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Retirees Protest National Union Takeover

by Gregory N. Heires March 6, 2024

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Retired city workers gathered in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday to protest their national union’s decision to put the DC 37 Retirees Association under trusteeship.

DC 37 retirees—who counted with many supporters–demonstrated outside the office at 75 Maiden Lane from which they were evicted.

They charged that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees took the step because of the group’s opposition to a city plan— supported by ASFCME’s flagship DC 37, the United Federation of Teachers and other unions—to force former municipal workers to give up their traditional Medicare coverage and enroll in a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan. AFSCME claims it imposed the administratorship because the association failed to file 990 tax forms.

“You can throw us out of office, but you cannot shut us up,” said the association’ vice president for interunion relations, Neal Frumpkin, addressing the estimated 200 protestors.

Frumpkin noted that more than a year before the takeover, ASFCME demanded that the association withdraw its financial support for the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, which is leading the legal challenge to the city’s privatization plan. The association, however, ultimately refused to withdraw its support, setting the basis for the trusteeship, Frumpkin said.

During the demonstration retiree leader Michelle Keller led the protestors in call-and-response chants.

“What do we want?” Keller said. “Medicare!,” the crowd responded.

“Who has the power?” Keller asked. “We got the power,” the protestors said. “What kind of power,” Keller said. “Retiree power,” they responded.

Marianne Pizzitola, president of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, said, “They didn’t count on us fighting back, but they woke up a sleeping giant.”

She referred to the AFSCME trusteeship as a “draconian punishment.”

As they cheered on speakers, protestors carried placards with such messages as “Protect my Medicare,” “DC Retirees won’t Be Silenced,” “Don’t Privatize Our Health Care,” and “ASFCME BETRAYED US.”

Retirees Aurea Mangual urged retirees to stop giving contributing to the national union’s political action committee and to boycott an upcoming union lobby day.

“This is a shameful and sad moment in labor history, when you have a national union take control of its own association under bogus charges” said retired teacher Maria Biederman.

March 6, 2024 0 comment

News

The Shared Struggle of Iranian Women and African Americans

by Gregory N. Heires September 20, 2023

written by Gregory N. Heires

By PIRUZ ALEMI and GREGORY N. HEIRES

The struggle for freedom of women in Iran and the fight against racism in the United States — seemingly unrelated or independent – are shared struggles as deep as the ocean.

The gender segregation imposed after the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution is fundamentally no different from the black code laws implemented after the Civil War (1861-65) in the United States. In both instances, a conservative ruling elite adopted a system of apartheid based upon police terror and religious authority to maintain its hegemonic power through unwritten and written laws.

Historically, African Americans have been at the forefront of movements to make the United States live up to the country’s democratic promise. But sadly, with polls showing Democratic President Joseph Biden running neck and neck with Republican Donald Trump, the indicted former president, there is a real fear that United States could move in the opposite direction as white supremacist voters succeed in ushering an era of fascism, long in the making.

The Persistence of Struggle

The far reach of the Iranian and U.S. struggles for freedom is a testament to the tenacity and resistance of both Iranian and African American women against master-slave relations.

Make no mistake about it, the Woman Life Freedom (WLF) movement is a 21^st century abolitionist movement against gender apartheid in the country and region.

Indeed, the cause of WLF in Iran mirrors the cause of emancipated slaves in a long, persistent struggle for political, civil and economic rights that has continued to this day. Black Lives Matter in the United States is but one strand of a larger abolitionist movement.

African-American activists, philosophers and feminists like Angela Davis view the opposition to police brutality of African Americans in the United States and the challenge of Iranian women facing state terror as a common struggle.

The two domestic yet international struggles reflect and feed upon each other’s history of activism and have much to share.

Davis describes the struggles in both countries as a reflection of a growing worldwide movement against patriarchy, segregation, and economic inequality. Davis views the Iranian protestors as “the harbingers of hope for all that want an end to racial capitalism, misogyny, and economic repression.”

Iranian Women’s Bond with the U.S. Civil Rights Struggle

The current rebellion in Iran stems from the death of Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, in Sept. 16, 2022.

Brutally beaten and tortured, she died three days after being taken into custody by the country’s morality police for improperly wearing her head scarf as required by sharia law. Pieces of her hair revealed from under her head scarf constituted her crime.

The murder–which the theocratic state infamously attributed to a natural heart attack–struck a deep chord that sparked demonstrations in 80 cities throughout the country, revealing the depth of the resentment for the Islamic state and exposing the plight of Iranian women and their fight for freedom to the world.

In 2022, the state atrocities included the killing of some 530 people many of them children. The number of people imprisoned rose to more than 20,000 by April of this year.

Norway-based Iran human rights group reported 354 executions in the first half of 2023. Where legitimacy has failed, terror has been the modus operandi of the Islamic state’s morality police.

Recalling post-Reconstruction practices of White Leagues, red-shirt groups of Mississippi, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and the lynching of African Americans by the Ku Klux Klan, paramilitary and undercover agents in Iran target and kidnap demonstrators in public to further terrorize public assemblies.

During the demonstrations, the protestors’ signature chants are “Death to the dictator!,” “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared, we are all together,” “We do not want Islamic Republic” and “This State is a baby killer,” the last a reference to gassing high schools, as a system of punishing the youth.

Reuters notes “The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s is a great guide. Today, America’s best Middle East expert is Dr. Martin Luther King” who said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

In conversations, protestors often share how they find inspiration in new methods of struggle. The rap music and protest songs of Toomaj Salehi, currently sentenced to six years in prison, is reminiscent of how African Americans advanced their struggle through spirituals, the blues and jazz.

In 1978 Khomeini banned chess, music, dance and singing by women. But Persian culture and its spirit of creativity has persevered despite Islamization, as reflected by the protests.

The two historical struggles share much in tactics. Both advocate individual rights, peaceful civil disobedience, general strikes, and creative arts in their calls for political transformation of civil society.

Both struggles have vast international solidarity and are century-old historical struggles.

Some 8 million Iranians living overseas or in exile are more than an echo of the WLF struggle, as they join with progressive international forces to fight the gender apartheid. This is exposing the international corporate and banking deals that help legitimize the Islamic state’s brutal repression of its opposition, primarily women.

In the words of Golshifteh Farahani, the Iranian activist, interviewed on CNN, “When other countries come in and inject money in that system they are participating in every bloodshed”. That includes the United States, China, and now the Saudis, according to Farahani.

When it comes to defending human rights and women’s liberation, the international community seems utterly paralyzed by multi-national corporate interests’ reluctance to deal with anything but profit. In this international bureaucracy of inter-continental master-slave relations no one is held accountable for violating human rights. Violence, rape and sexual assault as a preferred method of terror has become the nature of it all.

Black-Code Laws = Sharia Laws

The similarities of black code enforcement of racial segregation and sharia laws of gender segregation is striking.

In the United States, as described by historian C. Vann Woodward, “The code lent the sanction of law to racial ostracism that extended to churches and schools, to housing and jobs, to eating and drinking. Whether by law or custom, that ostracism extended to virtually all forms of public transportation, to sports and recreations, to hospitals, orphanages, prisons, asylums, and ultimately to funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries.”

Similarly in Iran, gender segregation has extended to restaurants, sports facilities (women are banned from football stadiums), parks, swimming in pools, rivers, lakes, seas, public transportation (women are not permitted to ride a motorcycle), the judiciary (women are barred from becoming judges), mosques, universities and schools.

Legally, married women need the official permission of their husbands to obtain a passport to travel outside the country. The sharia code allows a husband to prohibit his wife from having a job he regards as against “family values,” while maintaining the legitimacy of having four legal wives for himself.

Dress codes–including the forced hijabs–are imposed on women from all walks of life. The only exception to these rules seems to be foreigners or diplomats with immunity who, not surprisingly, follow the Islamist rules.

Journalist and activist Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), a chronicler of the horrors of Jim Crow and one of the founders of the NAACP, explains how the system of terror was grounded and applied systematically in United States. Her work applies equally to what is going on today in Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Just as Jim Crow enforced segregation, sharia law is the foundation for today’s misogynist practices in Iran. The Jim Crow statutes were upheld by what Wells calls “unwritten laws” based on “customs” and “common senses” that legitimize repression. In Iran, religious and social practices uphold the oppression of women.

“Lynching were public spectacles turned into ways of thinking and customs by a white majority before they became written laws in confederate States,” Wells said. From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States, according to NAACP records, and hundreds of African Americans were killed as they fought for their political rights after Reconstruction.

Today, the Islamo-fascist state is carrying out a similar Machiavellian reign of terror, which is vital for the survival of an autocratic state. Soon after the Jina rebellion began in September 2022, the state hung the bodies of their political opponents in public spaces, from cranes in the town of Mashad, a Shiite holly city in eastern Iran.

Iran Human Rights reports that bodies were displayed in soccer stadiums and shown on national TV. The public display of terror recalls the public lynching—often announced in advance by city councils—during the Jim Crow era in the United States.

In the southern states governed by Jim Crow practices, segregation was enforced through the terror machinery of citizen councils, whose members included white evangelicals. Similar citizen councils that enforce Islamic laws through custom and terror are also present in Iran. They include liberal men and reformists of all walks as well.

The unwritten laws described by Ida B. Wells find their Islamic versions in Fatwas, which are used to enforce Islamic laws. Any Islamist jurist (mujtahid) can issue a Fatwa and any Muslim can forbid a “wrong” presumably based on the word of God. Fatwas were used in calls for assassination of Persian activist Masih Alinejad and the attacks on writers such as Salman Rushdie and Iranian historian Ahmad Kasravi.

“The Origin of Others”

The masculine-based superiority complex underlying Iranian patriarchy subjugates women by constructing “The Other,” a term author and Nobel prize winner of literature Toni Morrison uses to describe the method of racism in master-slave relations in the United States.

In “The Origin of Others,” Morrison writes, “What is denied in the other is personhood, the specific individuality we insist upon ourselves.” She adds, “What more, really, do you know about these characters when you know their race? Anything?”

The concept of master-slave otherness provides a justification for maintaining power over excluded groups, especially minorities, through dehumanization and subjugation. The more slaves, the more the power of the master.

The idea of the “Other” legitimizes economic exploitation and ideological domination through the ruling ideas of an authority (like white power) on what constitutes good or is forbidden, beautiful or ugly. Interpreted broadly, the “Other” is an expression that reflects master-slave relations enforced by black code laws of racial segregation in the South.

Sharia laws have codified similar master-slave relationships in Iran through the state, mosques and schools, down to city councils and families.

The categorization of women as society’s “Other” has led to a marginalization of women in the economy. In 2020, the labor force participation rate of women was 14 percent compared to 70 percent for men—even though over 57 percent of university graduates were then women. A quota system in admissions further restricted Iranian women.

But women are fighting the mullahs’ gender-based dehumanization through the art of politics, creative arts and freedom of expression.

They are challenging their rulers through music, songs, dance, theater, cinema, photography, painting, and literary works and performing arts. Women are defending the right to flow their hair in the air freely—anywhere.

Similarly, for the black community in the United States, music, songs, history and literature have often been tied to identity and rebellion against bigotry, perhaps best exemplified in the case of Billie Holiday 1939 protest song “Strange Fruit.”

The Fight for Democracy

Increasingly, the Women, Life, Freedom movement is about democratic rights. Formally, Iranian women have the right to vote. But in practice that’s meaningless as the mullahs control the political agenda and name their own candidates.

In the United States, African Americans confront voter restriction laws, the weakening of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 by the U.S. Supreme Court and voter intimidation–reminders of how fragile the country’s democratic institutions remain despite historic civil rights gains.

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, in a talk at Colorado University earlier this year, expressed her optimism that the women’s rights movement will lead to a permanent rebuke to the mullahs and the rise of democracy in Iran.

“Today’s fight led by women stands to be more far-reaching than the male-dominated overthrow of the Shah in 1979 that led to the installation of the country’s theocratic, dictatorship,” she said.

“This time, in 2022, when women took to the streets and decided to cut their hair off, the men decided to support the women, and that’s why this revolution will succeed,” Ebadi said.

“It’s a glamorous revolution—the men have found out that democracy will come to Iran through women’s rights,” Ebadi said. She said that the rebellion carries a message for U.S. women, who must not back down in the face of the loss of the constitutional right to abortion that threatens to result in a further loss of their rights.

Economic Rights

The women’s movement is occurring as Iranians face a deepening of the country’s long-term economic problems, including growing inequities, insufficient jobs, and a gender-based segmentation of the work force.

As more Iranians fall into poverty, women have suffered disproportionately. Mullahs are the top beneficiaries of Iran’s annual billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues. Without oil, the Iranian theocracy has no material or financial base. Its rial currency does not circulate on the basis of a fatwa or Islam.

In his 1963 “I have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the “othering”—or marginalization–of African Americans in the U.S. economy, saying “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” The government reneged on its promise to provide freedmen 40 acres and mule after the Civil War.

In the more than 150 years since then, African Americans have faced persistent economic and other hardships including job, housing and credit discrimination, pay inequity, redlining and educational inequality, all of which has led to a great racial wealth gap. The average per capita wealth of white Americans was $338,093 in 2019 but only $60,126 for Black Americans, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. That’s a 6 to 1 gap.

The End of the Islamic State?

Today, activists and political analysts are increasingly predicting that women’s revolution in Iran will ultimately topple the mullahs and lead to democracy. “How long? Not long” as Dr. King would ask in relation to the 1960’s civil rights movement in United States.

Increasingly, the international community and its civil groups need to take the initiative themselves rather than rely on their respective governments’ empty slogans to stand for and uphold individual or human rights at home or abroad. WLF is an abolitionist movement waging a protracted civil war against slavery. International support for the movement is building, despite growing banking transactions for Islamic state’s oil and gas exports.

The Islamic state’s widespread repression and terror speaks to how seriously the mullahs have taken their opposition to Iran’s civil society, especially women. The repression also has shown how through executing absolute terror, the Islamic State lost legitimacy.

Without legitimacy, no state can govern for long by relying solely on violence and terror. Today, what gives these mullahs their power is not just the Sharia laws but also state power backed by morality-police terror.

The billions in oil and gas revenues accrued with the support of international corporate finance, led by United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and China, provides the material basis and literally the bloody fuel for the Islamic theocracy.

Piruz Alemi is a contributor to the Antonio Gramsci International Studies at Marxist Education Program (MEP). He is guest lecturer in the Dept of Politics, Economics and Law at the State University of New York and a faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Blogger Gregory N. Heires is the former president of the NY Metro Labor Communications Council.

Special thanks for a review of a draft of this article by Francine Moccio.

Please forward comments to palemi@jjay.cuny.edu

September 20, 2023 0 comment

News

A Labor Rebirth?

by Gregory N. Heires May 1, 2022

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Unions appear to be making a comeback as the Covid-19 economic crisis has emboldened workers and stirred up longstanding outrage over inequality and inadequate wages and benefits.

Since Starbucks workers at stores in the Buffalo, N.Y., area petitioned to be represented by a union in August 2021, employees at about 250 Starbucks stores in 30 states have launched organizing drives. Workers at a store in Mesa, Arizona, voted in to unionize in mid-March.

In an historic victory in late March, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted to be represented by a union. They are the first workers to successfully organize a union at the tech giant. Hundreds of workers at Amazon warehouses across the country have contacted Amazon Labor Union for help since the victory.

And in another sign of an increasingly aggressive union movement, workers at Condé Nast announced in March that they are seeking representation. The group includes 500 editorial, production, and video workers at publications where workers haven’t already unionized, including GQ, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Review.

But despite the growing activism, unions still face enormous challenges. Employers continue to pour millions into resisting organizing drives. Not all union leaders have adopted aggressive organizing strategies, choosing instead to pour resources into defending their base. And after many years of declining membership, unions remain stuck in a deep hole.

In January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 10.3 percent of the country’s workers enjoyed union representation in 2021, down from 20.1 percent in 1981. A mere 6.1 of the workers in the private sector are represented by unions.

Nevertheless, widely publicized organizing drives and a growing militancy are fueling hope for a labor revival following decades of attacks on unions that has led to the long-term downward spiral in membership and contributed to a worsening of inequality, an erosion of workplace benefits like traditional pensions, and a relentless economic squeeze on the middle class and poor.

A wave of teacher strikes that began in 2018 was an early sign of the deep-seated worker disenchantment that would blow up during the pandemic. Since then, the organizing drives at Amazon and Starbucks have captured a lot of attention.

Meanwhile, graduate students and museum, tech, and media workers are organizing like never before—and have won important victories. In February, workers at Raven Software unionized. Workers at a REI store in Manhattan have filed a petition for a union vote. Employees at several Apple stores are organizing.

Strikes are another sign of the greater militancy. Last year, taxi workers in New York, health care workers in Buffalo, Kellogg workers, and factory workers at Deere & Co. carried out successful strikes. Members of the International Alliance of Theatrical State Employees and the faculty at the University of California negotiated better pay and working conditions.

This wave of activism comes as unions are gaining greater support throughout the country. Support for unions has never been greater, according to a 2021 Gallup Poll. Some 68 percent of Americans approve of organized labor. That is up 20 percent since 2009. Support is especially strong among younger workers (GenZ and Millennials), who approve unions by 77 percent.

Labor analysts point to a number of factors explaining the greater labor activism sparked by the pandemic. The Covid-19-induced economic downturn led millions of workers to leave the workforce out of a concern for their health and safety and child-care responsibilities. They became less willing to accept poorly compensated jobs. A tight labor market and record job openings allowed workers to demand higher wages and improved benefits.

Deepening inequality heightened worker resentment over the fundamental unfairness of the U.S. economy in which the federal minimum wage remained stagnant while the earnings of billionaires skyrocketed and Covid-19 took its toll on ordinary Americans. By late 2021, nearly 90 million Americans had lost their jobs, about 45 million had suffered from Covid-19, and almost 8 million had died from it, according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. So, it’s no wonder that workers would be stirred up by the country’s unfairness.

The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion—at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion—during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty, according to an Oxfam report released in January. Nine out of the top ten richest men in the world are Americans.

From March 2020 to March 2022, Elon Musk’s wealth increased from $24.6 billion to $234.0 billion (851 percent), according to Forbes. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos increased his wealth from $113.0 billion to $161.5 billion (46 percent), and Bill Gates’ wealth jumped from $98.0 billion to $129.5 billion (32 percent).

Amazon CEO Bezos’s soaring wealth served as a rallying cry for the workers who organized the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island. And his adventures in space played into the union’s attack on corporate greed. Bezos’s worth had climbed so much from March- to September 2020 that he could have given all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still would have retained his pre-pandemic wealth, according to an Oxfam report in 2021.

As Bezos profited mightily during the pandemic, he has sunk millions of dollars into an effort to block the organizing drives in New York and Bessemer, Alabama, where votes are being tabulated in a second union election after the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Amazon intervened illegally in the first election.

Will the victory of the Amazon workers be the spark that deepens the growing militancy in the labor movement? Will Amazon workers play the role of leading the fight for unionization as autoworkers did in the 1930s? Millions of workers certainly hope so.

Newcrossroads.com blogger Gregory N. Heires is a former president of the Metro New York Labor Communications Council. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Jobs for All Newsletter.

May 1, 2022 0 comment

News

Hubert H. Harrison and the Radical African-American Tradition

by Gregory N. Heires September 26, 2021

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The second volume of the biography of the educator, orator, political activist and writer Hubert H. Harrison is a significant contribution to the study of the roots of the Black radical tradition that emerged in the early 20^th century.

Jeffrey B. Perry’s meticulously researched “Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927” (Columbia University Press, 2021) offers a study of a towering intellectual whose life and work deserves greater attention.

The first volume, “Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918” (Columbia University Press, 2008), explored Harrison’s work and eventual disillusionment as the leading Black organizer and theoretician in the Socialist Party of America from 1912 to 1914. That volume also focused on his founding of the Liberty League and The Voice, the first newspaper of the race-conscious and internationalist New Negro Movement.

The new book, divided into four parts, examines the last nine-and-half years of Harrison’s life, a period that included his resurrection of the Harlem-based The Voice and his work as a managing editor, associate editor and columnist of Marcus Garvey’s Negro World, soapbox orator, lecturer at the New York Public Library, political activist and independent writer.

Imperialism and White Supremacy

His extensive writings during these years covered white supremacy, imperialism, race consciousness, radical internationalism and demands for social change. During the period examined by the book, the immigrant from the Virgin Islands often struggled with poverty.

The exhaustive, 988-page second volume is based on countless primary and secondary sources that include Harrison’s community talks, scrapbooks and articles, as well as his diary, police and FBI reports, and newspaper reports. While very compelling, painstakingly researched and an authoritative and labor of love (Perry preserved and inventoried the Hubert H. Harrison papers now at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library and is the editor of “A Hubert Harrison Reader,” Wesleyan University Press, 2001), we should nevertheless point out that the book would have benefited from a skilled editorial haircut of citations from his writings and other documents to improve its accessibility and readability.

“Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927” begins with a discussion of Harrison’s political activities in Harlem, Washington, D.C. and Virginia and his work at The Voice, the official organ of the Liberty League, which he had founded in 1917. The Liberty League and its newspaper campaigned against racial discrimination, police brutality and government surveillance.

Significantly, Harrison used the pages of The Voice to criticize W.E.B. Du Bois for his “Close Ranks” editorial in The Crisis. The editorial called upon Blacks to “forget our special grievances and close our ranks, shoulder to shoulder with our white fellow-citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy” during World War I.

“It is felt by all his critics, that Du Bois, of all Negroes, knows best that our ‘special grievances’… consist of lynching, segregation and disfranchisement, and the Negroes of America can not preserve either their lives, their manhood or their vote (which is their political life and liberties) with these things in existence,” Harrison wrote. “The doctor’s critics feel that America can not use the Negro people to any good effect unless they have life, liberty and manhood assured and guaranteed to them. Therefore, instead of the war for democracy making these things less necessary, it makes them more so.”

Harrison pointed out that Du Bois wrote the editorial as he applied for a position in military intelligence, the branch of government that monitored the Black and radical communities. “The “Close Ranks” editorial sparked criticism of Du Bois’ leadership in the Black community, and 20 years later, Du Bois acknowledged it was mistaken, Perry notes. With his editorial, Harrison thrust himself into the center of the “Close Ranks” controversy that questioned Du Bois’ leadership and strengthened his position as the spokesperson of the New Negro Movement. Harrison also criticized Du Bois for his support of the “Talented Tenth” black leadership, which Harrison regarded as elitist and believed limited the political power of the Black community by discouraging the development of grassroots leaders.

Disillusionment with Marcus Garvey

The biography’s second part includes a fascinating and detailed look at Harrison’s work at the Negro World, the newspaper of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Harrison’s tenure as the principal editor of the newspaper gave him a unique perch from which to observe the financial corruption that resulted in Garvey’s disgraced leadership and eventual conviction for mail fraud.

Harrison began working for the Negro World in January 1920. While there, Harrison helped broaden Garvey’s political perspective, Perry shows, and turned the newspaper into the leading race-conscious publication in the country with wide-ranging articles that covered international and domestic issues and included literary reviews.

Drawing from personal diary entries, Perry explains how Harrison become disillusioned with Garvey and finally decided to break with him. Politically, Harrison believed that Garvey’s Africanist internationalist agenda was misguided and drained the energy from Blacks’ struggle for advancement in the United States.

The biography’s third part covers the years 1922-24. During this period, Harrison worked as a grassroots educator and an independent writer. He contributed frequently to the Boston Chronicle.

Part 4 covers 1924-27 with a discussion of his work as a public intellectual, including his lecture series on “World Problems of Race.” During this period, his major political activity involved establishing the International Colored Unity League and overseeing its publication, The Voice of the Negro.

“Father of Harlem Radicalism”

The historian Joel A. Rogers described Harrison as “perhaps the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time.” Labor and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph referred to him as “the father of Harlem radicalism.”

Indeed, through his membership in the Socialist Party, involvement in the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and work as a public intellectual, writer, popular educator and orator Harrison stood at the center of early 20^th century pan-Africanist, socialist and nationalist thought.

Yet today he doesn’t enjoy widespread recognition. Perry blames the lack of recognition in part on a bias against immigrants, academic elitism, a reaction against his outspokenness and willingness to confront leftist leaders and Black establishment figures like Booker T. Washington and Du Bois, and his radical positions on race and class. (Washington used his “Tuskegee Machine” to make Harrison lose his job at the U.S. Postal Service. Harrison criticized Washington for his ties to the Republican Party and insistence that blacks should rely on individual economic achievement rather than political engagement for advancing.)

Perry argues persuasively argues that Harrison stands at the intersection between the labor and civil rights movement of Randolph and Martin Luther King Jr. and the race and the nationalist Black liberation movement represented by Garvey and Malcolm X.

Together with the first volume of his biography, Perry’s “Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927” outlines with great detail and analysis Harrison’s contributions to the radical tradition in African-American history. Harrison’s powerful work demands greater attention and study.

The New Crossroads Blogger Gregory N. Heires is a former president of the Metro NY Labor Communications Council.

September 26, 2021 0 comment

News

COVID Unemployment Benefits of Millions Run Out on Sept. 6

by Gregory N. Heires September 5, 2021

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Millions of victims of the COVID-19 economic downturn will recall 2021’s Labor Day as a nightmare

That’s because Sept. 6 is when the extra $300 weekly COVID federal unemployment benefit will run out for an estimated 7.5 million people. The cutoff will affect about 30 million people if you include the families of the benefit recipients, according to Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project think tank.

“We are still struggling with a pandemic-induced downturn,” said Trudy Goldberg, chair of the National Jobs for All Network, a full-employment advocacy group. “Millions of people continue to be out of work. We believe it is both premature and cruel for states to end this vital, extra COVID-19 benefit.”

All but two of the 26 states that denied the benefits are led by Republican governors, who they were carrying out the cuts to spur hiring. But so far, there is little evidence that the cuts are having that impact.

Unemployed workers and advocacy groups mobilized—in some cases successfully—against state plans to carry out early cuts of the federal government’s extra pandemic unemployment benefits. At least seven states faced lawsuits over the cuts.

In July, a judge in Maryland rejected Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s lawsuit to block the state’s plan to cut off benefits. In Indiana, a judge held up a cutoff of COVID unemployment benefits to 230,000 unemployed workers. In another fightback effort included a Facebook group of 1,800 Tennesseans that is sued Gov. Bill Lee and the State of Tennessee for stopping federal unemployment benefits more than two months before the expiration scheduled for September.

In June, the grassroots groups, Unemployed Workers Union of Ohio and Unemployed Action Ohio–with support from the Ohio Organizing Collaborative–held a news conference at the Statehouse to protest Gov. Mike DeWine’s benefit cuts.

Cuts Fail to Spur Hiring

Earlier this year, the National Employment Law Project estimated that more than 4.7 million workers stand to lose the $300 supplement in the 26 states, according to the National Employment LawProject (NELP).

But the states’ attack on unemployment benefits went beyond the $300 cut. Twenty-two states also cut other federal pandemic benefits as well as state benefits. NELP estimated that would leave 2.3 million workers without any federal and state unemployment assistance at all.

About a month after two dozen GOP-led states began slashing the federal government’s extra benefit, a group of Morgan Stanley economists found the cuts had little effect on the labor market– no more than such factors as lack of childcare and transportation or health concerns.

“Conservative cuts in unemployment benefits make it harder for people to reflect on whether they want to go back to work, even as COVID cases are rising and even while average wages stay low, ”said historian Frank Stricker, author of “American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future” and a National Jobs for All Network board member. “Despite the stories about employers having to raise pay to attract workers, real hourly wages (in purchasing power) have fallen more than 2% over the year. The shortage of workers is not short enough to increase wages faster than prices. Making more people seek work right away means less pressure for employers to raise pay.”

In May, President Joe Biden took a similar position, dismissing the suggestion that the extra $300 benefit is a disincentive for unemployed workers to return to work. The pandemic led to 22 million job losses, Biden said at that time.

For many workers, the lack of child care, poorly-paying jobs, a fear about exposure to COVID-19, a reduction in public transportation, unstable jobs without health coverage and sick leave and other benefits, and considerations about a career change are more important factors than unemployment insurance as they weigh their decision to return to work.

On his podcast, Economic Update, Economist Richard D. Wolff charged that the Republican-led states were answering the call of businesses to make workers return to their jobs while providing inadequate compensation. “Labor Shortage?” Wolff said. “Listen, Jack. You raise the wages, the shortage will vanish.”

In July, NJFAN Chair Goldberg took a position similar to and expressed support for the grassroots groups in Ohio and other states that are fighting against the early cutoff of the weekly $300 benefit.

In June, Biden said it “makes sense” for the federal government to stick with its plan for the benefits to expire in September. The president was right to criticize states for opting to end the federal benefit early. It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t feel the Sept. 6 expiration is also premature.

Gregory N. Heires, blogger of the New Crossroads, is the editor of the Jobs for All Newsletter and former president of the Metro NY Labor Communications Council. A version of this story appears in the Jobs for All Newsletter.

September 5, 2021 0 comment

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Unemployed Workers Fight Early COVID Benefit Cuts

by Gregory N. Heires August 9, 2021

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Unemployed workers and advocacy groups are mobilizing against state plans to carry out early cuts in the federal government’s extra pandemic unemployment benefits.

At least seven states face lawsuits over the cuts. In some instances, the fightback is succeeding.

In July, a judge in Maryland rejected Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s appeal of a lawsuit that blocked the state’s plan to cut off benefits.

In Indiana, a judge ruled on June 25 that the state must continue to provide the COVID unemployment benefit to 230,000 unemployed workers until a lawsuit challenging the early termination of the compensation is decided.

Another fightback effort includes a Facebook group of 1,800 Tennesseans suing Gov. Bill Lee and the State of Tennessee to stop federal unemployment benefits more than two months before the program expires.

In June, the grassroots groups Unemployed Workers Union of Ohio and Unemployed Action Ohio, with support from the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, held a news conference at the Statehouse to protest Governor Mike DeWine’s benefit cuts. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is reaching out to unemployed workers online to join its campaign to block the cuts.

Cuts Fail to Spur Hiring

The federal government’s extra $300 benefit is scheduled to expire in September. But 26 states—all but two led by Republican governors–have already begun to eliminate it. More than 4.7 million workers will lose the $300 supplement in the 26 states, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP).

But the attack on unemployment benefits goes beyond the $300 cut. Twenty-two states are also cutting other federal pandemic benefits as well as state benefits. That will leave 2.3 million workers without any federal and state unemployment assistance at all, according to NELP.

The governors say they are carrying out the cuts to spur hiring. But so far, there is little evidence that the cuts are having that impact. About a month after two dozen GOP-led states began slashing the federal government’s extra benefit, a group of Morgan Stanley economists found the cuts had little effect on the labor market. “It appears that generous unemployment benefits are likely no more of a factor than other impediments, including childcare, transportation, and health concerns, to workplace re-entry,” Morgan Stanley economists wrote.

“Despite the stories about employers having to raise pay to attract workers, real hourly wages (in purchasing power) have fallen more than 2% over the year. The shortage of workers is not short enough to increase wages faster than prices. Making more people seek work right away means less pressure for employers to raise pay.”

In his podcast, Economic Update, economist Richard D. Wolff charged that the Republican-led states were answering the call of businesses to make workers return to their jobs while providing inadequate compensation.

“Labor Shortage?” Wolff said. “Listen, Jack. You raise the wages, the shortage will vanish.”

NJFAN Chair Trudy Goldberg echoed Wolff’s criticism of the cuts and expressed support for the grassroots groups in Ohio and other states fighting to block them.

In June, President Joe Biden said it “makes sense” for the federal government to stick with its plan for the benefits to expire in September. It’s the Republican-led states that are double-crossing millions of workers.

This article appeared Aug. 6 in the Jobs for All Newsletter.

The New Crossroads blogger Gregory N. Heires is the editor of the Jobs for All Newsletter and a former president of the Metro NY Labor Communications Council.

August 9, 2021 0 comment

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The Conservative War on America

by Gregory N. Heires April 5, 2021

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Our rigged political system and economy are products of decades of bad public policies and corporate practices. These actions have produced the greatest inequality since the Great Depression, killed off unions, and dramatically increased the concentration of political power in the hands of a political elite.

“Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History” by Kurt Andersen tells the story of how corporate interests, conservative politicians, and right-wing professionals worked together to change the rules of the game to help the rich get off at the expense of the rest of us.

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America:
A Recent History

By Kurt Andersen
Random House; 464 pages
August 2020
Hardcover: $26.99
ISBN 10: 1984801341 /
ISBN 13: 9781984801340

In addition to lifting government regulations and attacking government programs, these “evil geniuses” counted on the support of Republicans and Democrats alike. As they shifted the political consensus to the right, they aimed to erase the legacy of the New Deal.

The Cultural Divide

Andersen dates the country’s shift to the right to the cultural divide that emerged in the 1970s. A backlash to the civil rights movement, Vietnam War protests, the 1960s counterculture, the women’s movement, liberal social policies, and a mass nostalgia for the romanticized 1950s created the political climate for conservative change, he argues.

In 1971, corporate lawyer Lewis F. Powell Jr., who later became a U.S. Supreme Court justice, laid out a fight-back strategy for Corporate America in a confidential memo, “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The memo discussed how the free enterprise system was being undermined by the liberal media, colleges, the pulpit, intellectual and literary journals, socialists, communists, the arts and sciences, and politicians.

“The painfully sad truth,” the memo stated, “is that business, including the boards of directors and the top executives of corporations great and small and business organizations at all levels, often have responded — if at all — by appeasement, ineptitude, and ignoring the problem.”

Powell urged the Chamber of Commerce and its corporate and political supporters to respond to the assault on free enterprise by creating a nationwide network of think tanks, university beachheads, and sympathetic media devoted to creating and publicizing conservative public policy and ultimately winning political power.

One of the guiding lights of the fight-back was economist Milton Friedman. He promoted the doctrine that the pursuit of maximum profits was the central purpose of economic activity, reinforcing the conservatives’ moral argument for rapacious capitalism. This perspective was embodied by the trader portrayed by Michael Douglas in the film “Wall Street,” who proclaimed, “Greed is good.”

Beginning in the 1980s, right-wing professionals and corporate interests started in earnest to build up the infrastructure of the nationwide network proposed by Powell to create the ideological justification and blueprints for tearing apart the post-World War II political consensus that had built upon New Deal policies and supported for programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the War Against Poverty.

Eventually, the evil geniuses behind this agenda triumphed. Democrats lost the lock on the power they held in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Republicans swept to power in statehouses and county and local governments.

Democratic Complicity

Yet Democrats aren’t blameless. Politicians and college-educated professionals from both sides of the political aisle increasingly bought into the notion of being “socially liberal but fiscally conservative.”

An early convert was Gary Hart, whose 1974 stump speech for the U.S. Senate was called “The End of the New Deal.” As a New Democrat, President Bill Clinton would later declare that “the era of big government is over.” His vice president, Al Gore, spoke of “reinventing government,” which provided the rationale for contracting out and privatizing government services. Clinton dismantled the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) for poor mothers and children, a program that had existed for decades.This forced single moms to participate in work programs to receive benefits and imposed restrictions on how long assistance was available. Clinton also signed legislation to toughen criminal law, which led to a dramatic increase in incarceration, especially of African Americans.

Our Unfair and Broken Economy

The cost of all of this?

Over the past 40 years, we have witnessed a systemic economic squeeze on the middle class and the poor due to anti-worker corporate practices and the erosion of progressive public policy.

The share of wealth owned by the richest 1 percent of the population has doubled. The collective net worth of the bottom half of the country fell to nearly zero. The median weekly pay for full-time workers has increased by only 0.1 percent a year. The wages of ordinary Americans no longer rise alongside productivity. The fruits of productivity have gone to the top 10 percent, whose incomes have kept up with productivity.

Along with wages, upward mobility has stagnated. The privatization of student loans has saddled college graduates with about one-and-a-half times the debt ($11.5 trillion in 2019) of credit cardholders. Political resistance has blocked increases in the federal minimum wage, which has declined 31percent since 1968. Today, workers earning the federal minimum wage have the present equivalent of $6,800 less per year to spend on food, rent, and other essentials than did their counterparts 50 years ago. Traditional pensions have largely been replaced by risky 401(k) savings plans.

Thanks to the success of the Right, a majority of states have anti-union right-to-work laws. In 2019, the share of U.S. workers represented by unions was —10.3 percent — below its level four decades ago. According to the Economic Policy Institute, research shows that this de-unionization accounts for a sizable share of the growth in inequality over those years — around 13–20 percent for women and 33–37 percent for men. Working people are now losing on the order of $200 billion per year due to the erosion of union coverage over the last four decades — with that money being redistributed upward to the rich, EPI says.

But the Right’s triumph has not only been an economic one. Virtually all of President Donald Trump’s judicial appointees came from the Federalist Society, a group of conservatives and libertarian lawyers founded in 1982. Conservative media feed the public with conservative dogma. Over decades, corporations have steadily shifted the burden of health costs to their employees. The changing political climate culminated with Trump’s election, which helped create the political climate favorable to the neo-fascist and white supremacist coup attempt we witnessed on Jan. 6.

A New Progressive Era?

So, what is to be done?

Andersen recounts how, in many respects, he embraced the move to the right but has now grown disenchanted, morally outraged, and more progressive as he witnessed the social, political, cultural, and economic wreckage caused by the conservative cabal he describes. Yet, he appears cautiously hopeful that the right-wing agenda has run its course.

Indeed, “Evil Geniuses” raises the question of whether the United States has reached a transition point that will result in a paradigm shift in which the country will enter a more progressive, more inclusive era. Will, the current division within the Republican Party enable the Democrats to expand upon the gains they made in the 2020 elections? Or do we face a deepening threat of white supremacy and fascism along with conservative public policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us?

“For Americans now,” Andersen asks, “will surviving a year (or more) of radical uncertainty help persuade a majority to make radical changes in our political economy to reduce their chronic economic uncertainty and insecurity? Or will Americans remain hunkered forever, as confused and anxious and paralyzed as we were before 2020, descend into digital feudalism, forgo a renaissance, and retreat into cocoons of comfortable cultural stasis providing the illusion that nothing much is changing or ever can change?”

Meanwhile, now that the Democratic Party has won control of the U.S. Congress and the White House, many of us are asking whether the political will is there to ensure that needed major changes–health care, police, labor law reform; a federal jobs guarantee; paid family leave; addressing structural racism; child care; fairer taxes; affordable housing; the elimination of college debt, among others–are carried out. How deep is the legacy of the neoliberal New Democrats within the party? How effective will Republicans be at blocking reform? Can we eliminate the neo-fascist threat?

This isn’t a moment for the country’s movement for economic, political, and social justice to let down its guard.

The New Crossroads blogger Gregory N. Heires is a former president of the NY Metro Labor Communications Council. This review originally was published in the April edition of the Jobs for All Newsletter, which is available at https://njfac.org.

April 5, 2021 0 comment

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A Proposal for a Federal Job Guarantee

by Gregory N. Heires April 5, 2021

written by Gregory N. Heires

BY GREGORY N. HEIRES

The fight for economic justice is picking up steam as the pandemic-induced economic crisis underscores our economic and political system’s deep inequities.

Among policymakers and political activists the crisis has sparked a discussion about how aggressively engaged the government should be in creating jobs as opposed to focusing on temporary solutions such as providing unemployment relief. Ultimately, this raises a question about the depth of the government’s role in regulating or managing the economy.

This policy question recently came into focus as U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) introduced a resolution on Feb. 18 calling for a federal job guarantee. Pressley unveiled the proposal for legislation to create a government jobs program at a virtual town hall meeting she sponsored that day alonwith the National Jobs for All Network, PolicyLink, and Public Money Action.

“It’s time to establish a legal right to a job for all people in America,” Pressley said. “For years, we have legislated hate, harm, and injustice in this country. It’s long past time to pursue bold, intentional policies that affirm equity and recognize the dignity and humanity of all people.”

A Legal Right to a Job

Anchored in the movement for economic justice and civil justice, the resolution calls for:
• a legal right to employment,
• a federal program to create public jobs with living wages and
full benefits in infrastructure and caregiving projects, and
• ongoing federal funding.

“A federal job guarantee is an important investment in the American people, our communities, and an equitable economy that works for all,” Pressley said. “It affirms the right to meaningful, dignified work and a living wage. I’m proud to build upon and honor the legacy and work of generations of black women civil rights leaders by introducing this historic resolution.”

At the town hall meeting, Pressley was joined by economists and advocates who spoke of how the program would address the needs of the millions of workers and families affected by structural unemployment and job loss. They underscored how the program would provide the government with a crucial tool to respond to economic downturns, lift millions of people out of poverty, revitalize the union movement, create well-paying jobs with benefits and promote the dignity of work.

Eliminating Unemployment

A panelist at the town hall, Darrick Hamilton, the director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy at the New School and NJFAN board member, underscored the far-reaching societal benefit of the jobs guarantee.
“It would literally eliminate unemployment,” Hamilton said. With a jobs program, the country would no longer have a category of workers known as the “working poor,” he said. Hamilton added, “We need to understand what is the moral foundation of what we want: A civil right to a job.”

Shawn Sebastian, the senior strategist of People Action’s People and Planet First Initiative in Rural America, noted that unemployment is a political choice. Indeed, the discussion about unemployment poses a fundamental question: Should the government continue to allow millions of people to be thrown into the streets during economic crises, or will it instead commit to a policy that would help people who lose their jobs find new dignified employment?

“A job is essential for everyone,” Sebastian said. “Imagine the weight that falls off the community if the threat of unemployment is no longer there,” he said. People’s Action represents 40 organizations in 30 states; the organization works with diverse residents in many needy rural communities.

Steven Pitts, the host of the Black Work podcast, said the job guarantee would restore public trust in government, which for half a century has been the target of a right-wing political attack. With only 10.8 percent of workers represented by unions, one of the proposal’s underlying goals is to strengthen collective bargaining. “At the end of the day, when we talk about wages and benefits, it’s a question of power,” said Pitts, underlying how important a union revival would be to empower workers and their families.

Beware of the Deficit Hawks

Even though broad public support exists for a federal jobs program, supporters acknowledge they face an uphill battle. They expect to run into stiff opposition from deficit hawks. Both Pressley and Hamilton addressed the anticipated politically-motivated attack from fiscal conservatives.

It’s time to recognize that the government has the resources to support a federal jobs program, Hamilton said. “We can’t buy into this false scarcity narrative,” Pressley said. Last year, the government allocated $750 billion for military spending as the country was living in the midst of the pandemic-induced economic downturn, she pointed out. “The reality is that we are already paying by not paying” for the job guarantee, she said. “We are already paying for unemployment.”

“We see that the public supports a federal jobs guarantee, and yet we know to move this is going to be a battle,” said Angela Glover Blackwell, moderator of the town hall meeting, which was called “A Federal Job Guarantee: The Cornerstone of An Equitable Economy.” Glover Blackwell is the founder of PolicyLink, a national research institute focused on advancing racial and economic equity. “A few elected officials will dig in,” Glover Blackwell said.

The federal job program would be implemented through a series of legislative actions, Pressley said.

Fulfilling the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream

Pressley described the jobs guarantee agenda as a “national reckoning” that evoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. She noted that the 1964 March on Washington was not only a demand for freedom but also for jobs. Apart from addressing unemployment, the new government program would also respond to structural racism and white supremacy, Pressley said.

After her husband’s assassination, Coretta Scott King embraced the right to a federal job guarantee as she fought against what she described as “economic violence of unemployment and poverty.” (See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/04/04/the-king-who-carried-on-the-fight-for-economic-justice/ and http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-race/david-stein-why-coretta-scott-king-fought-job-guarantee.)

“We certainly welcome Rep. Pressley’s initiative, which we hope is going to make a federal job guarantee a central part of our national political debate,” said NJFAN Chair Trudy Goldberg. “We stand ready to work closely with all advocacy groups and legislators who support comprehensive jobs legislation.”

Pressley expressed her hope that the agenda will count on aggressive backing from the country’s economic and social justice movement.

“Organize, baby, organize,” Pressley said, quoting King.

A video of the town hall is available here.

For more information about the jobs guarantee proposal, go to
Resolution Text (PDF) and | Summary (PDF) and www.JobGuaranteeNow.org

A version of this story was originally published in the Jobs for All Newsletter April 2021 issue.

New Crossroads blogger Gregory N. Heires is the former president of the Metro NY Labor Communications Council and is editor of the Jobs for All Newsletter, a publication of the full-employment advocacy group National Jobs for All Network.

April 5, 2021 0 comment

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From Authoritarianism to Civil War?

by Gregory N. Heires October 28, 2020

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES and RAY MARKEY

The plot by an armed right-wing militia aligned with President Trump to kidnap—and perhaps even assassinate—Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer underscores the fragility of our democracy and the depth of right-wing extremism in the country.

Until now, warnings that our democracy is in peril or that a coup attempt is possible in the United States appeared to most of us to be the words of a Cassandra or a manipulative Chicken Little. No more.

Police departments around the country are now reporting that they are preparing for civil unrest on Election Day.

Increasingly, voters fear they are going to be met by poll watchers with assault weapons when they exercise their constitutional right to choose their president.

Trump—who is openly raising the possibility of serving in office longer than what’s permitted under the U.S. Constitution and is refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses the election–has enlisted white supremacist militias to intimidate voters and, if necessary, steal the election. They are part of his neofascist playbook to hold onto power.

The growing boldness of extremist armed groups committed to destroying American democracy has occurred as Trump has steadily laid the groundwork for what many Americans feel may evolve into a nationalistic police state.

As the country becomes more diverse, the militia groups and their supporters want to hold on to their privilege and culture by restoring their utopia: a white America.

The members of these groups—armed to the teeth with military weapons and fueled by an extreme right-wing ideology—are the true enemies of democracy of our country.

As the paramilitary groups become more active, the danger of our gun culture is becoming more apparent. The members of these self-appointed militias aren’t your friendly neighborly Second Amendment supporters who own guns because they like to go hunting or visit shooting ranges for sport.

No.

They are reactionary radicals whose defense of the right to bear arms isn’t a perceived basic right but rather an ideological justification for arming themselves for a civil war in which they aim take back the country from black criminals, illegal immigrants, feminists and white progressives.

A Weaponized Society

Over decades, the conflation of political freedoms and the right to bear arms has created a weaponized society, turning the United States into a giant armed camp.

“There are more assault rifles, as I understand it, in the hands of private citizens than in the hands of the United States military,” Sen. Bernie Sander said in a video on Twitter in 2019. “We’re talking about 5-10 million assault weapons in the hands of private citizens. That is insane. We must ban the sale, distribution and transfer of all assault weapons in the United States.”

With an estimated 400 million guns (120.5 guns for every 100 civilians), the United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world. The National Sports Shooting Foundation estimates that out of those, 17 million are assault-style weapons, which include the AK-47s and AR-15s often carried by militia members. About four in 10 U.S. adults live in a household with at least one gun.

Ultimately, the spread of assault weapons poses a threat to our democracy.

So, Let’s be clear: These armed groups– euphemistically described as militias and Second Amendment supporters–are actually paramilitary groups and terrorists. As we said, they believe Trump is providing them with a pathway to restore White America.

What’s new is that years ago, paramilitary groups in the United States were regarded as fringe anti-government fanatics, while today they have become actors in our electoral system, enjoying a legitimacy provided by Trump and the Republican Party. Their agenda is broader than that of anti-government terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 that killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others.

“There has been a major realignment of militia movements in the US from anti-federal government writ large to mostly supporting one candidate, thereby generally positioning the militia movement alongside a political party,” says “Standing By: Right-wing Militia Groups and the US Election,” a recent report by The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project, and MilitiaWatch, which tracks armed groups.

“This has resulted in the further entrenchment of a connection between these groups’ identities and politics under the Trump administration, with the intention of preserving and promoting a limited and warped understanding of US history and culture.”

Domestic terrorism experts expect armed right-wing groups to grow. Their agenda must be checked.

The number of armed militia groups in the country was actually higher than during the Obama administration. What’s different is that they have become more emboldened during the age of Trump.

And these paramilitary organizations will certainly become even more bold if Trump is re-elected or steals the election. For that reason, Democratic candidate Joe Biden needs a decisive victory on Nov. 3. If Trump wins, we will lose our chance to push for a progressive agenda to address our country’s economic ills and the crisis of our democracy.

That the elected leader of our country is encouraging anti-democratic and white supremacist armed groups is in itself a reflection of the growing fragility of our democracy.

“Coronavirus Politics”

Gov. Whitmer of Michigan , the kidnapping target of 13 militia members arrested Oct. 12, said Trump’s language has provided “comfort and support” to right-wing extremists. Authorities linked the men to the Wolverine Watchmen, a far-right group.

Two of the men 13 men arrested in the plot against Whitmer carried assault rifles as they joined other protestors in the occupation of the gallery at the Michigan state capitol in April to protest Whitmer’s efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Law enforcement officials have also uncovered threats to the governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania, as well as the mayor of Wichita.

Trump had encouraged the action against Whitmer’s extension of an executive order that imposed a statewide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,” he wrote in a tweet, and after the protestors occupied the capitol, he referred to them as “good people.”

Militia groups like the Wolverine Watchmen are tapping into the anti-government “coronavirus politics” of our country to recruit members and foment unrest.

The militias are appealing to Trump supporters angered over policies promoted by elected officials, especially Democrats, and public health experts—the use of masks, limiting the size of social gathering, closing down bars and restaurants—that they regard as violations of personal freedoms.

Some of the militia members arrested in Michigan spoke of their belief that we face civil war, according to authorities.

White Supremacy and Political Violence

An annual assessment of the Department of Homeland Security describes violent white supremacy as the “most persistent and lethal threat” in the country.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that right-wing extremists and white supremacists have killed at least 329 people in violent attacks over the past quarter century.

The CSIS says right-wing extremists were responsible for more than two-thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019. A recent CSIS study found that this year, right-wing extremists have accounted for an estimated 90 percent of attacks through May.

The New York Times estimates 300 militia groups with a total of 20,000 members are active in the United Sates. A quarter of the members are military veterans.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported earlier this year that it had obtained 100 hours of recordings of calls between the leader of the neo-Nazi group The Base and more than 100 prospective recruits from the United States and Canada with military experience. The group aims to take advantage of what it regards as a pending societal breakdown, according the center.

The Myth of the American Democratic Ideal

The growing threat of the militia has shattered the mythology of American democracy. We are learning that the world’s so-called beacon of hope for oppressed people is now confronting its own demons, a deeply ingrained ideology of hatred and authoritarianism shared by millions of people.

And this anti-democratic ideology reflects the worldview of the rank-and-file of today’s Republican Party and their leaders.

“We are not a democracy,” Republican Sen. Mike Lee wrote in a recent telling tweet. Lee added that, “democracy isn’t the object; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are.” He continued, “We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.”

Thirty-nine percent of Americans believe our country’s democracy is “in crisis” and another 42 percent says it faces “serious challenges,” according to a 2019 survey by Public Agenda. The survey found only 15 percent believe American democracy is “doing well.”

Freedom House ranks the United States as less democratic than, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Taiwan, Uruguay and Chile. It includes the United States in a category with newer democracies like Croatia, Greece, Mongolia and Panama.

Trump’s Attack on Democracy

As the presidential election nears, Trump continues to undermine its legitimacy and encourage voter intimidation.

In the September presidential debate, Trump gave a disturbing response when moderator Chris Wallace asked the president whether he would urge his supporters to remain calm and refrain from unrest when the results come in from the polls on Nov. 3.

“I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that’s what has to happen,” Trump said. “I’m urging them to do it.”

Hearing those words, many voters reacted with fear that they may be greeted by hostile poll watchers on Election Day and face civil unrest sparked by paramilitary groups that support a second civil war to restore white supremacy.

Blogger Gregory N. Heires of thenewcrossroads.com is a former president of the New York Metro Labor Communications Council and Raymond Markey is a former president of New York Public Library Guild Local 1930.

October 28, 2020 0 comment

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Trump, Fascism and the Allure of Authoritarianism

by Gregory N. Heires September 30, 2020

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES and RAYMOND MARKEY

Day by day, the evidence accumulates that the elected leader of our country—adored by millions–is a neofascist.

To describe President Donald Trump as a U.S. version of Adolph Hitler is on its face inaccurate and hyperbolic as we are not witnessing the terror of a 21st century holocaust or the brutality of an imperialist world war. Which is why we use the term neofascist.

But under the autocratic rule embraced by Trump, American democracy clearly faces its greatest threat since the country was founded. “Twelve more years,” his supporters chanted at a recent rally.

His administration has provided a home for a white nationalist fury that is to a great extent driven by a change of demographics in the United States.

When the white nationalists and fascists marched through Charlottesville with Confederate flags chanting “Jews will not replace us” they were reacting negatively to very obvious demographic changes taking place in the United States.

The 1990 presidential election saw whites cast 83 percent of the vote. In 2016 ,that figure dropped to 69 percent. Whites constituted 92 percent of Trump’s vote.

This white nationalist fury is also a product of the instability of the country resulting from three decades of war.

In a sense, our country is a experiencing a crisis of legitimacy similar to what Europe experienced after the carnage of World War 1, which saw 20 million die and another 21 million injured. One reason Hitler succeeded was that he was able to tap into the deep resentment and bitterness of millions of Germans who called into question the country’s political leadership they viewed as responsible for this human disaster and the ensuing economic hardship.

During the 2016 presidential election, Trump attacked the Bush dynasty for getting the country entangled in military conflicts. He promised to end the United States’ involvement in war, and he used that promise—which he has broken—as part of his strategy to make his campaign a referendum on the Washington establishment.

In the United States, we have been almost constantly at war since we invaded Kuwait and Iraq in January 1991. We began our attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001. We are still fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria in 2020. No country can be at war constantly for over 30 years without experiencing instability and war fatigue.

The right-wing militia members we see on our streets brandishing weapons are dressed exactly as if they were on the streets of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. For many of them this is the only life they know. Domestic terrorism experts and law enforcement analysts estimate that military veterans account for a quarter of the15,000 to 20,000 members of the 300 active militia groups in the country, according to The New York Times.

As the Black Lives Matter movement continues its campaign to denounce police brutality and racial injustice, Trump has fueled a counterattack by the white armed militias—his version of the brown-shirt thugs who did Hitler’s dirty work—and has given voice to a deep anti-democratic and xenophobic undercurrent in our country.
This suggests that Trump will count on the support of millions of Americans if he uses the political chaos surrounding a contested outcome of the election to hold on to power in what would be a de facto coup.

It Can Happen Here

The Big Lie. Racism. Nationalism. Armed militias. Electoral sabotage. A police state. An imperial presidency.

All of these signs of Nazi governance are embraced by Trump, who doesn’t hide his admiration for the world’s authoritarian political leaders.

As fascism emerged in Europe eight decades ago, Sinclair Lewis warned us in his 1935 political novel “It Can’t Happen Here” that fascism could emerge in the United States. Over the past four years, the Trump presidency has sparked a cottage industry of books raising deep concerns about authoritarianism at home and abroad.

The initial alarm came with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s “On Fascism: A Warning,” a survey of the world’s authoritarian rulers with a concluding chapter on the United States, and Yale University historian Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny,” which offered a concise guide on authoritarianism with suggestions for resistance.

More recent publications include John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer’s “Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers,” Salvatore Babones’ “The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts,” philosopher Jason Stanley’s “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” Anne Applebaum’s “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism,” and Masha Gessen’s “Surviving Autocracy.”

John Bellamy Foster, in his 2017 “Trump in the White House,” argues that a neofascist political current is emerging that is based on an alliance between monopoly capital and the lower-middle class, which is driven by a nationalist-racist-patriarchal ideology.

“I have held off using the f word for three and a half years, but there is no longer any honest alternative,” former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich tweeted in June, commenting on the nationwide police crackdown that followed the protests over the killing of George Floyd. “Trump is a fascist, and he is promoting fascism in America.”

That same week, Gessen wrote an article in The New Yorker in which she commented on Trump’s urging governors to take a harder line against protesters. “Whether or not he is capable of grasping the concept,” Gessen wrote, “Trump is performing fascism.”

Republicans and the Appeal of Authoritarianism

A recent study by Vanderbilt University Professor Larry Bartels shows how many Republican voters are more interested in “keeping America great” and “keeping America’s power structure white” rather than preserving democracy. The study, based on January 2020 interviews of 1,151 Republican identifiers and Republican-leaning independents, found that:

• A majority of respondents (50.7%) agreed that “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”

• A substantial plurality (41.3%) agreed that “A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.”

• A near-majority (47.3%) agreed that “Strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done.”

Trump Embodies the Soul of the Republican Party

“The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism—especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos,” Bartels said in his study.

“The strong tendency of ethnocentric Republicans to countenance violence and lawlessness, even prospectively and hypothetically, underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics,” he said.

Many analysts have described today’s Republican Party as a cult of the personality and blame Trump for destroying its core values of small government, free trade, fiscal conservatism and the global order.

But columnist David Atkins pointed out in a Washington Monthly article in August, “Donald Trump added kerosene onto the flaming bonfire built by Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes.” Atkins added, “He won the GOP primary not by being something radically different, but by accurately reflecting the existing dispositions of the Republican base. He embodies their ethos heart and soul, and they reward him with intense loyalty even as the economy begins to collapse and 180,000 Americans die in a pandemic he has ignored.”

So, the crisis of democracy in the United States is something that is far deeper than Trump.

Bartels’ findings are consistent with earlier surveys that have pointed to anti-democratic sympathies of many Americans.

Bartels cites a series of surveys from 2010 to 2017 that found a majority of respondents agreed that a military coup would be justified “when there is a lot of crime” or “when there is a lot of corruption.”

Surveys conducted over 2017 and 2018 found that only 73 percent of Americans said it was “important” or “essential” that “government does not interfere with journalists or news organizations,” and only 68 percent said it was “important” or “essential” that “government effectively prevents private actors from engaging in politically-motivated violence or intimidation,” Bartels reports.

Political Polarization and Economic Malaise

A 2019 Freedom House study, which Bartels cites, identified factors that have undermined support for democracy in recent years, including political polarization, declining economic mobility, the outsized influence of special interests, and the diminished influence of fact-based reporting in favor of bellicose partisan media. Trump has fueled the fire of the fear and anger of American society–particularly that of whites.

“President Trump exerts an influence on American politics that is straining our core values and testing the stability of our constitutional system,” the Freedom House study says.

“No president in living memory has shown less respect for its tenets, norms, and principles,” the study says. “Trump has assailed essential institutions and traditions including the separation of powers, a free press, an independent judiciary, the impartial delivery of justice, safeguards against corruption, and most disturbingly, the legitimacy of elections.”

Fascism and Trump

Historically, the U.S. left and liberals have been reluctant to describe right-wing politicians as fascists for fear of being branded as shrill, out-of-hand, naïve or insensitive to the victims of European fascism in the 1930s and 1940s.

But given the threat Trump poses to American democracy, this is no time to pull punches. Moreover, Trump’s neofascist inclinations actually have a long history.

Trump’s former wife, Ivana, told her attorney Michael Kennedy that Trump used to keep a collection of Hitler speeches, “My New Order,” near his bed, according to a 1990 Vanity Fair article. She told a friend that John Walter, Trump’s cousin, would click his heels and say, “Heil Hitler,” when he visited Trump’s office.

So, with Trump’s apparent sympathy for Hitler, outspokenness in the 1989 Central Park Five sexual assault case in New York City, discriminatory practices in his real estate business and his controversial public persona, it should not be a great surprise that his presidency would drift into authoritarianism.

Indeed, Trump’s record reflects several defining characteristics of fascism:

• A disregard for human rights: Trump has spoken in favor of torture, the death penalty, long incarceration, political assassination and police repression.

In a July 2017 speech to law enforcement officers in Long Island, New York, Trump said, “Please don’t be too nice.” He told the police officers that he believed that “the laws are so horrendously stacked against us, because for years and years, they’ve been made to protect the criminal,” not the officer.

• Stirring Up Patriotic Opposition to Groups Identified as Threats to Public Order: Trump has appealed to voter—especially white—fears by attacking immigrants, terrorists, socialists, communists, ethnic groups.

Trump has encouraged vigilantism by describing protestors as “left-wing mobs” and “anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens.” He defended Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old accused of killing two people who were protesting the police killing of the unarmed black man Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.

He referred to armed thugs in a caravan of trucks that drove through Portland, Ore. as “great patriots” as they pepper sprayed protesters of a police shooting.

• Attacking the Mainstream Media: Trump has personally ridiculed and criticized reporters he regards as hostile and routinely complains that he is a victim of “fake news,” a term intended to undermine the credibility of the media and rally his base.

• An Obsession with National Security: Trump’s attacks on immigrants are designed to stir fears about threats to the country’s national security.

His description of Mexicans as “rapists” in the announcement of his campaign in 2016 played into that fear. He referred to a caravan of Central Americans headed to the U.S.-Mexican border as “an invasion.”

• Linking Government and Religion for Political Purposes: Trump portrays himself as a Christian nationalist, though he isn’t a devout religious person.

With statements like “We’re going to win another monumental victory for faith and family, God and country, flag and freedom,” he appeals to his white Christian base. “God, Country and Family” was a popular saying during Spanish fascist Gen. Francisco Franco’s rule in Spain.

• Disrespect for Intellectuals, the Arts and Scientists:
With the COVID-19 pandemic , we have witnessed the tragic cost of Trump’s disregard for scientists.

Tens of thousands of deaths could have been avoided if his administration had followed the recommendations of public health officials.

• Protecting corporate power and the Rich: In a 2018 study, the Tax Policy Center found that under Trump’s 2017 $1.9 trillion tax plan, the average tax cut for the richest 1 percent was $51,000 and the average tax cut for the bottom 80 percent to be about $800.

Only hours after signing the tax giveaway into law, Trump told supporters at a Mar-a-Lago dinner that, “You all just got a lot richer.”

The Center for American Progress found that two years after the tax cut was passed revenues from corporate taxes had decreased by more than 40 percent, contributing to the largest year-over-year drop in corporate tax revenue outside of a recession. The U.S. Treasury reported that from fiscal year 2017 to FY 2018, the federal budget deficit increased by $113 billion while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90 billion, which would account for nearly 80 percent of the deficit increase.

We should note that Italian fascist Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should be more properly called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Trump has created a kleptocracy and plutocracy, turning the government into a personal profit-making machine filled with cronies and family members–as well as a servant of the rich.

Forbes Senior Editor Dan Alexander’s new book, “White House, Inc.,” indicates that Trump’s businesses earned $1.9 billion during from 2017 to 2019.

“Trump administration officials and people close to them are brashly using power to amass perks and cash,” The New York Times’ David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick wrote an article titled, “Corruption: The Definitive List.”

Visitors to Washington, D.C., who seek help from the White House often stay at Trump International Hotel, paying at least $500 a night.

Son-in-law Jared Kusher has used White House position to line his pockets. For instance, he solicited $500 million in loans for his family’s troubled real estate business from financial executives who visited the White House.

“President Trump, his family and more than a few of his appointees are using his presidency to enrich themselves,” Leonhardt and Pilbrick write. “They are spending taxpayer dollars for their own benefit. They are accepting sweetheart deals from foreigners. And they are harnessing the power of the federal government on behalf of their businesses.

An investigative report by The New York Times found that Trump paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years. He paid $750 the year he won the election and the same amount in his first year in office.

• Obsession with Law and Order: “I am your president of law and order,” Trump said as he ordered federal agents violently cleared peaceful protesters from a park near the White House in June.

• Suppression of labor: Trump has supported right-to-work states, issued executive orders that restrict federal unions’ ability to represent their members, adopted trade agreements that harm workers, gutted workplace safety protections, denied overtime to more than 8 million workers, reduced staffing at the Department of Labor, awarded billions of dollars in federal contracts to corporations that violate wage laws, weakened protections against wage theft, and made anti-union appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and National Labor Relations Board.

• Electoral Fraud: Trump is laying the groundwork to declare fraud if he loses the election in November.

His administration is restricting voter access and undermining the mail vote by blocking funding for the U.S. Postal Service (now led by a corporate political contributor).

Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi, a co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society, whose recommendations Trump (who has flouted the idea of serving more than two terms in office) has used for all of his judicial appointments, was aghast when the president suggested that the election be postponed.

“I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election,” Calabresi said.

“Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.”

Save Democracy by Voting Out Trump

Many people were surprised by the dark tone of the video in which Joe Biden announced his bid for the presidency. But the video accurately reflected the sad chapter of American history that we are living under.

The video included images of the march of torch-bearing white supremacists carrying Nazi and Confederate flags in Charlottesville in 2017.

Biden denounced the violence unleased by the Klansmen and Nazis at the march, referring to “their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging and baring the fangs of racism, chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the ‘30s.” He noted that Trump said he believed many of the right-wing thugs were “good people.”

The video was a clear warning that the re-election of Donald Trump will put American democracy at peril.

A vote for Biden is a vote to preserve our democracy.

September 30, 2020 0 comment

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