metro Chapter, and the Labor Party as a whole.

 

These issues were brought up in the United Action caucus Bulletin which explained: “we believe that the issues we will be taking up—complete independence from the Democrats, the need for a Labor Party that runs candidates, and a more determined approach to party building—will only be advanced if members are organized to fight around those issues within the chapter… and against those who have an altogether different agenda—‘fusion’ politics, stunted discussion and sanitized forms of activism.”

 

This could be seen in the election material published by the two slates during the election.  The New Directions literature nowhere mentions anything about running candidates.  In one of the flyers, “Five Ways to Alienate the Labor Movement” they complain about discussion in the Chapter to picket the “Central Labor Council because it endorsed Giuliani; Organize a campaign to ‘call on’ DC 37 to rescind its Gore endorsement,” and complained about a flyer which explained to public sector workers that “our unions have rolled over at contract time.”  New Direction clearly did not think that speaking about these issues to union members in the chapter and beyond was appropriate.  Their approach is determined by an acceptance and compliance with the policies of the existing conservative union leadership in the City.

 

Despite the absence of any significant union support and the outright hostility of a large section of union officials (who remain firmly embedded in the Democratic Party and even supported the right-wing Republican Mayor Giuliani for mayor because it looked like he was going to win) the Metro Chapter managed to grow and create a political space in New York at a time of retreat, defeats for labor, student and community movement.

 

This was possible because of the support, hard work and leadership of a number of socialists, supporters of this newspaper, and other activists who were prepared to campaign for the idea of an independent political party of the working class since before the LP was established and helped promote the idea that led to the creation of Labor Party Advocates—years ago and later the founding of the Labor Party.

 

Among the achievements of the Metro Chapter was not only the membership growth, but also the organizing of regular political events, organizing support for strikes and international struggles, (including support for Mumia, support for the Liverpool dock workers, campaign and support for the Detroit News workers, the Transit Workers in New York, tenant struggles, support for postal workers, and many more.)  Several campaigns and high-profile events were organized including an event on the need for single payer healthcare and more recently and event commemorating labor martyr Karen Silkwood which was attended by 700 people.

 

Campaigning for an Electoral Strategy

 

Since the beginning of last year, United Action activists in the chapter moved in the direction of building local groups in Brooklyn, Queens and other areas with a view of preparing the ground for electoral work in the 2001 elections for City Council.  In terms of New York politics, the Chapter produced leaflets and material that called on public sector and other workers to reject the bankrupt strategy of the leadership of the Central Labor Council and major unions in the city of support for the Democrats or Republicans and opposed the endorsement without discussion of Al Gore, for president and Hillary Clinton for senator by major unions in the city.

 

It was in reality this course of action taken by the chapter that New Directions and their backroom supporters are opposed to.  As they explained in their various speeches and campaign literature, opposing union officials because of their public stance on issues, may ‘alienate’ them and they will not look favorably toward joining the Labor Party!  (Incidental to the kind of union officials New Directions is looking to appeal to was Lou Albano, from AFSCME Local DC 37 who was involved in fraud in his own local when he was challenged by a reform slate a couple of years ago.)

 

The handful of unions that support the Labor Party in New York (CWA Local 1180, OSA) have been lukewarm in their support.  At the last convention, they were at the forefront arguing as campaigning for the Labor Party to adopt a ‘fusion’ plank in order to endorse ‘progressive’ Democrats, presumably the way the Working Families Party is doing with Hillary Clinton for the senate race (after ‘tactically’ endorsing the darling of the real estate industry Peter Vallone for governor last year).  This would have been the kiss of death for a party that aims to organize independently and on the basis of a working class program.  At the convention, the Metro chapter was in clear opposition to the NY union officials who support the Labor Party, but also continue to be involved in the Democratic Party, the New Party and the Working Families Party (which have now merged in NY).  The Chair of the NY State Labor Party Arthur Cheliotes (CWA local 1180) is also very active with the Working Families Party.

 

The possibility that the Metro chapter would be campaigning to run credible campaigns for the city council represented a serious threat to all those who see the Labor Party as more or less an educational effort, that would be better off keeping a low, non-confrontational and non-electoral profile.  Naturally, such a strategy would hardly keep the interest of activists and would tend to lead the party into stagnation at best.

 

Another key issue that brought the New Directions grouping together was their conscious and well-organized redbaiting campaign against organized socialists and leftists who have been in the leadership of the chapter for a long time and have a record of building the party.  Having no serious political record of achievements in building the party, New Directions retreated in this time-honored, bankrupt method of political struggle in order to confuse, create suspicion and divert from the issues.  In one of their campaign flyers, the New Directions slate argued: “We come together in respect for democratic process, working for an effective multi-tendency chapter that no single organization can dominate or use for its own purposes.”  This was a mild rendition of their long-standing orchestrated campaign against supporters of Justice and Socialist Alternative (formerly Labor Militant) in the chapter.  But they have no evidence either of domination or “use for its own purposes.”  As for New Directions respect for democratic process, their involvement with fraud in this election, says it all.

 

Responding to the redbaiting, United Action states in its principles: “We stand for the right of individual socialists and socialist groups to be constructively engaged in building the Labor Party.  We are absolutely opposed to the redbaiting, back-stabbing and innuendo aimed at other Party members.”

 

The fact that nominal socialists, including members of Solidarity, lent a left cover to the redbaiting campaign—probably believing that this will serve them to get closer to the good graces of union officials—shows how easily people can lose their way and how easily the lessons of the past can be forgotten.  They forget that to this day we are paying the price for the redbaiting campaigns against the left in the unions from decades ago.  Furthermore, if these methods can be used against one group, they will be used again when the time is right against another, opening the door for bureaucratization and destruction of democratic debate and political rights in the party.

 

On a Destructive Course

 

New Directions and their backers are unlikely to stop their destructive course.  In fact they are now bound to go to the offensive to undermine precisely the kind of politics Metro Chapter has campaigned for.  Supporters of Justice, the United Action caucus and other activists will continue to fight against the policies and methods of the New Directions caucus.  The real struggle will be to find ways to continue the campaigns that the Labor Party has launched on healthcare, workers’ rights, and local organizing committees, which can prepare the way for electoral initiatives to be taken in New York.

 

After failing to intervene on the issue of the fraud, Labor Party national organizer, Tony Mazzocchi, announced the formation of a committee of union officials to investigate the situation in the Metro Chapter in New York.  But as a result of Tony Mazzocchi’s inaction, the election result has been allowed to stand.  There will be further appeals against the election result in the coming months.  However, little confidence can be placed in this committee because there is no rank and file representation, no representation from the United Action slate and some members of the committee are hostile to the previous leadership of the chapter.

 

The key issue is to clarify the political questions raises, educate end recruit new members who want to see the Labor Party in New York and nationally develop and build a real working class alternative to the parties of the bosses.  Furthermore, these struggles inside the Labor Party will continue to occur.

 

Inevitably there would be conflict over the direction and program of the party between those seeking to pull the party in a conservative direction and against the influence of socialist and radical ideas in the party.  Socialists, while welcoming the participation of more unions and new members in the Labor Party, will continue to campaign for a clear program that can take the class struggle forward in the US, and explain the need for democracy and freedom of expression in the party.

 

The Labor Party will only be able to grow and attract mass support if it shows that it is not a bureaucratic, top-down organization run in a similar way as the unions which repels many young people and activists.

 

Justice and Socialist Alternative will continue to support and collaborate with all who want to build the Labor Party in New York and other cities because it represents a genuine step forward for working class people, and will continue to make constructive proposals and recommendations about what is the best course to build a working class political alternative.  Members of the Labor Party across the country should be informed about the events in the NY elections and should send letters to the National Office to overturn the fraudulent election result.

 

New York Metro Chapter Suspended by State Executive Committee-How NOT to Build the Labor Party

 

In May 2000, the New York Labor Party State Executive Committee suspended the New York Metro Chapter of the Labor Party, the largest Labor Party chapter in the country.  This action constitutes a serious violation of democratic rights and internal democracy that will affect all local chapters around the country

 

In response, we have launched a campaign among NY Metro Chapter members and suspended officers to lift the suspension and re-establish the democratic rights of all members.  Members of the chapters have asked Labor Party members and all chapters to send letters of protest and resolution against the suspension to the Interim National Council before it meets in July.

 

The suspension of the 900-member NY Metro Chapter came after a period of intense conflict about the political direction of the party in New York.  The struggle came to a head last Fall during a sharply-contested election for chapter Executive Committee.

 

Members of the United Action Slate, including several members of Socialist Alternative and supporters of Justice newspaper, documented and exposed that infants, children, phantom members and at least one dead person voted for the New Directions slate.

 

At this time, no investigation has been conducted either by the Election Convention majority or the national office.  The formal appeal presented to the State executive in early January has not been considered and there are neither plans nor any stated intentions to do so.  In January, we made a formal appeal to the State executive, but it has not yet been considered.

 

In early March, a special Commission met to discuss in the chapter.  This report released on March 28, noted that “New Directions supporters… clearly engaged in questionable practices to advance their immediate agenda.”  These practices, said the Commission, “shed discredit on the Labor Party and they must be condemned.”  New Directions won 17 of the 20 slots in the election.

 

The fraud factor clearly determined the outcome of this election, but the State Executive Committee and the National Organizer of the Labor Party Tony Mazzocchi did not attempt to protect the rights of the membership on this crucial issue.

 

The NY LP State Executive Committee announced in early May that membership meetings would be suspended and elected delegates would be banned from attending the state convention in May.

 

In response the State Executive announced that it would recognize members of the fraudulently elected Executive Committee of the chapter!  The State Executive Committee refused to circulate the Commission’s report and put a gag order on any member who wanted to discuss their actions.

 

A number of banned delegates elected at the April membership meeting organized a protest outside the State Convention and talked to other delegates about the situation in the chapter.  We pointed out that the actions of the State Executive Committee violate article VIII.4 of the NYLP’s own bylaws (Membership Bill of Rights) which states that “Members shall not be restricted in the exercise of their rights to freedom of speech concerning the operation of the NY Labor Party and its related bodies.  Active and open discussion of party affairs and the expressions of Members’ views shall be protected within the party.”

 

Furthermore, the NY State Executive prohibited the attendance of any delegates who are not EC members.  At the Metro Chapter meeting on April 7, 60 members of the Chapter elected 14 delegates to the state convention, according to the chapter and state party bylaws

 

The State Convention

 

In May, the state convention of the Labor Party attracted approximately 40 people, including guests.  By contrast, two years ago over 100 delegates and observers from several chapters and affiliated unions from across the state attended.

 

The former chair of the NY State Labor Party, Arthur Cheliotes, announced recently his intention to run with the Working Families Party, a pressure group supporting the Democratic Party.  Another officer of the State Labor Party, Howard Botwinick, refused to run for re-election or attend the May Convention.  There are no functioning organizations (chapters, etc.) of the Labor Party in upstate New York, and the unions that have supported the Labor Party are now drifting towards the Working Families Party.

 

One of the featured speakers was Reform Party presidential candidate Bob Bowman (who among his other credentials is a rocket scientist who worked on the Star Wars program of Reagan).  He stands for single payer health care, and is “pro-labor.”  After his stump speech, Brenda Stokely, the new chair of the New York State Labor Party, pronounced that Bowman was a candidate “who all could vote for?’  The suspension of the Labor Party’s largest chapter in the country received barely a mention at the hand-picked Convention, despite the efforts of those who had been suspended to raise their issues.  Membership among unions affiliated with the LP has stagnated since the last Convention.  Clearly, state leadership is not willing or able to build the Labor Party in New York State.  In reality, the NY State Labor Party does not exist.  It will have to be rebuilt by the efforts of individuals and activists.

 

Sharp Contrast

 

Previously the chapter had risen to over 900 members and started to organize local committees to campaign on health care and workers’ rights.  It also kept the membership active through meetings, forums and events.

 

The United Action Caucus submitted a serious strategy to build the party, which included running local candidates.  It also called for an open debate in the labor movement about the presidential elections.  United Action Caucus campaigned for the Labor Party to run local candidates for the City Council as a way to build the party as a working class alternative to the Democrats and their appendage, the Working Families Party.

 

Thus, there exists an impasse in the Labor Party in New York and explains why the attack on the Metro Chapter is taking place.  The Metro Chapter is taking place.  The Metro chapter’s program of activism threatens the status quo of the labor movement—both inside and outside the Labor Party.

 

New Directions openly used red-baiting in the campaign for the Executive Committee due mainly to the fact that supporters of United Action are open and honest socialists.  These activists should be credited for the chapter’s achievements over the past several years.

 

Members and officers of the chapter launched a campaign to immediately re-instate the Metro Chapter’s officers and bylaws.

 

We plan to mail the Commission’s findings to the chapter membership, and will convene a full membership meeting of the Metro Chapter to discuss all proposals pertaining to the chapter and the party for debate and a democratic vote.

 

Despite the suspension of democratic rights, the State Executive Committee has not taken away our First Amendment rights.  Labor Party members will continue to meet and be active regardless of the status of the chapter and will continue to build the Labor Party and serious working class political alternatives in New York.  This can only be done, on the basis of a struggle to reject the false ideas of support for the appendages of the Democrats and to build a strong, democratic Labor Party and prepare the way for independent electoral campaigns for the city council next year.

 

 

 

Why the Labor Party Should Support Nader In 2000

 

The campaign of Ralph Nader for president represents an historic break in US politics.  It has created a new situation that contains major opportunities for the construction of a mass workers party, but also important dangers, which hinge on the ability of the Labor Party and socialists to effectively intervene in this process.

 

Ralph Nader, a member of the LP (Labor Party), is running as an independent, and is the only candidate to consistently defend unions, workers and the environment and to attack racism and discrimination.  His campaign is capitalizing on the unprecedented disgust with the Democrats and Republicans and is an electoral expression of the newly emerging movement seen in Seattle-Washington-Philadelphia and Los Angeles of workers and young people against corporate domination of society.

 

Socialist Alternative decided to give critical support to Nader’s campaign in February when it became clear that neither the LP nor the AFL-CIO was willing to put forward a workers alternative in the presidential election.  A real workers’ candidate would have been preferable to the campaign of Ralph Nader, a radical middle class populist.

 

Unfortunately, the LP leadership decided to abstain from this central event in American politics and refused to launch a serious campaign inside the AFL-CIO for the unions to break from the Democrats and run their own candidate.  The leaders of the union movement and the Labor Party refused to fill this vacuum to the left of the Democrats and give a fighting expression to the growing anger of workers and youth.  Nader and the Greens have stepped up and catapulted themselves onto the political stage.

 

In light of this new situation, Socialist Alternative calls on the LP to give critical support to Ralph Nader by launching an energetic campaign to intervene in this election, putting forward the LP working class agenda and a call for a mass workers’ party as the only real alternative to the Republicrats.  By taking such an approach, the LP could position themselves to capitalize on the anger of rank and file unionists at the Democrats, and deepen this mood.  Such an effort would open up a massive debate in the unions, greatly raising the profile of the LP and attracting around it the best union militants.

 

If the LP had conducted such a campaign earlier this year, it would have been able to pounce on the debates inside the UAW and Teamsters union on whether to endorse Gore or Nader.  By throwing its weight into these crucial struggles, the LP could have tipped the debate in the direction of Nader.  Instead, the LP stayed out of these crucial battles.

 

”Rules” and Reality

 

It does no good to hide our heads in the sand and repeat formulas, “rules,” and speak of “the constitution.”  The INC (Interim National Council — the LP leadership structure) was elected precisely for and authorized to take decisions on issues before the Party that are new and pressing.

 

This is also why it is incorrect to hold conventions of the LP only once every 3.5 years.  Standard practice around the world for workers’ parties is to have annual conventions, for the purpose of being able to democratically discuss, debate and act on sudden changes in the situation.

 

LP activists must not be distracted by technicalities — when rules get in the way of building a mass workers party, we must throw the rules out the window!  Besides, as activists have seen in the recent dispute in the NY Metro LP chapter, the LP leadership is willing to look the other way, or even participate in outrageous violations of the LP’s by-laws and constitution, much less the democratic process, if it serves their political agenda.

 

The Labor Party’s Electoral Strategy Put to the Test

 

Nader’s campaign has proven that the opportunity to build a party to challenge big business, the Democrats and Republicans, and fight for working people exists.  Nader has also demonstrated the invaluable role that elections can play in building a party, recruiting members, strengthening a movement on the ground, popularizing its program and raising its profile.  Nader’s campaign has disproved the contention of the LP leadership that you should not run for office unless you have an excellent chance of winning with the backing of the majority of the union movement.

 

Instead, Nader tossed his hat into the ring, with modest resources, limited union support and a few activists.  He wasn’t afraid to start somewhere, and fight to build from there.  Since he launched his campaign, he has raised over two million dollars, won the support of millions of workers and young people, and won the endorsement of the California Nurses Association, and the United Electrical Workers (both active in the LP no less!) caused a debate inside the UAW and Teamsters, and could well end up winning more union endorsements (most likely the Farm Labor Organizing Committee), and especially from union locals.

 

Nader has accomplished this despite his limited program and the middle class approach of the Green Party.  The LP, with a working class program and roots in the unions, would have gotten an even better response with a systematic campaign among the rank and file.

 

As Socialist Alternative (formerly Labor Militant) has consistently warned from the LP’s founding convention, if the party does not begin to step into the electoral arena it will become deadlocked, stagnate and eventually be bypassed by other formations.  We fought for the LP to run candidates to actively challenge the two parties as the most effective way, at this stage, of building the LP.  Without such an approach, we warned, the LP would remain isolated and cut off from real struggles and remain unknown to the vast majority of rank and file union members and working class communities.

 

The LP should have set out on a course of systematically running local candidates after its convention in 1996, gaining electoral experience and positioning itself to be the left challenger in the 2000 elections.  If this strategy had been adopted, the LP would have been positioned in 2000 to make a qualitative, historic breakthrough.  It could have become a nationally known political force, popularized its program and message to tens of millions of workers, rapidly increased its membership, and provoked a massive debate inside the unions, possibly leading to sections of the AFL-CIO breaking from the Democrats and joining the LP.

 

Instead the LP has been out-maneuvered by a radical, middle class party (the Greens) and a left populist, Ralph Nader.  The danger is posed that the Greens may consolidate to their program and party an important layer of voters (including many workers and youth) and the newly emerging movement that began in Seattle.  This will hold back for many years the struggle to build a mass working class party based on the trade unions.

 

It is in order to combat this danger that the LP must forcefully intervene in the Nader campaign, to win the best workers and youth to its program and class orientation.

 

If all this is true, then why do the LP leaders steadfastly refuse to seriously run candidates?  Because the leadership of the major unions affiliated to the LP refused to break with the Democrats where it hurts (in elections) and the LP leadership is mortified at the idea of provoking the wrath of the AFL-CIO leadership.

 

We need a fighting, uncompromising leadership that will place the needs of workers and building the LP ahead of all other considerations.  Building a mass LP will inevitably cause massive convulsions and fights inside the AFL-CIO.  This cannot be avoided.  We need a leadership that is clear on this necessity, and has the political will and strategy to face up to this reality.

 

For a Mass Workers’ Party!

 

The question of a mass workers’ party has now been concretely placed on the immediate agenda by Nader’s challenge in 2000.  If his campaign continues to do well, it will greatly increase the opportunities to break the unions away from the Democratic Party.  Millions will be looking for a new “third party.”

 

The movement will face an important fork in the road: will it stop short as only a single electoral campaign around one individual, or will it go forward?  Will it form a new, broad party that provides a vehicle to deepen and extend the emerging mass movement on the ground while continually challenging the Democrats and Republicans in the electoral arena?

 

Second, what will be the character of this party?  A middle class party with a confused program (along the lines of the Green Party), or a working class party?

 

The resolution of these challenges will be determined by the conscious intervention of those forces that understand the need for a mass workers party.

 

Socialist Alternative is campaigning for the creation of a new, broad, workers party to emerge from Nader’s campaign.

 

We call on Ralph Nader, who has enormous authority and prestige, to convene a conference after the elections, of students, unions, community, civil rights, left, and environmentalist organizations to form such a party.

 

We appeal to the LP, and all LP activists to join us in this effort.

 

The Death Knell -Labor Party’s 3^rd National Convention

The Fight for a Workers’ Party Continues -2002

 

From July 25 to 28 the Labor Party is holding its third national convention in Washington, D.C. However, there is a sharp contrast between the lack of interest in this convention and the excitement of the 1996 founding convention. The founding convention in Cleveland attracted 1,400 delegates from 9 international unions and hundreds of union locals. A number of enthusiastic union activists came hoping that severing ties with the Democrats and building a Labor Party could halt labor's 20 years of defeats.

 

Since then, only a slice of union officials and activists have even heard of the Labor Party. The LP has not been able to get its Just Health Care campaign off the ground, and chapter membership has dried up. Going into the LP's 2nd national convention in 1998, the party's newspaper was full of interviews and debates between LP activists about how to build the party effectively. This time, there are so few activists left that The LP Press did not run a single article about convention debates - just the invitation to the conference.

 

LP leaders explain away the LP's stagnation with similar explanations that "experts" use to rationalize low voter turnout - American workers are complacent and content; change won't happen overnight. But many Americans have stopped voting because they see through the lies and broken promises of both the Democrats and Republicans. In fact, polls repeatedly show Americans want a third party. A Gallup/CNN/USA poll on 10/27/00, for example, found that 67% of Americans want a strong third party to run candidates for national office.

 

What Happened to the Labor Party?

 

The LP's decline is not due to a lack of interest, but rather the LP leadership's refusal to run candidates. How can people take the Labor Party seriously if it does not run candidates?

 

While getting candidates elected cannot change society, elections can be an important tool to reach a wider audience and build grassroots movements in the streets. The LP will only be seen as an attractive force if it boldly puts its program out there in elections and leads workers in struggles that bring about real improvements in their lives.

 

Justice argued since the founding of the LP that if it did not run candidates to fill the political vacuum opening up by the increasing anger at the corporations and their two parties, then other parties would. The Presidential campaign of left populist Ralph Nader did exactly that. Nader's campaign was a major step forward for the emerging movement against corporate globalization, popularizing its basic ideas among millions of people, and uniting different single-issue movements into a common struggle against corporate rule.

 

When the LP failed to run a Presidential candidate or join the Nader campaign, it missed a huge opportunity to raise its profile and recruit from the crowds of 10-15,000 that Nader drew in many cities. Instead, the Green Party was the only large organized force in the Nader campaign, which lacked the working class base and program of the LP, which could have attracted many more Americans. The LP is also oriented towards the labor movement, which has the institutional resources and the powerful working class base necessary to seriously challenge the twin parties of big business.

 

The LP has not connected with most living struggles and movements. It has been totally unattractive to the growing anti-corporate youth movement (unlike Nader who won massive support amongst anti-corporate youth and workers in the 2000 elections).

 

The LP leadership's failure to openly and publicly oppose Bush's war on Afghanistan was a dangerous mistake. The LP should have taken a principled stand by condemning the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 but also explaining how Bush's war in no way represents the interests of workers and will only exacerbate terrorism. A fighting workers' party would win support by standing in elections and opposing the two parties' identical agenda of budget cuts, attacks on democratic rights, racism and war.

 

If the Labor Party is unable to maintain an independent working class position in times of war, then it wouldn't be able to withstand the enormous pressures to compromise with big business if it were to get candidates elected to office. Workers' parties in other countries have ended up carrying out attacks on working people because they lacked a socialist program and an independent class position on all issues. Either a workers' party changes the system, or else the system will change the workers' party.

 

Another factor in the LP's decline has been its lack of democracy. A key turning point was the shutting down of the New York Metropolitan chapter – the largest, most vibrant chapter in the country with over 1000 members. The LP Interim National Council turned a blind eye when the NY State LP body disbanded the local chapter because Socialist Alternative members had been elected into the leadership of the chapter and were preparing to run local LP candidates.

 

The LP's Relationship with the AFL-CIO

 

Many left-wing union officials endorsed or affiliated to the LP on paper. Yet they refused to allow the LP to run candidates because if it did, they knew AFL-CIO President John Sweeney would have declared war on the LP and the union officials who supported it.

 

A Labor Party would have to seize this opportunity to open up a debate in the labor movement, from the rank-and-file on up, on why the AFL-CIO continues to waste members' dues on the same Democratic party that gave us NAFTA, the WTO, and other attacks on labor. As LP polls have indicated, there is more support for a labor party than the Democrats or Republicans.

 

Instead, LP leader Tony Mazzocchi's strategy was to avoid this inevitable clash with the AFL-CIO leaders by getting a significant number of labor leaders to endorse the LP before running candidates.

 

However, history shows that mass workers' parties have only been built through titanic events and class battles, provoking crises and debates within the unions. Well-paid union officials cannot be rationally convinced of the need to break their cozy alliance with the Democrats. On the contrary, the AFL-CIO leadership will fight hard to maintain their links with the Democrats because of their overall support for capitalism.

 

The key force in building a mass workers' party will be millions of politicized and active workers and youth. Labor leaders have historically only supported independent workers' parties when they absolutely had to, once it became so popular among union members that labor leaders would be voted out if they didn't jump on the bandwagon.

 

What Next?

 

The LP's stagnation does not prove that things will never change in America. On the contrary, the formation of the LP (and the movement against corporate globalization, the Nader campaign, the Reform Party, etc.) are signs of the deep cracks in the two-party system. Since the end of the post-war economic boom in 1973, corporations have been attacking the living standards of the working class, setting the stage for social upheaval and the eventual emergence of a mass workers' party.

 

While the space has been opening up for a workers' party, the experience of the LP demonstrates that it is not enough to just sit back and wait for people to come flocking to the party. A workers' party needs to actively fill the vacuum and harness the growing anger at the two parties. This requires a leadership that bases itself on the needs of the movement and the capacity of workers to struggle, not the boundaries set by the top AFL-CIO officials.

 

The AFL-CIO should use its powerful resources to run independent candidates across the country in November. With a bold working class program, they would win the support of millions, laying the basis for the formation of a mass workers' party. The LP and union members should argue for this within the AFL-CIO.

 

The LP Convention delegates should also adopt a strategy of running selected independent candidates in the November Congressional and local races. On this basis, the Labor Party could become a pole of attraction to hundreds of thousands of the most far-sighted workers and youth seeking a political alternative. Otherwise, the LP will continue stagnating, wither away or collapse.

 

Whatever happens at the LP convention, union, community, anti-globalization, anti-war, LP, Green, and socialist activists should form local coalitions and run independent candidates as the next step in the struggle to build a workers' party.