How do we say Goodbye to the Good fight?

My whole family surrounds me with love. They're my son, my daughter, my daughter in law, she’s putting all my old pictures together so that a friend In New Haven can make something out of them. All this surrounding love and caring. Here comes the Oxygen pump. I’m not sure whether it does anything. But what the hell. All this stuff they're surrounding me with is trying it’s darndest to keep me going. Oh, what difference does it make. I’m just trying to finish out me run. My dear son is making sure that the Stereo is working as I do love having Beethoven, Sibelius, Wagner, Chopin, and yes Hank Williams at my side. Hank was a musical genius whose beautiful melodies just seem to drop out of his heart. Haunting lyrics and melody, “I’m So Lonesome I could Cry.” Nothing expresses the loneliness of the American West as this song.

My life. Oh what a run it was. Look I was born of working class family right after the Russian Revolution Our family was fiercely devoted to the objectives of the working class. They believed those that produced the goods had first choice to them. The idol ruling class who owned the mines the mills,the places where things were made, where represented by the Czar and his entourage. So when the Russian workers revolted against that whole form of tyranny we were like the average New England fishermen who was glad to see the Brits leave our shores. That’s why we were so happy to see the defeat of the Russian Hierarchy and its blood sucker entourage. Just one more victory for working people.

(Just before I started to write this piece my son is reading me an article from the Times on the attacks against the unions in Wisconsin. He wants to know, What are these crazy people thinking. They have there supply and demand Market Capitalism “Don’t they realize that they are destroying their own system? “Yes Fred, they are self destructing because they are devils own victims of greed.  “So Dad what’s to become of us?”   Ahaa That my dear man depends on what you and your fellow citizens do about it”  In Newtonian  Physics there is a law. “Every action has an  equal reaction.”  We need to really count on that law for people in Wisconsin and other states to  get out there and fight back.

I was very fortunate in my life to have been in every struggle for a fight back better world.

1.Starting with the right to organize.  We won that with the passage of the Wagner Act. That guaranteed the fights of workers to organize and bargain collectively for their members, It meant that thousands of assembly line workers now had the right join a union. We thought of it as a revolution. No longer would  the mass production industries to be excused from the workers right to organize and have a say about the conditions they worked under. THAT IS NOW UNDER ATTACK IN WISCONSIN - ALREADY COLLECTIVE BARGAINING HAS BEEN STRIPPED IN WI FROM STATE AND MUNICIPAL WORKERS. My Daughter-in-Law, Barbara, told me, “WALKER’S TACTIC - DIVIDE AND CONQUER BY STARTING WITH STATE WORKERS, THEN POLICE AND FIRE (WHICH HE LEFT OUT ONLY FOR THE MOMENT) AND FINALLY - YOU BET, PRIVATE UNIONS, MAKING WI A RIGHT TO WORK STATE.”  (YUP, THAT’S WHERE IT WAS INITIALLY WON. GOD, I WISH I COULD BE PART OF THE FIGHT BACK. THE FIGHT BACK IS NOT JUST A DEMONSTRATION OR TWO. IT’S GOING TO BE AN ONGOING CONTINUOUS STRUGGLE TO  HOLD OUR GAINS.

Barbara told me Walker’s tactics included saying that state workers’ benefits and retirement were better than the private sector and workers were not paying into these benefits - his tactic worked to divide private vs. public workers and to muddy the waters of total compensation and salary.  In fact, WI state workers for several years have had no increases in their salaries, have taken furlough days (more salary cuts); and, when Walker said the budget was bad, AFSME agreed to increases in payments towards healthcare and retirement.  Walker ignored them, and began a process last February 2011 to strip state workers of collective bargaining rights.  Result - cuts in salary to pay more for healthcare and retirement.  Further, state workers have always contributed to their retirement and health benefits.  It’s called total compensation.  Rather than take home more pay in salary, parts of a worker’s total compensation (salary, benefits, retirement, for example) went toward their benefits.  There never has been a free lunch like Walker liked to say. 
 
Hate to remind you but it’s still the CLASS STRUGGLE THAT KARL MARX TOLD US ABOUT. JUST THE NEXT PHASE.

2.The Civil Rights struggle. Our Country was badly divided since the great tragedy of slavery. An estimated 650,000 People were brought here in chains completely against their will to work the Cotton Plantations. The owners made a fortune on that slave labor. Took the Civil War, the bloodiest in history to bring it to an end. The bigotry and persecution of Black people continued after the Civil War . The 1960s saw a continuation of that struggle with the birth of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.

That seemed to link up with the fight for jobs. THE ANTI POVERTY PROGRAM under LYNDON JOHNSON WAS BORN.    I WAS FORTUNATE AGAIN TO BE PART OF THAT AT MOBILIZATION FOR YOUTH. MFY.    Again the CLASS STRUGGLE GOT RIGHT INTO IT. MFY became an enemy because they were acting on behalf of those who had been lost in the society and denied the opportunities promised by our Constitution. We marched,we sat in we scared the beeJesus out of the ruling class as we took over schools and other public places.

That movement is now, “Occupy Wall Street” who my, Companion, Al who is from Lithuania, has visited and spent the day. He calls them “devoted, militant. young people who are determined to bring about change.” You see new movements do emerge even without the old “party control”.
The picture in the rest of the world is less encouraging. They-re the old guard really show no signs of conceding power. There is a far deeper problem. They-re is a lack of any real job opportunities. Look, what have they got to market?  The early Industrial Revolution Countries, like England, Textiles Middle East Oil Egypt, textiles. Yes they got the cloth from India but they spun it into marketable pretty stiff. That’s what pissed off Ghandi and started the India movement for INDEPENDENCE.
I am going to quit for now as my poor old brain just doesn’t have that staying power.

LOOK ON THE VISITING THING? COME WHENEVER YOU WISH. OBVIOUSLY I’LL BE HERE. WHO ELSE MIGHT BE , NOT SURE BUT WE CAN HAVE A HUG AND MAYBE A MEMORIAL DAY HOT DOG. ANYHOW I’LL STILL BE HERE I HOPE. MY BEST RS.