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AUT: FW: Workers Against War
- Subject: AUT: FW: Workers Against War
- From: Montyneill@xxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 21:30:20 EST
--part1_179.1548f6bd.2b6896bc_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
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The resolution refferred to in the text below was not inlcuded in the text I
got - Monty Neill
>Counterpunch
>January, 2003
>
>Workers Against War
>
>By JoAnn Wypijewski
>
>"Our membership is split 50-50. Fifty percent don't believe a thing
>President Bush says, and 50 percent think he's a liar."
>
>As entrails to ancient augurs, the water in toilets on upper floors
>of the Sears Tower presents to us signs, omens, the coded messages
>from which to coax the metaphors for our age. Lapping back and forth
>within the bowls, the water betrays the ceaseless stress and sway of
>America's tallest building. "The whole thing is basically just a
>steel skeleton. Think of the steel as a wire", my friend Marty
>Conlisk, a union electrician who has worked on just about every
>skyscraper in Chicago, suggested. "What happens when you put stress
>on a wire? It bends. Enough stress, over enough time, and it snaps."
>Outside the Tower a banner exhorts passersby, "Stand Tall America".
>Marty figures that "one day they're going to have to take the
>building down, or it's going to come down".
>
>I was in Chicago for a meeting on January 11 of about 100 union
>antiwar advocates or activists from across the country, gathered
>there to initiate a national labor organization against a war that,
>in its hottest phase, has yet to begin. The term "historic", used
>throughout the day, was not misplaced. Among the group were Staughton
>Lynd from Youngstown, who'd chaired the first demonstration on
>Washington against the Vietnam War in April of 1965; Frank Emspak
>from Wisconsin, who'd chaired the National Coordinating Committee to
>End the War in Vietnam when it called the first mass days of protest
>in October 1965; and Jerry Tucker from St. Louis, who was present
>when unions formed a peace faction outside the ultra-hawkish AFL-CIO
>in 1971, by which time, as he notes, the Vietnamese had won the war.
>Something profoundly different is happening now, and while it's
>unclear how broad labor opposition will become, its very existence,
>now given national expression, represents the deepest crack in the
>supposed consensus for war.
>
>The working class, unions particularly, aren't usually associated
>with antiwar sentiment. Immediately after 9.11, the Machinists
>famously bellowed for "vengeance not justice," John Sweeney said the
>unions stood "shoulder to shoulder" with George Bush in the war on
>terror, and many labor leftists dove for cover, saying even raising a
>discussion on the prospect of endless war was too risky. There was a
>war at home the latter argued-the sinking economy, assaults on
>immigrants-and it could be neatly filleted from the war abroad.
>
>At least as many people were killed in Afghanistan as died in New
>York, and in exchange for fealty to national security through
>slaughter, the Machinists got layoffs at Boeing, layoffs in the
>airline industry, a concessionary contract at Lockheed Martin.
>Sweeney and Co. got to watch as Bush intervened against the West
>Coast longshore workers and threatened to strip dockworkers
>permanently of the right to strike, as civil servants first in the US
>Attorneys' offices, then in the Office of Homeland Security lost
>collective bargaining rights, as immigrants were fired from their
>airport screening jobs and unions forbidden to organize, as 850,000
>government jobs crept toward the privatizing block, as unemployment
>rose, benefits ran out, the rich got goodies and government workers,
>soldiers included, were stiffed on pay. For its part, the timorous
>left got more evidence than needed of the naivete of its argument.
>(It also has to be said that a few bold labor leftists have paid for
>their early stance against war with the loss of their elective
>offices, but they were never under illusions that principle comes
>without a price.)
>
>Now enters US Labor Against the War. Its creation does not signal an
>about-face by top union leadership, though that is to be desired, but
>rather the convergence of an antiwar spirit first expressed in ad hoc
>labor organizations in New York, San Francisco and Washington, then
>in an increasing number of local labor bodies throughout the country.
>The AFL-CIO is still in the war column, though more reluctantly. The
>executive council of only one International union, AFSCME, has passed
>a resolution against war on Iraq. That one considers such an invasion
>a distraction from the war on terror and "a last resort", assuming
>the UN gives the go-ahead, but it is interesting because at the
>union's convention last June the leadership did all it could to
>silence and isolate antiwar delegates. Ultimately, it could not
>ignore what was percolating from below.
>
>US Labor Against the War is the result of a similar process. Since
>9.11 at least forty-two locals, fourteen district or regional
>councils, thirteen central labor councils, five state federations,
>four national labor organizations and twenty-two local committees
>have passed antiwar resolutions. These represent more than two
>million people, and that estimate is low, as many more labor bodies
>have gone on record than were counted in time for the Chicago meeting.
>
>"We are having this meeting because our members demanded it", Jerry
>Zero, secretary treasurer of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, which
>hosted the gathering, said at the outset. "Our membership is split
>50-50. Fifty percent don't believe a thing President Bush says, and
>50 percent think he's a liar."
>
>Local 705 is the second-largest local in the Teamsters. Zero, who has
>long been identified with progressive causes, calls its members
>largely conservative. While there are members who dispute this, it's
>fair to say that truck drivers in the Heartland do not fit any
>standard antiwar profile. Last October at a general meeting a member
>of the local introduced an antiwar resolution. His father fought in
>Vietnam and bears the psychic scars. The statement does not embrace
>or even mention the war on terror, the disarming of Saddam, UN
>inspections or international military coalitions. It simply states,
>"We value the lives of our sons and daughters, of our brothers and
>sisters more that Bush's control of Middle East oil profits", and "We
>have no quarrel with the ordinary working-class men, women and
>children of Iraq who will suffer the most in any war". After noting
>the economic implications for the US working class, it resolves that
>"Teamsters Local 705 stands firmly against Bush's drive for war".
>Zero said he had expected vigorous disagreement and was stunned when,
>out of 403 members present, no one spoke in favor of war. The
>resolution passed 402 to 1.
>
>705's resolution became the template for the resolution ultimately
>adopted, with additions and alterations, as the statement of US Labor
>Against the War. (See below.) Here, though, there was lengthy,
>passionate debate. It's worth reviewing that briefly for the larger
>lessons it holds.
>
>First, disagreement needn't lead to ruin. As Bob Muehlenkamp, a
>longtime labor organizer who coordinated the Chicago meeting, noted,
>the subject at hand was one of the most emotionally and politically
>charged issues humanity faces. It would have been bizarre, even
>troubling, if everyone present-from union staff to principal officers
>to radical rank and file-had moved in sheeplike agreement. People got
>excited, ideas were fought over, compromises reached; no one stormed
>out or tried to scuttle the project, and by the end of the day people
>who had been at opposite poles of the debate said they could work
>with the result.
>
>Second, a united front requires a confrontation on just what is
>unifying. Debate hinged on whether the new group should support the
>disarming of Iraq, containment of Iraq, UN multilateralism and
>inspections, or whether, like 705's statement, it should stick to
>simple principles of national and international class interest and
>opposition to war. The whole morning had been spent setting the table
>for the group to adopt the former position. Muehlenkamp pointed out a
>series of internal union polls showing that people are more likely to
>oppose war if the US goes ahead without UN approval. David Cortwright
>of Keep America Safe/Win Without War, which he described as "a
>mainstream patriotic coalition of Americans who are concerned about
>Iraq but don't want to go to war" and which includes the Sierra Club,
>Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, the NAACP and religious
>groups, had been invited to speak. He went into copious detail about
>UN procedures-a subject guaranteed to encourage the average person to
>switch off-and explained how "we can win against Iraq, we can win the
>war on terrorism" without an invasion or other US unilateral action.
>It was all perfectly understandable. Washington is crawling with
>labor officials, some International union presidents, who would like
>to take a stand against war but are scared. They might be emboldened
>behind the shield of the UN, shoulder to shoulder now with liberal
>business leaders.
>
>The problem is, at least half the people in the room believe that the
>war on terror, the threats to Iraq are part of a US imperial policy,
>that the US has and will manipulate the UN, that evidence against
>Iraq can always be manufactured or exaggerated for convenience sake,
>that solidarity with workers of the world places labor in natural
>opposition to a war agenda and that any talk about crises in the
>Middle East cannot ignore the question of Palestine. Bill Fletcher,
>formerly education director of the AFL-CIO, now the head of
>TransAfrica and a convener of the United for Peace and Justice
>coalition, spoke strongly on these issues and then warned, "We have
>to have a broad level of unity. If we make anti-imperialism the
>premise of our work then we're building a sect, and I'm too old for
>that".
>
>Somehow along the way, though, the UN position got defined as the
>neutral one. A draft resolution was presented reflecting that, to
>which a group of delegates counterpoised a modified version of 705's
>resolution. Thus began the debate. (Interest declared: I attended the
>meeting as a delegate from New York City Labor Against the War, which
>was formed soon after September 11, and this substitute draft
>resolution was initiated by two of our group's conveners, Michael
>Letwin and Brenda Stokely.) There were flared tempers, even moments
>of redbaiting. It seems some people had so prepared themselves for a
>sectarian hijacking of the proceedings that they were responding to
>some imagined revolutionary manifesto rather than to the plainspoken
>prose of a Chicago truck driver. And of course other people stood to
>denounce labor bureaucrats, the Democratic Party, or sometimes just
>to hear themselves talk.
>
>Out of this wrangle came a basic understanding: unity demands
>simplicity and allows for differences. The final resolution has
>elements of both proposed drafts and includes neither patriotism nor
>Palestine; it makes no rhetorical flourish on the nature of
>fundamentalism or capitalism; it neither embraces the UN nor
>denounces American imperialism. It therefore allows all of those
>subjects and many more to be freely explored and debated in
>discussion and organization among workers, which is, or should be,
>the whole point.
>
>Third, no one has a monopoly on representing workers' view of the
>world. It's not true that workers are all conservative flag-wavers
>any more than it's true that they're all organic anticapitalists
>waiting to be turned loose against the system. One of the problems
>with drafting resolutions that are meant to reflect what workers
>think or what workers will be comfortable with is that the process
>can so easily tip into essentialism. In Chicago there were moments
>when it seemed all of organized labor was being characterized as
>obsessed with terrorism and national security, scared to death,
>inclined to support military action though movable depending on the
>details. Yet again and again delegates would tell of how the workers
>had surprised them: how they voted unanimously against war, how
>discussion was heartfelt and strangely one-sided, how the head of the
>local building trades council, against all expectation, took an
>antiwar stand. Many things determine the picture: race, sex, age,
>income, experience-and sometimes nothing anyone could have predicted.
>
>What can probably be said without fear of contradiction is that a lot
>of people are confused and their information is bad, and that even if
>they have misgivings about war they don't think it's a subject for
>the union to take up. That last is a legacy of decades in which
>unions either recused themselves from discussion on the most
>compelling political issues of the day or were complicit with
>government policy and thus developed no independent analysis. Given
>how anxious union leaders are said to be about sticking their necks
>out on the war question, maybe the most valuable thing they could do
>is to initiate open forums, where information could be shared and
>issues engaged in freewheeling fashion. As at Local 705, their
>members might surprise them. Similarly, those labor bodies that have
>taken a stand might further the discussions they've already had. If
>they've passed resolutions supporting UN but not US intervention in
>Iraq, what if the UN gives America its fig leaf and the sons and
>daughters of the working class go into battle? What if the go-ahead
>is bought with US bribes and threats? If labor bodies have passed
>straight-up antiwar resolutions, what happens if a war on Iraq begins
>and is answered by terrorist attacks in the United States?
>
>The debates are far from exhausted, and this is a time to talk with
>people, not at them. In this spirit, on the night before the Chicago
>meeting, Local 705 co-sponsored, with local labor antiwar activists,
>a panel discussion the likes of which ought to be replicated in union
>halls, schools, community centers, veterans groups, anywhere that
>people open to experience and to the strong, true voice of the heart
>may gather. It was billed as "Labor Voices and Veteran Voices Against
>War" but that hardly captures it. Bill Davis, an early joiner of
>Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the chief steward of a UPS
>Machinists local in Chicago, called it "a dream come true", merging
>his labor and antiwar identities. And his talk, about the nature of
>the military and its recruitment, the economic draft, the plight of
>veterans, the history of the American Legion as a home for
>strikebreakers, vigilantes, Klansmen and warmongers, put the class
>angle of militarism up front, inescapably.
>
>Loretta Byrd, recording secretary of Teamsters Local 738 in Chicago,
>talked about family and home, the twin threats of war and
>joblessness, and proved there are more compelling ways to say no to
>war than through union resolutions, prompting the audience, "We've
>all heard that song 'War-What is it good for?'" and then, shaking her
>finger, "'Absolutely nothing.'" I imagined that through everyone's
>head might have been running "It ain't nothing but a
>heartbreaker/friend only to the undertaker... induction, then
>destruction, who wants to die?"
>
>Trent Willis of ILWU Local 10 out of Oakland described the heavy
>weather for longshore workers. Brenda Stokely, who is also president
>of AFSCME District Council 1707 in New York, reminded people that
>"the things that are worth fighting for always take a lot of nerve"
>and then challenged the crowd, in words applicable far beyond that
>room: "If you cannot talk to your relatives about your politics, your
>politics are irrelevant. If you cannot talk to your neighbors about
>your politics, your politics are irrelevant. If you cannot talk to
>your co-workers about your politics, your politics ain't worth
>having."
>
>Dan Lane, who trade unionists across the country know from his
>galvanizing role in the Staley struggle of the early 1990s in
>Decatur, spoke of growing up in a boys' home and entering the Marine
>Corps at 17 because "it was just a natural progression" from the
>boot-camp style home and Saturday afternoons spent watching Hollywood
>war movies. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam, saw more carnage
>than a soul is meant to handle, beat up an officer, was demoted from
>sergeant, collapsed, came home and went through twenty-two jobs in
>four years. He recalled that during the Staley struggle Illinois was
>called "The War Zone" because of all the strikes or lockouts there at
>the time.
>
>"There is a war that is continually being waged against workers", he
>said. "That is the way of life. It's a war where people don't usually
>come out and have strikes. It's a war where someone is just forced to
>sign a piece of paper. Because that's what most people deal with
>going into negotiations every day. It's not about negotiations; it's
>about them telling you what you're supposed to accept. And most of
>the time, people accept; you don't hear about them."
>
>The war abroad had come home. It just took a while to realize it had
>always been home.
>
>Rather than spend gobs of money on ads in The New York Times that
>nobody reads, antiwar groups, particularly those like US Labor
>Against the War, ought to take this kind of talk on the road. There
>isn't so much support for the war program that some real soul-to-soul
>and pressure in the right places can't turn it around. During
>question time an 18-year-old from DePaul University who is trying to
>rouse students against the war said he thought the veterans should
>come to his school. After all, he said, he has only 18 years of
>knowledge and experience, "and that's not a lot".
>
>For more information, US Labor Against the War can be contacted at
>katie007@xxxxxxxx
>
>
>JoAnn Wypijewski, a journalist in New York, is a member of the
>National Writers Union/UAW 1981 and New York City Labor Against the
>War.
>
--part1_179.1548f6bd.2b6896bc_boundary
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<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>The resolution refferred to in the text below was not inlcuded in the text I got - Monty Neill
<BR>
<BR>>Counterpunch
<BR>>January, 2003
<BR>>
<BR>>Workers Against War
<BR>>
<BR>>By JoAnn Wypijewski
<BR>>
<BR>>"Our membership is split 50-50. Fifty percent don't believe a thing
<BR>>President Bush says, and 50 percent think he's a liar."
<BR>>
<BR>>As entrails to ancient augurs, the water in toilets on upper floors
<BR>>of the Sears Tower presents to us signs, omens, the coded messages
<BR>>from which to coax the metaphors for our age. Lapping back and forth
<BR>>within the bowls, the water betrays the ceaseless stress and sway of
<BR>>America's tallest building. "The whole thing is basically just a
<BR>>steel skeleton. Think of the steel as a wire", my friend Marty
<BR>>Conlisk, a union electrician who has worked on just about every
<BR>>skyscraper in Chicago, suggested. "What happens when you put stress
<BR>>on a wire? It bends. Enough stress, over enough time, and it snaps."
<BR>>Outside the Tower a banner exhorts passersby, "Stand Tall America".
<BR>>Marty figures that "one day they're going to have to take the
<BR>>building down, or it's going to come down".
<BR>>
<BR>>I was in Chicago for a meeting on January 11 of about 100 union
<BR>>antiwar advocates or activists from across the country, gathered
<BR>>there to initiate a national labor organization against a war that,
<BR>>in its hottest phase, has yet to begin. The term "historic", used
<BR>>throughout the day, was not misplaced. Among the group were Staughton
<BR>>Lynd from Youngstown, who'd chaired the first demonstration on
<BR>>Washington against the Vietnam War in April of 1965; Frank Emspak
<BR>>from Wisconsin, who'd chaired the National Coordinating Committee to
<BR>>End the War in Vietnam when it called the first mass days of protest
<BR>>in October 1965; and Jerry Tucker from St. Louis, who was present
<BR>>when unions formed a peace faction outside the ultra-hawkish AFL-CIO
<BR>>in 1971, by which time, as he notes, the Vietnamese had won the war.
<BR>>Something profoundly different is happening now, and while it's
<BR>>unclear how broad labor opposition will become, its very existence,
<BR>>now given national expression, represents the deepest crack in the
<BR>>supposed consensus for war.
<BR>>
<BR>>The working class, unions particularly, aren't usually associated
<BR>>with antiwar sentiment. Immediately after 9.11, the Machinists
<BR>>famously bellowed for "vengeance not justice," John Sweeney said the
<BR>>unions stood "shoulder to shoulder" with George Bush in the war on
<BR>>terror, and many labor leftists dove for cover, saying even raising a
<BR>>discussion on the prospect of endless war was too risky. There was a
<BR>>war at home the latter argued-the sinking economy, assaults on
<BR>>immigrants-and it could be neatly filleted from the war abroad.
<BR>>
<BR>>At least as many people were killed in Afghanistan as died in New
<BR>>York, and in exchange for fealty to national security through
<BR>>slaughter, the Machinists got layoffs at Boeing, layoffs in the
<BR>>airline industry, a concessionary contract at Lockheed Martin.
<BR>>Sweeney and Co. got to watch as Bush intervened against the West
<BR>>Coast longshore workers and threatened to strip dockworkers
<BR>>permanently of the right to strike, as civil servants first in the US
<BR>>Attorneys' offices, then in the Office of Homeland Security lost
<BR>>collective bargaining rights, as immigrants were fired from their
<BR>>airport screening jobs and unions forbidden to organize, as 850,000
<BR>>government jobs crept toward the privatizing block, as unemployment
<BR>>rose, benefits ran out, the rich got goodies and government workers,
<BR>>soldiers included, were stiffed on pay. For its part, the timorous
<BR>>left got more evidence than needed of the naivete of its argument.
<BR>>(It also has to be said that a few bold labor leftists have paid for
<BR>>their early stance against war with the loss of their elective
<BR>>offices, but they were never under illusions that principle comes
<BR>>without a price.)
<BR>>
<BR>>Now enters US Labor Against the War. Its creation does not signal an
<BR>>about-face by top union leadership, though that is to be desired, but
<BR>>rather the convergence of an antiwar spirit first expressed in ad hoc
<BR>>labor organizations in New York, San Francisco and Washington, then
<BR>>in an increasing number of local labor bodies throughout the country.
<BR>>The AFL-CIO is still in the war column, though more reluctantly. The
<BR>>executive council of only one International union, AFSCME, has passed
<BR>>a resolution against war on Iraq. That one considers such an invasion
<BR>>a distraction from the war on terror and "a last resort", assuming
<BR>>the UN gives the go-ahead, but it is interesting because at the
<BR>>union's convention last June the leadership did all it could to
<BR>>silence and isolate antiwar delegates. Ultimately, it could not
<BR>>ignore what was percolating from below.
<BR>>
<BR>>US Labor Against the War is the result of a similar process. Since
<BR>>9.11 at least forty-two locals, fourteen district or regional
<BR>>councils, thirteen central labor councils, five state federations,
<BR>>four national labor organizations and twenty-two local committees
<BR>>have passed antiwar resolutions. These represent more than two
<BR>>million people, and that estimate is low, as many more labor bodies
<BR>>have gone on record than were counted in time for the Chicago meeting.
<BR>>
<BR>>"We are having this meeting because our members demanded it", Jerry
<BR>>Zero, secretary treasurer of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, which
<BR>>hosted the gathering, said at the outset. "Our membership is split
<BR>>50-50. Fifty percent don't believe a thing President Bush says, and
<BR>>50 percent think he's a liar."
<BR>>
<BR>>Local 705 is the second-largest local in the Teamsters. Zero, who has
<BR>>long been identified with progressive causes, calls its members
<BR>>largely conservative. While there are members who dispute this, it's
<BR>>fair to say that truck drivers in the Heartland do not fit any
<BR>>standard antiwar profile. Last October at a general meeting a member
<BR>>of the local introduced an antiwar resolution. His father fought in
<BR>>Vietnam and bears the psychic scars. The statement does not embrace
<BR>>or even mention the war on terror, the disarming of Saddam, UN
<BR>>inspections or international military coalitions. It simply states,
<BR>>"We value the lives of our sons and daughters, of our brothers and
<BR>>sisters more that Bush's control of Middle East oil profits", and "We
<BR>>have no quarrel with the ordinary working-class men, women and
<BR>>children of Iraq who will suffer the most in any war". After noting
<BR>>the economic implications for the US working class, it resolves that
<BR>>"Teamsters Local 705 stands firmly against Bush's drive for war".
<BR>>Zero said he had expected vigorous disagreement and was stunned when,
<BR>>out of 403 members present, no one spoke in favor of war. The
<BR>>resolution passed 402 to 1.
<BR>>
<BR>>705's resolution became the template for the resolution ultimately
<BR>>adopted, with additions and alterations, as the statement of US Labor
<BR>>Against the War. (See below.) Here, though, there was lengthy,
<BR>>passionate debate. It's worth reviewing that briefly for the larger
<BR>>lessons it holds.
<BR>>
<BR>>First, disagreement needn't lead to ruin. As Bob Muehlenkamp, a
<BR>>longtime labor organizer who coordinated the Chicago meeting, noted,
<BR>>the subject at hand was one of the most emotionally and politically
<BR>>charged issues humanity faces. It would have been bizarre, even
<BR>>troubling, if everyone present-from union staff to principal officers
<BR>>to radical rank and file-had moved in sheeplike agreement. People got
<BR>>excited, ideas were fought over, compromises reached; no one stormed
<BR>>out or tried to scuttle the project, and by the end of the day people
<BR>>who had been at opposite poles of the debate said they could work
<BR>>with the result.
<BR>>
<BR>>Second, a united front requires a confrontation on just what is
<BR>>unifying. Debate hinged on whether the new group should support the
<BR>>disarming of Iraq, containment of Iraq, UN multilateralism and
<BR>>inspections, or whether, like 705's statement, it should stick to
<BR>>simple principles of national and international class interest and
<BR>>opposition to war. The whole morning had been spent setting the table
<BR>>for the group to adopt the former position. Muehlenkamp pointed out a
<BR>>series of internal union polls showing that people are more likely to
<BR>>oppose war if the US goes ahead without UN approval. David Cortwright
<BR>>of Keep America Safe/Win Without War, which he described as "a
<BR>>mainstream patriotic coalition of Americans who are concerned about
<BR>>Iraq but don't want to go to war" and which includes the Sierra Club,
<BR>>Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, the NAACP and religious
<BR>>groups, had been invited to speak. He went into copious detail about
<BR>>UN procedures-a subject guaranteed to encourage the average person to
<BR>>switch off-and explained how "we can win against Iraq, we can win the
<BR>>war on terrorism" without an invasion or other US unilateral action.
<BR>>It was all perfectly understandable. Washington is crawling with
<BR>>labor officials, some International union presidents, who would like
<BR>>to take a stand against war but are scared. They might be emboldened
<BR>>behind the shield of the UN, shoulder to shoulder now with liberal
<BR>>business leaders.
<BR>>
<BR>>The problem is, at least half the people in the room believe that the
<BR>>war on terror, the threats to Iraq are part of a US imperial policy,
<BR>>that the US has and will manipulate the UN, that evidence against
<BR>>Iraq can always be manufactured or exaggerated for convenience sake,
<BR>>that solidarity with workers of the world places labor in natural
<BR>>opposition to a war agenda and that any talk about crises in the
<BR>>Middle East cannot ignore the question of Palestine. Bill Fletcher,
<BR>>formerly education director of the AFL-CIO, now the head of
<BR>>TransAfrica and a convener of the United for Peace and Justice
<BR>>coalition, spoke strongly on these issues and then warned, "We have
<BR>>to have a broad level of unity. If we make anti-imperialism the
<BR>>premise of our work then we're building a sect, and I'm too old for
<BR>>that".
<BR>>
<BR>>Somehow along the way, though, the UN position got defined as the
<BR>>neutral one. A draft resolution was presented reflecting that, to
<BR>>which a group of delegates counterpoised a modified version of 705's
<BR>>resolution. Thus began the debate. (Interest declared: I attended the
<BR>>meeting as a delegate from New York City Labor Against the War, which
<BR>>was formed soon after September 11, and this substitute draft
<BR>>resolution was initiated by two of our group's conveners, Michael
<BR>>Letwin and Brenda Stokely.) There were flared tempers, even moments
<BR>>of redbaiting. It seems some people had so prepared themselves for a
<BR>>sectarian hijacking of the proceedings that they were responding to
<BR>>some imagined revolutionary manifesto rather than to the plainspoken
<BR>>prose of a Chicago truck driver. And of course other people stood to
<BR>>denounce labor bureaucrats, the Democratic Party, or sometimes just
<BR>>to hear themselves talk.
<BR>>
<BR>>Out of this wrangle came a basic understanding: unity demands
<BR>>simplicity and allows for differences. The final resolution has
<BR>>elements of both proposed drafts and includes neither patriotism nor
<BR>>Palestine; it makes no rhetorical flourish on the nature of
<BR>>fundamentalism or capitalism; it neither embraces the UN nor
<BR>>denounces American imperialism. It therefore allows all of those
<BR>>subjects and many more to be freely explored and debated in
<BR>>discussion and organization among workers, which is, or should be,
<BR>>the whole point.
<BR>>
<BR>>Third, no one has a monopoly on representing workers' view of the
<BR>>world. It's not true that workers are all conservative flag-wavers
<BR>>any more than it's true that they're all organic anticapitalists
<BR>>waiting to be turned loose against the system. One of the problems
<BR>>with drafting resolutions that are meant to reflect what workers
<BR>>think or what workers will be comfortable with is that the process
<BR>>can so easily tip into essentialism. In Chicago there were moments
<BR>>when it seemed all of organized labor was being characterized as
<BR>>obsessed with terrorism and national security, scared to death,
<BR>>inclined to support military action though movable depending on the
<BR>>details. Yet again and again delegates would tell of how the workers
<BR>>had surprised them: how they voted unanimously against war, how
<BR>>discussion was heartfelt and strangely one-sided, how the head of the
<BR>>local building trades council, against all expectation, took an
<BR>>antiwar stand. Many things determine the picture: race, sex, age,
<BR>>income, experience-and sometimes nothing anyone could have predicted.
<BR>>
<BR>>What can probably be said without fear of contradiction is that a lot
<BR>>of people are confused and their information is bad, and that even if
<BR>>they have misgivings about war they don't think it's a subject for
<BR>>the union to take up. That last is a legacy of decades in which
<BR>>unions either recused themselves from discussion on the most
<BR>>compelling political issues of the day or were complicit with
<BR>>government policy and thus developed no independent analysis. Given
<BR>>how anxious union leaders are said to be about sticking their necks
<BR>>out on the war question, maybe the most valuable thing they could do
<BR>>is to initiate open forums, where information could be shared and
<BR>>issues engaged in freewheeling fashion. As at Local 705, their
<BR>>members might surprise them. Similarly, those labor bodies that have
<BR>>taken a stand might further the discussions they've already had. If
<BR>>they've passed resolutions supporting UN but not US intervention in
<BR>>Iraq, what if the UN gives America its fig leaf and the sons and
<BR>>daughters of the working class go into battle? What if the go-ahead
<BR>>is bought with US bribes and threats? If labor bodies have passed
<BR>>straight-up antiwar resolutions, what happens if a war on Iraq begins
<BR>>and is answered by terrorist attacks in the United States?
<BR>>
<BR>>The debates are far from exhausted, and this is a time to talk with
<BR>>people, not at them. In this spirit, on the night before the Chicago
<BR>>meeting, Local 705 co-sponsored, with local labor antiwar activists,
<BR>>a panel discussion the likes of which ought to be replicated in union
<BR>>halls, schools, community centers, veterans groups, anywhere that
<BR>>people open to experience and to the strong, true voice of the heart
<BR>>may gather. It was billed as "Labor Voices and Veteran Voices Against
<BR>>War" but that hardly captures it. Bill Davis, an early joiner of
<BR>>Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the chief steward of a UPS
<BR>>Machinists local in Chicago, called it "a dream come true", merging
<BR>>his labor and antiwar identities. And his talk, about the nature of
<BR>>the military and its recruitment, the economic draft, the plight of
<BR>>veterans, the history of the American Legion as a home for
<BR>>strikebreakers, vigilantes, Klansmen and warmongers, put the class
<BR>>angle of militarism up front, inescapably.
<BR>>
<BR>>Loretta Byrd, recording secretary of Teamsters Local 738 in Chicago,
<BR>>talked about family and home, the twin threats of war and
<BR>>joblessness, and proved there are more compelling ways to say no to
<BR>>war than through union resolutions, prompting the audience, "We've
<BR>>all heard that song 'War-What is it good for?'" and then, shaking her
<BR>>finger, "'Absolutely nothing.'" I imagined that through everyone's
<BR>>head might have been running "It ain't nothing but a
<BR>>heartbreaker/friend only to the undertaker... induction, then
<BR>>destruction, who wants to die?"
<BR>>
<BR>>Trent Willis of ILWU Local 10 out of Oakland described the heavy
<BR>>weather for longshore workers. Brenda Stokely, who is also president
<BR>>of AFSCME District Council 1707 in New York, reminded people that
<BR>>"the things that are worth fighting for always take a lot of nerve"
<BR>>and then challenged the crowd, in words applicable far beyond that
<BR>>room: "If you cannot talk to your relatives about your politics, your
<BR>>politics are irrelevant. If you cannot talk to your neighbors about
<BR>>your politics, your politics are irrelevant. If you cannot talk to
<BR>>your co-workers about your politics, your politics ain't worth
<BR>>having."
<BR>>
<BR>>Dan Lane, who trade unionists across the country know from his
<BR>>galvanizing role in the Staley struggle of the early 1990s in
<BR>>Decatur, spoke of growing up in a boys' home and entering the Marine
<BR>>Corps at 17 because "it was just a natural progression" from the
<BR>>boot-camp style home and Saturday afternoons spent watching Hollywood
<BR>>war movies. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam, saw more carnage
<BR>>than a soul is meant to handle, beat up an officer, was demoted from
<BR>>sergeant, collapsed, came home and went through twenty-two jobs in
<BR>>four years. He recalled that during the Staley struggle Illinois was
<BR>>called "The War Zone" because of all the strikes or lockouts there at
<BR>>the time.
<BR>>
<BR>>"There is a war that is continually being waged against workers", he
<BR>>said. "That is the way of life. It's a war where people don't usually
<BR>>come out and have strikes. It's a war where someone is just forced to
<BR>>sign a piece of paper. Because that's what most people deal with
<BR>>going into negotiations every day. It's not about negotiations; it's
<BR>>about them telling you what you're supposed to accept. And most of
<BR>>the time, people accept; you don't hear about them."
<BR>>
<BR>>The war abroad had come home. It just took a while to realize it had
<BR>>always been home.
<BR>>
<BR>>Rather than spend gobs of money on ads in The New York Times that
<BR>>nobody reads, antiwar groups, particularly those like US Labor
<BR>>Against the War, ought to take this kind of talk on the road. There
<BR>>isn't so much support for the war program that some real soul-to-soul
<BR>>and pressure in the right places can't turn it around. During
<BR>>question time an 18-year-old from DePaul University who is trying to
<BR>>rouse students against the war said he thought the veterans should
<BR>>come to his school. After all, he said, he has only 18 years of
<BR>>knowledge and experience, "and that's not a lot".
<BR>>
<BR>>For more information, US Labor Against the War can be contacted at
<BR>>katie007@xxxxxxxx
<BR>>
<BR>>
<BR>>JoAnn Wypijewski, a journalist in New York, is a member of the
<BR>>National Writers Union/UAW 1981 and New York City Labor Against the
<BR>>War.
<BR>>
<BR></FONT></HTML>
--part1_179.1548f6bd.2b6896bc_boundary--
--- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
- Thread context:
- AUT: SABOTAGE THE WAR EFFORT!,
anthony hayes Thu 30 Jan 2003, 00:53 GMT
- AUT: decomposition in action,
Adrian Wilding Wed 29 Jan 2003, 15:05 GMT
- AUT: ANSWER and the liberals/Auck anti-war lit,
Scott Hamilton Wed 29 Jan 2003, 11:49 GMT
- AUT: FW: Workers Against War,
Montyneill Wed 29 Jan 2003, 02:30 GMT
- AUT: Pro-war offensive by right-wing US intellectuals,
Scott Hamilton Tue 28 Jan 2003, 04:56 GMT
- AUT: Two views on the Porto Alegre WSF meeting,
Scott Hamilton Tue 28 Jan 2003, 04:48 GMT
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