Nearly 500 Celebrate May Day in Pittsburgh with a Colorful and Festive March and Rallies

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Nearly 500 workers and community actvists marched through the streets of Pittsburgh's South Side May I celebrating the international workers holiday. The main theme of the event was linking a defense of worker's rights with immigrant rights, and backing the passage of a just and comprehensive immigration reform bill in Congress.

'Everyone here is an immigrant or the sons and daughters of immigrants,' declared Leo Gerard, USW President, speaking from the back of a truck. 'We can't separate worker's rights and immigrant rights, they're one and the same.!

The main organizers of the celebration were Fight Back Pittsburgh and United Steel Workers Local 3657. The United Federation of Teachers, the United Electrical Workers, SEIU, IBEW, the USW's 'Women of Steel' and other unions also took part.

This was the first May Day event backed by Pittsburgh unions in some years, and it was also promoted nationally by Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO. It marks the beginning of a more militant response by labor against austerity and in defense of wider democracy for all of its allies.

The day started with a rally at the UFT headquarters, followed by a mile-long march along Carson Street, ending with another rally, with music and food, at the IBEW headquarters.

Community organizers from One Pittsburgh and the resident groups also played an important role, bringing out Latinos, Middle Eastern and African immigrants. Activists from Beaver County’s Progressive Democrats of America, Beaver County Peace Links and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism also took part.

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USW Report: A ‘Union Model’ Plans to Bring Worker Coops to the Ohio Valley

Michael Peck, Mondragon Cooperative delegate in North America, speaking at recent USW press conference in Pittsburgh

Steelworkers Announce 'Union Model' for

Bringing Worker-Owned Coops to the U.S.

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

The United Steel Workers and the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation-the largest industrial union in the U.S. and the world's largest network of worker-owned cooperatives respectively-held an upbeat press conference at USW headquarters in Pittsburgh March 26, announcing new progress in their innovative two-year-old partnership.

"For American workers, the traditional corporate model for organizing production and producing jobs has broken down," stated Tom Conway, USW International Vice-President for Administration. "It's simply not fair, and we're not afraid to try something different."

For those unfamiliar with Mondragon, 'something different' was inspired by the Steelworkers investigation into the Mondragon cooperatives (MCC) in Spain's Basque country. MCC is a 50-year-old thriving and ongoing experiment in radical democracy consisting of some 120 worker-owned cooperatives involving nearly 100,000 workers and allied with another 130 allied coops in the region, with revenues in 2011 of some $24 billion.

The MCC coops operate one the basis of one worker, one share, one vote-and no one outside MCC holds any shares. It is the leading edge of the Spanish industrial economy.

The USW took note of MCC after a successful effort with the cutting edge Spanish wind turbine firm, GAMESA, to build three innovation green energy factories in Pennsylvania. While not part of Mondragon, GAMESA and MCC shared a common representative in the U.S., Michael Peck, who then took a USW team to Spain to visit MCC.

Leo Gerard, the USW's president, has long been an advocate for a 'clean energy and green manufacturing industrial revolution' as a progressive way out of the current economic crisis. But given the conflicted and deadlocked Congress on such matters, little is being done on the matter trough traditional channels. Hence the turn toward the Mondragon partnership.

After the initial announcement of the joint effort in the fall of 2009, little was heard about any progress on the matter. Yesterday's press conference, however, revealed what was going on behind the curtains. There were three major projects underway.

The first was the production of 'Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Communities: The Union Coop Model.'

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

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.

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1000s at Labor Day Focus on Plight of Unemployed

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

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Is Wider Unity on the Shale Issue Possible?

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. Read more!

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

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.

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Green Jobs: Frustration with Neoliberals over ‘Industrial Policy’

‘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.

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Pittsburgh G20 Diaries: Day Three

Photo: PDA's Randy Shannon with banner, center, next Michael McPhearson of Vets for Peace with Rick Kimbrough, right.

10,000 Marchers Beat Back

The Steel City’s ‘State of Siege’

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Nearly 10,000 protesters marched through the streets of Pittsburgh on the last day of the G20 this Sept. 25 afternoon, delivering a powerful message for global justice that was expressed with a brilliantly colored display of unity, militancy and diversity.

Peace and justice groups demanded an end to wars and occupations, trade union contingents demanded green jobs and fair trade, women and people of color raised the banners of equality and empowerment, and young people called for a sustainable and liberated future in a new world.

“Will we make any difference?” Rick Kimbrough asked me a few hours earlier as we headed down a parkway heavily secured with police cars at every exit on our way into town. Kimbrough is an old high school friend, an African American steelworker with 37 years in a huge Beaver County mill that’s now shutdown and gone, Jones And Laughlin Steel. When I asked him to join me the day before, he was fired up to go already, until he heard a nephew had taken a bullet as a bystander in a senseless street fight. When he heard his nephew would do OK, he called back, ready to ride in with me and join the United Steel Workers contingent in ‘the People’s March’ at the close of the G20 sessions.

“We’ll make SOME difference, but not nearly enough, and not yet,” was my reply. “These G20 people think they can run the world as they please, but we have to show them they can’t, that there are limits, at least until we can grow stronger, and turn things around completely.” I asked Rick if he had ever been to something like this before. No, he’d been to political, union and civil rights rallies, but this was different.

We turned to discussing the news from the previous day, mainly about the efforts by anarchist youth, a thousand or so of them, to stage actions on a variety of targets, and march on the G20 without permits. They had a number of skirmishes all day and into the night with the highly militarized police, who made use of tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Some 82 protesters were arrested overall, and the day had seen numerous smashed windows and trash cans sent rolling into the streets.

Far worse, the Pittsburgh riot police, on the night of Sept 24, swept the university neighborhood streets, downtown Oakland, clean of students with pepper spray and tear gas canisters. Students were trapped on stairwells by riot police above and below and gassed. Students were gassed in closed passages between dormitories. They had committed no crime, no offense, no discourtesy, no disrespect, but had simply been walking to get a bite to eat, or to visit a friend, or to study, or stand around in the cool night air and talk with friends.

The media accounts had worried Rick’s family about his participation. In fact, a number of other Beaver County workers I had asked to take part flat out said “No!,’ they had no interest in playing tag with heavily armed cops who were largely inexperienced--and my assertion that today’s march would likely be large and peaceful didn’t count for much. In fact, it was entirely peaceful on this last day—no windows broken, and only one arrest.

“What’s the deal with breaking windows? Don’t they realize that’s just a big diversion that waters down the message?” Rick asked about the previous night. I tried to explain that anarchists didn’t necessarily share our message, and could be manipulated by police and provocateurs. But young people had minds of their own, often having to learn things the hard way. He agreed, turning the talk back to his nephew, and venting his anger against the criminal profiteers selling guns to kids in his neighborhood. “I’ve seen too much senseless street violence,” he concluded, “I’ve got no patience for it.”

When we hit Pittsburgh, our attention turned to trying to park downtown near the Steel Workers building, so we would have the car nearby at the end of the march. Nice idea, but no way it was going to happen. Every downtown exit was blocked until Oakland, near the university. We tried twice to double back, and were turned back by police and blockaded streets.

Security was tough and serious. The militarized police, more than 6000 of them brought in from across the country, had shut down normal commerce and movement of people in the city. The city was placed in a real, not a virtual state of siege.

Finally, Randy Shannon from Beaver County’s Progressive Democrats of America got us on the cell phone. He’s across the river on the South Side, the closest spot he could find. So we picked him up, and made our way to Oakland, and luckily found a parking lot right near the head of the march.

As we neared the top of a steep block and reached the staging area, Rick got a little wide-eyed at the first thing we saw, a contingent of 200 Tibetans, some with monk robes and beating drums, and all with red and yellow flags and banners. So I gave him a quick crash course in who’s who—the Tibetans are protesting what they see as a raw deal from China threatening their Buddhist culture, the young people dressed in black with masks are mostly the anarchists we were taking about, the people with checkered scarves and green, black red and white flags are pro-Palestinian, the women in shocking pink are Code Pink, a militant peace group, and so on.

“This is wonderful, all kinds of people are here,” was Rick’s conclusion. I suggested we look for union caps and jackets, or people in fatigues with Army veteran’s stuff, and we’ll find the folks we’re looking for. Right away, Carl Redwood Jr. from the battles in the Hill District, a low-income African American neighborhood, comes over to talk. I met him at a teach-in two days before. We fill Rick in on the issues around the new Penguin stadium and gentrification.

As we neared the front ranks, I spotted Michael McPhearson, a national leader of Vets for Peace I knew through United for Peace and Justice. When I introduce Rick, it turns out Mike has folks in Aliquippa, so they are quickly making connections.

There were two groupings up front. Randy had connected with his daughter, a University of Pittsburgh student, and was positioned with the Thomas Merton Center antiwar people. Rick and I were with the Iraq Vets Against the War group along side them. Aaron Hughes, an IVAW national leader, came up to greet us. He and Rick were soon talking about post traumatic stress and it impact on communities when soldiers return. “I still haven’t spotted the Steel Workers,” I told him, “but let’s just stay here until we do.”

Suddenly the march moved out, and we’re in the front ranks, about four rows back. It’s a long walk, more than a mile, but fortunately, almost all of it is downhill. After we’ve gone twenty blocks or so and are on a little rise, I walked backwards and looked for the end. I couldn't see it; we were still filling the streets. It meant we numbered somewhere between 5000 and 10,000, and we could declare a victory for the day. Progressive activists had beaten back attempts at intimidation.

Rick picked up on all the rhythmic chanting. “The people, united, will never be defeated!” seemed to suit him best, while “This is what democracy looks like!” was my favorite for the day. As we come in sight of the Hill District, I’m informed that a feeder march of the residents numbering about 500 has merged with us, as have a number of other groupings with feeder marches throughout day.

Eventually we decide to stand to the side and wait for the USW contingent to show up. This meant we got a terrific review of the march’s composition: large banners from the Green party went by, followed by a huge HR 676 Single Payer health care contingent, then several hundred young anarchists in black with black flags, the Gay and Lesbian people, more environmentalists, then Middle East peace militants. Finally we spotted the large blue USW flags, with dozens of people in union T-Shirts, perhaps 50 in all. I waved to Maria Somma, a Steel Worker organizer. Interestingly, the front banner is featuring the rights of immigrant workers. Plenty of ‘Good Jobs, Green Jobs’ placards are also visible. We fell in at the back of the contingent, carrying our own placard with a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a demand for jobs.

The taller downtown buildings provided and excellent echo chamber for our chants and drum beats, so spirits were high as we turned the corner to the rally scheduled at an open plaza near the City-County Building.

“We had this successful people’s march today only because we FOUGHT for it, every step of the way” declared Peter Shell of the Thomas Merton Center’s Antiwar Committee from the platform. He delivered a powerful indictment of the federal and city tactics designed to disorganize the protestors and dampen the turnout. “Look at all these militarized police brought in here from everywhere. They have taught us an important lesson, even if in a small way, about what it’s like to live under and occupation, and why we have to increase out efforts this fall to end the occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza.”

Lisa Jordan of the USW Education Dept spoke for the steelworkers. “The G20 is undemocratic and unrepresentative,” she stated. “They only speak for the CEOs; there is no voice for the workers.” She pledged the solidarity of the USW with all the ongoing fights for global and social justice.

We listened to a few more speeches, but the crowd was breaking up. One contingent would go on to the East Side within a few blocks of the convention center, where the G20 was wrapping up, and thus technically getting within ‘sight and sound’ of the gathering. It was a thin concession to what was really needed.

Rick had a bum leg, injured years back in the J&L tin mill when a sheet of metal sliced a tendon, and it was giving out on him. Given the restrictive logistics, we called it a day. Getting to a bus to get back to our car was hard enough—we had to pass through three barriers of hundreds of police, including a long line of German shepherd police dogs that looked forlorn behind their uncomfortable muzzles. The bus quickly filled, and in twenty minutes, we were back at the car and headed home.

Since the G20 bigwigs were also headed toward the airport, which is located near the border of Beaver County, security was even more intense on the highway on the way back. “It’s all overkill,” said Rick. “They just want to use us for practice. We’re just a training exercise for them, and it’ll be turned against us even more somewhere down the line.”

As I dropped him off at home, I reminded him to check the news. “The cameras all loved your picket sign; you may get your fifteen minutes of fame, and can brag to your grandkids.” When I got home and turned on the news, however, reality sunk in. There were a few brief snippets about our huge march today, followed by great detail about how many windows and storefronts had been smashed the night before, complete with charts and maps of targeted areas, and lots of footage of broken glass, with kids in black masks, while cops do their best to round them up or disperse them.

Randy Shannon called to check in, making sure we made it back OK. “In that state of siege,” he summed up, “the march today was a shining example of the courage and determination of those of us who understand the need to fight for the First Amendment.”

But on the wider messages, if we’re ever to get beyond preaching to the choir of the militant minority, and instead break through to the progressive majority, we’re going to have to find the ways and the forces to do things differently.

Carl Davidson is a writer for Beaver County Blue, and a long-time organizer going back to the 1960s New Left. Today he is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a national board member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. He is author, along with Jerry Harris, of 'Cyberradicalism: A New Left for a Global Age.' If you like this artile, make use of the PayPal button at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com

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Pittsburgh G20 Diaries: Day One

 

March for Jobs

in ‘The Hill’

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

The ‘G20' is a big deal in Pittsburgh, with multiple stories in the local press and TV, even though many everyday citizens are wondering what it’s really all about and whether it’s worth all the fuss and expense.

“I know all the big shots from around the world are coming, I see that on the news” my dad told me last week. “But what do they actually do behind all those guards and closed doors?”

It’s a good question. The ‘big shots,’ of course, are all the top political and economic leaders of the world’s nineteen largest economies, with the European Union added to make twenty. And lots of people would love to be a fly on the wall when they start wrangling over who’s really to blame for the latest financial meltdown and how to recover from it.

I told my dad, for starters, that they’re cooking up schemes to have the rest of us pay off the gambling debts of Wall Street speculators while they ship more jobs overseas. That’s why the unions are going to be in streets, along with the environmental people, the antiwar movement, and everyone else. He’s dubious that it will do any good, but I told him I’ll be in the thick of it, and I’d let him know what happens.

So today I headed for one of the first actions, a mass march for jobs, sponsored by the ‘Bail Out the People Movement.’ It’s a coalition pulled together by a number of left and community groups, with an assist from the Western Pennsylvania United Steel Workers and the United Electrical Workers. The organizers have picked Pittsburgh’s low-income African American ‘Hill District’ as the launch site, and it couldn’t be a better one, since this is the heart of the neighborhoods that need jobs the most. The route is a little under a mile, and ends at the edge of downtown, in an open space behind the Civic Arena.

Coming into town on the parkway, the first things that hit you are the giant ‘Pittsburgh Welcomes the World!” banners on the large corporate lawns lining the highway. Next is a higher density of police cars. Finally, there’s a blizzard of orange detour signs re-routing traffic so the sports arenas and casinos can function while the security zones go up around select areas downtown. I maneuvered through it all, and made my way through bleak blocks with boarded-up storefronts to the ‘Tent City’ on the grounds of the Monumental Baptist Church near the top of ‘The Hill.’ I find a tenuous place to park on a rise that gives me an excellent view for photos.

It’s immediately clear this is going to be a spirited and colorful march, but of a militant minority. The weather is good, but on the hot and humid side. Nearly 500 people are there, and perhaps half of these are from out of town. There are a number of preachers around, some ladies from churches in their Sunday finery, a number of people with UE T-shirts and Steelworker ball caps, and dozens of young people putting together picket signs and adjusting sound systems. In brief, all the components of the coalition are there, but this is going to be a relatively small kickoff march rather than a massive outpouring.

I started to survey the crowd and right away run into Scott Marshall from the ‘People’s Weekly World.’ He’s been in town for a week covering the AFL-CIO convention, which just ended.

“Whaddya think?” Scott asked. “Multiply by 100, and it would be terrific,” I answered. I added that I thought the media overkill on the supposed threats of violence and the city’s dragging out the permit process until the least minute had taken a toll. “They’re getting very clever on dealing with us, and we have to find ways to counter it.”

Next I ran into some friends from the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism from New York City and Los Angeles, who traveled from both coasts in vans. The tables of the main sponsoring left groups with the ‘People’s Bailout’ coalition are prominent. From Pittsburgh, there’s a sizable group from the Thomas Merton Center and its Pittsburgh Antiwar Committee, as well as Paul LeBlanc, a local leftist professor and antiwar leader. He reported favorably on the large educational sessions held over the weekend.

A Pickup truck with a decent sound system got positioned in the middle of the line of marchers. It’s playing ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now!’ and as the line moved, the chants begin: “We want a J-O-B, so we can E-A-T! is a popular one, as is ‘We’re fired up, won’t take no more!” Since it’s all downhill, it’s an easy hike. I describe a few historic sites we passed to some out-of-towners, like the Crawford Grill, center of the Pittsburgh jazz scene for decades, as well as the home of the famous Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Negro Baseball Leagues of which it was an important part.

Waiting for us at the rally site at the other end were Pennsylvania State Senator Jim Ferlo and his assistant Mikhail Pappas. Ferlo has long used his Harrisburg Senate position to advocate for labor, civil rights and antiwar causes, and today is no exception.

We’re welcomed to the rally by Rev. Thomas Smith of the Monumental Baptist Church. He started off by answering my dad’s question: “These G20 people are here to make deals that benefit the corporations; they’re not here helping the workers, or the rest of us in the communities.” Our efforts today are only the beginning, he reminds us, there’s much more to come, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere.

Senator Ferlo was next. “We’re here to speak out to right our countries wrongs, not only here but around the globe. Capitalism is in deep crisis. Some here may say capitalism IS the crisis. In any case, we have to press for a sustainable economy that works for us, the majority of the working people.”

Ferlo then took up a topic that had everyone buzzing all day. The morning’s Post Gazette including an article based on an interview with Obama, where the President said, in relation to the G20 protests: “I was always a big believer in — when I was doing organizing before I went to law school — that focusing on concrete, local, immediate issues that have an impact on people’s lives is what really makes a difference; and that having protests about abstractions [such] as global capitalism or something, generally is not really going to make much of a difference.

The Senator was furious with Obama. “This is worse than misguided and a major miscalculation; it’s intellectually dishonest. It was people in the streets that put him there. It was mass protests that built the unions, that got rid of Jim Crow, that won rights for women. This is the problem with the whole top layer of the Democratic Party in dealing with these attacks from the far right. They’re acquiescing to it; they should hang their heads in shame-and I’m telling you this as an active and registered Democrat. We have got to rise up and turn this around.”

“If we had a hundred more elected Democrats like him,” said one protester standing next to me in reference to Ferlo. “It would be a whole different ball game.”

Brenda Stokley followed up. She was with the Katrina and Rita Hurricane Survivors Committee, and delivered a blistering indictment of the government’s ongoing failures to deal with these crises. “There’s no reason for people to be homeless, no reason for people to be without jobs. We need these for survival.”

One speaker stood out in his ability to command the attention of almost everyone. Fred Richmond, a vice president of the United Steelworkers and an African American, started off by asserting that “the issue of poverty is central to labor’s agenda, and not just in this country, but globally.” He went on to describe in some detail exactly what the AFL-CIO would be pressing on the G20-fair trade, green jobs, a ‘Tobin Tax’ worldwide on financial speculation, a ’second stimulus’ on a global scale to spur job growth and the transition to clean energy and a green economy.

Richmond also put the earlier critique of Obama in a larger perspective. “This president is under a heavy and fierce attack from the far right. What he’s going through is unprecedented, unless you go back to Roosevelt. We have to back him up, but we also have to make sure all of them act in our interests.” Some were dubious on this point, but most of the crowd took him very seriously.

I missed a few of the final speakers, since I was making a point of connecting with some of the Progressive Democrats of America activists there. Western PA’s 4th CD was represented, as well as a group in from Akron, Ohio, who was passing out PDA’s ‘Healthcare, Not Warfare’ placards to use for the rest of the week. We exchanged stories of our dealings with the rightwing ‘Tea Bagger’ rallies in various places, plus the days to come.

Two important events are up soon for the remaining days of the G20. One is a union-sponsored rally in Point Park on Wednesday, Sept. 23. The negotiations for the permit there have been contentious, because the police and Secret Service wanted the same spot as a staging area. On Thursday, Pittsburgh’s anarchist youth will be heard from in one way or another-no one is quite sure what they will do. And Friday, Sept. 25, there will be ‘the big march,’ with the area’s peace and justice movements at the heart of it. Stay tuned!

[Carl Davidson writes for Beaver County Blue, the online voice of the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America. He is also a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button at the top of this site]

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SteelBlitz: AFL-CIO and Steelers in Western PA

Photo: Kyle Jones, Beaver Falls Obama Fan

Steelers and
Steelworkers
Go All Out For
Obama in Western PA

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Organized labor has set its sights on winning Beaver County and all of Western Pennsylvania for Barack Obama. They see victory in this battleground "swing state" as critical to the entire election nationwide, and are pulling out their big guns, all stops and every other available advantage to "Git 'er done."

That's the message made loud and clear by the visit of AFL-CIO chief John Sweeny to the IBEW Local 712 Hall here in Vanport, Pa this Saturday morning, October 25.

Sweeny's visit kicked off an all-day effort, and was teamed with a joint visit of United Steelworker union top officials and pro-Obama Pittsburgh Steelers players for a rally at the same hall later in the afternoon. In between, the unions deployed over 2200 rank-and-file union members to knock of the doors of some 31,000 union family homes across the state in a single afternoon, an effort that will get even more earnest in the next ten days.



I arrived early in a grey drizzle of a morning, unlike the glorious fall days of the last month of Saturday 'Labor Walks.' Media work was my task for the day, and I made sure a New York Times reporter quickly met all the local union officials and pro-union local candidates. While I'm getting wired on black coffee and a jelly donut, Bob Schmetzer, a local IBEW official, hands me one of his home-made flyers.

"Here, whaddya think of this?" he says. "I got it off the Internet." It's one of the now-classic pieces bouncing around exposing the undercurrent of unstated white supremacy in the campaign, using role reversal. "What if John McCain graduated and the top of his class at Harvard, and Obama came in at the bottom of his class with the record of a goof-off? What do you think Fox and the rightwing talk shows would be doing with that?" It gives a dozen more examples, using irony and good humor to make a very serious point.

"Terrific," I tell Bob, "We have to get people thinking about things like this. It arms them against the right." He agrees, and works the hall, pulling over one after another of his key guys, giving each of them the leaflet, going over it with them. He's thinking ahead, educating his troops, knowing that this battle's more than just dollars and cents.

Sweeny's arrival is low-key. He's escorted in by a young union staff woman, Yael Foa, assigned by the AFL-CIO to work with us in Beaver County. She's talented and tireless, but stands to the side with a beaming smile as Sweeny greets each union member as if he or she were family. Wearing his union jacket and cap, white hair and the trace Irish lilt in his voice, he's soft-spoken and warm with everyone, and gets the same in return. People like and respect him.

But on the platform he's a firebrand. "You're the reason Obama is out in front in Pennsylvania. Make no mistake; each of you here is very important. Of all the things that we do-mailings, advertisements, phone banking-there's nothing more effective or more persuasive than what you're doing today, a personal visit from one union brother or sister to another. Beaver County is the key to Western PA, Western PA is the key to Pennsylvania-and without Pennsylvania, there's no way McCain can win!'

Sweeney closes by pushing the entire ticket, from Obama at the top to Vince Biancucci and Dennis Rousseau, both local guys with a union history, for state reps at the base. He stresses the AFL-CIO's core message once again: No more nonsense about privatizing Social Security and putting it into the stock market, no more notions of taxing health care benefits, extend health care to everyone, no more nonsense about de-regulation of banking and Wall Street. They've made a huge mess, and we need a New Deal and a new leadership to turn things around. Obama is the most pro-labor candidate we've ever seen, so shift into high gear and let's make him our president.

Naturally, Sweeny gets a warm, standing ovation. Everyone is appropriately fired up, puts on 'Steelworkers for Obama' T-Shirts and like, and hits the streets in the nearby mill towns, as well as the back roads in the semi-rural township hills and hollows, for the next four hours.

While this is a key area, it's only one small part of organized labor's effort in this campaign. Aside from millions of dollars spent on print and other media pushing 'Green Jobs', health care, and the right of unions to organize, both the AFL-CIO unions and 'Change to Win' unions like SEIU, are making a common front, working together on this election. On this weekend alone, over 250,000 union volunteers across the country are on the streets, going door-to-door. Busloads from 'safe areas' like New York City spend weekends in the rural Pennsylvania Poconos, or working-class neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Car caravans from Chicago work the factory towns of Indiana, Kentucky and Western Ohio. There's nothing quite like seeing it in motion: "Awesome!" as the Obama volunteer young people put it, although they've done some pretty awesome things themselves more than once.

The sun starts breaking through the clouds at mid-afternoon. I get back to the union hall after a stint at the nearby Court House for our weekly Beaver County Peace Links vigil, for over five years running, with our 'Bring the Troops Home Now! banner and 'Honk for Peace!' signs. The union parking lot is filling up, with more than when we started.

The reason? It's 'Steel Blitz for Barack' time. That means a bus is about to arrive carrying Dan Rooney, owner emeritus of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Edmond Nelson, former Steelers star defensive lineman, United Steelworkers (USW) International President Leo W. Gerard and other union officials and players.

Outsiders might not get it, but in an area where 'Steelerism' comes close to being a state religion, THIS IS A BIG DEAL. Dozens of young, mostly white kids, boys and girls, are bundled up against the wind, plastering each others coats, front and back, with 'Union Voters for Obama' and 'Steelers for Obama' stickers, clutching autograph books, waiting for their heroes to get there.

Inside, Billy George, head of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, is warming up a packed hall, standing room only. George is from the tough McDonald Heights neighborhood of nearby Aliquippa, PA, home of the shut-down Jones and Laughlin Steel, once the largest steel mill in the world. He was with USW Local 1211, a powerful and militant local in its day.

'What time is it?' he yells into the mike, right off the bat. 'UNION TIME!' the room yells back, no prompting needed. The Steelers are going to win their division, he predicts, then the Steelers are going to the Superbowl, and 'who will be the President to greet and open the Superbowl?" 'BARACK OBAMA!' comes back, instantly and loudly.

George turns serious and talks labor history, educating the younger people and getting knowing nods from the older workers. He reminds us of the fierce battles of the Steelworkers Organizing Committee in the 1930s, the violence and the arrests, at the historical marker at the old plant gate in downtown Aliquippa, marking the 1937 Supreme Court decision made in the case of the Aliquippa workers, the decision under FDR that broke the back of reaction, and allowed nationwide union organization to spread and the FDR New Deal to accelerate.

"Social Security came out of this," George explains. "Our right to organize came out of this. These are the most important things we've ever won, and now McCain and the Republicans want to 'privatize' it or take it back. Can you imagine if they put your social security in the stock market? No way, no way we'll let them. I know everyone here agrees with me, but I want four full shifts out of each and every one of you in the next ten days. Get this message out to your neighbors, relatives, and everyone else around here that knows better, or ought to."

Next up is Leo Girard, the Canadian-born international president of the United Steelworkers. Even with his north-of-the-border accent, he know the exact language of this group today.

"We've been getting the shaft," he says, "but this is our time, we're going to turn it completely around. We've never had a candidate like Barack Obama. After the thank-you's and standard lines, Girard asks the workers here to follow a thought experiment with him.

Imagine a candidate born to wealth and privilege of the high officer class. Follow him as he fritters away his studies. Recognize and respect his service, but when he gets back, he dumps his first wife and marries into brewery millions. He goes to Congress with the goal of letting the banks run wild, and voting against the unions 85 percent of the time. He's so wealthy, he doesn't even know how many homes he has.

Now imagine, Girard goes on, a candidate with a single mother, who works hard, but leaves him mainly with Kansas grandparents to raise him. They sacrifice everything to get him an education. He gets to Harvard, top of his class. Wall Street is offering hundreds of thousands of dollars just for sign-up bonuses, but what does he do? He decides to give something back. He works for a church group on the South Side of Chicago, with the unemployed laid-off workers, many of them steelworkers, helping them get retrained, helping them find a future.

"The Republicans want to talk about character," Girard shouts out. "What does this tell you about it? What does this tell you about the difference between these two men? I listened to rightwing radio yesterday, making fun of Obama for going to visit his dying grandmother, the woman who gave everything to see him succeed. He set aside the time to see her while she could still hear his voice, and they mock it."

"McCain and the Republicans have been running around like 'Robin Hood in Reverse,' then dump all this slime on Obama and us, and we're supposed to shut up and like it?," he asks. "No, take the measure of these two men. Take then measure of which one stands with family as we know it, take the measure of which one can benefit the working class that we're part of. Obama is going to be a great president, and we're going to put him there.

By this time there's not a dry eye in the house, and Rooney takes the mike to add to his admiration of Obama. But the most powerful applause comes for linebacker Edmond Nelson, a huge African American man who dwarfs everyone else on the platform.

"I'm for Barack Obama because I hate this war in Iraq," he shouts out as his opening line. "I hate this war because of the lies told us about 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' to drag us into it. I'm for Obama because I hate what's been done to our soldiers and the people of Iraq.

These lines get the strongest applause of the afternoon.

But Nelson closes with "I'm for Barack Obama because I want to see people who look like me get a fair shake and a decent chance in this society." Again, powerful applause from a group that's over 90 percent blue-collar white workers, but still a group that knows exactly what he means.

As the lines are being organized so the youngsters, and many older people too, can line up to get their Steeler autographs, one of the AFLCIO chiefs gets order in the room. "One last speaker, one of the most important. She's going to tell you what to do."

Up comes Kyra Ricci, a petite twenty-something starkly contrasting when every previous speaker, with a terrific smile, but a "listen up now" sense of command. The Obama youth insurgency is "in the house", too, and she lays out the tasks of the final days, and has her people with their sign-up clipboards stationed so they won't be gotten by without a commitment.

It's the perfect counterpoint to end the day. Three powerful movements are coming together here-organized labor, the African American fight for justice and a new antiwar youth insurgency. Given the sense of class-conscious solidarity and unity in the hall, it's hard to see how McCain and the GOP can stop them. But it's also clear that an Obama White House, in calling for partners for 'change from below,' will also face forces that will not be easily deflected or denied.

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