Closing Nummi

As I read about the Toyota decision to close the Nummi plant in Fremont, CA, I get really pissed off. This is the only unionized Toyota plant in the whole USA. Before GM went bankrupt the plant was a joint venture between GM and Toyota. They manufactured the Corrolla and the small pick up truck. GM pulled out and Toyota US chief of operations, Yoshi Inabi, decided to close the Fremont operation. He said it was too expensive to operate, so 4,500 employees will lose their jobs by March of 2010.

Like the rest of the automotive industry, Toyota sales have been down for the last couple of years. All of their new plants built in the US are in the south and are, of course, non-union. They even have a new modern plant built in Mississippi that hasn’t even gone into production. They would probably like to move the Fremont operation from California to Mississippi. You wonder why? In Mississippi they don’t pay taxes, the state trains their workers, and it’s a “right to work state.” That makes it extremely difficult to unionize. In a word, Toyota is pretty free to do as they please down there in old Miss.

California is a different story. First of all the UAW in Fremont has made continuous concessions to the company on wages and working conditions. The UAW is trying its darndest to meet all the Toyota requirements for a free hand in running the plant. Toyota seems not to care a hoot about what the loss of 4,500 jobs will mean to the employees and the whole area around Fremont that supports the car plant. There are probably an equal number of people outside the plant who will also be affected.

Now here comes the real shocker in this story of indifference to where the company is operating. During the recent Cash for Clunker’s program, guess which auto company was the biggest beneficiary? You guessed it, none other than Toyota. The US taxpayer gave them a huge finacial boost You would think that might give them pause as they dump 4,500 employees into the street. Toyota doesn’t seem to understand that this is a humanitarian decision as much as an economic one.

Having said all that, I now have to turn my attention to the UAW and the Labor Movement in terms of how it will respond to the Toyota decision. The precipitous decline of the American Labor Movement, that has been going on ever since the passage of the Taft Hartley law in the late forties has been its inability to respond at critical moments of change; for example, Ronald Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers and the labor movement did nothing. So far, in the Nummi case the UAW leadership is making indignant speeches. That will not mean diddly-squat without some serious action.

Well in my 92nd year, I remember a conversation with the late John L. Lewis, the brilliant head of the Mine Workers Union. A bunch of us young wannabe union organizers were being asked to go South in a drive to organize the Textile industry. Lewis said, “When you are in a life and death fight with the employers and all seems hopeless, it’s time to create a crisis.” That’s what we did in Stanford, Ct. in 1948 after a losing battle with the Yale and Town Lock company. We created a one day General Strike. Man, did that work. The governor stepped in and an arbitrator was appointed. We didn’t win, but neither did we lose. It’s a lesson for the UAW.

Some advice from the poet Dylan Thomas might be appropriate, “Do not go quietly into the night.” Maybe take a few hundred of those Fremont members over to Torrance, the Toyota Corporate headquarters, and have a sit-in until you can have a meeting with Mr. Inabi. See if you can’t change his mind. If you can’t, then stay there and recruit your esteemed Governor to come and join you. This is just one amongst many possibilities. But for God sake, put up a fight in the best militant tradition of the the American Labor Movement. I hope it’s not too late. Go get ‘em UAW.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Obama;s Waterloo

It’s probably the worst of times or the best of times for the President and his family to go off to the Vineyard for a vacation. The worst because of what has been happening to his Health Care Reform initiative. The best because it might be a good opportunity to sit on a beach and think through what exactly has happened.

In an earlier blog I expressed a deep concern about Obama’s naiveté regarding “reaching across the aisle” for support of the proposed health care legislation. I thought then, as I do now, that all that inviting the Pharmaceutical guys for a White House” free lunch” was not going to help one bit. For the Pharma guys, when push comes to shove, the only thing that counts is the bottom line.

The insurance folks are just being true to their commitments, which is TO MAKE MONEY. They don’t care if everyone is covered or not. They care about their profits period. If this sounds like “class struggle” talk, well it is. After the world wide financial meltdown that caused irreparable damage to millions of homeowners, as well as job holders, while the bank boys wallowed in huge bonuses, if you don’t see the class angle in all of this, well what can I say. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer now what do you call that? It ain’t a church picnic. Maybe it is the class struggle?

Here’s the giveaway on what the right wing was up to. Early on in the health care debate some Republicans asked their conservative high Priest or should I say Rabbi, Bill Krystal ”what they should do about health care.” Without blinking an eye he said,”JUST KILL IT.” That created the group who are now out there to Kill IT, period. The object of course is the kill the Obama Presidency with it. That is what I think is now at stake.I hope a week on the Vineyard beach will brace Obama for the first really major fight of his Presidency. All of us who believe in a more equal distribution of health care benefits need to see it as our fight not just Obamas.

I hope Obama will go back to his campaign strategy of getting all those cyberspace folks back into action. In order for that to happen he needs to spell out in Power Point fashion exactly what needs to be in the Health Care Legislation. The “KILLER,S” have taken advantage of the fact that there is no legislation pending. There is just lots of ideas that have gotten rolled up into 800 pages of legislative stuff that has been a field day for the opposition. Wading through all those pages permits cuckoos to accuse the President of proposing “death panels for Grandma’s.” Listen it would be funny except there are people out there who are so frightened by the economic melt down that they believe anything scary.

Mr President please compose a list of exactly what your administration is proposing. No lengthy Harvard Law School discussion, just maybe a dozen bullet points of what it is you are proposing. While your are at don’t hesitate to call a lie, a lie, like the death panel stuff.

This is a time for bold leadership Mr. President. just go out there and sock-'em and the country will respond. Have a nice week on the beach and a good Lobster dinner at The Shack.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Hubris

Hubris *

I drive by the creek every day,
Boats lazily bump against the dock.
Up on the hill sit others, on cement blocks.
I whiz by as my eye catches,
Is that her? Could it be my old love Hubris?
Forlorn, abandoned, left high and dry
On cement blocks. It’s an indignity!

She and I sailed to the city going west
And to Montauk going east;
Through Shinicock and Moriches Inlets
With the wind whistling in her sails.
Her tiller in my hands I could sing
In full throat my song of joy;
As the water, the boat, the wind,
All in one perfect harmony.
And her name was Hubris.

Slowly but surely I knew,
One day my drive-by would stop.

As I looked across the creek
She kept calling to me for rescue.
Her name was chosen in the face of Poseidon.
He was smashing waves ‘oer her deck.
We were in deep water. What to do?
Snug inside her cabin we waited it out,
Waited for Poseidon to quit his rage.
He raged. The Oday just bounced around
Like a rubber duck in a baby’s bath.
For how long? Maybe an hour, two or three?

Poseidon blessed her heart. He called her Hubris.
No way was she to spend her late years
Rotting away on cement blocks.
To the rescue!

A visit, the sun was setting in a ruby red sky.
Criss-crossed old rail tracks marked
This ancient ruin of a boatyard.
Rubbish strewn cover from banishment.
But Hubris was sound in structure.
I thought, with a little love and a lot of luck
She’d sail the ocean blue yet again.

I went sailing, ass over tea kettle, my face in the mud.
I lay there a while. What to do? What to do?
Cell phone them 911?
What do I say? “I’m in this ancient boatyard
Between the Oday 22 and the Catalina 30?”
What’ll Kate think? “My God, what did he do now?”

No, just pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
Start all over again.”
Wisdom from Frank Sinatra.

But you can’t go home again.
Oh that’s baloney!
Get Hubris back in the water. We’ll show ‘em.
Well maybe after my leg stops screaming.
You stupid idiot! What were you thinking

As you lay in the ruins of an ancient boat yard?
Yeah, yeah, I know, if you could just get hubris back in the water,
You’d be back in ‘82 sailing the ocean blue.
Only you forgot, the man in black is at your back.

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.

(“Hubris” Greek word,challenging the Gods usually resulting in failure.)

I Was Wrong

It was probably Jean Freemen’s comment on my last blog,”Pete Seeger’s 90th,” that got me rethinking what I had said, “The left had given up the class struggle in favor of environmental issues.” Jean suggested that the two are so intertwined as to make them difficult to separate. The poor are and will suffer more from the the environmental catastrophes than the rest of us. That got me thinking it over again, as I have done so many times before. Now I believe I was wrong.

A little background. It is generally agreed amongst historians that the Industrial Revolution started about 200 years ago. That’s when the life of strictly living off the land began to change. It started in England with the invention of the steam engine used to pump water out of the coal mines. The railroad embodies the idea that we can use things found in nature to make our lives easier and richer. The railroads demand on nature included iron, copper, coal and wood. But look what it did in moving stuff and us from one place to another. Then came the cotton gin and most important of all the Internal Combustion Engine essential for all transportation. It required oil for lubrication and gasoline refined from oil to make it run. It created a revolution in farming through the tractor and the transportation of food and the airplane. It gave us very cheap source of power. This was the revolution that changed the lives of millions of people from feudal peasants to skilled industrial artisans. My life was the epitome of that largess. At age 16 I had my first car. I was the, “king of the hill” in my old neighborhood.

Those same very cheap sources of power have kept the lights on and air conditioners running through the use of coal. Now here comes the rub. These resources are finite and we are now at the point of beginning to run out of oil. The effect of our burning fossil fuel is destroying the very air that we breath. So here’s the quid pro quo. Nature gives us all these wonderful things that makes our lives a great historical party. But we foul up the atmosphere with carbon emission, water rises forcing millions to leave their homes, and new deserts are formed.

Yes Jean, I think you are right and I wish to retract what I said about the Sloop Clearwater. If we continue to destroy the planet at the rate we are presently going, there won’t be much of a class struggle to fight over. And yes, the poor are already paying as climate change is mostly effecting the people of Africa and Asia who can least afford it. People living on low lying islands in the Pacific are being moved as the oceans rise from the melting of the glaciers, the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets. The endangered Polar Bears are acting as our Canaries in the coal mines.

Why aren’t people more alarmed by this environmental crisis? My years of experience in the Labor Movement taught me that the average person, overwhelmed with their own day to day issues, feels that there is no way they can go out and do something about the destruction of the very environment that we are dependent on for our continued existence. That’s the present dilemma that we find ourselves in. Thanks Jean for your challenge.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Pete Seeger's 90th

Watching Pete’s 90 birthday party in Madison Square Garden on PBS brought back a sea of memories. The Garden Party was for the benefit of the sloop Clearwater. It is part of Pete’s campaign to clean up the Hudson River. Everybody who is anybody in the folk music world was there and it was a most joyous occasion for the thousands who filled the Garden and were happy to sing along. Yet it got me thinking. How did we progress down the road from “Talking Union,” one of Pete’s first songs about the class struggle to songs about cleaning up the Hudson River?

Early on Pete, with the rest of us lefties were singing about worker’s rights to organize. “Which Side Are You On,” “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” “Solidarity Forever” these were the anthems of struggle. When I was a union organizer I was inspired by Pete to learn to play the guitar as just another tool to help in the organizing campaigns. (You see the picture on my blog.) And indeed singing did help as it was a way of creating a common expression that all could participate in. What I am curious about is how the music changed? (I believe that when the singing ends the movement is over.)

The early days of the folk revival were born out of the WPA project to record as much as possible the songs of Appalachia and other rural areas that were rapidly dieing out. Alan Lomax lead this project for the Library of Congress. Much of the “Folkways” recordings that he made are now at the Smithsonian. A lot of the early protest music was sung by the Wobblies, the IWW. Their “Little Red Song Book” became famous for its songs about the class struggle particularly among the loggers in the Northwest.

Joe Hill took the hymn “In The Sweet Bye and Bye” and wrote these words to it
.
Long haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right,
But when asked about how “bout something to eat”
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, Live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.

The whole idea of that singing was to help people understand the nature of the class struggle. Workers and the poor suffered because the owners of the means of production that included the whole banking world were exploiting them for the sake of their own profits. (Song “The Banks Are Made of Marble with a guard at every door and the vaults are filled with silver that the workers sweated for.”)

When Pete came on the scene the class struggle was still a major focus of the folk singing world. That’s when “Talking Union” appeared and so it continued through the 30ies and 40ies. I can’t pinpoint an exact time when it began to change. This will be a rough try. First there was the McCarty era in which we had to fight off the fascist crazies who where preparing lists of people to be rounded up and put in concentration camps for the duration. (I was on that list.)That’s when singing out for freedom was a critical part of holding people together.

I believe things began to change some time after Khrushchev’s speech in 1956 to the Communist Party Convention acknowledging the horrors of the Stalin era. That was the beginning of the end of the utopian “dream of socialism.” Somewhat later with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “dream” disappeared from the world of alternatives to capitalism.

The coming together of the Viet Nam war protests and the Civil Rights movement is best expressed in the song “We Shall Overcome.” Black folks with the great Spiritual and Gospel tradition sure did sing themselves to many victories. The lefties were very much part of those movements.

The cultural revolution of the sixties was another important turning point. The anti war movement of the sixties pretty much rejected the old Marxist idea of the class struggle. The sixties launched the notion that what we needed to was “love one another.” It was as though “now that the idea of socialism has been pretty much destroyed what can we do to make the world a better place?” Well, loving one and other is not a bad idea it just doesn’t address fundamental underlying problems of society. The epitome of loving through music was demonstrated at the Woodstock celebration in 1969.

It was some time during the Reagan years that I got a sense that a new paradigm had taken over the society. Namely it was okay now to look out for yourself and go forth and make money. In that same time frame the issue of saving the planet began to emerge with increasing reports of the serious erosion of the worlds climate, oceans, air and resources. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring published in 1962 became a best seller and made the fight to save the planet real. No longer having a alternative of socialism this became a new safe harbor for old lefties to move into.

As we were celebrating Pete’s 90th in Madison Square Garden, I couldn’t help but think, have we solved all those old nagging economic problems that society is bereft with? Like the continuous increase in the spread between the rich and the poor? Or have we decided that it is easier to clean up the Hudson River with the help of the sloop Clearwater than it is to do something about the rich growing richer at the expense of the poor? Just more questions than answers.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.