The Chicago Sit-in: Has Obama's Election Spurred a New Mood of Union Activism?

Maybe the connection between current events and depression era activism is legitimate? Peter Drier, writing in Dissent, seems to think so:

"The Republic workers’ protest in Chicago was reminiscent of similar sit-ins by workers during the Great Depression and civil rights activists in the 1960s. Like those earlier protests, the factory occupation was not a spontaneous action but a well-planned strategy".

Chicago is not the only place were union activism is being seen. After a fifteen year battle workers at the Smithfield plant in North Carolina recently voted to unionize. In both instances, the support of President Obama helped ensure victory for working people.

Congress will go into session on January 20th and they have a lot to do. At some point within the first year they are going to take up the Employee Free Choice Act, and if they support working people they will pass it.

The Employee Free Choice Act does three major things:

1. It stops workers from having to campaign for a union. Workers are required to obtain signatures from at least 51% of the force in order to have a union. But under current law management can call for a secret ballot vote, and then a long drawn out campaign ensues with workers being intimidated, harassed, and fired. The EFCA ends all that.

2. It introduces mediation and arbitration into first contract settlements. In many first contract negotiations, management bargains in bad faith, or negotiates with no intention of reaching an agreement. Why? Because if a contract cannot be agreed upon, then the workers union is disbanned and another vote ensues. EFCA allows either side to call for mediation after 30 days, and binding arbitration after 90 days. Secruing a first contract means better pay, better benifits, and better working conditions for workers.

3. EFCA cracks down on intimidation practices and bad faith barginning that managment so often employs:

"Recent studies show that 75 percent of employers hire consultants to conduct anti-union campaigns during NLRB elections and that over 90 percent require workers to attend meetings where they are warned that negative consequences would result from unionization.

While technically legal, such actions violate the spirit of the NLRA. More direct violations of the law include firing union supporters (25 percent of elections) and refusing to sign a contract after workers have chosen a union (44 percent of elections)."

...

Workers all over the globe are hurting right now. The United States Congresscan take a step toward helping American workers by passing EFCA. However, you can be sure they won't unless their is continued activism. Early signs are good, but pressure must be kept on.

Bush v. Gore, Bush Won The Battle, But Fairness Wins the War

It looks like Al Franken is going to win Minnesota's Senate seat. Thanks, in part, to the Bush v. Gore decision. The Supreme Court ruling was not suppose to become principle, but an Minnesota appeals court recently stated that the ruling essentially carries the principle that after ballots have been cast, no one ballot can be treated as more important than any other. In other words, ballots in all county's must be recounted. That's what should have happend in Florida, but it didn't. This time though, justice will be served.

Sunday Comment on Rick Warren

My initial opinion on Rick Warren giving the invocation at the inauguration to Barack Obama's Presidency was mild. I thought, I don't like it, but if it pulls more conservatives into the Obama camp, no big deal. However, after finding that many conservatives don't want Warren to read the invocation, I have changed my mind. Having Rick Warren read the invocation is not going to help Obama with conversative citizens. Warren may be mainstream, but he is also a controversial figure. Many consertaive Christians view him as a "rock star" preacher out for fame and fortune. Its great that Warren believes in helping the poor and eradicating aids, but choosing him to read the invocation for minimal, if any, political leverage, upsets many people and rightfully so. Why make this a political issue? Why not pick an uncontroversial candidate and move on? Obviously people will get over this, but it is offensive to so many people who worked so hard to get Barack Obama elected. In the next four years there will be many political concessions made. Why make one for a day that should be a celebration?

It seems to me that the pick for who is to read the invocation is actaully more imporant for Obama politically than more serious cabinet positions. Does Obama want to make himself look more like an ordinary politican than the mysiah some people take him for? If so, he's doing a good job. The move looks political and on a spiritual issue, however minor, that does not seem like a good decision. Most liberals wouldn't bat an eye over most administraion appointments, however the invocation pick is extremely symbolic. More than cabinet level appointments it should take the base into consideration. The cabinet has to run the government and work with people from a variety of perspectives. The deliverer of the invocation simply does that, but for many people its a very important portion of the ceremony. If anything why not throw one to the base?

Lets consider that maybe Barack Obama isn't making a political decision, maybe he actaully agrees with Warren? Well that's not good politically either. As already stated, I don't think this is going to win Obama any political favors from conservaties in the future. So, great he's offending his base and not getting anything for it.

Obama ran on a message of unity, not compromise and there is a distinct difference between the two. Politically, compromise, tending towards the middle so as not to please anyone, tends to be scuicide. Unity, or inclusivness is open to everyone, but is tough to stick by. Obama should stick with with the inclusive definition of unity. He'll do better politically if he does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqbl-TEbCHk&NR=1

Homophobe Pastor Rick Warren to give Obama Invocation

A piece of evidence that goes against my thoughts on Barack Obama

Frost/Nixon/Clinton/Obama

I saw Frost/Nixon this past weekend, the story line was flimsy, but that’s not the point. As the film rightly points out, television, and maybe even film, has a reductive quality. So it doesn’t matter that much of the movie was filler because the film showcases the quote that everyone who has seen the trailer can recite, which, to put it mildly, is not very Democratic, “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal”.

After seeing the film I had to find the actual footage of the Frost/Nixon interview. When I did, I was struck at how oblivious Nixon seemed to the idea of accountability. He doesn’t scream, “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal”! He says it calmly and is actually trying to explain himself; when he says he made mistakes, it doesn’t seem like he is talking about anything larger than himself; when he goes on about his political opponents twisting a knife into his back, he is completely serious. Nixon’s was a narcissistic and I am not the first to say it. Hunter Thompson didn’t, but he did say that Nixon represented “the dark side of the American Dream”.

As I sat on the couch this afternoon, watching Primary Colors, Nixon’s statement was still fresh in my mind. After watching Libby’s funeral, I couldn’t take it anymore. Something was bothering me. I got up, paced for a second, and then started into the living room. “I don’t how at eighteen, someone as political involved as Libby could have been so naive”, I said, showing off my own naiveté to my Father. “What” he responded? “Ya know Primary Colors”, I asked? “Yea” he said. “Well in the scene where Libby presents the political dirt on Picker to Jack and Susan, she rants about the 1972 Convention, and how she couldn’t believe that Eagelton actually received electroshock therapy. She goes on about how the CIA must have drugged him and forced it on him and says that her side needs the same thing. Then Jack, the Clinton character, says, Libby we don’t need dirt because our ideas are better. That’s pretty powerful, huh?” “Yea”, my Dad replied, “it is”. I went on, “I guess what I was having trouble with is, how it is that anyone of the those characters could have been so idealistic? Even at eighteen, didn’t they know what politics was like?” He said, “It was before Watergate”. It was also before the Clinton scandal, the 2000 Election, the entire Bush Administration, and a laundry list of other events.

The last forty years in American politics have been dreadful. As I think about all the events that have happened, I think about Barack Obama. The burden he bears is unbelievable. What happens if he screws up? What if there is a scandal and he breaks our hearts. A dreary thought, but it has been on my mind recently. For what its worth, I do not think he will because I actually think he has a new politic, one that is informed both by Nixon and Clinton. When I hear Barack Obama speak, its like hearing the inverse of Nixon. Nixon thought he was the country; his problems were the problems of the entire nation. When I hear Obama talk about the problems of the country, they seem to be his problems as well.

CONA Kid Makes it Big

http://wellstone.org/blog/developing-new-media-strategy-campaigns-large-and-small
http://wellstone.org/bios/xavier-lopezayala

While checking my email today, I decided to read Camp Wellstone's email, Notes From the Field. The email centered on Obama's Minnesota New Media Director, Xavier Lopez-Ayala. The name sounded really familiar, I looked to left of the screen, saw the picture, and realized, I know this kid! Lopez-Ayala and I attend the YMCA's Youth Conference on National Affairs (CONA) together in high school. CONA brought high school students interested in politics toghether to discuss national issues. It was a conference of almost 500 students and I remember Xavier as a stand out. I always got a kick out of the speeches he would make. Without a single note, Xavier would pack two minutes with lots of ideas. The thing that made him fun to watch was that he would vary his opinions, sometimes taking the conservative point of view, other times taking the liberal. He was hard to get a read on and that made him interesting.

Now, Xavier is telling us about how to use new media to win campaigns. Take a look at what he says, I am sure that it will help any campaign.

Long Way From Home

Odetta, Voice of Civil Rights Era, Dies at 77

Interesting, and it kind of reads like something from the Dartmouth Review.

Orwell is a Genius

Stop! The contractors are coming! In all honesty, this warning is around twenty years too late. Now, according to government reports there are more contractors in Iraq than U.S. soldiers. In lieu of these reports, anyone one ever thought of Bush as a Machiavellian should stop.

Let him, then, who wants to be unable to win make use of these arms, since they are much more dangerous than mercenary arms. For with these, ruin is accomplished; they are all united, all resolved to obey someone else. But mercenary arms, when they have won, need more time and greater opportunity to hurt you, since they are not one whole body and have been found and apid for by you. In them the third part whom you may put at their head cannot quickly seize so much authority as to offend you. In sum, in mercenary arms laziness is more dangerous; in auxiliary arms, virtue is.

If it is true that everyone in the White House was required to read The Prince , it doesn't seem like they read it very closely. What Machiavelli essentially says in the above passage is, if you use mercenary arms, don't expect to win. As for Hayden's argument that these guys were purely out of power and global domination, you have to me kidding me! These guys couldn't think their way out of a box, let a long master mind a victory in Iraq. Seriously, did you read the NPR stuff, they don't even know how many contractors work for them, or have any idea of the job their doing. The level of incompetence of our President is outrageous! I mean if you're going to be a dirty lying scoundrel at least read the whole book!

Therefore, he should never lift his thoughts from the exercise of war, and in peace he should exercise it more than in war.

Apparently, they did.

Dialectic with the Depression

There has been much discussion recently about the current economic crisis and the Great Depression. And while it has largely focused on how Obama is going to govern like FDR and how FDR's new deal was a dismal failure, I wanted to take a minute and offer a different view. The parrallel I see does not involve the executive but rather, the people. After reading through all the non-sense spewed about FDR's failures, I decided to go to a more reliable source: Howard Zinn. In A People's History of the United States Zinn's chapter on the Great Depression is entitled, "Self-help in hard Times". Zinn's claim is that in reaction to extremely difficult times, working people across the country banded together and did amazing things. He paraphrases Sidney Fine's description of the 1936 strike in Flint, Michigan -- the longest running strike in history.

Committees organized recreation, information, classes, a postal service, sanitation. Courts were set up to deal with those who didn't take their turn washing dishes or who threw rubbish or smoked where it was prohibited or brought in liquor...A restaurant owner across the street prepared three meals a day for two thousand strikers. There were classes in parliamentary procedure, public speaking, history of the labor movement. Graduate students at the University of Michigan gave courses in journalism and creative writing.

The effort is astonishing, so are the numbers. In the fall of 1934, 421,000 textile workers were on strike, an incomprehensible number by today's standards of union activism. However, and here's the parallel, those numbers are dwarfed when compared to numbers from Obama's field campaign. As a volunteer from the Virginia campaign, I can tell you that on the Saturday before the election Barack Obama had 13 thousand people knocking on doors for him in the state of Virginia alone. Voter contact numbers were out of control, just ask fivethirtyeight and the Washington Post . And the kicker, on election day Obama had one million door knocks in Pennsylvania! Is that a record? Please, someone let me know. The point I am making is that the real parallel between our current situation and the Great Depression is how people are responding to hard times. They are not sitting around, they are actively involved in the destiny of the United States. On Election Day, Barack Obama won in a electoral college landslide, but the intensity of involvement punches home the full story.

Finally, doesn't it seem like we are working in dialectic with the involvement of the Great Depression? Social Security, schools, city halls, murals, all of the products of the New Deal are still around. Conservativism then responded, and progressivism listened, so that the social involvement seen today is more moderate, not less powerful. That's the gist of the big idea, I would love to hear responses no matter what the view.

Thanks for reading Until The Sun Doesn't Rise. I'll be back tomarrow, unless...