Keep On Keepin' On...

We're All in the Same Boat?

2012-01-25T09:08:00.001-06:00

On the Topic of Obama, the

GOP Can't Even Blush Anymore

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On!

If Hollywood gave Oscars for shamelessness, the Republican responses to President Obama's State of the Union speech last night, Jan 24, would have swept the field.

Take Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels, who gave the official GOP response:

"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," he said. "As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat."

Amazing. One top GOP candidate, Newt Gingrich, is running around the country attacking Obama as the 'Food Stamp President,' while the other, Mitt Romney, whose newly released tax returns show he takes in more in a day than a well-paid worker does in a year, critiques Obama's business skills using a shuttered factory as a stage prop.

Obama, of course, never shut down a single factory, yet that was precisely the business Mitt Romney and his outfit, Bain Capital, was famous for, including shutting down a factory in Florida, where his video message was being recorded.

"All in the same boat" and 'castigating others' indeed. Governor Daniels uttered these words as the state he presides over is currently engaged in a notorious 'right to work for less' battle to strip Indiana's workers on their ability to bargain collectively.

Like many Americans, I watched the President's speech with a critical eye. As he detailed a number of manufacturing and alternative energy industrial policies, I thought, finally, he's giving some voice to his 'inner Keynesian' and forcing a crack in the neoliberal hegemony at the top. I cheered when he took aim at Wall Street and declared, "No more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop outs." On the other hand I winced more than once at the glorification of militarism and the defense of Empire-I'm one quick to oppose unjust wars and who has long believed a clean energy/green manufacturing industrial policy needs to trump a military-hydrocarbon industrial policy.

This speech was also Obama in campaign mode. One thing we've learned over the last four years is that his governing mode is not the same thing, and requires much more of us in terms of independent, popular and democratic power at the base to make good things happen.

But one thing is clear. My critical eye has nothing in common with what's coming from the GOP and the far right. The first Saturday of every month, the pickups trucks from the local hills and hollows, growing numbers of them, fill the parking lot of the church on my corner, picking up packages from the food pantry to help make ends meet. In these circumstances and lacking better practical choices, I'll go with the 'Food Stamp' President any day of the week.

Book Review - Revolutionary Youth and the New Working Class: Lost Writings of SDS

2011-12-17T15:41:00.001-06:00

Edited by Carl Davidson,

Changemaker Publications

Pittsburgh PA, 2011

By Jerry Harris

Carl Davidson has done a tremendous service to anyone who studies the history of social movements or anyone interested in the 1960s rebellion. This "lost" collection of papers reveals the depth and richness of radical thinking coming out of the student movement as the war raged in Viet-Nam and militant protestors marched through the streets of America.

The most important document is the "Port Authority Statement," by SDS members David Gilbert, Robert Gottlieb and Gerry Tenney. Although at the time not widely circulated, it offers great insight into the thinking and analysis of SDS as it turned to revolutionary theory and debate. This is an impressive document. Detailed in statistical and economic analysis, grounded in revolutionary social theory, and innovative in its thinking and insights.

One of the most important sections of the paper was its class analysis with its focus on the new working class and the relationship of students to an economy shifting from manufacturing to services and technology. The documents notes that, "Modern American capitalism is characterized by rapid technological change with scientific knowledge growing at a logarithmic rate." This will result in the "elimination of unskilled labor (as) the blue-collar sector will decrease (and) jobs that require high degrees of education and training" will increase. (pages 88-89)

That analysis was made in 1966. Now read a recent article by Edward Luce from the Financial Times: "the middle-skilled jobs that once formed the ballast of the world’s wealthiest middle class are disappearing. They are being supplanted by relatively low-skilled (and low-paid) jobs that cannot be replaced either by new technology or by offshoring – such as home nursing and landscape gardening. Jobs are also being created for the highly skilled, notably in science, engineering and management. (12/11/11) Decades later the paper's main thesis still holds up.

Continuing its class analysis the Port Authority document examined the capitalist class and the debate over ownership and control. The authors focused attention on the growing trend towards paying executives with large stock rewards, merging management and ownership. Again we can turn to a recent article published in the December 2011 Monthly Review that reads, "More recently, David Harvey has argued that ownership (share holders) and management (CEOs) of capitalist enterprises have fused together, as upper management is increasingly paid with stock options." (Richard Peet) This "recent" argument now being made by a leading Marxist trails Port Authority by some 45 years.

Although the authors grasped the sweeping impact that technology would have on American workers, what they could not see would be globalization and the advent of neo-liberalism as a governing ideology. As the paper notes at the time, "Corporate liberalism implies that the dominant economic institution is the corporation and that the prevailing political and social mode is liberalism." (page 68) Of course it's understandable how such changes would be all but invisible in 1966; it's also a good reminder why political tactics and strategy must remain flexible and activists should always be willing to reevaluate their analysis.

The above are but a few of the enticing insights that are contained in page after page of these documents. As new social movements gather force throughout the world, a look into the thinking of activists from the last great social movement can help give direction to coming future battles. I would highly recommend this book to all activists and academics interesting in building a better world.

Jerry Harris, National Secretary of the Global Studies Association and author of "The Dialectics of Globalization."

Do They Really Want 'Specific Demands' from the Occupiers?

2011-11-29T22:05:00.001-06:00

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

I’m getting fed up with pompous pundits lecturing the ‘Occupy!’ movement for not having a set of specific demands.

A case in point: New York Time financial columnist Joe Nocera quoted at length in a story by Phoebe Mitchell in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Nov 29. He was speaking at the Amherst Political Union, a debate club at UMass Amherst.

Nocera starts off with the now usual tipping of the hat to the protestors:

“Nocera believes the anger caused by income inequality, a divisive issue across the country in this prolonged economic downturn, is the fuel for both popular uprisings. ‘If we lived in a country that had a growing economy and where the middle class felt that they could make a good living and had a chance for advancement and a decent life, there would be no tea party or Occupy Wall Street,’ he said.”

But we don’t live in such times, and the more interesting story is that OWS and its trade union allies are displacing the Tea Party, and energizing the progressive grassroots. Nocera, however, makes OWS the target.

“He believes that for the Occupy Movement to be successful, it must frame clear demands that outline a plan for creating jobs and refashioning Wall Street to benefit the entire country and not just a select few wealthy investors. Without a solid plan for moving forward, he said, the Occupy protestors will be continued to be viewed by Wall Street supporters as little more than “a gnat that needs to be flicked from its shoulder blades.”

A ‘gnat’ indeed. In due time, a progressive majority may well come to view our dubious ‘Masters of the Universe’ on Wall St as bothersome gnats to be flicked away.

But to get to the main point, Nocero knows perfectly well that there is any number of short, sweet and to the point sets of demands aimed at Wall Street finance capital and the Congress it works to keep under its thumb. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO has been hammering away at his six-point jobs program—one point of which is a financial transaction tax of Wall Street as a source of massive new revenues to fund the other five.

The United Steel Worker’s Leo Gerard has been tireless for years working for a new clean energy and green manufacturing industrial policy that could create millions of new jobs and get us out of the crisis in a progressive way.

So what happens when these demands are put forward? With our Wall Street lobbyists working behind the scene, the best politicians money can buy declare them ‘off the table.’ Nocera and others of like mind in punditocracy put the cart before the horse. OWS arose as a result of a long train of abuses, year after year of sensible, rational, progressive demands and programs swept off of Congress’s agenda like so many bread crumbs from a dining table. Not even brought to a vote. OWS and a lot of other people are fed up with being dismissed.

The pundits should watch what they wish for. The demands and packages of structural reforms will be back, much sharper and clearer, and with the ante upped by hundreds of thousands in the streets, as well as millions turning out for the polls. In fact, the solutions have always been there for anyone with ears to hear. We’ll see if our voices are loud enough to crack the ceiling at the top, and let some light shine through.

Occupy Wall Street Wins: ‘We Shall Not Be Moved!’

2011-10-18T18:52:00.001-05:00

Victory cheers in Zuccotti Park, 6am, Oct 14

Blocking Evictions, Fanning the Flames:

A Report from Occupied Wall Street

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Riding the New York City subways in a rush hour is always an adventure. But experiencing the crowds of people on the downtown train to Wall St at 5:30 am, Friday Oct 14, 2011 was a special treat. The closer we got to the financial district, the more workers with union jackets poured into the cars, in a militant and upbeat mood, ready to assert their power.

I was in town for a speaking engagement at a union hall the night before, when our small group got the word of an email blast from the national AFL-CIO, "Everyone who can, get down to Wall Street by 6 am. We're going to block the Mayor Bloomberg's attempt to evict the protestors with the police." The after-meeting chatter ended quickly, since we knew we need to get some sleep for a long day ahead.

It was still pitch dark as we climbed out of the Wall St station. We could hear the noise from Zuccotti Park, but batches of cops were everywhere, putting up barricades as a kind of obstacle course. I was with Pat Fry and Anne Mitchell, both SEIU staffers and leaders of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

"Goodness, look at all the media," said Pat, noting the hundreds of reporters, together with vans and cranes erecting their cameras. When we got to the park it was jammed packed with more than 1000 young people, mostly sitting in the dark with arms linked. The incoming thousands of supporters from labor and the general public began encircling the park until they were about three deep in front of the wall all around it. Anne spotted an open space on the wall. "Let's get up here," she said, as we each got a hand lifting us into position.

From our vantage point, even in the darkness, we could see an inspiring but intense scene unfolding. The police had paddy wagons and empty buses for mass arrests trying to find positions, but getting blocked by traffic. Every few minutes, hundreds more emerged from the subway stations as additional trains rolled in. You could tell who was there from the jackets, caps and T-shirts-Teamsters, SEIU, the Transit Workers Union and many more.

"No way there's going to be an eviction," I said to my partners. "The cops are way outnumbered and outmaneuvered. All they can do is teargas the entire plaza, but then what? That would create a fight shutting down the entire financial district. They're not ready for it yet."

Inside the park, an amazingly ordered but still spontaneous 'General Assembly' was underway. The 'human microphone' was in play, a technique developed to counter situations where amplified sound equipment was banned. A speaker would shout out a relatively short statement, and then it would be re-shouted in turn by the dozens around him or her, and reshouted again by much of the crowd, aiming their voices out into the streets. The only limitation is that you have to speak and pause as if you're being translated, but it's English-to-louder-English.

The speeches were intermixed with call-and-response chants. "Tell me what democracy looks like?" was met with the return roar, "This is what democracy looks like!" When someone wants to speak from different part of the park, they yell out "Mike check!" and when it gets repeated loudly enough by 20 or so people, they get their turn, and at any given spot, there will be a 'stack' of people lined up with something to say, managed by a 'stackeeper.' For this dramatic period at least, it worked beautifully.

Finally one speaker yelled out, "We've finally got the official word. At a meeting just a few hours ago, the city agreed to postpone the eviction. We've won!" The occupiers were jubilant--and even a good number of cops seem relieved. Soon after the announcement, one speaker was a member of New York's City Council. "You need to hear that you have more friends than you know about inside the council!" In other words, the mass pressure from below forced a split, and now there was a crack in the ceiling to be taken advantage of by the occupiers.

We stood on the wall for another hour or so, listening to a few speeches but mainly talking with friends and comrades who spotted us on our perch. Jay and Judith Schaffner, retired unionists, had driven in from the Poconos, and reported on what was happening even in the small towns of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Many activists with New York City's Labor Left Project stopped, as did people we knew from the Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party, USA. A good number of veterans from the old SDS of the 1960s came up and said hello: "We're everywhere!" I noted with a smile. I also had a surprising number of young people I've never met come up and say, "Hi! I'm one of your Facebook Friends!" The new media seemed to be working well.

By this time the gray light of dawn arrived. Some people were leaving the square to go to work while more were still arriving. "I don't know about you guys, but I need some coffee and a serious breakfast," said Anne. We agreed, jumped down, made our way through the police lines to one of New York's ubiquitous coffee shops. Over our eggs and sausage, we discussed the meaning of it all before Pat and Anne had to get to work.

In choosing Wall Street as their target, and taking direct action defined by moral clarity against a range of injustices, the young occupiers had opened up a new public sphere. It was a dynamic and flexible political space open to all whose issues, demands, hopes and dreams had been swept 'off the table.' An arrogant and dismissive ruling class, determined to impose more neoliberal austerity and longer wars, were in for a rude awakening. If those at the top thought the bottled up frustration and rage of millions at the bottom 'had nowhere to go,' they were now facing this new insurgency in the streets.

Young people in the 1960s had acted as a critical force, holding up a mirror to the rest of society, prodding it to respond. The Black student sit-ins in the Deep South were a prime example, as were the antiwar students on the campuses and the young alienated GIs returning from Vietnam.

But this new insurgency was different in important ways. First, the 'long wars' had fed a deep crisis abroad, feeding both the Arab Spring 'square' occupations and a long-frustrated antiwar majority at home. Second, the financial crisis had alienated millions in the working class and other strata in a deep way. The labor upsurges in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio revealed an angry discontent in the U.S. heartland. So instead of taking years of 'critical force' protests to create and awaken a progressive majority, the young occupiers rather quickly found that they had large and important allies.

That was evident in the rapid support they received from Leo Gerard of the Steelworkers, from Richard Trumka speaking for the AFL-CIO, from the 20,000 workers mobilized by New York's unions in a solidarity march a week ago, and finally, from this morning's dramatic intervention blocking the eviction. An important new alliance between a radicalizing youth movement and the more progressive wing of organized labor has been forged in the streets-and it was ongoing and open-ended.

It also didn't stop with labor. A number of city councils across the country, themselves suffering at the hands of Wall Street-imposed neoliberal cutback policies, passed resolutions and spoke up in defense of the occupiers. Others equivocated, and tried to restrict and disperse the actions, resulting in nearly one thousand arrests across the country. Electoral groups like the Progressive Democrats of America urged its members to go 'all out' in support of the occupations, and PDA's allies-Bernie Sanders in the Senate and the Progressive Caucus in the House-also spoke up. Even Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, gave her support. And while President Obama didn't go that far, he tipped his hat to the effort, acknowledging the validity of 'their concerns.' '

A New Popular Front Emerging

The implications of all this are deep, complex and strategic. A new popular front against finance capital, encompassing a progressive majority of the country, is beginning to take shape. It is emerging against the neoliberal intransigence on Wall Street, against the GOP-dominated Congress and against a White House that too frequently conciliates with the right wing of both parties. It brings together many demands, many voices and several contending platforms, but all aimed against a common adversary-the "99 percent versus the one percent," the most popular theme in the protests that sums it up.

After breakfast, I headed back to the park to spend a few hours talking to people and taking it all in. There was a lot of activity re-assembling the different facilities of the occupiers that had been taken down the day before to sweep and scrub the occupied zone. The mayor had been using the sham excuse of 'unsanitary conditions' as to why he was going to clear the area. "If the mayor was serious about this," said one young guy with a broom, "he'd give us the portajohns and dumpsters we've been asking for since we started. But they're still refusing, so we do the best we can."

The cleanup was actually very good. A large number of young people were also by now sleeping in the various sections of the park. They had covered their spaces with tarps and folded cardboard signs that doubled as sleeping pads for their sleeping bags. They had been up all night and were exhausted. All the sleeping was out in the open since the city had banned tents in the area, as well as amplified sound.

Not that the sound restriction mattered all that much. On the west end on the square was a huge drummer's circle with about a dozen people beating out a constant background of rhythms. The styles changed as one cultural grouping took over the drums from another-African American, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, women, white rockers, and various mixtures of all sorts. The drone was actually a pleasant background, giving off an energized atmosphere.

You could tell that many protestors were from a new and fresh layer of young activists. The reason? Four huge American flags were constantly being waved over the drummers. There were also a few red flags, and Earth flag and several rainbow flags-but in a more seasoned left event, especially with a large proportion of anarchists, the American flags would not likely be there. The youth also seemed quite diverse among themselves. There was one small 'Class War' corner with several dozen kids dressed mainly in black, other areas with kids mainly in tie-dyed shirts, and even one young man, very busily engaged in cleaning up the area, was dressed in his full Eagle Scout uniform, complete with all his merit badges.

The Matter of ‘Demands’

The media pundits had been criticizing Occupy Wall Street (OWS) for not having a set of specific demands. Rather the occupiers were simply underscoring vast inequalities and demanding a new world. What the pundits ignored was the fact that one reason the movement was resonating so deeply with wider circles of people was that all decent demands made over the last few years-ending the wars, Medicare for all, full employment legislation, and especially the demand to fund all reforms with a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators-had all been rejected, declared 'off the table' and not even allowed to come to a vote in Congress and any other government bodies. In any case, OWS actually had come up with a long list of indictments, which was widely circulated on the internet, even if it was ignored in the higher circles of power.

I spotted two students standing on the wall holding up a cardboard sign, "Education with Debt Is Not Justice! It Never Will Be!", and struck up a conversation. They were burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and weren't nearly finished with school yet. "What’s the difference between then and now?" one asked me, about being a student in the 1960s. My tuition at Penn State, I explained, was about $1500 a year and I could survive for a term on $500 for room and board, which I could make with my campus job as a janitor. If I took off to run around the country organizing against the war, no one's mortgage was at stake. Today's students have to deal with $15-20,000 per year, a severe hardship for many, and a strong motivator behind the 'Occupy!' movement.

But the occupiers were interested in everything, not just their own situation. There were several discussion circles of a dozen or so people going on simultaneously. Stopping by one, the topic was radical movements in Latin America. At another, the subject of militarism and the defense budget was being dissected. At still another, a small group of Ron Paul libertarians were trying to hold up under a barrage of friendly criticism.

Once you had an overview, it was clear that everything was fairly well organized. Right in the middle of the park were two long black chalkboards, propping each other up back to back. On one side was the entire schedule for housekeeping tasks-cleanup, food, dealing with the media, medical issues and so on. On the other side was a timetable for various events and speakers, workshop times and topics, and the times of the daily General Assembly.

Next to the schedule blackboards was the food pantry. At the center was a can for money donations, along with a suggestion to bring canned goods and fresh fruit. One might get an odd variety of things to make up a meal, but if you were broke, the price was right. All along one side of the park also was a line of lunch wagon trucks selling a variety of things. "What's best?,' I asked someone who looked like he had been there a while. "The guy with the falafel truck. Awesome!"

The cleanup section, logically, was next to the food. Here were four large plastic bins with soapy and clear water to keep utensils and dishes sanitary. Lugging the water in and out was a chore, but it otherwise worked fairly well. Finally, next to that, was the first aid station, with a variety of bandages and such. "What's been your most serious medical problem?" I queried. "Pepper spray burns by far, after the confrontation with the cops last week."

The Struggle Continues

In the days ahead, the flexible plan seems to be to send out forays of marching demonstrators, of varying sizes, to assorted targets around the city, but keeping Zuccotti Park as a more secure base area. Today one relatively small group headed further south toward Battery Park, taking over the center of a street, but got dispersed by the cops, and a few were arrested. The following day, Saturday, saw a huge victory rally of tens of thousands in Times Square. One group, trapped on a side street by irate cops who wanted it cleared, ended up with about 70 being arrested. But the kids are becoming more streetwise, now avoiding situations like last week where about 700 got trapped in a police net on the Brooklyn Bridge and were carted off to jail.

What happens next will depend a lot on vigilance, organizing skill and the relation of forces. One ominous report in the news revealed the gradual buildup of a huge encampment of militarized police, with different sub zones encircling the entire Wall Street area. But through their determination, planning and audacity, fanning the flames of discontent, OWS has already scored a tremendous victory. Similar actions are now taking place in over 500 cities around the world, and in nearly every major city and state capital in the U.S. In one month, they have changed the political conversation in all sectors, putting finance capital on the defensive at least tactically. The latest opinion polls show a majority of Americans are supporting them to one degree or another, revealing the deep class divide between Main Street and Wall Street. If there's any attempt to shut down any of the hundreds of occupations by force, a much wider and deeper solidarity effort is likely to emerge.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network, a writer for Beaver County Blue, the website of PA’s 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America, and a members of Steelworkers Associates. He is the author of several books, including ‘New Paths to Socialism’ available online. If you like this article, make use the PayPal button above.]

A Champion of Jobs, Justice and Peace

2011-10-12T09:54:00.001-05:00

Photo: Dwan Walker of ‘One Aliquippa’ with Rep. Conyers at award dinner

Rep. John Conyers Honored at Labor's

Human Rights Dinner in Beaver County

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Over 400 labor and human rights leaders and activists gathered at The Fez in Beaver County's Hopewell Township Oct. 8 to honor John Conyers, the Congressman from Detroit Michigan, now serving his 23rd term as a long-time champion of labor, civil rights and civil liberties.

Sponsored by the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, the annual human rights banquet drew local labor unions, the NAACP and African American churches, and activist groups such as the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America. The elected officials present included County Commissioners Joe Spanik and Tony Amadio, row officers Carol Fiorucci and Nancy Werme, as well as Dwan Walker and his 'One Aliquippa' organization. Walker's recent primary victory has position him to be the town's next mayor. The event was also honored by the attendance of several youth ambassadors from Aliquippa's Council of Men and Fathers.

"There's a high level of energy here," said Tina Shannon, PDA's president and a member of the dinner's organizing team. "Many of us have already worked together for years on Medicare for All, and in the recent 'One Nation' mobilization in Washington, DC. We've built a strong unity by working together, and it's reflected in the turnout here tonight. It'll continue as we fight for jobs"

Conyers was an excellent choice for the labor council's award. Not only is he known worldwide for his leadership in the House Judiciary Committee as a staunch defender of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he is also responsible for introducing some of the most progressive Bills in Congress. HR 676 'Improved and Expanded Medicare for All' has been widely promoted here in Beaver County by Unions and Progressive Democrats, including the first Citizen's Hearing on the Bill conducted in Aliquippa featuring Dennis Kucinich as convener. The Beaver County Commissioners and the Beaver/Lawrence Labor Council have both passed resolutions endorsing the Bill. Conyers has also recently drafted another groundbreaking bill, HR 870 Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, to be funded by a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators.

Rep Conyers arrived at the hall early. He spent his time chatting with the various folks from Beaver County and having his picture taken with them. He was warm and friendly and seemed genuinely engaged. As people sat down and started their meal, anticipation to hear Conyers' remarks had been also engaged. Two younger union leaders led off the program remarks, Rick Galiano, President of USW District 10 and Eric Hoover, President of IBEW Local 201.

"John Conyers has consistently stood up for labor against the Republicans," declared Hoover. "They're opposing everything positive now for only one reason. They want to drive Obama out of the White House, and they don't care how much they hurt the country in doing it. We've got to turn it around, re-elect Obama and defeat as many of them as we can.' Fred Redmond, International Vice-President of the United Steel Workers, in his introduction, added the urgency of grassroots mobilization, and pointed to the USW's support of the new wave of direct actions across the country in the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement.

"As a member of Congress who was on Richard Nixon's enemy list, it was nice to get an introduction like that, "Conyers quipped as he took the podium. He went on to stress three points. First, continue to improve health care, keep working to get HR 676 passed. Second, pass HR 870, which aims to create a full employment society. Third, make our education system affordable. "I don't want anybody in this country to say I wanted to go to school, but I couldn't afford it, I couldn't pay the tuition. That's not what America is all about."

But Conyers' final remarks brought the room to its feet in a standing ovation. "I close on this observation. We are in too damn many wars. We have got to get out of Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Libya. And some other places that I don't even know about, and you don't either. The accumulated costs of these wars are somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 4 trillion dollars. And they keep coming back to working people and saying you got to give up some more. You got to cut back on this, you got to cut back on that. And so I say to you, Martin Luther King had it right - Jobs, justice, and when we say justice we're talking about economic justice and political justice, and then we will come to peace. Peace not only in this country… but in this world."

‘Street Heat’ vs. Finance Capital and the Right

2011-09-25T08:43:00.001-05:00

Solidarity Time: Young People Occupying

Wall Street Are Standing Up for All of Us

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

The actions of thousands of young people in New York City's financial district, simply calling themselves "Occupy Wall Street," is now entering a second week, with many camping out overnight in the area's parks. How long its will continue and whether its numbers will swell is anyone's guess, but the response of the NYPD in arresting and otherwise restricting them is already banging heads with our First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble.

"At Manhattan's Union Square, police tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic netting," reports the Sept 25, 2011 Washington Post. "Some of the arrests were filmed and activists posted the videos online. One video appears to show officers using pepper spray on women who already were cordoned off; another shows officers handcuffing a man after pulling him up off the ground, blood trickling down his face."

Most of the youth are students, but many are also unemployed and underemployed young workers. And a small but important grouping of staffers and activists with NYC's trade unions have also made their way downtown to spend a few hours helping out.

The students certainly have a just cause. While the denizens of Wall Street have bailed themselves out and paid themselves huge bonuses with trillions from the public treasury, these young people are saddled with a degree of crushing debt to pay for their educations that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. If they manage to graduate, they face a financial burden large enough for a home mortgage-all before they start their first full-time jobs, assuming their lucky enough to find one that pays a living wage.

But these youth and students are fighting for more than their own immediate concerns. They have raised a whole range of demands-Medicare for All, defending social security, for passing the various jobs bills in congress, opposing racism and sexism, ending the wars, and abolition of the death penalty in the wake of the recent unjust execution of Troy Davis.

They are the cutting edge of a new popular front against finance capital.

Young rebels often manifest a moral clarity that awakens and prods the rest of us. Through their direct actions, they become a critical force, holding up a mirror for an entire society to take a look at itself, what it has come to, and what choices lay before it. The historic example is the four young African American students that sat at a lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee in Greensboro, North Carolina back in 1960.

The Wall Street protests are thus a clarion call to the trade unions and everyone concerned with economic and social justice. While the youth are clearly a critical force here, when all is said and done, they are not the main force. That power resides in labor and in the wider communities. It's in the hands of everyone that's part of an emerging progressive majority for peace and prosperity, everyone that wants a U-Turn against the country's current path to more wars and deeper austerity.

It's time to exercise that power and lend a hand with active solidarity. More actions are in the works, including an occupation and encampment on Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC starting Oct. 6, following the 'Rebuild the Dream' DC conference focused on a renewed labor-community coalition for the 2012 election.

It's going to take more than votes to push back the right wing and its Wall Street allies. It's going to take some serious 'street heat' as well.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network, and a member of Steelworker Associates residing in Beaver County, Western PA.

If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com His books are available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker]

New Book: ‘…The Lost Writings of SDS’

2011-09-16T17:19:00.001-05:00

This is a fascinating new collection of 12 essays and documents from the New Left of the late 1960s, gathered and commented on by Carl Davidson, a national leader of SDS at the time.

‘Revolutionary Youth and the New Working Class’ contains key sources illuminating a critical transition period in the American left, as well as a number of ideas still relevant.

Most important is the ‘Port Authority Statement’, actually titled ‘Toward a Theory of Social Change, and written by Robert Gottlieb, Gerry Tenney and David Gilbert. Passed around in mimeographed form, only about a third of it was ever put into print in SDS’s newspaper, until factional struggles set it aside. Meant to replace the Port Huron Statement, it is remarkable for many insights still holding up today.

The collection includes other ‘Praxis Papers,’ including three by Davidson, the Revolutionary Youth Movement documents that replied to the Weatherman faction, and the original ‘White Blindspot’ documents. About half the content has been scattered across the internet, but much of it has been newly digitized and now available in both e-book and paperback form from Changemaker Publications. Go to the site for the full contents, and contact the editor at carld717@gmail.com for bulk rates.

Far Right Exposing Its Own Class Hatreds

2011-09-15T10:07:00.001-05:00

Shameless Opposition to the Jobs Bill Reveals

The GOP's Deep Hatred of the Working Class

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want to have your class consciousness raised a few notches, all you have to do over the next few weeks is listen to the Republicans in Congress offer up their shameless commentary rejecting President's Obama's jobs bill.

This week's doozy came from Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, who was outraged that capitalists were being restricted from discriminating in hiring the unemployed, in favor of only hiring people who already had jobs elsewhere. I kid you not. Here's the quote:

"We're adding in this bill a new protected class called 'unemployed,'" Gohmert declared in the House Sept. 13, 2011. "I think this will help trial lawyers who are not having enough work. We heard from our friends across the aisle, 14 million people out of work -- that's 14 million new clients."

One hardly knows were to begin.

First, the Jobs Bill does no such thing as creating a 'new protected class.' It only curbs a wrongly discriminatory practice.

Second, so what if it did? Americans who uphold the Constitution, the 14th Amendment' equal protection clause, and the expansion of democracy and the franchise generally, will see the creation of 'protected classes' as hard-won progressive steps forward from the times of the Divine Right of Kings.

Third, if Gohmert had any first-hand knowledge of the unemployed, he'd know they usually can't afford lawyers, especially when the courts are stacked against them.

Fourth, to create even more confusion, Gohmert raced to the House clerk to submit his own 'Jobs Bill' before Obama's, but with a similar name. Its content was a hastily scribbled two-page screed consisting of nothing but cuts in corporate taxes.

What's really going on here is becoming clearer every day. The GOP cares about one thing: destroying Obama's presidency regardless of the cost. They don't even care if its hurts capitalism's own interests briefly, not to mention damaging the well being of everyone else. Luckily, Obama is finally calling them out in public-although far too politely for my taste.

The irony will likely emerge if and when they ever do take Obama down. I'd bet good money that a good number of the GOP bigwigs would then turn on a dime and support many of the same measures they're now opposing.

But most of them, especially the far right, would still likely press on with their real aim, a full-throated neoliberal reactionary thrust that repeals the Great Society's Medicaid and Medicare, the New Deal's Social Security and Wagner Act, and every progressive measure in between. Their idea of making the U.S labor market 'competitive' and U.S. business 'confident' is to make the whole country more like Texas, with its record volume of minimum wage work and poverty, and then Texas more like Mexico-the race to the bottom. They're not happy with 12% unionization; they want zero percent, where all of us are defenseless and completely under the thumbs of our 'betters'.

In brief, prepare for more wars and greater austerity.

If you think I'm exaggerating, over the next months observe how the national GOP is trying to rig the 2012 elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan and a few other big states. Our Electoral College system is bad enough, but they are going to 'reform' it to make it worse by attaching electoral votes to congressional districts, rather than statewide popular majorities. This would mean Obama could win the popular vote statewide, but the majority of electoral votes would still go to the GOP. Add that to their new 'depress the vote' requirements involving picture IDs, which are aimed at the poor and the elderly, and you'll see their fear and hatred of the working class.

We've always had government with undue advantages for the rich. But just watch them in this round as they go all out to make it even more so. We have to call it out for what it really is, and put their schemes where the sun doesn't shine.

Jobs Programs: The Right and Wrong Turns

2011-09-13T06:15:00.001-05:00

The Hot Potato Too Many Beltway Wonks Avoid:

The Need to Tie Job Creation to Industrial Policy

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want to be a good policy advocate for jobs these days, two starting points will help you a lot. One is to take off your national blinders and see the economy globally. The second is to grasp how the need for revenues to finance the creation of new jobs can best be filled by increasing taxes on unproductive wealth.

A good example of the problem is Robert's Samuelson's 'Job Creation 101' op-ed column in the Sept 12 Washington Post. If we simply follow his lesson plan, we would end up creating new jobs in the third world--and doing so mainly at the expense of the wrong people at home.

Samuelson begins his argument wisely enough by stressing how increasing demand for goods and services creates jobs, and government has to have a hand in it. But then he goes astray:

"If government taxed, borrowed or regulated less, that money would stay with households and businesses, which would spend it on something else and, thereby, create other jobs. Politics determines how much private income we devote to public services.

"To this observation, there's one glaring exception. In a slump, government can create jobs by borrowing when the private economy isn't spending."

On the first point, tweaking taxes so both people and businesses have more cash to spend glosses over the matter of where and how the money is spent. Using extra income to pay down your Visa Card doesn't help job creation much. And if you spend it at Wal-Mart or other big box stores, you'll create some demand to hire more workers in China or Malaysia, but not much here.

On the second point, it's not always wise to create jobs simply by borrowing. It certainly adds to the revenues of the banks and bondholders. But it's much smarter to go after unproductive pools of capital with progressive taxation. The proposal for a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators is an excellent example.

The rule-of-thumb is to tax activities you want to discourage, such as unproductive gambling in derivatives, while subsidizing efforts you want to encourage, such as new green manufacturing startups. It's called 'industrial policy,' and it's why some countries that have one, like China and Germany, are weathering the economic storms better than others.

If Obama's new jobs program is going to be thwarted by a hostile Congress anyway, those politicians who are serious about creating jobs would do well to fight for the best options-direct government programs that fund increasing local demand for local labor and raw materials. If we had every county in the country funded to build a wind farm or solar array as a public power utility, it would be a good start. So would the building of the new and massive 'Smart Grid' power lines for clean and green energy.

When finance capital's opposition in Congress rears its head to crush something that makes perfect sense to everyone else, then we'll learn exactly who is part of the problem and who is part of the solution. If we get political clarity here in a massive way, we'll be in a much better position to assemble the popular power required to get what we really need.

1000s at Labor Day Focus on Plight of Unemployed

2011-09-07T11:30:00.001-05:00

Photo: Aliquippa's SOAR Contingent in Parade

By Kaitlynn Riely
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Labor Day was a day off work for many, but for Shawn Wygant, it was one more day he didn't have a job.

In May, Mr. Wygant, 37, of Forest Hills, was laid off from his job as a washing machine operator for Sodexo. Since then, he has been searching for work, without success.

He uses unemployment benefits to pay his bills and makes large pots of spaghetti to feed his wife, her sister, her brother and a niece and nephew.

Frustration sets in when he sees news reports that say the job situation may not improve for years.

"I can't wait that long," he said. "We need people to start standing up for us."

On Monday morning, he stood in the rain on Freedom Corner in the Hill District as he prepared to march in the Pittsburgh Labor Day Parade. He was one of about 70,000 who participated in the Downtown procession.

On the annual observance of the contributions of workers, Mr. Wygant's story was similar to those of millions across the country who have found themselves unemployed or underemployed in the economic downturn.

Nationally, the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, and in Pennsylvania, it is 7.4 percent.

Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County Labor Council, and Frank Snyder, the secretary-treasurer of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, called attention to the plight of the jobless at a news conference before the parade Monday.

For the unemployed and the underemployed, the dreary holiday weather was another chapter in a bleak period of their life.

"For the past two years, it's not been that happy of a Labor Day as they've not been able to find work," Mr. Snyder said.

At this year's Labor Day Parade, one of the largest in the country, Mr. Snyder said he and other leaders of Pittsburgh's labor community wanted to focus on putting people back to work.

That focus includes both union and non-union workers, he said.

"Unemployment does not discriminate," he said. "Union members as well as non-union members, Democrats, Republicans, no affiliation, find themselves unemployed on this Labor Day."

Dave Ninehouser, the Pittsburgh coordinator for PA Wants to Work, said his group was using Labor Day to ramp up its efforts to help the jobless gain access to resources and to spur the creation of jobs.

"This parade is a perfect example of what we need to do," he said. "Come together, stick together, stand together and fight back."

The parade began at 10 a.m. and lasted almost three hours. Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Bishop David Zubik joined union members ranging from postal employees to Teamsters as they marched from the Civic Arena to the Boulevard of the Allies.

A steady rain fell throughout the morning, but there was a fair turnout, particularly among parade participants.

It was, for many parade participants, a bittersweet Labor Day.

About 5,000 members of the Pennsylvania State Education Association have been laid off from their jobs due to education cuts in the state budget, said Michael J. Crossey, president of the association. As the school year starts, they are out of work instead of in the classrooms, he said.

"We need to start doing the positive things that will move the economy forward," Mr. Crossey said. "This cuts budget doesn't work."

More than 50 people came out in support of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said Mike Plaskon, the executive vice president for Branch 84.

Part of their aim in marching in the parade, Mr. Plaskon said, was to urge Congress to find legislative solutions for the U.S. Postal Service's funding crisis.

"Our job is, we are going to get the facts out there, let the public know that they don't need to close post offices," he said. "They don't need to eliminate Saturday delivery. They just need to fix the funding."

Therese Kisic of Morningside has never been in a union but has family members who have, and she watches the parade every year.

This year, she said, she wished the labor movement would take its jobs message to Congress.

"I want to move this parade to D.C.," she said.

Although the parade had a definite message -- of supporting organized labor, providing access to health care and promoting job creation -- it was still a parade, with bands and banners and a few people throwing candy and other prizes to the umbrella-wielding bystanders.

Sandy and Andrew Pszenny of Franklin Park sat in lawn chairs on the sidewalk outside the DoubleTree Hotel, Downtown, and watched for their daughter Amanda, a piccolo player in the North Allegheny marching band.

They sought cover under their umbrellas as rain fell. It was their daughter's first time marching in a downpour, they said.

"But she's a tough kid. She likes the weather," Mr. Pszenny said.

Kaitlynn Riely: kriely@post-gazette.com o

No Shame When It Comes To ‘Fracking’

2011-09-04T06:41:00.001-05:00

The Low Road to Ecological Perdition:
Greed Tries Turning Natural Gas 'Green'

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

It's hard to decide who has less shame, the Pennsylvania legislature's GOP-led majority or the natural gas industry.

The question is raised by a Sept. 2, 2011 report in the Pittsburgh Business Times headlined, "Gas as alternative energy? New PA bill says yes."

So we're now faced with yet another sweetheart deal concocted jointly by our two local big-time political hustlers. They want to declare natural gas as a 'tier two alternative energy' to get their hands on tax credits earmarked for real green startups. To add insult to injury, both are also blocking any extraction tax on the gas released from the Marcellus shale by the environmentally dangerous 'fracking' underground explosions.

That's like someone picking your pocket with one hand while attaching your paycheck with the other.

Let's get this straight. Taking any form of carbon from under the ground, burning it, and putting the resulting carbon dioxide in the air is not an 'alternative energy.' Claiming so puts you in the running for the George Orwell 1984 'War is Peace' award.

There's only one rational, strategic way to burn carbon for energy: set aside part of the profits from this decidedly un-green process to create the investment fund for true alternative energy systems. Over time, this will help phase out the burning of carbon as a primary energy source altogether.

Here's something most kids learn in their high school Earth Science classes, even if our paid-off politicians and short-sighted and carbon-addicted business leaders are in denial:

Alternative energies, for the most part, derive from the interplay of the Earth, Sun and Moon. That's solar cells and solar collectors, wind turbines, hydro power and wave generators taking advantage of tides and other ongoing movement of water. The few exceptions are geothermal sources, tapping into the heat below the Earth's crust. All these are practically inexhaustible and leave a relatively low ecological footprint. That's why they're called 'renewable' and 'green'.

When brought to scale and with the proper technology--almost all of which is already invented and in use in many parts of the world--renewable energies can provide almost all our needs, from running heavy industry and powering land-based transportation to turning on your porch lights. We'll still need a small amount of hydrocarbons to power aircraft, but even that can be reduced with electromotive high-speed rail.

What's more, making the transition to clean and green energy requires a massive but productive increase in modern high-tech, high-value-added manufacturing and the jobs that go with them. That's why Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers has been hammering away at their importance for years now.

That's also the high road to economic and energy development for creating new wealth here at home. But our legislature or at least a majority of it, along with the speculators bound up with the Marcellus Shale, want to take us down the low road to less sustainable low-wage growth and disaster-threatening ecological perdition.

This bill is simply the latest case in point. It's time for the Blue-Green alliance and a job-building, progressive-minded majority to expose these shenanigans, get rid of the shale-related corruption and organize the independent political clout to put us on a proper clean and green course.

Why Neoliberals Have Trouble Telling the Truth

2011-08-29T11:29:00.001-05:00

Media Wars and Manufacturing Consent:

Getting People to Vote Against Themselves

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

"Newt Gingrich: Obama's 'Bureaucratic Socialism' Kills Jobs" is one of many similar headlines appearing on dozens of web-based news portals in this 2012 election season. This one keeps popping up, and I'm getting sick of seeing it.

The reason? It manages to pack several major lies, each of which you could write a book about, into just five words-and hardly an editor anywhere takes a blue pencil to it.

Don't get me wrong. I've got no problem with 'socialism.' My shoot-from-the hip response when someone spits the 'S' word out in a political argument is, "Socialism? I've been a socialist all my life, and proud of it. We should be so lucky as to have some socialism around here. Unfortunately, we're not even close."

First of all, Barack Obama is not a socialist. Even back in his more youthful years in Illinois, at best on a good day, he was simply a neo-Keynesian liberal with a few high tech green ideas. Keynesians believe, among other things, that when markets fail, government has the task of being the consumer of last resort, even hiring people directly to build infrastructure and put people to work,

But these days, surrounded by a 'Team of Rivals' largely from Wall Street, Obama has set aside any earlier Keynesian policies he held and has been, wittingly or not, sucked into the black hole of the prevailing neoliberal hegemony.

What's 'Neoliberal hegemony?' That's a shorthand phrase for the current domination of our government by Wall Street finance capital. It simply wants to diminish any government initiatives or programs, except for those that line their own pockets.

Keynesians and others, in and out of government, have opposed the neoliberals. They've advocated a range of reasonable proposals for getting us out of the current crisis-ending the wars, Employee Free Choice Act, Medicare for All, the People's Budget submitted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. John Conyer's HR 870 Full Employment Bill-but they all keep getting declared "off the table" by the neoliberals.

On Gingrich's second charge, far from being 'bureaucratic,' Obama, wisely or not, has actually reduced the number of federal employees, and made other cuts that will cause the states to do likewise.

On the third charge, far from 'killing jobs,' Obama's initial proposals regarding employment have actually created a few jobs, but not nearly enough. Why? Because of the real job-killing votes of Gingrich's Republican allies in the House.

It doesn't take a chess champion to figure any of this out. Any decent checker player could make an honest call of the false moves in the 'socialist job killer' gambit of Gingrich and other GOP presidential pretenders running the same rap.

But why distort the truth this way? Newt Gingrich is a smart man. He knows that Keynesianism is designed to keep capitalism going, and that socialism is something quite different and has very little to do with this debate. So why does he keep this 'Big Lie' business up?

It's a smokescreen. At bottom, Gingrich, the GOP and the far right are promoting a grand neoliberal project to repeal the New Deal and the Great Society, the primary past examples of liberal government dealing with market failure.

The right's problem is too many things that came out of those periods had some success and are still popular with a majority of voters-the elderly like Medicare and Social Security, labor likes the Wagner Act and the right to bargain collectively, Blacks and other minorities like the Voting Rights Act, and women like Title Seven. To take them all down, which is what the neoliberal-far right alliance wants, means you have to attack them indirectly, rather than directly.

So how does it work? You have to start with what most people fear most-losing their jobs-and then combine it with the darker demons of our past, such as anti-communism, racism and sexism. Next you mush all your potential adversaries--the socialist left, the liberals and progressives, and the FDR-loving moderates--into one huge combined bogey man. You make it into a hideous package that's going to scare voters into casting ballots against themselves. To put a fancier term on it, it's called manufacturing consent to combine with outright coercive force in getting you to submit to a renewed hegemonic bloc.

That's what Newt is doing here. In short, it's when they get you to think all your neighbors and co-workers are your enemies, while all the guys on Wall Street are your friends. You're going to hear a lot of it over the next year. Don't fall for it.

Time to Get Serious About Full Employment

2011-08-23T07:11:00.001-05:00

Yes, We Need a Jobs Program, But One

That Doesn't Tinker Around the Edges

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Our regional daily newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to its credit, came out with an editorial today, Aug. 22, 2011, urging President Obama to push for a substantial jobs program over Republican opposition.

"Action on jobs: Obama must push hard to get people back to work" is the headline, and a key point stresses "Mr. Obama now needs to offer proposals equal to the size of the problem. That means bold strokes, not half-measures. If his Republican antagonists in Congress are determined to stand in the way of getting Americans back to work, the president must say so publicly -- and then go over their heads to enlist the nation in his effort."

Terrific, a good framing of the question. Unfortunately, however, once you get into the substance of the piece, it turns into a muddle. The Post-Gazette offers up a hodgepodge of proposals that tinker around the edges of the problem-more tax cuts and credits for jobs created, more unemployment benefits, and oddly, more trade deals, even though these deals mostly result in net job losses.

Here's the heart of the matter. In a down economy, jobs are created by increasing demand, by more customers with bigger orders coming to a firm's doors. The problem is that consumer demand has taken a nose dive when the credit bubble burst. People don't have money to spend. They're cutting back on everything, and trying to unload their debt. This means business-to-business orders shrink as well. Companies may be cash-rich and have high profits, but with no increase in orders or customers at their door, they aren't likely to hire people to do nothing just to get a tax credit.

This is where government has to become the key customer. It has to make huge productive purchases for local work and local materials to build productive infrastructure-county-owned green energy plants, new and improved schools, modernized locks and dams, Medicare for all, investment in young students and veterans like we did with the GI Bill, investment in research in new industries, and so on.

Most important, to work well, it can't be nickel-and-dimed to death. It has to be on the scale of the expenditures for World War 2. That's when the 'multiplier effect' can kick in, and related growth in manufacturing can take off in turn. And it has to be paid for by going to where the most appropriate money is, imposing a financial transaction tax on unproductive and destabilizing speculation by Wall Street.

The best the P-G does on this matter is to support Obama's proposal for an 'Infrastructure Bank,' but urges him to find a way to bypass a GOP roadblock in Congress.

But even that is too passive. It says, in effect, here's a small pot of money. If you want to repair some roads, come and get some.

What we really need is something like the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority and Works Progress Administration, but on steroids, a TVA-WPA-CCC 2.0. We need to pass John Conyer's HR 870 Full employment Bill. We need the Dept. of Energy and the Dept. of Labor to go to every county in the country with a fully funded proposal to build new green energy wind farms and solar power arrays as public energy utilities, hiring local workers at union scale, with no obstacles to a union election. And that's just for starters.

Yes, we need a serious jobs program. But it's time for everyone who utters that phrase to get serious themselves. Why? Because it's going to take a massive upsurge in class struggle to get it by removing those standing in the way.

[Carl Davidson is a Steelworker Associate and a retired computer technician living in Beaver County. His 'Keep On Keepin' On' column appears in Beaver County Blue, website of the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America.]

Progressive Cynicism and Misplaced White Anger

2011-08-21T06:45:00.001-05:00

The Far Right's Two Magic Weapons for 2012

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want a Republican sweep in the 2012 election, follow this simple formula: Keep blaming the White House alone as the main cause of every problem the country faces, and ignore the Tea Party as overblown has-beens.

That's not advice from me. That's from Richard Viguerie, who some might remember as the think-tanker and skilled pollster of the 1970's New Right that helped usher in Reagan and the era of neoliberal hegemony we've suffered under ever since. That's what he hopes the center and left will do over the next year.

An Aug, 10, 2011 syndicated column by Viguerie reminds us that presidential elections don't require a majority of popular votes, but only a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

"The Aug. 8 Gallup tracking poll shows that Obama is at 50 percent or better approval rating in only 16 states, the majority of which are normally considered Democratic bastions. Those 16 states represent 203 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win the presidency." Then he adds: "Key states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida that contributed to Obama's 365-to-173 blowout of the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008, are in play at this time. It gets better. The states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, which are now in play, were three of the top states where the tea party wave swept new constitutional conservative members into Congress."

Viguerie goes on to discuss the role of the Tea Party insurgency in Michigan and California among angry white voters. He adds an astute point: if the GOP puts up a 'moderate' like Romney, Obama wins narrowly. But if it plays its 'wild cards' like Bachmann and Perry, the far right's activist base is energized-and at a time when Obama's strategy is dissing his own left-progressive base for the wimpy and ever-narrowing 'center.'

In short, keep the left inactive, the progressives and the center divided, and the Tea Party energizer bunnies get their 270 electoral votes.

It's not a bad projection for the prospects of a neoliberal alliance with proto-fascists, with the latter in the driver's seat. The alternative view is that the majority of serious Wall St finance capital is circling the wagons around Obama. They're not interested in the wilder instabilities that would be fueled by Bachmann or Perry White House.

Maybe so. Serious money matters in American politics. But the far right has some serious money too, and they can combine it with an army of insurgents.

Therein lays our problem. At the moment, we have no candidate for peace and prosperity at the top of the ticket. But we need candidates of that sort at any level if we are to unite and mobilize a left-progressive base in 2012. We have the negative motivator of a possible Tea Party win, but only if we take them seriously. But we need more than that. We need candidates that will fight positively for what working-class people need, not what Wall Street needs. The People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is a good starting point. We'll have some candidates who will back it, but we'll need them placed in the states with clout in electoral votes. We don't have enough at the moment.

Don't expect much help from the Blue Dog and upper crust Democrats. No matter how you slice it, it's going to be a tough fight. So organize your co-workers and neighbors independently, and prepare for some fierce battles.

More Taxes for More Wars?

2011-08-16T08:08:00.001-05:00

Scrambled Brains in High Places

Photo: Wasted War Junk in Iraq

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Members of Congress had best be careful. If it hasn't already done so, the 'deficit madness' virus circulating in those hallowed halls will turn your brains into scrambled eggs.

That's the conclusion to draw from the latest bright idea from Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass) reported in the Aug 16 Washington Post-a new tax surcharge on taxpayers across the board to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These wars ought to be paid for and not put on a credit card so that our kids will have to pay for this in the future," McGovern said in a recent telephone interview. It's morally wrong for members [of Congress] to call for support of our soldiers and then not ask the rest of us to pay for it .?.?. or have it left to the poor and middle-income and seniors to bear the sacrifice along with our soldiers and their families. That's wrong."

McGovern wants the 'Super-Congress' Deficit Commission to take it up.

Only the last phrase about putting the burden on the poor contains any sense, especially since the overall costs, not to mention lives lost on all sides, is approaching $3 trillion. The rest is just screwy.

But I have a better idea. First, end the wars immediately, and only allocate enough money to get all our troops and contractors back home lickety-split. Second, pass a bill to pick up the tab by doing away with the oil depletion allowances and all other tax breaks on the oil companies. If that's not enough, put a tax on transfers of oil stocks and the profits of military contractors. And if they try to jack up the price of gasoline to cover their war expenses, nationalize them. After all, they're the only ones really benefiting from these foreign policy disasters.

Once that's out of the way, we can turn to the more strategic solution: a job creating financial transaction tax on all Wall Street gambling to fund the clean energy and green manufacturing revolution we need to move away from fossil fuels altogether. There are all sorts of places to begin, from 'shovel-ready' low-skilled jobs repairing the locks and dams on our rivers, to higher skilled jobs building and installing county-owned wind and solar generators as public power utilities.

In short, 'Jobs, Not War!' and 'Windmills, Not Weapons' are much better alternatives every which way than more taxes to pay for more wars. Back to the drawing board, Congressman McGovern.

London: ‘Shock Doctrine’ as a Two-Way Street

2011-08-10T09:58:00.001-05:00

The Approaching Winter of Our Discontent

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Watching the rebellions of the young and poor continue in London and now spread to other industrial centers in the UK raises an interesting question: Will the Arab spring and the European summer lead to a fall and winter of discontent here in the USA?

All the makings for it are here. We have impoverished communities of the unemployed where there are huge numbers of young people who have never had a regular job of any sort. Now that any form of taxing the rich for funding a jobs program like that proposed by Rep. John Conyers’ HR 870 has been declared ‘off the table,’ it doesn’t appear likely to change, either.

Add to that the GOP’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ (with an assist from the White House) of creating a neoliberal deficit hoax to take from the working class and give to Wall Street, and you spread deeper misery across all of Main Street.

Now the AFL-CIO, thank goodness, is calling for a new round of mass actions against austerity and in defense of the tattered safety net. Add to that the October2011.org project, where the peace and justice movement is planning to camp out in downtown DC’s Freedom Plaza until all the troops are brought home from the wars.

It’s a perfect storm shaping up. Hopefully, many of our young unemployed and under-employed will be drawn to these events. But any police outrage could set off a chain reaction like those in London-we’ve seen this many times in our history.

We have a few decent politicians facing up to the problem, like the 80 votes of the Congressional Progressive Caucus behind the People’s Budget. But our top political class has declared their efforts ‘off the table,’ too.

In brief, they’re telling us our views don’t count and we have nowhere to go.

That’s what the bigwigs in London thought, too. Now they’re all in a tizzy about riots and violence. In contrast, in one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

Of course, many small shops and working-class homes, unfortunately, are being harmed in the UK events. Street heat is best when the target is narrowed on the upper class, and you keep the moral high ground. That way you can draw even more millions into relatively peaceful assembly with powerful and lasting implications. But when long-ignored social dynamite explodes, things don’t always work out that way, with the well-controlled niceties of a tea party, no pun intended.

It is right to rebel against outrages and unjust conditions imposed from above. The ‘Shock Doctrine’ is a two-way street, and once it erupts, more than you might think will know which side of the barricades to gather on.

‘City of Steel’ by Jasiri X, Our Own Rapper

2011-08-08T18:48:00.001-05:00

By Jasiri X and Paradise Gray

According to the New Pittsburgh Courier, “The average homicide victim in 2010 was a 33–year-old Black male with four prior arrests, most likely shot on the North Side, in the Hill District or the East End with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol in the early morning hours of a Saturday in July. The average shooter was a 29-year-old Black male with four prior arrests. The motive was likely retaliation. And according to the clearance-rate data, there is a 46 percent chance that he is still at large.”

This is why we decided to dedicate our latest video to the problem of violence in our community.

“City of Steel” was filmed on Pittsburgh’s Northside at, Northview Heights housing project, Allegheny County General Hospital, Zone No.1 Police Station, Union Dale Cemetery, and the newly reopened state prison, SCI Pittsburgh.

“City of Steel” was produced by Rel!g!on and directed by Paradise Gray.

This is the third video, in the four video series entitled “The Pittsburgh Press”, which was made possible by a generous Seed Award from the Sprout Fund.

LYRICS
In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

In the late hours thugs dream to take power
baked powder cocaine entry in the dope game
X or the Big H reps come from big weight
you can catch a big break graduate to biggate
you can catch a big case graduate to triple max
affidavits, eye witness, warrants for official taps
legal fees cripple stacks, ya funds is limping
with your money on crutches you can’t run from prison
now it got ya gums itching, now you’ve begun snitching
saying you’ve become Christian no more drugs and women
but the press leaked ya name so 44 guns is spitting
no more tongues is flipping you got slugs in ya system
ain’t no happy endings in this coke opera
just broke coppers and dope poppers, bodies found in coat lockers
hope nada you’ll get ya folk shot up
only guarantee is they’ll be another boat with product, here

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either a customer or hustler

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

In the early morning when ya barely yawning
thugs is carry on and what they carry is long and
sound like cherry bombs and will cherry ya garment and
bury ya squadron
for that cash stash that’s buried in your apartment
be wary of a cartridge
that’s loaded and fired by legendary marksmen
dead on with dead eyes dead weight cause dead guys’
don’t tell the Feds lies therefore the lead flies
In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
we stay on the fast lane of the freeway
each day’s a replay no room for delay
he say she say he spray she lay
on the pavement she’s going away with
her virginity in tack because she said she’d save it
till the day she got married but that day will never come
cause she died at 16 so she’ll stay forever young, here

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either a customer or hustler

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

Jobs and GOP ‘Dialectics’: Turning Things Into Their Opposites

2011-08-02T12:10:00.001-05:00

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

People sometimes either groan or laugh when they hear the term ‘dialectics,’ a word which some people use to bamboozle others into thinking they know something when they don’t.

But here’s a great ‘laughing out loud’ example inspired by a few lines for Mike Hall’s current post on the AFL-CIO blog today, Aug. 2:

“The 4,000 furloughed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) workers and 90,000 workers on airport construction projects stalled by the Republican shutdown of the FAA are worrying about how they will pay their bills in the coming weeks.

“But the only worry House Republicans have is how they are going to spend their six-week summer vacation. House Republicans leaders adjourned the House last night until Sept. 7 without taking action on reauthorizing an FAA bill so the agency—shutdown since July 22—could reopen and construction funds move down the pipeline again.”

So here’s a great example of Republican ‘dialectics’, their ‘Jobs Plan’ of turning real jobs into their opposites, non-jobs. It’s easy to laugh at, if it didn’t mean so much suffering for so many working-class families. I suppose we could say there’s a ‘unity of opposites’ there, too.

One thing that burns me up more than GOP nonsense, though, are many of the mainstream media pundits who don’t have any idea on how to ask a decent follow-up question. When our right wing lawmakers (and their White House allies) go on at length about cutting this and slashing that, taking money from low-income and middle-income workers and giving it to the super-rich, there always comes a point where they assert, ‘and this will create jobs!.’

Back in my youth I taught logic for a year at the University of Nebraska. Full disclosure here: I actually appreciate real dialectics, and other rules of argument. But one point I often made to my students: An assertion is not an argument.

Now why can’t our media pundits say, ‘Wait a minute here, Congressman (or other policy wonk). You’re cutting both spending and jobs, reducing overall demand. Then you assert this creates jobs? Can you tell us exactly how that works? Especially when it’s mainly demand that creates jobs? An assertion is not an argument.”

If I heard it just once on CNN, it would make my day.

My logic course back in 1965 was for incoming freshman. Wouldn’t it be great if news anchors could at least reach that level, even if it’s too much to expect of Congress and the White House? All the more reason we have to rely on our own labor-oriented blogs and news services. We know how to make use of decent dialectics, and put a spotlight on the foolish versions of our adversaries.

Save Us from the ‘Business Guy’ Candidates

2011-07-28T08:09:00.001-05:00

Mitt Romney at Screen Machine in Ohio

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Some things just drive you nuts.

Take Mitt Romney. Yesterday the GOP's presidential wannabe toured Screen Machine, a factory in Pataskala, Ohio, just outside Columbus. The plant make heavy construction equipment, rock crushers to be exact.

Romney and the owners, Doug and Steve Cohen, held a typical photo-op. Mitt took the occasion to blast both Obama and 'government' as 'bad for business.'

Really? What did Mitt have in mind? A wimpy stimulus package? A failure to build more infrastructure? In that case, he might have a point.

But no, the real problems are environmental regulation, labor safety codes and health care. In other words, with more pollution and more unsafe conditions at work, and less health care to deal with the consequences, business could surge ahead.

There's not any truth to that claim, but that's not the worst of it.

First, there's the irony that Obama's health care plan is basically a national version of Romney's Massachusetts Plan. If we could scrap both and replace them with 'Medicare for All,' yes, it would be better for both workers and business--save for the health insurance firms.

But the real clincher is the story of Screen Machines, where Mitt, the tough-minded, pragmatic business guy candidate, was delivering his words of economic wisdom. Here's the Washington Post on the topic:

"Yet it's been the government - and Obama's policies in particular - that has helped propel Screen Machine's growth at its sprawling new headquarters here, even during the recession. The company, which builds heavy-duty crushing and screening machines used in construction, mining and recycling, received four stimulus awards totaling $218,607. It is also benefiting from a 10-year deal with local and state governments to not pay taxes on its property, equipment or inventory, according to public records."

We need to make a minimum requirement of all elected officials that they at least have the ability to blush when feeding us a lot of nonsense. Of course, that might wipe out most of Congress, and a few in the White House, too. But then we'd have some open slots for politicians who count voters rather than dollars.

The Marcellus Shale’s Bigger Picture

2011-07-27T12:34:00.001-05:00

Clean Water, Green Energy and the Big Blue Marble

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

A Reuter's story this morning about the rising threat to the water supplies of 12 East Coast cities connected a few dots for me. The threat comes from burning carbon and climate change, which will raise sea levels and wreak havoc in numerous ways.

"Rising sea waters may threaten U.S. coastal cities later this century, while the Midwest and East Coast are at high risk for intense storms, and the West's water supplies could be compromised, "the story led off. "These are among the expected water-related effects of climate change on 12 cities across the nation over the remainder of the century, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group.

"A lot of people think of climate change in the global context, but they don't think about the local impact climate change might have, particularly on water-related issues," said Steve Fleischli, a senior attorney with NRDC's water program."

Perhaps it's because my daughters and grandkids live in New York City that the story caught my eye. 'We'll have to make room for them here in Beaver County,' up in the hills on the west slope of the Alleghenies, I first thought.

But what about the Marcellus shale fracking by the gas drillers? We might not have any decent water here, either.

That was the first dot. Then I recalled living in New York City when my first daughter was born. I was working at a leftwing newsweekly, and from out of nowhere, it seemed, 1 million people turned out in Central Park for the first Earth Day in the spring of 1970. What were we to make of it? This was something new, so I started reading stuff from a Marxist expert on the topic, Barry Commoner, a local science professor from Queens, and later a presidential candidate for the Citizens Party in 1980.

I loved Commoner's open mind and lucid ways of putting things. There are three laws of the universe, he said in one speech I covered. One, there is no free lunch (the law of conservation of energy); two, everything goes somewhere; and three, everything is connected to everything else. Later, after some more study, I added a fourth: Shit happens. (Chaos and complexity theory, especially in systems far from equilibrium.)

Those are the second dot. All four figure in to all the debates over the Marcellus Shale. All the poisonous brine goes somewhere, both what remains 10,000 feet down after cracking the shale, as well as all of it that comes back up. And every day, with the accidents occurring, we get proof of my point number four.

Earth Day didn't really appear out of nowhere. Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' a book on toxics, had a big impact in the 1960s on the campuses and in the suburbs among awakening housewives.

I've also always stressed the importance of a seemingly small event at the end of 1959, the publication of a space photo from Explorer IV, the famous 'big blue marble' picture. It was the first real life photo of us and our home. We couldn't see ourselves, of course, but I and many others noted two things about it. First, it was beautiful and revealed that we were a water world, with a dynamic interplay of wind, sun, moon and waves-all inexhaustible sources of natural and renewable energy. Second, there were no lines on the grounds. We could see our bioregions, but not our countries.

That's the third dot for the day. We're all in this together. We may be comrades, allies or bitter adversaries, but we're all here and we've nowhere else to go. Getting my kids and grandkids up into the hills doesn't solve anything. Along with hard-nosed organizing for grassroots people power, for clean energy and green manufacturing, we need to resurrect one of my favorite slogans from 1968-'All Power to the Imagination!' and keep our shoulders to the wheel.

Unemployment: Lies, Blue Smoke and Mirrors

2011-07-22T11:39:00.001-05:00

The Neoliberal-Tea Party Jobs Plan at Work

By Carl Davidson

File this under the ‘Why is Anyone Surprised Dept?’

This morning’s Pittsburgh news media lets us know that more and more Pennsylvanians are unemployed. Particularly, it’s in ‘Unemployment rate up in Pennsylvania’ in the Pittsburgh Business Times by Paul J. Gough.

What’s interesting is how it gets spelled out:

“Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate rose slightly in June as the Commonwealth followed an upward trend of national jobless data that has been rising since the spring.

“The state’s unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in June compared to 7.4 percent in May, according to data released Thursday afternoon by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry. That translated into a net of 2,600 jobs lost to a total 6.3 million people employed in Pennsylvania. Specific data for Pittsburgh won’t be released for several weeks, but unemployment increased in Pittsburgh to 7 percent in May, the most recent month where data is available.
“Much of the decreases were due to 7,800 jobs cut in education, health and social services. Also losing jobs were financial (2,000 jobs), leisure and hospitality (1,400 jobs), and professional/business services (1,700 jobs).”

What this means is that our GOP governor’s plan is working as designed. He and others of his ilk are determined to slash government spending on social services and the work force that provides them. If we combine this with taking money from low-income and middle-income workers, and give it to the superrich as tax cuts, we can help the ‘recovery’ of the wealthy by reducing consumer demand from the rest of us.

Now put these two planks together, and you have the GOP-Blue Dog-Tea Party plan for employment, and as we can see, it’s working rather well.

Of course the numbers are going in the opposite direction from what they’ve been claiming will happen. Maybe we just need even more layoffs and even less spendable income at the bottom, and then we’ll really see things take off!

Now Obama’s problem is buying into this. But if he’s going to sell it beyond the business press, it’s going to need a sales team with a lot of lies, blue smoke and mirrors.

Turn the Tables on a Rigged Game

2011-07-21T07:39:00.001-05:00

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Our local conservative newspaper, the Pittsburgh Business Times, carries an instructive story this morning, July 21, 2011, about how to solve our revenue problems, only it fails to make the critical point. So I’ll lend a hand. It says:

“Pennsylvania casinos brought in $81.4 million in tax revenue from table games during the fiscal year that ended last month, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. Of that, about $71.3 million went to the state’s general fund and another $10 million went to local municipalities and counties that host the state’s 10 table game casinos.

“The Rivers Casino on the North Shore was responsible for $8 million in state tax revenue and $1.2 million in local payments through its table games operations during the past fiscal year.”

It goes on to break the numbers down even more.

Now I can enjoy a day at the Casino. I recently took my Mom and stepfather, a retired J&L worker, to the Rivers for his 84^th birthday. I hit the nickel slot for $1.50 on my first try, but ended up leaving $5 in the hole.

But here’s my point. There’s a much larger casino in this country that has global reach. It’s called Wall Street, and enormous sums are bet there every second, with the biggest bets being placed by hedge fund managers gambling with other people’s money.

But where’s the ‘house take,’ like the tax revenues reported above? If they can get these amounts from the working class, what about the Wall Street class?

That’s what a financial transaction tax would do, and it could pay a great deal of our country’s social needs budget with plenty left over. What’s more, it wouldn’t even put a burden on productive capital, such as a new green manufacturing startups.

Instead we get big-time gamblers in derivatives wanting us taxpayers to cover their losses. That would be like me going to the Pittsburgh treasurer and asking for a tax deal to get my $5 back that I lost the other day, but I still get to keep the $1.50 I won on my first bet.

The bottom line is that we live in a class society with the wrong class on top. The boss press can easily report on the gaming taxes taken mainly from the working class, but the notion of taking a ‘house cut’ from the truly high rollers of finance capital, well, that’s ‘off the table.’

It’s time to turn this rigged game upside down.

‘Gang of Six’ and the Neoliberal Deficit Trap

2011-07-20T09:14:00.001-05:00

What Happens When You Accept a Neoliberal Frame — or How Obama Joined the ‘Gang of Six’ and Became a Reverse Robin Hood

By Carl Davidson

Only one of the Gang of Six pictured above has done something positive recently, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, when he blurted out that ‘the banks own the place’ in reference to Congress

Otherwise, this crew just cooked up a deal, under a false flag, that claims the US economy is going to recover by taking from the poor and giving to the rich—and now Obama has signed on to it.

It all follows from the false frame, that our main problem is ‘deficits.’

No, there’s plenty of money if you go after it in the right places, and our main problems are lack of jobs, unjust tax codes and the lack of a progressive clean energy and green manufacturing industrial policy.

But neoliberal finance capital has suckered our political class, with some exceptions, into its false framework. Once you accept the notion that there’s no money, that deficits can’t be corrected without cuts, and that tax cuts create jobs in a down economy, you’re on the road to perdition. Jobs are created by increasing demand, and these measures just decreased demand from both consumers and government. Ask your local deficit hawks to explain how decreased demand creates more jobs, and then try to keep from laughing out loud before they finish.

The ‘exceptions’ just noted in our political class are the 70+ votes in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the real solution to the crisis is in the ‘Peoples Budget’ they have promoted to counter both the White House and the GOP-far right alliance. Be sure to help them win in 2012, and to their ranks.

Progressive Democrats of America is the main group supporting the good guys here, speaking truth to power and calling mass meetings locally around left-progressive solitions. Go to http://pdamerica.org and hook up. We need to grow its size tenfold.

Source: pdamerica.org

Is Wider Unity on the Shale Issue Possible?

2011-07-14T09:11:00.002-05:00

A Stronger Steelworkers’ Voice Is Needed

in the Marcellus Anti-Fracking Movement

A Stronger Steelworkers’ Voice Is Needed
in the Marcellus Shale Anti-Fracking Movement

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

There’s a specter haunting Western PA. It’s the prospect of a working class divided by a fear of water pollution destroying the property values of small homeowners on one side, and on the other side, by the promise of new wealth from the exploitation of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale deposits.

A similar fear divides West Virginians over ‘mountaintop removal’ mining. Little towns are split between those who want food on the table and those fearful of poisoning their children.

Steelworkers can certainly see the problem in our own terms. It takes a lot of steel pipe to drill down two to four miles, then drill out a horizontally for another mile in a dozen directions. The tube mills are getting the orders and steelworkers are back to work. On the other hand, steelworkers know the dangers of poisoning the ground and the rivers better than most.

Everything goes somewhere. When the drillers lace 6,000,000 gallons of water with a ton of poisonous chemical brine, pump it underground to break up shale and release the natural gas, a lot of the water comes back up with the gas. A lot also stays underground. The poisonous brine that comes back up is caught in plastic-lined ponds that often leak. Some is reused, some spilled, some carted away in tankers. Some of the tankers leak or dump the brine along the way. A lot is partially treated by a few water treatment plants. Then it goes into the local rivers heavy with salt. Already the Ohio downstream has growing percentages of toxic brine. To repeat, everything goes somewhere.

Is there a way to protect our jobs in steel and our way of life? I think so. Ban drilling within a specified distance from the Ambridge reservoir and the watershed of Service Creek that feeds it. This is a valuable and irreplaceable source of potable water for 30,000 customers. Similar sources of good water around the state also need protected.

We need a beefed-up DEP/EPA to enforce new and enhanced safety regulations. A third step would be hiring local union labor at all the drilling sites. Local workers have a stake in clean water, and a union worker is more likely to blow a whistle on illegal or dangerous practices.

Naturally, all these cost something. That’s why the crucial first step is a hefty extraction tax. Pennsylvania’s current failure here is an outrage that makes us a laughing stock even among other states where fracking is underway. I would make the tax high enough to make two pots—one to pay for the expenses above, the other for a Green and Clean Energy Fund to finance the transition to renewables. Gas is a bit cleaner than coal, but it’s still a fossil fuel that takes carbon from beneath the earth and puts it in the air. It’s not good for us in the longer run, and we need to start now funding the transition from one to the other.

All these measures are consistent with USW policy, its Blue-Green Alliance and the steelworkers' overall strategy for a green industrial revolution. A progressive view from the unions needs a louder voice in a broad coalition around the Marcellus shale issue.

New Paths to Socialism by Carl Davidson

2011-06-13T09:12:00.001-05:00

How can the Mondragon Cooperatives, the Solidarity and Green Economies, with an assist from Gramsci and Marx, clear pathways to a new socialism of the 21st century?

Get a copy of Carl Davidson’s new book on the topic:

New Paths to Socialism

The Mondragon Cooperatives and 21st Century Socialism
Mondragon Diaries: Five Days Studying Cutting-Edge People and Tools for Change
'One Worker, One Vote:' US Steelworkers to Experiment With Factory Ownership, Mondragon Style
Green Party Mayor of Richmond, California Signs 'Letter in Intent' with Spain's Mondragon Coops
There Is An Alternative: Market Socialism with Radical Democracy
Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy: A Dynamic Duo for Changing the World
Green Jobs and Class Struggle: A Memo for the Working Class Studies Association
Alinsky vs. Arizmendi: Redistribution or Control of Wealth In Changing the World
Eleven Talking Points On 21st Century Socialism
Jossa: Gramsci, Economic Theory of Worker Cooperatives and the Transition to a Socialist Economy
Jossa: Excerpts from ‘Marx, Marxism and the Cooperative Movement’
Schweickart: Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible? The Case of China
$15 from Changemaker Publications. http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker

Carl Davidson on Democracy, Values and 21st Century Socialism

2011-06-03T15:44:00.001-05:00

Carl Davidson on Democracy, Values and 21st Century Socialism from Carl Davidson on Vimeo.

‘We Are One—And Ready to Fight Back!’

2011-04-06T15:49:00.001-05:00

Beaver County Union & Community Activists

Hold April 4th Solidarity Rally at Courthouse

By Carl Davidson and Tina Shannon
Beaver County Blue

Even though thunderstorms and downpours had swept through Beaver County all afternoon, close to 200 concerned citizens showed up for a candlelight vigil in front of the Beaver County Courthouse on Monday evening.

"Are you fired up?" shouted Roni Hamiel of SEIU Local 668 headquarters in Harrisburg, "Are you sick of this mess? The rich are getting richer and we're struggling every day, barely getting by. We want fairness, we want our bargaining rights, and we want a decent future."

Photo: Commissioner Joe Spanik at Vigil

Local members of SEIU 668 spearheaded the vigil, with others joining in to organize a broadly supported event. Throughout PA, events scheduled around the anniversary of Dr. King's assassination were organized by CLEAR (Coalition for Labor Engagement and Accountable Revenues). CLEAR is a coalition of public and private sector unions involved in protecting labor rights and public services from impending budget cuts.

"We are standing beside you in solidarity," said Willie Sallis, president of the Beaver County NAACP, from the podium. "Not behind you, but beside you. We are partners in this struggle."

Linwood Alford, Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council Director of Civil Rights and Economic Justice, moderated the event. Dennis Bloom, president of the Beaver Lawrence Central Labor Council, lead off the evening with a call for unity.

The presence of so many union members in the audience reflected the organizing work of local union leaders in Beaver County. In addition to SEIU members, three different IBEW locals were represented. Steelworkers and building trades members were there too. A group of teachers from Beaver Falls showed up wearing red for their union, the PSEA, and in solidarity with the community against cuts to education. Participation in this event reflected the important growing alliance between public and private sector unions. Federal, state and county workers were there. Several union members and staff spoke from the podium.

Democratic Beaver County Commissioners Tony Amadio and Joe Spanik also spoke. "I'm a public worker," declared Amadio, chairman of the Board of Commissioners. 'Not only in public office, but as a schoolteacher most of my life. I have just gotten back from Harrisburg, and believe me; we have NO friends there at the moment. We are going to have to fight hard for everything and everyone.' Commissioner Joe Spanik criticized the many politicians who are attacking the working class and the poor.

Bob Schmetzer, IBEW retiree and vice-president of the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America, wrapped the evening up. He denounced Wall Street for hoarding the funds needed to solve problems and put people to work. He urging people sign up on PDA worksheets and attend a showing of the movie ‘Inside Job’ in May.

Several regulars from the weekly Beaver County Peace Links vigil at the courthouse were also there. One held a ‘Jobs Not War’ placard with Dr. King’s photo on it.

The crowd, candles and umbrellas in hand, made one loop in the rain around the courthouse steps, and with high spirits, called it a day. A common message came through: this was only the beginning. Everyone knew that unions had been weakened over the years, and they faced a tough fight. But there was a fierce determination to get on with digging in for the long haul, because there is really no other choice.

It was announced that the fight would continue on May 3rd as buses leave from Beaver County to join the statewide protest in Harrisburg. We will be demanding an approach to the budget that doesn't hurt working people and devastate our communities. To sign up for the bus ride and join us in the struggle to defend our communities, click on link below.

Bus Trip to Harrisburg

Fighting for Our Future & Honoring Martin Luther King With Solidarity

2011-04-06T06:46:00.001-05:00

April 4 'We Are One' Events:

Uniting Labor and Community

For an Upsurge in Class War

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Working-class solidarity actions involving thousands of workers were among the lead news items in the headlines in nearly 1200 cities and town around the country over the April 4 weekend. The Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Eastern Ohio 'rust belt' region was no exception.

The occasion commemorated the anniversary of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his effort to help striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee win union recognition. The entire U.S. labor movement seized the time to organize public protest against the outrageous rightwing attacks on worker rights in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. The AFL-CIO knows full well that more attacks are coming, and its 'We Are One' campaign for the day was a grassroots dress rehearsal and consciousness-raising effort to prepare both its troops and its community-based allies for more battles to come.

"We are one! We are one!' and 'What's Disgusting? Union busting!' were among the chants echoing off the concrete and glass walls of downtown Pittsburgh. Somewhere between 500 and 1000 marchers waved V-signs at passersby in cars and buses--but more often than in a long time, one saw a sea of the more militant clenched fist salutes as well. As usual, different contingents of workers wore their color coded T-Shirts for the day-camouflage for the UMWA, dark blue for the Steelworkers, red for Unite Here! hotel workers, and purple for SEIU service workers.

USW President Leo Gerard fired people up at the first stop, the Equitable Gas headquarters. "These rich bastards aren't paying any taxes and sending the bills to us and giving themselves record-breaking bonuses. If tax cuts created jobs, Bush would have left office with full employment. The speculators gamble with our money and want us to cover their losses. Well, when they come around again, they can kiss my ass."

The crowd loved it. "What do you think, why are you here?" I asked Pamela Maclin, a woman worker standing near Leo, "We fought and died for our union rights, our civil rights. We're taking a stand; they're not going to take them away."

"How about you?" I asked a man standing next to her, Carl Lewis from the USW. "I'm here for Working America, and we're simply not going to be trampled on anymore."

Our next target downtown was the newly elected Pennsylvania governor, Tom Corbett, a right winger allied with the Tea Party. The marchers filled the lobby of his office building and the block outside chanting 'They say Cutback, We Say Fight Back!'

A public aid worker walking by across the street pulled me aside as I was leafleting passersby. She went on at length about the disasters awaiting the low-income people she works with. "These people here are absolutely right. You wouldn't believe the workload they're dumping on us and what they're doing to these people. This is going to blow up in their faces; I wish they could see what I see every day."

Another theme was 'Tax the Gas,' aimed at the free ride the GOP state legislature is giving to the exploiters of the giant gas deposit in the Marcellus shale. Not only are they endangering water supplies by their methods of drilling and recovering the natural gas, Pennsylvania under the GOP is the only state not imposing an extraction tax on the industry. Mel Packer of the Green Party and several of his comrades carried a huge and colorful banner linking environmental and labor issues: 'Fracking, Drilling Spilling, Killing: Unnatural, Unethical Unwanted, Unsafe!'

But chanting and marching through the streets on April 4th was only a part of a varied and dynamic weekend.

On April 1 the United Steel Workers invited activists to its headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh for a traditional 'Fish Fry' with all the trimmings and a sign-making party involving a good number of youngsters. Then USW staffer Connie Mabin brought on Rev. Kevin Lee of the Beaver County Minority Coalition to bless the food and say a few words. Over 100 of us got to see the documentary, 'At the River I Stand', a powerful and gripping account of the Memphis sanitation workers strike and the assassination of Dr. King.-a concrete example of the intersection of class and racial justice. Watching the documentary made it clear that the 'We Are One' movement is carrying that legacy forward.

The next day a 'Jobs and Unity Fair' was organized at the Teamster Temple in the Lawrenceville area in Pittsburgh, bring together unions and about two dozen non-profits to help several hundred of the unemployed who showed up.

In nearby Wheeling West Virginia, the Communications Workers of America designed April 4 as 'wear red to work' day, where workers showed up at their worksites in their colors armed with stacks of flyers. Across other suburbs, some union members, in addition to T-shirts, brought voter registration forms to work to round up the strays who hadn't registered yet. A teach-in on labor solidarity is also taking place April 5 in nearby Youngstown State University in Ohio.

The evening of April 4 was stormy and raining in Beaver County. Still, over 150 union workers and community residents turned out for a candlelight vigil and speeches at the Beaver County Courthouse, about 20 miles down the Ohio from Pittsburgh in an area that has long been the victim of plant closings. At every event on common message came through: this was only the beginning. Everyone knew that unions had been weakened over the years, and they faced a tough fight. But there was a fierce determination to get on with digging in for the long haul, because there was really no other choice.

Mondragon as a Bridge to a New Socialism

2011-03-16T16:31:00.001-05:00

Worker-owner in Mondragon coop factory

The Mondragon Cooperatives and 21^st Century Socialism:

A Review of Five Books with Radical Critiques and New Ideas

From Mondragon to America:

Experiments in Community Economic Development

By Greg MacLeod

UCCB Press, 1997

The Myth of Mondragon:

Cooperatives, Politics and Working-Class Life in a Basque Town

By Sharryn Kasmir

State University of New York Press, 1996

Values at Work:

Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragon

By George Cheney

Cornell University Press, 1999

Cooperation Works!

How People Are Using Cooperative Action

to Rebuild Communities and Revitalize the Economy

By E.G. Nadeau & David J. Thompson

Lone Oak Press, 1996

After Capitalism

By David Schweickart

Rowman & Littlefield, 2002

Reviewed by Carl Davidson

Solidarity Economy Network

Something important for both socialist theory and working-class alternatives has been steadily growing in Spain’s Basque country over the past 50 years, and is now spreading slowly across Spain, Europe and the rest of the globe.

It’s an experiment, at once radical and practical, in how the working-class can become the masters of their workplaces and surrounding communities, growing steadily and successfully competing with the capitalism of the old order and laying the foundations of something new—it’s known as the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC).

Just what that ‘something new’ adds up to is often contested. Some see the experiment as a major new advance in a centuries-old cooperative tradition, while a few go further and see it as a contribution to a new socialism for our time. A few others see it both as clever refinement of capitalism and as a reformist diversion likely to fail. Still others see it as a ‘third way’ full of utopian promise simply to be replicated anywhere in whatever way makes sense to those concerned.

The reality of an experiment on the scale on Mondragon, involving more than 100,000 workers in 120 core industrial, service and educational coops, is necessarily complex. It can contain all these features contending within itself at once.

That’s what makes MCC a fascinating story where the final chapters are still being written. But one thing is clear: it continues to grow and provide a quality of life for a participant that is unique in its moral benefits and above average in its material standards. Hardly any concerned would give up their position in the project today for the options of the society around them, even if they are skeptical or dubious about various aspects of MCC’s current practices or future prospects.

One MCC worker, for example recently expressed some cynicism about the coops. “People once took them seriously, but not anymore,” she remarked. “You mean it doesn’t matter to you whether you work here or at a private company?” she was asked. “Of course it matters,” she replied. “Here I have job security, and here I can vote.”

If I had to single out one of the five books listed above to tell MCC’s story, it would be the first one, From Mondragon to America by Greg MacLeod, even if its title is a little misleading and its facts 15 years out of date. The reason? It goes deeply into the structures and values at the core of MCC, as well as discussing the philosophical thinking of its founder, Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, or known more simply as Father Arizmendi.

A Priest with a Philosophy

The story of Mondragon begins with Father Arizmendi’s arrival in the Basque country of Spain in 1941 following the defeat of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The Basques has been a center of resistance to Franco and the area was devastated by the conflict. Most widely known was the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica, immortalized in the mural masterpiece painted by Pablo Picasso. Father Arizmendi himself had fought with the Republicans, was imprisoned and barely escaped execution.

As a young priest, he was assigned to the Arrasate-Mondragon region, which was suffering from high unemployment and other destruction in the war’s aftermath. Arrasate is the Basque name for the area, while Mondragon is the Spanish name—in any case, the industrial mountain valley received little or no help from the Franco regime and was the target of ongoing repression against the Basques, with the fascists trying to stamp out their language and culture as well as their political organizations.

In reorganizing his new parish, Arizmendi thus had to find a way for the Basques to help themselves. He started by forming a small technical school, and helped finance his efforts by convincing the local Basques with meager funds to form a small credit union. He also formed sports and other family-related organizations that could still allow people to gather under the legal restrictions of the fascists. In addition to being an organizer, Arizmendi was also a deep-thinking intellectual—all the while he was doing a thorough study of Catholic social theory, Marx’s political economy and the cooperatives theories of Robert Owen, the British utopian socialist.

Armed with these ideas, in a few years he selected five graduating students from his technical school and with donations and borrowed funds from the credit union, his team of young workers formed a small cooperative workshop, ULGOR, named from one initial of each of the five students’ names. It brought in about 20 more workers and started to produce a small but very practical kerosene stove for cooking and heating. The single-burner stove was much in demand and the coop thus thrived and grew. Today it’s called FAGOR, and its 8000 current employee-owners in several divisions produce a wide range of high-quality household appliances sold across the world.

But this small startup in 1956 contained the first secret of MCC’s success—the three-in-one combination of school, credit union and factory, all owned and controlled by the workers and the community. Starting a coop factory or workshop alone wouldn’t work; a startup also required a reliable source of credit and a source of skills and innovation.

Typically, an MCC coop is entirely owned by its workers—one worker, one share, one vote. Worker-owners get a salary that is a draw against their share of the firm’s annual profit, and is adjusted upward or downward at the end of the year. By Spanish cooperative law, a portion of the profits has to be turned over to the local community for schools, parks and other common projects, The remainder is set aside for the repair and depreciation of plant and equipment, health care and pensions, and emergency reserves, as well as the workers’ salaries.

Technically, MCC worker-owners are thus not wage labor, but associated producers. There is an income spread, according to skill and seniority, but this is set and modified by the workers themselves meeting in an annual assembly. The assembly also elects a governing council, which in turn hires a CEO and management team. Managers can be removed from their posts but worker-owners cannot be fired. New hires however, can be fired or laid off during their trial period—about six months. But when their trial period ends, they can buy into the coop. If they don’t have the funds for the value of their share—today about 3000 Euros—it’s lent to them by the coop bank, and they repay in small amounts over a few years. MCC coops typically have relatively flat hierarchies, and a much smaller number of supervisors compared to similar non-coop firms.

The Ten Principles

Father Arizmendi’s most important intellectual contribution to MCC, however, was the wider formulation of this structure into ten governing principles, which are firmly held and practiced throughout MCC. There is some flexibility around the edges, but not much. Here’s a brief description:

Open Admission: This means non-discrimination, that all are invited to join the coops—men or women, Basque or non-Basque, religious or non-religious, or from any political party or nonpartisan.

Democratic Organization. The principle of ‘one worker, one vote’ is the core here, but it also entails a wider participatory democracy in the workplace and engagement with the management team.

Sovereignty of Labor. This is the underlying core belief describing the overall relation between capital and labor, primarily that labor is the dominant power over capital, at least within the coops, if not fully in the wider local community.

Capital as Instrument. This is a corollary of the point above. It defines capital as an instrument or tool to be used, deployed and governed by labor, rather than the other way around.

Self-Management. This stresses the importance of training worker-owners not only to better manage their work on the assembly line, but also to train those elected to the governing councils or selected for management teams to have the wider educational background to steer the cooperatives strategically in the wider society and its markets.

Pay Solidarity. Here is where the worker-owners themselves determine the spread between the lowest-paid new hires and the top managers, with various skill and seniority levels in between. Originally it was set at 3 to 1, but that was adjusted because it was too difficult to retain good managers. Today the average is 4.5 to one, compared to 350 to one as the average for U.S. firms. The highest single coop’s range is 9 to one, and only exists at Caja Laboral, MCC’s worker-owned bank.

Inter-Cooperation. This encourages the various coops to cooperate with each other, forming common sectoral strategies, or for transferring members among coops when some firms’ orders are temporarily too low to provide enough work.

Social Transformation. The coops are not to look inward and operate in isolation from the community around them. They are to make use of cooperative values to help transform the wider society. In the Basque Country, for many this means seeing MCC’s growth as developing a progressive economy for Basque national autonomy and independence.

Universal Solidarity. The coops are not only to practice solidarity within themselves, but also with the entire labor movement—and not only in Spain, but across the globe as well. MCC has several projects abroad providing assistance in remote areas of third world nations.

Education. Just as the first coop was preceded by starting with a school and forming a cadre with a cooperative consciousness, MCC continues to hold education as its core value, seeing knowledge as power—and the socialization of knowledge as the key to the democratization of power in both the economy and the society.

In shaping these principles, Father Arizmendi also discovered what he believed was a fatal flaw in the cooperative theory of Robert Owen, which was the ability of an Owenite worker-owner to sell his or her share to anyone. This permitted external financiers to buy up the shares of the better firms while starving others. Thus in MCC, this is forbidden; a retiring worker may ‘cash out’ on leaving the coop, but he or she is not allowed to sell the share to anyone but a new incoming worker, or to the coop itself to hold until it does. This kept MCC’s capital subordinate to its workers, and is a second secret to its success.

Most of all, these principles have meant that the MCC workers retained control over their own surplus value, using it to provide themselves a modest but above-average standard of living while using their resources for measured and planned growth.

Mondragon has come a long way from ULGOR, the small workshop making the little single-burner kerosene stove. Today MCC unites 122 industrial companies, 6 financial organizations, 14 retailers (including the Eroski chain with over 200 hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores), plus seven research centers, one university and 14 insurance companies and international trade services. Its total sales in 2009 were 13.9 billion Euros and a workforce of nearly 100,000 people.

Less than six of the 120 coops have failed over 50 years. In the most recent economic crisis, MCC weathered the storm fairly well. No coop failed, salary reductions were modest and the only workers laid of were the trial-period new hires. Now things are picking up again. MCC remains a dominant force in the Basque economy, the leading force in Spain overall and is now making waves in high-tech manufacturing worldwide.

Cooperativism and Trade Unionism

What about Mondragon’s wider connections with the Basque and Spanish trade union movement outside the coops? Where do the various parties of the Spanish and Basque left come in?

For some answers to those questions, at least as things were in the mid-1990s, the best treatment is in Sharryn Kasmir’s The Myth of Mondragon. As a sociologist who spent some time in the Basque country, she took great pains to try to discern how workers themselves, inside and outside the coops, viewed MCC. At bottom, she would agree that the MCC workers, whatever criticisms they may have, would not readily trade places with their counterparts outside. She would also agree that the coops have become a powerful and progressive economic force in the Basque country. But in the end, these ‘pragmatic’ concerns are not hers; she wants to view MCC through the more traditional ‘ideological’ lens of the left.

Kasmir place high priority, for example, on trade union militancy and solidarity and examines and celebrates its history in the area in some detail. The Basque are best known for their high-mountain shepherds but they have a long industrial tradition in the valleys and coastal towns, especially in iron and metalworking. The workers in these areas like the Arrasate-Mondragon valley formed trade unions early on and have a tradition of solidarity across industries and trades, often shaped in a lively night life in bars involving entire families.

Kasmir does an excellent job digging out this history and showing how it continues. She also reveals, however, that some of the level of its traditional expression has dropped off in the areas where the Mondragon Coops are prevalent. The MCC worker-owners, she notes, are viewed by other workers as ‘working too hard’ and spending less time in the bars in political discussion. Moreover, when strikes are called and other workers are asked to strike in solidarity, the MCC workers only offer a token presence, or don’t show up at all.

“Ekintza, the Basque concept of ‘taking action,’ is a core cultural value,” Kasmir argues. “Basque towns are centers of political activity. In Mondragon, political discussion takes place in bars, demonstrations are frequent, and town walls are covered with posters, murals and graffiti, making them dynamic arenas for political debate. Far from generating ekintza among workers, however, cooperativism appears to engender apathy.” (p. 195)

Finally, Kasmir gives an example of a small group of young Maoist workers in the ULGOR plant that tried to strike the coop in the 1970s, but failed to win much support. They were expelled from the coop by the other worker-owners, although, after a few years, a good number were brought back in. It was the only strike in all of MCC’s 50 year history although there have been other conflicts over regionalism and inter-cooperation where a few coops split off.

Kasmir seems to hold to a traditional left view that the task of the left is to organize increasing on-the-job militancy while building one’s strength in the political area with socialist political parties, and to work both the arenas of elections and other mass action campaigns. And as she correctly observes, MCC doesn’t fit this mold.

Class: Looking Forward, Looking Back

What Kasmir glosses over or misunderstands, however, is that there is indeed a critical difference between the workers in MCC coops and workers in other firms. The most important, already mentioned, is that MCC worker-owners are not wage-labor, but associated small producers. Most MCC firms are under 500 workers and many quite smaller. Second, the MCC firms are not owned by an external force alien to their production process. The managerial strata and the workers representatives in the governing councils have the same single ownership share and vote as everyone else.

In other words, when workers in a regular firm go on a sympathy strike, they hurt or pressure the interest of external bosses; but when MCC workers go out, they only subtract from their own material interest. They may do so anyway as a matter of solidarity, much as a small store owner may close for the day of a political strike, but the structure of interest is clearly different than the wage-laborer. Likewise when MCC worker-owners spend more time at work, or attending school or training sessions after work, subtracting from time spent in the bars—they are contributing directly to their coop’s growth and their own benefit as well, where on the other hand, forced overtime in a regular firm primarily benefits an external owner.

So the interesting question Kasmir leaves unanswered is whether the class position of the MCC worker-owner is a step backward to a petit-bourgeois past or a step forward to a worker-controlled mode of production of a socialist future. Given the overall picture of MCC’s successful growth since the time of her writing, the latter seems the better answer.

Democracy: Representative and Participatory

But do the MCC firms’ internal practices still stand as well-functioning examples of direct and participatory democracy in the workplace? Kasmir suggests they are not; that they are simply run by the managers and the rest is pro forma. But her ideological presumptions miss a great deal here that is much better treated in George Cheney’s book, Values at Work: Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragon.

Cheney is both more in solidarity with the Mondragon project and in some ways, more critical of it at the same time. His criticisms, however, come largely from within. He holds up MCC’s own values as a mirror to its practice, and then examines the realities.

During a recent study tour of MCC, for example, my group had a session with Fred Freundlich, an American who hade been living in the Basque Country for more than a decade and teaching economic theory at MCC’s Mondragon University. We asked for his opinion on how involved the younger MCC workers were with their own governance in the coops.

“Frankly, Basque youth aren't all that active inside the coops. They're into third world global justice issues, environmentalism in general and Basque nationalism. About the coop managers, I'd say a strong minority, maybe 30 percent, have solid cooperative values at heart, another small minority pays lip service to them, and the rest are somewhere in between. We clearly need a new surge of activism to spread cooperativism beyond the factories.”

The highest governing body of each coop, and MCC overall, is its General Assembly or Congress. The average participation is around 70 percent, and attendance is required. (One absence results in a warning; a second results in a fine to be paid.) Issues decided are important, such as overall salary spreads, strategic direction of products and the election of leadership.

“The General Assembly of worker-members is the highest authority in each company,” explains Freundlich in his 1998 paper, MCC: An Introduction. “It must meet at least once a year to address company-wide concerns (though it often meets twice). The General Assembly also elects the company's Board of Directors and a President of the Board for four-year terms, based on the principle of one-member one-vote. The Board appoints the chief executive and must approve his or her choices for division directors.

“A Social Council,” Freundlich continues, “is elected by departments to represent front line workers' interests and to help promote two-way communication between management and workers. Pay solidarity and the distribution of profits to all worker-members, as described previously, are other important cooperative policies.

“While the MCC has its share of workforce controversy and apathy,” he concludes, “and perhaps more today than 30 years ago-these structures and policies have contributed to fairly high levels of commitment to the business and to the cooperative idea, which in turn, many believe, have provided Mondragon firms with a difficult to measure, but nonetheless real, competitive advantage over its conventional competitors.”

Other studies of various MCC components, such as Eroski, have placed the average quantifiable advantage self-management has given MCC coops over non-MCC firms in the marketplace at 15%.

“If one enters a Mondragon factory,” writes George Benello in the magazine Reinventing Anarchy Again, “one of the more obvious features is a European-style coffee bar, occupied by members taking a break. It is emblematic of the work style, which is serious but relaxed. Mondragon productivity is very high—higher than in its capitalist counterparts. Efficiency, measured as the ratio of utilized resources (capital and labor) to output, is far higher than in comparable capitalist factories.”

Changes, Large and Small

As for shifting attitudes, Basque society itself has seen major changes over the past 30 years. “Such changes are revealed, for example,” says Cheney, “in the dramatic drop in attendance at Mass in the Basque country, from about 75 percent in 1975 to less than 25 percent today.” (p. 56). What this shows is the Basques were not immune to a weakening of traditional ties and the growing secularism and consumerism prevalent in Europe.

Even so, there is still a considerable degree of participation and debate at the base of the MCC coops, even if it doesn’t take the forms or rise to the level those on the governing councils or management teams would like to see. One ongoing debate is over the salary spread between managers and production workers. According to Wikipedia:

“At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between the worker-owners who do executive work and those who work in the field or factory and earn a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in his/her cooperative. This ratio is in reality smaller because there are few Mondragon worker-owners that earn minimum wages, their jobs being somewhat specialized and classified at higher wage levels.^[10]

“Although the ratio for each cooperative varies, it is worker-owners within that cooperative who decide through a democratic vote what these ratios should be. Thus, if a general manager of a cooperative has a ratio of 9:1, it is because its worker-owners decided it was a fair ratio to maintain.^[10]

“In general, wages at Mondragon, as compared to similar jobs in local industries, are 30% or less at the management levels and equivalent at the middle management, technical and professional levels. As a result, Mondragon worker-owners at the lower wage levels earn an average of 13% higher wages than workers in similar businesses. In addition, the ratios are further diminished because Spain uses a progressive tax rate, so those with higher wages pay higher taxes.”^[10]

Another key tension and debate arose in the 1990s, when Mondragon transformed itself from a federation of coops loosely connected through their ‘second degree’ coops—the bank, the social insurance agencies, the university and research institutes—into MCC with its ‘sectoral’ structures—industrial, financial, retail distribution and knowledge. The more centralized and unified structure enabled Mondragon’s management teams to develop and pursue common strategies to better compete collectively with their rivals in the marketplace.

While this relatively greater degree of centralization proved very successful, it also increased market pressures on the individual coops in the form of intensity of work and speed of innovation. ‘Finding the balance’, explains Cheney, is the key term used to resolve differences.

Prospects for Coops in the U.S.

Can an experiment like Mondragon find fertile ground in the U.S.? This is a topic addressed in Cooperation Works! How People Are Using Cooperatives to Rebuild Communities and Revitalize the Economy by E.G. Nadeau and David J. Thompson. This work offers a survey of some 50 cooperative ventures in twelve different areas of the U.S. society, both historical and current—including agriculture, housing, business purchasing coops, credit unions, social services and power utilities—as well as worker-owned industrial coops.

The authors reveal two key points. The first is that cooperatives have a long, rich and varied history across the U.S, ranging from wheat farmers banding together to manufacture and market their own pasta products, to home health care providers building their own company to provide decent wages and benefits in an occupation that often suffers from poor conditions. The second is that none of these 50 case studies, successful or unsuccessful, has followed the Mondragon model of a three-in-one combination of school, credit union and factory—even though in a number of areas these three components exist nearby each other. (The book’s appendix lists the top 100 coops in the U.S. which is quite useful.)

That doesn’t mean some of these coop ventures aren’t doing well or breaking new ground. The Cooperative Home Care Associates, based in the Bronx, NY, has grown to include more than 1600 worker-owners, and vastly improved the lives of the mainly Black and Latino women workers involved.

“By transforming part-time home care jobs into full-time positions,” states board member Kim Alleyne, “CHCA differentiates itself from other firms in New York City's home care industry. Specifically, we invest significant capacity in scheduling our home care workers for at least 30 hours each week …. We also allocate 80 percent of our total revenue to the wage and fringe benefits costs of our home care workers - including a comprehensive health and dental insurance benefit that does not require a financial contribution from employees.

“We also offer our home care continuing education with many opportunities to accumulate assets, including worker-ownership, through which employees can accumulate a $1,000 equity stake in CHCA and receive dividends based on our annual profits, an employer-contribution to their 401(k) account in profitable years; and as an alternative to predatory payday loans, CHCA offers no-interest loans that average $250. We also encourage workers to create savings and checking accounts, instead of relying on expensive check cashing services.”

For another interesting example, one can look to California’s Bay Area. Here Cheeseboard Pizza and five other bakeries have formed a networked cooperative of Arizmendi Bakeries. With some 200 worker-owners, they produce baked goods combined with retail eateries that keep winning prizes for the best foods and best places to eat in the area. Even though the scale is small compared to MCC in Spain, they also include in their network one ‘second degree’ coop that helps them all with financial services.

In North Carolina, however, a project called the Center for Community Self-Help, started by Martin Eakes and Bonnie Wright, highlighted a core problem. They retrained workers displaced by plant shutdowns, and hoped to help them form coops. Cooperation Works!... explains:

“Eakes and Wright discovered that the engine that gave Mondragon its power was missing in North Carolina and was stalling the development of worker coops. That element was access to capital. For the Mondragon Cooperatives, the Caja Laboral (or ‘Workers Bank’) furnished the necessary capital to launch successful ventures. Thus Eakes and Wright concluded their next step was to create a Caja for North Carolina.”

So that’s exactly what the couple did. Starting with a bake sale, within three years they formed the Self-Help Credit Union with several million dollars in deposits from area churches and government grants. In another seven years, this had launched new businesses with some 4000 jobs and 2000 child care spaces.

Cleveland, Ohio has a similar story. The Cleveland Foundation and other nonprofits for years had been repeatedly funding job training programs for the long-term unemployed in low-income neighborhoods, only to find that their newly certified workers still couldn’t find employment. Finally, a core group of funders and allies made the trek to Mondragon, and was inspired on their return to form the Evergreen Cooperatives, with local colleges serving as schools and the foundations serving as sources of startup capital.

Three businesses are now underway: Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, an industrial-scale operation doing laundry for major medical centers nearby; Ohio Cooperative Solar, which leases urban business rooftops and installs solar arrays, providing electric power to the region’s grid; and Green City Growers, and industrial-scale urban agriculture venture producing fresh produce for local markets and restaurants. A dozen more coop businesses are on the drawing boards.

Another project, in Chicago decided to follow Father Arizmendi’s model closely, and started with the design and organization of a new public school in a low-income neighborhood, Austin Polytechnical Academy. With ideas of worker participation and worker ownership built into the school’s mission and curriculum, it will graduate its first class of students with high-tech manufacturing skills in 2011. The school was developed with partners from area trade unions and some 20 high-tech manufacturing firms. A number of the students have gone to Mondragon on study tours.

Agreement with the Steelworkers

What gave a national focus to all these efforts was a recent decision by the United Steel Workers, one of the largest industrial unions in the U.S, to declare a formal partnership with MCC to try to establish worker-owned enterprises in depressed Rust Belt regions. This was soon followed by a similar partnership declaration between MCC and the City of Richmond in the Bay Area to launch a similar effort.

The U.S., of course, continues to face dire economic conditions. Bank credit is difficult to obtain and unemployment is near 10 percent. Government at every level, blocked by a neoliberal budget-cutting resurgence, is slashing funds for community and small business development in favor of tax breaks for the superrich.

This manufactured austerity is a two-edged sword as far as coops are concerned. One edge is that there is little help coming from government which makes new ventures very tough. The other edge is that the solidarity economy, of which MCC is a mother lode of ideas and experience, emerges precisely when government fails and people have only each other to turn to for mutual aid. The harsh conditions become a spur to radical experiments and strategies for structural change.

This is where the last of these five books takes center stage, David Schweickart’s After Capitalism. In this short but lucid book, Schweickart draws on his earlier studies of workers control in Yugoslavia and his own experiences in Mondragon and elsewhere, and raises all of these to a wider working hypothesis for a new socialism for the 21st century. He calls his effort ‘successor-system theory’ and names its project ‘Economic Democracy.’ The core idea is that the workers themselves democratically elect the managers of their firms, which are either leased from the government collectively or owned cooperatively outright. They also share the wealth they create by sharing the profits among themselves. They make their money the old-fashioned way: by finding consumer needs, meeting those needs with decent products, and selling them to satisfied customers at reasonable prices.

We can see the Mondragon model here, but painted on a much wider canvas of an entire nation’s economy. Schweickart’s theory is one of the main variants of what is called ‘worker controlled market socialism,’ and his task in this work is not so much to tell us how to get there, but how it can work once we do get there.

The heart of his argument rests on dividing markets into three—capital markets, labor markets, and markets in goods and services. Capital markets he would abolish or at least severely restrict by government buyouts or takeovers of major banks and corporations in a time of crisis and turning them into public asset funds. Labor markets he would drastically change or restrict by vastly reducing wage labor, turning most workers into owners or leaseholders of their factories. Workers each have one equal vote, and elect their managers. Markets in goods and services, however, would remain, although regulated for ecological sustainability and other matters related to the common good.

Mondragon as a Bridge to Socialism

Even if the Mondragon cooperators themselves don’t speak directly of wider socialist theory, Schweickart does it for them in this work. “The Mondragon complex did not develop as a purely pragmatic response to local conditions,” he explains. “Arizmendiarrieta was deeply concerned about social justice and explicitly critical of capitalism, basing his critique on progressive Catholic social doctrine, the socialist tradition, and the philosophy of ‘personalism’ developed by Monier, Maritain, and other French Catholic philosophers. He was critical of Soviet state socialism and certain elements of the cooperative movement itself. He was particularly sensitive to the danger of a cooperative becoming simply a ‘collective egoist,’ concerned only with the well-being of its membership.”

Schweickart goes on to note the problems of conflict, tension and abstention from participation within the MCC coops mentioned by both Kasmir and Cheney. But he draws this conclusion:

“The presence of worker alienation and of certain practices that cut against the grain of Arizmendiarrieta’s vision should not blind us to two striking lessons that can be drawn from the economic success of Mondragon. First, enterprises, even when highly sophisticated, can be structured democratically without any loss of efficiency. Even a large enterprise, comparable in size to a multinational corporation, can be given a democratic structure.

“Second, an efficient and economically dynamic sector can flourish without capitalists. Capitalists do not manage the Mondragon cooperatives. Capitalists do not provide entrepreneurial talent. Capitalists do not supply the capital for the development of new enterprises or the expansion of existing ones. But these three functions—managing enterprises, engaging in entrepreneurial activities, and supplying capital—are the only functions the capitalist class has ever performed. The Mondragon record strongly suggests that we don’t need capitalists anymore—which, of course, is the central thesis of this book.”

What Schweickart is doing, of course, is dispensing with all the usual arguments capitalist apologists circulate among average workers as to why socialism can’t work. In addition to the intellectual arguments, he simply points to Mondragon, which continues to move forward as the living example of another path. In this sense, what the MCC worker-owners have established is a bridge to a small fortress that serves as a foothold in the future, a powerful example of one not-so-small victory in a Gramscian ‘war of position.’

To a certain extent, many of the MCC workers and managers would agree. MCC itself is officially ‘nonpartisan,’ meaning that it’s not tied to any particular Basque or Spanish political party.

But this does not mean ‘anti-partisan.’ MCC works with a number of socialist and Basque nationalist parties and officials to build up the economy and educational planning infrastructure of Euskadi, the Basque name of their ‘Basque Country,’ for which they are working for a high degree of regional autonomy, if not national independence. In the MCC coops, the workers belong to a range of socialist, communist and Basque nationalist groups ranging from left to center. There have been sharp differences between socialists and some of the more militant nationalist groups in the recent past, but today, the trend is for a wider popular unity and a cessation of any violence.

Not all cooperatives are on the left, of course, and not only in Spain, but elsewhere, including in the U.S. Nor are those that do have progressive politics at their core the only examples of strongholds that can be won in the ‘war of position.’ There are many other ‘strong points’ in need of multiplying and growing—progressive trade unions and labor councils, community-driven schools and civic organizations and coalitions, and, naturally, progressive political organizations and parties rooted in working-class communities. These are all organizational instruments for a range of tactics that will be required in different phases and a variety of fronts in class struggle and popular democratic campaigns. What Mondragon has done for us, however, is to make a major breakthrough in both theory and practice and bring it to scale as a powerful example of what can begin to happen when ‘labor is sovereign’ in a new socialism for a new century.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network, and a member of Steelworker Associates. He is also the co-author, with Jerry Harris, of CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker. His email is carld717@gmail, and he is available to speak on Mondragon.]

Green Jobs: Frustration with Neoliberals over ‘Industrial Policy’

2011-02-14T15:02:00.001-06:00

‘Good Jobs, Green Jobs’ Conference 2011:

Green Jobs Organizers Collide with

Neoliberalism’s War & Austerity Plans

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Nearly 2000 people gathered at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel over three bitterly cold days in Washington, DC Feb 8-10 for the 4^th Annual ‘Good Job, Green Jobs’ conference. The attendees were a vibrant mixture of seasoned trade union organizers, representatives of government agencies and young environmental activists waging a variety of battles around climate change and the green economy.

“We want everyone to work at a green job in a green and clean economy,” declared David Foster, executive director of the sponsor, the Blue-Green Alliance, opening the first plenary. “But what stands in our way?” The answer was a new Congress stalemated by neoliberal resurgence centered in a bloc of the GOP and the far right. “It’s not going to be easy. We’re going to have to fight for it the old-fashioned way, from the bottom up, brick by brick, and floor by floor.”

The Blue-Green Alliance today is a coalition of hundreds of environmental groups, trade unions, and green business enterprises. It was founded less than five years ago, largely by the efforts of Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, one of the largest U.S. environmental nonprofits, and Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steel Workers, one of the country’s largest industrial unions.

“We’ve come a long way,” said USW’s Leo Gerard, the next speaker up. “Today we have dozens of affiliated sponsors and members with a combined membership of 14.5 million. Those fighting harder against us are going to meet some serious resistance.” The participants at the conference represented more than 700 organizations and came from 48 of the 50 states.

Still, attendance was down from the past two years. The solid core of trade unionists and environmental youth were present, but wider allies like the Hip-Hop community mobilized by Green For All were absent or only had small representation.

Gerard went on to explain the core idea of the alliance. The old notion that one had to chose between job growth and environmental protection was dead wrong. “Rather than ‘either-or’ we’ve come to see that’s it’s ‘both or neither.’ We will have both good green jobs in a green and clean economy, or we will have neither. That’s what it boils down to.”

“I also want to raise a new idea,” Gerard continued. “Sustainable development is something we hear a lot. But what about ‘restorative development’? It’s not enough simply to build sustainable new things, we have to repair and recover the damage we’ve done with the old ones. He went on to describe the ‘Smart Grid,’ the need to deliver clean electric power to the same high standards as the internet and telecommunications, retrofitting the old grids in the process. “In the process, we create an abundance of new high-skilled green jobs that pay for themselves by saving energy and cleaning the environment at the same time.”

Labor Opposed to Austerity Solutions

Along with other labor leaders, Gerard spoke several times throughout the conference, often on panels with Obama’s cabinet officials. Even though they greeted each other warmly, there was a noticeable distancing from officialdom on the part of labor. However valuable any proposals made in Congress, the labor officials were astute enough to know that an anti-deficit ‘austerity’ was still the watchword of the period, and any gains would have to be fought for at the grassroots and in the streets.

Gerard symbolized the problem when he introduced Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and part of Obama’s cabinet. Noting that it was her birthday, he presented her not only with a card from the BGA, but also a huge pair of boxing gloves as a gift ‘for going into the battles ahead of us.’

Jackson’s speech was an effort to turn the tables on the rightwing effort to gut or neuter what they termed “the job killing EPA.” “When people turn of the water to cook their oatmeal or take a shower,” she explained, “they don’t want to worry whether toxic wastes or sewage sludge is going to come out of the faucet. Our regulations enhance markets and create economic benefits, with a $2 savings for every dollar invested.” Regulations in health and safety, in the end, created far more jobs than they eliminated by creating confidence in products, safety for workers, and stability for markets in clean-up equipment.

“Winning the future also means winning the race for innovation,” explained Jackson... ‘The history of environmental protection has been a history of innovation. Innovation made everything we do cleaner, healthier and more efficient – and led to the creation of good jobs. The catalytic converters that are manufactured to reduce toxic air pollution from our cars, the invention of more effective water treatment mechanisms to free our drinking water of lead, or smoke stack scrubbers that are installed to keep sulfuric acid pollution out of the air we breathe mean new orders for American companies and jobs for American workers.”

All the speakers from the administration hammered away on the ‘win the future’ theme from President Obama’s State of the Union speech--likewise with the phrases about ‘out-innovating’ and ‘out-performing’ against all contenders in every critical sector of the economy. But given the relation of forces in Congress and even his own Cabinet, and the slashing of programs that the deficit-cutters had already launched, the participants tended to take it all with a grain of salt.

Frustration with Resistance at the Top

If one key word popped up in nearly every workshop, it was ‘frustration.’ The participants, after all, had been working steadily for nearly four years researching, designing and organizing for solutions to a range of critical problems—jobs, clean energy, toxic waste, youth entrepreneurship and so on. The first two conferences were full of hope and energy, especially with Obama’s victory and the appointment of Van Jones to head up green jobs. The third year was marked by going deeper into practical solutions, and growing concern about the political climate.

But now, armed with an array of practical programs, the young people especially seemed to conclude that they were banging their heads against a brick wall created by Blue Dogs, neoliberals and the far right. One option was discussed repeatedly: stop wasting too much time in DC and return to the base. Build organization at the county and state level, and try to win some local victories, even if done piecemeal, and gather more strength.

A case in point was an early workshop on ‘Building a Movement to Change America: Strategies to Forge Ahead to Create Good, Green Jobs.’ It asked participants to step back and assess their alliances, their adversaries and their tactics. It’s worth examining in some detail to see the overall problems facing the conference.

“We took a beating in the 2010 elections,” said Cathy Duvall of the Sierra Club, opening up the subject. “Our campaign for a comprehensive climate change bill with a cap on carbon got turned around into the ‘job killing energy tax.’ We learned that we simply don’t yet have the power to do what we want to do.”

Duvall’s answer was to go back to localities, and focus on setting standards and regulating markets “in favor of Main Street over Wall Street.” She summed up with three points: 1) the need for industrial policy with high domestic content, 2) the need for broader coalitions with people who don’t always agree, and 3) to mount head-on challenges to the oil-military complexes preventing productive investment. “But most of all, we need new coalitions at the local base.”

Ron Collins, a vice president of the Communications Workers of America, picked up where Duvall left off. “We have to do things differently,” he said, “or we have to turn off the lights.” The ‘One Nation’ rally in October, he continued, was a good start, but not much has happened at the local or state level. “‘We need to be building ‘One Maryland’ or ‘One Virginia’ or ‘One Baltimore.’ We need a deeper unity at the base, or the right is going to take us out, one by one. As for some of our fair-weather friends, we have to say, ‘If you’re not with us on the issues, then we’re not with you’, and then act on it.”

In this context, the issue of immigrant rights was rising as a difficult wedge issue, and was taken up by Ali Noorani of the Immigration Forum. “People don’t like to move from their home countries lightly,” he said, “but only do so for compelling reasons of survival.” Noorani gave the example of U.S. agribusiness dumping corn in Mexico at prices below its cost of production, thereby bankrupting Mexican farmers and driving them to border town factories. When those factories closed, many had little choice but to move across the border. “Look at every player in this drama,” he continued. “There is only one beneficiary, the crooked employer. We need to stop pointing fingers in the wrong directions, and start finding solutions. Our method in the past has been to mobilize our base, persuade the middle and isolate the opposition. If we can combine that with a view that the pie can grow bigger, then we can all win.”

Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation closed up the panel. “I think we have to be mad and strategic at the same time,” she declared. She went on to observe some lessons from the Tea Party, nothing that while they had considerable differences, they were able to come together to fight. “But what did we do after the ‘One Nation’ rally? Too many of us just went back to our separate silos.”

Need for ‘Street Heat’ from the Bottom Up

In the discussion, one participant offered a critical point from the floor: “For our strategy to work, we need some cracks at the top, but with Obama’s ‘bipartisan’ center-right bloc, all the cracks have closed up, at least for now. It seems we need more organized strength from the bottom up, more street heat to break things open again.” “Exactly,” said Collins from CWA. ‘We need to be drawing some lessons from the people in Egypt.

There was a lot of discussion about the need to build new alliances. This was not just a search for common ground. Rather it was recognition of the necessity for respecting the traditions, the work, and the sacrifice of potential allies in a situation in which conditions, for them, are changing.

A good example is the attitude expressed toward coal and miners. “We have to recognize that without coal miners we would not have the standard of living that we have, the technology that we have, that makes it possible to talk about a sustainable economy with good jobs and a rising quality of life,” said one workshop speaker. “These men and women, the coal miners and their communities, should be our heroes. They are not our enemies.” There were also warnings to stay away from language that stimulates a fear reaction about what those organizers are trying to win. Examples from coal: solar power and wind that are presented as if they will replace the jobs of miners, with not enough attention given to conversion and re-employment.

Other workshops over the two-day period covered a wide range. Topics included wind manufacturing opportunities, workforce training for solar industries, women in the green economy, sustainable agribusiness, inner city school reform, protecting workers and their families from toxics, high speed rail, and fighting rightwing science-deniers in elections, among many others.

One Tuesday afternoon workshop, entitled ‘Building the Wind Energy Supply Chain: Moving from Rhetoric to Reality,’ brought together a number of issues—job creation, domestic productive capacity, and industrial policy. Wind energy as a vital part of a clean energy economy was taken as a given. The key question was whether it would lead to new manufacturing and green jobs in the U.S., since the more mature technologies and factories had been developed in Spain, the Netherlands and China.

Dillep Thatte of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a federal agency, was optimistic. “Anything you need for wind energy can be competitively obtained domestically; the problem is simply in making the connections and relationships.” He was particularly strong on smaller businesses with less than 500 workers: “These are the innovators creating new jobs today.”

Rob Witherell of the United Steel Workers was skeptical. “High speed rail is in the news today; Obama wants to spend some major money on it. But how many plants in the country right now can actually build high-speed train cars? Only a handful. Can we do it? The answer is, ‘Yes, but…’ It will take some time and investment to get domestic firms up and running.” Helping to form supply chains of small component manufacturers, however, was something the USW could do fairly easily, he added, since the union was connected with some 6000 firms.

As for the quality of production, Dee Holdy of the Global Wind Network explained how her group’s task was to sort out who could effectively be in or out of global competition. “We take a lot of surveys and analyze a lot of reports, but some of it is done by walking around production facilities to find any duct tape or C-clamps holding equipment together.”

Taking on the Neoliberal Alliance with the Far Right

Another following workshop narrowed the target on the far right. Entitled ‘Confronting Science Deniers: Lessons from Minnesota’s Sixth District,’ it featured Tarryl Clark, the former assistant majority leader on the Minnesota State Senate. Clark had run and lost against Tea Party firebrand Michele Bachman, who got 52 percent of the vote.

“Michele Bachman was perhaps the only member of Congress to stick up for BP during the Gulf Oil spill crisis,” Clark started off, “but she’s more widely known for calling on people to become ‘armed and dangerous’ against legislators working for Cap and Trade and Climate Change laws.” She explained that the race became one of the most expensive in the state’s history, with Bachman raising over $13 million, largely from wealthy rightists, while she raised some $5 million in smaller contributions and from labor unions.

“We did well in televised debates,” Clack continued, “but there was no way we could match her massive direct mail operation, which were filled with falsehoods. They were not above absolutely fabricating information while being very good at playing the victim.” One example of a bold headline from a Tea Party website: ‘Tarryl Clark…Backed by Foreign Contributors Who Murder Irish-American Korean War Veterans in U.S. Healthcare Facilities!”

Despite the lies and wackiness, Clark explained that despite her crafted persona of being slightly unhinged, “Bachman is very smart; she knows exactly what she’s doing, and she knows that most of her claims are misleading at best. The truth simply doesn’t matter to her; it’s the results that count.” Clark concluded that the only alternative was to keep organizing and keep fighting, for “otherwise the Darth Vader side wins.”

The final plenary on Wednesday morning focused on green transportation. The session was opened by AFL-CIO vice president Arlene Holt Baker, who noted the prevalence of clean energy manufacturing and high-speed rail in Europe and China, and the need to promote it here:

“What brings us together here,” Baker explained, “is the commitment to make those jobs green jobs and to make them good jobs. Good jobs that provide the wages and benefits needed to sustain families and enable them to buy the products we will be making. Good jobs that can put our economy back in working order. Good jobs that afford workers the opportunity to choose for themselves whether to join a union to have a strong voice on the job for quality American-made products and services.”

Baker went on to give the examples of several new high-design battery plants, including one near New Castle, PA, that had been aided by stimulus money from Obama initiatives. “We are opposed to the idea that the only way out of this crisis is through austerity; we have to invest in the ways to build our way out.”

Baker was followed by Deputy Secretary of Transportation John Porcari. A strong advocate of high-speed rail, he noted that our current transportation system consumed one-third of our oil and produced more than one third of harmful emissions. “Modern high speed trains can operate at one-third less energy per mile than either planes or trucks. For decades, we have blindly refused to invest in our rail system, and we have to turn this around.”

The Need for ‘Industrial Policy’ of a New Type

The case for Obama’s current economic policies was presented next by Jared Bernstein, the chief economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. “Let me start by declaring that neither five-year planners nor lassez-faire ideologues are going to get us what we want.” The former, he explained could never get pricing right, while the latter ignored ‘externalities’ like pollution and waste. No single firm or cluster of firms could rise to the task of basic research, less than 20 percent of which was privately funded. Nor was a major and vital infrastructure project like the ‘smart grid’ even conceivable without a role for government in public-private partnerships.

The conference organizers prepared a summary panel on stage to take off from these final presentations, guided by talk show host Kojo Nnamdi. Panel participants included Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Lawrence Hanley of the Transit Workers Union, Kathy Gerwig of Kaiser-Permanente and Clark Manus of the American Institute of Architects.

“Good jobs, clean energy, sustainable communities—everyone wants these things,” said Nnamdi, posing a question to the group. “But how do we get there? That’s where we differ, isn’t it?

“Some mean it, and some don’t,” replied Congressman Ellison. “The fact is, we have no urban policy; we have no energy policy. We need a multi-city campaign of town meetings, culminating in a national rally in DC. We need to organize and strengthen the progressive Democratic base, and we need to expand the Progressive Caucus.”

Hanley added that where there’s no will, there’s no money. In mass transit, people were facing massive fare increases along with cutbacks in service and mass layoffs. “Yet we have money for wars and the military,” he noted. “There no way out of this without taking on the War Lobby.

“We are living on our grandparent’s infrastructure,” added Ellison. “The rich got tax cuts while we got school cuts.”

The prospect of hard struggle against a recalcitrant neoliberal dominated Congress, and key parts of the White House as well, were duly taken as a challenge. For many, it also suggested the shift to more local base-building that was a common theme of many panels and workshops.

The issues that seem best suited for local focus were diverse:

· Green building codes for new construction.

· Mass transit investment and lower fares.

· Local tax credits/deductions for green capital investment for companies, and for individuals (homes, cars, etc.).

· Local renewable energy goals and requirements.

· Local vehicle fuel economy standards.

· Incentives for local/urban agriculture.

In the last round of workshops, there were some hopeful signs for the future. One panel on partnership for technical education and green jobs was presented by Erica Swinney of the Center for Labor and community Research and focused on the Austin Polytechical Academy, and innovative neighborhood public school on Chicago’s West Side. Swinney, who serves as the school’s communications director, started with a PBS News Hour clip on the school’s achievements, bring together unions and dozens of manufacturing firms to create both a high school and an engine for community economic development. Another workshop following hers focused on a high school in a low-income West Philadelphia neighborhood, with a unique after school program designing and build hybrid gas-electric “X-Cars” getting over 150 miles per gallon, and winning in design fairs over teams from MIT and industry groups.

Students from both schools stressed a common theme: “We are problem solvers, not test takers,” voicing opposition to a one-sided and undue emphasis on standardized testing, rather than most creative approaches to schools required for a clean energy and green economy future.

The final day, Feb. 10, was “Advocacy Day,” where attendees headed for Capitol Hill. David Foster estimated that there were more people participating in this event than last year. Several delegations were very large, mainly from the Steelworkers, Teamsters, and Electrical Workers. They flooded the House and Senate Office Buildings for meetings with Congress people and Senatorial staffs.

“Large groups of workers roaming the halls of Congress were an inspiring sight,” said Ted Pearson, a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism from Chicago, who was attending the conference. “Union members and other activists from Illinois, for instance, met with 5^th CD Representative Mike Quigley and his legislative aide, who pledged support for all the Blue-Green target issues. Other meetings were held with staff for Jerry Costello (D-12^th CD, Southeastern Illinois), and Chicago’s Bobby Rush and Danny Davis.”

Whether it will all amount to a winning campaign for a new clean energy and green manufacturing industrial policy to replace the old oil-military industrial policy remains to be seen. But the ongoing works of the Blue Green Alliance and its annual conferences have clearly contributed to drawing clear and informed lines of demarcation in the battlefield.

[Carl Davidson is a USW Associate Member now living in Aliquippa, Pa He is a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network and a National Co-Chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. In the 1960s, he was active in the civil rights movement, a national leader of student new left and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Together with Jerry Harris, a former Chicago steelworker, he is author of CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age and editor of Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. He is the author and co-author of several other books and lectures on the topic of the Mondragon Cooperatives, a network of 120 worker-owned factories centered in Spain, and writes for the Beaver County Blue website. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button HERE ]

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Aliquippa: Sports Works for a Few, But We Need Jobs for All

2011-02-11T10:51:00.001-06:00

Steel Town Finds Unity and Hope on Football Field

Posted February 11, 2011 at 8:00 am, in From the News

NY Jets Darrelle Revis at Aliquippa High School

By Carl Davidson
Author and writer for Beaver County Blue Blog

via USW Blog

For those of you who haven’t seen the current issue of Sports Illustrated, with the feature on Aliquippa, do yourself a favor, buy it or find it online, and sit down for a long and rewarding read.

It’s titled “The Heart Of Football Beats In Aliquippa: Over five decades of economic decline and racial conflict, a Western Pennsylvania mill town has found unity and hope on the football field.” Thorough the lens of sports, it will tug at your heart with a much larger story of de-industrialization, race and class privilege, class struggle and unity–and it will do it up close and personal, in a way that every steelworker knows is true.

I was born nearby, in Hopewell, Pa. Actually, my family was there before there was an Aliquippa or even a Beaver County. Many of my folks worked in J&L; my grandfather was killed in that mill.

The Beaver County Times did a decent story on the SI piece, and it kicked up some discussion in the online responses. For some reason, whenever Aliquippa is mentioned in any of these online debates, all the racist attitudes come out from under their rocks. This time, a few guys said Aliquippa should simply be bulldozed; and since my Mom and her husband, a retired steelworker, still live on Franklin Ave., it got my dander up. Instead of nasty quips about bulldozing, I wrote in and told these guys to read the article, especially the part about the seven coaches who work for free, simply for the love of the kids, the game and the area. Take them as a role model–then you can be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

The tragic sense of the article is that only a few escape to a better life through sports. We should be proud of them and those who helped them. But what about the rest? We have to be concerned about them, too. If we had the political unity and will, we could put every kid in Plan 11 to work in a decent Green Job cleaning the environment, winterizing public buildings, or working on things like Raccoon Creek State Park that was built by the WPA and the CCC in the Depression Era, an FDR project that’s still rewarding us all.

We have a decent shot at this if we combine the USW’s green industrial policy with Rep, John Conyer’s HR 5204 Full Employment Bill that starts where the need is greatest. That’s what Aliquippa and many other towns around here urgently need, and we don’t have any time to waste.

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Carl Davidson, a retired computer technician, is a USW Associate Member now living in Aliquippa, Pa., his hometown, and the location of the former J&L Steel Mill, where many in his family worked and where his grandfather and a cousin died on the job. In Chicago, he served as a computer consultant for SEIU and several other unions, and was the editor of FIRR News for the Federation for Industrial Retention and Renewal during the campaigns against plant closings. In the 1960s, he was active in the civil rights movement, a national leader of student new left and the anti-Vietnam war movement. He worked on President Barack Obama’s first political campaign in Illinois, on his campaign for the U.S. Senate and for the presidency. Together with Jerry Harris, a former Chicago steelworker, he is author of CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age and editor of Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. He is the author and co-author of several other books and lectures on the topic of the Mondragon Cooperatives, a network of 120 worker-owned factories centered in Spain, and writes for the Beaver County Blue website.

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Tags: Aliquippa, Beaver County Times, de-industrialization, J&L Steel, Sports Illustrated, Steelworkers, USW

PA Progressives Plan for New Battles

2011-01-28T15:19:00.002-06:00

Pennsylvania Progressive Summit 2011:

Rebuilding Alliances, Shaping New Messages

Keynote speakers, Leo Gerard and Jess Jackson

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Nearly 500 progressive and liberal organizers gathered at Pittsburgh’s Sheraton Station Square over the sunny but bitterly cold weekend of Jan. 22-23 to drawn out the lessons of their setbacks in the 2010 elections and shape a new course for the future.

Under the theme of ‘Taking Pennsylvania Forward,’ the two-day meeting was mainly pulled together by four ‘Organizing Sponsors’—Keystone Progress, a popular online communications hub for the state; SEIU, representing some 100,000 PA workers; the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition between the United Steelworkers and advocates for new manufacturing enterprises; and Democracy for America, the outgrowth of the Howard Dean campaign in the Democratic Party.

A large number of unions other than the USW and SEIU also took part, as well as many local political, civil rights, women’s rights, youth and environmental groups from around the state. Beaver County was represented by a delegation from the 4^th CD Progressive Democrats of America.

Eileen Connelly of SEIU chaired the opening session, and started off making an assessment of progressive gains and losses. When she got to ‘we have to continue pressing for and end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she got a spontaneous round of loud applause. Her main task, however, was to introduce PA’s Senator Bob Casey.

“I want to focus on the future,” Casey began. “We need to put hope in the lead, and fear behind us. But hope comes from hard work and tough debates.”

Casey has been a liberal voice in the Senate on most issues, most recently around the exploitation of the Marcellus Shale, a geological formation beneath Pennsylvania and surrounding states. The shale contains immense quantities of natural gas, but it can only be released by a process of ‘hydraulic fracturing’ or ‘fracking’. Gas drillers go 4000 feet or more and then outward horizontally in a spoke-like array for up to a mile. Then a toxic brine is exploded underground, releasing the gas and bringing much of the brine back to the surface with it. There is great danger of polluting water supplies and toxic spills, among other hazards, and an insurgent movement critical of the process has been erupting through the region.

Casey noted that oil drilling and strip mining in the past had ‘left scars on the land, our communities, and our workers.” He pledged to work for gas extraction that was ‘done in a way protective to the environment, and the health and safety of workers and communities, too.” He ended by saying that, although he had to be a Senator for everyone, he always posed the question, ‘For whom do you fight, who do you put first? It’s the workers and their families that come first, especially the people without a voice in high places. They come first.”

That comment served as a perfect transition to the next speaker, Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steel Workers. He started off by noting the presence of a number of young people in the room, noting that the bleak future and high unemployment of many young workers was posing “basic questions about what kind of society do we want to become.”

“In the Bush years,” Gerard continued, “some 50,000 U.S. factories were shut down and moved abroad. We don’t have a deficit crisis; we have a jobs crisis. And we better face up to the fact that we have to hit the streets, kick some ass, and mobilize to do something about it. We know we can’t do it alone. The labor movement can’t work in isolation from the environmental movement, in isolation from the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, and so on.”

Gerard indicated that the road ahead would be tough. “In my own naiveté,” he explained, “I was dumb enough to assume that a Democratic Congress and a Democrat in the White House would put us on a different path.” But in order to rebuild a new clean energy and green technology manufacturing base, the only thing that will turn the jobs crisis around, he went on, it was going to taken a lot more organizing and developing our strength at the base and in the streets.

“I’m sick and tired of us whining about what the Democrats didn’t do,” he explained. “The tougher question is what are we doing, and do we have what it takes. Don’t worry about attacking Obama; attack the money! It’s Wall Street and the banks blocking a recovery and shipping our manufacturing abroad.”

Fired up by Gerard, the participants headed out for the first round of eight workshops sessions, with a total of some 72 workshops over the two days. The topics were wide ranging—the Marcellus Shale, gun violence, medical marijuana, hip-hop politics, social media, coalition building, green manufacturing and the economy, immigration reform, dealing with racism, marriage equality, women’s rights in society and the workplace, ending torture, running for office, winning elections and many more.

DFA ran a series of workshops over the two days focusing on grass roots organizing, campaign organizing, precinct organizing, and ‘get out the vote’ organizing. Attendees of the DFA workshops received a certificate and a handbook for organizing to run for office.

‘Building a 21^st Century Economy’ was chaired and presented by two young women from the Blue-Green Alliance, Hillary Bright and Lauren Horne. “If we got the $100 billion Obama wants for Green jobs,” said Horne, introducing their PowerPoint presentation, “that would mean $4 billion for Pennsylvania, and that could turn into 86,845 jobs around the state. In addition to advocating new green energy manufacturing startups, the presenters also stressed the important of setting and enforcing regulatory standards, especially the Renewable Energy Standards and Clean Energy Standards.

“We also want to invite all of you to attend the upcoming annual ‘Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in DC Feb 8-10 in DC,” said Bright, wrapping it up. “We had over 3000 people come over the past three years, where we go into all of this in much more detail.”

Five different workshops over the weekend focused on pollution dangers from the Marcellus Shale drilling and coal-fired energy plants. Particularly outrageous was the dumping of fly ash and other waste in ‘Little Blue’ lake near Hookstown, PA, next to the West Virginia border and above the nearby Ohio River. It has become a giant toxic waster cesspool, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on the impact Dec, 16, 2010:

“The Post-Gazette's ecological study of mortality rates for heart and respiratory disease and lung cancer shows elevated rates for the combined area of Greene Township, Hookstown and Georgetown. Heart disease deaths there were 46 percent higher than the national rate. The total of 88 deaths from all three diseases is 42 percent higher than the predicted number of 62 deaths, based on national rates.”

“This is my hometown and these are my people,” said Tina Shannon, president of PDA in the 4^th CD, and a workshop participant. “There’s only so much people can take. First they had to worry about their water. Now their kids are getting sick from playing outside when the wind’s blowing. We've got to draw the line and people are starting to get organized about it."

Two back-to-back workshops, ‘Social Media 201’ and ‘Social Media Metrics,’ were especially interesting to those making use of internet technology in political campaigns. The main focus was on the use of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, both as ways of getting your message out and challenging the messages of your opponents and adversaries. In the lively back-and-forth between the presenters and attendees, dozens of tips and links were passed around on how to measure the impact of various efforts, and much more.

But economic problems remained as a center of gravity pulling on all discussions. One major workshop was pulled together by the Steelworkers: ‘Growing a Manufacturing Economy in the 21^st Century.’ It featured Mickey Bolt, a USW member and a staff member of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) and Ike Gittlen, USW’s AAM liaison chief.

Gittlen led off by posing the question: ‘Why should progressives care about manufacturing?’ He then projected a number of PowerPoint bullets: 1) necessary to create real wealth, 2) good jobs = strong communities, 3) good tax base = a more just society, and 4) social mobility = part of the American Dream.

“The hollowing out of our economy, the deindustrialization we see everywhere around here, the closing of factories and shipping them overseas,” Gittlen explained, “if we can’t fix these, you can forget about fixing everything else. And to fix this, we need to change and reshape industrial policy—and you can’t change policy with getting political power. That’s what it all boils down to.”

Gittlen’s points were reinforced by Bolt, who comes from Mercer County, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh. “We have small towns like Greenville and Sharon that were centers on manufacturing. Today it’s mostly gone, and when the guts are taken out of these small communities, everything else begins to fail—the schools are under funded, the parks aren’t kept up, people stop going out to clubs and socializing—all sense of community begins to fade away as people become isolated and fearful.”

Both Gittlen and Bolt talked a good deal about China’s monetary and trade policies as a cause of the problem, and the need for U.S. officials to fight against them. One questioner from the floor challenged the emphasis: “Naturally, we want everyone to keep their trade agreements, ourselves as well as the Chinese, and we are doing unfair things that need correction, too. But isn’t the main source of the problem with finance capital right hear at home? Shouldn’t we be mainly fighting for, say, a tax of the export of capital or a financial transaction tax to fund new startups. That might be a tougher bullet to bite, but it gets to the heart of the matter.” Gittlen responded by agreeing that the problems weren’t just on one side, but insisted that ‘all of the above’, including a focus on China, had to be carried out.

The main feature of the evening was a keynote address over by Rev. Jesse Jackson of Rainbow/PUSH, who was an early fighter against plant closings as well as civil rights, and thus warmly welcomed by this crowd.

Jackson began by recasting today’s political categories of progressive, liberal and conservative in terms of the fight against slavery.

“The conservatives of that day wanted to maintain and expand slavery,” he stated, “while the liberals wanted to make it less harsh and nicer. But the progressives of that time, those that claimed the moral center, were the abolitionists who wanted to do away with slavery altogether.

“The engine of change in our country,” he continued, “rides on two rails. One rail is the Democratic Party, the other is the Republican. But the train draws its power of movement from the third rail. That’s what we progressives are, the third rail, carrying the energy of change. We can't just join the Democratic Party; we must change the direction of the party. We are not liberals. We are liberators.”

Jackson went on to stress the importance of new alliances. "We must really penetrate Appalachia. The region's rural poor have a huge moral authority. No one can challenge their work ethic. No one can challenge their military commitment. No one can challenge their commitment to America."

Republicans won their majorities, Jackson explained, by pledging to close budget deficits through spending cuts. “Their answer to a fire is a gas distribution plan.” This would lead to public sector layoffs while unemployment remains above 9 percent. New Deal-like projects were needed and the spending required should be offset by tax increases on the wealthy and by ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After Jackson speech, which drew a long ovation, the conference organizers gave out a number of awards. The most moving was to Anne Feeney, a widely loved Pittsburgh-based labor and folk singer. Feeney has been waging a person battle with cancer, and is now recovering. Her poised ability to take the stage and thank everyone was itself an inspiration.

A popular workshop on the final day was ‘Hip-Hop, Social Media and the Future of Organizing. The presenters, who worked as a team, practically completing each other’s sentences, were Pittsburgh’s famous rapper, Jasiri X, and his elder co-worker, Paradise Gray. Jasiri got everyone energized by playing his rap video, ‘What If the Tea Party Was Black?’, which has gone viral, made the major news and irritated the Tea Party to no end. It must be seen to be fully appreciated; just Google the title.

“I must mention,” said Jasiri, “that I was inspired to do this by an essay by a white dude, Tim Wise, who wrote a heavy piece with the same title.” Then Jasiri and Paradise went on to discuss the evolution of hip-hop as spoken word poetry into the music video genre as well as live performances. ‘With a simple digital camera and a computer, you can put your piece on YouTube, then Tweet announcements around. If it’s good, it’ll take off, and on YouTube, they track the number of viewers and allow them to write feedback comments.” Jasiri went to explain how John Stewart and Stephen Colbert gave him the idea of writing and filming a weekly video rap about everything that went on in the news that week. He sustained the project for three years, and made a name for himself as a progressive and independent multimedia artist and rapper. But exhausted from the energy required, he decided to do more periodic pieces—that’s when ‘What if the Tea Party was Black?’ was born.

Some of these lessons continued intro one of the final workshops. It was a small one, titled ‘Blogging as a Tool for Communicating Progressive Ideas.’ Chaired by blogger Tom Waters, the panel included John Morgan of the PA Progressive blog, Maria Lupinacci of 2 Political Junkies, Lisa Kaneff of An Average Jane, and Barbara White Stack, blog editor for the Steelworkers.

What was interesting was the variety of approaches and tasks involved. “I pick a subject I’m interested in, like gay teen suicide,” said Waters, then I do Tweet searches to see what everyone else has to say, then I pick an angle that hasn’t been said, and write on it.” Morgan explained that he started his day with a disciplined reading of national and Pennsylvania newspapers to see what the hot topics and especially the new trend were, then to write, repost and link pieces from there. Lupinacci said she start simply by writing letters to the editor, the watching the Pittsburgh City Council on TV: “Some thing would just get me mad, some I set up a blog, and just started writing and posting every day on what got me annoyed or angry.

Stack had a different discipline. “I have to make sure everything on the site reflects the views of the Steelworkers. That means I have to keep up to date on all of our positions, what our leaders are thinking, and what issues need discussion. It’s not easy, but I really enjoy it, especially when I see our stuff getting bounced around the internet or mentioned in Congress or the major media.”

The conference wrapped up just in time. The hotel lobby was filling with crowds, mostly wearing black and gold, the colors of the Steelers football team. A few brave souls were in the green and white of the New York Jets. All were warming up for the big game that would decide whether the Steelers went to the super bowl. Most of the conference attendees were in no mood for the bitter cold of the stadium, making a beeline for home, and the pre-game TV specials and the high spirits of victory that followed later that evening.

[Carl Davidson is a writer for BeaverCountyBlue.org , a member of Steelworker Associates in Beaver County, a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network, and a national co-chair of CCDS, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button in the upper right corner of this blog. ]

Aliquippa’s Harsh Realities Featured in Story of the Hope and Vision of its Athletes

2011-01-26T22:01:00.001-06:00

Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis visiting his hometown, Aliquippa, Pa.

The Heart Of Football Beats In Aliquippa

Over five decades of economic decline and racial conflict, a Western Pennsylvania mill town has found unity and hope on the football field

By S.L. Price

Sports llustrated’s ‘Vault’

Jan 31, 2011 Issue - The fear came for Willie Walker that November. He was not expecting it. Evening had dropped early and hard, as it does in Western Pennsylvania in the fall, but these were streets he had known forever. Hours had passed since the 2004 regional championship game had ended down in Pittsburgh; the adrenaline and bravado on the ride home had long since burned off, replaced by grief, then mere regret. They had lost. The Aliquippa High football team, for all its history of success, had been beaten. Now, in the backseat, Walker felt a numbness settling in. Losing happens. You move on. You start thinking about what's next.

Walker was a senior. Just seven months until graduation, and he'd be able to say it: He had survived. The town hadn't killed, hadn't crippled, hadn't defeated him, though God knows it had tried. His life had been a cliché of criminal pathology: father long dead, mother struggling with crack addiction, days of hunger, corners promising casual violence. Aliquippa's streets are, as one of Walker's coaches put it, "a spiderweb" capable of ensnaring the most innocent, and though Walker never lost sight of his prize—college somewhere, anywhere—he was hardly innocent. No, for a time he had leaped into the web, daring it to grab hold.

The year before, Willie (Silent But Violent) Walker had been a star lineman for Aliquippa's 2003 state championship team, a 6'1", 295-pound, 4.8-in-the-40 "monster," says Darrelle Revis, then Walker's teammate and now a Jets cornerback. But during the season, after Walker's mother was jailed on parole violation, the bottom had fallen out: Walker had gone to the coaching staff in tears, ready to quit. He was alone, 17, with a 13-year-old sister to care for and no money for food or rent. Coaches and boosters mobilized, had a refrigerator stocked with groceries delivered to Walker's apartment in the Valley Terrace housing project, got him odd jobs, handouts. It wasn't enough. His cousins were in the business. He began dealing cocaine and crack to make ends meet.

As the winter months unrolled, Walker found himself growing colder. He had no time to feel pity. He lived the predatory days of black-on-black crime, supplied the hollow-eyed with endless rock, saw one friend rob another at gunpoint. He avoided arrest when a SWAT team raided the operation's gun- and drug-laden home base just minutes after he'd left. He watched as the mom of one of his associates came with cash in hand, and her son sold her a fix. Walker allowed himself a shiver, paused long enough to think, Je-sus. Then he got back to business. "She came to him, he gave it to her," Walker says. "It was just normal."

His coaches and most teammates didn't know what he was doing. His sister, Kerrie, didn't know. Walker kept playing, going to practice when he could, consuming the free food laid out afterward: green tea, hoagies, kielbasa, barbecue. Since he had begun playing his freshman year, football had provided an identity, given his chaotic life its only frame. The field was the one place in Aliquippa where the spiderweb's strands couldn't get much purchase.

The season ended, spring came, Walker's mother was released. Nobody in the business hassled him when he decided to stop dealing; his cousins were notorious.

The next fall, the 2004 season, Walker studied, cut grass for coaches and teachers, prepped for the SATs. In the fall he had 82 tackles and four sacks at defensive tackle, blocked three kicks. He was just a player and student again, tooling around in a 1985 Dodge Diplomat he'd bought for $750. He had scraped the rust off, repainted the car blood red and dubbed it the Red Baron. People still grin recalling Willie and that car, seemingly made for each other—both headed for the junkyard once, both proud and shining now. But Walker wasn't driving it that night in November, heading home from the game, when his heart started pounding as if to break through his chest.

For weeks he'd kept the thought at bay, but now it wouldn't be denied: My last game. Football saved me, but now it's over. The fear rushed through him, worse than on the worst days with his mom, worse than when a passing cop car slowed, worse than when he felt the weight of the Taurus .45 jammed in his pants. He had never been so scared. No practice, no workouts, nothing. College? He still had no offers. The van he was riding in took a left on Superior Avenue, engine gunning as the street rose under the wheels. He could see the lights of Valley Terrace looming when, without warning, he began to cry. Tears, silent sobs: He couldn't stop.

"Because going up that hill?" Walker says. "It was like driving into the mouth of a monster."

It was your quintessential melting pot," says Don Yannessa, an Aliquippa High graduate and the coach of its football team from 1972 through '88. "Italians lived in [the] Plan 11 [neighborhood], Serbians in Logstown or Plan 7, Greeks downtown. We had a large Jewish community. And they all got along. There were 30,000 people and paychecks every two weeks, and the stores were thriving. What a great town it was."

What remains is a stadium, perched high above the near-dead downtown. To reach it you make a right off Franklin Avenue, climb roller-coaster-steep Main Street and hook a right close to where, during the 2009 season, the team's brainy wideout escaped a drive-by shooting with two bullet holes in his pants leg. You walk toward the gates, seeing neither field nor grandstand. You wonder if you'll step off into an abyss, and, yes, you will. There's a reason they call it the Pit.

Carl A. Aschman Stadium, home of the Fighting Quips, was wedged into the hill's flank in the late 1930s, creating one of the nation's loveliest settings for football. But now, as you descend its ravaged wooden bleachers and crumbling concrete on a November game day, it provokes the dizzying fear that the whole ramshackle structure will at last release its grip and send hundreds of parents, coaches and fans—not to mention the Indian mascot, his horse and the flaming spear that quivers in the immaculate turf—hurtling to the street below.

Still, for opponents such disorientation, combined with the dungeonlike visitors' locker room, is a perversely welcome rite of passage. "You haven't played football in Western Pennsylvania," says an adult accompanying the saucer-eyed preps from Pittsburgh's Shady Side Academy, Aliquippa's first-round victims in the 2010 playoffs, "until you've played the Pit."

What also remains is a coaching staff of 19, 11 unpaid, all ignited by the standards set by their fathers and uncles, all former Quips but one. Mike Zmijanac never played a down of organized football. This past season the 67-year-old son of an Aliquippa waitress and an absent Marine sergeant became the winningest coach of the best high school program in a region that unearths talent like so many chunks of coal. Zmijanac is quick to say that he inherited a machine built by his celebrated predecessor, Yannessa, and when reminded that he's the only high school coach to have won Pennsylvania state titles in football and basketball, his first impulse is to point out that he's the only one to have lost championship games in both too.

But if Zmijanac's default mode is self-puncturing, if he tends to forget his players' names—instead giving them indelible tags such as Pottymouth, Frankenstein and Lunch—he also sets the tone of tough compassion used by assistant head coach Sherm McBride, defensive coordinator Dan (Peep) Short and the rest of the staff. The Quips are efficient, disciplined. The offense is simple. There's no taunting. Each player learns to call elders Sir.

"Tonight's the kind of night that I remember why I do this," Zmijanac says to his team just minutes before Aliquippa's final 2010 game at the Pit, the first-rounder against Shady Side. "You seniors: This is the last time you'll ever play on this field. This team: This is the last time you'll ever play together on this field. It's a special group of people that get to do this. Don't ever take it for granted. Make it special. Play Aliquippa football, play the game right, respect the people on the other side, and knock the crap out of 'em—and then help 'em up. Now for all those people who played here before and the ones who'll play here after: Our Father...." And they all bow their heads to pray.

The Pit on Friday night is the one place where Aliquippa now feels closest to Aliquippa then. Those who moved away find their way back: The old millworkers in wool hats gather under blankets in the senior citizens' seats, people wary of the streets gather here to greet old friends. White and black, young and old sit together, taking swigs from tiny bottles, commenting on the cold. The starters run out arm-in-arm with a cheerleader. The smell of gyros and cheese fries fills the air, the gravelly voice of the P.A. announcer says, "First-and-10, goooooo Quips!" and the masses softly answer, in less a cheer than a collective warning, "Yeeaaaah!"

"Did you get chills?" asks Sean Gilbert, a Pro Bowl defensive tackle and former Quip. "What football will do. Football's a religion sometimes."

They are cocky, this crowd, and why not? Few corners of the nation, certainly none as small as Aliquippa, have produced so many big names. A man will be shot and wounded tonight on a street in Plan 11, not far from where Gilbert, NFL Hall of Fame tight end and coach Mike Ditka, Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett, two-time Super Bowl champ Ty Law and Revis, the 2009 AFC Defensive Player of the Year, grew up. But there's little danger of a shooting at a Quips game.

"There is no drug dealing at the Pit, and rarely any violence," Walker says. "It really is sacred ground; it's like a miracle. You've got guys that, any other time of the day, they're going to try and rip each other's throats out, but they just walk past each other in the Pit. They're there to watch those kids play."

What remains is the team. Aliquippa lost another 10% of its population in the last decade, down to 10,548 residents; there were only 32 males in the high school's 2010 graduating class. Yet the Quips—from the fifth smallest high school in Western Pennsylvania, a Single A team fighting well above its weight—have averaged 10 wins a year for three decades, dominating AA competition, beating richer schools and towns, producing so many Division I-A players that it beggars belief.

Some on today's roster are sure they're next in line. Maybe it will be senior defensive lineman Zach Hooks, 6'6" and 286 pounds, whom Temple is looking at, or freshman running back Dravon Henry, who will romp for 177 yards and two touchdowns against Shady Side. Each season Zmijanac has to tell a few players, "You think you're next, but you're not. Someone lied to you."

Tonight, as always, they'll slap the plaque over the door that reads WE RULE OUR HOUSE as they spill out to the field. Then they'll destroy Shady Side 41--0. Next week it will be Beaver 34--0, then Ford City 26--7 before a 19--6 loss to South Fayette in Aliquippa's record 21st appearance in the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League final. Before all that, though, they will put on their pads and tape their wrists. Too many will take black markers and write carefully on the tape. rip, it will say, on wrist after wrist. RIP KLJ SR. BDB; RIP EAG; RIP WALL; RIP UNCLE CLYDE; RIP TDW; RIP TMG.

Rest in Peace, Cousin. Brother. Friend. Father.

Then they won't look like boys anymore. Because what remains in Aliquippa, too, is a kind of war.

Football isn't kind. It wasn't invented to save men or to serve as a civic barrier against the ills unleashed by the end of an era. Fueled by obedience, reveling in brute force, dismissive of weakness, the game hardly seems nimble enough to withstand the social trends that made Aliquippa feel, over the past 40 years, like some corroding edge of the American Dream. Industrial collapse, race riots, massive layoffs, white flight, corporate greed, fatherless families, the scourge of crack: All battered this tiny town like a series of typhoons. It's as if the same mysterious alchemy that keeps producing Hall of Fame talent and a team with a record 13 WPIAL titles created an equally outsized appetite for destruction. Aliquippa takes everything to extremes.

But then, the tone was set early. "I was terrible," says Mike Ditka, who grew up in the 1940s and '50s. "I had to win, had to win when I played marbles, whatever I played. And I wasn't a good sport about losing." Ditka—Aliquippa's first college first-team All-America, first NFL first-round draft choice, first player to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl, first coach of a Super Bowl champion—established the template for commitment, the near-maniacal need to infuse mere games with life-and-death importance, which has only grown stronger with time. The mystery is why. Unlike today's players, Ditka grew up in an Aliquippa that had everything: jobs, community, a downtown complete with a soda shop, a sweet Main Street to cruise and the certainty that nothing would ever change.

After all, Aliquippa, about 20 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, was just one of many burgs built to process all that ore and coal wrested out of the hills, one more town full of people from Eastern and Southern Europe who kept the coke ovens fired and the stacks smoking 24 hours a day, 13,000 workers filling three daily shifts on the other side of the Aliquippa Tunnel. Jones & Laughlin Steel designed and built the town just after 1900 and divided it into 12 ethnically specific "plans," separating labor from management, hunkies from cake-eaters. But the soot still fell all over, dirtying your shirt collar even if you never set foot in the mill that stretched for seven miles along the Ohio River.

Ditka's parents, Mike and Charlotte, moved up from Carnegie, Pa., in 1941, but young Mike didn't see much of his dad until he was four. While the Aliquippa Works pumped out record tonnages of armor plate, shell forgings, bombs, landing craft, bullets and mortar tubing, proudly shaping the weapons to beat back Hitler and Tojo, Mike Sr. served in the Marines at Camp Pendleton, Calif. He came home to a job as a "burner"—welding boxcars on the mill railroad, his hands scarred by daily scorchings—and ruled the cramped house in the Linmar neighborhood like a drill instructor. The four kids had to be in bed by 7 p.m., and any misbehavior brought out the Marine belt.

Young Mike never once fought back. In sports, though, he was a terror: His way was the only way. In one Little League game Mike was catching for his younger brother Ashton when Ashton surrendered a few walks. Mike stopped the game, and they switched positions. During an American Legion game, when Ashton, in centerfield, dropped what would have been a game-ending fly, Mike charged off the pitcher's mound, chased Ashton over the fence and, Mike says, "whipped his ass." The Marine belt came out for that one. Word has it that Ashton, for being a bit lax in defending himself, also got a lash or two.

By the mid-1950s, football—relentless, down-the-throat running football—was the undisputed king of Aliquippa, a way to take on towns such as Ambridge and Beaver Falls in matchups that reflected the mills' blue-collar grind. Once coach Carl Aschman led Aliquippa to its first WPIAL title, in '52, the machine found its rhythm. "If you looked like a football player? The older people, the older athletes would get on your back: You're going out for football," says Frank Marocco, who was two years ahead of Ditka at Aliquippa High and was the Quips' coach from 1989 to '96. "They made you play whether you liked it or not."

Ditka, a scrawny 135 pounds as a sophomore at Aliquippa, struggled through the team's two-week training camp, starting off as fodder on the so-called "ghost battalion": Marocco and the rest of the seniors spent days running over him like so much dirt. Ditka would cry, wipe off the snot and scream, "Come on, hit me again!" And so they did. Aschman finally pulled him out of practice for his own protection, sending him off to clean latrines. After that Ditka tried quitting, but Aschman told him to wait. By the following fall Ditka had grown into his meat-hook hands and done enough push-ups to power a steam engine. Aschman would tutor him alone after practices: how to block, run patterns, catch the ball. Ditka started at linebacker and tight end. The team went undefeated and won the WPIAL title. When a teammate's leg was broken on a clean hit, Ditka walked into the opposing team's huddle and threatened to kill them all. Come winter Ditka would play basketball for coach Press Maravich, whose eight-year-old son, Pete—"A little s---!" says Ditka—could outshoot and outdribble anyone. When the Quips lost four football games during his senior year, Ditka set a team record for lockers trashed. After missing a layup that basketball season, he broke his wrist punching a wall.

Aschman sold him hard to recruiters, and Ditka had his pick of college football powers. The mill had been pumping for five decades; two generations, uneducated immigrants and their kids, had traded health and happiness for a decent house, three squares, a foothold in the new world. But the third generation saw the Aliquippa Works less as an opportunity than a cautionary tale. Ditka toured the place once in high school and never got over its filth. When he took the scholarship at Pitt in '57, it sent a message.

"Everybody in my family worked in the mill; that's what we knew," Yannessa says. "It wasn't until I was a junior and Mike was a senior that some people said, 'If you get your grades in order, you can get a scholarship playing football.' So many of our guys did. That's the first time the light came on: Maybe I can escape."

Nights, Ditka would sit up late and tell his mother, "One of these days I'm going to have four cars and a big house with a pool. You'll be able to drive 'em, but Daddy can't."

"He always said he was going to make money," Charlotte says. "I don't know where he got the idea." Ditka went to Pitt intending to be a dentist, though the thought of that glowering face, enraged by some stubborn molar, could make an ant swear off sugar. "Can you see that big hand in your mouth?" Charlotte says. But he made his money, all right, rattling teeth as an unstoppable tight end with Chicago and Dallas, blossoming into a near cult figure as coach of Da Bears and the Saints, and along the way gave some $80,000 back to the Quips' athletic program and raised another $250,000 in scholarships. Now, at 71, he owes no one, and his work consists mostly of being Mike Ditka on ESPN and showing up once a month at his self-named steak houses to shake hands.

Charlotte, 89, still lives in the house in Linmar. Mike's image papers the walls, and a small crystal bear squats on the coffee table above her son's words, still quoted around town: TOUGH TIMES DON'T LAST. TOUGH PEOPLE DO. Charlotte, like some of Mike's old teammates and buddies still in Aliquippa, dresses up and makes the 15-minute trip to his restaurant near the Pittsburgh Airport when she hears he's coming. Before she arrived in November, Ditka took on all comers at a back table, fielding compliments, repeatedly thanking every customer he could.

"I was going to be a dentist, but that's because of Coach Aschman," Ditka said. "He thought it would be a good idea if I came back to Aliquippa and fixed teeth." He gave a little shrug. "But eventually there was nobody to work on. I would've went broke."

Late September, leaves starting to fall. It's a sparkling Friday morning in the neighboring township of Hopewell, and Tony Dorsett stands at the fence ringing the high school stadium. He has just finished saying that the christening of Hopewell High's home field as Tony Dorsett Stadium in 2001, with 100 relatives present and fireworks and parachutists filling the sky, is the greatest honor he has known. Greater than receiving the Heisman Trophy or winning a national championship with Pitt, greater than being enshrined in the college and pro football halls of fame. "This," he says, "is the ultimate."

Yet something about that moment, this field, unsettles him. Dorsett goes silent, his eyes reddening; 13 seconds pass before he can utter another word. Now he points to the spot where he saw it, the image of his dead brother smiling. Tony was a ninth-grader in the fall of 1969, just months after he'd watched Melvin, age 27, collapse and die of a heart attack at their home, which was in Aliquippa's Plan 11 but fell within the Hopewell school district. Tony couldn't sleep in the house after that, but he never expected to be spooked at a football game. Playing against his buddies at Aliquippa High was worry enough.

"My brother used to always sit in that one spot, back up in this corner there," Dorsett says. "I know people might think I'm crazy, but I made a great play, and I looked up to see my family, and I saw him. I saw a vision. Clear as could be....

"Melvin dropped out of school. But when I was a kid, we used to watch him. Talk about speed? My brothers all had speed, but he was the one I'd watch at the park on Fourth of July, everybody playing softball, and it was amazing the stuff he'd do. He ran from leftfield to rightfield and caught a fly ball—the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen in my damn life."

Dorsett—and Hopewell—won that game, and he went on to win plenty more in high school, at Pitt and with the Cowboys, the only one of Wes and Myrtle Dorsett's five boys to make it out. The couple had moved to Aliquippa from Pittsboro, N.C., in 1944 amid the Great Migration's second wave, a rural-to-urban odyssey that transformed African-American culture and every Northern city. Wes never spent a day in school, but his every lesson was a variation of the one he gave while racing his boys, switch in hand, whipping their hams as they fled: Move. Tony visited his dad once outside the mill's open-hearth department and didn't recognize him under a mask of grime. "Come in the mill, you don't know if you're coming out," Wes said. "And if you do, you might be missing an arm or eye or leg. Do something better with your life."

When, at 16, Tony's friends took summer jobs at the mill, he refused. He never did go inside, not once. Eventually all four older brothers—each quicksilver fast, each eyed by coaches—made that ride through the Aliquippa Tunnel. Drink, drugs or dwindling motivation proved too hard to fight, and only Tony, the scared mama's boy with eyes so wide that Wes dubbed him Hawk, proved strong enough. So, yes, Dorsett feels pride when he sees his name on the sign at his old school, but it's diluted by guilt and mystery. At 56 years old he still asks, Why me?

Another reason the christening ceremony felt so miraculous is that Dorsett was sure it couldn't happen. Rename a stadium in Hopewell after a black kid from Aliquippa? Never. Because Hopewell, the wealthy, spacious Pittsburgh suburb that borders Aliquippa, had, by the time Dorsett came along, become a haven for whites bolting the town—and many looked down their noses at all they'd left behind.

By 1970, Aliquippa's population was 25% African-American and had shrunk to 22,277. An explosion of racial strife, the tail end of nearly three years of nationwide integration battles and civil rights protests, only fueled the exodus. In May 1970, Aliquippa schools were shuttered after confrontations between white and black teenagers resulted in the suspension of 54 students. According to a state report, eight white students said, when questioned, that "they would be willing to get killed fighting blacks." Three weeks later racial clashes spilled from the junior high to the streets, leaving 11 students injured and dozens arrested. That night 250 whites clashed with police after demanding the release of four white youths. More than 30 gunshots were fired; tear gas filled the air. Whites and blacks divvied up territory.

"You were only allowed up in the school [area], where the white people lived, during school," says Sherm McBride, the assistant head coach. "If you ran into a certain type, you were getting jumped on. Vice versa for whites: If they were downtown, they were getting jumped on by black guys. And in the school, from what my brothers say, there wasn't a day you didn't have guys carrying switchblades."

The state report also relates stories of "battles between police and alleged snipers" in Aliquippa, an "angry charging mob of chanting whites" confronting blacks in Plan 11, blacks and whites arming themselves, and whites organizing neighborhood protective groups. Ditka's dad, Big Mike, was one of the patrol leaders, his house but a minute's drive from the mostly black housing project Linmar Terrace. "They were going to clean out the white people," Charlotte says.

Yannessa, who had left Aliquippa in '68 to teach and coach at nearby Ambridge, spent free periods listening to reports over the police scanner. By then the Quips' football program had been gutted. Aschman had a heart attack and stopped coaching after winning his last WPIAL title in '65, and soon whites and blacks wouldn't play together; the '70 team fielded just 16 players. Aliquippa won 12 games over the next seven years, losing seven of eight to Hopewell, before Yannessa, a teammate of Ditka's and disciple of Aschman's, came home to take over in 1972.

"I had never seen a community change so dramatically in a negative sense," Yannessa says of Aliquippa. "It was all racism, white flight. They wouldn't even let the kids play nighttime football. You're getting your ass kicked, and by the third quarter you're playing in front of 18 people? It was ugly."

Meanwhile, a zoning fluke—the line drawn just 30 yards from the front door—had placed the Dorsetts' home in the Hopewell district. While the boosters at Aliquippa might have finagled a way to keep him, Tony's parents took one look at the stable, peaceful halls of Hopewell High and put him on the bus headed there. Within two years Vikings coach Butch Ross had the most spectacular running back yet seen in Western Pennsylvania.

It wasn't easy for Dorsett, though. He was one of only a handful of blacks among more than 1,500 Hopewell students, living "in two worlds," as he puts it: by night a resident of the Hill, hardscrabble and all black, by day a student in what he and his friends called Whiteyland. But Dorsett had football to insulate him, and he says the two-world split prepared him to deal with just about any social situation. In fact, the only thing Hopewell didn't prepare him for was the notion that his school, state—hell, entire country—could evolve, that white and black kids would someday date without inciting comment, that a black man could see his name raised on the most revered structure in town.

Of course, change didn't come overnight. At Aliquippa High, Yannessa walked into the gym his first day as coach, saw his prospective team self-segregated by race and demanded that they mix—or else. It didn't help that even the booster club had separated into black and white factions. But within a year the Quips began to win. A black steelworker named Charlie Lay served as a goodwill conduit to the white community, setting up mixed meetings of parents, boosters and players in white and black homes, buying drinks in white bars and black, and the battle lines began to soften. Yannessa, along with Zmijanac, his defensive coordinator, had been cocky enough to think he could calm the waters, bring back the old days, and he felt even cockier now. Then, in the fall of 1977, the town cracked again.

A fight between a black and a white student outside the school cafeteria ended with the white student stabbed, and all the tamped-down tensions erupted. Aliquippa High closed for three days. After that police roamed the halls, and every day brought another fight with a knife or chain. Teachers locked their doors and hid. For the first time Yannessa felt the football program, and the town, were surely lost.

He was wrong. Although town and school were savagely split, the team's core was not. Short, McBride and five other players, a mix of juniors and seniors, black and white, met the weekend before the '78 season opener and heard Short demand, "This has got to stop somewhere." The next day, after the team entered the gym and, for the first time in years, divided itself into white and black factions, the seven players walked together to the center of the floor. "You're either with us," they announced, "or you're out."

"No one left that gym," McBride says. "Everybody came together as one." Not long after, some felt a shift in Aliquippa's air. Black and white players were seen double-dating, sometimes interracially. The crowds at games began to mix. In the off-season Yannessa insisted that the annual banquets for the black and white booster clubs be combined, and it happened.

"Football brought the families, the community, everything back together," McBride says, walking behind the Pit's grandstand. "You'd go down to the mill where everybody's mother or father was working and hear, 'You going to the game this week?' If you wanted to rob a bank in Aliquippa? Friday night at eight o'clock was the best time."

Tony Dorsett is walking downtown. A car passes, slows: Why would anyone be walking ... wait. Was that Hawk? It has been years since he's been down to Franklin Avenue. Most storefronts are empty now, mocking like a toothless grin the spiffy red banners on the light posts that plead, TAKE PRIDE IN ALIQUIPPA. Two men, their clothing loose and fraying, appear and head Dorsett's way. They stop, shake hands, chat. "Man," Dorsett says. "Everything's shut down."

"Only one thing that ain't shut down, Tony," one replies. "The bullets."

Aliquippa is, in one sense, like a big city: People warn you away from certain spots. There's a safe stretch along Brodhead Road, but the occasional burglary keeps residents edgy. You don't want to be on Franklin Avenue at night, and places that used to be crime-free, like Main Street just outside the high school, have grown grimmer. "You can be anywhere," says Revis. "Every time somebody gets killed, I'm getting a call: 'Stephen died.' 'This guy died.' I have been home and talked to somebody, and two weeks later I'm getting a call like, 'He's dead.' It's not safe. You can die just like that."

It's not rare to hear someone declare Aliquippa dead too. The streets give off a postapocalyptic feel, at once simmering and still. You can't be sure that what you see is a mercilessly dismantled past or a nightmare vision of the future—a vivid preview of what can happen when a nation ships its manufacturing work, the kind that once offered blue-collar security, overseas.

The J&L mill, battered by cheap, inventive Japanese products and taken over by the Ohio-based LTV Corporation, began shutting down nearly 30 years ago, and closed for good in 2000. Pittsburgh has made a successful transition to the new economy, but "Aliquippa's in a weird place," says Pitt labor economist Chris Briem. "It's not the center of the region, it's not the city, it's not quite rural. What is the competitiveness of towns that used to have a reason for being—and don't anymore?"

Yet others insist that a molten stream of the old immigrant sensibility, alloyed with the hard-won unity forged in the '70s, still courses through the town. Aliquippans say hard times weeded out the weak, and only the strong remain. They see a drive among the youngest, especially the athletes who've lived entire lives amid the ruins, that keeps pushing them to win against ridiculous odds.

"My sister was murdered," says 35-year-old Dwan Walker, a former receiver for Aliquippa who intends to run for mayor this spring. Standing behind the Aliquippa stands during a September game, Walker describes how his sister, Deirdre, 33, was killed in the fall of 2009 by James Moon, a 24-year-old former Quips running back who, the Aliquippa police say, was jealous of Deirdre's relationship with another man. "She was shot and killed in front of my nephew, shot three times," Walker says. Moon then turned the gun on himself. Afterward, Walker says, "I wanted to leave. I'm mad at this place every day. But I have never felt so much love in my life as I felt from [Aliquippans] when my sister was murdered. My Facebook page exploded; I had to shut it down, there were so many messages.

"All in all, I wouldn't trade Aliquippa for nothing in the world. We're going to keep fighting. You'll read the paper tomorrow: ALIQUIPPA WON. That's all we need. Because it's heart, man. It's pride. It's a mystery, how you keep wanting to come back."

"Aliquippa will never die," says Aileen Gilbert, Sean Gilbert's mom and Revis's grandmother. "On the surface it looks like a ghost town. It looks desolate. But I don't see desolation."

What she does see is spirit, handed down from parent to son, that can be best summed up in four words: no track, no problem. Because the story that best illustrates the town's mix of triumph and tragedy is only tangentially related to football. It involves McBride, who doubles as the Quips' track coach; four football players who ran sprints; and a long jumper named Byron Wilson.

With no running track, the Quips practice in the school parking lot, spikes on asphalt. Before 2005 an Aliquippa team had never won a state title. Yet at that spring's state championships, against schools fielding up to 20 boys, Aliquippa won its first team title with just those five.

The sprinters finished one-five-eight in the 100 meters, took second in the 200 and won the 4 × 100 relay. But to claim the title the team would need points from Wilson, who rarely worked hard at practice and was seeded 21st of 24 competitors. After he fouled on his first two jumps, there wasn't much hope. "It wasn't like Byron had technique," says Michael Washington, one of the football player--sprinters. On his third jump, however, Wilson stuck it: 22'3¼", good for first place and 43 team points. Aliquippa won the championship by two points.

"When he called, you could hear it in his voice; it was really gratifying," says Andre Davis, Wilson's stepfather, who had raised him from age three. "To me and his mother, it meant, Thank God. Now he knows that he has a talent. He realizes if you put your mind to something, you can accomplish something." His parents hung the medals on their bedroom mirror so they could see them every day when they woke. They hang there still.

It was, all admit, the kind of Hollywood finish capable of changing a life. Ask McBride what happened to Wilson, though, and his eyes drop. Wilson had a scholarship to run track at California (Pa.) University under Olympic great Roger Kingdom. "Guess what," McBride says. "He shot a guy. Here at Aliquippa you can be top dog one day and in the wrong place at the wrong time the next." McBride pauses. "Great kid. Father is a chief of police here."

Andre Davis is, indeed, Aliquippa's assistant chief of police, a member of the department for 24 years. He has battled rising gang activity in the housing projects and now in Plan 12. His stepson's case was different. Drugs or turf weren't the issue so much as personality: Soon after high school Wilson's hot temper, sharp tongue and inability to back down inflamed the boys from Linmar Terrace, and word spread. "A lot of guys wanted to kill him," Revis says. "You'd hear that all the time."

Revis saw it too. On a visit home during his sophomore year at Pitt he went to Curenton's Mini Market on the Hill to buy the latest Air Jordans. Wilson showed up talking to a friend, Revis's half-brother Jaquay. Revis exchanged pleasantries with a male standing by the door, a Linmar lookout guy who complimented Revis on his college career. Minutes later, as Revis walked out, shoes in hand, a white car pulled up and a man jumped out shooting. Wilson and Jaquay hit the pavement. Revis dived behind a car, where he ended up face-to-face with the now-panicked lookout. They stared at each other as the bullets flew.

"My heart is beating so fast, and you just hear the gunshots: Boom, boom, boom!" Revis says. "I'm like, Yo, my brother might be shot, then I heard the car pull off. Nobody got shot. Byron got up and started shooting. I'm shaking. My car was shot up; it had a couple bullets in it."

Still, Revis loves Aliquippa. He feels a need whenever he's in town to get back to the Hill, to the street he grew up on. The always crowded 13-room family home on Seventh Avenue is where Ty Law would stop by when Darrelle was in elementary school, where his uncle Sean Gilbert's teammates would congregate laughing, where Darrelle would step out to stare up at the stars and dream of flying to outer space. When he was three years old, his mother, Diana, would find him waiting summer nights on the step out front; she was puzzled until one evening Sean, doing his preseason training, came chugging up the hill. He'd reach the top, tap Darrelle and then turn and jog back down. "Let him stay right here," Sean said. "I'm going to keep touching him."

Revis ran some with a junior Griffin Heights crew and backed out when they started flashing guns. But these days he doesn't want to seem stuck-up. In Aliquippa he makes a point of talking to everyone who stops him, even crackheads, "just to let them know I still know where home is, and I still come back."

He knows this might not be wise. But Revis believes that Aliquippa's lunacy helped make him one of the best cornerbacks alive, and besides, he's one of many who say that the end of the town's biggest menace has brought a measure of calm. In August 2009, Anthony (Ali) Dorsett, 34, the son of Tony's brother Keith, pleaded guilty to charges of dealing crack and powder cocaine in a joint federal, county and local crackdown on a drug ring that had operated out of Linmar Terrace from '03 to '08. Twelve other men, described by federal prosecutors as sellers or gun-toting "shooters," have been sentenced; Dorsett, the acknowledged ringleader, is scheduled to be sentenced on March 17. He could face life in prison.

When the arrests were announced in December 2008, Tony Dorsett was appalled by the coverage. He has lived in Texas since joining the Cowboys in 1977, but seemingly every news story labeled Ali as "Tony Dorsett's nephew." His own son, Anthony Jr., a former NFL player also living in Dallas, was at first mistakenly reported to be the drug dealer, and Tony had to quell rumors that the feds had seized some of his property, including the house he bought for his mother with his first signing bonus. All untrue, Tony says, though his son had been involved with Ali in a real estate venture.

Davis was involved in the sweep, which was dubbed Operation Enough Is Enough. Since then Aliquippa has indeed seen "a big change for the better," he says, with fewer reports of shots fired and far less loitering at the Linmar Projects. But any satisfaction he feels about it is tempered by the fact that in 2006 Byron Wilson plea-bargained a 15-month sentence after pulling up next to his Linmar enemies in a car and opening fire. Two years later he wounded two men in a bar shootout, for which he has just begun serving a one- to two-year prison sentence.

Since then Davis has gotten job offers outside Aliquippa. He won't leave. He played football for the Quips, and on fall Saturdays he referees for the WPIAL and the Beaver County Youth League, which includes the Little Quips—four levels of junior teams from ages five to 12—who play to crowds even more jacked than Friday night's. Davis thinks he's figured out why Aliquippa, in spite of everything, keeps producing greatness.

"You get through here and the hard times? Everything else is easy," Davis says. "They've survived not eating at night, or went through watching a brother or sister get killed. I personally had to see my son arrested and prosecuted and put in jail. So what could be harder? Playing football? That is nothing."

Sirens? They almost don't hear the sirens anymore. But when, early in the evening of Oct. 7, Quips players and coaches saw the helicopter flying in low, its blades whap-whap-whapping over the Pit and beyond, the usually smooth rhythm of practice began to stutter. A chopper is never good news. Dread spread, and soon running backs coach Timmie Patrick, a Beaver County detective, had learned the latest awful news. Medevac: man stabbed at Curenton's Mini Market, and one of their own.

Art (Rooster) Motton, 47, with multiple wounds to his neck and trunk, was flown to a Pittsburgh hospital and pronounced dead, and 16-year-old Aliquippa High student James D. Motton, a nephew whom Art had raised as a son, was charged with the murder. (His trial is pending.) Word was that the two had argued over damage to Art's car, but the motive almost didn't matter. Up at the football field, shock leaped from face to face.

Art Motton had been one of the hardest hitters in Quips history, a 170-pound cornerback whose ferocity had been a legend for 30 years. The hit Rooster put on Belle Vernon tailback Marlon McIntyre—all 220 pounds of him laid out, unconscious—on the first play of the Aliquippa's 1980 playoff win was almost as devastating as the line Motton delivered walking away. "Call the ambulance," Rooster said. "He'll be here for a while." Motton had had his troubles—a crack addiction, since kicked, an unsteady marriage—but lately seemed to have found his footing. For the next week Zmijanac found himself fighting back tears.

It has been a particularly grueling year for the Quips. Not so much the football: Aliquippa finished 12--1 and lost the WPIAL final largely because it fumbled three times inside South Fayette's 20-yard line. Of its 45 players, a couple have a shot at a D-I scholarship and 35 to 40 will be back next fall. But last May former Aliquippa defensive end Kevin Johnson, father of the senior who had escaped with bullet holes in his pants leg in 2009, took six bullets and died in Beaver, police say, after he forced his way into the home of a former girlfriend. Then, a month before Motton's death, assistant chief Davis and volunteers called the Council of Men and Fathers found it necessary to patrol outside the home game against Beaver Falls, defusing any possible violence in retaliation for the August shooting death in Beaver Falls of Stephen Hardy Jr., 22, a law-abiding former Quips quarterback about to graduate from Robert Morris University with a degree in mechanical engineering.

There's no pattern. Kids who study hard and avoid trouble have been destroyed; kids once immersed in crime have grown into caring citizens. "Half of them make it, and half of them don't—and you never know which half it's going to be," says Zmijanac, who took over the Quips' football program in 1997. "It's joyful, and then it breaks your heart—all in the same day."

Zmijanac estimates that he loses a half dozen players to the street each year, and he has a long record of suspending stars. But the team has an open-door policy: "If he wants to come back, we'll always bring him in," McBride says. "No matter how many times they fail. Our job is not to give up on them."

That's why you'll hear Zmijanac call a kid like Willie Walker, former crack dealer, "wonderful." Because maybe, just maybe, Walker beat the spiderweb. He negotiated the final seven months of school without football, weathered the disappointment of 2005 Signing Day coming and going without one offer. A day later a coach from California (Pa.) University came to Aliquippa with a full scholarship for him. It wasn't until the fall of '06, after he'd moved to the campus 60 miles away, bought books and been brutally sandwiched by a pair of massive twins on his first collegiate snap, that Walker allowed himself to believe: I'm here. I finally made it.

Four years later Walker, a defensive lineman, led the Vulcans to the semifinals of the NCAA Division II tournament and was named to the AP's Little All-America first team. There were bumps: His girlfriend in Aliquippa had a baby his freshman year, and he wanted to be involved, but two of his cousins and an uncle were indicted in the roundup of Ali Dorsett's crew, and Willie's mom—stepping up at last—told him to stay at school, away from the trouble. She helped out with the baby in Aliquippa and brought her on game days to watch Willie play. Sometimes some of his former confederates would come up to cheer him on too. He intends to graduate. He still keeps the Red Baron immaculate.

This, of course, isn't a picture of conventional mores, but Aliquippa rarely allows for black-and-white assertions of right and wrong. The town is small, the lines blurred and ever shifting; it is, indeed, a web in which everyone knows or is related to everyone else. Ty Law grew up in the house once occupied by Sean Gilbert's mother. Willie Walker stayed good friends with Byron Wilson, even though it was his own kin who wanted to kill him. "And are you ready for this?" says Short, the Quips' defensive coordinator, one day in November. "Ali Dorsett is married to my daughter."

When he first learned about the relationship, years ago, Short tried warning the drug dealer off. The next time he saw the couple together, he punched Dorsett in the face. "But he's actually a pretty good guy," Short says, shrugging. "Just trying to get that easy money—and now he's going to pay for it."

People often describe the Aliquippa football program as an oasis in the desert. It's not that tidy. When asked if he'd like his two-year-old son, Jayden, who lives with his mother in Beaver Falls, to be a Quip, Revis hesitates, then says, "I don't want him in Aliquippa. If Aliquippa can pick their school up, and their coaches, and move somewhere else? Yes." But that's impossible. The team is the town, its pride and pain.

In July, Tony Dorsett returned for the funeral of his 61-year-old brother, Tyrone, a longtime drug user whom Tony could never pry away from Aliquippa. As he drove the broken streets, past the weeds creeping down out of wood structures as if to consume the place whole, past the monument to the workers of Jones & Laughlin Steel, he was hit by a force hard to understand. For the first time he told his wife, Janet, "Let's look at some houses." He wants to move back, maybe to Pittsburgh, maybe somewhere closer. "Every time I come back, the feeling's there, more and more," Dorsett said in September, steering his Chrysler 300 up Monaca Road. "It hurts me to see it, but this is Aliquippa. This is me. This is where I got everything."

He hits the gas going up Kennedy Boulevard, takes a right on Brodhead Road, crosses the border into Center Township and veers onto Chapel Road. His mother is up there now, waiting. Dementia has been a patient thief, but Myrtle still thrills to Tony's voice. He pulls into the driveway. She's sitting by the door and looks up blankly—face so youthful under the cottony hair—at the man by the black car now standing and waving. She wiggles her fingers back. "She's wondering who I am," Tony says. "She sits on the porch a lot these days."

Dorsett walks up the little path, shoulders squared, the usual roll gone out of his step. He leans down and hugs her, not too hard. The front door is wide open. Soon they'll have lunch, mother and son, in a dimmer light, survivors holding fast to all that's left of home.

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Solidarity and Hope: The Ongoing Saga To Close ‘School of the Assassins’

2010-11-29T13:23:00.001-06:00

Bearing Witness, Making Solidarity:

5000 Turn Out vs. Torture and Murder

At Fort Benning’s ‘School of the Americas’

By Carl Davidson

CCDS Field Organizer

The annual School of the Americas Watch vigil and procession are a unique and powerful event in America political life

Going on for 20 years now, the mobilization against the training of torturers and killers in Fort Benning, GA is part peace mobilization, part solidarity with Latin America event, part religious pageant, part public face of the Catholic left, and part gathering of the tribes for newly radicalized youth. The gathering draws thousands of people, including nuns and priests, veterans and labor organizers, along with other peace and solidarity activists. They all come for a two-day creative mixture of diverse events that leaves everyone politically transformed and emotionally peaked.

This year’s event was no different. Over the weekend of Nov 19-21, close to 5000 people took part is a series of colorful and dramatic actions. Thirty were arrested and held several days by police. Four of these were arrested after intentionally committing civil disobedience by climbing over a fence topped with barbed wire at the entrance to Fort Benning. Others were arrested for simply straying off a sidewalk in an attempt to march to downtown Columbus, GA. Local courts imposed heavy fines and maximum sentences.

Why is the U.S military training torturers and death squads? The answer is an old one: wealth, power and intimidated, non-union labor.

“For the past several decades, the US has allied with dictators in Latin America who helped that region’s small, elite group of wealthy landowners,” said SOAW founder Father Roy Bourgeois, a Louisiana native, who lives just outside the gates of the school in Fort Benning where he carries on his work.

“We got involved militarily with these countries because they were rich in natural resources, with coffee in Colombia, bananas in Central America, copper in Chile, petroleum in Venezuela and tin in Bolivia. With their militaries, the U.S. joined with them to exploit those natural resources and to pay workers $1 a day. There were no labor laws there,” Bourgeois noted. “We were like the new conquistadors.”

The high point of the weekend was the Sunday procession of thousands, each carrying a white cross with the name of a slain Latin American peasant, worker or child, and a number of priests and nuns, including Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, slain by those trained in Fort Benning’s SOA facility. Teams of singers mournfully sang the names and ages, and after each one, everyone raised their crosses, and answered with the classic salute of the living to those who have fallen in battle: “Presente!”

The procession lasted for hours as the column of mourners bearing crosses of the dead walked from the front of the stage up one side of the street to the police barriers and back down the other side of the street to the back of the stage. There they placed the crosses into the chain link fence blocking the entrance to the military base. Many mourners cried. Some raised their fists. Some knelt in prayer or meditation as the singing of the names and the chant of “Presente!” continued. Behind the stage a theatre group staged a scene of murdered members of a religious order, their bodies spattered with blood. Others snapped pictures or stood quietly.

As soon as a young man approached the fence military loudspeakers surrounding the entire area blared a recorded message asserting that the military base was a legal entity and operated under the U.S. Constitution and that crossing onto base property was a federal crime. Cheering and applause roared up as the young man climbed the fence, crossed the barbed wire top and dropped onto the grass. Before he could reach the second fence he was apprehended and cuffed by the military police. On the east side of the street up the hillside crowds of neighborhood residents stood silently in their yards observing the ceremony of remembrance.

Over its 59 years of existence, the SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering. It has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. Among those targeted are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into being refugees.

“I am a different person, and so is everyone else who confronted this evil,” said Randy Shannon from Beaver County, PA. “We walked in a procession singing out the name of each and every one of the thousands of Latin American men, women, and children, mostly working people and their spiritual brothers and sisters. It was a remembrance of their loss and our shame.”

Shannon is a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Together with Jim Skillman and Steve Wise from Atlanta, along with me, we comprised a team of four who worked the CCDS book and literature table, as well as taking part in many of the events. Randy made the long drive from Pennsylvania the day before, so we were early arrivals on Saturday, Nov. 20. We managed to get our van unloaded and table set up before 9am.

The School of the Americas Watch team had the area well organized. A strikingly decorated stage was constructed near the double barbed wire topped fences blocking the entrance to Fort Benning. The stage was at the foot of a 10-block-long section of a street that was had been blocked off by police. The wide corridor with tall loudspeakers stationed every few blocks, provided excellent acoustics. Homes of local residents were on one side of the corridor, and many had food concessions on their lawns. On the other side of the street was a chain link fence, against which a long line of booths for political groups and vendors were arrayed. On the other side of the chain link fence was a grassy area patrolled by military and local police.

Before long, the buses start arriving. They came from across the South and the Midwest, up to Minnesota, down to Florida, and out to Nebraska. A good number were from small Catholic colleges and universities, and loads of students, along with the nuns, monks and priests who taught them, unloaded with smiles and excitement at being there.

"As an activist since the 1960s,” said Atlanta’s Jim Skillman, “I find it intoxicating to be in the midst of so many justice-minded young people." A Vietnam veteran, Skillman had joined SDS at Georgia State after leaving the army in 1967, and has been a dedicated labor, peace and human rights organizer ever since.

Other veterans started showing up in batches. They gathered around the ‘Courage to Resist’ table, a group of today’s Iraq and Afghan vets. They were featuring a display defending Private Bradley Manning, facing 50 years in prison for being a whistleblower leaking information about war crimes in Iraq.

A variety of religious forces also began arrives. A group of Presbyterians unfurled a banner. A group of Buddhist monks of Nipponzan Myohoji, Atlanta Dojo walked more than 100 miles as a walking prayer to ‘Close the SOA.’ They averaged 15 miles per day, staying in churches or supporters' homes. .

Our CCDS table quickly became very busy. We came up with the successful idea of making a thousand small water-applicable ‘No to SOA’ tattoos, the letters SOA with a red circle and slash. ‘Get a free tattoo! Just sign up with your email for our CCDS newsletter!’ We were surrounded by eager signers for the entire two days. Naturally, some of the taboo applications turned into longer discussions and book purchases. It was a lively time well spent.

A far larger feature of the weekend than activity at the tables, however, was an ongoing tension shaping up with the police, military security and the FBI, who are all present in force. The strategy of the SOA and local authorities is apparently to find every possible minor transgression to crack down hard on participants, to impose quick and severe penalties for planned civil disobedience, and where no problems exists, to use undercover agent provocateurs to create division and trouble.

The Columbus city police headed the security preparations this year, assisted by the Muscogee County sheriff’s and marshal’s offices, Fort Benning’s own military police force, and a number of undercover agents disguised as protestors.

The agent provocateurs were focused on a planned march to take the SOA Watch protest into downtown Columbus on Saturday afternoon. At a meeting the night before, three individuals kept egging people into the streets. When challenged as to who they were, they then faded away. The next day when the march did take place, a number of the crowd stepped off the sidewalk and into the street at one point. According to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer:

“Lauren Stinson, an undercover agent with the Metro Narcotics Task Force, testified Sunday that she participated in two meetings with SOA Watch protesters as they planned to step onto Victory Drive Saturday afternoon. All but one of the 22 arrested were found guilty, an SOA Watch organizer said. Stinson followed the group of about 12 people into the southbound lane around 4:45 p.m., blocking traffic and being rounded up with the others on charges including obstruction of a highway and unlawful assembly. Stinson was put in the back of a patrol car and taken to the Muscogee County Jail, but wasn’t arrested. She testified before Columbus Recorder’s Court Judge Michael Cielinski in some of the 22 cases the judge heard Sunday afternoon.”

When defense attorneys tried to question Agent Stinson on the stand to learn more about her team’s operation, the judge ruled that she didn’t have to answer, and she didn’t. For the minor incursion of stepping into the street, each protestor was hit with $5000 in bail and six month jail terms.

“Many of these tactics are not new,” said Jake Olzen of the SOA Watch team. “What is new, however, is the intensity, preparation, and specific targeting used by law enforcement authorities to discredit the movement’s legitimacy through the use of scare tactics and deterrence. For example, the Columbus Police department had photographs and lists of members of the SOA Watch Legal Collective and were specifically targeting these individuals because of their capacity as organizers and their ability to offer legal support. Charity Ryerson, a former SOA Prisoner of Conscience and Georgetown University law student, was specifically sought out and arrested for her role as an organizer.”

Sunday morning began with a march of about 100 veterans, followed by music from the stage, mixed with appeals for bail money for those arrested the day before.

One visitor to our table on Sunday morning was Bob King, the newly elected president of the United Auto Workers. Randy talked to him about the jobs crisis, and sold him our pamphlet on full employment. King has been at the SOA Watch protest many times, and has led a U.S. trade union delegation to El Salvador. This year he was a featured speaker, and took part in the procession with his daughter.

“The SOA has a terrible history,” said King from the stage. “Its graduates were involved in some of the worst human rights abuses in South and Central America including the assassination of Archbishop Romero and six Jesuits priests at the University of Central America in San Salvador. Those of us who have democratic rights must be a voice for those less fortunate who do not have a voice because of the terrorism they face."

A speaker from Resistencia in Honduras also detailed some of the atrocities carried out by the Micheletti and Lobo regimes since the June 28 coup. The new Wikileaks exposes may well reveal a less-than-neutral hand by the Obama administration.

Father Roy Bourgeois, when he spoke from the stage, tied the arrests and undercover police efforts over the weekend to the wider efforts by the FBI to target antiwar and solidarity activists with grand jury subpoenas under the guise of ‘fighting terrorism.’

“If the FBI is interested in investigating terrorism,” said Father Bourgeois, “they should come here to Columbus, Georgia, home of Ft. Benning, where there is the School of the Americas. This really is a well known terrorist training camp, and if we want to get serious about talking about terrorism and closing down terrorist training camps, I would highly recommend that the FBI come right in their backyard….I want to offer my support, as so many of us want to, to our brothers and sisters in the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. What has happened to them can happen to anyone, anyone that is a critic of U.S. foreign policy.”

As the speeches concluded and the procession was underway, the planned civil disobedience of climbing the barbed-wire fence into Ft. Benning got underway. This year four people took that step. Two of them, Louie Vitale, OFM, who crossed the line for the fourth time, and David Omondi, of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker who crossed the line for the first time, pleaded ‘no contest’ and were immediately convicted in federal court. They each received a six month prison sentence from U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Hyles. Nancy Smith and Chris Spicer, the two others who crossed over the fence, will go to trial January 5, 2011.

A number of reports noted that this year’s SOAW effort was smaller than the peak of 20,000 years back. Part of the reason was that this year's efforts were divided between those who came to Ft Benning, and others who had lobbied Congress earlier this summer. In any case, given the high spirits and determination of those who came this year, the struggle will be ongoing.

Randy Shannon summed it up: “Seeing UAW’s Bob King here and hearing his militant speech pledging labor's solidarity with the peace community and Latin America, all working to close this abomination—that gives me hope. Likewise, the thousands of students from small Catholic colleges across the country standing up against murder and torture--that gives me hope as well.”

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair and field organizer for the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and a webmaster for Beaver County Peace Links. If you like this article, make use of this PayPal button on the right above to help with the expenses of producing it.]

Pittsburgh Rally Defends Clean Water, Opposes Natural Gas ‘Fracking’

2010-11-07T14:51:00.001-06:00

Photos by Bill Allen

Western PA Activists

Deliver ‘Street Heat’ vs.

Marcellus Shale ‘Frackers’

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

“No Fracking Way! No Fracking Way!” was the chant resounding off the steel, granite and glass walls in downtown Pittsburgh on the sunny afternoon on Nov. 3, as nearly 500 environmental activists headed for the David Lawrence Convention Center. Their target was a gathering of 2000 natural gas drillers being addressed by Karl Rove, advisor to former President George W Bush.

Inside, the industry executives were meeting to discuss the "future" of hydro-fracking gas drilling and planning to use heavy explosives to blast apart the 4000-foot-deep Marcellus Shale formation to get the natural gas beneath.

"Only a dying soul," said Stephen Cleghorn, "can contemplate the destruction of life that they're discussing in that building right now!" Cleghorn is Reynoldsville, PA farmer, and his views reflected those of many semi-rural residents of Pennsylvania and other nearby states, where water was polluted and cattle died.

“They promise people all sorts of money,” said Bob Schmetzer, “but what’s your home worth if you have bad water? Nothing!” Schmetzer, carrying a placard demanding ‘prosecute the polluters,’ is the council president of South Heights in Beaver County, and the vice president of the 4^th CD Progressive Democrats of America.

The Marcellus Shale is a geological formation underlying Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and West Virginia. It contains vast amounts of natural gas, recently made accessible by the new technology of ‘hydraulic fracking.’ The method involves deep drilling, then pumping large amounts of water laced with toxic chemicals down to the shale, where it explodes. The released gas is then brought to the surface, along with most of the water, now in the form of toxic brine

Under optimum conditions and with strict regulation and safeguards, ‘fracking’ can produce gas, with relative safety to workers and the environment. Even this is disputed by many who claim the longer term effects have yet to be measured, that optimum conditions are rarely met, and that greed often trumps safety regulations in the field.

The recently broadcast documentary film ‘Gasland’, moreover, has exposed enough cases of polluted waterways, gas flames coming of household water spigots, outbreaks of cancers and dead farm animals to have spurred wide concern. The protest at the natural gas drillers meeting at the convention center was only the tip of the iceberg of the new emerging social movement brought together Nov. 3 by MarcellusProtest.org, a network of several dozen groups focused on the issue.

Josh Fox, maker of the film Gasland, spoke at the rally at the convention center once the march through the streets had concluded. He was introduced by Mel Packer of the Green Party, and got huge cheers from the crowd as he told the story of a father in a hydro-fracking region whose two sons got frequent nose bleeds from hydro-fracking-associated toxins. "We are here for that family!" said Fox, as he then took his mobile phone from the podium and called Governor-elect Tom Corbett, a gas industry favorite, Fox told the governor that “we, the people of Pennsylvania, joined by our allies, demand an end to hydro-fracking gas drilling!” He then held his phone out to the crowd, who resumed chanting, "No Fracking Way!"

Several musicians took the stage, including Mike Stout, writer and performer of ‘The Tale of Marcellus shale,’ and Justin Sane of the punk band ‘Anti-Flag.’ Sane shared a special song he wrote for the occasion entitled, "Gasland Terror," in which he equated the gas industry with terrorists bombing the homeland.

City Councilman Doug Shields and State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, also took part in the protest. "I'm glad to see everyone come out," Shields said, who has been leading effort against drilling within the city limits. "It really comes down to the people and what they're ready to tolerate. And it appears some people are not willing to tolerate drilling in the city." Residents from West Virginia, Western Maryland, and New York sent small delegations as well.

Report Back: Huge Rally in DC for Jobs, Justice, Education and Peace

2010-10-07T12:02:00.001-05:00

‘One Nation’ March Shows the Tough Fight

Ahead for the Emerging Progressive Majority

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

If you wanted to know what a dynamic and emerging progressive majority of Americans looked like, the place to be was the National Mall at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC on the beautiful and sunny Saturday afternoon of Oct. 2, 2010.

It was a sight to behold. Pulled together by the ‘One Nation Working Together’ coalition of some 400 groups, an estimated 175,000 people filled the area. They were the country’s trade unions, civil rights, women’s rights, and community organizations, peace and justice groups, and many more. The focus was jobs, justice and education, with sizable contingents against the wars as well.

“I hope they look at the mall today,” stated the Rev. Al Sharpton from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, referring to the GOP and the Tea Party right, “because this is what America looks like, not just one color or one gender.”

A rainbow of nationalities, men and women, young and old, and with a solid core from all sectors of the working class filled the area. The crowd’s mood was upbeat and militant, and they let it be known with a range of voices, from old-fashioned liberals to the socialist left, that they were fed up with the right wing assaults from Tea Party, the GOP neoliberals and the Blue Dog Democrats going along with them.

“This gathering is a wakeup call for the American people,” declared Harry Belafonte, in one of the strongest and most critical speeches of the day. “"Do we really believe that sending 100,000 troops to kill innocent men and women in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes any sense?” he continued, clearly and sharply criticizing Obama’s concession to the war machine. The actor-singer went on to attack the “crippling poison of racism” and "the undermining of the Constitution and the systematic attack on our most inalienable rights….At the heart of this danger is the Tea Party which is coming close to achieving its villainous ends. On November 2, in the millions, we must overburden our voting booths, and vote against those who would have us become a totalitarian state."

I arrived at the mall early, before 9am, along with Randy Shannon from Beaver County in Western PA. We drove to D.C. to participate in a conference of political economists on Jobs and the Economy at Howard University on Friday. But now our task was to get as close as possible to the mall, where we were assigned a space for a literature table. We lucked out. There was one legal spot left only 50 yards from our spot, so I snatched it.

Teams from other groups were arriving to do the same. Leslie Cagan and Mike McPhearson from United for Peace and Justice and Vets for Peace stopped to greet us.

“We’re just around the bend,” said Leslie. “If anyone needs a sign linking the war and jobs, send them over. We have plenty.” Next to stop was Aaron Hughes of Iraq Vets Against the War. “Greetings, Brother!” he said, and handed me a stack of handouts explaining their new campaign to get adequate benefits for returning soldiers with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. I put them on the table, along with an array of political books and literature from the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Our most important item for the day was our new booklet making the case for full employment as the progressive path out of the crisis.

Randy took off to meet incoming buses from our area. Among the thousands arriving from the East Coast, South and Midwest, there were four from Beaver County—organized by a coalition of the United Steel Workers, the Beaver-Lawrence County Labor Council, the Beaver County NAACP, the Minority Coalition, SEIU, and our 4^th CD Progressive Democrats of America. The USW had other buses and vans from other counties near us, and they, together with local civil rights groups, were fully engaged in building this event. Most important, they were also working to build new jobs coalitions to fight at the county level for new manufacturing startups. The Oct 2 rally was only one part of a wider and ongoing effort.

As I put the finishing touches on our book display, the busloads started pouring in. A huge throng of several hundred SEIU1199 healthcare workers from the Boston area, mainly Puerto Rican and African American, surges by. “Comrade Carl!” says Rafael Pizzaro, an old friend and an SEIU organizer, as he came over to give me a hug. “It’s great to see the CCDS table here!” Pizarro was one of the early Co-Chairs of CCDS; he said he’ll stop back later, and he did. I got $2 from him for the jobs booklet.

SEIU1199 was one of the initiators of today’s events, together with the NAACP and La Raza. It has largely through their prodding, along with the USW, that the national AFL-CIO came on board. But you could clearly see the clusters of SEIU locals everywhere in the crowd, with their distinctive purple T-shirts. Everyone was color-coded—red for the communications workers, sky blue for the NEA teachers, navy blue for the steelworkers, yellow for the NAACP, and so on.

The next surge was hundreds of African American youth from community colleges in the DC area, full of excitement, carrying banners demanding jobs and funding for schools. A few stopped to talk, eager for things to read. I got six of them to sign up for our email newsletter.

By this time I can hear the sound kick in from the main stage. Several bands, both rock and hip-hop, are warming up the growing crowd. But I’m far enough back that it’s not overwhelming. Besides, the messages were on target:

“Most of my childhood friends died over some dumb stuff, it’s like we all on some slum stuff, whatever happened to that we shall overcome stuff?” rapped Black Ice, a poet getting his politics out. “What’s a young boy to do when he want to do right but there’s a lock on the right door? When he has the heart of a soldier and the aggression of a prize fighter but no one’s taught him what to fight for?”

When a group of about 20 young people carrying signs from one of the new Students for a Democratic Society chapters passed by, one of them looked at me and the table, then at me again, comes over and said, “Hi, you’re Carl. I’m one of your Facebook friends--nice to meet you in person!” We both get a laugh out of this, and he picked up some literature. But I met five or six more ‘Facebook friends’ the same way throughout the day. “Facebook is cool,” I’d always say. “But to do serious organizing, you still have to talk with people face-to-face.”

One middle-aged union guy came up, wanting to learn about socialism. “Well, you can look at our ‘Goals and Principles’ statement, it’s only a buck,” I said. “But if you really want to get into it, read this book, ‘After Capitalism,’ by David Schweickart. It goes for $20, but it’s the best single thing on the topic for today’s times.” He bought both, signed the email list, and moved on. Now if I could multiply that by a hundred, it would make my day.

Another older guy in military fatigues stops and picks up a book on Afghanistan. We talked some about the war, then I asked him where he was stationed. “I was at the Pentagon,” he says, “but I just retired. I was finally able to get disability when they made some changes about PTSD.” I handed him one of the cards Aaron Hughes left, and said ‘You need to go talk with the Iraq Vets against the War, they have a new campaign on PTSD,” and pointed out their table location. He headed for it.

Around 1pm I got some relief. Janet Tucker, the CCDS national coordinator, who’s a retired nurse from Kentucky, arrived to help with the table. I decided to move around, and take stock of the event.

Standing at the World War Two Memorial at the rear of the mall, I could see that the entire area on both sides of the reflecting pond is completely filled, even under the trees, all the way from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But looking back at the Washington Monument, I could see large groups still arriving, meaning that buses are still unloading. Whatever the final count, I guessed it was somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000, and that made it a success.

The Code Pink area was a visual treat, as always, and the variety of signs and banners was also remarkable. Most stuck, more or less, to the official themes of jobs, justice and education, but a good number targeted the wars. One banner was especially interesting:

“Money for Jobs, not for War or Sanctions against Iran!,” it read, and was carried by members of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran. One of them, Phil Wilayto, later wrote up his experiences with it:

“I was closely watching the faces of the people passing by our banner,” said Wilayto, “remembering the times years ago when I would attend a union rally with a banner about Vietnam, or the Middle East, or Central America or some other area of the world where the U.S. rulers were sending our young people to fight for Wall Street's profits. Some of those encounters had been painful. Literally.”

“Today was very, very different. One big burly white guy, an auto worker, stopped and stared at the banner, then pulled out his camera and took our picture. Walking away, he smiled and gave us the thumbs-up sign. Others waved and smiled. Not one person showed any hostility.”

The large outdoor TV screens along the mall helped a lot for those listening to the speeches. There were two overlapping but distinct messages coming from the platform. One was that everyone needed to get out the vote in November against the GOP. In that sense, this was a rally to expand and fire up the voters in the Democratic base. The other was to push Congress and the White House on jobs, immigrant rights and peace, no matter which party held the balance of power.

After harshly denouncing the ‘moneyed powers’ on the right, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka appealed to both union workers and progressive groups for broad unity: “Promise you won’t let anyone quiet us or turn us against each other. Promise to make your voices heard for jobs, justice, and education today — and on Election Day,” he declared. “Our best days are ahead, not behind us, and we will fight for them, and we won’t let anyone stand in our way.”

Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen spanned both messages: "In the past 47 years, workers' rights have been all but crushed," he said. "Today, only one in 15 workers has bargaining rights. The U.S. is at the bottom of the global economy in protecting the rights of workers to organize and negotiate. We know that a minority in the U.S. Senate has prevented even discussion of 400 bills passed by the House of Representatives, including the Employee Free Choice Act." This raised a sore point labor has with the Democrats and Obama, the foot-dragging on EFCA. But Cohen concluded,

"We will build one nation together. We can make progressive change on November 2. We can work for democracy in the U.S. Senate."

Walking back to our table, I saw the Progressive Democrats of America table, with their head guy, Tim Carpenter, sitting under a tree. He wants to know what happened at the Howard University conference on political economy. “It looks like we’ll have a new full employment bill out of Conyers office by January. They want help organizing town meetings on it all around the country.” “Good!” he replied, “That’s right up our alley. It’ll fit well together with the ‘Medicare for All’ work. And it will help us grow with the unions.”

I also ran into a large group of workers in UAW jackets. “Where are you from?” I asked. ‘Saginaw, Michigan,” one replied. “That’s a long, tough bus ride,” I said. “Yes, but the spirit here makes it all worthwhile,’ he answered, as they moved on.

It summed up the day for me. Back at the table, about a dozen people from one of our Beaver County buses stopped by. There’s a retired IBEW electrician and former mayor of a small borough, three social workers, one Vietnam vet who works on the Ohio River locks and dams, a home day care provider, among others They all picked up stuff to read for the ride back.

By 5pm, it’s time to pack up. Just as I’m placing books in boxes, Medea Benjamin from Code Pink stops by on a bicycle. “What’s Code Pink up to next?” I asked? “Israel, Palestine and Gaza,” she replied. I let her know about our Beaver County Peace Links project to put a billboard on Ohio River Boulevard demanding a cutoff of military funding to Israel. She moved on, and in 15 minutes or so, we have the truck loaded, and were on the highway before six.

There’s always a point at the close of these big mobilizations when I take a critical look at whether it was worth it. This one definitely was a step forward. Cindy Grundy, one of our Peace Links stalwarts, noted: “On the ride back, when we stopped in Breezewood, PA, I felt a great sense of solidarity with other people on other busses. There were nods and eye contacts with so many strangers who were now my brothers and sisters. I didn't feel this to this degree the last time we went to DC.”

I also heard from Steffi Domike from the USW staff, who served as a van driver for 10 retired steelworkers living near Pittsburgh. “This group was very excited about the event,” she concluded. “They stayed to the very end, way after the speakers were done and everyone else was rushing to the doors. These guys had retired in the 1980s, having worked from 20-50 years for Jones &Laughlin Steel; many of them had worked their last years up at the Aliquippa mill after the Pittsburgh mills had closed down. They were excited to see such a big community coming together, but they also were wondering if anyone with the needed resources would actually come to Beaver County to help back new manufacturing endeavors.”

Time would tell, but in any case, we’d have to fight for it. But given the diverse forces brought together locally in building this rally, we had a decent shot at it. That was the point of it all.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, and a local Beaver County, PA member of Steelworkers Associates. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button on Keep On Keepin' On.]

Mondragon and the Transition to a Third Wave Future

2010-09-17T19:23:00.001-05:00

Mondragon Diaries: Day Five

Need, Trust, Realism and Well-Chosen Allies

“The world has not been given to us simply to contemplate it, but to transform it. And this transformation is accomplished not only with our manual work, but first with ideas and action plans.”

--Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, founder of the Mondragon Coops

By Carl Davidson

Keep On, Keepin' On

Today the Mondragon valley is misty and grey, with small clouds drifting between the mountain peaks. It's somewhat otherworldly, I think to myself on the bus ride up the slopes, almost like a scene from “the Lord of the Rings.”

Today is also our last day, and we're full of mixed feelings. Melancholy that our week-long seminar is coming to a close and that the news friends we've made will scatter. But there's also excitement that we'll soon be back home and able to share it all with our communities.

Our first stop is another component allied with Mongragon University called SAIOLAN. It's an incubator project for helping to launch new coops and high-tech businesses.

We're greeted in a classroom by a young woman from Mexico, Isabel Uriberen Tesia, who is also our presenter. She wastes no time bringing up her powerpoint on the screen and getting into the topic.

“Our aim is generating employment, creating new jobs,” she says. “our purpose is to do this by developing new business projects and training new entrepreneurs.”

An few years back, as the economic crisis was developing, nearly 60 percent of the students graduating in the Basque Country were having a hard time finding employment. The government, the MCC coops and other businesses, as well as the students themselves, all turned to SAIOLAN to help launch new enterprises that could put young people to work.

“There are five levels in the training of entrepreneurs,” Isabel explained. “First is motivation. Second is finding opportunities. Third is defining a suitable project for the student, in tune with his or her interests and ideas. Once you get past these three, the next two, planning the startup and launching what you have developed, also involves finding resources, such as grants and loans, that can get the new businesses operating.”

What kind of businesses were being started? One involved processing plants for cleaning waste water in a new and better way, another was called 'micro-manufacturing,' producing very small components accurately, quite a few were new software products. One from FAGOR, the large home appliance worker-cooperative, involved finding new uses for stainless steel, including exterior products, like one-piece transit stop structures.

Some of our group were concerned that many of the new startups were simply new businesses rather than also coops. This was 80 percent, or 138 out of 172 new small enterprises over the last few years, with 2281 new employees. SAIOLAN didn't seem worried. “It's their choice,” was the explanation. “Some of them will later transform into coops, and in any case, it's good to create new employment for our entire Basque community, not just the minority in cooperatives.”

We got deeper into the subject in our next session. It was further up the mountainside at Otlalora, and we had as our resource person one of the senior MCC leaders, the head of the “Innovation Group', who had been with Mondragon for 48 years.

After laying out some of the basic features of innovation—infrastructure, science, technology, strategic planning—he made it much more real by talking about a fundamental conflict facing all manufacturing businesses, not just MCC. “Take FAGOR, our home appliance manufacturing coop. It's a mature business. We can continue to compete by making some additional improvements in quality, or cutting our profit margins. But in the end, it's going to be very hard to compete with similar products produced in Asia. We should keep at it as long as we can operate in the black and our worker-owners can maintain their standards, but where, really, is our new growth potential?

He named three broad areas—renewable energy, health and eldercare, and information technology. I got even more interesting to me as he became more specific about new product lines—fuel cells, wind turbines, photovoltaics, embedded software, wireless, ambient intelligence, and bioprocessing in supercomputers. He was presenting the shift from second wave manufacturing to the high-design and high-touch products of a third wave future in a knowledge economy, and he had 200 people working full time on coming up with new ideas and plans.

I asked a question. “Have you had any inquiries from those countries trying to define a new 21^st century socialism, in whatever way, such as Venezuela, Cuba, China, Vietnam or even South Africa, on how they might use Mondragon's ideas and services? Do you thing you have something to offer here?”

“Yes and No,” was the cautious answer. “We get queries from all of them. We've been to China and other places, and there is some genuine interest, to a point. But since spreading knowledge and worker's power at the workplace also often runs against the clinging to control by bureaucrats, socialist or otherwise., the interest often comes to a dead end. But it's not always the case, and we keep working on doing what we can.”

He went on to discuss the problems of cultural differences. “We Basques are often risk-adverse when it comes to business, unlike Americans. We other avoid risks when we shouldn't. On another hand, when we talk with Mexican workers about owning the firms we start there for themselves, and they elected the leadership, they simply don't believe us. They want to know where the trick is hidden, since businesses are always owned by bosses, never by workers. There is no trust.”

So what are the basic things need to start worker-cooperatives in our countries, asked one of our group?

“First the workers themselves must FEEL THE NEED. Without that, it's hard to get anywhere. Second there must be a culture of TRUST, since you are sharing money, sharing risks, and supporting new leaders. Third, is to BE REALISTIC. You need successes, especially in the beginning. To many early mistakes, and you are finished. Finally you need friends and collaborators, but pick them carefully!”

This had us inspired and buzzing all through lunch, another amazing sampling of Basque cuisine. I had steamed artichokes with a delicious sauce and braised pork, finished off with dark strong coffee and ice cream with slivers of dark chocolate.

The afternoon session featured a presentation of one of the students in MUNDUKIDE, a small overseas assistance program with the people of Mozambique, Brazil, Cuba and a few other countries. The discussion was largely about microloans, which weren't working very well, and road-building, whic was rather successful.

Our final session was with Fred Freundlich, the American professor, who was a veteran of the movements against plant closings in the U.S. A few decades back, who now was a faculty member at Mondragon University. Since he understood both our realities and those at MCC, he could handle any outstanding questions.

There were a lot of them. The first was how much was MCC's success a result of factors unique to the Basque Country. “It's somewhat important, but not decisive,” Fred answered. “One very important . factor was it started at just the right time. If it had started 10 years earlier, conditions may have been too harsh. But the first coops were launched at a time when people really needed a lot of things, and finally had a little savings to spent. Many businesses grew in this period. If it started 10 years later, MCC may have had much stronger competition, and may not have gotten off the ground so well.”

I asked what was the response of the socialist and communist groups in the Basque County and Spain to MCC? “Mixed and confused,” was the answer. Some thought it utopian. Others dismissed it as a diversion, as making workers into capitalists. But they still kept sending delegations for visits, and going away impressed. The Basque left was also fragmented over violence, when ETA, the Basque armed resistance group, assassinated a former leader of one of the MCC coops who was also a socialist official.

After a thoughtful pause, Fred made a point that applied to the U.S. Left as well. “There's two trends in the left,” he explained. “Those who think long and hard about business and what to do with it. And those who mainly like to discuss left ideas.” The implication was that they most often didn't overlap, even if it was wise to do so, both tactically and strategically.

Mikel brought the session to and end by asking us all for our new ideas and projects on how we might implement what we had learned. There were all sorts of plans in the works, from networking food coops, to producing new green products, to making a new film about Mondragon for a U.S audience. We had clearly all had our imaginations fired up by the experience. Mikel gave us each a certificate for completing a 40-hour study seminar, which was a lovely touch. But the truth was that most of us would need no reminder. What we had learned here had changed us, and we would be looking at people and projects in new ways for some time to come.

Mondragon’s ‘Second Degree’ Coops Help Weather Today’s Crises

2010-09-16T20:00:00.001-05:00

Mondragon Diaries: Day Four

Worker Coops, Worker Banks, Worker Skills

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On

Most new small businesses fail. That's a fact, whether they are in the Basque Country or in the U.S. Or anywhere else, Yet the Mondragon Coops, which all started as small worker-owned businesses, have hardly ever failed. Why? The key is in Father Jose Maria Arizmendi's original founding conception of cooperatives as the interlocking of school, factory and credit union.

This was the thought I was rolling over in my mind as our bus again climbed the slopes on the Arrasate-Mondragon valley, this morning with grey skies and a light drizzle. We were headed for an administrative office of Caja Laboral, the worker-owned banking network of the MCC Coops. The ride wasn't far, and we were soon whisked into a small auditorium. Our mentor, Mikel, introduced the staff member who would introduce us to the world of banking, and Mondragon's modification of one corner of that reality.

Some people might question why workers for social change would want to be involved with banks at all. But certain kinds of credit and finance are important components of any society—capitalist, socialist or somewhere in between. Father's Arizmendi's conclusion tha two of the many reasons cooperative movements fail in the past was the lack of reliable credit and the lack of innovation and new ideas. Hence the reason he started with a school, but was soon to add a small credit union formed from the small deposits of his parishioners and their neighbors. To start a factory, you had to borrow some money, and borrowing the money of people close to you at lost cost was the best way to go.

By 1959, the small credit union had grown and transformed into Caja Laboral. Today it is one of the major banks in Spain, with assets of 21 billion euros and 1.5 billion in equity. It has 18.6 billion in customer deposits, outset by 16.4 billion in credit loans. It has 1,2 million clients, only 120 of which are the MCC coops. It has 2000 people working for it, who are worker-owners. Actually, the bank is owned 55% by the MCC coops and 45% by the staff workers. But the rule they have adopted is that the factory coops pick eight of the board member, while the staff worker elect four. Since Caja Laboral, is a coop of coops, it is what MCC calls a 'second degree' coop. Other second degree coops are their schools, medical clinics and insurance agencies.

“We are rated the best bank in Spain in customer satisfaction,” says our presenter. “One reason is that we are worker-owners ourselves, and not socially distance from them. We work closely with our clients. We are prudent and conservative.

Mikel give a wry laugh from the back of the room, and interjects: “Except for the Lehman Brothers fiasco....” It turns out Caja Laboral had taken a hit of 160 million euros it had tied up in Lehman Brothers securities when the Wall Street investment bank collapsed at the beginning of the financial crisis two years back. Not only had MCC's bank had been hurt, every bank and government in Europe felt the pain, and some were still struggling.

“Yes,” said our presenter. “But we followed our rule of transparency. You and everyone else knew it the same day, and we announced it to the press the next morning.”

This opened up a discussion among all of us on the proper role of banking and credit unions, including cooperative ones. It's not a subject progressive activists are all that familiar with, but we had it anyway. First it was clear that Caja Laboral's big sin in the Lehman Brothers case was believing in the validity of the AAA ratings of its securities, set by U.S. Government agencies, which turned out to be a sham. Second, it was also clear from the numbers presented that Caja Laboral was really something on the order of a strong and relatively cash-rich savings and loan operation and consumer services bank. Its managers didn't get rich, but had incomes within the same narrow and modest salary spread as all MCC coop members. Its profits were plowed back in to building new coops. It was not in the same league as the giant Wall Street speculators in derivatives, with their billion dollar bonuses, who were trying to gain wealth not by creating new wealth, but by pure gambling with other people's money.

Most of us concluded that Caja Laboral was a sound and necessary part of MCC and its growth, but the arguments continued out the door and on the bus ride further up the mountainside to our next talk at the Otalora conference center.

Here we had a new topic, the training of governing boards of the coops. It did no good to elect workers to coop governing boards, and then just let them sink or swim. A skills transfer and training pro gram was in order.

Our presenter was Juan Ignacio Aitpunea. He was a well-seasoned and tough-minded older Basque worker with strong cooperative values in his heart.

“We use a Basque word, ORDEZKARI, for our program,” he started off. “It means 'representative,' because that's the task of the boards, to represent the workers. Our boards are elected to four-year terms, but we stagger them. Every two years, only 50% change, but with 120 coops, that means we have about 1000 new board members to train every two years.

“We do it in steps. In the first six months, we get the new people to do self-evaluations, to find out their competencies, or the lack of them, so we know what to stress over the next year or so.

What were the skills needed? “First,” Juan continued, “you have to konw the basics, the laws on cooperatives and the functions of coop leaders. Second, you need common skills—teamwork, how to communicate, how to lead, how to make timely decisions. Third, you have to know how to design and work through a followup plan.

Juan went into more detail on this, but our crew had other questions: how were people nominated, and what was involved in running?

First, if there are two vacancies, there must be at least three candidate, he explained. Any worker could volunteer to run, but he or she had to get signatures of 10% of the workforce. Next, the workplace's social council, which serves some of the functions of a trade union, could suggest a candidate. Finally the old board could name one new candidate itself. But an initial vote was taken for each of the final minimum three candidates to get a 50% minimum, then the vote was held to determine the final two.

“We need this to make sure board members have a wide respect throughout the workplace,” Juan added. “This is especially important in hard times, like now, when hard decisions often have to made. Leading is not just about friendship, or making friends. This is not mainly a place for that. But it is a great school where you can learn what it means to be responsible. You may also make a few new friends. In fact, in tough times, that's when you can make the best and truest friends .”

Juan also stressed the need for diversity and the need to bring forward younger leaders. “When you get old like me, you get too used to having your own way. A time comes when you need to let new people in, but still find other ways to make a contribution.”

Our last stop of the day was Mondragon University. It was formed as a second degree coop by joining the engineering school, the business studies program, and the humanities and pedagogy teaching coop. It currently has about 3600 full time students. Tuition is about five thousand euros a year, considered moderate for a European university. Most of the students are from middle-income families in the area or from the workers in the coops.

Fred Freundlich was our presenter, an American who had been in the coop movement in the U.S. In the 1980s, but had lived in the Basque County for a good number of years. He gave frank and critical answers to our questions.

I raised my hand, and asked: “Suppose I'm a young worker in one of the local industrial coops, and I decide I want to become part of the management. How does MU help me? Do they?”

The short answer was 'Yes.' But Fred added that management usually required a college degree, and you didn't necessarily need to get it from MU. If you had a good resume and vita from elesewhere, You'd still be considered. On the other hand, if your coop saw that you were eager to gain new skills, they would give you a good deal of support, including financial, and going through MU for your degree would be a plus.”

Others raised the general question of activism among youth. “Frankly, Basque youth aren't all that active inside the coops. They're into third world global justice issues, environmentalism in general, and Basque nationalism. About the coop managers, I'd say a strong minority have solid cooperative values at heart, another minority pays lip service to them, and the rest are somewhere in between. We clearly need a new surge of activism to spread cooperativism beyond the factories, but my guess is only about 30 percent of the workers are activists on the matter. You really need to talk more with Mikel, who's really a leader on this topic”

Mikel went up front and drew us a wave-like graph, showing an initial surge in the early MCC decades, then a leveling off, then a dip at the beginning of the crisis, and now a small upward turn.

“This is the beginning of a rich discussion, how we need to redefine and reinvent ourselves for the 21^st century. But the bus is waiting to take us to dinner in San Sebastian. We can return to it tomorrow.”

Tools for Shaping the Organizations of the Future

2010-09-15T18:27:00.001-05:00

Mondragon Diaries: Day Three

Visions of the Future, Ties to the Past

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On

This morning our bus again takes us far up the winding mountain road to the 15^th Century blockhouse fortress now transformed into a conference center. I've since found out it's called Otalora, after an old noble family who owned the whole area reaching back 600 years. In those days, in was an armed way station on a trade route between the center of Spain and the sea, and the Otalora family extracted heavy taxes on the traffic going both ways.

This led to wars among the noble families over these spoils, and at one point the tall armed tower on one end of the building was destroyed by a rival. In the years that followed, to bring a degree of stability, all the the armed towers are lopped off on other castles in the area. This imagery brought smiles to the faces of the women in our group, who caught the symbolic significance immediately, even if the men took a moment or two to catch on with the laughter.

In any case, Otalora is now owned by Caja Laboral, the worker-owned credit union of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, which operates on the scale of a major bank with outlets across the country, in addition to serving as a source of finance to all the MCC coops, who dominate its governing council. The other voice is a bloc of representatives from the Caja Laboral staff workers themselves. A few farmers use the land for dairy cows and sheep, but otherwise, the whole area looks like a well-tended national park.

After the Otalora story, our more serious topic this morning is the wider range of the cooperative movement, both in the Basque Country and Spain. Mikel introduces Lorea Soldevilla, a young worker-owner from KONFEKOOP, the Basque Cooperative Confederation. MCC is part of this, but it turns out that there are many more cooperatives in the region that are not. From the group's acronym, I also learn that the Basque language does not use the letter 'C.'

There are currently 755 cooperatives in the Basque Country, she explains, and only 80 of them are the worker-owned MCC coops. There are a total of 537,000 members of all the coops, but only 54,919 are worker members, and 37,860 of these are the MCC worker-owners.

Where did these other nearly 500,000 come from? Lorea brings up a spreadsheet on a screen to show us that there all all kinds of cooperatives and members. Eroski, the supermarket chain, for instance, has consumer members as well as worker members, and there are other consumer coops. There are also producer coops, such a diary farmers, where the farm owners are member, but not necessarily the farm workers. There are also marketing coops, transport coops of independent truckers, cooperative schools, food coops and housing coops.

At the center of Konfekoop's work as a confederation is the concept of 'inter-cooperation,' the idea that coops should help each other. 'Inter-Coop', as it's called, has several organized components. ELKAR-LAN helps people with the legal and organizational consulting to form new coops. Elkar-Ikertigia is a volunteer policy and research center. PromoKoop helps find new markets and helps coops enter new markets. Oinarri helps to link coops to the wider social economy.

But there is another vital function as well. MCC is nonpartisan, ie, not tied to any political party, and the same is true of many of the others. Still, they need to influence and work with the Basque and Spanish governments, especially on matters of law and regulations that can help or hinder them. Konfekoop enables them to do this, both as a lobbying arm and by directly having its people serve on government bodies and study groups. It's a way of working with favorable politicians of all parties without directly being members of any of them. The Basque government, for its part, is largely favorable to MCC and the other coops, since they have helped to bring a higher-than-average degree of prosperity to the region.

We all gave Lorea a round of applause for expanding our horizons. It was now time for our caffeine break, and we all headed downstairs to a room in the old castle that was now a coffee bar. There were three workers getting us expressos and cafe con leches, so I asked, 'Are you guys worker-owners of this fancy Caja Cabral enterprise too? I asked. “Of course,” was the answer, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

As we returned for the next round, I heard a few groans about the title: 'The Corporate Management Model.' Some gritted their teeth for a technical lecture; a few said, “can't they find a better word than 'corporate'?” “Give it a chance,” I replied. “'Corporation' doesn't translate with the same meaning we put on it.”

Mikel introduced Jose Luis Lafuente, whose title, accordingly, was 'Director of Corporate Management Model.' Jose started of by explaining that their model was developed over decades, going back to Father Arizmendi's Ten Principles, but in the 1990s, was also deeply rooted in TQM outlook, or Total Quality Management. Again a few eyes were rolled, because a version of TQM was used against U.S trade unions back in those days, and a few around the table remembered it.

But as Jose continued expanding of MCC's approach, which put the core values of worker ownership and democracy at the center of an ever-widening set of values and organizational principles, the mood in the room began to change. He then took each component, and in a wonderful set of inter-linked graphic images, he unfolded a number of powerful tools that could be adapted to any progressive organization to build its strength, grow its size and achieve its goals.

He posted 'people in cooperation' as the first starting circle, then went on to connect that concept to the necessity of participatory organization, wage solidarity, social transformation and many others. By the time he was done, everyone was wide-eyed. “So what do you think?” he asked. “I love it,” I blurted out. “But I'm going to adapt it to building my socialist and other political organizations.” He laughed, but in the front of my mind was the conclusion that I had a powerful, modernized framework to update and supplement Lenin's 'What Is To Be Done' and an number of other classics on organization.

It was time for lunch, and all the tables were buzzing with excitement over the presentation. Jose set across from me, but he immediately asked about other matters. “We made an agreement with the US Steelworkers about a year ago to form some worker coops in the U.S. How's it going?” “From what I know,” I replied, “they want to proceed with caution, finding a few profitable firms to buy up and create. Plus a lot of their members had bad experiences in the past with Employee Stock Ownership Plans or ESOPs, and they have an educational task show how the MCC model is not at all the same as ESOPs. He countered than it was often easier to form a worker coop as a new startup, but he understood my points. He went on to speak highly of GAMESA, the Spanish wind turbine outfit that had opened up three new plants in Pennsylvania in cooperation with the USW. GAMESA got along fairly well with MCC, even though it wasn't a coop, but simply a high-road green capitalist

firm.

After lunch, we boarded our bus and headed back down the mountainside to the town of Assarte-Mondragon. We were visiting IKERLAN, on of MCC's thirteen Research and Development cooperatives. It was the first and the largest, and had a number of research lines. It included 209 full-time research scientists as worker-owners, and another 54 trainees. “Effective Innovation at the service of our company clients” was how Maria, our presenter, summed up their mission. She went on to describe energy saving power stations, micro-needles for bio-tech medicine, new computer components for smart electrical grids, touch screen control panels for the home automation, and so on. “Less energy, with lighter materials at lower costs” is a common thread, she added.

Again I was impressed by seeing the advanced productive forces, created by high design, that would be critical to solving problems like the climate change crisis. One of our team, however, asked an interesting question: “Does serving your clients mean working on nuclear weapons or other military instruments?” No, she said firmly, we turn these down. “Is that written down somewhere?” She wasn't sure, but added that with their values, “We would simply not think of doing things like that.”

The comment served as a transition to the last part of our day, a 40-minute bus ride even higher into the mountains. We were headed to a Franciscan monastery with a new secular institution, BAKETIK, the Basque Peace Center of Aranzazu, far above the town of Onati. The ride itself was a joy, with forest broken up by high mountain meadows with dairy cattle and, once you got higher, the sheep the Basques are known for raising. The cathedral at the top was a power piece of architectural, one you had to walk down through cut stone to enter.

The peace center itself had taken on a tough task. There were hundreds of undocumented refugee children, mainly from bloody civil conflicts in Africa, who had would up on the streets of Spain, homeless. Many were brought here, and paired with volunteer 'big brothers' and 'big sisters' to help them regain trust and their own physical and mental health. It took patience, but it served the children well.

On the way back we stop in Onati, known for good chocolate stores. It was true, as I picked up a large bar of truffle-flavored 80% cacao dark for only 2 Euros. But as I strolled through the town square at evening, I noticed something of even greater value. The town's working-class families were sitting in the town square, drinking beer and coffee, engaged in conversation. Children had the run of the streets, playing games and riding bikes—and there wasn't a bevy of police cars to be seen. It was a place of community and solidarity, where people still enjoyed the simple company of one another and the smaller pleasures of life.

Knowledge and the Path to Workers Power

2010-09-14T18:37:00.001-05:00

Mondragon Diaries: Day Two

It Starts with a School…

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On

This bright and sunny morning in the Basque Country mountain air again begins with our bus slowly winding up the mountain slopes, but this time its a short ride. We stop at ALECOP, a unique worker-student cooperative that is at once part of Mondragon's production units and its educational system. Think of it as a small worker-owned community college, but with technology shops that actually produce items for sale in industrial markets, and you won't be far off.

Once we get settled in a classroom, our MCC mentor, Mikel Lezamiz, introduces us to a young 30-something worker-technician who is going to explain ALECOP to us, and a good deal more.

“First of all, we are a mixed cooperative,” he states. “This means we are made up of both worker-owners and students. There are 59 worker members and about 300 student members. Some of our students also work in other coops part-time, but our students are mainly working as part of their studies, and to earn a little money to support themselves as students.”

He goes into some history, reminding us that MCC started back in the 1940s, with the polytechnical school started by Father Arizmendi, the innovative priest who envisioned MCC, as his very first effort to help the war-torn Basque workers find a path out of the devastation of World War 2. The first school's students helped form the first factory, but the school also continued, and over the decades, it evolved into what is now ALECOP, several more coop high schools, and what is now Mondragon University.

“To democratize the power, we have to share the knowledge,” interjects Mikal, summarizing Arimendi's theories. “Thus continual study throughout life must not only be for the rich, but also for the workers.”

What kind of jobs do the ALECOP students have? Our young guide shows us a list: R & D assistant, storekeeper, publisher, process technician, electronic assembler and several others

What kind of products do they make? “Most important, we design educational tools, to help in teaching electricity, electronics, automation, telecommunications and other subjects needed in high schools and in factory training. But we are also a nonprofit. We make money, but our hope is mainly to cover our expenses. He goes on to describe a list of 'competencies' that they hope to instill in the students, so they can go to work in FAGOR or other MCC factories with a good degree of skill.

It all becomes much clearer once he takes the 25 of us out into the shop area. As someone who taught computer repair to inner city youth and ex-offenders by recycling old computers, I step away from the group and examine some of the teaching stations. They are large panels with, for example, critical automotive parts on one side, connected with various testers and gauges. I examine the back side and find the motherboards and circuitry connecting them all. A student who wanted to become an auto mechanic, for example, could test and work through the key components of dozens of vehicles on the front side, while the programming embedded in the back side would give him or her the proper positive or negative training responses. Very cool, I thought. Even cooler was the fact that the students not only used these machines for their own learning, they also made the circuit boards and wrote the software to make these instructional learning tools in quantity, ready to be sold and used anywhere.

After ALECOOP, our bus makes a quick stop at Mondragon University's top-line coffee bar. We're in a hurry, so Mikel gets busy: How many with milk? How many black espresso? He turns in the bulk order, and with our caffeine fixes, we're back on the road in 20 minutes.

The late morning session is at Mondragon Assembly, a mind blowing and thought bending state-of-the art high-tech and high-design worker cooperative competing on a world scale. Its products are the software and hardware of room-sized automatic assembly machines making solar photovoltaics and many varieties of electronic components for robotics.

“It's rather easy to design a machine that can make a switch or solar cell every 1.8 seconds,” explains a young coop member. “But it's very hard to make the same switch or cell in 1.2 seconds. Yet that is what our clients are demanding of us, and it changes every six months, with higher and faster standards. We either do very well, and make lots of money for the cooperative, or we fail and we lose a lot.

“But this is what we want to be doing,” he adds. “We don't have too many workers in this coop in the 40 to 55 age range. We're all younger. Some say we try to make up in attitude and spirit what we lack in experience!” This brings a round of laughter, but we all know exactly what he means. He goes on to describe the global market for these advanced means of production, with China leading the way in many of them.

“We can't just produce for the Basque Country, or even Spain and Europe. We have clients everywhere, and we are setting up factories everywhere—Germany, Mexico and China, too.” While own by MCC, none of these are yet worker-owned coops. But neither are they sweatshops; they are very advanced production units with skilled workers. Still, it is a contradiction, and MCC's aim is to eventually convert them all to cooperatives, but they have to move in accordance with the host country's laws and customs on the matter. Or simply make the decision to abandon proposed startup projects in that region to others.

How are his clients spread around? “Right now, we have 85 here in Spain, 30 in Mexico, 25 in France, 6 in China and 20 in Germany. For this kind of equipment, you don't get a large number of orders. Maybe ten a year. But each one is worth millions, but only if if we are successful! But keep in mind that for every two jobs we create globally on the outside, we also create one new job here inside MCC.”

As we left, many in our group were debating the pros and cons of global economic justice. I shared their concerns, but I also saw something else. Here was the beginnings of some of the most advanced productive forces in the world, the means of both economies of abundance and the means of clean and safe renewable energies and far lighter ecological footprints. In any dynamic socialism of the 21^st century, these young people and their creative efforts would be invaluable. I would want to shape their boundaries, but I would not want to stifle them or just send them off to work for the neoliberal globalists. We needed them with us.

As is the custom in this part of the world, our main meal was a long mid-day 'lunch', really a dinner. We were driven higher up into the mountains on a winding road to an immense building that looked like a blockhouse or small fortress on stone. When was it built?, someone asked. We checked the carvings, and translated. Around 1500, the time of Columbus. But now it was updated into long stone-walled dining rooms, with a conference center on the upper floors. Needless to say, lunch was exquisite and Basque cuisine deserves its reputation.

In our last session for the afternoon, Mikel gives us all a detailed technical talk about cooperative structures, how they can vary, and especially, how they are financed and governed.

“People are the core, not the capital. This is the main point,” he starts off. “If capital has the power, then labor is simply its tool. But if labor has the power, then capital is subordinate. It becomes our tool.”

This is part of Father Arizmendi's ten principles, which he presented yesterday. “Labor is sovereign' is one of them. “This means one worker, one vote—whether you have more money or less or anything else, it doesn't matter. You have an equal voice and the access to knowledge and transparent information.

“One journalist once said back in the 1970s that Father Arizmendi had created a progressive economic movement that was anchored in an educational institution. When Arizmendi heard it,

he said, 'No, its just the reverse. We are creating an educational movement for social change, but with anchors in economic institutions.” It's the whole of humanity that matters most.

Learning About Bridges to 21st Century Socialism

2010-09-13T18:19:00.001-05:00

Mondragon Diaries: Day One

Why Humanity Comes First at Work

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On

“This is not paradise and we are not angels.”

--Mikal Lezamiz, Director of Cooperative Dissemination, MCC

After a short bus ride through the stone cobbled streets of Arrasate-Mondragon and up the winding roads of this humanly-scaled industrial town of Spain's Basque country in a sunny fall morning, taking in the birch and pine covered mountains, and the higher ones with magnificent stony peaks, I raised an eyebrow at the first part of Mikel's statement. The area was breath-takingly beautiful, and if it wasn't paradise, it came close enough.

I'm with a group of 25 social activists on a study tour organized by the Praxis Project. Our focus the the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a 50-year-old network of nearly 120 factories and agencies, involving nearly 100,000 workers in one way or another, and centered in the the Basque Country but now spanning the global. We here to study the history of these unique worker-owned factories, how they work, why they have been successful, and how they might be expanded in various ways as instruments of social change. Georgia Kelly of the Praxis Project is our cheerful and helpful tour leader, but Mikel is in charge of teaching us what he knows.

The MCC reception center is part way up on a slope of a much larger mountain, but it offers a magnificent view of the town and the dozens of industrial and commercial cooperatives in and around it in the valley After watching a short film on the current scope of MCC, we move to a lecture room for Mikal's talk. The signs on the wall say 'Mondragon: Humanity at Work: Finance-Industry-Retail-Knowledge', in Basque, Spanish and English.

“Humanity at Work,” Mikal starts off, reading the slogan. “This means we are the owners of our enterprises, and we are the participants in their management. Our humanity comes first. We want to have successful and profitable businesses and see them grow, but they are subordinate to us, not the other way around.”

The other part of the slogan refers to the scope of the cooperatives. Of the 120 workplaces, 87 are industrial factories, making everything from kitchen appliances and housewares, to motor buses, auto parts, computers, and machine tools. One of the coops is a large bank, Caja Laboral. One is a Mondragon University, with some 4000 student; seven others are research and development centers. One is retail the huge network of hundreds of Eroski supermarkets and convenience stores, four are agricultural, and six are social service agencies managing health care, pensions, and other insurance matters. All are worker owned. All have the management selected by the works and the coops. All have yearly assemblies were the workers set strategies and make or change policies.

Mikal also introduces all this by telling us a little about where we are. The Basques are among the oldest people in Europe, with a unique language, unrelated to any others. They have a strong sense of culture and solidarity, and an ongoing quest for autonomy, even independence. The region is made up of four political divisions in Spain and two just across the Pyrenees in France, with three million Basque inhabitants three and another three million living abroad. They were a center of resistance to Franco's fascist regime, and have won a good deal of autonomy today is some of the districts.

After World War 2, the area was devastated, and the Franco regime was in no mood to give it much help. But one who did rise to the challenge as Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, a priest who had fought Franco, ended up in prison, but got released instead of executed. Father Arizmendi, as he is popularly called, was assigned to the valley containing the small town of Arrasete-Mondragon and set to work trying to solve the massive war-created problems at hand. He began building a small technical school, and then a credit union where the region's peasants and workers pooled meager funds. With just five of the best students of the school, he started a small factory making one product: a small paraffin-burning stove so people could cook and heat water. Most important, he gave the project a set of ten principles to serve as guidelines for the current and any future endeavors:

Open Admission, meaning no worker is to discriminated against because of nationality, gender, political party or religion and such.
Democratic organization, meaning one worker, one vote.
Sovereignty of labor
Instrumental and subordinate nature of capital
Participatory Management
Wage Solidarity
Cooperation between Coops
Social Transformation
Universality
Education

How each of these are implemented, and with what success, will be spelled out in this series of diaries-- at least I'll give it a good shot. But following this introduction and a barrage of questions, Mikal answered a good many, but soon had us all get back on the bus. The best way to learn was to see for ourselves, so he took us off to FAGOR, the relatively large industrial coop that had grown for the first tiny shop that build that first small paraffin stove.

FAGOR is several connected coops with about 6000 workers overall, both here in Assante and in China. All the employees in the Basque areas are worker-owners; those elsewhere are in varying stages of becoming so.

As we got off the bus, we are at a large modern structure that could easily enclose several football fields. We were given headsets so we could hear our young woman guide over the din of the assembly lines. Once inside, we saw a very modern and computer-assisted assembly line that was putting together household washing machines, from beginning to end. It wasn't completely automated; workers were required at many points, especially at those checking quality. This was a hallmark of MCC products generally. They compete by selling very high quality goods at reasonable prices and good service. They very few supervisors. I didn't see a single one covering the whole process of making the washing machines, and later some ovens, from one end to the other. Self-supervision was thus a competitive advantage. Not having a lot of supervisors to pay meant lower prices.

Before the crisis hit two years ago, 15 percent of FAGOR's workers were temporary new hires, meaning they couldn't become worker-owners for six moths to a year. All these were laid off due to the fall in demand, but all the worker-owners remained on the job or were shifted to other related coops.

Now the workers were on two shifts. 'One group starts at 6am and ends at 2pm,” our guide explained. “The other goes from 2pm until 10pm. There are breaks every two hours, after which each worker can take a different position on their section of the line, The workers decide this rotation among themselves. It helps with safety and spreads skill sets around.”

We noticed that some of the components were in boxes shipped from other countries, and asked Mikal about it. “Our policy for purchasing is set by three things—quality, price and service. If an outside firm does better, we use them.” He picked up a wiring harness from a box. “Here is a good example. We used to have this made by one of our student-run coops that made this wiring set and another computer component. The quality and service was good, but the price was poor. This piece, made in Turkey was just as good, the firm had good service, but at a much lower price. Our students only worked a four hour day, and paid themselves 550 Euros a week, but the Turkish workers put in 60 hours at 200 Euros. In that situation, we encouraged the students to shift to improving the product where they were better, and to design new products.

Some in our group groaned at the concept, but others felt that, give a market economy, it was the best way to handle the problem—although raising the conditions of the Turkish workers would be a good idea, even if beyond the reach of MCC at the moment.

One thing that stood out of the Fagor line was a concern for both safety and quality. 100 percent of the machines were tested on the line for safe operation, and another 3% tested again at random just before final packaging. There were numerous station stops where workers kept daily records of any accidents—a green smiley face sticker was a good day, a red frowny face was a problem day. I only saw one red face on a chart on the entire line.l

FAGOR is producing 850,000 units a year, shipped mainly throughout Europe. Their pressure cookers are very popular in U.S. department stores.

After a delicious and leisurely lunch, Mikal gave us another talk, stressing two topics—the spread of MCC to other countries, and its ongoing and often difficult efforts to make factories in areas outside of the Basque country into full worker-owned cooperatives.

Of the 100,000 people who work for MCC, of the 39,000 in the Basque Country, some 99 percent are worker-owners. Of the 40,00-to50,000 recently broke into MCC in the rest of Spain, Portugal and parts of France, many are in various stages of becoming worker-owners, although some are discouraged by the low or negative earnings in the last two crisis years. The remaining 17 percent in countries like China and Brazil still remain wage labor in firms owned by MCC. MCC, however, is still trying to find ways to deal with local laws and customs in these countries to make a full transformation.

This discussion ran into overtime, so the last part of day one, a visit to an Eroski supermarket, was limited to 30 minutes. But this one was an excellent facility, owned both by all the workers and many consumers as well. Think of a high quality worker-owned Walmart combined with a Whole foods with much lower prices, and you'll get a reasonably good idea on what one is like. But all I can vouch for at this point is that the fair trade 70 percent chocolate bars come very close to being a small piece of paradise.

Beaver County's Big Knob Fair Meets the Peace and Jobs Movement

2010-09-11T14:37:00.001-05:00

Lessons Learned at the

Big Knob Grange Fair

By Carl Davidson and Randy Shannon

Beaver County Blue

The Big Knob Grange Fair, held Aug. 30 through Sept. 4 up in the lovely rolling hills above Rochester, PA, a distressed mill town at the confluence of the Beaver and Ohio rivers, is a “big doin’s’ in Beaver County, and has been for 70 years or so.

It features blue grass and country rock bands, tractor and truck ‘pulls,’ a demolition derby, dozens of rides for kids, booths for local politicians, hunting clubs, garden clubs, home improvement vendors, and local artisans. The Grange members serve delicious home-cooked food, display prize-winning livestock, fowl, and garden produce. The oldest and the latest in farm equipment are also on display. In recent years, the Fair draws from 30,000 to 40,000 semi-rural farmers and blue-collar workers with their families, and a horde of young people, and this year, with glorious weather, was no different.

This year the Fair had a new feature co-sponsored by Beaver County Peace Links and the 4^th CD Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America. Near the middle of the big striped circus tent was a table with a large banner hanging behind it: ‘War Is Making You Poor!’ Many of the hundreds of passersby on any one of the five days stopped and did a double take. Some ambled on, but a good number stopped to chat and see what it was all about.

“We were there every day from 4pm until 10pm,” said Randy Shannon, treasurer of the 4^th CD Progressive Democrats of America. “People start flowing in after work. In addition to our banner, there was a giant 4ft x 5ft poster showing that Beaver County taxpayers have shelled out $54 million per year for the last ten years for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is almost the same amount as the county’s annual general fund tax collections.”

Carl Davidson explained his contribution: “We set up an internet connection with a cell phone. With a monitor and a laptop I showed some antiwar videos picked by Beaver County Peace Links, including a looping video of an apple pie being divided like the US budget. The military got half the pie.”

Todd and Emily Davis made a unique contribution to the table. Todd, a Methodist pastor, is the chairperson of Peace Links. They labeled 10 jars with the main categories of the federal budget. They were arrayed in front of a small backdrop that read: 'Take the penny poll: how would YOU spend your tax dollars.’

“We gave people a cup of 20 pennies,” explained Emily, “and said, ‘think of each one as 20 billion dollars. Imagine that you’re in charge, and put them where you want the budget to go--vet benefits, health care, education, transportation, military, and so on.’ When they were done, we showed them a colored graph of how the money was really spen, published by the National Priorities Project. Reactions ranged from shock, to surprise, to resignation, to outrage. All spending for the wars, the military, interest on military debt, and care for casualties of war received 59 percent. Education, like other human services received around 2 percent.”

“I had one pro-war veteran who dropped all his pennies in the military jar, and walked away with a big frown” said Davidson. “But five minutes later, another tough old vet from the Korean war put all his pennies in for vet benefits, but told me, ‘I won’t give a cent to the military. These wars are destroying us and our youth, for no good reason. You run them through two or three tours where everyone and no one is the enemy, and they come home with their brains wrecked and get no decent health treatment or jobs. We even have homeless Iraq vets. No, not a penny more for the damned wars.’”

“On the other end of the table we had a sign that said "Hands Off Social Security," said Randy. “Next to it was a stack of postcards addressed to our ‘Blue Dog’ Congressman, Jason Altmire, which folks could sign or take with them.” The message was simple: don’t cut Social Security or raise the retirement age, and it was very popular, especially with people over 50 years of age.

“Another young man looked at our budget categories,” Randy added, “and with tears told us that his girlfriend was dying because she did not have health care. He was followed a little while later by a man hobbling on a cane. Without hesitation he dumped his 20 pennies into healthcare and kept on going.

Marcia Lehman from Ambridge was working the table Saturday night. “A 10 year old boy approached the table with his parents and a younger sibling,” she said. “All four got involved in the Penny Poll. You could tell by the interaction that these parents were smart and engaging, and really got the kids involved. After they played the poll, we gave them the bar chart - Where does your money go? There was some explaining by the parents to the kids, which was very well done. Then the 10 year old studied the bumper stickers we had laid out on the table in this order:

WINDMILLS NOT WEAPONS
HEALTHCARE NOT WARFARE
WAR IS MAKING YOU POOR

“This bright-eyed boy promptly said: ‘Well, if we do the 1st two, the third will take care of itself.’ The parents proudly looked on---Dad said, ‘wow, even a 10 year old gets it!’”

There were the other political booths outside the tent—one for Republicans, one for the regular Democrats, and one for Congressman Altmire. They were getting ready for November, passing out yard signs, buttons and bumper stickers. Congressman Altmire stood at his booth for several hours on Saturday evening greeting passersby.

County Commissioner Joe Spanik stopped by our table to talk about the fight for money to grow jobs. The following day Tony Berosh, Beaver County’s District Attorney and Terry Tatalovich, Beaver County Coroner, stopped for a while. “Here’s a question for you,” said Davidson. “From the perspective of the DA’s office, what’s our biggest problem?” “That’s easy,” Berosh replied. “Jobs, jobs and jobs. I don’t care what all the wacky theories people come up with. There’s a direct relation between the number of arrests and the level of unemployment. The more jobs, the less arrests. The less jobs, the more arrests. Sure, there’s more to it, but that’s the heart of it.”

Naturally, in an event as large as the Big Knob fair, all kind of people stopped by, with a whole range of views. One wiry tough-looking 50-something woman, after defending social security while denouncing all politicians, declared “The only way they'll get my guns is bullets first!” Why did she need them? “They’re going to attack Israel, and the Lord won’t stand for that. Like the Bible says, we have to be ready for Armageddon!”

Said one woman: “I won't put any money in for housing, because only Blacks need housing.” There was a big discussion with one person who claimed that the only purpose of the federal government should be the military. Another claimed that his CPA had told him that social security would be bankrupt in two years and nothing could be done and anyone who thought otherwise was getting “questionable information.”

“One woman told us she loved Sarah Palin,” said Lehman. “’OK,’ I said, ‘but all the Federal programs we use and see benefiting our seniors, Sarah Palin will cut and try to eliminate: the regulations for the environment, big oil and gas, social security, Medicare, etc.’ She looked at me in disbelief and said, ‘Do you really think that is true?’ She clearly did not understand the agenda of the right wing, but was just caught up in the personality of Sarah Palin.”

Another 40-something man, Lehman added, said government should not be in health care at all: "’It's God's job to take care of us, not government.’ I asked him what happens if someone gets diabetes or cancer, does God drop the insulin on the front porch? ‘No, God will heal me’, he said. ‘People don't have enough faith.’ Rather stumped, I said, ‘OK, I hope that works for you.’”

Our best responses were from women over 30 and trade unionists. Said Lehman: “Two women, retired school teachers, were just so thrilled that we were there. They took the literature and said they were on-board. Another older SEIU organizer from nearby Ohio came up, took a quick look, reached into his pocket, and stuffed a handful of bills in the donation jar before saying a word. But we talked with him a bit on the Oct 2 March for Jobs in Washington, which he’s doing in his area.”

Todd Davis reported on Thursday night: “Due to schedule conflicts, I had to be there several hours alone. One man wearing ‘intimidation’ sunglasses stood for while at the center of the aisle looking intently at the posters. Then he strode to the table and whipped off his glasses looking me square in the eye. He was tall man, as I am, so we were at eye level.”
“He said to me, ‘My son was killed in Iraq. No one out here gives a damn about what’s happening over there. This means more to me than you will ever know. Don't feel sorry for me.’ He helped himself to literature, put his glasses back on and disappeared in the crowd.”

Tina Shannon, PDA chapter chairperson was attending the table on Friday evening. “A man and his wife came by the table. He was older and clearly intoxicated. He spent a good few minutes staring at the banner ‘War Is Making You Poor!’ He came closer to the table and looked at the bumper stickers and recited ‘War is making you poor?’ as a question several times getting a little louder and with a slightly sarcastic tone. Then he lowered his voice saying ‘My son was killed in Iraq.’”

We learned that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing more than $54 million a year. For some people here the wars carry the immeasurable cost of the lost lives of children and loved ones. Young people who could have become teachers, firemen, farmers, veterinarians, mail carriers, pilots, nurses, or doctors, are now a painful memory of loss for their surviving families.

By the end the end of the fair, there were hundreds of pennies in every jar. But the totals told a poignant visual story: they were almost an exact reverse of the current priorities of the federal government budget. We learned from the penny poll that our neighbors want the federal budget spent mostly on healthcare with 18%. Veterans’ benefits and education share second place totaling 28%. The military budget is fourth with 12%. And the remaining 42% goes to alternative energy, agriculture, science, homeland security, housing, transportation, in that order.

Nearly a dozen volunteers helped at the table. We collected a good number of cards to send to Altmire asking him not to cut social security, and collected about $70 in donations, and added some names to our mailing list. We gave people something to think about that they don’t usually encounter at the Fair, a different path ahead: peace and prosperity instead of war and austerity.

Perhaps the most important thing that happened was a discussion of the war in a public arena. Plus the fresh lemonade, funnel cakes, and home cooked food at the Grange hall couldn’t be beat. And if you were a fan of tractor pulls, they were terrific as well.

One Picture, One Thousand Words: Anyone Think We Can Ignore the Far Right?

2010-08-28T18:00:00.001-05:00

Glen Beck's 'Restore Honor' Rally in DC, Aug. 28, 2010. Still think we can aim the main blow at Obama and the Democrats, and not worry about the fallout? Or just tail behind liberals and Blue Dogs conciliating with this? Time for some serious left and progressive thinking that won't fit on a bumper sticker...

...time to join with us.

What To Do About Blue Dogs? Report from Beaver County PDA

2010-08-17T08:06:00.002-05:00

How to Deal with the Blue Dog

and Still Defeat the Republicans—

PDA Breakfast Meeting Discusses the 2010 Election

by Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

About 40 seasoned Progressive Democrat activists from the 4^th CD gathered on Aug. 7 at the Candlelight Lounge in Economy, PA for a two-hour breakfast discussion. The hot topic of the day was the District’s Blue Dog Congressman, Jason Altmire, and what to do about him in the upcoming election and beyond.

It was not an easy question. The people in the buffet line putting tasty scrambled eggs, sausage and home fries on their plates were a cross section of Beaver County’s best political fighters—steelworkers, trade union organizers, African-American community leaders, retirees, postal and construction workers, teachers, social workers and day care workers, and a few candidates and local elected officials. Almost all of them had worked very hard four years ago to replace the GOP’s right-winger, Melissa Hart with Jason Altmire in Congress. While there was little naiveté about politicians in this dining room, they had still expected more from Altmire, especially given the distressed condition of the working class and small business in the area.

“We all know what we’re here for,” said Tina Shannon, the President of the 4^th CD’s Progressive Democrats of America, as she opened the meeting. “Most important is we want everyone to speak their minds so we can figure out how to work together on this. The floor is open.”

The Rev. Kevin J. Lee, head of the Coalition for a Thriving Beaver County, was the first to speak. “We all know Jason fairly well,” he started off. ‘He’ll invite us to his office and let us speak our minds.” The Reverend went on to describe some of his dealing with the Congressman, and was less than satisfied. “He’ll claim to be for Beaver County, but you soon come to realize he’s still a lobbyist for the health industry. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be laid off. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have no jobs in your community. He doesn’t know what it’s like to go without health insurance.”

“By joining the Blue Dog Caucus and declaring himself a ‘deficit hawk,’ Altmire has made it rather clear that he’s not standing with us,” added Carl Davidson, at activist with Beaver County Peace Links from Raccoon Township. “I just handed all of you a Peace Links flyer on what these two wars have cost our county, over $500 million, not to mention the cost in lives, from here and in the countries we’re occupying. If Altmire wanted to seriously get rid of some waste, he could start his deficit reduction by cutting off the money for the wars and bringing our troops home. But he did the opposite. I don’t plan on voting for him. If it were a cliffhanger, I might have a problem, but it’s not. So I want to see a large undercount, a political fact that will sting a bit. He should pay a price.”

“I’m too angry to vote for him,’ added Del Linville. “He’s said one thing and done the opposite too many times.”

Mike Sabat, a steelworker from Raccoon, urged everyone to look at a wide picture, whether they voted for Altmire or not. ‘We’ve got two good labor candidates running for state legislature, Frank Bovalino and Dennis Powell, and redistricting is on the agenda. We don’t have to work for Altmire; we can put all our energies in these two races whether you vote for Altmire or not.”

Charlie Hamilton, a retired postal worker and a member of the Beaver-Lawrence Central Council, AFL-CIO, didn’t disagree with the criticisms of Altmire. He urged a more traditional Democratic view along with a comprehensive review of Altmire’s voting record. “He’s been with labor more than 90 percent of the time. No matter how you cut it, he’s better for us than the Republican. We should help him win, but still keep talking to him and press him with our concerns.”

“I’ve agonized over this,” said Janet Hill of the USW staff, agreeing with Hamilton but also hearing the truth in the opposition to Altmire.

Steven Kocherzat, an Ambridge attorney took the floor next. “Working with families, I see a lot of suffering. I go from nursing home to nursing home, and the toll being taken is terrible. And I see the direct connection between how Altmire worked to gut the insurance reforms and the increase in that suffering. I know I won’t vote for him. It would have been better to have a candidate against him in the primary, but we couldn’t get one in time. Now the best we can do is work for a large undercount. That’s what anyone considering running against Altmire in the next Primary will look at, the undercount.”

Randy Shannon, PDA’s Treasurer, described PDA’s monthly Lunch Vigils outside Altmire’s Aliquippa office. “This month we focused on the upcoming plans to cut social security and Altmire’s failure to oppose it. They’re trying to raise the retirement age to 70. Think about this. What is the life expectancy of an African American worker? It’s 70. Think about the profound racism in raising the retirement age to 70 — you work your entire life paying into something that you’ll never see. We can’t let this stand.”

Shannon urged people to joing the vigil at Altmire’s office at noon on August 18th to protest the plan to cut social security. He also asked people to joing a large contingent from Beaver County in the upcoming Oct. 2 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice called by the NAACP, La Raza, SEIU and the AFL-CIO. ‘We need to make full employment the driving issue for both peace and prosperity.”

“Jason Altmire has always been a lobbyist,” declared Georgia Berner, Altmire’s 2006 Democratic Primary challenger. “He was when he started and that’s what he is today. When an issue comes down to corporate interests versus the needs of the people, Altmire will always to for the corporate interests.”

Lou Hancherick from Butler County brought up the importance of talking about the proposed financial transaction tax as the best argument for dealing with the ‘deficit hawks.’

There were a few newcomers to the group. Frank Kirkwood from Wexford focused on campaign financing, and how Altmire now received far more from PACs than from individual contributors.

At the end, Tina Shannon gave the last words to the two state representative candidates in the room, Frank Bovalino and Dennis Powell. “Jobs are the main thing,” said Powell, a steelworker running against Republican Jim Marshall. Powell also stressed the importance of local hiring into the new Marcellus shale drilling business, taxing the gas extraction, and regulating it to protect our water and air. “We can still create jobs and drill responsibly,” he said. ‘In fact, when you do it right, you create even more jobs.” Bovalino stressed his record of service over the years in Beaver County, including as a Beaver School Board member in contrast to his opponent Jim Christiana who has acted as a lobbyist for the gas drilling industry.

So what was the conclusion? While no formal vote was taken, a fairly clear consensus emerged. First, everyone was going to work for a good turnout to defeat the GOP, especially for the local candidates who were union members. Several speakers voiced support for Joe Sestak, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and Dan Onorato, Democratic candidate for Governor. While most people expected Altmire to win, they were unrelenting in their criticism of him. Some stressed the importance of finding a new candidate to oppose him in the next primary in 2012; others stressed ‘a sizable undercount’ as an indicator of progressive strength. As Reverend Lee said, “We need to vote for Altmire. But it’s time to make him very uncomfortable.”

Tina Shannon said: “When the word voting comes to mind, I don’t want that word to come into your head by itself, I want it to be voting and something else, voting and taking action to change this situation.”

Action for change will begin with a huge ‘Town Hall Meeting for Jobs’ at The Fez in Hopewell Township on Sept 23, being organized by both labor and community civil rights groups. “This could set in motion the wider local coalition,” said Rev. Lee, ‘ a force that we all know we need to drive progressive change here.”

Interview at PDA National Conference in Cleveland

2010-08-13T20:59:00.000-05:00

Keep On Keepin' On...

We're All in the Same Boat?

On the Topic of Obama, the

GOP Can't Even Blush Anymore

Book Review - Revolutionary Youth and the New Working Class: Lost Writings of SDS

Do They Really Want 'Specific Demands' from the Occupiers?

Occupy Wall Street Wins: ‘We Shall Not Be Moved!’

Victory cheers in Zuccotti Park, 6am, Oct 14

Blocking Evictions, Fanning the Flames:

A Report from Occupied Wall Street

A Champion of Jobs, Justice and Peace

Photo: Dwan Walker of ‘One Aliquippa’ with Rep. Conyers at award dinner

Rep. John Conyers Honored at Labor's

Human Rights Dinner in Beaver County

‘Street Heat’ vs. Finance Capital and the Right

Solidarity Time: Young People Occupying

Wall Street Are Standing Up for All of Us

New Book: ‘…The Lost Writings of SDS’

Far Right Exposing Its Own Class Hatreds

Shameless Opposition to the Jobs Bill Reveals

The GOP's Deep Hatred of the Working Class

Jobs Programs: The Right and Wrong Turns

The Hot Potato Too Many Beltway Wonks Avoid:

The Need to Tie Job Creation to Industrial Policy

1000s at Labor Day Focus on Plight of Unemployed

No Shame When It Comes To ‘Fracking’

Why Neoliberals Have Trouble Telling the Truth

Media Wars and Manufacturing Consent:

Getting People to Vote Against Themselves

Time to Get Serious About Full Employment

Yes, We Need a Jobs Program, But One

That Doesn't Tinker Around the Edges

Progressive Cynicism and Misplaced White Anger

The Far Right's Two Magic Weapons for 2012

More Taxes for More Wars?

Scrambled Brains in High Places

Photo: Wasted War Junk in Iraq

London: ‘Shock Doctrine’ as a Two-Way Street

The Approaching Winter of Our Discontent

‘City of Steel’ by Jasiri X, Our Own Rapper

Jobs and GOP ‘Dialectics’: Turning Things Into Their Opposites

Save Us from the ‘Business Guy’ Candidates

Mitt Romney at Screen Machine in Ohio

The Marcellus Shale’s Bigger Picture

Clean Water, Green Energy and the Big Blue Marble

Unemployment: Lies, Blue Smoke and Mirrors

Turn the Tables on a Rigged Game

‘Gang of Six’ and the Neoliberal Deficit Trap

Is Wider Unity on the Shale Issue Possible?

A Stronger Steelworkers’ Voice Is Needed

in the Marcellus Anti-Fracking Movement

New Paths to Socialism by Carl Davidson

New Paths to Socialism

Contents:

Carl Davidson on Democracy, Values and 21st Century Socialism

‘We Are One—And Ready to Fight Back!’

Beaver County Union & Community Activists

Hold April 4th Solidarity Rally at Courthouse

Photo: Commissioner Joe Spanik at Vigil

Fighting for Our Future & Honoring Martin Luther King With Solidarity

April 4 'We Are One' Events:

Uniting Labor and Community

For an Upsurge in Class War

Mondragon as a Bridge to a New Socialism

Worker-owner in Mondragon coop factory

Green Jobs: Frustration with Neoliberals over ‘Industrial Policy’

‘Good Jobs, Green Jobs’ Conference 2011:

Green Jobs Organizers Collide with

Neoliberalism’s War & Austerity Plans

Aliquippa: Sports Works for a Few, But We Need Jobs for All

Steel Town Finds Unity and Hope on Football Field

PA Progressives Plan for New Battles

Pennsylvania Progressive Summit 2011:

Rebuilding Alliances, Shaping New Messages

Keynote speakers, Leo Gerard and Jess Jackson

Aliquippa’s Harsh Realities Featured in Story of the Hope and Vision of its Athletes

Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis visiting his hometown, Aliquippa, Pa.

The Heart Of Football Beats In Aliquippa

Over five decades of economic decline and racial conflict, a Western Pennsylvania mill town has found unity and hope on the football field

Solidarity and Hope: The Ongoing Saga To Close ‘School of the Assassins’