“’This is something similar to what occurred in Gaza or worse, because neither observers nor journalists had access to the war zone,’ stated a UN source who asked for anonymity. The army acknowledges that 6,200 soldiers and 22,000 guerrillas died in the last three years of the longest civil war in Asia. The UN affirms that between 80,000 and 100,000 persons died in the conflict,” wrote Elisa Reche of Prensa Marea Socialista.

“During the war,” Reche continued, “the army had 200,000 troops. Now with peace, 100,000 are being incorporated… A strange peace it is that requires more troops than in actual combat.”

More troops are needed because systematic ethnic cleansing is now the order of the day for the Tamil people. Their Homeland will be obliterated by introducing more Sinhalese settlers. The same strategy, as John Pilger pointed out, that Israel uses against Palestinians.

This is what M.K. Bhadrakumar, an ambassador for India who served in Sri Lanka and other countries, wrote about the day after Sri Lanka declared victory.

See, they have already solved the Tamil problem in the eastern provinces… The Tamils are no more the majority community in these provinces. Similarly, from tomorrow, they will commence a concerted, steady colonization program of the Northern provinces where Prabhakaran reigned supreme for two decades. They will ensure incrementally that the northern regions no more remain as Tamil provinces… Give them a decade at the most. The Tamil problem will become a relic of the bloody history of the Indian sub-continent.

Ethnic cleansing goes hand-in-hand with the policy of imprisoning and mistreating hundreds of thousands of Tamils. For more than a year before its military victory, the Sri Lanka government enticed Tamils, wishing to flee the war zone, into so-called “welfare” centers or villages. Tens of thousands became “Internally Displaced Persons” (IDP), and are thus subject to United Nations regulations concerning decent living conditions, food and water, freedom of movement and the right to leave and rejoin families. All these rights and necessities have been denied them.

“Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy,” President J.R. told the Daily Telegraph, (UK) on July 11, 1983.

A quarter-century later, the current president is striving to fulfill his predecessor’s genocidal intentions. Mahinda Rajapakse has claimed that no IDP is held against his/her will and all are treated well. However, the few United Nations visitors—there are no official investigators into abuses since the Human Rights Council majority blocked such a possibility—who come to observe have quite another picture.

When UN’s political chief, Lynn Pascoe, visited camps in September he said people were not free or well treated… “this kind of closed regime goes directly against the principles under which we work in assisting IDPs all around the world.”

Rajapakse told Pascoe another tale about “free movement”. He said that detention was necessary because the army was clearing the area for mines, and it was still looking for guerrillas hiding among civilians. However, as the UN resident coordinator reported, and Amnesty Internationalquoted: “Under international humanitarian law, captured combatants…may be held pending the cessation of hostilities. Once active hostilities have ceased, prisoners of war must be released ‘without delay.’”

At of July, there were 9,400 individuals with purported links to the LTTE held separately from the rest of the population. They have not been released nearly half-a-year after internment.

Amnesty International also reported that the camps are clearly militarized. The 19-member Presidential Task Force established in mid-May “to plan and coordinate resettlement, rehabilitation and development of the Northern Province” is headed Major General CA Chandrasiri, who was also appointed governor of the province. All inmates are enclosed by barbed-wire fences, guarded and brutalized by well-armed soldiers.

“Arrests have been reported from the camps and Sri Lankan human rights defenders have alleged that enforced disappearances have also occurred,” wrote Amnesty.

“Sri Lanka’s history of large-scale enforced disappearances dating back to the 1980s, and the lack of independent monitoring… raises grave concerns that enforced disappearances and other violations of human rights may be occurring… Previous research [shows] that [persons] suspected by the government of being members or supporters of LTTE are at grave risk of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.”

“Although the government calls these facilities ‘welfare villages,’ they are effectively detention camps…” Amnesty International also reported that not only are people not free to move as they wish, women and girls are raped by soldiers, and people live in sewage, disease-infested conditions, with little food and water and medical attention. They die in droves because of these imposed conditions.

Women and children are especially mistreated, which was the subject that James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, complained about to Sri Lankan authorities, who then expelled him from the country. Elder described the “unimaginable suffering” of children caught in the fighting, including babies he had seen with shrapnel wounds.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had refrained from criticizing Sri Lanka’s government, leveling his critique only at LTTE for carrying out atrocities. But when he briefly visited one camp less than a week after the end of the war, he said:

“I have traveled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far the most appalling scenes I have seen…I sympathize fully with all of the displaced persons,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told CNN after visiting Manik Farm, the most presentable of Sri Lanka’s squalid and dangerous internment camps for Tamils civilians. The UN Chief has also promised international action regarding the heavy shelling of civilian populations during the recent fighting.

Out of the 280,000 IDPs after the end of the war (there were nearly one-half million over a year’s period), only between 15,000 and 40,000 had been released by November 1. Half of them, perhaps, have been ransomed. The Sunday Times wrote about “human trafficking at the internment camps.” Relatives were made to pay camp authorities in order to secure their release.

Future

A week after the end of the war, the LTTE communicated that several of its leaders were killed, but the organization would continue struggling for an independent Tamil Eelam in peaceful ways. July 22, the LTTE announced that its chief of international relations, Selvarsa Pathmanathan—known as KP—was made the new leader, and that a new strategy for a “free Tamil Eelam” would occur. On August 8, England’s The Independent wrote that Pathmanathan was under arrest by Sri Lanka and held incommunicado.

For us solidarity activists, left-wing organizations, and governments considered to be progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe that our task must be to press for the lives and rights of the Tamil people. Australia’s Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance said it well in its October 2009 international situation report:

Now the Tamil struggle has entered a new phase. The immediate campaign must focus on defence of basic human rights, release and resettlement of the Internally Displaced Persons currently held in SL government concentration camps, an end to murders, torture, rapes, and provision of basic housing, food and drinking water to the Tamil people under brutal occupation.

As a solidarity activist, who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to induce oppressive and terrorist governments to engage in a process aimed at peace with justice, I condemn all perpetrators of terrorism and demand they change tactics to ones that are morally in accordance with our ideology for socialism, for justice with equality.

I find that most, if not all, armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case with FARC and PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous struggle. They are up against, as was the more brutal LTTE, much greater military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. Remember the ANC in South Africa’s war for liberation. They committed much the same.

The main reason why I am on their side, why I have been a leftist solidarity activist and writer for nearly half-a-century is a matter of basic ethics. I define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our conscious hand—without being attacked, invaded, oppressed beyond bare. A moral person, organization, political party, government acts in daily life and in the struggle for justice with that ethic in mind. These are my thoughts on morality.

1. We act to so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under another.
2. In combat against oppressors and invaders, we do not kill non-combatant civilians nor forcefully recruit them, or use them as hostages.
3. We struggle to create equality for all.
4. We abolish all profit-making based upon the exploitation of labor or the oppression of any person, group of people or class. Instead, we build an economy based upon principles of justice and equality, one in which no one goes hungry, sharing equitably our resources and production.
5. We struggle to create a political system based upon participation where all have a voice in decision-making of vital matters, in local, national and international policies.
6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in each of us.

After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, which fortunately only lasted two years, it acted in a moral manner. Cuba’s revolutionary armed struggle was exceptional in this way. The Vietnamese struggle against the invaders of France and the USA was so conducted as well. There are a few other examples: the original Sandinistas is, perhaps, one.

I think that the key reason why so many millions of people the world love and respect Che Guevara is because of his moral stance, of his example as a just revolutionary leader. I conclude this all-too-long essay with these oft-quoted words from Che’s Socialism and Man.

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love… Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, the most sacred cause, and make it one and indivisible… one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

This problem is attributed to a fragmented, profit-oriented medical system that denies millions of people access to care.¹ While a national medical plan that covers everyone is desperately needed, improving the general health of the population requires more fundamental change.

Studies show that social inequality affects the health of populations more than any other factor – more than diet, smoking, exercise, and even more than access to medical care.²

Americans suffer the worst health statistics in the industrialized world because they live in the most unequal society in the industrialized world.

Poor health and lack of access to medical care are both symptoms of social inequality. In 1970 the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans took in 100 times the average annual income. By 2001, they were taking 560 times the average annual income. In 1980, U.S. life expectancy ranked 14th in the world. By 2007, it ranked 29th.

Inequality is built into and generated by the capitalist system. Capital is created when employers pay workers less than the value of the goods and services they produce. The resulting profit, or capital, is used to extract more capital. As this process repeats over time, capital accumulates at the top of society and misery accumulates at the bottom.

The strategy of divide-and-rule generates even more inequality: between men and women; White and Black; national and foreign-born; straight and gay; etc.

As social inequality grows, the health of the entire population suffers, not just those on the bottom.³

Inequality Kills

A study of 282 metropolitan areas in the U.S. found that the greater the difference in income, the more the death rate rose for all income levels, not just for the poor.

Researchers calculated that if income inequality could be reduced to the lowest level found in the United States, it would save as many lives as would be saved by eradicating heart disease or by preventing all deaths from lung cancer, diabetes, motor vehicle crashes, HIV infection, suicide and homicide combined!⁴ We would see even greater benefits if we eliminated social inequality entirely.

Consider the lives that would be saved just by ending racial inequality.

Without racism, death rates for Black and White Americans would be the same. Yet, every year, Black Americans suffer 300 more deaths per 100,000 people than White Americans. Compare these 300 additional deaths with the 2005 U.S. homicide rate of fewer than 6 per 100,000. Do the math. Racism kills 50 times more people than die at the hands of individual murderers.

Inequality kills kids. Forty-two nations have lower infant death rates than the U.S. The infant death rate in the capital of the U.S. is more than double the infant death rate in the capital of China. In 25 nations, people live longer, on average, than they do in America.

Inequality is so destructive that it can even counter the benefit of higher incomes. Studies show that poorer people living in more equal nations tend to be healthier and live longer than more-affluent people living in more unequal nations. For example, middle-income people in Britain enjoy better health than wealthier Americans.⁵

Men living in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries, are more likely to reach age 65 than Black American men living in Harlem. Harlem men have higher incomes than Bangladeshi men but live in a more unequal society. Black Americans tend to die prematurely from cardiovascular and other diseases that are linked with class and race inequality.⁶

How does inequality do so much damage?

Power = Health

A study of the highly-stratified British civil service found that health deteriorated as social status fell. This decline in health could not be explained by smoking, exercise or body weight.⁷ Income is not the factor, because professionals who earn less than non-professionals still enjoy better health.⁸

The answer lay in the surprising finding that those near the top of the power structure had worse health than those at the top, even though their life-styles were essentially the same.⁷ The only difference that could account for this is social power.

People with more control over their lives enjoy better health. Bosses live the longest, healthiest lives because they have the most power. As power diminishes, stress rises and health deteriorates. This relationship between social status and health has been found in every nation studied, including the United States.⁹

A 2008 study found widening differences in health between income levels in America. (Income level is often used to measure social status.) The nation’s poorest adults were nearly five times more likely to be in “poor or fair” health than the richest, and at every income level the wealthier group was healthier than the next lower one. This trend was seen in all racial groups.¹⁰ Michael Marmot, who studies the link between social status and health, explains,

Your position in the hierarchy very much relates to how much control you have over your life…Sustained, chronic and long-term stress is linked to low control over life circumstances.¹¹

Under capitalism, only a few people get to make the important decisions. The rest of us get no say over how work will be organized and how social resources will be used. We don’t get to decide if we will build more schools or more prisons, wage war or make peace.

Exclusion from decision-making is strongly linked with cardiovascular disease,¹² and the more powerless a person feels, the faster the disease progresses.¹³ Oppressed sections of the working-class suffer the highest rates of cardiovascular disease,¹⁴ because they have the least social control.

People with little control over demanding jobs are more likely to be overweight and have high cholesterol regardless of age, amount of exercise and smoking habits. By itself, hard work is not bad for your health unless there is also a lack of control. The most health-damaging jobs saddle workers with great responsibility (e.g. caring for patients) while denying them the resources required to meet those responsibilities (enough time to do what is needed).¹⁵

In Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality, Richard Wilkinson links inequality with health-damaging stress. Children show rising levels of stress hormones as their social position falls.¹⁶ Nurses who work under “unfair and unreasonable” bosses have higher blood pressure.¹⁷ Simply speaking with someone with higher social status will raise your blood pressure.¹⁸ The greatest damage is done to those who are put down and ordered around their entire lives.

Stress triggers a higher heart rate, a release of adrenaline, glucose and other neurological responses to help the body respond to a short-term threat. But when extended over long periods of time, they can harm the cardiovascular and immune systems, making individuals more vulnerable to a wide range of conditions including infections, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, asthma and aggression.¹¹

Solidarity is the Best Medicine

Human survival has always depended on the cooperation that flows from strong social bonds. People who pull together enjoy better health and longer lives.¹⁹ Strong social ties may explain why Hispanic Americans have lower rates of chronic illness than White Americans, despite having lower incomes.²⁰

Human beings cannot be healthy in class-divided societies. From birth to death, capitalism ranks people on a vertical scale, with those higher up being treated as more worthy than those lower down. The unequal relationship between bosses and workers is maintained by divide-and-rule policies that generate more inequality based on sex, skin color, religion, nationality, etc. These divisions rupture social bonds and generate sickness throughout the population.

Universal access to medical care would reduce some of this inequality. However, even the best medical system cannot eliminate the health-damaging effects of poverty, social discrimination, unsafe work, bad housing, poor schools and being denied the right to make decisions that affect our lives. To end these miseries, we must eliminate class divisions and all the other inequalities that follow.

Human sickness is a product of sick social relationships, and human health is a product of healthy social relationships. Replacing class divisions with a cooperative, socialist society would reduce the burden of disease and raise the level of health more than any other measure.

1. Hadley, J. (2002). Sicker and poorer: The consequences of being uninsured. Kaiser Family Foundation.
2. Wilkinson, R.G. (1992). National mortality rates: the impact of inequality? Am J Public Health, Vol 82:8, p. 1082-1084. See also, PBS (2008). Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?
3. Rosenthal, S. (2006). POWER and powerlessness, Chapter 11, “Divide and Rule.”
4. Lynch, J.W. et. al. (1998). Income inequality and mortality in metropolitan areas of the United States. Am J Public Health Vol. 88, p. 1074-1080.
5. Quoted in Bowe, C. (2008). U.S. society helping to make people sicker. The Financial Times Limited, February 29.
6. McCord C, Freeman H.P. (1990). Excess mortality in Harlem. New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 322, p. 173-7.
7. DHSS (1980). Inequalities in health: Report of a research working group. Middlesex: U.K. Author.
8. Cited in Schmidt. J. (2000). Disciplined minds: A critical look at salaried professionals and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives. Rowman & Littlefield, p. 103-104.
9. A discussion of American studies linking class and heath can be found in Schmidt. J. (2000). Disciplined minds: A critical look at salaried professionals and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives. Rowman & Littlefield, p. 103-104.
10. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2008). Overcoming Obstacles to Health.
11. Cohen, P. (2004). Forget lonely. Life is healthy at the top. New York Times, May 15.
12. Raphael, D. (2001), Inequality is bad for our hearts: Why low income and social exclusion are major causes of heart disease in Canada, North York Heart Health Network, Toronto, Canada.
13. Everson S, et. al. (1997). Hopelessness and 4-year progression of carotid atherosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, Vol. 17:8, p.1490-5.
14. Raphael, D. (2002). Poor choice or no choice?: Even more evidence links low income with disease so why keep blaming lifestyle choices like fries? Toronto Star, October 11, p. F6.
15. Kivimääki, M., et. al. (2002). Work stress and risk of cardiovascular mortality: prospective cohort study of industrial employees. BMJ October 19. Vol. 325, p. 857.
16. Lupien S.J. et al. (2000). Child’s stress hormone levels correlate with mother’s socioeco­nomic status and depressive state. Biol Psychiatry Nov 15. Vol. 48, p. 976-80.
17. CBC. (2003). Bad bosses bring blood pressure to boil: Study. June 24.
18. Long, J.M, et. al. (1982). The effect of status on blood pressure during verbal communication. Journal of Behavioral Medicine Vol.5, p. 165-71
19. Cacioppo, J.T. et al. (2002). Loneliness and health: Potential mechanisms. Psychosom Med May/June, Vol. 64, p. 407-17. Also, House, J.S. et. al. (1988). Social relationships and health. Science, Vol. 24, p. 540-545.
20. Cited in Cohen, P. (2004). Forget lonely. Life is healthy at the top. New York Times, May 15.

In a situation of negotiations between on the one hand the putschists and on the other hand the legitimate government and its allies in the Front, all this in the context of the presidential elections, what is the Micheletti de facto government attempting to do? Amongst other things, it is trying to divide the resistance forces and weaken the mass movement in the streets in order to gain time and legitimize itself through elections. However, all three forces, firstly the Front and its affiliate social and trade union organizations and followers in the street, secondly the two potential candidates for the presidential elections who are directly linked to the Front and thirdly the Zelaya government, have all further developed their unity with each other. Their combined tactics in this complicated situation constitute one of many examples exhibiting the rapidly growing political maturity and consciousness of all the components forming the resistance. All of these forces, far from succumbing to the usual imperialist tactics of divide and rule, are further unifying themselves. The resistance in the streets, the new political forces and the constitutional Zelaya government all complement each other.

From an exclusive October 5 telephone interview with Zelaya by some international media and reported by on-the-spot journalist Giorgio Trucchi, the following are excerpts:

Question: You have agreed to sign the San Jose Arias Plan or Agreement which does not envisage the main demand of the National Front Against the Coup, that is to begin a process to install a Constituent Assembly. Does this imply a concession by you? [The question is related to President Zelaya refraining from promoting the Constituent Assembly during the remainder of his mandate.]

Zelaya: The person who is going to sign the Plan is me as the elected representative of the Honduran people. The Plan has two components: my restitution in order to say No to coups d’etats; the Latin American presidents are interested in this so as to feel confident that the sovereignty of the people is going to be respected and that no military, economic and political elite can replace the will of the people.

The second component comprises the social processes and reforms and is related to timing….The Constituent [Assembly] is not a power of the President, neither of the de facto regime, nor any other group. It is a faculty of the Honduran people who, through a people’s consultation, can determine when they are going to do it. That is why the signing of the Arias Plan is consistent with my position in relation to the reforms that have to continue…. The decision to organize a Constituent [Assembly] belongs to the people who are sovereign…¹

In an October 14 interview with Front leader Juan Barahona and as reported by Telesur, in response to the question:

Another point where it will be difficult to reach an agreement is number 3, where it is proposed that President Zelaya concedes the promotion of a Constituent Assembly?

Barahona: President Zelaya has already said that he is ready to sign the Agreement of San Jose and renounce the Constituent Assembly during the period that will remain to end his mandate. We are going to respect this position of the President; however, we as the Resistance are never going to renounce the need to push for the Constituent [Assembly]…. There will be no elections if President Zelaya is not restored ….

I am very pessimistic [about the negotiations] and I do not have many expectations that it can reach a comprehensive agreement. The putschists are trying [since the beginning of the negotiations] to divide our delegation saying that there exists strong contradictions between the resistance and President Zelaya. We [the resistance] meet daily to refine strategy and seek common positions, but this disinformation campaign indicates that they want to make the dialogue fail and then place the responsibility on our shoulders. They have gone so far as to launch a campaign against myself personally saying that I am very tough [a hardliner] and therefore I am not fit for negotiations. In this sense, it is true that I am tough, because I will never be willing to renounce the rights of the people…²

In communiqué No. 28 of the National Front, dated October 13, it is stated:

…We withdrew our comrade Juan Barahoma from the so-called Guaymuras dialogue. Our comrade Barahona was acting as the representative of the National Front against the Coup in the delegation of President Zelaya in the said dialogue.

The delegation of the coup regime, in a typical act of intransigence to hinder the advance of the negotiation, tried to paralyze the dialogue by refusing to accept that our representative would sign accord No. 3 referring to the installation of the National Constitutional Assembly with reservations, since we wished in that reservation to have it recorded that our Front does not renounce nor will it renounce the struggle for this demand, which is the demand of the Honduran people. Conscious of the fact that this was a manoeuvre to cause a failure of the dialogue using any pretext, since signing with reservations was suggested by them in an earlier session, we decided not to lend ourselves to this and therefore we took this decision, leaving President Zelaya at liberty to substitute another representative that enjoys his trust. In that sense, the lawyer Rodil Rivera Rodil was delegated as part of the commission of President Zelaya in substitution for our representative.

The preceding signifies that the [National Front] left the Guaymuras dialogue and that we will keep fighting in the street for the demands that we have raised since the 28th of June; the return of constitutional order, the restitution of President Zelaya to his office, and the convening of a Constitutional Assembly.

We declare that we respect the decision of our president if he decides to sign the San Jose Accord, even with all its conditions, and we declare that we are in full harmony with him in regard to the demand that the coup perpetrators sign an accord by which they will abandon power, and the office of President of the Republic will be returned to him [Zelaya.]³

It was reported on October 19:

In a telephone message to a meeting of the National Front…[on October 18, Zelaya] called on it to keep up the peaceful struggle to restore democratic legality, broken by the June 28 military coup. ‘We will resist until the people obtain victory’… [and] stressed that the struggle will continue until we obtain a country with justice and equity, in a truly participatory democracy. The national directorate of the Front agreed [on October 18] and vowed to continue the peaceful resistance until the return to power of Zelaya and then go on to a national Constituent Assembly…⁴

There are two candidates for the presidential elections who are fully involved in the National Front:

César Ham of the Unificación Democrática (UD) party and trade union leader and independent candidate Carlos Reyes. Zelaya called on them both to take a stand against participating in the elections under the existing conditions which would lend legitimacy to the putschist electoral process.⁵

In an interview carried out by Giorgio Trucchi in Honduras with popular trade union leader and independent presidential candidate Carlos Reyes, the latter stated, as published on September 30:

“…If we the people´s and democratic candidates do not withdraw from this electoral process, we would be endorsing all that scaffolding [built-up by Micheletti] and weaken the resistance…”⁶

This position was confirmed on October 15 by one of the Front leaders Rafael Alegría who emphasised that Reyes will not be candidate under the current conditions in order to “…refrain from legitimizing coups d’etats or constitutional breakdowns…”⁷

On October 19, the UD party, the third most important of five political force amongst all tendencies in Honduras, announced that it is withdrawing from the elections taking into account that they are “unconstitutional without the restoration of the legitimate president, Manuel Zelaya…”⁸

This tendency developed even further on October 22. Even a section of the Liberal Party, a party to which the coup perpetrators are linked and one of the biggest political parties in Honduras, joined the protest against the elections. According to an interview accorded to Prensa Latina on October 22: “The Coordination of the Liberal Party against the Coup in Honduras confirmed that it will abstain from participating in the November 29 elections if there is no re-establishment of democracy in the country…. In order for the elections to be recognized by the people and the international community, the indispensable requirement is the return to constitutional order and of the legitimate President, Manuel Zelaya. The Coordination was created in the middle of August during a meeting with the participation of more than 5,000 Liberal Party delegates who rejected the break-down of legal democracy carried out by the military on June 28…”⁹

Despite all the pressures, on October 25, the National Front, through the voice of its Coordinator Juan Barahona declared that the Front met on October 24 and confirmed their position that “one of the agreements reached was to ratify that if President Zelaya is not returned to his position, there will be no elections on November 29 in the face of the rejection by the vast majority of the people…Barahona pointed out that the candidates running as independents, those from the UD, from the sections of the Liberal Party, as well as Innovación and Unidad Social Democrática parties opposed to the coup, have all anticipated their withdrawal from the elections if Zelaya is not restored…”¹⁰

According to a Prensa Latina report, in order to make sure that this orientation regarding the elections makes its point, on October 25 the Front met at the local neighbourhood base and then following the mandate received from this level, decided on October 25 that the 121st consecutive day of resistance will take place on October 26…” Of great political significance, in my view, is that the Front decided in favour of “the resistance carrying out a variety of initiatives in order to stop the military dictatorship from succeeding in its attempt to seek an appearance of legality through the elections.”¹¹

This constitutes one of the most important steps in the struggle since the coup; right from the beginning the Honduran oligarchy and those supporting them either directly or indirectly have been attempting to gain time, to stall until the elections take place and in this way “legitimize” the coup.

Since June 28, the Honduran people and all progressive forces including the Zelaya legitimate government have been developing their unity, political consciousness, organization and peaceful tactics with the immediate objective being the restitution of Zelaya followed by Constituent Assembly, the latter whether Zelaya is ever returned to power or not. The putschists have provoked a mass movement in the country to renew Honduras through a new constitution as the foundation. In fact the new foundation has already been built on a solid basis constituted of the people’s political consciousness and the innovative alternative organization.

For example, in an October 23 interview, Barahona declared that “Honduras completely changed, and we are going to inherit a very positive result of all this; an organization and an important experience. During these days of struggle the level of consciousness has risen far more than by means of a hundred courses on class struggle…”¹²

Honduras 2009 already has carved out its place in the most recent history of this small Central American country. It is bound to win, nothing can stop it.

Each country in the region has its historic moments which have proven to be watersheds in its respective history:

* Cuba, as the pioneer, is so rich in ground-breaking historical steps. Taking the most recent history, one can indicate the attack on Moncada in 1953 as the continuation of José Marti’s nineteenth century tradition, and its future development following the Granma landing in 1956, the Sierra Maestra war in 1957-1958, with decisive events such as Che’s historic 1958 action in Santa Clara which broke the back of the pro US-military dictatorship.

* Venezuela 1998 is now synonymous with the first electoral victory of Hugo Chávez, coming out of a long struggle by the leader and his movement, a year which changed the coursed not only of Venezuela, but affected all of South America. However, a coup d’etat organized by Washington and their allies in Caracas in 2002 turned into a disaster for the US and Venezuelan oligarchy when the political and organizational strength of the people of Venezuela exploded into a massive action. The secret to success, amongst other factors such as the support for the President from a section of the military, had as its basis mass participation as was explained to the author in a recent interview accorded by a Venezuelan participant who is now a Legislator.¹³ The columns of people coming from all over completely overwhelmed the coup perpetrators in Caracas. The political consciousness including the need for further organization took a leap forward in a just a couple of days.

* Bolivia 2005: Evo Morales as an indigenous trade union leader and his movement were hoisted to the head of the government in the wake of a massive and successfully organized involvement of a marginalized people; they discussed and acted upon election procedures and soon after a new Constituent Assembly as the basis of a new constitution.

* Nicaragua 2006, nourished from the tradition of the 1970s and 1980s but with a renewed political organization and tactics, Daniel Ortega broke through to victory in 2006.

* Ecuador 2006, the election of Rafael Correa as President proved to be the first step in a rapid succession of political events running into 2008 including a referendum on the need for a Constituent Assembly, the actual election of a Constituent Assembly and the successful referendum on a new modern constitution emerging out of the Constituent Assembly.

Honduras 2009 marks the watershed between the old and the new in this country which Zelaya attempted to remove from its position of being one of the poorest nations in South America, an economic and military colony of the USA. Honduras 2009 may continue into 2010, but the Honduran people will win, just as did the Cubans, Venezuelans, Bolivians, Nicaraguans, Ecuadorians and others.

1. Entrevista en exclusiva con el presidente Manuel Zelaya, en Tegucigalpa, Giorgio Trucchi, Rel-UITA, 5 October 2009
2. Telesur, 14 October 2009
3. voselsoberano.com,13 October 2009.
4. Raimundo López, enviado especial Prensa Latina, 19 October 2009.
5. Telesur, 17 October 2009
6. Giorgio Trucchi, Carlos Amorín, Rel-UITA, 30 September 2009.
7. Telsur, 15 October 2009.
8. Venezolano de televisión, 19 October 2009.
9. Raimundo López, enviado especial Prensa Latina, 22 October 2009.
10. Prensa Latina, 25 October 2009.
11. Raimundo López, enviado especial Prensa Latina, 26 October 2009.
12. tercerainformacion.com, 23 October 2009.
13. Lor Mogollón, Henrys, Deputy ,Yaracuy Province, in a private interview with the author, October 14, 2009, Montreal.

But, aren’t tough times good for union organizing? Unfortunately the answer, so far in this economic crisis, is no. So far there has been no rush to join unions, no mass mobilizations of the unemployed and no growth of militancy of any kind. Perhaps if the crisis continues workers will once again become militant, just like in the Depression of the 1930s when it wasn’t until five years into the economic crisis that there was an explosion of organizing, which included sit-down strikes, factory occupations, mass political movements and the creation of huge new industrial unions.
But it won’t happen without hard work.

The truth is the Depression only became “good times” for union organizing once millions of workers had lost faith in capitalism. The truth is unions grew along with political movements that claimed to offer alternatives to capitalism. And there is every reason to believe the same will be true today.

Why is this so? Because if workers believe in capitalism, or are satisfied by their personal situation under capitalism, they are more likely to buy into the ideas of capitalism. And joining a union is not at the top of the list of things recommended by Ayn Rand or the Wall Street Journal. In fact, ideologues of the system usually claim unions and collective bargaining to be an illegitimate interference in the “proper” working of capitalism.

In other words, organizing a union is seen as a challenge to the rules of capitalism. This is true despite the motivations of actually existing unions, some of which claim to be “just part of the system.”

The key to most successful union organizing drives is motivated members, both in the organizing target and in the larger union. History and common sense tell us that the number of people committed to union organizing rises and falls in inverse proportion to the popularity of capitalism. The more people are dissatisfied with capitalism, the more people believe another economic system is possible and unions can help bring about change, the more people will be motivated to put themselves on the line to build unions.

In other words, if we want to grow our unions, if we want to organize the unorganized, we need to focus on the flaws of capitalism and begin defining an economic system that is a realistic and attractive alternative.

The good news is there seems to be a vast and growing discontent with the existing economic system as shown by the opening this weekend of Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story and the popularity of books such as Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.

The more difficult task, however, will be describing an alternative that is both attractive and realistic. We need to develop a vision of a better system that can be a powerful motivation to do the hard work that is necessary to create a better society.

If people think capitalism is the best that is possible, of course they will continue to follow the true believers in the system. If people believe there is no better way, disenchantment with the existing capitalist system will breed nothing more than cynicism and a retreat to private spaces. In fact, that is the result purveyors of capitalism are banking on.
It is time for unions and our allies to offer hope that a better world is possible. Professing loyalty to a sick system that glorifies greed and promotes war will only make the rut we are in deeper.

It’s time for unions to regain their momentum by offering a vision of society in which one person one vote is the basis of both our political and economic system.

It’s time for economic democracy.

New Unionism: The union movement is the largest democratic force in the world today, by far. However, too many union members complain about bureaucratic behaviour at leadership level. Do you accept this is a problem, and, if so, what do you think are the root causes?

Dan Gallin: First, let’s get the problem in perspective. The level of bureaucracy in unions is constantly overstated. We have much less difficulty in this area than corporations do, for instance. Of course corporations are, by their very nature, top-down power structures – what could be less democratic than your average workplace? – and I cannot imagine anything as wasteful as some management bureaucracies. Similarly, think about bureaucracy in government, or in tri-partite bodies, or in non-governmental organisations. The difference is that unions, by their very structure and purpose, are consciously committed to internal democracy, and so failures are clearly seen as such. The basic structures of unionism are democratic and the internal struggle to assert and reassert democracy is always there. Trade unions have to deliver; there is a very short time span between demand and the delivery. Think of collective bargaining, for instance. Unions are constantly being held to account by their members.

NU: Are you trying to tell us there’s no real problem, then?

DG: No. I am not trying to minimize the problem. What I am saying is that bureaucracy is a pervasive feature of all institutional and organizational life. What, after all, is a bureaucracy? It is an administration, and all organizations need an administration. The problem arises when this administration develops a collective interest of its own, separate and eventually even opposed to the interests of the people it is supposed to serve.

This is serious enough in government, where the civil service constitutes a bureaucracy that can easily overreach its authority. In a democracy, the civil service is supposed to be the servant of the people. When it starts to act as its master, democracy is in danger.

In the trade union movement, the problem is even more serious because its administration, its own civil service if you wish, must represent people who have no other source of power than their organization. If this organization ceases to be responsive to their needs, they lose everything. An administration that builds its own power at the expense of the membership is betraying its trust – that is treason.

NU: If, as you say, trade unionism is inherently democratic, why is it that we hear these complaints about unions being run as dictatorships and/or oligarchies?

DG: Actually, there are not so many cases of this, in proportion. What happens is that we have some spectacular examples of organizations which degenerate and then become notorious. They are falsely represented as typical of the movement, most often in anti-union propaganda. But there is never any guarantee against an organization, even with the best democratic traditions, being hijacked by anti-democratic cliques or personalities.

The hijacking of the Russian revolution by the Communist bureaucracy led by Stalin is a classical example. After four or five short years, a vibrant, radically democratic, revolutionary mass movement started giving way to the rule of a bureaucracy which first asserted, then consolidated power by means of terror, police and military terror against its own people, on a scale not seen before in modern times. A whole new society with a bureaucratic ruling class!

How do these things happen? In order to work, democracy needs the active support of large masses of people at all times. In a union, this means the active participation of most of the membership. Democracy is not a state of being, it is an activity, it is in fact hard work, and it is a constant work in progress. You might say the same thing about freedom.

Most people are not able to maintain a high level of commitment over time. They are not organization professionals, they need to get on with their lives, as they should, so “democracy fatigue” might set in; especially after periods of great social stress. They might not pay attention to what happens in the organization for a time, routine sets in and the professionals take over. If the leaders are not trained in the right kind of politics, if they are not persons of the highest individual integrity, and if they are not supervised and controlled, they may start treating the organization as if it were their own property.

This is why it is the responsibility of every progressive and democratic trade union leadership to maintain constitutional and practical conditions in which membership participation and control is ensured and welcomed, without making conditions of participation too onerous for ordinary members.

NU: Just by way of clarification, can you explain what you mean by “trained in the right kind of politics”?

DG: Socialist politics, of course. And by that I mean the kind of politics based on the values that were at the origins of the labour movement and that made it great: solidarity, selflessness, respect for people, a sense of honour, and the modesty that comes with the awareness of being a soldier in the service of a great cause, a contempt for self-promotion, or “le refus de parvenir” as Monatte¹ called it.

NU: Do you think the Cold War contributed to bureaucratizing the movement?

DG: It certainly did. In a situation of extreme political polarization by outside forces, it is easy to lose sight of the original purpose of the exercise.

First, let us be clear what we are talking about. The Cold War was a conflict between States, between two blocs of States, led by the two superpowers of the time: the United States and the USSR, more or less from 1949 to 1989.

However, this conflict had nothing to do with a much older conflict within the labour movement. This earlier conflict arose after the October Revolution, when the Russian Communist Party created an International of its own and declared war on all other movements of the Left unless they accepted total subordination to its dictates.² That conflict became unbridgeable once the Communist leadership had moved to imprison and execute activists of other Left tendencies in the territory under its control, including its own opponents and dissidents. Under Stalin, this became a systematic campaign of extermination, with hit men spreading out all over the world to assassinate opponents.

It is small wonder that a majority of the Left, of all tendencies, became “anti-Communist”, meaning that they organized to defend themselves as best as they could against Communist claims of hegemony and terror.

When Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, breaking the treaty it had signed two years previously, the USSR found itself part of the anti-fascist war-time alliance. Despite past history and experience, much of the Western trade-union movement, which was predominantly social-democratic, was ready for organizational unity with Soviet bloc labour organizations. The result was the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), which was founded in 1945. However, it lasted only four years as an inclusive organization of the world’s labour movement (though it continued, and still exists, as a Communist rump).

The unity on which the WFTU had been founded was the temporary unity of governments, not a unity of labour – none of the contentious issues between the Communists and everyone else on the Left had been resolved. When the unity of governments gave way to the rivalry between the US and the USSR for world power, the artificial top-down unity of the WFTU also broke apart.

What happened then was a race between the two blocs to secure the support – in fact, the control – of civil society organizations (labour, youth, students, women, etc.), with trade unions as prime targets.

And now comes the complicated part, which must be clearly understood. The Western governments and the non-Communist Left suddenly had the same enemy. The conflict between governments – the “Cold War” – and that earlier conflict within the labour movement, became superimposed. For some, they became indistinguishable.

This is how the war-time relationships which some socialists – and others – had formed with the political services of the US or UK governments (among others) to fight the Nazis continued seamlessly into the fight for a “free world”, against the new totalitarian menace.

In reality, we were of course still dealing with two different conflicts and two distinct interests. One was fighting Stalinism to defend working class interests, the other was fighting the USSR as a rival imperialism to that of the US. These are hardly compatible positions, but the most difficult thing to comprehend in politics, especially if you have the knife at your throat, is that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend!

Despite the apparent symmetry of the situation of the trade union movement within the two blocs, the reality was quite different. In the Soviet bloc, the trade union apparatus was part of the government structures of a police state, and a fairly subordinate structure at that. Dissidence was treated as a criminal offence or as a mental disorder. So in that context, the bureaucracy issue does not even arise in connection with the Cold War — the whole system had been thoroughly bureaucratized long before. In its first decades, that system was impossible to crack from within.

The situation in the West was much different: here a three-way battle was being fought between the advocates of an alignment on pro-American policies, the advocates and apologists for Soviet policies, and those who kept saying that neither option represented working class interests and that the labour movement should refuse to be aligned with either side.

Those of us who held the latter position believed that the lines of cleavage that mattered most in the world were not the vertical ones separating the two blocs, but the horizontal ones between the working class and the rulers of both systems, a fundamental division cutting across both blocs.

This was not an easy position to hold. The pressures to align and to conform were very strong. Having been put in charge of the AFL-CIO’s International Department by George Meany,³ Jay Lovestone⁴) — the Dr. Strangelove⁵ of the labour movement — with his acolyte Irving Brown⁶ and the various AFL-CIO Institutes, were running around the world buying unions with US government money, in close cooperation with the CIA , and trying to destroy any organization or individuals that did not accept their line, whether Communist or not. They were not looking for allies, they were recruiting agents.

The Soviet bloc operators were doing the same for the other side, also backed by considerable diplomatic and financial resources. The result of this competition is not difficult to guess: it spread a culture of corruption, especially in Africa where the movement was weakest and most vulnerable, but also in parts of Asia, Latin America, Europe and the United States itself, where some labour leaders were co-opted into Cold War politics, although most had no idea what the International Department was up to, and did not much care until all these operations were exposed in the mid-1960s.

In that sense the Cold War was a very powerful factor of bureaucratization in the West: it created and strengthened corrupt leaderships who no longer had to take their memberships into account, it enforced political conformity, stifled discussion, suppressed dissent and isolated all radical opposition through ‘red baiting’.

NU: Some labour writers contend that the acceptance of Cold War politics, and anti-Communist purges by the leadership of the American labour movement, contributed to its paralysis during the conservative onslaught of recent years.

DG: Yes and no. It’s not that simple. True enough, after the anti-Communist purges in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the merger with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1955, the conservative elements of the AFL prevailed in the merged AFL-CIO. These people would later prove totally at a loss in the face of globalization and the conservative onslaught launched by Reagan, and continued by his successors, both Republican and Democrat.

But the problem with this story is that it exonerates the American Communist Party of any responsibility in these developments. The CP and its trade union activists are cast in the role of innocent victims. This overlooks the war the CP waged against all of the Left from its earliest days: first against the IWW and the socialists, then against the Trotskyists and against every other kind of radical group it didn’t control, and of course against most union leaderships, progressive or not. The CP did what it could to destroy the American Left and, like in Niemöller’s poem,⁷ when they came to get it there was nobody left to defend it.

This said, most conservative labour leaders didn’t need the Cold War in order to be ferociously anti-radical, super-patriotic and, eventually, helpless before the anti-labour campaigns of the Right. You have to remember that we’re dealing here with very stupid people. They may have been street-wise and cunning, but they knew nothing about the world and couldn’t think strategically. The roots of conservatism in the American union movement are very perceptively described by authors such as Daniel Fusfeld and Patricia Cayo Sexton.⁸) What the Cold War situation did, was to give people like Lovestone the opportunity to organize the right-wing of the American trade union bureaucracy as a base for a major international operation, and to isolate leaders of the labour Left, like Walter Reuther,⁹ Ralph Helstein¹⁰ and Pat Gorman,¹¹ as well as some good unions with a Communist history, like the ILWU and the UE.

NU: Did the Communists not at least denounce the clandestine right-wing operations the American unions were involved in?

DG: Not at all. Of course they would denounce operations like the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala, or of Goulart in Brazil, as examples of American imperialism in action, but there was never any exposure of the union involvement. The CIA and British government operations in the labour movement were blown open by Trotskyists and independent radicals in the mid-1960s. Then the New York Times picked up the story and it became a major scandal. But the CP had nothing to do with it at any stage. Afterwards, of course, everyone started writing about it.

NU: While all of this was happening in the US, bureaucratization must surely have been a growing problem in the European trade union movement as well?

DG: In Europe and elsewhere, for instance in Japan, the polarized politics of the Cold War also enforced political conformity and stifled dissent, but Europe is a complicated place with many political and trade union cultures, so generalizations are not very useful. In some countries Cold War politics played a major role in the labour movement, in others hardly at all.

Far more pervasive and general were the consequences of the war. Today it is hard to imagine the extent to which the historical labour movement had been destroyed, first by the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, then by the war itself, with the occupation of most of Europe by the Nazi armies and police. In most of Europe, the structures of the labour movement were wiped out, parties and unions of course, but also the entire institutional network that rooted the movement in society: welfare institutions, credit unions, co-ops, cultural and leisure time activities – everything.

Most of the leadership of the movement, right down to local level, had to go into exile, or into concentration camps, or died in the war. Many of the best people were lost. One of the important parties of the Socialist International, the Jewish Labour Bund,¹² was destroyed entirely, together with the population that supported it. No one had imagined anything like this could happen, and those who had hoped that the end of WWII would usher in another period of social revolution, a re-play of 1918, had lost touch with reality.

Superficially, the unions emerged in a strong position – after all we were on the side of the victors, whereas big business had collaborated with fascism throughout Europe and had much to be forgiven for. In fact, labour was far weaker than it appeared, and far more dependent on the State than before the war. That too did not seem to be a problem at first, since most post-war governments were pro-labour in one way or another, but it did eventually lead to the loss of the political and material independence of the movement and, yes, it did promote bureaucratization.

Whereas the pre-war movement conceived of itself as a counter-culture and an alternative society, at least in principle, the post-war movement made its peace with the “social market economy” and demanded no more than a better life within the system (full employment, welfare, social protection, good wages and working conditions).

In that situation, the leadership of the movement became increasingly unwilling to maintain a whole network of flanking institutions. If you don’t want to change society then you don’t need to build an alternative counter-culture or an alternative economy. Think of all the money you can save. So the unions concentrated on their presumed “core business” – collective bargaining with “social partners” – the parties concentrated on elections, and the movement lost its roots in society, lost many of its think tanks and educational institutions, and lost its periphery, a sphere of influence and protection.

At the same time, you had the surge of prosperity in post-war Western Europe through the Marshall Plan. An exhausted working class, after the deprivation and the sufferings of the war, started to get its life back and became gradually more comfortable over the next thirty years. And why not? But as it played out, as a major political factor, it created a problem the movement couldn’t cope with, because it also coincided with the rise of media empires, with television, financed largely by advertising. Our movement was not ready to compete at that level. This is where we lost the communications war. We lost our press and any independent expressions of working class culture, with the long-term effect of losing the culture wars in the 1990s.

Many of the issues of the vanished civil society of labour eventually got taken over by others (feminists, environmentalists, human rights activists, etc.), but that’s another story.

Then, in countries like France, Italy and Greece, where the CP was dominant in the labour movement, the working class became hostage to Cold War politics and political positions, as well as labour alignments. They were frozen for about thirty or forty years. In some other countries, notably Germany, Cold War polarization also contributed to deadening the political debate and distorting trade union priorities.

Finally, European unions have become accustomed to State subsidies, in general for specific activities, such as education or participation in a host of official and quasi-official institutions and meetings. Today, in many countries, unions would be unable to function without the government subsidies they have become accustomed to.

So what do you get? A heavily bureaucratized and passive movement, initially led by survivors, then rapidly replaced by complacent and arrogant careerists who are happy to depend on the State. They administer the gains of past struggles but are unwilling to conduct any new ones, opposing any ideas they have not thought of themselves and believing that nothing must ever happen for the first time. That kind of leadership educates union members to be passive consumers of union services, not participants in struggle.

NU: You said before that, as far as Europe was concerned, generalizations were not very useful. Should we take that to include what you just said?

DG: You got me there. I think what I have tried to do is draw a common denominator, a composite picture which applies in general but not exactly in any one country. For example, in the Nordic countries, except for a short-lived split in Finland, the Cold War had hardly any impact at all. In Spain, where the labour movement emerged from a fascist regime only in the 1970s, rank-and-file democracy is a strongly-felt aspiration. All of Eastern Europe is a different situation again, and a very complicated situation, with many cross-currents. And of course there are always exceptions. There have been outstanding labour leaders like Otto Brenner,¹³ Wilhelm Gefeller¹⁴ in Germany, Jack Jones¹⁵ in Britain, André Renard¹⁶ in Belgium. So, one has to fine-tune every national situation. But some will recognize my descriptions and, as the saying goes, if the shoe fits, wear it.

Neither do I want to idealize the pre-war labour movement in Europe. There were too many entirely avoidable and disastrous defeats. The leading labour parties of Germany and Austria had armed militias ready to fight which were awaiting orders that never came. The French Popular Front government refused to support the Spanish Republicans in the civil war, who, had they won, would have changed the course of history. Not to speak of the catastrophic Communist policies, in Germany, in Spain, all over. One needs to reflect on these defeats and learn from them. But even so, the level of ambition in those days was higher.

NU: You were general secretary of the IUF for many years, and active in the international union movement. How does the international movement cope with the problem of bureaucratism?

DG: With difficulty. You have to realize that the international movement is yet another level removed from the rank-and-file: the actual members of international trade union organizations, in a statutory sense, are national unions, not individual workers, so the international organization will reflect to a very large extent the culture and practices of its affiliated unions, particularly the large affiliates.

So, structurally, it is almost inevitably bureaucratic. The politics of the leadership, basically the secretariat and the governing bodies, makes a big difference. You can have an organization with a deeply rooted culture of militancy and a democratic culture, which will do two things: first, ensure that democratic practices are respected and encouraged in the way it operates, within its own governing bodies, and, second, encourage democratic participation within its affiliates wherever it can, for example through its educational programs, in its publications, etc.

NU: And then you have the others…

DG: Indeed. Again, it is a question of politics, of how you interpret the situation and, consequently, how you evaluate the union response required. If you believe that “social partnership” is an accurate description of labour/management relations, and that social change occurs through conversations between political leaders and experts – “social dialogue” – then you will invest your resources and energies in a lobbying operation. The privileged counterparts in these conversations will be the bureaucrats of government organizations and of employers’ organizations. In meeting after meeting, you will be bargaining about words, and you will believe you have won a significant victory when you have changed a sentence in a statement. This can go on forever, and no one will ever know the difference. The workers who are members of such organizations don’t even know they exist.

NU: How can workers, at rank-and-file level, learn to tell the difference between useful and useless organizations? Where does usefulness become apparent?

DG: Very simple: workers certainly can tell the difference when they become involved in a conflict. When it comes to conflict, the differences are very quickly apparent. And whether our international sell-out artists like it or not, unions are about conflict. Either the international organization pulls out all stops and the saying “one for all, all for one”, (especially the second part) becomes a concrete reality, for as long as it takes, or else the international organization starts mediating instead of fighting, tries to minimize and kill the conflict, even sides with the employer just to be rid of the problem.

NU: How does this relate back to the issue of bureaucratism? Are you suggesting that bureaucracy and politics are related?

DG: They are, very much so. However, the relationship is not a mechanical one. For instance it would be simplistic and wrong to say that left-wing politics protects us against bureaucracy. If we are talking about the Communist tradition, the opposite is true, almost always, and this includes Maoism, which is actually an extreme form of Stalinism. People who come out of that school are often dangerous authoritarians. Even when they change their politics, they don’t necessarily change their methods.

And of course social-democracy has its own awesome bureaucratic traditions; even anarchist and syndicalist organizations, contrary to legend, can be run in extremely authoritarian and bureaucratic ways.

No, the only form of politics which is an effective antidote to bureaucratism is the kind of socialist politics that contains a strong element of radical democracy. This goes back to Marx himself, but despite appearances, this current was never dominant in the socialist movement. It surfaces from time to time, a person like Rosa Luxemburg would be fairly typical, there were others within the political families of the Left. Eugene Debs in the United States would be another example.

NU: That’s not a very broad political base. If that’s all we have, is the struggle against bureaucratism lost in advance?

DG: No, because in fact we have very much more. The politics of radical democracy respond to a very deep and fundamental need felt by workers. They keep coming back to this on their own, and they very often spontaneously develop democratic forms of organizing, of conducting struggles, of running their organizations. Rosa Luxemburg understood this. This aspiration is very strong. That is the basic reason why the labour movement has such a democratic culture, despite all the pressures to the contrary from the society that surrounds it… the “old shit”, as Marx called it.¹⁷

NU: Do you see workers’ desire for deeper forms of democracy extending from union HQ all the way down into the workplace?

DG: Yes, except I would put it the other way around, from the workplace – the “point of production”, as the IWW used to say – to union HQ. It has to start at the point of production. As I said, this is a very fundamental need of workers, and actually very often of people in general. Think of women’s movements or peasant’s movements – in all progressive mass movements there is this demand for transparency and accountability in the leadership.

The point is to nurture and strengthen the politics of radical democracy, the particular strand of socialist politics which I believe is the authentic Marxism, which insists that power, where it matters, always has to remain in the hands of the workers. Today this means almost all of society, since nearly everybody is part of the working class, whether they know it or not. To get there, you have to start from the bottom, the point of production, and then build democratic institutions, like democratic unions, impose democratic procedures at every level, democratize the decision-making mechanism in public administration. We don’t want to abolish bureaucracy if bureaucracy means administration, we all need administration and we want it to be honest, transparent and efficient, in our own organizations to start with, then in society at large. We want an administration built on our key values: justice and freedom. These will be the values of the society of the future – if we make it that far.

1. Pierre Monatte (1881-1960) A proofreader by profession, he was a leader of the French CGT when it was a revolutionary syndicalist organization and, in 1909, founded its journal, La vie Ouvrière. He was an anti-war internationalist during World War I., joined the French Communist Party in 1923 and was expelled in 1924 for opposing its bureaucratization. He then returned to revolutionary syndicalism, and in 1925 he founded La Révolution Prolétarienne, which is still being published. “Le refus de parvenir” means: “the refusal of social climbing”.
2. The Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920 agreed on ‘Twenty One Conditions‘, which formalised the beginning of ‘the great split’: a split which was to divide the labour movement for the rest of the century. Note in particular: ‘In the columns of the press, at public meetings, in the trades unions, in the co-operatives – wherever the members of the Communist International can gain admittance – it is necessary to brand not only the bourgeoisie but also its helpers, the reformists of every shade, systematically and pitilessly.’
3. George Meany (1894-1980), president of the American Federation of Labor from 1952 to 1955, then, following its merger with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, president of the united AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1979.
4. Jay Lovestone (1906-1989), a founder of the American Communist Party, later leader of the Right-Wing opposition group (the pro-Bukharin faction) which dissolved in 1941. In 1943 Lovestone became international affairs director of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and, in 1963, director of the international affairs department of the AFL-CIO. He held that position until 1974 and as the main architect of the collaboration of the AFL-CIO with the CIA. For more on Lovestone, see: A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone, Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster by Ted Morgan (New York: Random House, 1999
5. Dr. Strangelove: the 1964 black comedy film by Stanley Kubrick, featuring a paranoiac American general launching a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, hoping to thwart a Communist conspiracy to “sap and impurify” the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people with fluoridated water. The US president in the film is advised by a “mad scientist” type: Dr. Strangelove.
6. Irving Brown (1911-1989) , chief lieutenant and hatchet man for Lovestone since the 1930s, set ujp”anti-Communist” operations in the trade union movement, mostly in Europe, including the notorious Mediterranean Committee, organized with the help of gangsters in French, Italian and Greek ports.
7. Friedrich Niemöller (1892-1984), prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the following lines (and variations thereof):
   “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
   Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
   Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
   Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
   
8. Daniel Fusfeld: The Rise and Repression of Radical Labor 1877-1918, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, Chicago, 1980 (ISBN 088286050X) and Patricia Cayo Sexton: The War on Labor and the Left – Understanding America’s Unique Conservatism, Westview Press, Boulder/San Francisco/Oxford, 1991 (ISBN 0813310636
9. Walter Reuther (1907-1970), leading organizer and after 1946 president of the United Auto Workers’ union, a Socialist Party member until 1939, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1952, negotiated the merger with the American Federation of Labor in 1955, eventually clashed with Meany over the conservative policies of the AFL-CIO and formed a short-lived alternative center, the Alliance for Labor Action (1958–1972) with the Teamsters and a few smaller unions. On May 9, 1970, Reuther and his wife May were killed when their chartered plane crashed while on final approach to the airstrip near the union’s recreational and educational facility at Black Lake, Michigan. In October 1968, a year and a half before the fatal crash, Reuther and his brother Victor were almost killed in a small private plane as it approached Dulles airport. Both incidents are amazingly similar; the altimeter in the fatal crash was believed to have malfunctioned. When Victor Reuther was interviewed many years after the fatal crash he said, “I and other family members are convinced that both the fatal crash and the near fatal one in 1968 were not accidental.”
10. Ralph Helstein (1908-1985), president of the United Pckinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) from 1946 to 1968. Under his leadership, the union, a CIO affiliate, became one of the most militant and democratic unions in the US. It organized the meat packing industry in the US and Canada and played a leading role in fighting for minority and women’s rights. When the UPWA merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters union in 1968, Helstein became vice president and special counsel. He worked with the union until 1972 and died in Chicago in 1985.
11. Patrick Emmet Gorman (1882-1980), a life-long socialist, International Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (AFL) from 1942 to 1976 (the Meat Cutters were an old socialist union which had a European constitution, where the secretary-treasurer, not the president, was the chief executive officer). Gorman opposed Meany on the Vietnam war and on many other political issues.
12. The General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, in Yiddish the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland, generally called the Bund (from German: Bund, meaning federation or union) or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a Jewish political party and trade union in several European countries operating predominantly between the 1890s and the 1930s with remnants of the party still active in the United States, Canada, Australia, France and the United Kingdom. The Bund opposed Zionism and fought for the recognition of Jews as an autonomous cultural community within European countries. In this and in other respects, it was strongly influenced by the Austro-Marxist school of socialism, and was a left-socialist party in the context of the Labour and Socialist International. In WWII it was active in the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation in Poland and in Lithuania, one of its leaders, Marek Edelman, was a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, and later of the Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) in 1976 and of the Solidarity movement. Two leaders of the Bund, Victor Alter and Henryk Erlich, who had sought refuge in the USSR after the German invasion, were executed in December 1941 in Moscow on Stalin’s orders.
13. Otto Brenner (1907-1972), president of the German metal workers’ union IG Metall from 1956 to 1972. In 1931 Brenner left the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) which he had joined as a youth to join the Socialist Workers’ Party, founded by Left Socialists and dissident Communists, too late to prevent the seizure of power by Hitler. Brenner became active in the anti-Nazi resistance, was arrested in 1933, sentenced to two years’ prison and kept under police supervision until the end of the war. In 1945 Brenner re-joined the SPD and became active in the reconstruction of the trade union movement. At the head of the IG Metall he played a leading tole in the defense of democratic rights and against rearmament. In 1961, he was elected president of the International Metalworkers’ Federation.
14. Wilhelm Gefeller (1906-1983), president of the German chemical workers’ union IG Chemie from 1949 to 1969, one of the founders of the post-war German trade union movement, active in the SPD. Strong advocate of co-determination in German industry and at international level, and of democratic rights. President of the International Chemical and General Workers’ Unions (ICF) in the late 1960s.
15. James Larkin (Jack) Jones (1913-2009), general secretary of the Transport & General Workers’ Union (UK) from 1968 to 1978. Throughout his career he strove to increase the power and influence of shop stewards. In 1937 he joined the International Brigades in the Spanish civil war and was wounded in 1938. Jones was also Vice-President of the International Transport Workers Federation and, after his retirement, was a campaigner for pensioners’ rights. His autobiography, Union Man, was published in 1986.
16. André Renard (1911-1962), Belgian trade unionist, active in the resistance under Nazi occupation,created an illegal united trade union movement independent of political parties and advocated its extension to the entire country at liberation, but could not overcome the split between socialist and Catholic unions. Deputy General-Secretary of the socialist trade union center FGTB, leader of the six-week general strike in 1960-1961 against the austerity policies of the conservative government. A strong advocate for the autonomy of Wallonia (the French-speaking part of Belgium).
17. ”…revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the old shit and become fitted to found society anew.” Karl Marx: The German Ideology, Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook 1845.

During the spring of this year the membership of LO-affiliated¹ unions fell to under one million wage earners. It was a symbolic mile post for a development which has been going on since the middle of the 1990s when membership began to fall after decades of uninterrupted growth. Some have on the basis of this predicted the approaching death of the trade union movement.

But is there a good reason for allowing the bells of doom to ring out over the Danish trade union movement? No, not yet anyway.

Membership figures and union density continue to be very high when applying an international yardstick, and seen with international eyes we have a uniquely powerful influence regarding the development of society.

The Danish model, in which the trade union movement and the employers play a central role, has, through the passage of time, proved to be a brilliant way of regulating the labour market. Those parties which have their fingers on the pulse in relation to the labour market and its challenges have a decisive influence on and a co-responsibility for the area.

But in spite of this powerful point of departure, the development of the trade union movement in a negative direction in recent years is unequivocal – and many unions are feeling the pinch. Union density is declining and membership is falling.

Consequently, to the best of my judgement in the coming years, we will continue to see a range of structural changes in the trade union movement. In my opinion, the union amalgamations which we have already seen between the Danish General Workers Union (SiD) and the Women Workers Union (KAD), to form the United Federation of Danish Workers (3F), will mean that in ten years’ time there will be 6-7 unions in the Danish LO.

As trade union leaders, we can choose to allow this development to take place on the principle of laissez-faire, in which structural changes spring up according to some relatively short-term considerations within the individual unions.

Or, we can choose to use the crisis constructively and create a range of long-term changes which can put the Danish trade union movement into line with the enormous changes that have taken place in the working lives of ordinary wage earners and on the labour market in general.

Let us start a debate on the development of the trade union movement. It is my vision that we, in the coming years, should work towards amalgamating the Danish LO-affiliated unions into one large single union: a modern locally-based union and an effective trade union and political actor.

I know that this for many people sounds dramatic. But when I look at the challenges in the coming years I believe that it will be the best way of ensuring Danish wage earners a powerful, future–oriented trade union movement in a globalized world.

My vision is the conclusion of how we best can address the four central challenges facing the trade union movement in the coming years. I will now attempt to describe these in more detail.

The first major challenge is the change to a far more flexible labour market.

A generation ago, you became a skilled fitter, then you probably worked as a fitter until you were pensioned off.

Globalization has changed this model for ever. Manufacturing moves in and out of the country, workplaces emerge and are closed down at an ever increasing rate, and the individual wage earner has to constantly educate him/herself in order to keep up with the demands in the new job or move to another sector or industry by way of re-training.

At the same time Danish wage earners are changing jobs more frequently. A generation ago you could quite easily be employed at the same workplace during the whole of your working life and retire with a gold watch and a speech from the director for long and faithful service. In the future 25th anniversaries will be very rare. Forecasts show that a young Dane starting work today will, on average, change jobs nine times before retiring.

The big problem is that the Danish LO, with its division into individual trades, is to far too great an extent, geared to the old reality. This is no new insight – it was in actual fact one of the reasons why six LO cartels were set up in the 1990s, based on sectors and industries: manufacturing industries, building and construction, local government, central government, the media and trade, transport and services.

But in my eyes this division is also outdated. Wage earners don’t just change jobs more often – they change sectors as well; for example, many of them who are being made redundant at the moment in traditional manufacturing industries are starting a new working life in the municipal nursing and health care sector.

The sharp division into unions based on trades or sectors is a relic from the labour market of the previous century, and it creates a lot of unnecessary problems for the trade union movement for being locked into this framework. The trade union movement is very inflexible when it comes to working across the organisational divide. Organisationally many resources are spent on transferring members between the different LO unions and every year the movement loses thousands of members in conjunction with change of jobs.

In my opinion, the best answer is to create one powerful LO trade union for wage earners which you can depend upon throughout your working life, irrespective of job, trade or sector.

The second major challenge for the LO trade unions is development of membership, especially flagging recruitment amongst young persons.

A generation ago joining a union was a matter of course. It was a natural part of a young person’s entry onto the labour market and part of that set of values related to solidarity and fellowship amongst workers, which were often implanted by the young person’s parents who quite naturally were members of a trade union. That’s what you did.

Young people today have a far more individualistic attitude to being on the labour market. They think more about their own career and their own opportunities in life – in many ways a quite natural development in keeping with a more individual and flexible labour market.

You can be pleased about it or bewail it, according to your temperament. But it is a fact which the Danish LO will have to address far more actively. Young people no longer become members as a matter of course and do not know much about the trade union movement and the labour market. Much more information can be given by schools and from society in general on the matter, but the main task lies with us. We have to earn every single young LO wage earners’ confidence and inform them about the advantages and results achieved by the trade union movement.

The alternative is that the trade union movement will be in competition with the DanAge Association.

Let me use my own union as an example.

Almost half of 3F’s members are 50 or over. In 15 years’ time these members will have retired, and if the present pattern of membership development amongst young people continues, then 3F in 15 years’ time will be reduced by more than a third – corresponding to more than 100,000 members. If this development does not change, then it will not be workers from Eastern Europe who are a major threat to the Danish model, but Danish workers under 40.

In order to address and resolve these issues, I believe we would be stronger having only one united union. In part we can strengthen our work informing young people about trade union work and undertake special campaigns and offers directed at the young people.

And in part the trade union movement will in this way gear itself to addressing the working lives of young people. Often young people will only be in a trade or job for some few years – e.g. Think about a young person who works as a bartender for a few years, or on the till in a supermarket – and, therefore, will not join a union in the sector in question.

And finally, for many young people trade unions seem to be a Babylonian confusion of unions, local branches, main organisations, unemployment insurance funds, and I don’t know what. Unfortunately this is not without good reason. As an example, it can be difficult to state what it costs to be a member of a union. It all depends upon the local branch and the sector you work in, etc.

In the coming years we have to put every ounce of our energy into strengthening organizing among young people. I believe it is best done in a joint trade union framework, in which we draw up a strong and comprehensible offer.

Thirdly, the Danish LO is facing competition from the so-called “yellow” trade unions, who entice people with cheap offers in the local radio and news bytes. In reality, they are not direct competitors, as none of them can deliver the major trade union product – collective agreements. It is only genuine trade unions that can do that.

But as many wage earners are being enticed by these inane yellow offers, we have to address them. I believe that here too the answer is to create a still-stronger, more effective, service-minded, democratic union. Our fundamental goal is not to run a business. The foundation of the trade union movement is its local, democratic trade union base, and this base has to be maintained as our strength.

By amalgamating we can get rid of the work duplication which takes place in the unions and in the Danish LO, and there would be considerable large-scale advantages to be gained in trade union methods of working and operating. It would be completely wrong to turn the trade union movement in the direction of being more business-oriented as a consequence of this new competition. On the contrary. Quite naturally we have to give our members excellent service. No doubt about that. But a strong united trade union has to strengthen internal democracy and emphasize that our movement is a trade union. This applies to the individual workplace, where a shop steward is elected among his/her colleagues, and to the position of General Secretary.

The trade union movement must be a strong and visible actor within local society, with membership centres on the main street of all Danish municipalities and a strong joint unemployment insurance fund. This would be a marked improvement on the service afforded to many Danish LO members today, who live a good distance from their local branch, or work in another place than where they live.

Finally, a united trade union movement would do away with all the demarcation and internal disputes which unfortunately mar the work being done by the Danish LO, and which create a distorted picture in relation to the results achieved.

Let me emphasize that my vision is not to create a bureaucratic colossus managed from the top. It is a decisive factor that an amalgamation of trade unions can create a space to encourage different trade union identities within a common framework. Therefore, an effective, large single union has to have a flexible structure, which ensures close proximity to the individual member’s everyday life, irrespective of his/her job and workplace. It is a balancing act which we are already aware of in the large trade unions.

Fourthly, during the last 5-10 years there have been dramatic structural changes in the organisational structure on the part of the employers. DI (the Confederation of Danish Industries) has, through a series of mergers, expanded considerably and now encompasses a larger area than its traditional manufacturing base. The desire to be all-embracing can be clearly seen in the organisation’s change of name, from the Confederation of Danish Industries to DI – the organisation for business and industry, which embraces persons working in an office environment. Apart from this, DI has expanded its membership to include a wide range of large companies selling services, for example, ISS and PostDanmark. Today DI is the dominant actor on the employers’ side.

We have still to see the full consequences of this development, but it is quite clear that it will have consequences for political as well as trade union work in the trade union movement.

A strengthened DI has sharpened its political profile and influence on a willing government. A long-lasting campaign to lower taxes for persons at the top of the pyramid was crowned by the tax reform in February, which historically will give marginal tax reductions to the richest members of society.

The strengthening of DI’s political work means partly that the Danish Confederation of Employers has died a de facto death as an independent political actor, and partly that the trade union movement must, out of necessity, sharpen its own political work in order to match that of the employers.

A single united LO trade union movement would have the muscle to be one of the most powerful lobby organisations in Copenhagen and Brussels, as well as in the Danish municipalities, for the benefit and interests of wage earners.

Yet another more far-reaching consequence of these employer mergers is the concentration of influence during collective bargaining. DI has for a long time been the most important player on the employers’ side of industry, and dominates the trend-setting collective agreements in the manufacturing sector in the so-called ‘minimum wage’ area. After the merger with the Transport, Commerce and Services Confederation, DI has, however, dominated the other collective agreement area, the standard wage area, which covers the transport sector.

After next year’s round of collective bargaining we will have a much better idea of how far-reaching the consequences are of this development are. But in fact the situation is that a range of different constellations of trade unions will have to negotiate all these key collective agreements with a unified DI.

It is thought-provoking that a corresponding centralization has taken place in the public sector, where municipalities and The National Association of Local Authorities in Denmark (KL) will, in the future, be the single central actors, with the Ministry of Finance as the puppeteer. It is here that the predominant part of future “welfare production” will take place, while the central government area will shrink and the regional areas will no longer have any economic independence.

You could ask yourself whether this would mean the creation of two unions – a public sector union and a private sector union. I believe this to be a bad idea. In the first place individual members will, to a greater extent, transfer between the private and the public sector. Take a look at the volatile out-sourcing and buying back of the ambulance services, which at the moment is taking place through regional tendering.

But still more important is preserving the alliance between private sector and public sector wage earners. We would risk creating two Frankenstein monsters which would run amok in a welfare society: a public sector trade union which would quite rashly demand irresponsibly high wages and more of every thinkable service, and a private sector trade union which would always put the conditions in the private sector in pride of place, above the welfare society as a whole. It would be a tragedy for the trade union movement – and for the Danish welfare state.

If the trade union movement is to emerge strengthened from its encounter with the most pressing challenges it faces, the best strategy, in my view, is to join forces into one single union.

I’m quite clear about the fact that the thought of one large single LO union is a drastic vision to place on display. There are many interests at stake – camels which have to be swallowed, and hobbyhorses which have to be put out to pasture, before such a vision becomes reality.

And other people probably have alternative ideas on how the trade union movement can gear itself up for the future. I’m willing to listen to them, but one thing is certain: we cannot just stand by and do nothing.

The crisis in the trade union movement will become a disaster if we, as trade union leaders, close our eyes and ears and muddle through using stop-gap measures. Instead, under the auspices of the Danish LO, we have to start a discussion with one another, and with our trade union representatives and members, about long-term visions for the trade union movement.

I’ve made a contribution.

1. LO: Landsorganisationen i Danmark – the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions. Poul Erik Skov Christensen is the General Secretary of LO’s largest affiliate: the United Federation of Danish Workers (3F).

The military-civil coup in Honduras was the first in Latin America since the region re-democratization in the 80s-90s (aside from Alberto Fujimori’s proclaimed autogolpe in Peru in 1992) and has faced unanimous condemnation. The continent’s historical tradition of military takeovers has been challenged for the first time ever. After the “leaning leftwards” of the early 2000s, current governments in the region consider it to be shameful and humiliating to be deposed by means of force. It’s a natural fear for them that, if they tolerate this, they themselves can be next.

On Sunday night (27 September), the ‘de facto’ administration, headed by former speaker Roberto Micheletti, threatened to remove the status of embassy from the building where Zelaya is sheltered since last Monday. This would make way for storming the place, but attacking a diplomatic building is a severe rupture of international law – every embassy is considered to be territory of its parent country. Micheletti gave Brazil an ultimatum to either hand over Zelaya or grant him political asylum. And, at the same time, suspended civil rights, restored curfew, banned demonstrations, and threatened to shut down media outlets which broadcast or print speeches by the opposition. If there was still any doubt Honduras is under a dictatorship these days, they are now all gone.

Although the United States of Barack Obama have publicly joined the hemispherical unanimity to condemn the coup, word that the State Department and the CIA gave their support to overthrowing Zelaya spread throughout Latin American nations, ranging from suspicion to strong conviction. Although no evidence of U.S. interference has been found so far, the century-old history of Washington’s logistical and financial support to “breaches of constitutional order,” to be euphemistic, is a witness for the prosecution.

On the other hand, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has emerged as the leading voice among Latin American governments calling for immediate restoration of Honduras’ democratically-elected president to his dutiful post. This time, it wasn’t theatrical Hugo Chávez denouncing the U.S. as the geopolitical Devil, nor timid center-left Chilean diplomats, who took the lead in tackling the reactionary forces of the region. It was the president of a rising star: the Brazilian one.

With its economy quickly recovering from the capitalist crisis, and practically returning the nearly one-million jobs lost since 2008, Brazil is presenting itself as the next best thing in the global scenario. The country is now an active voice in developing nations fora like the G20, BRIC (with Russia, India and China) and IBAS (with India and South Africa), while calls for South-South cooperation are finally materializing with crossed investments and united lobby in the World Trade Organization (WTO). But, historically, the diplomats of Brazil (long dubbed as “the sleeping-giant”) were vacillating about turning the economy high tide into political power in international relations.

It seems the self-confidence problems are being solved now. The “Itamaraty,” as the Brazilian foreign office is called, has decided to take a firm stance against the coup and to help Zelaya to get back to office. Brazil is sheltering the ousted president within its embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he claims he got “by his own means” – although we know it’s highly unlikely that Brasília was fully unaware of his coming, something the Itamataty will never admit. Besides that, Lula used his opening speech in the General Assembly to demand the immediate return of Zelaya into his elected post and an emergency meeting of the Security Council. Even other international entities like the Organization of American States and the World Monetary Fund, both formerly supportive of authoritarian regimes, joined the condemnation after pushed by Brazilian initiative.

Anything more than that would be interfering in a foreign nation’s internal affairs. Lula has repeatedly stated he will not cross this line, but at the same time refused to sit on his own hands. However, that’s exactly what the conservative elites of Brazil are already claiming. This Saturday (26 September), Brazilian ultra-rightist weekly magazine Veja ran a cover story accusing Brazil of ‘megalomaniac imperialism’ – while no line was ever dedicated to the U.S. centennial imperialist tradition. The opposition parties, PSDB and Democrats, are criticizing the Itamaraty for hosting the lawful president. And the daily prime-time newscast of Globo TV, on Friday, aired an appalling report to argue that what happened in Honduras in June “was technically not a coup d’état,” quoting lines from the country’s constitution. Its article 239 says any president who proposes to alter the ban on reelection would be automatically removed, but the broadcasters omitted that Zelaya never did that – only called for a discretionary referendum.

What they all omit, however, is that Brazil has no other interests in Honduras but to assert is political strength in the region, something that cannot be seen as undermining in any way, but rather as a matter of state interest. Moreover, Brazil is acting not on its own behalf, but on behalf of the global South as a whole. This is the first time poor nations are rising a single voice against the use of brute force in politics. And the isolation which the regional governments have imposed on the ‘de facto’ government in Honduras is unprecedented, even if we count what happened to Cuba in the early 1960s.

With Fidel Castro old and officially out of power, the antagonistic role in the geopolitical script of the Americas has been performed by Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. But perhaps Chávez’s bombastic style might be counterproductive for his own foreign policy and for the left in general, while Lula’s more discrete – albeit straightforward – approach has proven successful in other regional crisis like Bolivia, Ecuador and Haiti, where Brazil keeps 1,200 troops under UN peacekeeping blue helmets since 2004.

Let it be clear: Zelaya is by no means an ideological leftist, but rather a populist leader in the very same shape the Latin Americans are used to. But ideology is really not the central matter here; it’s about sending a message to military to stay in the barracks. Had it happened to a liberal or elite-backed conservative government, the cry against the unlawful removal of an elected head of State would be done all the same – perhaps only less loud.

Even if the threats by the de facto administration are met, or any setback in the next days would prevent Manuel Zelaya from leaving the Brazilian embassy and walking in triumph to his lawful chair at the presidential palace of Tegucigalpa, the bridge is crossed already when it comes to the shift in regional powers. Any defeat of Zelaya now would not exactly be a defeat to the Itamaraty, but rather enforce its moral victory: that it achieved to forge an unprecedented unity in the continent and made it clear that the age of military takeovers in Latin America is over.

Schenley Park just outside of the University of Pittsburgh, was the scene of some of the most volatile interactions of the day. At first, student onlookers, seemingly not initially affiliated with the G20 protests, challenged riot police and were violently repulsed. Then, protesters massed in the park and marched on the police line. Tear gas was fired, but the wind was with the protesters and blew the gas back on the police themselves. Massive numbers of police then surrounded the park. The protest dwindled as young people, fatigued by a day of being chased by the police through streets of Pittsburgh, retreated in search of food and much needed rest.

There was property damage today, but it was either defensive or immediately quashed by the protesters themselves. A sound and gas attack by police resulted in the overturning of some dumpsters — a futile symbolic act of self-defense not the justification for repression that the mainstream media has reported. Rocks in BMW and Boston Chicken stores were the frustrated outcome of a crowd whose right to assemble had been forcefully revoked. A small band of protesters went further, by smashing ATMs, but they were quickly persuaded against continuing by march organizers themselves.

The police were everywhere. Pinning down protesters, creating confrontations and randomly stopping and searching. Cops came from Ohio, Florida and Arizona. If their numbers were not enough, they employed anti-protest technology. A Long Range Acoustic Device was employed to beam out high-volume sounds and Twitter-journalist visually identified a microwave heat machine which wasn’t used, but stood at the ready to repel demonstrators. Such tools of repression have no place inside a democratic society.

The protesters were brave, standing up against overwhelming repression, policing themselves and sending the message that capitalism has failed them and billions of others around the world. Equally encouraging were the actions of residents of Pittsburgh. Many extended solidarity to the protesters — opening their homes for relief, providing overnight housing free of charge and disregarding work rules to provide a tired demonstrator with a free glass of water or a seat to rest for a moment. Such acts of solidarity offer a basis to think about a different kind of society, one which moves beyond acoustic attacks and tear gas and towards democracy and freedom.

1. For pics and video visit: http://socialistwebzine.blogspot.com/

We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined.

— Dr. David Himmelstein, co-author of a new study and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard, speaking in an interview with Reuters.

My wife just “got through” breast cancer, and now — suddenly — she’s in the middle of tests that we’re praying won’t show her to have ovarian cancer or anything negative. She does everything around the house. She does everything around us. She is everything to us. She is the Love of Love, and I was put on this earth to love her. She’s so much fun. Such an inspiration, such a great teacher. Rare as flawless chrysolite.

I’ve been hardly sick a day in my 67 years.¹ Just enough to know that when you’re really sick… usually… nothing else matters. Sometimes, not even the love of others. Neither for nor by.

WHAT ABOUT THE MASSES OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO SUCH TESTS? WHAT ABOUT THE QUESTIONABLE QUALITY OF CARE THAT TOO OFTEN DOMINATES WHEN PEOPLE HAVE COVERAGE? There is an interesting perspective on the public perception of what’s in the works vis-a-vis CHANGE/IMPROVEMENT.

First of all, forget about socialism. We already have socialism in place respecting our military and industrial agriculture, among other horrors . And don’t worry about people getting away with murder milking financial loopholes; the rich do that dance way better than any illegal steps the underprivileged could ever trot out.

That behind you, we force the top 1% or 2% of the country (in terms of the holding of “financial wealth”) to pay for part of what we desperately need.² At once. Force? Immediately? Yes, right along the lines of what the powers that be pulled when they went into emergency sessions to save the Too Big To Lose Financial Giants.

Remember? That was recently. When THEY forced us to pay right away for _____________ (You fill in the blank.).

The “part of what we desperately need” is the best health care coverage on earth at affordable prices. Not Medicare, better than Medicare. For EVERYONE.

That’s one of the potential great pleasures of being Super Rich (The situation is worse today!). You can help others by only spending a fraction of your financial wealth . Am I being disrespectful of The Rich? Rich people who have zero compassion for the immisserated masses deserve very little respect.

Seriously, that’s THE SOLUTION. Call it the One Percent Solution, or call it the Two Percent Solution. But don’t call it too late.

Fire and Ice. You choose how things will end up.

If the powers that be want to end any of our unnecessary wars — Lots to pick from! — to pay for this , fine. Actually, that might make it easier on us all financially and otherwise. We’ll be safer in the Big Picture to boot. BUT that would demand disentangling our ECONOMY from the Pentagon. Necessary (eventually), but no small order. Jeff Lays shows only one little aspect of what I’m talking about here. The health care and the warfare — both — are just the tip of the iceberg built upon the ice cold atomization of our souls..

Still… what a place to start. Place UNIVERSAL SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE COVERAGE BETTER THAN MEDICARE as a higher priority than having a WAR ECONOMY, and see what we have to do to make it work. And, then, see what happens. You don’t have to have a plan to go get water if the house is on fire, do you?

We CAN make that IMPOSSIBILITY work. Tout de suite.

And as easy as looking up a few French words online.

As easy as getting organized, organizing… like I’m doing with you. No fund raising necessary. No meetings. No petitions to be handed to people who don’t care or who are powerless to change things (even if they want to). Following NONE of the usual ways in which people have been taught to protest, or push for change.

Voilà!

1. Almost died once from a burst appendix, but Sylvie, in the midst of being plagued by one of her regular over-the-top migraines, saved my butt by being “proactive” with incompetent medical professionals.
2. Don’t worry ’bout HOW right now. First get on board … so that we can start the ball rolling in California. Remember, though, there’s a big difference between picking a fight with someone giving them a way to… walk away, and cornering them, making them feel that their life is at stake. Just so, there’s a huge difference between telling rich people you’re demanding equal justice and an equal redistribution of wealth and telling them that you’ll settle for simply doubling your financial wealth by draining a very small percentage of what they couldn’t spend if they lived a thousand years.

Ashley Smith: What is the G20, and what are they meeting about in Pittsburgh on September 24-25?

Paul LeBlanc: The G20 consists of the top economic and political leaders of the global economy. They want to ensure that the global economy functions in a positive and smooth way in the interests of those who dominate the global and key national economies. Often that is in direct conflict with the needs and interests of the majority of the world’s people.

The G20 will be gathering together in Pittsburgh, but they haven’t revealed what topics they will be discussing. To be honest, the G20 is not noted for its transparency.

I think it’s obvious that they will be addressing the economic crisis. I guess they would be talking about the environment, which is a key issue for the world’s people, but also for the global economy. It’s conceivable that they will be talking about issues of wars and peace.

But they have not shared with us or consulted with us, the majority of the world’s people, about exactly what they will be discussing. That’s one reason why we have to raise our voices and advocate for the kind of world we would like to see.

AS: Initially, the G20 was planned to meet in New York City. Why did they move it to Pittsburgh?

PL: The Obama administration hasn’t given a clear answer. They’ve said Pittsburgh is a wonderful and beautiful city, and it’s doing all kinds of innovative things. Many have speculated that political deals have been made. Remember that Pennsylvania went for Obama, and Pittsburgh in particular, and so Obama may have decided to let Pittsburgh host the G20 summit to reward his political allies and keep the state aligned with the Democratic Party.

There are other issues, though. Pittsburgh is smaller and less complex than New York. The progressive movement here is vibrant, but there are fewer of us here than in New York. So they hope to minimize and contain whatever protests develop against the G20.

AS: How have activists in Pittsburgh responded once you found out the G20 was happening in Pittsburgh?

PL: The response of the activist community has been amazing.

We have at least three tent cities being planned. There’s an environmental encampment organized by a number of environmental groups, there’s a women’s encampment organized by Code Pink and Women’s League for International for Peace and Freedom, and then there’s another poor people’s encampment organized by Bail Out the People and Monumental Baptist Church.

There are at least three educational activities, which raise questions about and criticisms of the G20. The one that I’m most intimately involved with is the People’s Summit. There will also be an International Peace Justice and Empowerment Summit that is being organized by progressive activists in the African American community here. The People’s Summit and the International Summit are working together to coordinate their efforts. There’s another activity initiated by the United Electrical Workers Union in conjunction with the Institute for Policy Studies.

AS: What about plans for demonstrations and actions?

PL: There are several peaceful, legal demonstrations planned. The Bail Out the People movement has called for a demonstration for jobs and justice on Sunday, September 20. The Steelworkers and Pennsylvania state Sen. Jim Ferlo have planned one for Wednesday, September 23. The Thomas Merton Center has called for a big peaceful legal rally for Friday, September 25 in cooperation with dozens and dozens of other organizations from around the country.

The Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project has called for actions of an undefined character on Thursday, September 24. This group has not announced that its actions will be restricted to peaceful or legal methods. I don’t know what the character of those activities will be.

Those are just some of the activities that are taking place.

AS: We’ve seen reports in the media about a huge police presence being deployed in Pittsburgh, and heard that the city and federal hovernment may not provide permits for demonstrations. Where does the fight for civil liberties and the right to protest stand now in Pittsburgh?

PL: First of all, there has been a considerable amount of fear-mongering and violence-baiting in much of the media initially, and it’s still going on. The media and authorities lump all of the different protests together and smear them, implying that activists are going to do horrible things and generate immense violence.

They’ve generated a significant amount of fear in the population. The authorities are using this situation to justify a series of policies that are potentially extremely repressive. They have put out a call out to police departments in the surrounding area to supply up to 4,000 additional police.

This is not simply a local police matter; it’s a national security matter. The Secret Service and other federal governmental agencies are directly involved in coordinating and training the police in all sorts of tactics to deal with this supposedly grave threat that they’ve projected. So there’s potential for significant police violence as has happened in other places against protesters.

At the same time, the local government indicated initially that it would provide permits. But then later, it stated that they would not be providing permits. Now there are all sorts of stories in the media saying either that permits have been provided or not been provided.

The situation is a bit confusing. But the movement has rallied together to push for democratic rights for all to engage in peaceful, legal protests, and to secure the various permits we need for the encampments, marches and rallies. There’s also a wonderful team of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, National Lawyers Guild and Center for Constitutional Rights, which have been representing activist groups in negotiations with the representatives of the city and the federal government.

There has been an indication that at least some of the permits will go through. But the city has stated that everything is subject to approval by the federal government, which may reserve the right to rescind any permits.

So all of this is still up in the air. But it does appear to me that the government will be giving some ground to the constitutional rights of protesters to organize peaceful, legal actions.

AS: Many activists experienced this kind of restriction, and in some cases police violence, under the Bush administration, and expected different from the Obama administration. What do you make of what the Obama administration is doing in Pittsburgh?

PL: During the campaign, Obama repeatedly said that the way positive social, political, and economic change was brought about in the history of this country has been through protest movements–through the struggles of the labor, civil rights movement, and women’s movements. He said that all this change was brought about through organizing and protesting in the streets and workplaces.

One would have thought therefore that his response and the response of his administration would have been to welcome people speaking out about the kind of world they’d like to see, and having protests raising questions about the G20.

His administration has done the opposite. It appears that there’s not that much difference between the policies of Bush and those of Obama toward these kinds of protests.

It seems to me that it would be in Obama’s best interests to adhere to what he was talking about in his campaign. If he really believes in those things, then he should be true to what he was saying in the campaign. So far, there is no clear evidence that he is being true to that.

AS: What do you and others have planned for the People’s Summit?

PL: The People’s Summit is going to take place September 19 through September 22. It is being sponsored by a broad array of forces. Recently, unions such as National Organization of Legal Services Workers (UAW Local 2310), the United Steel Workers and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers have decided to join in.

We’ve got a number of local community leaders from Pittsburgh speaking, such as Carl Redwood, Tim Stevens, Molly Rush and John Canning. We also have some leading labor leaders like Leo Gerard from the Steelworkers, as well as John Tarka from the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers.

We have invited major international speakers. Walden Bello from the Philippines and one of the key leaders of the global justice movement will be speaking. A representative from Jubilee Zambia/Jubilee USA named Privilege Haangandu will also be addressing the summit.

From the U.S., we have some leading activist voices. Jeremy Scahill, the crusading journalist who writes for The Nation and other publications, will be speaking. Anthony Arnove, who works closely with Howard Zinn and wrote an excellent book, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, will be at the summit. Howard Zinn himself, who for medical reasons will not be able to be here, has made a video presentation especially for the conference.

There will be cultural activities that include an African dance group; Son of Nun, a nationally known hip hop artist; and a presentation of Howard Zinn’s one-act play Marx in Soho by the wonderful actor Brian Jones.

Throughout the whole conference, we’ve organized an inter-weaving of the global and local to show common problems that we are facing. It’s a very intense and rich array of speakers, educational activities and discussion about what kind of world we would like to see.

There isn’t full agreement among the Peoples’ Summit sponsors on whether the G20 can be part of the solution to the world’s problems. Some feel that it is an organic part of what is going wrong.

But we are unified in a commitment to have that discussion, and also around a basic set of principles: decisions being made about all of our lives should be made by all of us. There should be liberty and justice for all. All of us in the U.S. and throughout the world are entitled to freedom expression, freedom of beliefs, freedom from fear and freedom from want.

That’s the kind of world we want to see. The Peoples’ Summit as a whole isn’t involved in any demonstrations, although some of its sponsors–such as the Thomas Merton Center, to which I belong–are very involved in preparing for peaceful, legal protests.

AS: All the hype about police repression and the battle over permits may give people the feeling they should stay away. What do you say to activists who are wondering whether or not to come to the demonstration?

PL: No one should have any doubts or questions: there will be a peaceful legal demonstration on Friday, September 25.

The Thomas Merton Center is spearheading a broad coalition that is absolutely committed to making that happen. It is organizing a network of peace marshals to ensure the peaceful nature of the demonstration.

I am confident that the government will not try to violate our constitutional right to march. It may want to tailor where we march. But our legal team will fight very hard to win our right to march to the City County building, where we will have a rally and then go on to the Federal Building, which is very close to the Convention Center where the G20 will be meeting.

The marchers want to go there to express their beliefs and ideas on what kind of world we want to see, to question whether the G20 should make decisions that affect our lives, and to demand that such decisions be made with the democratic participation of the people.

If it turns out that the city does not allow the march to go the Federal Building, that will be challenged through legal channels, but there will be no confrontation with police. Such a confrontation would only happen if our democratic rights were entirely violated. In that case, I think significant numbers of people would follow the example of Martin Luther King Jr. and commit non-violent civil disobedience.

King once put it this way, “We must have the right to protest for what is right.” People will be prepared to do that if their constitutional rights are being violated.

I don’t anticipate that this will happen. The indications from the city are that it will be allowing a peaceful legal protest on September 25. So any activists who can should come to Pittsburgh and join our march.

AS: How do you see the People’s Summit and the protests against the G20 fitting in with the growing frustration with the limits of the Obama administration and the recognition that we have to fight for the change we want?

PL: Our organizing is crucially important. Only through educating, organizing and mobilizing pressure for peace and social justice, independently of all politicians and governments, will we win the better world we need.

We have to develop popular pressure that will compel governments to respond in a positive way to the needs of the majority of the world’s people. If the Obama administration is going to live up to its campaign promises, it must feel this kind of popular pressure.

As Obama said during the campaign, this is only way that genuine change is brought about–by mobilizing such pressure. The time to do so is now.

But even if the Obama administration, other governments and the G20 respond positively on certain kind of issues, it will be necessary to maintain popular pressure, because there are powerful counter-pressures from multinational corporations and the wealthy to make the world go their way at the expense of the rest of us. We must build popular pressure to push it our way.

But there’s another issue as well, a more fundamental issue, and that is we believe a different kind of world is possible, one in which the people democratically make decisions, control the institutions that affect their lives and control the economic resources on which on all of us depend.

We need a better world, a different world, in which that democratic principle permeates everything. Until we are able to achieve that world, we need to build popular pressure to win reforms that support democracy, human rights, and social and economic justice.

As we build movements for these short-term victories, we have to debate and discuss how can we bring about a world which is based not on the profit for the few, but on meeting the needs of humanity. We are at pivotal time in building this struggle, both for reforms and a whole new world.

We don’t know that the Knights of Labor created the first Labor Day in 1882 and that Congress made it a national holiday in 1894.

Almost none of us, including life-long union workers, know the personalities of the labor movement. About Mother Jones (1830-1930), the militant “angel of the coal fields” for more than six decades. About “Big Bill” Haywood (1869-1928) who organized the Industrial Workers of the World, a universal coalition to fight for the rights of all labor. About cigar-chomping Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), the first president of the American Federation of Labor, a job he held for 38 years.

We don’t know about Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) who led strikes in 1916 to reduce the work week to 48 hours, from the standard 54–60 hours, and then helped create the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) before becoming a major political force for workers during the labor-friendly Roosevelt administration. Missing from our collective knowledge is the life of Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), known as the “father of grassroots political campaigns” who worked alongside Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) who used Alinsky’s tactics to organize the United Farm Workers.

Most of us probably never heard about Eugene Debs (1855-1926), Joe Hill (1879-1915), and thousands of others who went to prison or were murdered defending the rights of the workers not only to organize, but to demand better working conditions. The names of Tompkins Square, Cripple Creek, Homestead, Lattimer, Lawrence, and dozens of other places where police forces massacred workers are unknown. We don’t know about the Avondale mine fire that killed 110, because of faulty construction of the colliery and a disregard for worker safety, or of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, where 148 women, some as young as 12, working under brutal sweat-shop conditions, died because a fire door was chained. We won’t become involved in the struggle, risk our jobs and futures. That’s someone else’s responsibility. We’ll just follow inane rules and complain privately.

Most Americans, and certainly most journalists, don’t know the story of Horace Greeley, a social activist and the nation’s most prominent ante-bellum publisher, who created The New York Typographical Union for his typesetters and printers because he believed they needed representation. Most journalists also don’t know about Heywood Broun (1888-1939), one of the nation’s best-paid columnists who risked his own financial stability to create The Newspaper Guild in 1935 to help those reporters making one-hundredth of his salary. Most media don’t even have local stories about Labor Day, preferring to run nationally-distributed stories and not “waste” any of the few reporters they have left.

The national syndicates and wire services, plus a few socially-conscious newspapers, may make the effort to find a current labor leader who will say organized labor is having a tough time but is still strong and vital, the only recourse against poor working conditions and unfair labor practices. The stories will tell us that about 12.4 percent of all workers are in unions, down from a peak of 35 percent in 1954, but the reporters don’t dig into myriad ways of intimidation by Management, or of the professionals who mistakenly believe because they are professionals and not workers they don’t need unions.

The reporters may interview the workers. An elderly man’s remembrance of his life in the coal mines or breakers, and what Black Lung did not only to his own health but to his family and friends. They might chat with an elderly woman who worked 12-hour days six days a week for $3–$4 a day in the heat and humidity of a garment factory. They may talk with a few current workers who tell us the Recession has cut deep into their lives, but they work hard and are pleased that they still have a job.

Some stories may even dryly point out statistics—that the unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is 9.7 percent, up from 4.8 percent when the Recession began in December 2007, that 14.9 million Americans are unemployed, up from 7.4 million. The stories might even note that 9.1 million Americans work part-time either because their hours and wages were “downsized” or because they couldn’t find full-time work. Another 2.3 million Americans are “marginally attached,” according to the BLS; these are unemployed Americans who aren’t listed as “unemployed” because they haven’t looked for work in four weeks; of these 2.3 million, about 760,000 are “discouraged”—their unemployment benefits have run out, they have tried to find work, but have given up.

Meanwhile, corporate executives are taking multi-million dollar bonuses for improving the “cash flow.” Even if executive management makes significant mistakes, and the “return on investment” isn’t what the Board of Directors expects, or the companies fail because of management incompetence and greed, almost all CEOs and their immediate underlings have the “golden parachute” that allows a soft drop from employment, yielding termination packages that amount to millions of dollars and considerable benefits and bonuses that no working class person will ever receive.

Business euphemistically claims because of “downsizing,” “rightsizing,” and “outsourcing,” mostly to foreign countries, the “bottom line” is improved; corporate investors are being “optimally compensated.” Since the recession began, more than a year before President George W. Bush left office, about 4.3 million Americans have been “downsized,” according to data compiled by Challenger, Gray and Christmas Inc. Data collected by NowPublic reveals that 2008 was “the worst year for layoffs and job losses in the United States since World War II.” Although terabytes of data reveal the Recession is slowing under the massive Obama stimulus package, another one million Americans will be laid off this year. Recent Department of Labor studies report that American workers are “the most productive” ever. That’s because not only are they are doing so much more to compensate for their fellow workers having been laid off, but because they live with the fear if they don’t work even harder they, too, may be laid off or lose promotions in an economy that went as far south as our manufacturing plants.

Of course, there are some industries that have gained in the past year’s plunging economy. Retail sales, which the Department of Labor reports as having the lowest average wages, is gaining workers. But, that’s because it’s just “good business sense” to hire 75 low-paid part-timers and save the cost of benefits than to hire 50 full-time clerks. Only about 16 percent of all retail workers even receive health care benefits, according to the BLS.

To the 50-year-old who worked hard for one company more than half of his life, showed up for work on time, left on time, and tolerated the company’s banal preaching about everyone is “part of our happy family,” and then is laid off as an “economy measure,” the numbers don’t matter. To the worker who put in 20 years in one job, and then is fired for reasons that would be questionable under any circumstance, the numbers don’t matter. To the $20,000-a-year worker who is told she won’t receive a raise because “we’re having a bad year,” but sees upper management not only get raises and more stock options, but also hire other managers, all of them making five times or more than her salary, the other numbers don’t matter.

But, millions of Americans will have their bar-b-ques and family reunions, they’ll splash in the ocean or hike mountain trails, and they will have no idea why the struggle for worker rights must be fought every day by every worker.

I went to the main Gaza port. While I was there, I figured out how sad the sea and the fishermen are. Boats are stuck and fishermen are looking at the sea with no hope.

The Palestinian fishermen have been consistently harassed by the regular Israeli attacks on them, as they abuse the fishermen for pursuing their livelihood. Furthermore, they are prevented to work for far distances inside the sea. The allowed distance for them is just around 4.5 Km. Unfortunately, once they reach that distance, they find themselves under Israeli fire.

Around 3000 fishermen are now despondently jobless and in a real tragedy. The tragedy began with the complete blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. The fishermen are prohibited from going to a deeper and richer area of fishing, and they have been dramatically affected with these restrictions from the Israeli navy forces. Indeed, they now have very low incomes with which to feed their families.

Ismael Kalilo is a 65-year old fisherman in Gaza City, who has spent 50 years of his life in the sea, and now lives in the Beach Camp. “I am totally satisfied to be a fisherman in Gaza, but completely exhausted by the conditions imposed on us.”

The aged fisherman is also a father of 8. I asked him how he takes care of his dependents, and how he feeds them: “No one can bear the situation that the fishermen are living with. He should go to the sea and see how much they suffer. We were peacefully fishing before the time of the siege on Gaza, as we just depended on our livelihood. We have become unable to secure even the basic needs of our life.

I asked him about his own experience regarding the Israeli navy forces. He took deep breath, then pointed at his son to tell us the story. Ahmed is 24 years old, and is also a fisherman.

“I was with my boat about a year ago at Sudania coast, north of the Gaza Strip,” he said. “With no alert and at 10 pm, I found that the Israeli ship started firing missiles toward my boat, exactly at my net. They ordered me to get back without my net. I tried to save my big net, which costs around $2000, but it was in vain. Then I found myself obliged after staying in the sea from 10am to 7am to get back home, and they took the net — including what I had fished. That even had increased our tragedy, as they took the net which we all depend on for fishing.”

“We are passing through a rough time, and we are suffering,” said Ismeal, as he took me to see the bullets still in the boats, the fishermen unable to get them repaired. “The siege has suffocated us for almost 3 years.”

Ismeal finished his interview with me, calling upon all of those people who claimed humanity, to stand beside the Palestinian people, their besieged people in Gaza, and to take responsibility for ending this daily suffering.

Somewhere over the next 40-plus years, the game became a multi-billion dollar sports industry with lucrative TV contracts, merchandise galore, corporate sponsorships and public subsidies for constructing luxury sports domes.

But some things haven’t changed. The owners are again digging in their heels, citing a tough economy to wring concessions from the NFL Players Association (NFLPA).

One of the big sticking points is money. Currently, players get almost 60 percent of the NFL’s revenue; owners want an even bigger piece of the pie and blame players for the high ticket prices fans are forced to pay.

The union counters that the average profit of an NFL team is $24.7 million. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, spokesperson for the bosses, claims “there is a lot of fiction in that.” The NFLPA’s reply? Open the books!

In March 2008, NFL owners voted to terminate their collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the players’ union after the 2010 season — two years ahead of schedule. The owners are also threatening to lock out players in 2011.

The strike of 1987.

The last NFL labor dispute got pretty ugly. The bosses hired scab players and convinced the networks to put the games on TV. The union didn’t have a strike fund and some players gradually crossed the picket line. After the strike of 1987, the NFLPA’s Executive Director Gene Upshaw eventually formed a less adversarial relationship with owners. Both sides duked out their issues in court, and players prospered a little in the subsequent years, although not nearly as much as the industry, which last year raked in $8 billion.

Players who retired from the game were an entirely different story. As anyone who watches football knows, players suffer bone-crushing injuries that affect them long after they leave the field. Only a select few parlay their success into TV careers. In 2006, USA Today reported that 78 percent of players wind up bankrupt or unemployed three years after retirement.

Unlike owners, who typically come from money and earn their wealth elsewhere, players come from poverty and spend years playing football in high school and college before earning a dime in the big leagues.

Former players, such as the late Hall-of-Famer Mike Webster, have wound up homeless because of sky-high medical costs the union health plan doesn’t cover. A star player with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the ’70s, Webster earned the owners fabulous profits.

As a union rep, Upshaw formed a cantankerous relationship with retirees even though he was one himself; retirees are shortchanged on pension money and the millions being made by companies that sell their images to a thirsty fan base. Upshaw, who lived a lavish lifestyle, took the position that retirees didn’t pay his salary.

Perhaps a new era.

Upshaw died of pancreatic cancer last year and in March, the players elected DeMaurice Smith, a lawyer, as Upshaw’s successor. Smith, 45, comes from a working class background. He was elected on the first ballot by 32 union reps — one for each NFL team — after he presented the Players Association with a comprehensive plan for the future. Key was his view that the union had “a moral and business obligation to former players.”

And in a departure from Upshaw’s top-down style Smith is meeting with players in an effort to unify them. This summer, he has travelled from one team to the next, educating players about their business — how much the owners make and how the stadiums they play in are publicly financed.

In June, Smith reached out to former players agreeing to settle their lawsuit against the union. Herb Adderly was the lead plaintiff in a class action suit representing 2,056 former players who won a claim that the union had breached licensing and marketing terms. The players were awarded $28 million but the union promised not to appeal and settled out of court for $26 million.

Meanwhile, with the retirement of NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, owners also have a new rep. Roger Goodell sent a message to the NFLPA in March: get a new labor contract done before the 2010 season or the bargaining will get much tougher. Goodell’s strong-arm message came at the owners’ meetings where it was also announced that the NFL had just received $1 billion per year for 2011-2014 from DirecTV.

The owners get that money even if games aren’t played in the 2011 season. In other words, the owners have lockout insurance; they are guaranteed $31 million per year, whether or not football is played.

Are football players well off?

While some fans have trouble sympathizing with the NFL players they watch on TV every week the reality is that most players are anything but rich. The average salary for football players is about $750,000, while baseball players cleared an average of $3 million. For NFL rookies, it is around $400,000.

On the surface that sounds great, but NFL salaries, unlike those in pro basketball and baseball, aren’t guaranteed. Players receive signing bonuses up front, but can get released at any time without severance pay.

The average length of an NFL career is about 3.5 seasons, compared to 6 for major league baseball players.

While some leave the game with their health relatively intact, many are literally carried from the gridiron and live the rest of their lives in pain. Given this, it’s easy to see why current players voted for Smith’s vision to do better by retirees. They know their time will also come soon.

The owners clearly have the money advantage as negotiations start, but players have incentive and, increasingly it seems, unity.

“Our guys understand the cost of playing football on a Monday or Tuesday morning when they struggle to stand upright,” said Smith. “What they don’t understand is what does the average team make per game?”

As both sides prepared for a possible lock out, Smith is coaching his players to tackle that question. Stay tuned. Fans may be asked to turn off a blank TV screen in 2011 and join real players on the picket lines.

Akin to the definition of insanity, the hallmark of entrenched but marginalized movements is that they continue to pursue exactly the same strategy and tactics that have failed to produce solid results. They indulge themselves with self-delusion, defensive thinking and acting as if the world at large must surely and finally wake up, see the light and embrace the Truth. Years and, potentially, decades go by, but this quixotic status quo remains embedded, as if set in intellectual concrete. There is no brain tumor to blame. Nor any mass hypnosis of true believers to prove. There is just monumental disinterest among the dominant culture, political establishment and the broad public that is far more engaged with other issues, problems and movements.

The 9/11 truth movement, at best, gets meager public attention when it is derided and insulted, used as an example of persistent conspiratorial insanity.

Make no mistake; I concluded a few years back, after using my professional engineering and materials science background to study the evidence, that the official government story is a lie. As a former full professor of engineering, I firmly believe that elements of the US government were involved with contributing to (not just allowing) the 9/11 tragedy, but that does not necessarily eliminate the role of those terrorists publicly blamed for the events. Science, logic, evidence and critical thinking told me this.

Who should we blame for the failure of the 9/11 truth movement to fix the historical record and, better yet, identify those in the government who turned 9/11 into an excuse for going to war, getting them indicted, prosecuted, and punished for their murderous acts?

It is too easy to blame the mainstream media and political establishment for refusing to demand and pursue a truly comprehensive and credible independent scientific and engineering investigation. President Obama with his tenacious belief in looking forward, not backward, exemplifies a national mindset to avoid the painful search for truth and justice that could produce still more public disillusionment with government and feed the belief that American democracy is weak at best, and delusional at worst.

Marginalized movements always face competition for public attention. There are always countless national issues and problems that feed new movements and distract the public. There have been many since 9/11, not the least of which was the last presidential campaign and then the painful economic recession, and now the right wing attacks on health care reform. The 9/11 truth movement illustrates a total failure to compete successfully with other events and movements.

This can be explained in several ways. The 9/11 movement has not been able to articulate enough benefits to the public from disbelieving the official government story and pursuing a new investigation. What might ordinary Americans gain? Would proof-positive of government involvement make them feel better, more secure, and more patriotic? Apparently not. In fact, just the opposite. By its very nature, the 9/11 issue threatens many things by discovering the truth: still less confidence in the US political system, government and public officials. Still more reason to ponder the incredible loss of life and national wealth in pursuing the Iraq war. In other words, revealing 9/11 truth offers the specter of a huge national bummer. Conversely, it would show the world that American democracy has integrity.

The second explanation for failure is that the truth movement itself is greatly to blame. It has been filled with nerdish, ego-centric and self-serving activists (often most interested in pushing their pet theory) unable to pursue strategies designed to face and overcome ugly, challenging realities. The truth movement became a cottage industry providing income and meaning for many individuals and groups feeding the committed with endless websites, public talks, videos, books and paraphernalia. They habitually preach to the choir. Applause substitutes for solid results. In particular, it embraces the simplistic (and obviously ineffective) belief that by revealing technical, scientific and engineering facts and evidence the public and political establishment would be compelled to see the light. Darkness has prevailed.

Proof of this are the views expressed days ago on the truth movement by Ben Cohen on the Huffington Post: “I have done some research on the topic, but stopped fairly quickly into when it dawned on me that: 1. Any alternative to the official account of what happened is so absurd it simply cannot be true. 2. No reputable scientific journal has ever taken any of the ’science’ of the conspiracy seriously. 3. The evidence supporting the official story is overwhelming, whereas the 9/11 Truthers have yet to produce a shred of concrete evidence that members of the U.S. government planned the attacks in New York and Washington.” Similarly, in the London Times James Bone recently said a “gruesome assortment of conspiracy theorists insists that the attacks on the US of September 11, 2001 were an inside job. It is easy to mock this deluded gang of ageing hippies, anarchists and anti-Semites.” Truthers continue to face a very steep uphill battle.

A common lie about the truth movement is that there have been no credible scientific articles in peer reviewed journals supporting it. But those opposing the truth movement will and do find ways to attack whatever scientific evidence is produced and published. It takes more than good science and facts for the movement to succeed.

Besides the movement having too many genuine crackpots (possibly trying to subvert it), a larger problem is what has been missing from it: effective political strategies. Besides pushing scientific results and more credible supporters, it did nothing successful to make a new 9/11 investigation a visible issue in the last presidential campaign. It did nothing effective to put pressure on a new, Democrat controlled congress to consider legislation providing the authorization and funding for a new, credible investigation. It seems that people who want to blame the government are often unable to also see the political path forward that requires the government to fund a new investigation.

To its credit, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth does have a petition aimed at Congress, demanding a new investigation, but has fewer than 5,000 signers. The petition effort in New York City to get a new investigation is commendable, with just under 75,000 signers, but national action is needed. Pragmatically, both efforts are unimpressive compared to other campaigns seeking political action. To get both media attention and political support the movement needs a hundred times more documented supporters, willing to do a lot more than sign a petition.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 will come fast. The opportunity is making 9/11 an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. The least delusional and defensive in the truth movement should think deeply and seriously on what needs to change to accomplish the prime goal: having an official investigation that compels most people and history to accept the truth, no matter how painful it is, including the possibility that it finds no compelling evidence for government involvement.

A previous Pastors for Peace Caravan school bus in Vedado, Havana: defying the U.S. blockade for eighteen years.

Ahead of the Organization of American States summit in April 2009, President Barack Obama announced that visits by Americans to Cuba will be allowed once annually instead of once every three years, and the $300 per quarter limit on remittances will be lifted – but only if they have relatives on the island nation. Restrictions on investment in Cuba will also be eased – but only in telecommunications. Obama has signalled his willingness to ease the 47-year-old U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, but not yet for the rest of us. While still couched in the language of regime change, Obama’s overtures represent a ray of hope for breaking down the barriers that have separated Americans and Cubans and prevented them from learning from each other.

Meanwhile, the effects of the U.S. embargo (Cuba calls it a blockade) are much more intrusive than the mere absence of American goods. Patient monitors and CT scanners from Europe and Japan that have seen only a few years of use are often idled by the inability to procure assemblies or accessories that contain U.S. parts. Despite these difficulties, the Cuban health system guarantees every resident access to care, resulting in a life expectancy (78 years) equal to that of the United States. There are no denials of claims here, no patients turned away for lack of insurance.

Thousands of Cuban doctors and medical personnel continue to serve in countries ranging from Bolivia to Pakistan to South Africa. Meanwhile, Cuba brings in hundreds of new foreign students for medical school from poor countries and the United States alike, completely free of charge. And Cuba’s biotechnology industry is a leading-edge exporter of both genetically-engineered and low-cost generic drugs.

Yes, the dug-up roads are decaying. The crumbling houses are discolored with mildew. The sputtering cars are American antiques of the 1940s and 1950s, frozen in time, but kept running through miraculous Cuban ingenuity. That is the tunnel image most Americans have of Havana. The images are there along the fabled seaside Malecón, in Habana Centro, and in Habana Viejo, where most of the historical tourist attractions are located. But outlying suburbs like Miramar, smaller cities like Santa Clara or Sancti Spiritus, and even rural villages have houses and shops that are more modern and well kept, roads that are nicely paved, and newer motor vehicles from Europe, Canada, Japan, and China. It is just the inverse of unequal development in most other Latin American countries. Cuba has chosen to focus its finite resources on ensuring that everybody has housing first, and only afterwards renovating existing buildings for the eyes of foreign visitors. There are no foreclosures here, no tent cities of the homeless.

The U.S. notion that the embargo is needed to pressure Cuba to embrace “democracy” and ultimately expedite “regime change” is based on the assumption that the Cuban people have no say in the affairs of their country. In fact, people routinely chose representatives to municipal assemblies, which in turn elect members of the provincial assemblies, and in turn elect the 614 members of the Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular (National Assembly of People’s Power). The constitution calls for the National Assembly to elect the State Council, and the State Council to elect the president. So while Cuban citizens do not directly elect the president and members of the National Assembly, they do so through a tiered pyramidal democratic structure that ensures greater accountability of each of each layer of representation to the layer below it because electors at each level are actually able to get to personally know those whom they are electing.

The Cuban electoral system is in effectively a one-party democracy in which candidates for elected office are pre-screened by a participatory nominating process. The U.S. electoral system is in essence a two-party dictatorship in which the two major parties and the media collude to systematically deny credibility and electability to any candidates of third parties, or even candidates within the two dominant parties who are outside of the “mainstream.” It is far from clear that one system is really more politically democratic or dictatorial than the other. While both systems are flawed (they both perpetuate incumbency and state power), it would be a gross misstatement to call one an unqualified “dictatorship” and the other an unconditional “democracy.”

On freedom of the press, Cuba is not a place where one can buy a foreign newspaper or magazine on the streets. But then neither is Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, readily available on the streets because it is largely distributed through the vast array of political, economic, and social organizations through which every Cuban citizen is engaged in one way or another. Freedom of the press is one area in which Cuba would do well to lift restrictions. Having survived the extraordinary stresses of the Special Period in the 1990s, Cuba can rest assured that allowing independent Cuban media and opening up to responsible news sources from Latin America and the world will not degrade, but rather invigorate, the public intellectual discourse, the perceived quality of life, and Cuba’s strength as a nation.

The distorted view most Americans have of Cuba is molded by their inability to visit Cuba to see for themselves. People in the United States and Cuba have much to learn from each other. In April 2009 a Congressional delegation, led by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, visited Cuba to review policies on trade and cultural and academic exchanges. The same opportunity needs to be afforded to all Americans in order to formulate a rational national policy towards Cuba based on realism and mutual respect.

The international community of nations has spoken out against the U.S. embargo on trade and travel to Cuba through 17 consecutive years of resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly. With each passing year the United States government has become more and more politically isolated on this issue. The last vote on October 29, 2008 was 185 to 3 against the U.S. blockade, with 2 abstentions. Those opposed were the United States, Israel, and Palau. Palau, along with the Marshall Islands and Micronesia which abstained, are all former U.S. colonies that remain highly dependent on the U.S. economic and military umbrella. Palau, incidentally, is so dependent on the United States that when no other country on the planet would agree to take 17 Chinese Uighurs held in Guantánamo Bay as so-called “enemy combatants,” because no country wanted to legitimize the systematic U.S. denial of protections guaranteed to prisoners of war under international law, Palau agreed in June 2009 to take them after intense U.S. pressure. Only afterward did Albania, in no less desperate economic situation itself, ultimately relent to taking four of the 17 Uighurs.

Even the Cuban-American exile community, which has traditionally backed the U.S. embargo because their families lost properties in the 1959 Revolution, has been gradually shifting in preference to selectively lifting the embargo and travel restrictions to ease family visits and for the younger generation to rediscover the land of their parents. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has not posed any conceivable threat to the security of the United States.

On the contrary, the United States is harboring a Cuban-born Venezuelan man – Luis Posada Carriles – who has been convicted in absentia for various terrorist attacks and conspiracies in Latin America, including the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455 that killed all 73 people on board. Detained in 2005-2007 for illegal presence in the United States, Carriles is now free. If President Obama is truly concerned about security and thwarting future terrorist attacks, he would move to extradite Carriles to Venezuela or Cuba, both of which have demanded that he face trial in their courts.

On the other hand, the Cuban Five (Los Cinco) – Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino – were arrested in 1998 for activities related to gathering intelligence on a number of militant Cuban-American exile groups, including Brothers to the Rescue, that have been accused of organizing illegal and often violent activities inside Cuba. The Five were convicted in 2001 on all 26 counts by a Federal District Court in Miami, where they could not possibly have received a fair trial. So far, the Obama administration has refused to reconsider the case, and, in fact, successfully pressured the Supreme Court to deny a review. If President Obama is truly interested in justice, he should reopen the case against the Cuban Five for independent review, and allow visits by family members from Cuba. If The Five’s only crime was thwarting terrorism, then they must be freed.

A parallel opportunity for rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba is arising out of acknowledgements by both the Bush and Obama administrations that harsh interrogation methods and torture were used at the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, and President Obama’s announced intention of closing the prison within a year of taking office. In fact, the prison itself appears to violate the very terms of the lease agreement of February 23, 1903 that grants “the premises for use as coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose.” One aspect of putting this dark period in U.S. human rights history behind us is to terminate the lease and return Guantánamo Bay to Cuba once the prison is closed. This will be another substantive gesture that the U.S. and Cuba can live together with mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty.

Having lifted the embargo just a little and let the Pastors for Peace Friendship Caravan through, President Obama needs to carry through on his promise of change by ending the U.S. embargo once and for all.

California-based organizer, educator, activist-writer, and playwright (and, oh yes, home schooling father and devoted spouse) Richard Oxman knows the answer. He’s more than aware that our current system – our very culture – is designed to shove the “big” questions to the fringes. This is why Oxman has conjured up a unique form of dissent: TOSCA — Taking Over the State of California.

“A necessary, urgent action,” he calls its, “designed to put thirteen non-politicians into the Sacred Seat in Sacramento (the Governor’s seat)… with all of those citizens having an equal say… along with the working figureheads who will be our candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor in the 2010 gubernatorial race.”

Oxman feels California is ideally suited for such an effort and has begun the important work of getting the campaign (so to speak) rolling. I recently asked him some questions via e-mail and here’s how it went:

Mickey Z: What is it about the state of California and its political apparatus that makes it a logical venue for your efforts?

Richard Oxman: The Governor of California can wield great influence in the state, having the legal right to move unilaterally on many fronts without having to compromise with opposing politicians. The state itself is tremendously influential, nationwide, internationally. Her/his role — the Guv’s — in Higher Education alone could change the world. Think divestment, for one. And because California is in serious — historic — trouble on several counts, citizens there are primed to follow a new paradigm for change. They are desperate.

MZ: If/when this succeeds, what might be the first obvious difference the public would notice?

RO: It will succeed, it must… or we are doomed. Everything else on the table is either disingenuous or moving at an arthritic snail’s pace. Once in office all decision-making meetings will be filmed for public consumption, to help citizens to self-educate, and decide for themselves who has their interests at heart, what to demand, who to pressure, etc. Our Guv can actually teach citizens HOW to pressure. That’s one of several aspects of TOSCA that have no historical precedent. Our tenure in office will be citizen-centered and communally-centered, NOT about the self-interest of career politicians or their money men.

MZ: Speaking of money…

RO: Our campaign will be waged on a ZERO budget. Whereas people concerned with the influence of money in campaigns to date have tried to change things with efforts such as campaign finance reform… we will Be The Change We Want To See. Meaning, we intend to demonstrate what miracles can be wrought with no money. TOSCA is all about opening up a window to see what the public will do on their own once they see how much can be accomplished without any funds whatsoever. How much pure joy can be generated, how much human connection can be had… with nothing in one’s pocket.

MZ: Considering the roadblocks involved with even getting a candidate on the ballot, how do you intend to accumulate enough votes?

RO: One thing we’re going to do is do away with all the time, energy and money that’s always put into getting on the ballot. What we save there we’ll put into recruiting… on an intimate basis. Not with signs, petitions, online blah blah, meetings, announcements or any of that habitual generic stuff. Sure, we’ll accept high profile plugs, but our basic m.o. will be to have friends contact friends one-on-one, bonding in an unprecedented way, passing the word incessantly; we have a huge jump on others already. No real time needed. That 61% who didn’t show at the last statewide election will provide mucho. Then there are the voters whose votes weren’t counted because of carelessness, more than what the Green Party garnered! None of our unaffilitated write-in votes will be lost in that Black Hole. I can’t fit “reasons” and much else into this telegraphic bite, but… contact me. There will be easy crossovers from major and marginalized parties… for it’ll be effortless to sell the notion that we need deep institutionalized changes… like detaching our economy from the Pentagon… which no one else can offer. Before much longer highly influential souls will take up TOSCA’s cause… almost exclusively. And then the first step in our legal, non-violent revolution will kick in.

MZ: Okay, I’ve asked to sound-bite and condense and reduce your idea to an easily digestible morsel to keep it ready for prime time…but now imagine you have a totally different audience: radicals, activists, etc. Why should, say, an anarchist get on board the TOSCA Express?

RO: Express, yes! Everyone should get on board “yesterday” because individual freedom will be of paramount importance — on an ongoing basis — for all connected with TOSCA. There are different kinds of anarchists, of course, but like the vast majority of anarchists… TOSCA’s core members believe that an appropriate economic order cannot be created by the decrees and statues of a government. We’re into the collaboration of workers in all aspects of production… keeping in mind, however, please… that we have no intention to approach “production” along traditional, environmentally destructive lines. The taking over of management in all facilities by the producers themselves is of prime importance to us, and of great appeal to most anarchists, I believe. We see separate groups within industry as independent members of the Big Industrial Picture, carrying on production/distribution of products in the clear interests of particular communities… on the basis of free mutual agreements. That said, it doesn’t mean that the thirteen people serving as Governor together will not be trying to influence decisions made in each little corner. Everyone has an obvious vested interest in moving in solidarity respecting certain environmental facts, at the very least. And, by the way, this business of anarchism should not scare anyone away. For everyone who opposes the Pentagon being inextricably bound up with our economy’s success, functioning… must, absolutely must acknowledge that we’re going to have to have radical institutional changes in order to create greater democratization in society. To say nothing about other equally important (related) issues…like abominations abroad… which we will spotlight daily on our own media outlet.

MZ: When you talk about the need to move in solidarity respecting certain environmental facts, are you saying that we may differ on certain issues but everyone is heavily impacted by 80% of world’s forests being gone?

RO: Perfectly put. We are all doomed if everyone is merely doing their own thing. TOSCA would respect anarchists more than any other group in office in history, but… we would do our damnedest to help everyone self-educate about our mutual environmental threats, and do what we could to encourage those making decisions in little corners to deeply consider larger communal concerns. Their own survival, to put in another way.

MZ: Who — besides me — have you asked to serve as an advisor and who have approached about being a candidate? What kind of response have you generally gotten?

RO: High profile figures and others such as Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Bill Blum, Derrick Jensen, Glen Ford, Afshin Rattansi (in Iran at present), Jennifer Loewenstein, Greg Moses, Wallace J Nichols, Michael Stocker (of Ocean Conservation Research), the great African specialist who constantly risks his life to get great news to us… Keith Harmon Snow, Dave Lindorff, Cindy Sheehan, Ron Jacobs, Kim Petersen (of Canada), Henry A. Giroux (who Routledge named as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period), L.A. attorney/author Ellen Brown, Argentina’s Marie Trigone, Bruce Anderson (of the Anderson Valley Advertiser), Devinder Sharma (of India), Ronnie Cummins (Executive Director for Organic Consumers Association), David Yearsley, organic farmer Dr. Shepherd Bliss of Sonoma State University, Murray Dobbin (of Canada), Stephen Martin, and artist Jerry Fresia (in Italy) are just some of the people who have offered us their public imprimaturs.

We’re still in the process of trying to recruit Mike Davis, Paul Hawken, Michael Albert and Arundhati Roy… and everyone else! Noam Chomsky hasn’t come on board yet, but we haven’t given up on anyone, and even people like Noam — who for very legitimate reasons want to take “a little more time” to consider all aspects of what we’ve put on the table before adopting a public stance — have taken the heartbeats to go back and forth with us, very generously. Much is not written in stone, and so we can take the time to ask people to make recommendations, to feel free to tweak this and that to, possibly, suit their own purposes… their angle on society.

MZ: So the reactions have been encouraging?

RO: Everything considered, I’d say that we’re getting an over-the-top positive response. I mean, the above list was compiled over a period of only about two weeks of me working alone, spending only minimal time on recruitment. That’s actually phenomenal by any standards, yes? And one really has to factor in that we’re coming out of nowhere, dumping ourselves in the inboxes of individuals and organizations quite suddenly, absolutely no prep for what’s essentially, arguably, the most radical proposal in the realm of politics… for the electoral arena… in the history of the country. IRV is one of our big/small potatoes.

Some groups and some activists are truly puzzling in their responses, but that’s another book, as they say. The reasons for silence in response to my missives sometimes, the dropping of the ball inexplicably by some, the lack of nurturing well-intentioned efforts like TOSCA’s, and premature dismissal of what we put on the table for consideration now and then is all part of the animal we’re taming. By which I mean any effort to mobilize citizens for the purposes of moving in solidarity meaningfully — not in lockstep automatic meaningless mode following old paradigms for protest/change — is going to encounter all kinds of resistance for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is what I call territorial trauma. But that’s part of the beautiful satisfaction that’s coming our way, this TOSCA making a dent in all that. The fact is that there’s nothing else on the table that I know of which has a shot in hell at saving this “heaven on earth” in time.

MZ: How can readers learn more and get involved?

RO: Readers should contact me directly IMMEDIATELY. They can reach me at tosca.2010@yahoo.com or at headburg@yahoo.com for starters. Urgent connection is crucial… whether one wants to limit one’s participation to only ten minutes total running up to the election in 2010, OR whether one wants to work alongside me 24×8 to create this watershed in history. PLEASE NOTE that I always get back within 24 hours at the outside. If one doesn’t hear back from me directly within that time frame, something’s amiss. The link http://oxtogrind.org/archive/353 is a decent place to start learning about TOSCA, and a reading of that can be followed by encouraging others to contact me.

In Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice,¹ Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin insist that we need new answers to these questions if we hope to reverse “the crisis facing organized labor – indeed the crisis facing the entire US working class.” This crisis is marked by declining unionization, inter-union conflict, falling living standards, rising unemployment, growing poverty and deepening oppression.

Solidarity Divided is essential reading. For a summary of the contents, I recommend Immanuel Ness’ thoughtful review.² I will address the strategic questions that Fletcher and Gapasin raise because they are so important to our organizing efforts.

What is the purpose of a union?

Since Samuel Gompers took the Presidency of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, the official answer to the question of what is the purpose of a union has been to promote the economic interests of those fortunate enough to be union members.(15) Fletcher and Gapasin argue that this narrow focus on economic self-interest (economic unionism) has been a colossal failure for unions and for the working class as a whole.

Unions are the most organized section of the working class. They could win mass support if they championed the unity, rights and standard-of-living of the entire class, that is, if they addressed social and political issues.

When unions don’t support the class, they cannot count on the class to support them. And without mass support, unions cannot prevail against an employers’ offensive that pits groups of workers against one another. Here’s a good example.

I recently heard a public radio report on a months’ long civic workers’ strike. The head of the union was interviewed first, followed by the city’s mayor (the employer).

The union leader focused on the fairness of the union’s economic demands compared with what other unionized workers in the city have won. The mayor talked about how the strike was an attack against seniors and children. He said that everyone was suffering from the recession, and city workers had no right to put their own welfare above that of others. He added that he could not meet the union’s demands without cutting public services.

The mayor presented himself as the guardian of the greater good, when the reverse is true.

The union had rejected a concession contract. It is fighting to maintain a standard of living that serves as a benchmark for other workers in the area — defending senior’s pensions and good jobs for tomorrow’s workers. However, the union did not say that it was fighting for the rights of all workers. The union did not say that it was fighting against the unreasonable demand that workers should pay for economic problems they did not create. The union did not call on everyone who is suffering from the recession to join its fight and demand that business profits be taxed to provide more good jobs through expanded public services. It said none of these things. Unlike the mayor, it steered clear of “politics.”

So, after hearing both sides, the average person would be inclined to support the mayor against the “greedy unions” who either caused the recession or are demanding more than their share.

How can union supporters convince others that unions fight for everyone, when unions themselves refuse to make this argument?

Polls show that most workers want union jobs, so there is potential for majority support for unions. However, a narrow union focus on economic self-interest does not invite mass support. On the contrary, it can generate resentment among non-union workers. By refusing to fight the political class war, unions are losing the economic battle.

To reverse this situation, Fletcher and Gapasin argue that the union movement must undergo a political transformation to become a labor movement that champions the economic and social interests of the entire working class: union and non-union, employed and unemployed, all races, genders, sexual orientations, native-born and immigrant.

How should unions respond to oppression?

Employers use racism, nationalism, sexism and homophobia to divide workers and weaken their collective power, so unions would benefit from fighting these oppressions. However, most unions go along with workplace and social divisions, and their structure reflects this – most union officials are straight White males.

When unions do address matters of oppression, these are not considered central to the union’s function. Instead, they are usually delegated to separate union departments or caucuses, so that Black members are left to fight racism, women to fight sexism, gays to fight homophobia, etc. The implication is that straight White male workers have nothing to gain from fighting oppression. The question of whether they do or not divides society, the workplace, the unions and the left.

Employers accumulate capital by paying workers less than the value of what they produce. As a result, the gap in wealth between the capitalist class and the working class keeps widening. Capitalism denies that employers exploit workers. Instead, it promotes the view that employers and workers are economic “partners.”

On the other hand, capitalism encourages the belief that sections of the population who are better off have achieved this position at the expense of those who are worse off, i.e., that men benefit from the oppression of women, Whites benefit from the oppression of Blacks, straights benefit from the oppression of gays, workers in richer nations benefit from the exploitation of workers in poorer nations, etc. This idea is widespread, but untrue.³

The belief that some workers benefit from the oppression of others causes the presumed beneficiaries of oppression to feel guilty around their oppressed co-workers who, in turn, feel resentful toward their more “privileged” brothers and sisters. This is divide-and-rule at its finest, and it benefits only the employers.⁴

I could find no reviews of this book that questioned its assertion that some workers benefit from the oppression of others. This issue must be resolved if we hope to build an effective fight against oppression. As the authors state, “[Either] oppressions such as racism and sexism become battlegrounds to unite workers in the larger challenge for power, or they become battlegrounds in the intra-class struggle over resources.” (181)

Building beyond the workplace

Solidarity Divided argues that the struggle against oppression must transcend the boundaries of workplace, union and nation.

The authors describe how the AFL-CIO and CTW union federations limited their response to Hurricane Katrina to economic support for the evacuees and for reconstruction. These unions avoided the political questions of: why the infrastructure of the area had been allowed to deteriorate due to cuts to public services; why poor Black residents were hardest hit; why federal rescue operations were so inadequate; why developers were allowed to bulldoze poor Black neighborhoods to build upscale alternatives; and so on.

Katrina provided an opportunity to challenge racism, poverty and neoliberal government policies and to help Gulf Coast residents organize themselves so they could have a say in the future of the area. But instead of providing political support, the unions offered only charity.

Similarly, unions have not fought against unemployment, for women’s reproductive rights, for affirmative action, for immigrant rights, for gay marriage, etc. At best, resolutions are passed, and money is donated.

Instead of paying lip service to social issues, the authors argue that unions should promote internal political discussion with the aim of mobilizing members to fight for the rights of the oppressed of all classes and for the working class as a whole. (168-9) This will be not be possible without challenging the widespread conviction that straight White male workers actually benefit from racism, sexism and homophobia.

How should unions relate to employers?

Fletcher and Gapasin describe how American unions embraced a social contract with employers after World War II.

The postwar social accord with capital was symbolized by the so-called Treaty of Detroit in 1950, in which Corporate America bought back managerial initiative and control of the shop floor in exchange for cost-of-living raises, employer-sponsored health care, and pension plans. The price was abandonment of class struggle against Corporate America and further bureaucratization of the union movement. Grievance and arbitration procedures replaced the right to strike. “Professional” labor-relations representatives replaced rank-and-file shop stewards as the primary representatives of the unions. (28-9)

In the early 1970s, the economy sank into recession, and Corporate America tore up its half of the social contract. By the late 1970’s, employers were on the offensive, demanding concession contracts to roll back wages and benefits. Both Republican and Democratic administrations backed the capitalist class.

In the wake of President Carter’s firing of postal workers after the 1978 wildcat strike and then the dramatic firing of the PATCO workers by President Reagan, organized labor had no sense of how to build a massive social movement that was anything more than a lobbying effort. Organized labor made excuses for its inaction rather than reflectively and self-critically acknowledging that labor’s “Pearl Harbor” had taken place and that a new form of class warfare was unfolding on the national level. (46-7)

Unions refused to accept the new reality. They continued to operate in a kind of time warp, insisting on upholding their end of a social contract that no longer existed. They accepted employers’ demands for concessions, no matter how deep, in the hope that once profitability was restored, they could regain lost ground. However, even as the economy boomed during the 1980s and 1990s, employers continued to demand concessions.

The unions cannot acknowledge this one-sided class war, because years of compromise and bureaucratization have left them totally unequipped to fight on a class basis. The authors warn, “As long as unions operate solidly within capitalism, accepting its basic rules and premises as permanent, they may be marching to their doom.” (214)

Fletcher and Gapasin disagree with the prevailing wisdom that all union problems can be solved by acquiring more members and building bigger unions. They argue that this strategy cannot succeed unless the push for growth is matched with a political strategy that acknowledges the fundamental conflict between labor and capital, challenges the supremacy of capital, and fights for working-class power.

How should unions relate to the State?

Samuel Gompers believed that the interests of American workers were linked with the interests of American corporations and the American Empire. So the AFL allied itself with US capital and the US State in their program of world domination, even though this partnership put the AFL in direct conflict with the interests of workers in America and around the world.

With the notable exception of US Labor Against the War (USLAW), most US unions continue to back US foreign policy, supporting imperial wars and military aid to foreign governments that attack workers’ rights (ie. Columbia, Indonesia, Israel). As the authors state, “The AFL-CIO and CTW leaderships appear to equate patriotism with support for US foreign policy and are clearly reluctant to entertain broad-based discussion of US foreign policy within the ranks of the union movement.” (120)

Fletcher and Gapasin believe that unions must take a stand against US imperialism, because class solidarity means nothing if American workers back their State to dominate and destroy the lives of workers in other lands.

Similarly, unions must oppose domestic anti-worker policies, including racist immigration measures, a privatized medical system and neoliberal economics that force workers to pay the cost of bailing out failing corporations.

Solidarity Divided challenges the myth that government represents “we the people” (as in, we the people now own shares of GM and Chrysler), when it actually represents the collective interests of the capitalist class (as in, we the capitalist class are using public money to float GM and Chrysler until it can be returned to profitability). As they point out, the State serves the employers by consistently suppressing independent working-class activity.

What’s the solution?

Solidarity Divided advocates building geographically-based unions and workers’ councils that include union and non-union members. Such formations have traditionally provided a base for working-class power. However, the authors do not advocate building an independent political party of the working class.

The authors support independent political action, but not political independence from the Democratic and Republican parties. Instead, they call for a neo-Rainbow approach – building an organization that can work both inside and outside of the Democratic Party.⁵

Unfortunately, the American electoral system is designed to prevent independent mass organizations from developing. Bi-yearly electoral races exert an irresistible pull on all social movements to back particular candidates and to tone down their demands in order to get those candidates elected.

The Democratic Party has been phenomenally successful in absorbing and derailing social movements, the campaign to elect President Obama being the most recent example. Fletcher signed the founding statement of “Progressives for Obama” which states,

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama’s unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.⁶

This is how social movements are seduced into supporting a capitalist party that serves the capitalist class. Only a political organization that is dedicated to working-class rule could resist this pull and avoid the demobilization that follows inevitable betrayal.⁷

Despite warning us that the State is not a class-neutral machine, it appears that Fletcher and Gapasin fall into Gompers’ trap of viewing the State as “an empty vessel that could be filled by any sort of politics or political or economic influence… [so that] the working class need not challenge the capitalists for state power.” (15)

This may be the greatest weakness of the book – it calls for building a movement to challenge capitalist oppression, not to end that oppression by bringing the working class to power.

The problem may be the mistaken belief that some workers benefit from the oppression of others. If this were true, then a society run by workers would not end oppression, so that it would be necessary to seek cross-class alliances. However, this is a dangerous road because cross-class alliances typically subordinate working-class demands.

Can unions be reformed?

Fletcher and Gapasin argue that the existing unions cannot be reformed, because they are structured to prevent democratic control from the base. (165-6)

The authors provide numerous examples of how conservative and even right-wing union leaders have used socialists to build the unions while denying them any power unless they agree to be co-opted into the bureaucratic structure.

The book describes how the union machine has applied anti-democratic methods to prevent the class-based expansion of union struggles (Decatur, Illinois) and to crush internal rank-and-file rebellions (Ron Carey and Teamsters for a Democratic Union). A more recent example is the SEIU takeover of United Healthcare Workers -West, when it insisted that front-line health care workers had the right to vote on who should represent them and to participate in bargaining contracts with their employers.

For those attempting to build independent unions, Fletcher and Gapasin warn that capitalism creates the conditions under which undemocratic business unions are reproduced and by which even the most well-intentioned leaders are co-opted. Preventing such corruption requires stringent counter-measures that make sure members keep collective and democratic control of the union. As the authors put it, “members must be active participants in the change process rather than recipients of someone else’s work, even if that work is conducted on their behalf.” (66)

This is a huge challenge in a society that dominates workers to keep them passive.

It should be noted that the book’s many examples of rank-and-file defeats are drawn from years of relatively low class struggle. Democratic rebellions would be more likely to succeed in a context of rising class struggle.

If unions are too weak to challenge the employers, how can they lead a more general class uprising? The answer is that they can’t, but other sections of the class can and, in the process, revitalize the unions. The 2006 million-strong general strikes in defense of immigrants’ rights were fed by the rising unionization of immigrant workers. They also fed into that unionization.

While Fletcher and Gapasin promote a mutually beneficial relationship between unions and social movements, they are unclear on how this can be achieved, given the narrow economic focus of the union bureaucracy and the domination of most social movements by professionals. Class politics can provide an answer.

The authors rightly argue that race/color is the key division in the American working class (and in American society) and so the fight against racism must be central to the labor movement. However, I would argue that, within the unions themselves, the central division is one of class, not race.⁸

Fletcher and Gapasin describe how the ascension of rank-and-file workers to union officialdom “marks the beginning of a transition from one class to another.”(58) They also describe the revolving door between union officials and local politicians. (102,159) But instead of attributing the conservative politics of the trade union bureaucracy to its position as a professional middle class, the authors attribute these politics to outmoded and unproductive “old-style thinking.” (108)

If the problem of union strategy is simply one of ideology, then the unions could be reformed. If the problem is a class divide within the unions, then a revolution-from-below would be needed to turf out the union professionals and put the worker-members in power. The same would hold true for social movements dominated by professionals. Unions and social movements that joined forces to advance class concerns would be a might force indeed. However, there is huge resistance to acknowledging the existence of any class-divide within the unions.⁹

Conclusion

Solidarity Divided calls for a return to the class-struggle politics that originally built the unions. This call could not be more timely, as today’s unions lack the political clarity required to advance their own limited demands, let alone to champion the rights of workers and the oppressed.

The questions raised by the authors deserve serious consideration, widespread discussion and further development. After reading this book, I eagerly read every review I could find in the hope of learning more, but what I found was disappointing.

Most criticism of this book was self-serving, in that the authors were condemned for setting themselves up as authorities and equally condemned for not being authoritative enough to address every possible concern. And it was distressing to see so much academic competition over who is “getting it right” when we must pull together to achieve the political clarity and the organization we so desperately need. This low level of politics is the result of 30 years of setbacks and defeats for our class, and the reason why Solidarity Divided was written and is so important.

As Fletcher and Gapasin remind us, “Class struggle is built into the fabric of all societies that have classes.” To develop these struggles, we must answer the strategic questions that Solidarity Divided has placed on the table.

1. Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice, by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin (2008). University of California Press. The numbers in parentheses indicate page numbers from the book.
2. Book Review: Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice, by Immanuel Ness. First published in Socialism and Democracy, No. 49, March 2009.
3. ”The politics of identity,” by Sharon Smith. International Socialism Review, Issue 57, January–February 2008.
4. ”Emphasizing divisions,” pp.197-202 of POWER and Powerlessness, by Susan Rosenthal (2006). Trafford.
5. ”Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow” by Danny Glover and Bill Fletcher Jr., The Nation, Feb 14, 2005.
6. ”Barack Is Our Best Option – And You’re Needed Now!” by Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Barbara Ehrenreich, and Danny Glover. Progressives for Obama, March 24th, 2008
7. The Democrats: A Critical History, by Lance Selfa (2008). Haymarket Books. Chicago.
8. ”Class-Divided Unions,” by Susan Rosenthal, March 23, 2007.
9. Professional Poison: How Professionals Sabotage Social Movements, and Why Workers Should Lead Our Fight, by Susan Rosenthal (2009).

This nation’s prime dysfunction is the lack of a genuine social movement for anything substantive. The last movement died somewhere in 2003-2004: drowned in a sea of Democratic propaganda about changing the Emperor’s clothes. I was busily organizing the peace movement throughout Illinois at the time. We were turning out thousands of protestors on a regular basis, and backing the street manifestations with a frontal grassroots blitz of letters and calls to congresspeople, followed by the occasional sit-ins at their offices. To all involved, it was clear that the anti-war movement would shut down the war after a few years of persistence.

But alas, the movement completely discombobulated right before us. I watched willing volunteers start spending their time working for an “exciting” new senate candidate in Illinois, and others join the Howard Dean campaign and ultimately the John Kerry campaign. By the time the “exciting” Illinois senator rose to national prominence, based primarily on his capacity to string multiple coherent sentences together in a forceful manner (what low standards we have come to possess), the social movement had become the man himself. When this happens, the social movement stops existing: it is trumped by the ambitions of one man and the party that supports him. Wall Street, the banking industry, the health insurance racket, and the military industrial complex had not-so-cleverly beaten this nation’s last great movement.

According to many sociologists, the Frenchman Alain Touraine prime among them, a society is defined by conflict among social movements. As such, a nation without social movements is also void of society. As in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and other authoritarian systems, society has become thoroughly entrenched by the ruling elite in the Land of the (buy one get one) Free. The uniquely American brand of government is particularly trying and burdensome insofar as a significant portion of the population is convinced that we have a functioning democracy.

I would argue that we are governed by a bureaucratic plutocracy: a system that intentionally drowns the populace in trivial details so as to guard against independent thought. Social interaction is frequently driven by promotion rather than genuine amicability. Since no one in my generation seems to be gainfully employed, everyone is an independent contractor: peddling some sort of pseudo-art or music, or their graphic design or website design “business,” and so on. Even those supposedly working for grassroots political movements operate on a business model of consuming all who stand in their path. To them, you are a name on a list and a potential donor. The message becomes nothing but a tool to procure sustenance for the organization: to the point that the movement gets engulfed in the organization.

For six years, we have been functioning as a nation without society. We have the skeletons of society: people bustling around doing stuff, newspapers printing stuff, televisions broadcasting stuff, and a couple political parties advocating stuff. But the stuff is primarily noise and irrelevant sound bytes.

The closest thing to a genuine social movement today is the inspiring conservative anti-war movement, as evidenced in the appreciable success of the Ron Paul presidential campaign and the succeeding Campaign for Liberty movement. In addition to offering a principled opposition to war, this movement raises prescient criticisms of this nation’s monetary system and an essential reform: abolishing the Federal Reserve.

Unfortunately the Left has been more hesitant than the right to critique its mainstream party, though there are notable exceptions. Two of them are right here in Illinois. Firstly, the sit-in at Republic Windows last winter demonstrated that Chicago might still be the labor movement capital of the universe, and that not all workers have been consumed by the ravenous Democratic Party. Secondly, the Illinois Green Party, through persistent and painstaking grassroots work, has become an established party on par with the two corporate parties. Their Gubernatorial candidate, Rich Whitney, won greater than 10% of the vote in 2006 and looks to build on that atop an eclectic slate of seasoned activists in 2010.

Nonetheless, a significant portion of the largely dormant left has been looking to the president for guidance. He is undoubtedly a brilliant man insofar as he navigated the confusing legal, bureaucratic jungle that is our political system and achieved a historic feat last November. However, his accomplishment was not, as is widely regarded, the result of some social movement. In fact, he shunned the remaining minute traces of social movements at every opportunity. He said he would fight to end the war, and then expanded it, said he would fight to restore civil liberties and take a principled stand against warrantless wiretapping, and then reversed his decision. And most recently he said he was for “universal health care,” and yet echoes the same drivel of bygone years.

People must stop looking to the president for solutions to this nation’s numerous problems: unending wars of empire, avarice throughout the banking industry, a political class that is a mere shill for said banking industry, and a national discourse that has become incredibly trivialized by the saturation of corporate-controlled media. Addressing these deficiencies, re-instituting a democracy and reconstructing civil society will require arduous labor over the course of many years. I invite all concerned citizens to join a local anti-war group, or create one if there isn’t one already, and be as visible and intelligently provocative as possible. Do the same with alternative political parties that build off of local involvement, such as the Greens or Libertarians. Join one of the local movements for single-payer health care, or any other movement built upon substance rather than noise. We need people of courage to take on the duty of lifting Americans above this feeble reverence of Wall Street’s latest White House implant.

On the morning of July 8, as the Group of Eight leaders began arriving in L’Aquila, activists scaled the hill overlooking the red zone and laid out huge sheets of white plastic to form 10-meter high letters reading ‘Yes We Camp.’ As Mattia Lolli of the 3e32 Committee, which takes its name from the time the earthquake hit, explained, “We want to make sure the G8 leaders as well as public opinion in Italy know that three months after the earthquake there are still over 22,000 people living in tents.”

The G8 summit was originally to take place on the island of Sardinia. On April 23, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s scandal ridden prime minister, made the surprise announcement that it would be moved to L’Aquila, saying it would put the world’s spotlight on the devastated city. But that’s not how it is seen by local residents, who are still mourning the loss of friends and loved ones — 300 people died in the quake — as well as their homes and their city.

Among the first events organized by the citizens committees on the occasion of the G8 summit was a candlelit march the night of June 6, the three-month anniversary of the earthquake, to remember the victims and “shed light on the responsibilities.”¹

I arrived in L’Aquila with a group of over 40 people from Vicenza, Italy, where local residents have been working for more than three years to block construction of a new U.S. military base. Despite having worked tirelessly for weeks to organize a national demonstration just the day before on July 4th, the No Dal Molin movement in Vicenza was able to fill an entire bus for the seven-hour ride to L’Aquila, intent on showing their solidarity with the local people who, like those in Vicenza, are working to defend their city.

The march started at midnight, with 5000 people holding candles illuminating what everyone remarked is now a ghost town. Only 23,000 of the 70,000 residents remain in the city — nearly all of them living in the tent camps — while the others have been sent to hotels on the coast. “L’Aquila is Italy’s New Orleans” commented Francesca, a CodePink activist from California who was in Italy for the No Dal Molin demonstration.

Unlike most Italian marches, there were no signs, flags or banners, aside from one with the names of victims and another with two simple but effective words, ‘Truth and Justice,’ a demand seen as “the best way to keep the memory of those who are no longer with us alive.” The silence was broken only by the inappropriate sound of helicopters flying overhead monitoring this most peaceful of marches.

The police and military presence in L’Aquila had been on the increase as the G8 approached. Officers with machine guns were present at every intersection and citizens are subjected to what one 70-year-old woman referred to as “check points.” As I walked through the city in the pre dawn hours following the march, the number of police and military vehicles on the streets was overwhelming.

While waiting for a regional bus, I asked people what they thought of holding the G8 in L’Aquila. Not a single person had anything positive to say. The most common criticism was the inappropriateness of using the tragedy as a backdrop for the international summit, especially so soon after the earthquake. Others talked about how the G8 was bringing more inconvenience to people who were already suffering, with roads closures and the blocking of internet and cell phone service for the duration of the summit. In addition, the frenetic 24-hour work being done to prepare the city for the G8 took vital resources away from the reconstruction work that would help get people back into their homes before the cold of winter hits this city in the mountains.

However, it wasn’t just with the G8 that more control and restrictions were imposed on the citizens of L’Aquila. As the residents of the tent camps began to recover from the shock of the earthquake and started organizing to demand a role in the rebuilding of their city, new rules came into effect. In an attempt to stifle dissent, distributing fliers was forbidden within the camps as was organizing assemblies and meetings. As Renato of the Abruzzo Social Forum noted, “The upcoming G8 summit was then used as an excuse to crush any dissent in L’Aquila.”

But organize they did. In part thanks to the space set up in a public park by the 3e32 committee, the only place in L’Aquila where people can gather outside the tent camps and where everyone can come and go as they please — no check points! There is a main tent for events, meetings, concerts and theatre as well as an internet point and a fair trade shop.

On July 7, the day before the official start of the G8, the citizens committees organized an all-day forum. Local residents as well as people from all over Italy gathered under the 3e32 tent to talk about the reconstruction, both physical and social, of L’Aquila.

The central focus of the citizens committees is the 100% Campaign, which calls for 100% reconstruction of the city, 100% participation on the part of the local residents in the decisions that affect the city, 100% transparency regarding how reconstruction money is spent.

The funds thus far authorized by the Italian government are deemed to be insufficient to rebuild the city. If compared to the 1997 earthquake in Umbria, with more than twice the number of people left homeless, the government has authorized 20% less for the reconstruction of L’Aquila, or Euro 5.7 billion. Adding insult to injury, the Italian parliament just recently approved the purchase of 131 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets for a total of Euro 13 billion. It is not yet clear who Italy intends to bomb.

In addition, the Italian government has handed down a decision made with no local input to build new housing on privately owned property outside the city expropriated from small landowners, changing forever the urban makeup of the city and risking the abandonment of the historic center. In other words, creating suburbs around a medieval city! The local residents are fighting to keep their city in tact. In fact, the second part of the ‘Yes We Camp’ slogan is ‘But we won’t go away.’

Berlusconi, as owner of three private television channels and in control of the three public channels, has managed to create a very different image of L’Aquila. Antonello talked about a recent trip with his family to the seaside, where he was told, “You people from L’Aquila are so lucky! You get free meals. You’re going to have free houses. Berlusconi has solved all your problems and you have the nerve to complain!” It was reminiscent of Barbara Bush’s comments on the people living in the Astrodome in Houston, Texas after hurricane Katrina.

But the Yes We Camp protests have managed to garner media attention. As Obama passed through L’Aquila on his way to tour the damage in the historic center, activists were on hand with banners to greet his motorcade. And on July 9, as the First Ladies toured the same area, the women of L’Aquila organized the march of the “Last Ladies” and occupied an empty apartment building demanding that is be used for the people still living in tents.

There are some concerns that, as the G8 comes to a close, there will be no “withdrawal” from L’Aquila. In fact, throughout Italy, unpopular decisions handed down from the central government are increasingly enforced by the military, including the construction of incinerators at Acerra and mega-landfills at Chiaiano near Naples. Berlusconi has also threatened to use the military to enforce the construction of new the U.S. base in Vicenza and, more recently, for the construction of new nuclear power plants.

However, in each of these cases, the local people have succeeded in creating a movement to defend their territory and vindicate their right to dissent. And in this day and age of “representative systems” that are in effect killing democracy, what we see with the local citizens committees and assemblies are instead examples of true democracy.

Yes we camp. And we won’t go away!

1. Video

Panic ensued. The one hallway leading out of their attic apartment was engulfed in flames. Charles, Annie and James’ 19-year-old son, made a daring leap through the wall of fire and escaped, but the rest of the family was trapped. The only way out of the inferno was through the window; there were no fire escapes. Annie made it down to the second floor windowsill with the help of another son, Willis. The crowd below placed a pile of blankets on the ground to cushion her fall and told Annie, dangling for her life, to let go. She hit the pile and survived. Willis also jumped and survived. The fire, described by one Chicago firefighter as a “holocaust,” killed four of the Hickman children. They were found underneath the bed with Leslie (14), shielding the bodies of his younger siblings Elvena (9), Sylvester (7), and Velvena (3).

Hickman returned home the following morning to find his building gutted and his family gone. He recounted later that a neighbor approached him and broke the tragic news. “He said, ‘Mr. Hickman, I hate to tell you this, four of your children is burnt to death.’ And I weakened to the ground.” Even though he was distraught and wracked with pain, Hickman remembered a threat made by his landlord to burn out the tenants out of his building if they didn’t move out.

Hickman found his family, buried his children, moved into a new apartment, and returned to work. But justice eluded him. “Paper was made to burn, coal and rags. Not people. People wasn’t made to burn, ” he told his son. The police didn’t seriously investigate the case. Coleman, his landlord, was a free man. Over the next six months, Hickman became increasingly depressed and frustrated. His family worried about his mental stability. On July 16, he picked up his .32 caliber pistol and went to confront Coleman at his home on the Southside of Chicago. He found Coleman sitting in car outside his house and accused him of setting the fire. Hickman later claimed that Coleman admitted it. Hickman, a deeply religious man, raised his pistol, looked Coleman straight in the eye and said, “God is my secret judge,” and shot him four times. Coleman died three days later.

Police arrested James Hickman at his home and charged him with murder. State prosecutors sought the death penalty. The Hickman family saga could have ended with another tragedy with James facing life in prison or execution by the State of Illinois. But a small group of revolutionary socialists in Chicago, members of the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP), took the lead in putting together a vibrant community based campaign that ultimately resulted in James Hickman going free. How did they accomplish this?

Jim Crow Chicago Style

James Hickman, like many African Americans during and immediately following the Second World War, came to Chicago to escape the grinding poverty of life in the rural Deep South. Hickman was born on February 19, 1907 near Louisville, Mississippi. His parents were sharecroppers and at ten years old he went to work in the fields. When James was sixteen years old he married Annie, who was to be his wife for the rest of his life. They had nine children together. His first goal after arriving in Chicago was to find a decent paying job to support his large family. He eventually found one at International Harvester’s Wisconsin Steel plant near the Indiana border. But finding decent housing for his family was another story.

Hickman searched for housing in Chicago when the overwhelmingly bulk of the city’s growing African-American population was still confined to a narrow sliver of land on the Southside of the city starting at what was then called 22nd Street (now called Cermak) and stretching to 62nd Street between Wentworth and Cottage Grove Avenues. More than 60,000 black workers came to Chicago from 1940 to 1944 seeking employment in war-related industries. This migration to Chicago continued after the war. “Between 1940 and 1950 Chicago’s black population swelled by 214, 534,” according to Chicago housing historian Arnold Hirsch, bringing it up to a total of 492, 265. The boundaries of the ghetto were walled off by restrictive “covenants”—deals between white homeowners and larger institutions, which stipulated that that only whites could buy homes in certain defined areas.

In 1927, the Chicago Real Estate Board began promoting racially restrictive covenants to YMCAs, churches, women’s clubs, the many chambers of commerce and property owners’ associations as a way of “protecting” the value of their property from incoming black families. This racist housing policy was backed by the city and by the policies of the federal government. It is believed that by the mid-1940s as much as 80 percent of Chicago’s residential housing was covered by restrictive covenants of one kind or another. The Supreme Court in 1948 ruled that restrictive covenants were unconstitutional, the year following the Hickman case, though little would change for many years.

The available housing for Blacks in Chicago was confined almost entirely to the South Side ghetto, leading to massive overcrowding. A small enclave of Blacks was beginning to grow on the West Side of the city, but it was plagued by the same problems that residents struggled with in the South Side ghetto. In many cases, black landlords were as guilty as white landlords of making money hand-over-fist by cutting up apartments into smaller and smaller units called “kitchenettes.” The cute sounding word really meant a dilapidated one-room apartment. According to Hirsch, “The Chicago Community Inventory estimated that there were at least 80,000 such ‘conversions’ between 1940 and 1950.” Nicholas Lemann, in history of the black migration to Chicago, The Promised Land, vividly describes the kitchenettes as “rickety three-story tenemen…with heating, plumbing, and insulation that were rudimentary at best and often completely non-functional.” Yet, there was little to no options for black families seeking shelter. The housing crunch for blacks was made worse by returning veterans. Blacks faced white violence when they tried to move into predominately white communities. This is how Jim Crow worked in Chicago. This is also how James Hickman met David Coleman.

A dangerous man

David Coleman was also from the South and came to Chicago in 1943 with ambitions to be a businessman. Coleman met a woman in July 1946 with a building to sell at 1733 West Washburne, on the West Side of Chicago; he leased it from her shortly thereafter. In effect, he had day-to-day control of the property and he collected the rents.

In the middle of August 1946, Hickman heard that an apartment was available at Coleman’s building, which was subdivided into Kitchenettes. Coleman first showed him the basement apartment for $50 a month. Hickman later told journalist John Bartlow Martin, “The water was half a leg deep in the basement…no windows, no lights, no nothing in there.” Hickman declined the basement “apartment” but Coleman quickly offered him an attic apartment for $6 a week until the space on the second floor became free. “We walked up the stairs, it so dark,” Hickman later testified, “we almost had to feel our way…I am walking around looking at it, I don’t like this. She [Annie] said, I don’t nether but surely we can stay here because we ain’t got no place.” It was a small attic that adults could barely stand-up in, and there was no electricity, no gas, and only one window. But they needed shelter for their seven children. So, despite their reservations the Hickman’s told Coleman that they would take the attic “apartment” with the expectation that the second floor apartment would be theirs soon. They gave Coleman one hundred dollars as a down payment.

Days turned to weeks and still there was no word from Coleman on the promised apartment. Finally, Hickman confronted Coleman in mid-September 1946 and demanded back his $100 deposit so he could look for another place. Coleman refused. “I won’t pay you until I get ready,” Coleman barked at Hickman. In return Hickman said he would take him to court. Hickman recalled that Coleman threatened to burn him out. “He said he had a man on the East Side ready to burn the place up if…I had him arrested.” The Hickmans swore out a warrant for Coleman’s arrest but the police didn’t arrest him.

This wasn’t the first time that Coleman threatened to burn his building. The previous fall, tenants in Coleman’s building stopped contractors (who showed up with no notice) from further cutting up their apartments into smaller units. Coleman appeared at the scene and tenants told him that he would have to go to court to evict them. He declared, “I am the owner, I don’t have to go to Court to do that, I will get everybody out of here when I want if it takes fire.”

Coleman was clearly a dangerous man, but the city authorities did nothing. In fact, the coroner’s jury that heard testimony concerning the death of the Hickman children could not decide if the fire was accidental or deliberate, and recommended that the State’s Attorney initiate an investigation into it. No serious investigation was done. In the end, Coleman was fined by the city authorities for a series of safety and health violations—totaling $450—the equivalent of $112.50 a piece for each of the dead Hickman children.

“We got there first”

Soon after Hickman shot and mortally wounded Coleman, he returned home and waited for the police to arrest him. He offered no resistance and confessed to what would soon be the murder of David Coleman. While in jail Hickman was interviewed by a two of the most important newspapers in Chicago, the Chicago Daily Defender, the leading Black newspaper in Chicago, and the Chicago Daily Tribune. But by far the best piece of journalism on Hickman was written by Robert Birchman for The Militant, the weekly newspaper of the Socialist Worker’s Party, who laid out the case. “The story of Hickman is the story of negligence and callous disregard of housing and health conditions. It is the story of the horrible slums in which the Negro people are forced to live in dilapidated, disease-ridden firetraps,” declared Birchman. “It is the most tragic of many calamities in which 22 persons have lost their lives, many others suffered injuries and hundreds made homeless as a result of fires in Chicago’s Negro ghettos since the first of the year.” Shortly after Birchman’s interview with Hickman, M.J. Myer, a Chicago labor attorney and co-counsel in the (historically important but largely forgotten) Minneapolis sedition trial of American Trotskyists in 1941, became lead counsel for Hickman. Myer released a statement shortly after the coroner’s inquest into Coleman’s death, that read in part, “In Hickman’s mind all evidence pointed to Coleman’s responsibility for the burning to death of his four children This idea has obsessed him until it reached a point where he no longer could control himself.” Myer also announced that a defense committee was being formed on Hickman’s behalf. Two other attorneys joined Myer; Leon Despres, then a counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and soon to be a famous Chicago alderman, and William H. Temple, an African-American criminal defense attorney and a member of the Chicago NAACP executive board, giving Hickman an effective legal team. They all agreed to represent him without compensation.

How did the SWP get involved in the case so rapidly? They had 150 members in the greater Chicago area, whereas the Stalinist Communist party, by far the dominant group on the U.S. Left, had easily ten times that number, if not more. “We got there first, not the Communist Party, because our members were involved in the neighborhood in tenant rights,” longtime socialist Frank Fried, told me in a telephone interview. “They were members of the Westside Tenant’s Union.” Fried had just left the navy and was active in the liberal American Veterans Committee; he would become a leader of the SWP-initiated Hickman Defense Committee.

Immediately following the fire, the tenants in Coleman’s building organized themselves into the Chicago Area Tenants Union, which members of the SWP were actively involved in. The driving force behind the tenants’ union was the Chicago SWP organizer, Milt Zaslow (who went by the public name of Mike Bartell) and his partner Edith. “The tenants’ rights organization that began in the building where Milt, Edith and their son lived,” wrote Karin Baker and Patrick Quinn in 1997 obituary of Zaslow/Bartell. “The group pushed for improved living conditions, among other demands. At one time a renters’ strike developed that involved thousands in the city of Chicago. The campaign got so big that people in distant neighborhoods were calling them, wanting to get involved.”

The SWP also benefited from the revival of civil rights activism following the end of the war. The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), which was founded in 1941 at the University of Chicago and pioneered many of the tactics that became mainstays of the civil rights movement of 1950s and 60s, took the lead in the fight against Jim Crow in Chicago. “Chicago CORE, after a year of inactivity, was revived in the autumn of 1945 under the chairmanship of the black schoolteacher and NAACP leader, Gerald Bullock.
Finding few members interested in action, he dropped the chapter’s rigid selection procedures and made a broad appeals for new members to which the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) responded,” according to historians Meier and Rudwick. Gerald Bullock would later play an important part in the Hickman defense campaign. An SWP member became the editor of the local Chicago CORE-News. One of the most successful campaigns of CORE, involving SWP members, was the campaign to desegregate the aptly named White City Skating Rink in 1946. “Although it was located in the predominantly African-American part of the city, only whites were allowed in certain areas of the park, such as the roller rink. The SWP under Milt’s leadership was central in implementing a broad-based campaign that broke the color barrier at White City.” Frank Fried recalls, “Mike was an organizer’s organizer. He got up everyday and read the four daily newspapers, and look for things to get involved in.” The Hickman case was one of them. Leon DesPres deeply believed that, “but for Mike, James Hickman would have been convicted.”

“Will you help us?”

Working quickly, SWP activists put together a Hickman Defense Committee on August 8, 1947. The focus of it’s work was, according to Fried, was “to make it politically impossible in the eyes of the people of Chicago for the prosecutors to convict Hickman, to put as much pressure that could be mobilized on the city, and take the case national to pressure the state and the city.” The committee received support from the Chicago Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Industrial Union Council, the American Federation of Labor Building services employees union, the American Veterans Committee, and the Baptist Ministers Conference of Chicago. A public appeal for Hickman was signed by Willoughby Abner, first vice-president of the Chicago CIO Council and chair of the Hickman defense committee; Charles Chiakulous, president of the UAW-CIO Local 477; and Bernis Johnson, chair of the Westside NAACP Youth Council.

Abner was important to the defense campaign because of his stature as a leading black trade unionist in the UAW in the Chicago area. According to historian Nelson Lichtenstein, Abner “organized thousands during the war in several South Side foundries and small manufacturing facilities.” Sidney Lens, a local trade union official, who later become a nationally known historian and antiwar leader during the Vietnam War), also played a central role in Hickman’s defense campaign. “We put a collection can for donations, a petition and leaflets about Hickman in every store, bar or restaurant we could in the black neighborhoods in Chicago,” says Fried. “People gave generously. Everybody knew about Hickman. I think the prosecution was screwed from the beginning.”

Why was the Hickman cause so popular? The reasons were explained in an article written on the case for the journal Fourth International some time before Hickman’s trial. “Every so often a previously unknown individual suddenly attracts wide attention. There is usually a social reason for this. The story connected with the particular case epitomizes the plight of voiceless millions, focusing on the needs of one group and the crimes of another, bringing into the light of day the festering rottenness of class society…. Hickman’s story is the story of Jim Crow as it is practiced north of the Mason-Dixon line.” The tragedy of James Hickman personified the plight of Chicago’s black community.

Seeking to organize a large public display of support for James Hickman and his family, the defense campaign organized rallies at several churches across Chicago. The largest rally was held on September 28, 1947 at the Metropolitan Community Church on Chicago’s South Side. To build the rally, the campaign put up “hundreds of posters announcing the event,” canvassed the area with “two sound trucks,” and handed out “40,000 leaflets.” Over 1,200 people attended with the overwhelmingly African-American audience unanimously passing a resolution calling for Hickman’s release. The featured speaker at the rally was actress Tallulah Bankhead, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat and was a member of a powerful Democratic Party family from Alabama. Her father had been speaker of the House of Representatives in the late 1930s, but she broke with her family over the conservatism of the Southern Democrats, particularly their virulent racism. Her involvement in the Hickman campaign was something of a “coup” for Sidney Lens. He recalled three decades later:

I was leaving my office on Dearborn Street one evening when I noticed her name on the marquis half a block away. She was starring in a new play. On the spur of the moment I went to the stage door and asked for her. To my surprise she knew about Hickman and was immensely sympathetic. When I asked her, however, to speak at the rally we planned at the Metropolitan Community Church, she shuddered as if I hit her with a blast of artic air. “Why, Mr. Lens, how can I make a speech?” It took a while to figure out that what she meant was that while she was capable of reciting other people’s lines, she was incapable of constructing a speech on her own. I agreed therefore to write a speech for her, and a couple of days later she advised that “I read it to my secretary and made her cry. I’ll be happy to deliver it.”

Bankhead, according to Lens, “drew tears from the whole audience, a couple of thousand people” with a riveting speech:

It seems to me a shameful condemnation of our society that 2000 years after Christ, people are still herded together into Black ghettoes merely because of their skins have different pigmentations than other people. No one condones murder or any act of violence. I hope the day shall come soon when humanity can resolve not only its racial problems but all problems coolly and rationally; when emotional acts of violence—be they individual or national—can be eliminated. So long, however, as there exists anywhere on earth one minority that is treated with contempt, that is herded into Black slum areas, that is abused and insulted, so long will we have violence, hate, brutality, savagery. So long as there exists a Jewish problem, or a Mexican problem—or a problem of any minority—so long will one form of violence beget another. I am proud to be one of the humble gladiators in this struggle against narrow prejudice and stupidity. I am glad to lend my efforts so that there shall be no more James Hickman tragedies.

Other speakers that night included the best-selling African-American author Willard Motely, and Chicago packinghouse union official Philip Weightman. Hickman’s attorney M.J. Myer roared to the crowd, “It is not Hickman who should be on trial, but the inhuman landlords and real estate interests who sacrifice human lives for profit, for they are the real criminals. They are the people who should be put behind bars and kept there.” The Communist Party, which could have contributed significant resources to the Hickman campaign, refused to participate and stood outside the Hickman defense rally handing out a pamphlet, The Great Conspiracy by Alfred Kahn, attacking the SWP and repeating old slanders that Trotskyism and fascism were in league against the Soviet Union.

Motley, author of the 1947 best-selling novel Knock on Any Door, which was made into a film starring Humphrey Bogart in 1949, played an incredibly important part in the Hickman defense campaign. He had a huge reputation at the time of the case. His book sold 47,000 copies during its first three weeks in print and a total of 350,000 during the next two years. His involvement opened many doors for supporters of Hickman. However, the one door that Motley could not open was to the Chicago Sun (soon to be the Sun-Times). The Chicago based author met Hickman in prison and wrote an eloquent appeal that the defense committee attempted to publish in the Chicago Sun, one of the largest circulating newspapers in the mid-west. The Sun’s owner Marshall Field, heir to the Field family fortune and a publicly identified liberal, refused to printed Motley’s appeal even after the defense committee was prepared to pay for the space. Motley publicly attacked Field for his hypocrisy. He is one of those “rich liberals…who talk out of both sides of their mouths.” The defense committee had Motley’s appeal circulated to many of the largest Black newspapers in the country including the Chicago Daily Defender. Motley didn’t hold back his feelings about the Hickman case:

You have seen many pictures of men who have killed. You have seen the photographs of the returned soldier. Perhaps next door lives a boy who killed some other boy during the war. In the war millions of men killed other millions of men because they believed they were a threat to their homes, their wives, their children. This threat was thousands of miles from home. These were strangers killed, with whom there had been no personal contact. James Hickman killed the man who had threatened his wife and children with a death more horrible than the Nazi gas chambers. And carried it out. This is what I was thinking of as I sat talking to Hickman today. Hickman needs help. There are three children left who need him. A wife who needs him. Will you help us help him?

“This man has paid enough”

The defense campaign scored a major victory when the State’s Attorney office announced on the eve of the trial that it was dropping its demand for the death penalty. This changed the whole atmosphere surrounding the trial. Leon Despres, co-counsel for Hickman, said that it made the trial “less edgy.” It was also a backhanded admission that the pressure of the defense campaign was working. James Hickman went on trial for the murder of David Coleman on November 5 before a white judge and an all-white jury in the Cook County Criminal Court building. The presiding judge was Rudolph Desort, the prosecutor was Assistant State’s Attorney Samuel Friedman, and M.J. Myer was the lead counsel for the defense. The prosecution presented a total of eight witnesses that included four policemen and Coleman’s half-brother, Percy Brown, who under cross-examination gave testimony that reportedly contradicted statements he had made earlier to the police.

M.J. Myer in his opening statements argued that Hickman was not guilty because he was “temporarily insane” at the time of the shooting of David Coleman. Myer placed the blame for the shooting of Coleman on the terrible living conditions in Coleman’s building and the death of the Hickman’s four children. Myer called witnesses that testified to Coleman’s previous threats to burn the tenants out of the building and James’ anguished state of mind following the fire and deaths. Two psychiatrists testified for the defense. Dr. Boris M. Ury interviewed Hickman, while he was incarcerated at Cook County Jail. Hickman spoke about the divinely inspired “mission” of his dead children’s lives. “I see the future in these four was destroyed. They would have been great people had they lived. I had a vision, but their lives was cut-off.” Dr. Ury’s report went on: “Client continued to discuss the grandiose ‘mission’ of his children: ‘The Lord had work for them to do. He had picked them out…’ Examiner [Ury] inquired whether this godly mission would be confined to work among the colored people but he was assured by his client that the mission would be applicable to all people.” Dr. Ury concluded his report by saying that Hickman shot Coleman “in a schizoid, disassociated state, feeling he was accomplishing the Lord’s will.”

Leon Despres considered James Hickman’s testimony in court “magnificent” and, at times, “poetic.” Hickman sat solemnly in the witness chair and wore a modest gray suit with a white flower in lapel, according to Chicago Daily News reporter John Culhane, who pieced together the courtroom scene from interviews with Leon Despres and access to his Despres’ case files for an article he wrote in the mid-1960s.

“This was God fixed this,” Hickman testified.

I had raised these children up and God knowed that vow I made to him…that these children was a generation to be raised up. God wasn’t pleased what happened to them….

I had two sons and two daughters who would some day be great men and women, some day they would have married, some day they would have been fathers and mothers of children. These children would have children and these children would children and another generation of Hickmans could raise up and enjoy peace.

The trial lasted nine days. On November 15, after nineteen hours of deliberation, the jury informed the judge that they couldn’t reach a decision. It was a classic “hung jury”—seven to five for acquittal. The State’s Attorney’s office initially declared that it would retry James Hickman the following January. But it soon reversed itself and announced that it was dropping the murder charge and recommending to the judge that Hickman be sentenced to two years probation if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He agreed and walked out of court a free man on December 16, 1947. Hickman had served a total of five months in jail. Samuel Friedman, the prosecuting attorney, said that one of the major reasons that his office didn’t want a retrial was the public support for Hickman from across the country as he held up letters of support for Hickman. “They are too numerous to read all of them here,” Freedman declared holding up a fistful of letters, resolutions and telegrams, “but the general opinion is to the effect that mercy ought to be shown to an individual who, under the stress of the loss of four children, has been punished to such an extent that society can be magnanimous and afford him a chance to return to his remaining children and his wife, and spend the rest of his lifetime in peace.” Though he admitted “some quarters” would disagree with his recommendation, Freedman concluded, “The state feels this man has paid enough with the loss of his children.”

“A chain of personal memories”

The Hickman family returned to the private lives after the trial. But within a year the case received it’s widest publicity (outside of Chicago) when Harper’s magazine commissioned renowned journalist John Bartlow Martin to write a story on the Hickman case. Martin’s writings would today be called “true crime,” but that would be a great disservice to them. They were neither lurid nor exploitative, as many true crime works are. Martin’s writing style combined the best techniques of a novelist and a journalist with the motivation of a socially conscious liberal. In his autobiography, written many decades after the Hickman case, he recounts how he approached writing the The Hickman Story:

In preparing to do the piece, I read Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma and other books, but only for my own background information—I wrote the piece almost entirely from interviews, especially interviews with Hickman and his wife and with the landlord’s relatives, I simply told the story of Hickman’s and the landlord’s lives and their world—the world below.

The “world below” was one of racism and poverty that greeted Black refugees from the Deep South. “I wanted to do not an article, crammed with demographers’ statistics, but, rather, a story about a man. James Hickman had been a sharecropper in Mississippi. He was deeply religious and deeply devoted to his children.” Martin’s article is great writing and deserves to be read by everyone today committed to social justice.

But what lift’s the story from the page is the illustrations of the Hickman case by the great American artist, Ben Shahn. Shahn’s name is not one that many Americans would recognize, but millions have seen his work, particularly his drawings of the martyred Sacco & Vanzetti, and the three murdered civil rights activists, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Shahn’s drawings of the Hickman case that hung on the east wall of Leon Despres’ old law office caught the eye of reporter John Culhane, prompting him to write one of the few profiles of the case to appear in the decades that followed the trial. Shahn later wrote of his own struggle to capture the enormity of the Hickman family tragedy:

I was asked to make drawings for the story and, after several discussions with the writer, felt that I had gained enough of the feel of the situation to proceed. I examined a great deal of the factual visual material, and then I discarded all of it. It seemed to me the implications of this event transcended the immediate story; there was universality about man’s dread of fire, and his sufferings from fire. There was a universality in the pity which such a disaster invokes, had its overtones. And the relentless poverty which had pursued this man, and which dominated the story, had its own kind of universality.

Sometimes, if one is particularly satisfied with a piece of work which he has completed, he may say to himself, ‘well done,’ and go on to something else. Not in this instance, however. I found that I could not dismiss the event about which I had made drawings—the so-called “Hickman Story.”… I had some curious sense of responsibility about it, a sort of personal involvement.

The Hickman tragedy “aroused in me,” Shahn recalled, “a chain of personal memories.”

There were two great fires in my own childhood, one only colorful, the other disastrous and unforgettable. Of the first, I remember only that the Russian village in which my grandfather lived burned, and I was there. I remember the excitement, the flames breaking out everywhere…The other fire left its mark upon me and all my family, and left scars on my father’s hand and face, for he had clambered up a drainpipe and taken each of my brothers and sisters and me over the house one by one, burning himself painfully in the process. Meanwhile our house and all belongings were consumed, and my parents stricken beyond their power to recover.

The most powerful of all of Shahn’s Hickman drawings is the four huddled, deceased children. His “personal involvement” led him to use his own siblings as the basis for the drawing. “They resemble much more closely my own brothers and sisters.” John Bartlow Martin’s story and Ben Shahn’s drawings remain the most powerful documents from that era of the Hickman case. Unfortunately, the Hickman trial transcript disappeared many decades ago along with much of the paperwork related to Hickman’s legal defense. The Sidney Lens Papers at the Chicago Historical Society has some of the Hickman defense campaign literature, flyers and brochure—just enough to give you a feel for the campaign.

“Dismiss it in a sentence or two”

Despite all of this, one has to ask, how can such a powerful story disappear from the public memory? This is an amazing story, not only of rapacious greed and racism that led to an excruciatingly painful family tragedy, but also the triumph of justice over very long odds. It didn’t take place in some remote part of the country, but played itself out in Chicago, who’s crime-obsessed, tabloid press salivated over stories of much less interest. I think there were several things working against the Hickman case getting the recognition that it deserved. The case took place in 1947; over the next few years the death-grip of the Cold War would tighten around U.S. society. A virulent level of repression would drive socialist, communists and radicals of various allegiances to the very margins of American society. In many ways, the campaign to save James Hickman was one of the last echoes of the great radicalization of the American working class of the 1930s and 1940s. A successful political campaign to free an African-American man who shot and killed his landlord led by revolutionary socialists is not the type of story to be embraced during the height of the American Century. The Hickman case was simply steamrolled over by a decade and half of political repression and cultural conformity. This, however, is only a part of the answer.

The other part lies, I believe, in who writes the history of the American Left. By-and-large they were historians that were members of the Communist Party and the New Left of the 1960s, few of who have shown any interest or political sympathy for the revolutionary tradition of Marxism and the Russian Revolution in the form Trotskyism in this country in the 1930s and 1940s. “Trotskyism has been written out of the history of the American left,” notes veteran revolutionary socialist Joel Geier. There are notable exceptions, such as Alan Wald’s The New York Intellectuals or Bryan Palmer’s James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, but too often the most popular left-wing histories of the 1930s and 1940s simply dismiss, denigrate or out-rightly censure the role of Trotskyism in the radical movement.

One of the worst examples of this is Labor Untold Story by Boyer and Morais, published by the UE, one of the unions of the CIO era that was led by the CP. It strait-forwardly ignores the Trotskyist-led great Minneapolis Teamster strikes of 1934. It was the strikes in Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco that directly led to the formation of the CIO. This type of censorship may be extreme but not uncommon. This includes the 1941 trial of the Trotskyists of the SWP for “subversion” under the reactionary Smith Act that became the model for the trials that destroyed the CP after WWII. Yet, as Ellen Schrecker in her Many Are The Crimes: McCarthyism in America notes, “There is little scholarship on the Trotskyist Smith Act case. While recognizing it implications for the later Smith Act cases, most writers tend to dismiss it in a sentence or two.” Instead of “dismissing it in a sentence or two,” it’s time that Trotskyism gets the proper recognition it deserves in American radical history.

There are many stories such as the Hickman case that need to be recovered from oblivion and retold. Last year Clint Eastwood’s film Changeling was released. Set in 1928 Los Angeles, it told the real-life story of Christine Collins and her search for the truth behind the kidnapping of her son and the mind-boggling public relations stunt by the LAPD, who sent her the wrong child and then attempted to shut her up when she refused to play along. It led to an explosion of public protest. The story disappeared from public memory for eight decades until screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, a former journalist, was contacted by an old source at Los Angeles City Hall, who told him that the city was planning to destroy some of its archives and that there was “something [Straczynski] should see.” This turned out to be a transcript of a city council hearing of Collins’ case. There are thousands of stories of injustice and struggle hidden away in the archives of city halls around the country. Hopefully, younger historians can bring to light the many of these stories before they are lost to history.

I want to extend a special thank you to two people, Frank Fried and Leon Despres. Frank first told me about the Hickman case at Joel Geier’s 70th birthday party, and Leon Despres (who passed away on May 7, 2009 at 101 years old) for allowing me to discuss the case with him at his Hyde Park residence. Patrick Quinn has been extremely helpful in tracking down important sources of information on the case and commenting on the first draft of this article. I also want to thank the Chicago Historical Society for allowing me access to the Sidney Lens papers, and the Library of Congress for access to the Hickman files in John Bartlow Martin’s papers. The librarians in charge of the Willard Motley papers at the Northeastern Illinois University were very helpful but I ended up referencing different material on Motley’s role in the Hickman case.