Labor Struggles

Hola Everybody,
It is Labor Day -- people died so you could have this day off; for the right to bargain collectively, for the 40-hour week, and paid vacations.

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Labor Struggles

In 2013, a ten-year-old boy in #Syria carries a mortar shell in a weapons factory

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
 -- Giovanni Gentile

Happy Labor Day, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many men, women, and children that died in order to make fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations a reality. We like to wave flags commemorating wars fought, not for our rights, but for corporate interests, but we have jack shit to say about the people who gave their lives so that we could be properly rewarded for our work. 

There has never been a middle class without strong unions. The reason for this is straightforward. More and better unions translate directly into higher pay and better benefits for everyone, including nonunion members.

Contrast that with the reality that both the GOP and the elites of the Democratic Party loathe unions. In fact, neoliberal policies such as those espoused by the Clintons have resulted in most of the wealth being seized by the those at the 1 percent -- the same people who fund their campaigns. Yet they also claim they want to build a strong middle class. This makes no sense.

Consider also that the U.S. is going in exactly the opposite direction. Unions, beginning with Reagan, have been under an unprecedented assault. As The Intercept notes, union membership...  

falling during that time from 24 percent to 11 percent. And even those numbers conceal the reality that union membership is now 35 percent in the public sector but just 6.7 percent in the private sector. That private sector percentage is now lower than it’s been in over 100 years.

At the same time, they add... 

 wealth inequality, which fell tremendously during the decades after World War II when the U.S. was most heavily unionized, has now soared back to the levels that have not been seen for 100 years. 

Why is this important? It is important because there is a wealth of research showing that there is a connection between inequality, violence, and heath.

If, as decades of studies show, unions lessen inequality, then its impacts far surpass the workplace. Inequality affects how you see those around you and your level of happiness. In more equal societies people live longer, are less likely to be mentally ill or obese and there are lower rates of infant mortality. Inequality increases property and violent crime. Unequal societies have less social mobility and lower scores in maths, reading and science. Less equal societies have less stable economies. High levels of income inequality are linked to economic instability, financial crisis, debt and inflation. 

The tragedy is that even by conservative calculations show that if wages had gone up in step with productivity, families with the median household income of around $52,000 per year would now be making about 25 percent more, or $65,000. 

Given all this, you would think that labor history would be a prominent feature of our education. Unfortunately it is not because the power elite would never allow a focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about. Stuff such as whatever Trump tweeted last night. Please note that inequality or the labor movements is almost never an issue discussed during election debates.

In fact, the history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation mouthing empty clichés about the “good ole days,” well, Bubba, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and others who would come after, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ horrific response to the Labor movement.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” The fact remains that the same mindset that is the cause of the problem can never be used to bring about a solution. Solutions require a change of mind, an evolution of the individual and collective consciousness.

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions so that we could enjoy better lives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Excavting the Future

Hola mi gente,

Today, I go back to the belly of the beast to do what is almost impossible: create a group therapeutic environment in that poisonous mess we call Rikers Island.

The Future is Now

A public union employee, a conservative activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the conservative and says, “Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.”

I was raised to believe in the “American Dream.”* I was taught that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I got good grades in school, went to a decent college, played by the rules, and worked really really hard, that I could grab at least a measure of that dream. When I was a child, I was assured that the depth of ingenuity and expertise in the U.S. would save us all and that we would become an enlightened society pursuing the further reaches of human nature with the increase of leisure time, as technology and human evolution converged to create a more noble society. A great society preoccupied with eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease.

I believed in a future in which we would conquer space, where solutions for previously untreatable diseases were right around the corner. I was assured that the tension between technological innovation and the environmental havoc it sometimes caused would be resolved.

.

When I was a child, I was assured that we would develop viable alternative energy sources and cures for once untreatable diseases. I was told of a future wherein people -- for the first time in human history -- could commit the bulk of their lives for their intellectual, spiritual, and material benefit.

Welcome to the future, my friends. I live in a city where it is illegal (and lethal) to be black or brown. Here the color of your skin, not your grades, determination, or educational attainment, matters most. Today, being smart is considered elitist. Worst of all, today you work longer hours for less money -- if you’re fortunate enough to be working at all. Millions still are less likely to be able to have access to decent health care, if they have any health care options.

Welcome to the future, it is now -- a future of disappointment. And the only reason you haven’t noticed is because you’re too busy jerking off to the latest online celebrity sex tape or watching “reality” shows of “celebrities” whose talents apparently have more to do with sucking NBA cock than having a real talent such as singing, dancing, or painting. Or perhaps you’re too busy watching the latest hit reality show -- the presidential election cycle -- to notice we’re amusing ourselves to death.

The major economic theory of the past 30 years, the trickle-down theory, is not just a cruel hoax, but has succeeded in exporting most of the good industrial jobs we had left in our country, while the middle class has been disemboweled. There is no free time. You’re fortunate if you can get a job whose major requirement is knowing how to ask, “Want fries with that?”

Still, while you and I struggle to make ends meet, living lives of quiet desperation, the wealthiest one percent have gotten 95% of the income gains since the Great Recession. 

Here is the American Dream of the future today: no jobs, no prospects, no leverage, no short-term solutions, no long-term plans, no big ideas to save us. In fact, the current election cycle is predicated on the cynical idea that nothing can be done. That the best we can hope for is a neoliberal war hawk who maintain the status quo. And I’m talking about Hillary Clinton here, not Donald trump. Meanwhile, the bottom four-fifths struggle to stay afloat, the upper one-fifth cautiously tread water, and the elite continue to accumulate wealth at a rate not seen since the Gilded Age.

In the future of today, CEOs earn monster salaries, corporations receive taxpayer welfare, and most of our representatives in the U.S. Congress can boast of being millionaires. Meanwhile, child poverty levels hover near record levels, a substantial portion of our workforce has stopped looking for work, and food stamp usage sets new records every month even as our political leaders conspire to cut its funding.

Economic inequality has become a so much of a feature in our lives that, for many years, a certain level of inequality was accepted, even encouraged, as incentivizing creativity and rewarding hard work. But in the last several decades, the wealth gap has become so stark, with gains at the top so disproportionate, that social mobility -- the opportunity to move from one socioeconomic class to another -- has all but disappeared, allowing intergenerational advantage to accumulate and compound in the form of wealth. 

Shrinking incomes, fewer jobs... but bigger corporate profits. Not a good sign. Somehow, many of you have been convinced that the answer is doing more of the same: give more to the rich and we’ll all benefit from the resultant odiferous trickle down. What’s obvious is that the rich are not only dedicated to hanging on to what they have but also committed to accumulating more. This salient wisdom gets maybe a yawn from the dumbed-down, apathetic voter. In fact, our country's concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt.

This is nothing but class warfare and when you try to show, whether through charts and graphs or real-life examples, that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful, you’re labeled as unpatriotic, a socialist and/ or communist. What often happens is that, instead of yelling back, “Hell, yes, we’re talking fucking class warfare!” liberals usually fell over themselves in apology, vehemently denying the accusation. They react as if talking about class warfare is tantamount to treason. Neoliberal politicians like Obama and Clinton and their supporters get spooked and fall in line, saying “Look, Eddie, we can’t do social engineering through the tax code. We can’t have free higher education. Single payer will never happen. Stop dreaming!” Yet we spend trillions on a jet fighter that doesn’t even fly. It’s so pathetic they make me sick.

The wealth gap has become so alarming that some billionaires acknowledge that our current economic polices will destabilize our society (duh). In fact, billionaire Warren Buffett contends that the wealthiest Americans should their fair share in taxes.

Someone suckered us along the way. The future we bought into was great until we fell asleep and woke up to find that at some point the future becomes the present. Welcome to the future, it’s here.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization... 

*Note: To use “America” to describe the United States of America is incorrect. America is the name of a whole continent. United States of America means that the United States belongs to America and not that America belongs to the United States. Using America to describe the U.S. is imperialistic and served to erase the rest of the people who live on the continent.

Labor Struggles

¡Hola! Everybody…
It is Labor Day -- people died so you could have this day off; for the right to bargain collectively, for the 40-hour week, and paid vacations. People died so that you could enjoy workplace safety and work while maintain at least a semblance of human dignity and living wage. The freedom to work with human dignity, and more, is what is under attack by the conservatives seeking to take us back to a time that never existed and into a neoliberal global slum.

* * *

-=[ The Ludlow Massacre ]=-

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

-- Giovanni Gentile

Happy Labor Day, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations a reality.

Not familiar with the history of labor struggles? That’s OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores -- the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers -- would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation mouthing empty clichés about the “good ole days,” well, Bubba, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and others who would come after, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ vile response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes in the history of Labor struggles, The Ludlow Massacre (click here for a more in-depth treatment), reads like something out of the history of a fascist state -- which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that the corporate-hired thugs would randomly shoot through the tent colony. The women and children were found dead, huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun (the Death Special, they called it) that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre (April 20^th), the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter was ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes unionization; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why conservatives abhor the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. This is true of almost anyone who lived in Nazi Germany. Most of those people weren’t evil, they simply didn’t act. Like us today in the USA, there was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living, to speak out. So after they came to get the butcher, then the teacher, and finally the neighbor, there was no one around to help when the same forces came for them because there was no one left to speak out against the evil.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” The fact remains that the same mindset that is the cause of the problem can never be used to bring about a solution. Solutions require a change of mind, an evolution of the individual and collective consciousness.

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions so that we could enjoy better lives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Labor Struggles [The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, well-versed in history and a wide range of subjects. I know this sounds like hubris, but it is isn’t, I’m simply claiming a little intellectual curiosity. Which is why I was taken aback one day some years ago when I was entering an NYU building for one of my classes and noticed a large wreath of flowers. There were no words, no plaque, no reason, apparently, for the wreath. When I asked a classmate, she looked at me in surprise, and asked, “You never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire?” Actually, I never had heard of that horrific incident.

They say that history repeats itself, but I disagree. I tend to see history as a spiral not a circle (an important distinction). If you want to know where the current conservative Kool-Aid will lead us, then read on. This is the “America” the teatarded want to bring back (h/t Sam Smith)

* * *

-=[ The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire]=-

Those who refuse to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana

Note: My maternal grandmother toiled as a garment worker for decades.

The fire at the Triangle Shirt Waist Company in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers, is one of the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

This incident has had great significance to this day because it highlights the inhumane working conditions to which industrial workers can be subjected. To many, its horrors epitomize the extremes of industrialism.

The tragedy still dwells in the collective memory of the nation and of the international labor movement. The victims of the tragedy are still celebrated as martyrs at the hands of industrial greed.

Brunswick Times Record editorial, ME - On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York City. It spread quickly through the factory, which made women’s blouses, known as “shirtwaists,” and occupied the top three floors of the building.

Most of the workers could not escape the flames, since doors leading to the roof were locked and flames prevented workers from descending stairwells or by an elevator that eventually buckled under the heat. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, most of them immigrant women, who either died in the flames or jumped to their deaths from the factory windows.

It was the deadliest industrial disaster in the city’s history, the fourth deadliest in the United States.

The fire, and the acquittal of the two owners in a criminal trial, helped spur factory workers to organize and join labor unions that would advocate for them against sweatshop working conditions, low wages and 50-hour work weeks.

A young woman named Frances Perkins was appointed as the lead investigator of the commission looking into how to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again. The commission took four years to complete its seven-volume report…

Perkins later become the first woman to hold a Cabinet post, serving as secretary of labor for the 12 years of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. Her mind as well as her heart seared by what she had learned in the Triangle fire investigation, she was the driving force behind most, if not all, of FDR’s “New Deal” reforms. Among them:

The Wagner Act, which gives workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, which established for the first time a minimum wage and gave us the 40-hour work week.

The Social Security Act of 1935, legislation she literally nagged FDR to support, astutely recognizing that the dire conditions of the Great Depression were probably the only way such a sweeping economic security package would gain public support.

* * *

Company executives, showing no concern for the welfare of the women workers, managed to escape by secretly taking a freight elevator where they were rescued. It is said that girls and young women leapt from eighth- and ninth-story windows, their flaming skirts billowing in the wind. It horrified a nation and led to some of the first city, state and federal laws dealing with workers’ safety. It gave a powerful impetus to the fledgling labor movement, greatly strengthening the building of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which two years before the fire had led a three-month strike to focus attention on conditions in workplaces like the Triangle factory.

How easily we forget the sacrifices and victories of our own labor history.

More on the Shirtwaist Fire here

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization...