Bruce Lesnick wrote, in part: "it is no exaggeration to say the
Democratic and Republican parties, along with the system they uphold,
represent a deathtrap for working people."
One would not think that it is so difficult to understand that this
System we exist in is not our System. It belongs to the Corporations
and their elite. But apparently enough smoke and mirrors really can
cloud the minds of honest, trusting workers. Smoke and Mirrors, and a
little Greed tossed into the mix. "Work hard and you shall reap the
benefits". That is the tune played by the Empire's Pipers. With hard
work and a little luck, any of us might claw our way into the Upper
Class, and live the life of Riley.
So we invent the Middle Class, a level between the Working Class and
"Riches beyond belief". Beyond the Middle Class, we imagine an Upper
Class. These are the folks who have almost made it. These Middle
Class and Upper Class folks mostly support the views of the Ruling
Class. They turn against the blue collar and working class folks, as
well as the unemployed and disabled and persons of color. But the
truth is that these Middle and Upper folks are being fooled, and are
opposing their own best interests.
Fact: there is only one political party. It may have any name it
wishes to have, but it is the property of the Ruling Class.
The only sure way of forcing it to serve all Americans, is to destroy
it and replace it with a government that represents the broader
interest and needs of the majority of the People. But of course if
this were to come about without great efforts to educate and mobilize
the Working Class, the new government would be seized by those people
close to the top of the current pyramid. The upper class. Naturally
they would pattern their government after the Capitalistic one from
which they had been profiting, to a degree. They could not believe
that it was the Systems fault. It had to be the fault of those in
control. So they would build a new system just like the old one,
believing that they could make it work.
Until we understand that it is the System that keeps so many good
people under the heel of the Master, we will repeat the same mistakes
over and over.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/10/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://socialistaction.org/flint-a-tale-of-two-cities/
Flint: A Tale of Two Cities
Published February 9, 2016. | By Socialist Action.
Feb. 2016 Flint
By BRUCE LESNICK
It [is] too much the way of [mainstream politicians] to talk of this
terrible [crisis] as if it were the only harvest ever known under the
skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or
omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if observers of the wretched
millions … and of the misused and perverted resources that should have
made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before
and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. — Charles Dickens, “A
Tale of Two Cities”
Working people in Flint, Mich., are suffering mightily from the
poisoning of the city’s water supply that resulted from callous
decisions by government officials—from the unelected emergency city
manager, on up to the governor and the federal Environmental Protection
Agency. All of these officials acted in the name of austerity and
cutting costs. But as is so often the case, the tragedy in Flint is not
merely the result of individual bad actors but flows from an economic
system that pits the wealthy few at the top against the vast majority
who work for a living.
Despite the fact that global wealth and U.S. labor productivity per
capita have both been increasing exponentially for more than a
generation, the small unelected handful of financiers and industrialists
that own and control our economic and political systems—the so-called
one percent—have been promoting the narrative that times are hard and we
must all tighten our belts. By “all” they mean everyone except those
“indispensible” titans of capital who are currently calling the shots.
But in reality, the wealth created for each man, woman and child in the
U.S. (as measured by GDP per capita) increased from $13,933 in 1981 to
$54,629 in 2014 (in constant 2015 dollars.) That’s an increase of 292
percent! For Tunisia, the increase in the same period was 244 percent;
for Greece it was 300 percent. Similar gains can be cited for other
countries (source: World Bank). Collectively, the planet is awash in
wealth.
Nevertheless, the false narrative of scarcity has been used to justify
austerity in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, France, elsewhere across
Europe, and all throughout the U.S. And now we have Flint.
Between 2006 and 2013, overall revenue to the state of Michigan
decreased by 25%. Since 2006, Democratic and Republican officials have
appropriated $6.2 billion in local sales tax and other revenue to cover
state budget shortfalls. This has been done despite a law requiring
those funds to be shared with municipalities. The result was
predictable: city after city across the state—from Pontiac, to Lansing,
to Detroit and Flint—has had to cope with calamitous budget deficits.
What caused the decline in revenue? In part, it was due to corporate tax
giveaways approved by the previous Democratic governor. But the biggest
factor in the budget squeeze has been the decline of the auto industry.
From a peak of 1.5 million United Auto Workers union members in Detroit
in 1978, the number crashed to 400,000 in 2013 as corporate execs moved
production south or overseas in search of cheaper, nonunion labor.
Then there was the auto industry bailout. In 2009, the federal
government loaned $29.4 billion to GM and Chrysler on the condition that
the UAW agreed to allow delays in payments to the union health fund for
retirees, reduce payments to laid-off workers and deepen the two-tier
wage program enabling new hires to be paid less for the same work.
Later, GM would receive another $36 billion as it entered bankruptcy. At
its peak in 2003, the U.S. auto industry employed 1.1 million workers.
By 2006, 43% of those jobs had been eliminated.
Flint, with long ties to the auto industry, has felt the squeeze. Of the
80,000 Flint autoworkers in the 1970s, only 5,000 remain.
A Michigan state law passed in 2011 allowed for the appointment of
“emergency managers” to preside over cities deemed insolvent. Once
appointed, the emergency manager rules supreme. Elected
officials—including the mayor, city council and school board—can do
nothing without the manager’s approval. In April 2014, the bureaucrat
that was imposed on the city of Flint switched the city’s water supply
from the Detroit system to the Flint River, hoping to save a few bucks.
What resulted was a massive epidemic of lead poisoning, due to the
different chemistry in the Flint River and a long history of using the
waterway as an industrial waste dump.
A September study by the Hurley Medical Center in Flint confirmed that
the proportion of Flint children with elevated lead levels has nearly
doubled since the water source was switched. The tap water drawn from
the river also contains illegal levels of cancer-causing trihalomethanes
and other toxins, and is implicated in the spread of Legionnaires Disease.
A massive effort will now be needed to restore clean running water to
Flint residents and to deal with the long-term health effects from the
poison brew people have been forced to use for drinking, cooking, and
bathing for over a year.
No auto executives or members of the ruling rich were harmed in the
making of this story. The Michigan localities that have suffered the
most are majority working class and Black. The population of Flint is
over 56% African American. Forty-one percent of city residents live in
poverty, and the real unemployment rate for Michigan is over 11 percent.
In this conflict so far, it is working people who have taken all the
blows. But it wasn’t always that way.
Given Flint’s iconic history, it’s more than a little ironic that the
current crisis has its roots in the greed of the auto industry giants
and their political plenipotentiaries. A generation ago, another battle
was fought in Flint between the auto barons and the working-class
majority. In that fight, which began in December of 1936, the balance of
power was decidedly different.
The United Auto Workers union (UAW) was founded in 1935 in the wake of a
militant labor upsurge that began sweeping the country the year before.
Key battles in Minneapolis (truck drivers), Toledo (Electric Auto-Lite),
San Francisco (general strike), Akron (rubber workers), and Huntsville,
Birmingham, and throughout the South (textile workers) set the tone. But
the big automakers had yet to be breached.
In the 1930s, as now, there were competing ideologies for how the
working people could best fight for their rights. The most conscious,
radical workers saw the bosses, their government, and the major
political parties as members of the same team, against which the 99% had
to wage an uncompromising fight. But the leaders of the newly formed
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) saw things differently. As
Art Preis described in “Labor’s Giant Step”:
The CIO leaders were class collaborationist to the bone. They sought
“peaceful coexistence” between predatory capital and exploited
labor—between robber and robbed. They believed they could persuade the
employers that unions are a “benefit” to the capitalists themselves and
thereby secure gains for the workers by the simple means of “reasonable
discussion” across the conference table. …
Fortunately for the success of the CIO, the concepts of the top CIO
leaders did not always prevail. The strident notes of the class struggle
broke through the “class harmony” chorus and set the dominant tone
during the decisive days of the rise of the CIO. The bridge to victory
proved to be not the conference board, nor the inside track to Roosevelt
in the White House, but the picket line—above all, that “inside picket
line,” the sit-down.
An ongoing organizing drive in the Flint auto plants was met with
stonehearted resistance by General Motors. The straw that broke the
camel’s back came on Dec. 30, 1936, when management provocatively
transferred some union supporters. Workers at Flint Fisher Body Plant 2
responded by sitting down and refusing to leave the factory. Later that
night, workers saw managers attempting to remove critical machinery from
Fisher Body Plant 1. The workers at Plant 1 put a stop to that by
sitting down as well. The shutting down of these two plants brought GM’s
auto production to a screeching halt.
The strike spread to 15 other GM plants, from Detroit to Kansas City.
Finally, the crucial motor assembly operation at Chevrolet Plant number
4 in Flint was occupied. Ultimately, 93% of GM’s production workers
joined the fight. Preis explains:
Victory or defeat for the GM workers depended on a simple strategy:
keeping their buttocks firmly planked on $50 million worth of GM
property until they got a signed contract. GM’s strategy was to get the
workers out of the plants by hook or crook so that the police, deputies
and National Guard could disperse them by force and violence.
The bosses hit the strikers with injunctions, but the sheriff charged
with delivering the first of these was laughed out of the plant. The
company attempted to recruit scabs to retake the plants, but soon gave
that up. Management cut the heat to Fisher Body Plant 2, and police
attempted to prevent deliveries of food and supplies to the strikers.
Outside, picketers stormed the police blockade. A battle ensued; police
guns were answered by bolts and bottles hurled by the workers.
Eventually, the strikers aimed a freezing stream from a fire hose at the
cops, successfully turning them back. When the dust settled, 24 strikers
were injured; 14 had been shot.
Politicians, from the Democratic governor to President Roosevelt, sided
with GM. The governor positioned 1500 National Guard troops to be ready
to retake the plants by force. Meanwhile, fellow unionists poured into
Flint from Toledo, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Lansing, and elsewhere, and
formed a cordon of solidarity around Fisher Body Plant 1.
GM threatened to turn the heat off again, but the strikers threatened to
expose the plants firefighting equipment to the cold, freezing the gear
and thus invalidating GM’s insurance coverage. Management was livid and
demanded that the governor give the order to retake the plants. Governor
Murphy passed the buck and tried to pressure CIO President John L Lewis
to reign in the strikers. Lewis explained, truthfully, that he hadn’t
started the strike and he couldn’t stop it.
In the end, GM surrendered. The strikers had demonstrated sufficient
determination and ingenuity for GM to realize its plants would be
destroyed if they tried to remove the workers by force. The first UAW
contract with GM was signed on Feb. 11, 1937.
The working people of Flint won that monumental battle in 1937, but the
corporate titans have never given up on the overall war. This is the
critical context for the Flint crisis of today. The forces seeking to
victimize working people in Flint now are the same ones that confronted
autoworkers in Flint three quarters of a century ago. Those seeking to
fight against austerity and mount an effective response to the current
water crisis can learn much from that pivotal chapter in history.
Today, as in the 1930s, it’s crucial to understand who is on our side
and whom we’re up against. At the second convention of the UAW in 1936,
the body unanimously called for the formation of a labor party. It’s no
coincidence that the workers who successfully fought back the GM
colossus understood that the Democratic and Republican parties were both
in the boss’s hip pocket. This realization was essential for navigating
the rough terrain as the struggle unfolded.
But by the late 1940s, those who preached class collaboration and
relying on the Democrats as “friends of labor” had gained the upper
hand. Socialists and other radicals who, like the Flint sit-down
strikers, recognized the major political parties for the big business
appendages they truly are were driven out of the labor movement and
isolated. Unions like the UAW turned their back on the lessons of the
Flint sit-down strike. As a consequence, the UAW is a mere shadow of its
former self, reduced in numbers and diminished in power. Throughout its
steady decline, UAW leaders have held fast to their
class-collaborationist outlook. The results of this approach can be seen
in scattered, broken pieces all around us, including in Flint.
Today, Democratic and Republican party politicians shed crocodile tears,
expressing the utmost regret for the calamity that has befallen Flint.
But their concern rings hollow. These are the heirs of the politicians
who mobilized the press, the police, and the National Guard to side with
GM and the other corporate behemoths in the labor upsurge of the 1930s.
These are the political parties that have been running our country for
generations, with the result being what we see in Flint and all around us.
Witnessing the suffering of the residents of Flint, it is no
exaggeration to say the Democratic and Republican parties, along with
the system they uphold, represent a deathtrap for working people.
But there is a way out. There are steps we can take to avoid future
disasters like the one now unfolding in Flint. This path serendipitously
addresses many of the other problems we face—from endless war,
inequality and exploitation, to racism, unemployment, and environmental
destruction. This road has just one rule: human needs must come before
profits.
And there is but one way to get there: by recognizing that only working
people—the vast majority of the population and the producers of all of
society’s wealth—have the power to build a just and rational world. For
that power to be realized, we must organize collectively and
independently of our foes at the top of the economic pyramid, refusing
to be taken in by their lieutenants in the Democratic and Republican
parties.
While no fight is ever an exact blueprint for another, the guiding
principles of solidarity and independent political action, demonstrated
in abundance by the heroic Flint sit-down strikers, remain essential
tools for the struggles of today.
Bruce Lesnick is a long-time political activist who lives and writes in
Washington State. He blogs at blogspot.com. He can be reached at
blesnick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Photo: Flint residents display jar of brown tap water. CNN.
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Posted in Black Liberation, Economy, Environment, Labor, Marxist Theory
& History. | Tagged Flint, UAW.
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