This is another part of my ongoing effort to leave a record of my life for my Great Grandson Soren decade by decade.
Your mother and father paid a visit---yesterday.
18 months old you made us giggle and laugh.
The country, the world in recession-depression?
We all need a Giggle and a Laugh..
Meeting Kate was my 80s highlight.
My belief in love was reborn.
Actor, President Ronald Reagan opened the decade.
He fired 11,000 Air Traffic Controllers over a strike threat.
The sleepy old Unions, just sighed and dismayed.
Union coffin got another nail. To bad for your Grandpa
He continues to believe in a Labor Movement.
We sent men off in a Shuttle to space.
At the same-time credit card mania took off,
For the worlds greatest party.
On credit off course. “We can have it all”
Yupp, that’s what they thought.
Most celebration’s,--- were down on Wall Street.
Billions in bonuses for money launderers.
Make nothing---just shuffle paper around.
Ronald Reagan, the movie star turned President.
Russian, Gorbachev and he end the Cold War.
(That was between the US. and Soviet Union.)
4500 Nuclear Bombs later. They’re still out there.
Chenobyl, nuclear power plant blows up.
Thousands radiated. Reminder
Nuclear can end life as we know it.
So can Global warming.
New wars, Iraq and Iran--Soviets, Afghanistan Israel--Palestinians.
Computers are everywhere. ”Globalization” The new world economy.
Grandpa thinks its Imperialism under a new rubric.
Cars get child safety seats bicycles get helmets.
Global warming nuclear weapons got nothing.
Berlin Wall between East--- West Germany comes down
Symbol of divided world. Not a failure of socialism,
It was never, never ever tried. Dictatorship is not, socialism.
Aids a new disease decimated the Village where we lived.
350 Bleeker Street Used to be a Village.
Now it’s home to Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Winston, Tiffany?
We left when the locals lucked out. Village my foot.
Aids infects 31 million world wide.
Lung cancer results from smoking. Cure, cut smoking.
Aids from sex. Try cutting that?
New diseases in bloom, like Global Warming
Maybe no cure? Maybe just to late?
Music reflects the time. Rocks in many forms.
Hard, Soft, Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, Country Rock
Punk Rock, Salsa Rock. Maybe rocks in our heads?
Even Klezmer is back. Whiney clarinet and all.
The 1980s will be remembered as the party age.
Soren I hope you wont be “Paying the Piper.”
Love your Great GrandpaBob.
.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Memo to Richard Trumka President AFofL-CIO
You and I met a few years ago at University of Stony Brook Award Ceremony. I was given a “Lifetime Contribution for Social Justice Award.” You and I spoke about the Miners For Democracy that I had been involved with.You acknowledged the role it played in your own career.It contributed in no small way to your becoming the President of the United Mine Workers. You spoke about how you saw the future of the Labor Movement. Yes, you were going to lead a new effort to organize a whole new class of service workers who had little or no tradition in the union world. Okay, that was one of those upbeat and inspiring experiences. Now the Labor Movement is confronted with a very different reality The new Conservative Tea Party Congress will pick as one of their targets the decimation of unions.
I have a fundamental concern with how the Labor Movement needs to respond to any and all attacks. Its hard won victories starting way back with the establishment of the eight hour day will be targets for the conservative steamroller. In defense of hard won concession there has to be a new fearlessness in protecting those gains.There can be no caving in as there was when Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers. That was just the latest turning point leading to the precipitous decline of the unions. The Labor Movement simply cannot tolerate any more of that and still expect to be a force for the workers.
Having spent many of my early years in the Machinists Union I remember another turning point. That was when the leaders of the AF of L. and the CIO couldn’t wait to sign the Non Communist affidavit resulting from the passage of the Taft Hartley Law. The exception was your very own great leader of the UMW John L Lewis. He rightly called the signing of those affidavits a disgrace. Following the end of WW2 the employers with the help of that anti union Taft Hartley Law attempted to cancel any gains the unions had made during the war. We had to find many ways to defend our hard won gains.
I’m going to go back again for a little history. It was in 1935 I was 18 when I got my first organizing assignment for the newly formed CIO. A group of youthful organizers like myself had the opportunity to meet with John L. Lewis. (Oh, my God we were going to meet with the guru himself.) I do remember some of the things he told us. One was when you are really up against it and things look particularly bleak create a crisis. Don’t sit and wait for something good to happen. Emphatically he said “It never will” you have to make it happen.
After WW2 that's what we did in Stamford CT. Yale & Towne lock had decided to cancel their union contract with the Machinists. The strike there was in its sixth month. The union was desperate. Remembering what Lewis had told us we organized a one day General Strike. By God it worked, Lewis was right. That action saved the union.
My message Brother Trumka is please begin planning now exactly how the Labor Movement is going to respond to the attacks that are on there way. New dramatic tactics are called for. Stoppages, sit ins, demonstrations at State and in the Capital Washington. Marches, marches marches, get all that anger out there directed at those who are fleecing the working population. Yes your the leader and your going to have to take some risks. Remember anything is better than just sitting there playing dead.
If there is one lesson I have learned in our long struggle for “Social Justice” it is that the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the very nature of the resistance. Ideally we should win. We may not win all that we started out to fight for. The outcome may not be what we wanted. Most important we should find ourselves in a position to fight another day. One final word from Baron Von Clausewitz the great Prussian military strategist. He suggested, I’m paraphrasing when the enemy has you surrounded and outnumbered and your not sure what to do, launch an offensive.
Richard Trumka my best wishes for a successful outcome. Remember another General in WW2, Vinegar Joe Stillwell's battle slogan, “Illegitimate No Carborundum” or “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind you Down”
I have a fundamental concern with how the Labor Movement needs to respond to any and all attacks. Its hard won victories starting way back with the establishment of the eight hour day will be targets for the conservative steamroller. In defense of hard won concession there has to be a new fearlessness in protecting those gains.There can be no caving in as there was when Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers. That was just the latest turning point leading to the precipitous decline of the unions. The Labor Movement simply cannot tolerate any more of that and still expect to be a force for the workers.
Having spent many of my early years in the Machinists Union I remember another turning point. That was when the leaders of the AF of L. and the CIO couldn’t wait to sign the Non Communist affidavit resulting from the passage of the Taft Hartley Law. The exception was your very own great leader of the UMW John L Lewis. He rightly called the signing of those affidavits a disgrace. Following the end of WW2 the employers with the help of that anti union Taft Hartley Law attempted to cancel any gains the unions had made during the war. We had to find many ways to defend our hard won gains.
I’m going to go back again for a little history. It was in 1935 I was 18 when I got my first organizing assignment for the newly formed CIO. A group of youthful organizers like myself had the opportunity to meet with John L. Lewis. (Oh, my God we were going to meet with the guru himself.) I do remember some of the things he told us. One was when you are really up against it and things look particularly bleak create a crisis. Don’t sit and wait for something good to happen. Emphatically he said “It never will” you have to make it happen.
After WW2 that's what we did in Stamford CT. Yale & Towne lock had decided to cancel their union contract with the Machinists. The strike there was in its sixth month. The union was desperate. Remembering what Lewis had told us we organized a one day General Strike. By God it worked, Lewis was right. That action saved the union.
My message Brother Trumka is please begin planning now exactly how the Labor Movement is going to respond to the attacks that are on there way. New dramatic tactics are called for. Stoppages, sit ins, demonstrations at State and in the Capital Washington. Marches, marches marches, get all that anger out there directed at those who are fleecing the working population. Yes your the leader and your going to have to take some risks. Remember anything is better than just sitting there playing dead.
If there is one lesson I have learned in our long struggle for “Social Justice” it is that the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the very nature of the resistance. Ideally we should win. We may not win all that we started out to fight for. The outcome may not be what we wanted. Most important we should find ourselves in a position to fight another day. One final word from Baron Von Clausewitz the great Prussian military strategist. He suggested, I’m paraphrasing when the enemy has you surrounded and outnumbered and your not sure what to do, launch an offensive.
Richard Trumka my best wishes for a successful outcome. Remember another General in WW2, Vinegar Joe Stillwell's battle slogan, “Illegitimate No Carborundum” or “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind you Down”
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
What Jobs are we Talking About?
Or Upon Reconnecting with old friends.
Recently I had the opportunity to reconnect with two old friends. One reminded me that he was finished with, “trying to change the world.” The other reminded me of what happened to the old Blue Collar Democratic coalition. They are the working class who have been losing out since the end of manufacturing across the industrial heartland of the U.S.
First about trying to “change the world.” I grew up with folks who had a dream of a utopia controlled by industrial workers. Workers would form elected councils that would start at their workplaces and move on through government. Yes they would be elected by the people who actually worked in the mines and mills to run the country.Back then there was the Soviet Union. Its supporters held that it was the living example of the new utopia.
I was a young radical growing up in the storm of these never ending arguments. There was a debate between myself, as a leader of the Young Communist League in the Bronx and Gus Tyler the head of the Young People Socialist league. It was held at The Bronx Free Fellowship. This question was posed to me. “In the struggle for socialism do you consider the Soviet Union a beacon or a burden?” Without hesitation I answered emphatically, “it was a burden.” That was my first step away from “changing the world.” Gus Tyler expressed shock and disbelief. Yes I confirmed my position. He then wanted to know “what on earth do you believe?”
In explaining my comment I said that I had come to the conclusion that in our struggle for a better world we can make improvements in the every day lives of working class people. I explained, “that’s what unions do every day in factories across the land.” It was in the struggles for Home Relief, Unemployment Insurance, Right to Organize that I experienced the real gains made for working people. Later I came to understand that what I was doing was making “imperfect adjustments.” This idea left plenty of room for future adjustments. That’s is how I have been dealing with “changing the world.” I guess I am still in that space and that is why I remain engaged even if it is just this old blogger holding forth as if on “Tremont & Prospect.” ( Soap box corner in the Bronx.)
On to the second old friend who for the many years was always a voice for the Guys who worked in the monstrous industrial heartland of the country. In a recent NY Times column David Brooks said, “This is the beating center of American life. The place--the trajectory of American politics is being determined. If America can figure out how to build a decent future for the working-class people in this region then the U.S. will remain a predominant power. If it can’t, it wont.”
Wow where is Brooks coming from? This heartland of America is now the rustbelt of most of those smoldering giants of the early industrial revolution. The few new mills that are operating under foreign ownership are producing more stuff with 80 percent less workers than in, “the good old days of Bethlehem Steel.” Brooks wake up it’s over. In place of Steel Making and cigars for a successful melt we have computer screens you sit in front of and push buttons.
Which brings me around to what kind of jobs are we all talking about? Can I remind my readers that some months back I wrote a blog on “Women As A Majority of the Work Force.” Now that has some real implications for the kind of jobs we are talking about. I love when I hear talk of, “shovel ready projects.” I don’t know exactly when the shovel became obsolete. I do know that any shovel job that required more than a dozen shovel fulls was taken over many decades ago by a machine called a back-hoe. They come in all sizes from a little bitty one that I can rent to use in our garden to giants operated by one person that can dig a quarter mile six foot deep trench before lunch.
My point is that jobs in the U.S. have been rapidly changing from the old industrial mills to the service, health care and automated computer controlled operation. It is now estimated that half the workforce or 75 million people do their jobs sitting in front of a computer screen the whole day.
That reminds me of a book Patricia Sexton wrote back in 1969 called “The Feminized Classrooms, White Collar and the Decline of Manliness.” I knew Pat Sexton and I read the book when it came out. Most of what she had to say is in the title. I was ambivalent at the time because my own experience moving from the plant floor to the office helped me to understand that in the white collar settings men and women were equal as far as the tasks were concerned.
Sexton’s concern about “manliness” was and is real. It was while working as a plumbers helper in high rise buildings I became a man. I was doing hard physical labor that was only done by men. Hence I became one. My work determined my state of mind. So now I’m in front of a computer screen and my major help comes from my wife who knows a hell of lot more about this machine than I ever will. This brings me back to the unemployed that Brooks wrote about in the “Great heartland of America?”
It was my second “old :friend” who called my attention to the fact that without some kind of college education getting any job at all is becoming extremely difficult. So what is going to happen to all those middle aged blue collar guys who lost their jobs as a result of the recession? Who out there thinks they can be retrained to sit here like I am and be, a claims operator at an insurance company? I have some real doubts as to how possible that will be. That brings me back to the David Brooks piece. If we need to create jobs in the Heartland to put the old timers back to work I’m afraid we can’t and so we may be losing our “predominance in the world.” I’m not sure if that’s good or bad?
Recently I had the opportunity to reconnect with two old friends. One reminded me that he was finished with, “trying to change the world.” The other reminded me of what happened to the old Blue Collar Democratic coalition. They are the working class who have been losing out since the end of manufacturing across the industrial heartland of the U.S.
First about trying to “change the world.” I grew up with folks who had a dream of a utopia controlled by industrial workers. Workers would form elected councils that would start at their workplaces and move on through government. Yes they would be elected by the people who actually worked in the mines and mills to run the country.Back then there was the Soviet Union. Its supporters held that it was the living example of the new utopia.
I was a young radical growing up in the storm of these never ending arguments. There was a debate between myself, as a leader of the Young Communist League in the Bronx and Gus Tyler the head of the Young People Socialist league. It was held at The Bronx Free Fellowship. This question was posed to me. “In the struggle for socialism do you consider the Soviet Union a beacon or a burden?” Without hesitation I answered emphatically, “it was a burden.” That was my first step away from “changing the world.” Gus Tyler expressed shock and disbelief. Yes I confirmed my position. He then wanted to know “what on earth do you believe?”
In explaining my comment I said that I had come to the conclusion that in our struggle for a better world we can make improvements in the every day lives of working class people. I explained, “that’s what unions do every day in factories across the land.” It was in the struggles for Home Relief, Unemployment Insurance, Right to Organize that I experienced the real gains made for working people. Later I came to understand that what I was doing was making “imperfect adjustments.” This idea left plenty of room for future adjustments. That’s is how I have been dealing with “changing the world.” I guess I am still in that space and that is why I remain engaged even if it is just this old blogger holding forth as if on “Tremont & Prospect.” ( Soap box corner in the Bronx.)
On to the second old friend who for the many years was always a voice for the Guys who worked in the monstrous industrial heartland of the country. In a recent NY Times column David Brooks said, “This is the beating center of American life. The place--the trajectory of American politics is being determined. If America can figure out how to build a decent future for the working-class people in this region then the U.S. will remain a predominant power. If it can’t, it wont.”
Wow where is Brooks coming from? This heartland of America is now the rustbelt of most of those smoldering giants of the early industrial revolution. The few new mills that are operating under foreign ownership are producing more stuff with 80 percent less workers than in, “the good old days of Bethlehem Steel.” Brooks wake up it’s over. In place of Steel Making and cigars for a successful melt we have computer screens you sit in front of and push buttons.
Which brings me around to what kind of jobs are we all talking about? Can I remind my readers that some months back I wrote a blog on “Women As A Majority of the Work Force.” Now that has some real implications for the kind of jobs we are talking about. I love when I hear talk of, “shovel ready projects.” I don’t know exactly when the shovel became obsolete. I do know that any shovel job that required more than a dozen shovel fulls was taken over many decades ago by a machine called a back-hoe. They come in all sizes from a little bitty one that I can rent to use in our garden to giants operated by one person that can dig a quarter mile six foot deep trench before lunch.
My point is that jobs in the U.S. have been rapidly changing from the old industrial mills to the service, health care and automated computer controlled operation. It is now estimated that half the workforce or 75 million people do their jobs sitting in front of a computer screen the whole day.
That reminds me of a book Patricia Sexton wrote back in 1969 called “The Feminized Classrooms, White Collar and the Decline of Manliness.” I knew Pat Sexton and I read the book when it came out. Most of what she had to say is in the title. I was ambivalent at the time because my own experience moving from the plant floor to the office helped me to understand that in the white collar settings men and women were equal as far as the tasks were concerned.
Sexton’s concern about “manliness” was and is real. It was while working as a plumbers helper in high rise buildings I became a man. I was doing hard physical labor that was only done by men. Hence I became one. My work determined my state of mind. So now I’m in front of a computer screen and my major help comes from my wife who knows a hell of lot more about this machine than I ever will. This brings me back to the unemployed that Brooks wrote about in the “Great heartland of America?”
It was my second “old :friend” who called my attention to the fact that without some kind of college education getting any job at all is becoming extremely difficult. So what is going to happen to all those middle aged blue collar guys who lost their jobs as a result of the recession? Who out there thinks they can be retrained to sit here like I am and be, a claims operator at an insurance company? I have some real doubts as to how possible that will be. That brings me back to the David Brooks piece. If we need to create jobs in the Heartland to put the old timers back to work I’m afraid we can’t and so we may be losing our “predominance in the world.” I’m not sure if that’s good or bad?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Social Unrest Has Arrived
A a number of occasions I have written about social unrest. Now its breaking out all over the world. Karl Marx might have observed that capitalism, in its regular economic upheavals is once again going to solve the crisis on the backs of the working class. What has changed since Marx’s time is whose backs are going to pay for this latest big rip-off? The rip-off artists are known as Madoff speculators, Bear Stearns, Citi Corp Goldman Sachs or any one of the big Hedge fund artists. Yes, we hardly know these days who exactly constitutes the capitalists or the “working class?” Do we include all those millions of white collar people sitting in front of computer screens? Is the new ruling class the Gates, the Zuckerburgh’s? Who? However in the meantime the social unrest factor is spreading across the globe.
Look at the protests in Britain. So far they were primarily students furious at the proposed increase of college tuition. What of the street demonstrations in France, Greece? This of course is only the beginning as all the “advanced capitalist countries” begin to figure out how to pay for the big party of the nineties. That's when we all went on the biggest credit binge in history. Buying mountains of stuff that most people couldn’t come close to affording. That's when your house was your big poker chip. You could burrow against it. You could buy and sell it doubling your money and it was all so easy. And for a little while it made lots of people feel oh so happy that WE GOT IT ALL. Then the bubble burst and very suddenly we are back in the same old dump of a recession. Or depression depending on who you are talking to.
Capitalism is not nearly as scared of social unrest now as it was back in the 1930s. That’s primarily because all that threatens now is a move to shift the distribution of wealth. Back in the 30s the capitalists were scared of a socialist revolution. That’s why I have often told how FDR with the aid of the left saved capitalism from its own abuses.
My years in the Labor Movement were precisely in those times of great social unrest. You bet workers were angry about the unfair distribution of capitalism’s goodies. With our regular use of social unrest we were able to create a world of tolerable working conditions for millions of workers. The Unions in those days had some really dynamic leaders like the head of the Miners John L. Lewis. In a very early new organizers meeting he growled at a roomful of us young whipper snappers. “They’ll be many times when you feel there’s no hope, your up against it don’t have an idea what to do. Then create a crisis.” Soon after the end of the war that’s exactly what we did in Stamford Conn.
Yale & Towne Lock company had been out on strike for months. Strikers morale was eroding. Ahaa! Time to create a crisis. We managed a general Strike in Stanford and man did the rulers ever take notice. We were threatening the system. Workers got a sense of power that they had never experienced. And man did they love it. The strike was settled. I learned from that experience why the idea of the General Strike had been wiped off the map of ways to strengthen working class power. The union leadership in cahoots with the owners of industry realized early on that the experience of the general strike was far to dangerous to the system. That was social unrest that could lead to revolution. Taken off the books.
Okay so now we come to President Obamas Commission on the deficit. They have issued a preliminary report, “for discussion.” The argument that has quickly emerged is who is going to pay for the big party that is now over? Here a lot will depend on the social unrest factor. If the argument boils down too a conversation of do we or don’t we expand the Bush tax cuts nothing much will happen. If the changes in SS and Medicare don’t get anybody mad and out on the streets the working class is going to pay through the nose. We are back to the social unrest factor. To the degree there is a protest movement out there to defend the basic interests of the average wage earner that will determine how much the cost of the crisis will be paid for by that very same wage earner. Keep an eye on the social unrest factor. It will determine the outcome as well as the future of the programs under consideration for cuts, cuts, cuts.
Look at the protests in Britain. So far they were primarily students furious at the proposed increase of college tuition. What of the street demonstrations in France, Greece? This of course is only the beginning as all the “advanced capitalist countries” begin to figure out how to pay for the big party of the nineties. That's when we all went on the biggest credit binge in history. Buying mountains of stuff that most people couldn’t come close to affording. That's when your house was your big poker chip. You could burrow against it. You could buy and sell it doubling your money and it was all so easy. And for a little while it made lots of people feel oh so happy that WE GOT IT ALL. Then the bubble burst and very suddenly we are back in the same old dump of a recession. Or depression depending on who you are talking to.
Capitalism is not nearly as scared of social unrest now as it was back in the 1930s. That’s primarily because all that threatens now is a move to shift the distribution of wealth. Back in the 30s the capitalists were scared of a socialist revolution. That’s why I have often told how FDR with the aid of the left saved capitalism from its own abuses.
My years in the Labor Movement were precisely in those times of great social unrest. You bet workers were angry about the unfair distribution of capitalism’s goodies. With our regular use of social unrest we were able to create a world of tolerable working conditions for millions of workers. The Unions in those days had some really dynamic leaders like the head of the Miners John L. Lewis. In a very early new organizers meeting he growled at a roomful of us young whipper snappers. “They’ll be many times when you feel there’s no hope, your up against it don’t have an idea what to do. Then create a crisis.” Soon after the end of the war that’s exactly what we did in Stamford Conn.
Yale & Towne Lock company had been out on strike for months. Strikers morale was eroding. Ahaa! Time to create a crisis. We managed a general Strike in Stanford and man did the rulers ever take notice. We were threatening the system. Workers got a sense of power that they had never experienced. And man did they love it. The strike was settled. I learned from that experience why the idea of the General Strike had been wiped off the map of ways to strengthen working class power. The union leadership in cahoots with the owners of industry realized early on that the experience of the general strike was far to dangerous to the system. That was social unrest that could lead to revolution. Taken off the books.
Okay so now we come to President Obamas Commission on the deficit. They have issued a preliminary report, “for discussion.” The argument that has quickly emerged is who is going to pay for the big party that is now over? Here a lot will depend on the social unrest factor. If the argument boils down too a conversation of do we or don’t we expand the Bush tax cuts nothing much will happen. If the changes in SS and Medicare don’t get anybody mad and out on the streets the working class is going to pay through the nose. We are back to the social unrest factor. To the degree there is a protest movement out there to defend the basic interests of the average wage earner that will determine how much the cost of the crisis will be paid for by that very same wage earner. Keep an eye on the social unrest factor. It will determine the outcome as well as the future of the programs under consideration for cuts, cuts, cuts.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Voting as an Exorcism
When I went to vote in our local school there was an old lady using a walker. I was sitting down. I offered her my seat. She asked,”how old are you?” I told her 93. She said,”your older than me you stay there.” I thanked her and met her again as we were leaving the school. “How’d it go I asked.” “Oh it was just fine as now we’ll get those scoundrels out and get the country humming again.” “Do you always feel that way after you have voted?” “Oh of course" she replied.” “So you always feel uplifted once you have voted?” “Yes indeed. Isn’t it the American way?”
It dawned on me that people get a heightened sense that the act of voting has somehow cleansed there felt sense that “by God I have actually done something for my country.” She just seemed to be one happy AARP member. If for some the election is an exorcism then for others it has become a sporting event. Think of it as the baseball pennant race. That’s the primaries and the election the world series. The result is the same. Just an opportunity to be a fan for your team. God forbid there be any serious thought given to the issues.
All my life I have tried to understand what the voting means to the individual voter. As a soap boxer way back in the thirties I often told my audience that the whole system of Tweedledum and tweedldee was setup by the capitalist system to create the illusion that you are voting for change. When in fact we were just voting for the same script with just a change of players. Having said that I still tried to convince my audience that F.D.R. was better than his opponent. “So if you have to vote go with FDR as he is indeed better than Alf Landon." Yes, it was the lessor of the two evils. We had lots of explanations for that notion as Europe was going fascist and we felt that FDR was our best bet against that rising tide.
Now with capitalism in one of its regular crisis the Democrats became the fall guys for 8 years of Bush. It was Carl Rove’s idea to raise that enormous debt in order to a “starve the beast” policy. Translated it meant raise the debt to make sure there is no money left for social programs. That’s is exactly where we are now. The Republicans who created the debt crisis are now going to solve it on the backs of those who can least afford it. And yes they will champion all those Bush tax cuts mostly the ones for the very rich.
What went wrong for Obama? A couple of things at work here. I believe the fact that we have the first Black President is what got the Tea Party folks bonkers. That’s what, “Give us our country back” was about. It just sat there right under the skin of so many white people who just couldn’t abide with the new Black face of our leader. It expresses itself in the “Where’s his birth certificate?” “Yeah we know he’s a Muslim just waiting to take over the country." And to boot a socialist and on and on.
Obama really never had an organized base. To the pickup truck, beer drinking old buddies of mine Obama is not a good communicator. He reminds me of another to smart politician Adley Stevenson. He also had trouble putting his thoughts into very simple little slogans that the average Joe can understand. (Just think about the Obama Health Care campaign.) Talking of the essential need for an organized base I am reminded of a meeting between A.Philip Randolf President of the Sleeping Car Porters Union and FDR. Randolph at the time was the lone Black in the leadership of an A F of L union. The Sleeping Car Porters was the largest black union in the country. Randolph was complaining to FDR about the lack of jobs for his members. He was pressing Roosevelt to do more about job creation. FDR is reported to have said. “Philip I agree with everything you are saying now you go out there and make me do it.”
That is precisely what Obama simply doesn't have a mass movement to make him do it. It was great to see all those young folks out there being excited about their new President. Problem was the day after his inauguration the youngens went back to text messaging and forgot about politics.
There simply never was an organized movement in support of what Obama wanted to do. Yes there were some nice slogans like, we can” and “Change.” That last word “Change” seems to have all kinds of magical connotation for the citizens. Yet there is no definition of what “change” means. Just changing the actors doesn’t mean a hill of beans. If there is no change in the system we are doomed to endlessly play the game of treedledum and tweedlldee.
I am glad that a little old lady helped me to understand the excitement that comes over people as they go to the polls. I never thought of it as an exorcism a cleansing of the political pallet. A sense of relief. A feeling that “by God I really changed things today. because I voted.” So there.
It dawned on me that people get a heightened sense that the act of voting has somehow cleansed there felt sense that “by God I have actually done something for my country.” She just seemed to be one happy AARP member. If for some the election is an exorcism then for others it has become a sporting event. Think of it as the baseball pennant race. That’s the primaries and the election the world series. The result is the same. Just an opportunity to be a fan for your team. God forbid there be any serious thought given to the issues.
All my life I have tried to understand what the voting means to the individual voter. As a soap boxer way back in the thirties I often told my audience that the whole system of Tweedledum and tweedldee was setup by the capitalist system to create the illusion that you are voting for change. When in fact we were just voting for the same script with just a change of players. Having said that I still tried to convince my audience that F.D.R. was better than his opponent. “So if you have to vote go with FDR as he is indeed better than Alf Landon." Yes, it was the lessor of the two evils. We had lots of explanations for that notion as Europe was going fascist and we felt that FDR was our best bet against that rising tide.
Now with capitalism in one of its regular crisis the Democrats became the fall guys for 8 years of Bush. It was Carl Rove’s idea to raise that enormous debt in order to a “starve the beast” policy. Translated it meant raise the debt to make sure there is no money left for social programs. That’s is exactly where we are now. The Republicans who created the debt crisis are now going to solve it on the backs of those who can least afford it. And yes they will champion all those Bush tax cuts mostly the ones for the very rich.
What went wrong for Obama? A couple of things at work here. I believe the fact that we have the first Black President is what got the Tea Party folks bonkers. That’s what, “Give us our country back” was about. It just sat there right under the skin of so many white people who just couldn’t abide with the new Black face of our leader. It expresses itself in the “Where’s his birth certificate?” “Yeah we know he’s a Muslim just waiting to take over the country." And to boot a socialist and on and on.
Obama really never had an organized base. To the pickup truck, beer drinking old buddies of mine Obama is not a good communicator. He reminds me of another to smart politician Adley Stevenson. He also had trouble putting his thoughts into very simple little slogans that the average Joe can understand. (Just think about the Obama Health Care campaign.) Talking of the essential need for an organized base I am reminded of a meeting between A.Philip Randolf President of the Sleeping Car Porters Union and FDR. Randolph at the time was the lone Black in the leadership of an A F of L union. The Sleeping Car Porters was the largest black union in the country. Randolph was complaining to FDR about the lack of jobs for his members. He was pressing Roosevelt to do more about job creation. FDR is reported to have said. “Philip I agree with everything you are saying now you go out there and make me do it.”
That is precisely what Obama simply doesn't have a mass movement to make him do it. It was great to see all those young folks out there being excited about their new President. Problem was the day after his inauguration the youngens went back to text messaging and forgot about politics.
There simply never was an organized movement in support of what Obama wanted to do. Yes there were some nice slogans like, we can” and “Change.” That last word “Change” seems to have all kinds of magical connotation for the citizens. Yet there is no definition of what “change” means. Just changing the actors doesn’t mean a hill of beans. If there is no change in the system we are doomed to endlessly play the game of treedledum and tweedlldee.
I am glad that a little old lady helped me to understand the excitement that comes over people as they go to the polls. I never thought of it as an exorcism a cleansing of the political pallet. A sense of relief. A feeling that “by God I really changed things today. because I voted.” So there.
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