NAME: Ira Grupper
EMAIL: irag@iglou.com
DATE: 05/27/2008

TITLE: Split Turns Ugly, But Latin Scene Brightens

LABOR PAEANS—May 2008
by Ira Grupper
(published by FORsooth, newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky chapter of F.O.R. [Fellowship of Reconciliation] )

A bitter split occurred in U.S. labor a few years ago. Several unions broke away from the AFL-CIO and formed Change to Win.

Your scribe works politically with both labor entities--within organized labor, in community groups and in coalitions. Additionally, colleagues from each organization have been invaluable in feeding us information on many topics that Labor Paeans covers.

But that is no excuse to refrain from commenting. Your columnist is very embarrassed, shame-faced. So we will now atone, and comment. Briefly: seeing that the AFL-CIO was losing membership and not organizing the unorganized in an effective manner, some of the largest unions broke off and formed Change to Win, particularly, but not limited to, SEIU (Service Employees Intl. Union), UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) and the Teamsters.

Unfortunately, SEIU’s contracts with many nursing homes seem to many little more than “sweetheart deals,” benefiting union membership growth and the nursing home operators, while royally shafting employees.

As if this were not bad enough, a recent national labor conference in Michigan, where the head of an AFL-CIO affiliate (California Nurses Assn.) was to speak, was invaded by a rival SEIU throng. Many of the latter, some witnesses reported, were older workers and children who were simply told to get on buses but not told anything else—they were duped.

One worker died in the ensuing scuffle. Some who witnessed this disgusting display felt it was not just a wildcat action, that leadership knew about it. Your correspondent was not there, so will not comment further on the incident.

Note: your scribe will be a panelist in June at a forum sponsored by the Working Class Studies Association. It will be held at the State University of New York. Text of our remarks will be carried in the June column. We will deal more extensively with this unfortunate schism at that time, among other issues.

Another schism preventing a united working class is race. The great intellectual, W.E.B. DuBois, once said that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. We are now into a new century, with racism still alive and well, so it may be instructive to look back on this history, along different lines.

The beautiful lined faces of the civil rights veterans betrayed hidden peace and beauty, knowledge, experience, revolutionary patience, revolutionary impatience. Our bodily organs, now sometimes reliant on prescription pills and determination, yet our collective will to create the “beloved community” still burns.

These are the veterans—Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, gathered together for our third annual meeting in Jackson, Mississippi. Lord, do I remember Jackson, in the 1960’s. Willie Daniels, the farmer, a stalwart of the Movement in Columbia, Mississippi. Mr. Daniels was so nervous. He made a right turn onto a one-way street in Jackson—the wrong way! A short, shrill burst from the police car siren, and he and I pulled over. The big white cop looked down at us, the Black farmer and the white civil rights worker, both of us clad in overalls, both festooned with civil rights buttons. Have mercy.

But our worst fears were soon allayed, as the officer of the law spoke: “I’m gonna let y’all go with just a warning. But, driving like that, next time y’all could get your dick knocked into your watch pocket.” What imagery, this officer, even if he miscounted organs and watch pockets. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, yet I remember that phrase from so many decades ago.

Fast forward to the present. More than three hundred people are gathered at Jackson State University, almost one third veterans, the rest students and teachers from high schools and colleges across the country, elementary and high school students from Shaw, Mississippi (in the Delta), teachers, videographers—and more. I am sixty four years old, and one of the youngest veterans.

Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize novelist, was so magnificently conversational in her presentation. Harry Belafonte, the glorious folk singer and actor, eighty one years old, so eloquent. He spoke without notes, for two and one half hours! Nobody left; all were enraptured. His political sophistication, erudition, nuanced analyisis—mama mia!

The problem of racial disparity in the U.S. is a current problem as well, of course. Reports IPS (news agency): “The United States government is drawing fire from international legal experts for its treatment of American Indians, Blacks, Latinos and other racial minorities.

“The U.S. is failing to meet international standards on racial equality, according to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), based in Geneva, Switzerland.

“...As part of its recommendations, the Committee has asked the U.S. government to consider the establishment of an independent human rights body that could help eliminate widespread racial disparities.

“The panel said the U.S. needs to implement training programmes for law enforcement officials, teachers and social workers in order to raise their awareness about the treaty and the obligations the U.S. is required to uphold as a signatory.”

Uh oh. Still another left government takes office in Latin America, and it’s heartburn-time re: Venezuela—again. From the L.A. Times 4.20.08: “A former Roman Catholic bishop (Fernando Lugo) who championed the downtrodden and challenged the long-entrenched political elite, was elected Paraguay's president,…ending six decades of one-party rule in this South American nation… Spurring his triumph was widespread discontent with the ruling party's long record of corruption, cronyism and economic stagnation.”

But that aint all. “Lugo said he would fight endemic corruption, institute long-delayed agrarian reform, invest in education and social needs, and renegotiate Paraguay's income from two huge hydroelectric projects with Brazil and Argentina. He argued that Paraguay was failing to benefit from the massive amounts of excess electricity its dams produce.”

Lugo, who stepped down from the priesthood to seek the presidency, is a follower of Liberation Theology and is believed to be the first former Catholic bishop to be elected a chief of state.

As if President Bush doesn’t have enough on his hands in Paraguay, along comes Hugo Chávez’s ALBA initiative. ALBA,

the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, is a trade alliance funded by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez from his country's oil profits. Its other members are Cuba, and Nicaragua and Bolivia, which are among the region's poorest nations.

Now, ALBA is not brand new. What is brand new is where the ALBA bank has opened—in Cuba! It is designed to break the region's dependence on the World Bank and other U.S.-backed lenders.

And, so, as the sun sets on the American Empire, we bid fond adieu to arrogance, domination and control. But this is not happily-ever-after. Your humble commentator predicted, not so long ago, that George Bush, whose failed presidential ship-of-state, washed up on the shoals of Iraq, would seek another war, perhaps in Venezuela, maybe in Iran.

Oh how I want to be wrong. Oh, how some of you wrote in to tell me so. But there aint no presidential library gonna reach out and dignify Iraq. So, what’s a failed sovereign to do?



Contact Ira Grupper: irag@iglou.com


April, 2008 Newspaper
http://www.ccds.org/newsletters/labor_paeans_Apr08.html

March, 2007 Newspaper
http://www.ccds.org/newsletters/labor_paeans_Mar08.html

February, 2007 Newspaper
http://www.ccds.org/newsletters/labor_paeans_Feb08.html