Memories of Jesse Jackson

  By Reginald Johnson 

              Sad to see Jesse Jackson leave the stage. He was a great man who constantly worked for a fairer, more progressive society. He moved the needle.

              I was fortunate enough to see Jackson twice in person. The first time was in the spring of 1984, when he was campaigning for president. He came to a rally at the low-income project, Beardsley Terrace, now known as Trumbull Gardens, in Bridgeport. There was a huge crowd that had gathered to hear him. He urged the many young people in attendance to keep working for their education, never lose hope and always believe in themselves.

      Then he led the crowd in a chant: "I Am --- Somebody!"  "I Am Somebody!" "I Am --- Somebody!"

      It was electrifying.

     Years went by, and it was 1991--- after the Democrats had foolishly turned him away from gaining the nomination to run for president --- and Jackson was still on the move.  Now he had started a new campaign called a "March to Rebuild America" and he came to Connecticut, home of some very poor cities like Bridgeport and other communities of great affluence. Jackson spoke out against the wealth disparites and said it was not sustainable.

  The march wound through a number of towns and cities, including Bridgeport and Hartford. Before coming to Bridgeport, he stopped for a rally in Milford, an event organized by my good friend Glenn Davis. Although the mostly white town of Milford had been accused by some of being less than friendly to minorities, Jackson got a very warm reception. People were lined up all along Route 1 as the march wound its way to Stratford.

  I was standing on the edge of the Devon Bridge and I'll never forget seeing Jackson walking towards the bridge with the other marchers, while people along the route clapped and cheered.

  Later Jackson walked through the heart of Bridgeport --- a once powerful industrial city that had fallen into bankruptcy. He marched up East Main Street, and somewhere I have a great photo taken by the Post of Jackson walking alongside the longtime activist and Puerto Rican community leader, Willie Matos.

  No doubt, Jesse Jackson was a wonderful person who made a difference. We need more people like him.

   May he rest in peace.

'A state beyond insanity'

      

    By Reginald Johnson

     World renown intellectual and social critic Noam Chomsky is warning of catastrophe if the Ukraine War continues.

  The MIT professor emeritus of linguistics and longtime anti-war activist told an audience at the Peoples Forum in New York City recently that the war creates the potential for disaster in two ways – first by triggering a sharp increase in the use of highly polluting fossil fuels at a time when the world has only limited time left to avoid a climate collapse, and second, by creating the real possibility of nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

 “The longer the war continues the greater will be the toll, reaching very fast perhaps, to the end of organized human life, speak of the vast number of species we are wantonly destroying,” Chomsky said.

 “And that of course is assuming we can ward off the option of destroying ourselves more expeditiously with nuclear war, a possibility that is casually being discussed, as if it were an option – it’s an indescribable descent to a state beyond insanity.”

  “Sorry if these remarks seem hyperbolic. They are not,” Chomsky said. “All of this tells us that every possible path to a diplomatic settlement should be pursued in accord with the wishes of almost the entire world, including the core of Europe… There is no time for delay,” he said.

  Chomsky delivered his sobering message during a panel discussion entitled “The Real Path to Peace in Ukraine.” The event, co-sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, was designed to discuss ways to develop a wider protest movement aimed at stopping the war.

  Among those joining Chomsky was peace activist Medea Benjamin of Code Pink; Dr. Jill Stein, former Green Party presidential candidate and historian and commentator Vijay Prashad.

  The discussion took place as the Ukraine-Russia war is now in its ninth month and shows little signs of letting up. Approximately 100,000 casualties have been reported and there’s been widespread damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure. Leaders of both Ukraine and Russia have said the use of nuclear weapons is not out of the question.

 Meanwhile, the Biden administration has shown no interest in promoting peace talks to end the conflict; in fact, a tentative deal to end the war last April was rejected by the White House.

 Administration officials as well as leaders in both political parties in Congress maintain that continued aid is needed to help Ukraine win back its freedom, resist “Russian aggression” and stop a claimed “threat” posed to the rest of Europe.

  Critics charge however, that the real goal of the United States in funding the war is a geopolitical one: weaken Russia and eventually spark regime change in that country; Ukraine is simply being used in that process.

  So far the United States has given nearly $100 billion --- much of it lethal military hardware --- to help Ukraine fight Russia.

                                                          

The Ukrainian military has gotten billions of dollars in aid from the US to fight Russia.

  “We’re saying ‘no’ to this proxy war, we’re saying ‘no’ to the US government policy of bleeding Russia through the lives of countless Ukrainians,” said Manolo De Los Santos, co-director of the People’s Forum, in introductory remarks.  “We are not going to wait for nuclear war.  We are not going to wait for global famine. We are not going to wait for a further energy crisis…We will not allow them to sacrifice either  Ukrainian or Russian people or better yet we will not allow them to sacrifice the planet for their new war of greed.”

  Benjamin said it will take a broad-based grassroots movement to force a change in US policy on the war, which is supported even by so-called “progressive Democrats” in Congress.

  “It’s important to gather up our forces and to extend them to get the people in the environmental movement to recognize that this war has only led to production of more dirty energy, giving a green light to the oil and gas and coal and nuclear weapons and power producers,” Benjamin said, adding, “we have to get the environmental movement to work with us to say that this war and all wars are so destructive of the environment and they have to stand with us for peace.”

  The Code Pink founder continued, “We also call on the faith-based movement to say war is immoral, all wars are immoral and they need to come with us and call for a ‘Christmas Truce’ like the one that happened during World War I… We are calling on faith-based leaders around the country to join the Pope, who has said we must get all sides to the table.”

Noam Chomsky

     In her remarks, Stein said the war represented “end-stage capitalism” in which only the elites are benefitting from war --- through arms sales and oil profits – while the vast majority of people around the country and the world are seeing a decline in their quality of life.

  “The chickens have come home to roost back here in the seat of the Empire,” she said. “The chickens have come home to roost in the struggles of the poor and the working poor who are growing by the millions in the US and around the world. Hundreds have joined the ranks of the billionaire class while hundreds of millions have joined the ranks of poverty.

  “So the system just doesn’t last,” Stein said. “And we’re all in the crossfire – not just the people of Ukraine who are being set up to the last person, man, woman and child --- their lives are being expended --- we are all part of this vast exercise of unaccountable and abusive power on the part of economic elites. We are saying no more. The buck stops,” she said.

  The 2016 presidential candidate said there is a disconnect between how members of Congress see the nation’s priorities and how regular people see them. She said that Gallup polls indicate that economic priorities --- such as inflation and cost-of-living issues relating to housing and healthcare are at the top of the list of concerns cited by working people.

  Stein said “70,000 people in the United States are dying for lack of health insurance every year and housing is an acute crisis with 11 million people facing eviction.” But Congress is not targeting funding to deal with these problems.

“If you look at Congress it’s very clear and explicit that it’s funding for a new generation of nuclear weapons and more tanks for Ukraine and armaments that is their number one priority,” she said.

  Santos said about the panel discussion, “This is not “a one-off event. This the beginning of a movement to fully challenge NATO and US imperialism.”

  A series of actions and anti-war protests are planned for January, he said.

    

 

 

 

Progressive journalist quits over censorship

By Reginald Johnson 

      In the latest journalism travesty, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Glenn Greenwald has been forced out of the publication he co-founded because editors there were censoring his stories about possible corruption by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

  Greenwald, who started The Intercept in 2014 after he broke stories about unlawful surveillance of the American people by the National Security Agency, resigned from The Intercept after editors said they would not run any of his stories unless he removed all material critical of Joe Biden.

  The Intercept --- along with almost all of the mainstream and left media --- have blacked out all the revelations in stories done by the New York Post concerning apparent influence peddling and possible criminal wrongdoing in connection with payments by foreign nationals to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. Also blacked out has been a statement by a Hunter Biden business associate that contradicted claims by Joe Biden that he knew nothing of his son’s business ventures in countries including Ukraine and China.

 The FBI is reportedly investigating Hunter Biden for money laundering.

   Biden, who served as Vice President from 2009-2017 in the administration of Barack Obama, was in charge of foreign policy concerning Ukraine and China, when his son went into business in Ukraine.

  Biden, who is facing Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential election, has denied any wrongdoing related to his son’s business dealings and said the stories were part of a Republican “smear campaign.”

  That denial has satisfied most of the media, the same media who acted like sharks smelling blood every time a report surfaced in the past about possible nepotism or nefarious activities by Trump family members.

  Biden supporters and many in the media have instead labeled the Post stories as “Russian disinformation” --- based on statements by former CIA Director John Brennan and former NSA Directors James Clapper and Michael Hayden.

 In an interview on FOX with Tucker Carlson, Greenwald said he was shocked to see even The Intercept ran a story referencing the claims by the former intelligence chiefs about Russian disinformation, even though the officials admitted in their full statement they had no hard evidence of a Russian link.

  Greenwald said The Intercept was founded on the idea that the media must be skeptical about the claims of the intelligence community, in light of the revelations about illegal mass surveillance by the NSA brought forth by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported by Greenwald.

  The investigative journalist said that in recent years an "unholy union" has come about between the media, the intelligence community, neo-cons, Silicon Valley (tech companies such as Google and Facebook). Democrats and Wall Street to advance a certain point of view and rule out independent voices. 

 Part of the reason for that joining of forces is that the left, which used to criticize the CIA, now likes the intelligence community because the CIA and FBI promoted the Russia-Trump collusion investigation, which nearly drove Trump from office, Greenwald said. The collusion narrative fell on its face however, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation found no conspiracy had taken place between the Trump campaign and Russia in influencing the 2016 election. 

  That "union of power," Greenwald contended, fully backs the Democratic Party which is likely to take over the Senate and possibly the presidency on Tuesday.

   "That is a very alarming proposition because they are authoritarian, they believe in censorship, they believe in suppression of information that exposes them in any kind of critical light," Greenwald said.

  The media has behaved very unprofessionally in refusing to probe the Biden allegations. That failure, together with the mistakes the press made in not covering the Russia-collusion controversy more critically, has left the media as an institution in tatters.

 That has grave implications for our democracy, since a vigorous and objective press is vital for our system to work well.

 Glenn Greenwald has not sold out. In my book, he's a hero.

   

 

 

 

 

Cut the military, fund social needs!

    By Reginald Johnson

    Democrats fight for a lot of good things --- steps to combat climate change, a saner immigration system, a more equitable tax system, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, ending racism and controlling guns. Check, check, check.

  But where Democrats keep falling down is on the question of whether to cut the bloated military budget --- a budget that dwarfs the military spending of many countries around the world combined.
 A number of  Democrats, including presidential candidates, vacillate on this crucial issue. They talk of possible cuts in the defense budget but don’t take a strong public stand on the matter, and sidestep critical votes.  Others actually support massive increases in the war budget, and back President Trump on Pentagon spending.

  According to an August 2^nd story in the World Socialist Website, Senate Democrats recently gave strong support for a record $738 billion defense budget outline, a plan backed by President Trump.  Democrats voted 38-5 for the plan, which won passage in the Senate.  Self-described “Democratic  Socialist” presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said previously he would vote against the budget, but did not bother to return to D.C. to actually cast a vote against it. Candidates Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and  Kamala Harris also were absent for the vote.

  Why didn’t they go back to Washington, blast this wildly excessive spending plan and cast their votes in opposition? These people are going around the country demanding that we rebuild our infrastructure, invest in education, fund health care and build more affordable housing. They denounce Trump for not addressing  critical social needs. But the huge amount of spending on the military siphons billions of dollars away from funding domestic programs.  In fact, the massive outlays for the military year in and year out make it impossible for domestic needs to be adequately addressed.

  People like Sanders and Warren have to know this fact. But apparently, out of fear they’ll be labeled as “weak” on national security or afraid they’ll lose votes and contributions from defense contractors and their workers, they hedge on the issue of reducing the Pentagon budget.

   Other leading figures in the Democratic Party are voting in favor of Trump’s war spending.  Presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand, for instance, voted in favor of the Trump budget.
   Also backing Trump's war budget was freshman Congress Member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been in the headlines continuously for the past year condemning Trump’s immigration policies and calling for the president’s impeachment.  Her vote helped the House of Representatives pass the budget overwhelmingly. Apparently Ocasio-Cortez didn't care that this obscene budget steals money from domestic needs like education and housing, which are vitally important to the constituents in her mostly poor Bronx-Queens district.

  You expect Republicans to go along with sky-high defense spending proposals, year in and year out. You wouldn’t think Democrats would be so supportive.

  But they are, and this support undermines the promise by Democrats they will create a government that is more compassionate and addresses domestic needs.

  Democrats have to overcome this contradiction, otherwise they cannot continue to claim they are  “the party of the people.”

   The U.S. military budget is by far and away the largest of any country in the world and exceeds the total military spending by many other nations --- including China, Russia, France and England --- put together.

   Our military budget should be cut by at least 30 percent. There won’t be the slightest fall-off in U.S. security.

  Thirty percent of $738 billion is about $220 billion. Think of what that money could do for building new schools, new infrastructure and new housing.

  It’s time for Democrats to step up to the plate.

  Cut the military budget!  

 

  

  

   

       

       

Democrats silent on U.S. coup in Venezuela

                    

By Reginald Johnson

  Members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation --- all Democrats --- are remaining mostly silent as the Trump administration tries to oust Nicolas Maduro as president of Venezuela, threatening to use force if necessary.

  Claiming that Maduro is running an authoritarian regime which has mismanaged the Venezuelan economy, President Donald Trump and other officials are demanding that Maduro be replaced, and they have hinted at the possibility of a military intervention. Crippling economic sanctions have also been levied against Venezuela.

  On January 23, Trump said in response to a question about possible military action by the U.S., that “all options are on the table.” He reiterated the comment that  “all options” were being considered, at a press conference with Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez last week.

   In threatening to use military force to overthrow a sovereign government, Trump is violating the UN charter, to which the United States is a signatory.

     Article 2, paragraph four of the UN charter unequivocally states: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

  Yet all members of the Connecticut congressional delegation, with one exception, have said nothing about Trump’s strong-arm policy.

   A check of congressional websites shows none of the five members of the House of Representatives from Connecticut have taken a stand on Trump’s Venezuela policy.

   Phone calls were also made last week to the offices two congressmembers,  Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, seeking comment on Venezuela.  A staff person for Himes said the congressman had not taken a stand yet on the issue, but someone would call back if he chose to comment now. So far, there’s been no reply.

   A staff person at DeLauro’s office said she didn’t know if the congresswoman had a position on the administration’s Venezuela policy. “All her positions are on the website,” she said.

   A spokesman at the office of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, said “I don’t think he’s made a comment on that yet,” when questioned about Venezuela. But he promised that if the senator did take a stand, the office would inform me.

   U.S. Sen. Chris  Murphy, D-Conn  is the only one to comment on the Trump policy.  He wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post on Jan. 29 saying that while he agreed with the objective of replacing Maduro --- due to his “lack of democratic legitimacy” and economic mismanagement --- he cautioned against a military solution. He said “the administration must recognize the troubled history of US intervention in Latin America” and added that “public bluster about military options and private leaks about coup planning only serve to undercut the legitimacy of the democracy that we should support.”  

       Murphy said that “the United States should be working with international partners to support negotiations with all of Venezuela’s factions in pursuit of a transitional government that can hold new elections.”

    

President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela  (Getty Images)

    Henry Lowendorf, chairman of the Greater New Haven Peace Council, which is strongly opposed to the U.S. Venezuela policy, said “there seems to be a conspiracy of silence --- not just in the Connecticut delegation, but in general, among Democrats.”

     Lowendorf added, “Republicans are cheering Trump on.  Democrats for the most part, with a few exceptions, have been silent. Maybe a half dozen Democrats, including Tulsi Gabbard,  Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders have said we shouldn’t overthrow the government. That’s none of our business.”

   “I don’t want to let the Republicans off the hook,” Lowendorf said.  “Historically, over the last half-century or so, Republicans have been the war party. But Democrats now are the war party. The Republicans continue to push for war and more military but the Democrats are pushing it even more.”

  Lowendorf said over the last two years, whenever Trump has done something that is not militaristic, such as moving to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, or make a peace deal with North Korea, the Democrats have criticized him. Also he noted, very few Democrats have criticized the “U.S. role in the devastation of Yemen.”

   Despite the stand of the Democrats, peace activists in Connecticut and elsewhere are beginning to mobilize to protest U.S. policy on Venezuela and prevent what could be a catastrophic American military intervention.

   Next Saturday, February 23,  rallies are being held around the country and around the world to protest U.S. policy towards Venezuela.  Locally, the Greater New Haven Peace Council is sponsoring a rally in New Haven, on the New Haven Green at Elm and Church Streets from 12 noon to 1 PM.  There will also be a march to Congresswoman DeLauro’s office at 59 Elm Street.

  Another rally sponsored by the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition is taking place in Hartford outside the Federal Building on Main Street from 12 noon to 1 PM. In New York City, there will be another rally entitled “March on Wall Street to Defend Venezuela,” beginning at 1 PM at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan.
  "We must stop another war. We must end the sanctions. No to the coup," said Lowendorf.

       

   

 

  

   

 

   

A Bitter Harvest

                         

By Reginald Johnson  

                                           

  It was last April 24, the day Donald Trump came to Connecticut during the Republican presidential primaries, that I realized something unusual was going on in this country.

 That was the day Trump visited Bridgeport and Waterbury, two once powerful industrial centers that have been struggling for years to recover after a succession of companies closed down their factories and left town.

  The lines of people waiting to get in and see Trump at two rallies --- many of them waiting for hours in a light rain --- was amazing.  In Waterbury, the line to get into Crosby High School stretched along one building, down a hill and up along another building. In Bridgeport, people queued up through the length of the parking lot outside the Klein auditorium where Trump was set to speak.

   Something about Trump’s message and persona attracted these people, in both cases, a mostly white, middle-aged crowd. “He does something to me, I don’t know what it is,” said one woman waiting in Waterbury.

 As I watched these people line up both in person then on the news, and then heard Trump speak at the Bridgeport event recorded on You Tube --- an absolutely raucous rally (what else in Bridgeport?) with Trump blasting away at a “60 percent loss of manufacturing”  in the region and denouncing NAFTA --- it occurred to me that Trump had really hit on something.

People lining up to see Donald Trump in Bridgeport last April. Trump decried the loss of manufacturing and blamed trade deals like NAFTA.

 For the past 40 years, the middle class in this country --- mostly white --- has been sinking.  You can tie that decline very much to the disappearance of manufacturing.  People with only high school educations back in the day could walk into the GE plant in Bridgeport, or the Uniroyal plant in Naugatuck, or Scovill in Waterbury, and get a decent paying job, with medical benefits and a pension. But those plants are long gone.

  Try and find a quality job today with just a high school diploma. Forget it.

  The process of plants closing and corporations fleeing overseas to make more money didn’t just happen back in 1970s and 1980s. It has continued into the 1990s and 2000s’ courtesy of the pro-corporate North American Free Trade Agreement --- promoted by leading Democrats like Bill Clinton and Al Gore --- which laid out the red carpet for companies to leave the country.  And leave they did in droves, from the Northeast to the northern Midwest.

  

  People’s lives have been ruined in the process and communities devastated.

  I got the feeling that day back in April that many of the people going to hear Trump either had worked in now closed factories or maybe their parents had, and their lives were better then, and their communities were stronger. They were also likely upset over the hollow  “economic recovery” since the 2008 Wall Street bank crash. They came believing that Trump could turn this sorry trend around, and Trump --- though a billionaire capitalist --- knew what they were thinking and catered to it.

  Except for Bernie Sanders, no one else among the presidential contenders saw this major undercurrent in the electorate --- the rage of the middle class. I don’t think too many people in the media saw it either.

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

 While I felt blue collar anger would be a powerful force in Trump’s favor, I never thought it would be enough to overcome Hillary Clinton’s advantage in key battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. So I was shocked, as many were, by the result last week, with Donald Trump capturing the presidency by winning the most votes in the Electoral College, copping 290 votes to Clinton’s 228. (Clinton won the popular vote.)

 When Tuesday’s election results first came in, I thought for sure the Democratic ground game and union power would be enough to give Clinton the edge in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But it wasn’t. It turns out there was a “Brexit Effect” going on --- a lot people angry at their economic status declining , angry at the Establishment, angry at being ignored --- turning out in surprisingly large numbers to say “enough.”

   When I related what was happening in the Rust Belt states with what I saw earlier in Connecticut, it all made sense. The white working class was pissed off and making their feelings heard.

  Was race a factor in the election? It might have been for some voters. There’s no question that Trump demagogically played on voters’ fears about job loss and terrorism/security by engaging in constant immigrant bashing and slamming Muslims.  Some Trump backers, particularly the rabid followers at his rallies, responded to this.

  But I do not think that all the 60 million voters or so that voted for Trump in the end were racists and xenophobes --- an argument some liberal commentators seem to be making. Most people voted for him due to anger over their declining economic fortunes and the perception that Trump, and not the Democrats, had some kind of answer for the malaise: rewriting trade treaties, stopping the corporate exodus, lowering taxes, as well as restricting immigration.

  As the old saying goes, people vote with their wallets.

A Trump banner hangs on a tractor trailer in Skowhegan, Maine. The area of central and northern Maine, which voted for Trump, has been hit by plant shutdowns and a general economic slowdown.

 This is not to imply that Trump’s prescription for an economic recovery is the right one. While rewriting the trade deals is a good idea, other ideas of his are the same old Republican bromides --- like cutting corporate taxes and lessening regulations --- that have been tried before and don’t work.

  Trump is basically a populist demagogue. While he has correctly identified some real economic problems, he’s mixed his message with hateful and divisive rhetoric. This is to be condemned.

  Since the election, numerous acts of bigotry directed against minorities have been popping up around the country. Trump needs to come out and make a firm, public statement renouncing this behavior.

  It needs to be recognized that it is the U.S. economic system --- corporate capitalism --- that is the real reason why an irresponsible candidate like a Trump can succeed. The system --- with corporations dumping millions of workers as they relocate to other countries to gain higher profits and with big banks engaging in risky investment schemes that crash the economy --- has created masses of people frustrated with their lives and resentful towards government.

Desperate for answers, they fall prey to someone like Trump.  

 

Sanders Confounds Skeptics

By Reginald Johnson




                  That was a very impressive showing by Bernie Sanders in Iowa.

                  A man who just six months ago was thought to have little or no chance of winning Iowa against the much better known establishment candidate Hillary Clinton, came within an eyelash of pulling off the upset. Sanders finished with 49.5 percent of the vote, to Clinton's 49.9 percent.

            While Clinton technically won the caucus in Iowa, Sanders also won, in that he proved he is very much a viable candidate to win the Democratic Party nomination and that his message of bringing fundamental change to the American economy is resonating with thousands of voters, young and old, men and women.

          He moves on to New Hampshire, where he is way ahead in the polls. If the Vermont senator scores a resounding victory there, he may well have the momentum to go to South Carolina and again, do much better than expected in that state's primary. Given that many in South Carolina's large African-American population favor Clinton, this will be a challenge for Sanders. But he's shown already he has the ability to win people over with his message about economic equality, and I think he can start gaining support among black voters in the South.

       When Bernie Sanders first announced his candidacy for president in April of last year, he stood at only 3 percent nationally among Democrats who said they would for him. Today, his level of support has shot up to over 36 percent.

     In Iowa, the Democratic Socialist started his campaign a full 40 points behind Hillary Clinton in the polls. But with a relentless campaign in which he repeatedly drew huge crowds, Sanders completely closed the gap, and finished in a "virtual tie" as he called it, in the state's caucus.

   When Sanders began his national campaign for president --- amid widespread doubt that he could make any headway at all --- he cautioned, "don't underestimate me."

   I don't think anyone is underestimating Bernie Sanders now.

    

       

   



        .

        

Commentary

Breaking with the Democrats?



By Reginald Johnson
June 17, 2011



It was a hopeful sign the other day when AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the federation may drive a harder bargain with Democrats if they want labor’s backing.

Trumka took a militant tone when he addressed a convention of the United Nurses in Washington, saying that union members are tired of working hard to get Democrats elected every election cycle and then being disappointed in the results.

“For too long, we’ve been left after Election Day holding a canceled check, waving it about—‘Remember us? Remember us? Remember us?’—asking someone to pay a little attention to us,” said Trumka, according to an article by John Nichols in The Nation.

Trumka and other union leaders have been frustrated with the failure of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (card check) and other needed labor law reforms as well as caving in to the GOP on tax issues.

“…I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that shit!” Trumka shouted.

The AFL-CIO leader said the country needs an “independent labor movement strong enough to return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation.”

Nichols further wrote that Trumka has recently “been repositioning the AFL-CIO as a force that will hold Republicans and Democrats to what he describes as “a simple standard: ‘Are they helping or hurting working families?’ ”

It is very refreshing news indeed if the AFL-CIO --- which represents 13 million workers --- is going to take a more independent position on national political issues, and not just be a lapdog for the Democrats, as they have been for too too long. The Democratic Party in recent years has been drifting to the right --- with President Barack Obama and leaders of the U.S. Senate taking centrist or even conservative postitions on key issues of government spending, taxes, social programs, labor needs, civil liberties and war policies. Caving in to the Republicans has become the norm for Democrats, not the exception.

You get the sense now that people in labor and many progressives have had it with the Democrats and are ready to make a move away from the party. This move could be to create a new umbrella organization that would work to achieve a clear set of progressive goals. In turn that group would in effect tell all political candidates seeking their support --- ‘endorse our goals or we don’t support you.’ Period, and no compromise. If no candidate meets the test, the group simply announces, ‘OK guys, we’re sitting out the election.’

Or there could be a move to form a third party altogether.

I know this has been talked about ad infinitum, the idea of breaking away and forming a new party. In the past progressives and people in labor have always rejected this idea in the end, and stayed with the Democrats, seeing that, while not perfect, the Democratic candidate for president in any given national election was always more palatable than whoever the Republicans put up.

This syndrome was, as Ralph Nader puts it, opting for ‘the least worst.’

But has ‘least worst’ run its course?

Think about it. How much difference is there between Obama, and say, Mitt Romney? Obama has been lousy on labor, lousy on the environment, lousy on civil liberties, and a total sell-out on tax and spending issues. Where’s the big difference?

I think more than ever this year, people, including those in labor, are showing disgust with the performance of both the Democrats and Republicans. I think there’s wider recognition among people today that the leaders of both parties are really not interested in the welfare of workers and consumers and are just kow-towing to the interests of the corporate elite --- because in the end that helps them stay in power and continue to enjoy their privileged status.

I do hope that the stirrings of setting up new political formations will come to something. The country desperately needs it.