People Before Profit blog

Pat Buchanan's New Pro-Nazi Book

Tue, 04 May 2010 08:59:00 +0000

Patrick Buchanan's latest book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, has been published for the far right market and has received (outside of either right-wing or anarcho-crazy circles) largely negative reviews.

I read the work after I had a nasty tooth pulled and, all things considered, I would prefer to have another tooth pulled rather than read it again. But, in its over the top distortions of general works of history, right, left and center, its often comical and sometimes sinister use of classic propaganda ploys to advance its general interpretation, it deserves to be reviewed from a Marxist perspective, not simply as others have seen it as a book that attacks Winston Churchill, minimizes the Nazi danger, and trivializes the fascist genocide against the Jewish people and others. Buchanan's book is a work that reflects almost completely the views of Chamberlain and those to his right like the British fascist leader, Sir Oswald Moseley, Laval, Petain, and the Vichy collaborationist government, Charles Lindbergh, Father Charles Coughlin and other open and not so open pro-fascist isolationists in the U.S., and in general those forces through the world who fought on the side of the fascist axis during WWII and in many country, after reinventing themselves as good anti-Communists, have in recent decades sought to rationalize their past politics in terms of the world today.

It is difficult to really analyze a work like Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, since its distortions over and over again defy reason, but I will try to deal with those distortions. Buchanan uses two interrelated techniques – the Big Lie, associated with Nazi propaganda, and "multiple untruths" associated with U.S. McCarthyites and the House Un-American activities committee, namely, assertions based on distorted citations and false evidence, one after another in a way that makes it very hard to keep up with the flood of mis and disinformation.

Buchanan doesn't use primary sources. Instead, he scavenges from a wide variety of secondary sources, mostly from the right and also from the center and the left general historians, and takes assertions and bits and pieces of information to develop his plot narrative. Often, these works, including many of the right-wing works, have very different interpretations than the ones he has. The British critics of Churchill, for example, blame his policies for leading to the U.S. supplanting the British empire. But Buchanan doesn't even mention those differences. What matters is the master plot narrative. Critics of Ronald Reagan referred to this approach in Reagan's world-view as "movie truth," namely that all that matters is the story you are selling, and you make up situations, change them as you go along, in order to get your points across. And Buchanan has written a work based on the principles of "movie truth," even if the film makers would be closer to wartime Germany than Hollywood.

Let's start with some of the big lies. Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm was not an aggressive power and World War I was unnecessary and the result of "germanophobia." Here Buchanan uses pop geopolitics and a loving portrayal of Kaiser Wilhelm (a much more pacific individual than Winston Churchill) to make his points, taking materials from a variety of right-wing pro-imperialist historians. That World War I was a war of rival imperialist blocs is certainly true, but that has nothing to do with Buchanan's view, which is that the war, with the German empire a victim of its enemies, divided the "West" and brought about the ultimate evil, the Russian Revolution.

But Buchanan is just warming up. In 1919-1920, during the global reaction to the Soviet revolution, capitalist media and politicians hurled everything at it that they could, including anti-Semitism as they pointed to prominent Bolshevik leaders of Jewish background. Winston Churchill, who had said things like "we must kill the baby in its crib" (which Buchanan of course would support) about the Soviet revolution, also joined in these attacks. But Buchanan, who in recent decades has become America's tolerated and semi-official anti-Semite, argues that an article that Churchill wrote in this period, "Zionism and Bolshevism," when British imperialists among other things were seeking to consolidate their mandate over Palestine against the opposition of both Jewish settlers and Arabic people, is no different than Hitler's concept of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. Churchill to Buchanan, who doesn't make any distinction, is as big an ant-Semite as Hitler, even though Churchill's career in British politics was never characterized by anti-Semitic policies and Hitler initiated policies that led to the murder of nearly 1/3 of the Jewish people of the world.

Anyone who equates Churchill with Hitler on the question of anti-Semitism is certainly capable of anything, and Buchanan doesn't disappoint. The depression as Buchan, myself and everyone else knows, produced a mass Nazi party in Germany and helped bring Hitler to power. Since Buchanan identifies completely with those sectors of corporate capital who backed Hitler against the Socialists and the Communists, he makes no analysis of their role or that of the larger class struggle in Germany. Instead, he blames the French for bringing Hitler to power in 1933 by refusing to support a German Austrian "customs union" advocated, which he sees has leading to a deeper banking collapse in Austria and intensifying the depression.

While the collapse of the Kreditanstalt bank in Vienna did add to the European depression, no one sees the Customs Union as a serious solution to anything, since capital had dried up internationally, and trade had collapsed. Hitler's smashing of the trade union movement, mass arrests of socialists, communists and other anti-fascists, and persecution of the Jewish minority, to be charitable, don't concern Buchanan. Hitler's re-armament doesn't concern Buchanan either, or rather, it is implicitly justified, since the Versailles Treaty was a monstrous violation of German rights, creating countries like Czechoslovakia which Buchanan like Hitler contends had no right to exist, ceding territory to Poland in an an unjust manner, oppressing Germany. Here Buchanan presents the view of the Nazis and their allies that Germany was a "have not power" victimized by the great powers, seeking what was fair for it in Europe as it sought to defend "Western civilization" from Bolshevik revolution. Neville Chamberlain is praised for his settlement at Munich and then attacked for not doing the same thing a year later over Poland.

Hitler, according to Buchanan and the secondary sources that he selectively cites, didn't want war with England over Poland but friendship and cooperation against the Soviets. His demands on the right wing Polish government were fair and Chamberlain should have pushed the Poles to go along with them. The anti-Comintern Pact, the fascists answer to the peoples front anti-fascist campaigns, which became a major organizing tool for them in occupied Europe, Buchanan sees positively. Not even the virulently anti-Communist Polish government would join the anti-Comintern Pact because they understood that it would make them completely a protectorate of Hitler, and, unlike Buchanan, they had read Mein Kampf and understood that Nazi imperial policy and allied race theory offered them nothing but slavery at best, extinction at worst.

The rest reads like old communiques from the Reich Ministry of Propaganda. Churchill is condemned for not playing the part of Pierre Laval and accepting Hitler's peace offers in 1940 and thus saving the "West" from the revolutionary consequences of World War II. These consequences, according to Buchanan, are the ultimate evil: the survival of the Soviet Union and its expanded influence in Eastern Europe (Europe is seen as "the Christian continent") and the victory of the Chinese revolution. In his view, these are far greater evils than anything associated with German or Japanese imperialism. Indeed, for Buchanan, the war crimes of the Nazis and the Japanese imperialists are no worse than those of the allies in their bombing of civilian populations in Germany and Japan and the forgotten and for Buchanan really important Holocaust is the expulsion of millions of Germans from Eastern Europe at the end of the war.

If Buchanan were a bit more in control, he might have presented his pro-fascist, pro-Axis views in way that would have been more palatable to many of his fellow "conservatives." If he were a bit more honest, he might have titled his work "The War the Axis Should Have Won," since a British collaborator government signing a peace with Hitler in 1940 and a right-wing U.S. government doing business with Hitler as it expanded its power in the Western Hemisphere and abandoned both China to Japanese imperialism and the rest of the world is really what the world according to Patrick Buchanan would have been. There would have been no expulsions of Germans from Eastern Europe. Instead, the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, especially the people of Poland, would have been treated much like the Congolese were by Belgian imperialism at the turn of the 20th century or the African majority under the worst of apartheid, massacred, worked to death, and put on reservations. In such a world, the world of Hitler's "new order," there would have been many little and big Hitlers like Patrick Buchanan and those who support his views as there were throughout Europe and Asia, and they would have profited at the expense of must of humanity--a world where extreme forms of racism, militarism and colonial domination would be the norm.

Nearly 70 million people died in World War II on all sides, but the sides were never the same. Winston Churchill, whom Buchanan attacks in such crackpot ways, was a conservative and an imperialist whose primary interest was in saving the British empire. He took the position, against Neville Chamberlain and the great majority of his fellow conservatives that Hitler was the main enemy in the short run, not the Soviet Union. He even made a joke about it to his fellow conservatives, saying at the time of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would at least say a good word about the devil in the House of Commons. After the Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943, he did everything that he could to block the Soviets, in effect becoming a premature cold warrior and helping by his opposition to an early second front, to prolong the war. But he was not Chamberlain, who by the way wasn't Pierre Laval or Vidkun Quisling either. They, the right wingers who joined collaborated with the German occupation, supported WWII as a holy war against the Soviets and a war against the "inferior races" are the ones whose views dominate Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War.

You could make many jokes about this book. The old line from the late 1930s, "Hitler wants peace; a piece of Czechoslovakia, a piece of Poland." Spike Jones comedy record, "When the Fuhrer says we is the Master Race we go (farting sounds) in the Fuhrer's face." And of course, from The Producers, as the Churchill hating buffoon author of Springtime for Hitler says "Hitler was a better dresser than Churchill, Hitler was a better painter than Churchill, and he could dance the pants off of Churchill." But this book isn't really funny.

If We Go Down, We Go Down Together

Tue, 04 May 2010 08:32:00 +0000

Author's Note: An Excerpt from the Short Story Collection NIGHT PEOPLE AND OTHER TALES OF WORKING NEW YORK. Brooklyn NY. Dedicated to my union family at DC 1707 AFSCME.

Lucinda Flanagan was never one for frills. Her roots in Chicago prepared her well for life in working class New York, where she learned all about organizing tenants, neighborhoods and of course workers. Daughter of ‘notorious’ labor organizer Joe Flanagan, who stands as a hero to radicals but is the scourge of bosses throughout the mid-West, Lucinda clings to her family pride as most would a precious stone; at his most boastful her father insists that their lineage leads right back to James Connolly. Joe is into his sixties now but continues leading campaigns for his international, refusing the cushy desk job they offer time and again, and Lucinda happily walks her father’s walk. BUT, she makes clear, has no intention of hanging on his coat-tails. Where Joe stormed the barricades of Chicago’s warehouses, factories and construction sites, Lucinda has been firmly planted in on the east. And her people are the terribly overworked and underpaid human service workers of the city that never sleeps. But rather than talk about her from afar, let’s go ahead and meet Lucinda:

“Hey, first thing---please call me Luce. My parents meant well but that name carries with it a little too many syllables and a little too much bourgeois”, she laughed. “So don’t worry about what’s written on this card except for my cell number”, she explained, handing her business card to a tired-looking group home counselor. “Call me any time. And I will call you tomorrow so we can sit down with those co-workers you told me about, okay? I know this has been a long time coming for you”. The young woman sitting across from her looked back intently-- her deep brown eyes appearing relieved and at least a little frightened. Luce gripped her hand gently and smiled. Placing the card deep into her breast pocket the woman nodded affirmatively and she was gone.

Lucinda looked downward at the small stack of business cards in her hand. She’d been at this game for 7 years already but it never failed to give her a quiet thrill to see the title ‘Lead Organizer’ follow her name. This is where she needed to be.

“Oh shit”, its 7:30 already and I haven’t called Tony yet—damn.” Running down the hall with campaign literature beneath one arm and her open appointment book still in her hand, Luce raced against time to get home to the meal she was already late for, that which she and her husband had planned a couple of days ago. But if there is anyone that might understand Luce’s insane schedule its Tony, Antonio Pagamento. Luce and Tony married several years ago after meeting on an organizing campaign--she the Organizer attempting to increase union density at one of their sites and he the Representative for those employees who already were members of their local, the fighting Community Service Workers Union. They made a great team and had a shared pedigree: Tony’s grandfather had organized textile workers and his mother spent college as a New Left activist in the Communist Party. Tony was even named after Gramsci, no less, so the pair had plenty of ideology to hold them together.

“There you are!”, Tony happily exclaimed as he switched the oven back to ‘off’ again, trying to maintain the integrity of the meal just a little longer. Luce fidgeted with the keys, pulling them out of the security lock on their apartment door several stories above a bar on Avenue A. “I called down for a bottle of Merlot and they have it chilling now. Go get washed up and I’ll get the table set”, he called out to her as she bolted into the bedroom, plopping down her bag and coat on the bed and running into the postage stamp sized bathroom just off the hall. “Oooh, wine too. Wonderful, babe. It was a long day so you in an apron is a welcome sight”, she said laughing as Tony lit some candles. Slipping out of her boots, CSWU tee and khaki pants, Luce gave herself just a moment to decompress. “So how was your day?”, she called out through the bathroom door as Tony proceeded to tell her about this or that event in the shop. She pulled her long blondish hair out of the tight pony tail and ran a brush through it. Now spreading cool water over her face she looked into the mirror and rubbed her weary eyes. Looking down at her body, all of 27, Luce worried that she’d been losing too much weight and was looking beat. Strategically dabbing on perfume and climbing into her silk robe, Luce gave herself a come-hither look and decided that she still had it, even if too tired for much more than a meal tonight.

THE NEXT DAY Lucinda was in the union office early. Her supervisor Stanley Grimes, a studious and intense middle-aged man who’d been a mainstay of the movement since his own Black Panther days, was already typing away at his computer in the corner office, the one crowded with posters from organizing drives over the years. Stanley was able to type rapidly while balancing a cigarette in one hand and manning a coffee cup with the other. No, smoking wasn’t allowed indoors but who cared? “Hey soldier”, he called out to her without ever once raising his eyes from the contract language he’d been working on since God knows what time that morning.

“Hey captain---how’s it coming?”, she shot back. Stanley shook his head in slight disgust, consumed as he’d been with the losing campaign at the Committee for Global Rescue. The union had made multiple attempts to win an election at this UN-based non-governmental agency, one with a harshly anti-union management; no surprise as CGR had been established as a distant arm of the CIA during the Cold War. Its mid-town office included a team of refugees who were now employed by this organization, indebted to the boss and afraid to speak out. With the awful wages and nearly non-existent benefit package they received, the union organizers thought of these workers as indentured servants and had battled against management’s intimidating tactics for years. Now again, a team of organizers had been in touch with a small group of workers who sought membership in the union and help filing a Labor Board complaint against management. In addition to the long hours and little pay, some were now complaining of harassment by their supervisors and threats which, for the refugees, they feared could result in deportation. Staff had been severely cut and the two hundred-ten CGR employees left were now working longer and harder than before. Still, the majority of them were too afraid or blind to recognize the need for unity and Stanley had to consider if he had enough experienced organizers on staff to take on this battle now, at a time when he had several other campaigns going on simultaneously.

“Uhhh, Luce, I may need to bring you in on this one”, he said, blowing smoke out of his nostrils in a quite illustrative sigh. Finally looking up from his computer his eyes met hers. Stanley took off his reading glasses and rubbed one hand against a gray temple. “Maybe we should sit down together for a while. There’s a hell of a lot going on in this one…”

By 5PM Luce was waiting in a 42nd Street coffee shop for the three CGR workers who’d been serving as primary contacts. One of them, Vojin, had been a refugee and had more to lose than the other two but as he explained, life in Kosovo had taught him what he did NOT have to put up with: “We cannot go on this way—management speaks to us like servants and the pressure for increased productivity is continuous” Vojin explained while looking over his shoulder at regular intervals. “Ever present is the threat that we who were refugees must fulfill our tasks in order to maintain residence here. But what happened to the promise of safety, the promise of a job and home?”, he asked incredulously. Back in the safety of a huddle with his fellow workers, he and the other two--Brenda and Deter--presented Luce with several weekly schedules which demonstrated that most of the employees were being assigned to work two jobs per shift, a cheap way to make up for the loss in staffing. They also carried with them numerous pay stubs which clarified that while they were working well in excess of forty hours per week, few if any were receiving overtime rates. These documents were accompanied by copies of several threatening letters from one of the supervisors, the angry tone of which clearly indicated an attempt to intimidate. Management had also begun a series of mandatory anti-union meetings which again included illegal threatening statements. All Luce could think was that this so-called Rescue agency had a most unique way of demonstrating empathy.

That evening, after documenting her meeting in a log-book, Luce discussed the situation with Tony. “I felt so bad for these folks and was especially concerned about the rest---those who were unwilling to come to our meeting. Some of them were simply terrified and management has really set the stage for a fight here. You know most of the CGR workers must opt out of the health benefits due to extremely high premiums and deductibles, so when several have become ill they have been forced to go to work sick. One of the older employees recently had to go out on SSD and they are fearful that he’ll just whither away after giving CGR sixteen years of service. With so many vulnerable people at stake, I am really worried about how to proceed, but something must be done”, she admitted. “I began the draft for the ULP I want to file with the Labor Board, but this case must go much further than that”.

“Hmmm, sounds like you almost have the makings of a modern-day Triangle Factory here”, he said, referring to the tragic, landmark 1911 case of factory owners who locked immigrant women workers in to intimidate them and keep ILGWU organizers out---only to have two floors worth of employees perish in the smoke and flames when a fire erupted in the bins. “I cannot pass this up. I have some contract negotiations to deal with right now, but with a good strong committee in place, I can split my time. Count me in on this campaign with you”, Tony said quite righteously. And they discussed strategy over a late-night supper.

ONE WEEK LATER the pair, along with Stanley and two of the Community Service Workers’ organizers, Maria and Sylvia, set up the large conference room at the union hall. They placed the chairs and labor literature on a table down front, pamphlets explaining how an organizing campaign works and about the union’s history and benefit funds. But no brochure or chart or graph could ever tell the story that a face-to-face meeting could. Stanley knew damn well that as management has the workers at their disposal every day for eight hours, his people needed to present well and thorough. This could be their one opportunity.

“And above all else, WE have to believe in that which we are advocating for, that which we know to be the key for these folks”, Stanley said as he laid out stacks of the union authorization cards that must be signed by a majority of the workers so they can file for an election. Instinctively, Stanley pulled a CSWU, AFL-CIO cap onto his head, the well-worn cap which had already seen dozens of demonstrations and meetings in the past year. All part of the uniform. Slowly, the employees of the Committee for Global Rescue began to file in, right on time with the main three activists, Deter, Brenda and Vojin leading the way. Deter was a fifty-something German-born book-keeper who’d been living in this country since age five. Quiet and relatively unassuming, his was a simmering kind of anger, a self-righteousness that lingered beneath the radar. As such, he was able to avoid any negative attention by management and could acquire necessary information—especially working in the back-office as he did—for the organizers. Brenda, a young African-American woman was raised in the south but had been living in New York since attending Columbia University. An idealist, she signed on with CGR after serving as a community activist in upper Manhattan during college but quickly became disturbed by the back-story of this agency. Luce was impressed with her boldness from the start…

“Hey Luce I guess I don’t have to tell you about the dirt I got doing a little bit of research”, the young woman said as their earlier meeting came to a close. “CGR employed under cover State Department agents who carried the title of ‘Special Outreach Worker’ starting with the late 1950s and this continued right up till the Berlin Wall fell--and then for some years after that. They were doing special ops in all countries with Left-wing governments and were used to try to dismantle unions in South and Central America. Supposedly, they pulled the agents all out by the Clinton years but with all of this attention on countries like Venezuela and Brazil these days, who knows?”

Now Brenda and her two co-workers sat alongside the organizers as the rest of the CGR employees entered. Looking around the room with varying levels of anxiety as they first crept in, the workers were soon drinking coffee and gobbling up donuts (“ people always feel better when they eat”, Stanley reminded the others), though handling the food with some distrust. After some general conversation one worker, still holding half a jelly donut and large cup of coffee, asked the union staff what they could do for the CGR employees.

“Remember people”, Luce explained, “it cannot be the union officers and organizers that make the changes in your lives---it has to come from you”. And with that she asked what the problems were and what they wished to see changed. The crowd of forty or so people anxiously looked at each other or at no one at all. The air grew thick with silence and then finally a middle-aged white man with glasses and a loosely hanging cardigan blurted out that the union would get them all fired. “What can you do for us when they just do a mass termination? You’ll go on to the next organizing drive and leave us holding the bag, jobless”, he insisted.

“Yeah!”, a heavy-set Latina cried out, followed by a nervous-sounding young man whose voice carried a thick Senegal accent: “CGR helped us and now you are asking us to turn on them? How you can do this??”. Others mumbled concerns and several were clearly echoing some of management’s well thought out anti-labor statements, contrasted by a few others who said that management had had ample time to fix the problems but instead offered only the air of intimidation throughout the office. This did little to settle fears. The maelstrom began, building from a buzzing, rocking din. Previously timid, studious social workers and statisticians and accountants were now bearing teeth and shaking the occasional fist.

Brenda stood and tried to offer some reality checks but was shouted down as the crowd became more overt in their protests; things were moving in a bad way and a few of the workers put on their jackets and began to move toward the door, seeking escape from the noise and confusion. Deter avoided the rest, looking downward, as Vojin called out to his co-workers in futility. A flustered Middle Eastern man had one of the anti-union flyers from the boss, misinformation about the efficacy of the union’s contracts in other agencies, and began waving it angrily as he stood above the fray and shouted at the union people to offer a response. Luce looked the group over and searched frantically for an answer but her thoughts were quickly interrupted by Stanley, ever alert Stanley:

“Okay soldier, this is your show now, you know”, he said, leaning over closely. She looked back at him uncomfortably as he added, “So go to work”, and smiled.

Luce shot up and, glancing over her shoulder, saw Stanley give her a subtle ‘thumbs up’. “Okay people, people!”, she called out to the crowd. “People---HEY!” Heads whirled around and a few of the CGR employees looked back, surprised. “You can keep yelling if you want---don’t let me stop you. You can turn this into primal scream therapy if you feel it will help but let me first ask you this: will your anger give you a pay raise? Will yelling at us give you the kind of benefits you and your families deserve??”, she challenged them. The boil now simmered. Several workers in the mob moved to continue their protest but could say nothing.

Luce approached the angry man who’d waved the flyer, that which was rolled up and now held aloft like a sword. “Can I see that?”, she asked, pointing to his ersatz weapon. The man glumly handed it to her and once in her hand Luce began to shake the page with a snap. The front row stood in mild bemusement. She looked the page over quite theatrically and then continued shaking it until the flustered man asked her just what in hell she was doing. Luce looked back at him, smiled carefully and said, “Hey I know how important you feel this is so I was just trying to see if it would get you any more money, or maybe if a new benefits package would fall out of it!”. She looked back at the crowd with a grin and raised brow. Re-examing the page now, trying to peer into the bottom , the side; trying to look through it by holding it up to the light. The man’s annoyance went in neutral as several frowns melted into a rather reserved chuckle. And then several others began to softly laugh and soon, many were snickering too.

“Yeah”, Luce quickly added, “This little ol’ piece of paper must carry one magic bullet. What else did they give you?” And another employee, a young South Asian woman, raised a color brochure about the agency being One Big Family.”Ah, yes, of course---it’s a good thing to know your workplace is like a family, isn’t it?”, Luce asked directly. A couple of the workers in the front row nodded uneasily while one more who remained a loyalist responded verbally: “Yes, it’s a good goddamned feeling. Let me tell you, we have been like a family for years”.

“And we would never want those positive feelings to change, brother”, Luce assured him, “but I cannot help but wonder how warm the feelings are when someone in the family has to struggle to earn a living or suffer the indignity of not being able to get proper benefits for their children. Or they themselves need to retire early and collect government benefits because they cannot afford coverage. Families look out for one another and, without trying to insult your good relations here, I have to ask if you think that a family-like atmosphere should include unexplained terminations, a deliberate reduction of the workforce and the serious overworking we’ve been hearing about. It just doesn’t seem right---does anyone here feel that it’s appropriate to be treated that way?” The crowd now became more forthcoming in their agreement with the young woman. Some of those standing in the back that’d been ready to leave now slowly moved back toward the seats. One older woman who’d been listening attentively throughout now stood and said, “That’s right. They call us ‘family’ but we are treated like in-laws at best”, and the crowd loosened, sharing a good, affirmative laugh.

“Yes, sister”, Luce said softly and with a gentle smile, “yes, you are right. And in-laws are often—outlaws.” Luce now walked to the center of the room, standing amidst the employees spread out before her. She continued: “It pains me to see good workers who outreach to those with great, great needs, themselves having to struggle with such basic human needs as a sense of security and decent pay; REAL benefits and reasonable workloads; simple respect. No one in this room wants to see the Committee for Global Rescue fall into problems—and it won’t. But it seems like a UN-affiliated N.G.O. should be the first to live by the UN’s charter for human rights. Is that too much to ask for? Is your right to organize, to stand together in unity, TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR? Tell me, aren’t you—your spouses and kids—worth at least that much??”And the group sat in an oddly calm stillness.

Luce walked over to the table her team had placed the literature on and sat on the edge with her hands folded comfortably in her lap. She smiled at the workers and nodded down toward the union authorization cards sitting on the table. “It’s time, people. It’s time to make a decision about your future. Its time to have a voice, to forge the realities of your work life--and the lives of your families. And the one way to do that is---together.”

Stanley and Tony stood quietly and walked over to the table, just behind Luce, and raised a stack of union cards each, extending them out to the workers who were now standing up and slowly moving forward. And as one would stand he or she next to him would begin to stir. And stand a little bit taller. And walk a little more assuredly.

One by one they reached for the union cards.

Chicago, Birthplace of May Day and the 8-Hour Day

Mon, 03 May 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Step by step, the longest march
    Can be won, can be won;
Single stones will form an arch,
    One by one, one by one.
And, by union, what we will
Can be all accomplished still.
Drops of water turn a mill,
    Singly none, singly none.

This 1870s miners’ poem sings of the spirit of unity and forecasts Labor’s eventual triumph. It was this spirit that brought workers out in 1,600 cities in the US to march on May 1, 1876. The marchers demanded an 8-Hour Day with no cut in pay. The work day at that time was 10 to 12 hours, 6 days a week, for about $1 a day. The employers’ view of the 8-Hour Day was described in a few words by “Mr. Surgeon Green” of St. Thomas Hospital.

Eight hours’ work, eight hours’ sleep, and eight hours’ recreation, is the allotment of twenty-four, which seems most agreeable to nature to some of them, for adults. But to the great majority of employers of all kinds of labour, such a humane division of the day must seem very preposterous. For as man was born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards, so, according to their creed, was he born to labour, as the sweat drops downwards. Are not the poor, the “working classes?” Then let them work─ work─work. If they are to rest hours and hours on week days, pray what is the use of the Sabbath? Work is the Chief End and whole Duty of Man.

Milwaukee Tragedy

Most of the May Day Marches went peacefully. In some cities, however, employers and government violently attacked the movement. Milwaukee was one of the cities where employers used deadly violence against workers who were striking for the 8-hour day.

The March for the 8-Hour Day was massive in Milwaukee on May 1st, 1886. Thousands participated. After the March, hundreds went to Milwaukee factories to spread the strike for the 8-Hour Day. By May 2, workers had shut down every factory but the Rolling Mills in Bay View. On May 3, the 8-hour-day strikers marched to the Mills. They picked up more marchers along the way, swelling their numbers to 1500. The strikers were mainly Polish, some German, and some Native American. Two hundred yards from the Bay View Mills, the marchers were met by the State Militia.

The Militia had orders to “shoot to kill,” and kill they did. They killed Frank Kunkel, Frank Nowarczyk, John Marsh, Robert Erdman, Johann Zaska, Martin Jankowiak, Michael Ruchalski and two unidentified Polish immigrants. After the massacre, many employers began to fire Polish workers “because the Polish people were too radical.” However, the citizens of Milwaukee sympathized with the 8-Hour Day strikers. Voters were outraged by the massacre. The 1888 elections replaced county and city government officials with Socialists. Socialist mayors were elected in Milwaukee and served many terms.

Haymarket Massacre in Chicago

It was the massacre in Chicago’s Haymarket Square that brought world attention to the 8-Hour Day struggle in the United States. On May 1. 1886, workers put on the largest march in Chicago’s history. The streets were full of the sounds of the 8-hour-day song:

We mean to make things over, we are tired of toil for naught,
With but bare enough to live upon, and never an hour for thought,
We want to feel the sunshine, and we want to smell the flowers,
We are sure that God has will’d it, and we mean to have eight hours.
We’re summoning our forces from shipyard, shop and mill,
Eight hours for work, eight hour for rest, eight hours for what we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hour for rest, eight hours for what we will!

The 8-Hour Day March was peaceful, even festive. But on that day, there was trouble at McCormick’s Reaper Plant. Thousands had been locked out for demanding an 8-hour-day. A workers’ rally outside the plant was attacked by police. Some workers were killed. To protest the killings, a rally was called for May 4th in Haymarket Square. Mayor Harrison attended the rally and all was peaceful. Contrary to the Mayor’s wishes, Police Captain John Bonfield brought hundreds of police to the rally. After the Mayor rode off on his white horse, unknown persons threw a bomb into the crowd. The police began to fire wildly. Eight policemen and at least as many workers were killed.

Severe repression, fed by media hysteria, followed the massacre. The police made hundreds of arrests. Eight workers’ leaders were held for trial. Despite worldwide protests, four were executed on the gallows: Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fischer. The four Martyrs had been sentenced to death in a flagrantly flawed trial. For example, the judge invited “Society debutantes” to sit on the bench with him and flirted with them during the trial.

May 1st, International Workers Day

The heroism of the Martyrs inspired workers around the world. In 1891, the Socialist International declared May Day as International Workers Day, in honor of the Haymarket Martyrs. Since that time, working families all over the world celebrate May Day, the holiday devoted to the workers’ cause.

I watched the big May Day March in New York, in 1923. I had a good view. I was still small enough to be hoisted up on my father’s shoulders. It was fun to look at the thousands of happy marchers dressed in their best clothes. I remember a sea of signs: the hat-makers, the dressmakers, the pocketbook makers, dressmakers, men’s clothing workers, the printers, plumbers, on and on. Everyone was a maker, a worker.

Then it began to rain. “It’s raining, papa,” I said, “Let’s go home.” “Wait just a while,” he answered. The rain kept coming down and the marchers continued to march. Their hair got wet and the paint on their signs began to run. I did not fully understand what was going on but I was impressed. “This must be very, very important.” I thought. “Otherwise people would never march in the rain.”

I marched every year after that, until the marches fell victim to anti-Communist hysteria and the Cold War. Only a few people in the USA renained aware of the May Day tradition. That changed on May 1, 2007. On that day, millions of immigrants brought May Day back to the United States. The immigrants marched for their rights on May 1st in 2007 and 2008. In a way, that is a poetic restoration of our history. In 1886, most of the fighters for the 8-Hour Day were immigrants, too. Thanks to research by William Adelman, and a college paper by my grandson, I learned how modern Chicago was built by immigrants.

Immigrants Built Chicago

Chicago of the 19th century was built by immigrants. The Irish came in the 1830s and 1840s, and the Germans came after the defeat of the 1848 Revolution in Germany. After these workers began to organize and fight for their rights, employers brought in Czech, Bohemian, Polish and other European workers. Employers hoped the newer arrivals would be more docile.

Germans in Chicago remembered the horrible morning of April 21, 1855. They had marched from their Milwaukee Avenue neighborhood, intending to protest at City Hall. The beer halls that served as German social gathering places were closing because their license fees had been raised from $30 to $300. As the marchers were crossing the Clark Avenue Bridge over the Chicago River, Mayor Boone ordered the bridge turned. The marchers on the bridge were trapped. Then the police opened fire, wounding many and killing one.
Chicago Fire and Immigrant Workers

Immigrants suffered severely in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Of the hundreds who died and the 100.000 left homeless, most were immigrants from Europe. The victims looked to the city for help. A half billion dollars (in today’s terms) had been donated for relief by workers around the world. But only a trickle of the funds reached the victims of the fire. The Relief operation had been privatized, turned over to the mayor’s business friends in the Chicago Relief and Aid Society.

Homeless and hungry, the unemployed workers marched on the Relief Society on December, 1872. The marchers were herded by the police into the tunnel under the River at La Salle Street. Both ends of the tunnel were then closed by the police. The marchers were trapped. The police charged into the tunnel, clubs swinging. Several demonstrators were killed and many were injured. Later investigation showed that the business men in charge of the Relief and Aid had used the funds for private gain. They had borrowed huge sums at no interest, pocketing what they saved over borrowing from banks. Nothing was left for the Fire victims. Unfortunately, this type of thievery has not stopped to this day. Thoughts of the mistreatment of New Orleans flood victims come to mind.

The suffering of the Fire victims deepened during the 1873 recession. Hungry people flocked to the Relief and Aid Society again, to demand food. Minutes of the Society’s Board of Directors shows the Director’s unfeeling response: "Mr. King, Prest., stated that he had called this meeting to consider what action could be taken to relieve the Society of the crowd thronging the building and streets demanding relief, the majority of them unworthy and impostors." To keep people away from its doors, the Board asked for written applications and a recommendation from "some well known citizen." The Board added, single, able-bodied men would get no help.

Railroad Strike of 1877

In 1886, Chicago was only 50 years old. It already had a rich labor history, bloodied by anti-labor police violence. That history can help us understand the background of the Haymarket Massacre. Labor Historian Adelman wrote, “The rich of Chicago felt that the world was coming to an end and their way of life about to be destroyed.”   As Mother Jones pointed out in her autobiography, the working class was “in rebellion” in all of the industrial centers of the country.” This was especially true of Chicago, the scene of one great strike after another. The Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Streetcar Strike of 1885 set the stage for the Chicago Haymarket Massacre of 1886.

Chicago was deeply affected by the National Railroad Strike of 1877. The strike had a big impact on Albert Parsons who became a key figure in the Haymarket Tragedy ten years later. One of the big issues of the 1877 strike was safety, especially for the brakemen who had the most dangerous jobs. The brakemen coupled cars together. “They had to stand between two cars being coupled so that they might steer link into socket and then let fall the pin that joined them.” The dangerous moment was when the cars came together. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured every year. It was so bad that a new brakeman was recognized by the fact that he still had all ten fingers.

Was this carnage of railroad workers just a necessary cost of connecting the states by railroads? One commentator said, “As long as brakes cost more than brakemen, we may expect that the present sacrificial method of car coupling to be continued.” But workers answered a loud “NO!” to the question, “Do brakemen have to die?” They went on strike in West Virginia, fighting for safety and other issues. The strike spread to Chicago on July 23, 1877 and soon paralyzed the city. After the Michigan Central Railroad workers walked out of the yards at Randolph and Michigan, workers began walking out all over Chicago. Streetcars on the South Side stopped running. Ships did not move because seamen were on strike. That evening 8,000 workers came to Market Square for a torchlight rally. Albert Parsons gave a speech that electrified the rally.

Parsons urged working men to join the Workingmen’s Party. He called for use of the ballot to win state control of transportation and to take key sectors of the economy “out of the hands or control of private individuals, corporations, monopolists and syndicates. Today we would say that Parsons was calling for nationalization. More, since he wanted control to be in the hands of the people, he was calling for Socialism.

The speech united both ethnic and native born workers in a new way. But the speech did not go over that well with Parson’s employer, the Chicago Times. Parsons, a typesetter, was fired and blacklisted. When he applied for a job at the Chicago Tribune, thugs threw him down two flights of stairs. He persisted in his search for a job, applying at the ethnic newspapers. Some plainclothesmen sent Parsons to City Hall, then in the Rookery building at Adams and LaSalle. There, Parsons was met by the police and fifty members of the Board of Trade. They told him, “Leave town or you’ll be strung up on a lamp post!”

Despite a maximum effort by workers to win the strike, the Railroad Strike of 1877 was drowned in a sea of employer-state violence. Over 100 people, mostly strikers, were killed. In Chicago, Federal troops and the Illinois National Guard were used to crush the strikers. The Federal troops came from the Dakotas. They had just massacred the Sioux in revenge for the death of General Custer. A headline in the Chicago Times in 1877 voiced the capitalists’ anxious outrage: "Terrors Reign, The Streets of Chicago Given Over to Howling Mobs of Thieves and Cutthroats."   Big Business owners kept the anti-labor hysteria going. Marshall Field armed the clerks in his store and gave his delivery wagons to the troops to move armed forces around the city.

Streetcar Strike of 1885

Company-State violence against strikers was used again in the 1885 Chicago Streetcar Strike that year. The streetcar workers demanded shorter hours and an end to discrimination against union members. The company’s reply was to fire sixteen of the union leaders. In the strike that followed, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison told the police to stay out of it and let company and workers settle it between them. But Police Captain Bonfield cared nothing for the Mayor’s orders. He offered the police as strikebreakers. The Pinkerton Detective Agency also offered their men as strikebreakers—for a fee. Rather than give the workers their demands, the Streetcar Company preferred to pay huge fees for strikebreakers.

On July 1, the stage was set for a confrontation. The company sent out its streetcars run by Pinkerton detectives and Captain Bonfield’s police. They were met at the corner of Madison and Halsted by a crowd of men, women and children. Many of the crowd were in support of the strikers. Others were there because they were angry with the company for overcharging passengers and refusing to give transfers. The confrontation was bloody. The police clubbed everyone in sight. That included storekeepers who stepped out to the sidewalk to see what was going on. Five days later, the company agreed to accept Mayor Harrison’s offer of arbitration. But Captain Bonfield would have none of it. He led 400 policemen out to the West Side and ordered them to “shoot to kill.” He personally “shot to kill” a worker who was stoning a strikebreaker-driven street car. Fortunately, Bonfield’s aim was bad and he missed. [Adelman, 10]

Haymarket Massacre Setback

The next year, Bonfield played a similarly vile role at the Haymarket Massacre. As mentioned above, Bonfield disobeyed the Mayor’s orders again. He massed 200 police at the relatively small and peaceful rally in Haymarket Square. When unknown persons threw a bomb into the crowd, wild police fire killed eight workers and eight policemen. The repression that followed, including the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs, set the 8-Hour Day movement back for decades. Still, the 8-Hour Day issue did not go away as the 19th century ended.

In 1918, the 8-Hour Day was a key demand of the packinghouse workers. Under threat of a national strike, a federal arbitrator granted the 8-Hour Day for the meatpackers. The 8-Hour Day was also the central demand of the National Steel Strike of 1919. But as late as the summer of 1933, I worked 10-hour days on my first job. Ten hours and sometimes twelve were still standard at that time.

It was not until 1938 that we won the 8-Hour Day. Under pressure from the new CIO-led coalition, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The eight-hour day finally became a reality. This Act also established minimum pay and outlawed child labor. In recent times, progressives have demanded a shorter work week and the 6-Hour Day. Since 1886, my guess is that productivity has increased hundreds or thousand-fold. But instead of a shorter work week, people are now asking, “Whatever happened to the 8-Hour Day?” According to The NY Times, Jan. 31, 2009, “Americans Lead the World in Hours Worked.” As we fight for massive public works job projects, we can draw inspiration from our Chicago Haymarket Martyrs. Fight for a shorter work week and higher minimum wage!

Engels on the "Negation of the Negation"

Mon, 03 May 2010 10:47:00 +0000

Engels discusses the negation of the negation in Chapter XIII of Part One of Anti-Dühring [on Philosophy].

It seems that Dühring approves of Marx's discussion of primitive accumulation at the end of Vol. I of Capital: he calls it "relatively the best part of Marx's book." However, he has one big objection, viz., that Marx uses the "dialectical crutch" of "Hegelian verbal jugglery" to explain how private property will become social property. That verbal jugglery consists of the Hegelian concept of "the negation of the negation."

Dühring accuses Marx of spouting nonsense since that is what "must necessarily spring" from using "Hegelian dialectics as the scientific basis" of one's discussion. This upsets Engels, but Dühring could take comfort from the fact that most bourgeois economists today would agree with him. In fact, it is because they agree with him that most of them themselves spout nonsense

Before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the negation of the negation, Engels wants to take Dühring to task for thinking Marx was spouting nonsense when he spoke of property being both individual AND social at the same time.

Engels now explains the meaning of Marx's notion of property being both individually and socially owned at the same time. This problem comes up in Chapter 32 of volume one of Capital ("Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation").

In this chapter, Marx details how the growth of capitalism led to the concentration of workers into factories and their loss of their own tools (which as individual craftsmen they formerly owned) resulting in their dependence on the capitalists not only for employment but also for the tools with which to work.

This development of capitalism is the FIRST NEGATION, with respect to the workers, of private property-- i.e., they lose their means of production to the capitalists (their tools and handicraft properties. But capitalism brings about its own negation (the SECOND NEGATION). This means that it gives birth to socialism as a result of its own internal contradictions ("with the inexorability of a law of Nature"). Thus Marx says: "It is the negation of the negation." [The "It" is socialism.]

"This does not, " Marx writes, "re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production."

So, Engels maintains, Dühring is way off the mark by calling that notion of Marx's a lot of contradictory Hegelian nonsense. Engels says, "To anyone who understands plain talk this means that social ownership extends to the land and other means of production, and individual ownership to the products, that is, the articles of consumption."

How can Dühring be so confused with regard to Marx's meaning? He misquotes Marx's words over and over again. Engels decides it is either because Dühring can't understand Marx, or he is quoting him from memory and getting it wrong.

It is important to realize that Marx is not using dialects in a mechanical fashion to construct his description of capitalism. Marx's famous observation, in this chapter of Das Kapital, that "One capitalist always kills many" and that capitalism should lead to socialism, is the result of an EMPIRICAL investigation of the capitalist mode of production. Due to competition and monopoly, capitalist concentration leads to the domination of a few big corporations, to over production and to the relative impoverishment of the majority of working people.

These people, however, have been trained to work in large socialized industrial enterprises which run on principles of specialization of functions and cooperation of labor. It is a small step from this capitalist set up to socialism. Only the private ownership of these effectively socialized means of production needs to be replaced by public ownership.

Right now, Spring 2010, General Motors Corporation is already a virtually socialized enterprise (60 percent owned by the American people). It is only the lack of a socialist consciousness in the working class that allows GM to remain under capitalist control and allows representatives of the capitalist class to be elected to positions of governance in the US.

What Marx showed was that this process of change by which the petty producers were eliminated and replaced by the capitalist enterprises has now developed to the point where capitalism has, as Engels says, "likewise itself created the material conditions from which it must perish." [It's taking its sweet time about it.]

The point is that this is an HISTORICAL PROCESS, and Engels says "if it is at the same time a dialectical process, this is not Marx's fault, however annoying it may be to Herr Dühring."

This means that Marx is not appealing to the NEGATION OF THE NEGATION to demonstrate the historical necessity of the transformation of capitalism into socialism. He is doing just the opposite according to Engels. He is showing, by an appeal to history, that such a transformation is already under way and that this is the trend of future development. Only after doing this does Marx also point out this development can be described as well "in accordance with a definite dialectical law." He is NOT saying the law determines this development. E=mc2 does not determine that mass and energy are interchangeable, but that they are allows us to discover that E=mc2. Failure to realize this shows "Herr Dühring's total lack of understanding of the nature of dialectics."

Engels proceeds to give several examples of dialectical thinking that exemplify the negation of the negation. For example, in olden times there was common ownership of land which was negated by private property and all the attendant evils of that negation are currently manifest in our time and can only be eliminated by a negation of the negation (socialism).

Engels discusses how this was seen by Rousseau as far back as the middle of the 18th century, and although he did know the "Hegelian jargon" he nevertheless developed "a line of thought which corresponds exactly to the one developed in Marx's CAPITAL." Let's look at the work Engels refers to.

Rousseau wrote the DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGIN OF INEQUALITY in 1755. Unlike most of the thinkers of the Enlightenment Rousseau thinks that the development of civilization, the growth of private property and individualism have led to the intensification of human inequality rather than being forces for the growth of liberty, equality and fraternity.

The invention of agriculture brought about he concept of property and the idea of justice to ensure the rights of people with respect to it. It is not possible, Rousseau says, “to conceive how property can come from anything but manual labor.”

But once property in land and its products was introduced greed, competition, the desire to accumulate the produce and labors of others was also introduced. “All these evils were the first effects of property, and the inseparable attendants of growing inequality.”

We must remember that in the state of nature there is no “right” to property other than what a person, by his/her own labor can extract for the necessities of life. The growth of private property, the development of classes, the foundation of the state and laws to protect private property represent a negation of the original existential condition of humanity vis a vis nature.

Now, under the rule of law and living in a state, how do the rich and powerful few prevent the many, the poor and oppressed, from asserting their rights to their own labor and the natural use of the products of nature? That is, how do they keep their negation of the natural state from being negated?

Rousseau says “the rich man, thus urged by necessity, conceived at length the profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to employ in his favor the forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to inspire them with different maxims and to give them other institutions as favorable to himself as the law of nature was unfavorable.”

This was done by appealing to all to join together in forming a society based on laws designed to protect everyone from everyone. Here is what we should do, said the first usurpers of the common property of humanity: “Let us, in a word, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, collect them in a supreme power which may govern us by wise laws, protect and defend all the members of the association, repulse their common enemies, and maintain eternal harmony among us.”

Well this certainly sounds good. Liberty and Justice for All-- who could be against that. Throw in motherhood and apple pie and you have an unbeatable formula. Thus, Rousseau says, “All ran headlong to their chains, in hope of securing their liberty.”

This was, "or may have been," Rousseau says, "the origin of society and law." This was a clever set up pulled off by the rich. Engels would suggest, I am sure, that it was probably not consciously done. This scenario is a retroactive description based on a rational analysis of the consequences of the agricultural revolution. Rousseau lacked the vocabulary, as did Enlightenment intellectuals in general, to describe these historical developments as purely objective developments. This vocabulary would have to await Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx.

The result of the negation of individuals living in a state of nature was the appearance of civilization and the existence of numerous independent political organizations which recreated the conditions of the state of nature but now. on a higher level, between states and peoples.

One need only turn to the daily press to read about the outrages in Afghanistan, the rape of Iraq for its oil, or the constant bullying of small states by powerful ones to see the truth of Rousseau's words that this change is responsible for "national wars, battles, murders, and reprisals, which shock nature and outrage reason; together with all those horrible prejudices which class among the virtues the honor of shedding human blood. The most distinguished men hence learned to consider cutting each other's throats a duty; at length men massacred their fellow-creatures by thousands without so much as knowing why, and committed more murders in a single day's fighting, and more violent outrages in the sack of a single town, than were committed in the state of nature during whole ages over the whole earth." Well, this is where we find ourselves today. I hope left-center unity will get us out of here to a better place.

The remedy to this state of affairs, the negation of the negation, is the abolition of private property and the establishment of a world socialist order. The heroic attempt, and temporary defeat, to establish this order in the last century reminds us of the immense difficulty involved in this task, but it in no way diminishes the need to do it.

Engels gives several other examples of the negation of the negation for the edification of Dühring but I think his point is sufficiently clear. He concludes his discussion of philosophy (part one of Anti-Dühring) with a brief conclusion (Chapter XIV) which is that Dühring has absolutely nothing of importance to say about philosophy. Nevertheless, as we have seen, he served as a useful foil for Engels to give a fine presentation of Marxist philosophy.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9299363@N06/ / CC BY 2.0

Nazis Defeated in Berlin

Mon, 03 May 2010 10:31:00 +0000

What would May Day bring to Berlin?

To believe the boulevard rags, it would be a day of revolutionary riot, bloody battles with the police, and violent standoffs between extremists of the left and right.

Of course, being May Day, there were the usual union rallies in most major cities, including Berlin, where union leaders spoke rather more militantly than on the other 364 days of the year. Pressures from the membership were building up; there was a dip in unemployment figures but the numbers of those with temp jobs, short-term jobs and hunger wage jobs improved the statistics but increased uncertainty the poverty. Many feared what the right-wing government or Angela Merkel was preparing for the months after the key May 9th elections in the big state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

But a basic question for many Berliners was: Will the Nazis march in force through a key district of eastern Berlin. They had been roundly defeated in Dresden in February, when human blockades prevented them from leaving the train station. Their internet sites seethed with anger and hatred and now they boasted that 10,000 would achieve revenge in Berlin and elsewhere.

They were due at the city rail station Bornholmer Strasse. The neo-Nazi party had official standing, so their right to march would be guaranteed and their ranks protected by the police. But a wide range of anti-fascist groups saw things differently. Berlin must never again be a Nazi center. The area was plastered in advance with slogans; “Berlin bleibt Nazi-frei” - “Berlin stays free of Nazis” or simply “Nazis raus” - on placards, banners on balconies, even pasted on trees or chalked on sidewalks.

And other preparations had been made. Since the police refused to say which march routes were planned, all routes were to blocked off, as in Dresden, by human barriers with thousands of people.

The groups, meeting at 9 AM at central stations of the city subway or elevated systems, were given maps and the planned program. They jammed the trains for the five or six stations to a street near the site of the planned march. The main groups were in East Berlin, where the Nazis were expected, but one group went to the western side, to block any surprise attempt to move through West Berlin.

They soon found their path barred by police. Only a press pass permitted a walk along Bornholmer, a wide boulevard, now almost devoid of normal pedestrians but full of countless police vehicle and thousands of visored, helmeted police in full wartime anti-bullet, anti-missile regalia, with clubs and pistols, marching or running from one site to another. It was an odd atmosphere: with lilacs, fruit trees and shrubs in full blossom, blackbirds caroling joyfully from their branches, and below them an a feeling of almost wartime tension and menace.

A small earlier sit-down near the station, the site of the planned major blockade, had been broken up earlier by the police, peacefully, even politely, and not before a well-known political figure in Berlin, the bumbling, red bearded Wolfgang Thierse, had been filmed and photographed sufficiently for the more staid newspapers and TV news shows. But after this seemingly orchestrated demonstration of reasonable determination by the city authorities, the street was blocked off and every further attempt by anti-fascists to move into the Bornholmer from the side streets was immediately blocked by those menacing police squads.

But the anti-fascist organizers had planned many alternatives. At the main one a huge crowd had gathered, certainly over 4-5000. Similar groups waited at all possible crossings where the Nazis might be expected. And they waited. Despite the tension in the air, as the expected 12 o’clock arrival time of the Nazis approached and then passed, it remained a determined but very friendly, easy-going crowd. About 90 percent were young people between 17 and 25, many with the odd clothes, hairdos and piercings still in fashion in their groups, which included people from The Left, the Greens, the left-wing Social Democratic Falcons, the Pirates, a young party for internet “misusers”, anti-fascist youth and anarchist groups. As they settled down, sitting and often stretching out on the grass, the now unused streetcar tracks or the asphalt streets, they mixed, chatted and listened to the occasional loudspeaker announcements, waiting for news about the Nazis, ready to sit or lie down to stop them. Those in front were eye in eye with the police, fortified with a water cannon, ubiquitous photographers and nervous police dogs barking away, mostly at each other.

The hours dragged on, but the crowd remained stubbornly where it was. News arrived that similar blockades had stopped Nazi marches in Rostock to the north and Erfurt to the south of what had once been Eastern Germany, while a small group of Nazis who tried to make an unregistered show in the center of West Berlin but been stopped - either by anti-fascists or by the police. The news was patchy; it was rumored that the Nazi arrival at Bornholmer Strasse was delayed by a fire on the tracks somewhere along the route.

The scene was full of ironies. Governing the city-state of Berlin was a coalition of Social Democrats and The Left; this prevented – to a point – any violence against the anti-fascists in the blockades, especially since a statement against the Nazis had been signed by most city dignitaries, including the Social Democratic mayor, union leaders and heads of the main religions, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish. On the other hand, most of the media were waiting breathlessly for any sign of what they could call undue toleration of the hoodlums on the left, and the city government is currently shaky and nervous, with elections coming next year.

And another irony: Bornholmer Strasse, right on the former border, was the street where in November 1989 crowds of East Berliners had jammed through the first opening in the Wall. The very name of the street is weighted with symbolism, and the scenes of that crossing have been shown at least as often as those with people dancing on top of the Wall. And it was on this street that the Nazis wanted to march and the police had cleared of all organized groups opposing them.

Finally, after eight hours, it all came to an end, an anti-climax, no doubt, but a happy one. There had been no ten thousand Nazis; evidently the expected resistance kept their number down to 600 or 700. And the blockades had their effect. The bunch which had finally arrived waved their flags, shouted their “Germany for Germans” slogans, walked a block or two under the protection of the police, then gave up and retreated to the station! There were no confrontations.

Though perhaps an anti-climax, this was undoubtedly a true victory. Although the menace from the Nazis remains as they keep burrowing away, playing on economic despair and chauvinist emotions in many a small town and some urban areas, these demons from the past are now meeting stronger resistance, especially in the cities. And this May Day they suffered a smashing defeat.

Most of the media reported only briefly on this. Some showed a photo of Wolfgang Thierse. Most headlined the small but violent clashes between a few wilder, black-clothed “anti-capitalist”, anti-establishment groups in another part of Berlin or in Hamburg, mostly with hoods and scarves covering their faces, some alcoholized and some most certainly provocateurs, who threw bottles and firecrackers at the “bulls” in uniform, providing the customary headlines for the media.

When Frank Sinatra Came to Italian Harlem: The 1945 “Race Riot” at Benjamin Franklin High School

Mon, 03 May 2010 10:13:00 +0000

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in: Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, pp. 161-176. Eds. by Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno. New York: Routledge, 2003.

New York City's worst racial incident in the immediate postwar period erupted on September 27, 1945 at Benjamin Franklin High School, an all-boys school located on Pleasant Avenue between East 114th and East 116th Streets in Italian Harlem. This, the most Italian Little Italy, which in 1940 had approximately sixty thousand Italian Americans, occupied an area of East Harlem from East 96th Street to East 125th Street from Madison Avenue to the East River. Its enrollment included 1,162 students, 37 percent of whom were Italian American, 13 percent African American, 9 percent Puerto Rican, and 41 percent "Other" that included a large number of Jewish students. Over a span of two months, this incident generated over eighty articles and editorials in New York City's press as well as mention in the Black press outside of New York City. Some of these newspaper accounts, and the accompanying photographs, gave the impression that a full-scale riot had occurred and that the Italian community was populated by violent racists. By implication, these reports communicated that Benjamin Franklin, its principal, and its underlying educational philosophy had failed. BFHS, which had gained a national reputation as a center of intercultural and interracial education, so of all of New York City's eighty high schools it was the least likely high school where a racial incident would occur. This paper presents the remarkable campaign (that concluded on October 23, when America's most famous Italian American, Frank Sinatra, visited the school) that healed the racial breach caused by this incident and restored the reputation of the school, it s principal, and the Italian community.

Leonard Covello, New York City's first Italian American high school principal, had gained national recognition for his leadership as the founding principal of Franklin High, which was widely viewed as an experimental community for the implementation of Covello's educational philosophy. Among other things, his perspective (which he termed community centered education) celebrated the contributions of immigrants and advocated the maintenance of their cultures and specifically their languages, so that in 1939, for example, 553 students, almost one-half of Franklin's enrollment, were studying the Italian language. Courses in every subject area and frequent student assemblies celebrated the cultures and contributions of all nationalities and races in the construction of a pluralistic culture and society. Covello insisted that the public schools must reflect a "reciprocal relationship between the good things in both foreign and native cultures. ... For this purpose the community-centered school does not want to suppress the traditions of foreign cultural groups. ... The appreciation by the school of such values leads to a fuller integration between itself and the community; it gives recognition and prestige to foreign cultural groups...." At Franklin, the recognition and celebration of ethnic diversity was consciously extended to include full racial equality. According to Covello, the goal of BFHS was to "Make the school the training ground for democratic living." In recognition of this, the Office of War Information (OWI) produced a documentary about BFHS, "A Better Tomorrow," that depicted the school as an exemplar of "democracy in action," which was screened in a score of countries.

On Thursday morning, September 27, a dispute about a basketball broke out in the gym between a small group of African American and Italian American boys, which later spilled over into the locker room. The boys challenged one another to fight it out after school. When news of this incident reached Covello, he assigned the two best faculty members for this task,William Spiegel, the basketball coach, and Salvatore Pergola, the Dean of Boys, to stand outside the building at dismissal in order to quell the threatened fight. Spiegel was the attendance officer for the school and, much more important, he had led the winning (and integrated) basketball team. The Benjamin Franklin Year Book, 1942 was dedicated to Spiegel, where under his smiling photograph, a student journalist asserted: "He may act tough at times but he is only fooling. He gives unselfishly of his time to us in the community." This piece then quoted a New York Journal-American article which stated that "With Ben Franklin High assured of at least a tie for its fourth straight Manhattan Public School Athletic League Basketball Title, the spotlight once again was thrown upon one of the greatest coaches ever to mould youngsters in high school athletics-Bill Spiegel. Dean Pergola had a unique rapport with the students. In The Heart Is the Teacher, his autobiography, Covello describes him as "a stocky, colorful, energetic man ... born in New York City of Neapolitan parents, with an instinctive affinity for problems relating to tough East Side boys."

Covello's intervention was sufficient to ensure that the African American students exited the school without incident; however, when they reached the bus stop, which was two blocks north of the school, a mob-primarily made up of local toughs-armed with sticks randomly attacked them. The police were called; and within ten minutes, peace was restored. Although many of the African American boys had been hit, none had been injured sufficiently to require medical treatment. The next morning, a group of African American boys, while marching down East 116th Street (Italian Harlem's major east-west artery), began chasing a white boy. Upon being alerted of this development, Covello raced from the steps of the school, where he had been standing to meet the group. Covello arrived at the same time as the police, who searched some of the African American students and arrested two of the boys for carrying weapons. Later, in school, the police questioned and searched other African American boys from this group and arrested three more for carrying weapons. (The charges against the five African American students were ultimately dropped.) During the day, some of the African American students became very much alarmed when a crowd from the Italian American community began gathering outside the school. Covello allowed those African American students who felt threatened to remain together as a group within the school library. The schedule of the day, however, including a student assembly at which African American and white students performed, proceeded normally.

Under Covello's guidance, the faculty and staff acted to protect the African American students from any potential harm when they left the school building. The city buses that most of the African American students used to reach their homes in Central Harlem were rerouted so that they stopped directly in front of the school. The buses, which were escorted by police cars, did not stop to pick up passengers until they had reached Lexington Avenue, the informal western border of Italian Harlem. There were no incidents of missiles being thrown at these buses or any harassment of the African American students. Significantly, the African-American students opted to walk through Italian Harlem to reach the subway line, four long blocks distant from the school, arrived there without incident.

After dismissal, a faculty conference was held, but unfortunately there is no documentation of its deliberations. On Saturday, at the school, Covello conferred with John Ernst, Associate Superintendent, of the Board of Education, and Edward Lewis of the Urban League. It was not unreasonable, therefore for Covello to state to reporters that: "There is no need to worry. Everything's all right now." However, major New York City newspapers did not concur with this version of these events.

On Saturday, five of New York City's daily newspapers covered the Benjamin Franklin story. In a four-inch article printed on an inside page, The World-Telegram (which appeared in the afternoon) reported that "street fighting broke out twice with five hundred white and Negro students and their elders battling each other and eighty uniformed and plainclothes policemen." The article in the liberal Republican Herald Tribune focused on the measures taken at Benjamin Franklin to ensure order. It reported that the Italian American mothers who had escorted their children to school were ushered into the school auditorium where Covello and John de Martino, the chief inspector in charge of the ninety-five police officers assigned to the school, assured them, in English and Italian, that they had no cause to fear for their boys' safety. Contrasting with these reports were articles that sensationalized and grossly misreported the events at Benjamin Franklin which were published by: The New York Times, the City's most prestigious newspaper; The New York Daily News, a tabloid with the largest circulation; and The New York Post, the (then) liberal tabloid.

The headline of Times' front-page story, blared "Student ‘Strikes' Flare into Riots in Harlem Schools: Knives Flash in Street Fights as Elders Join Pupils in Battling the Police: Coaches' Row a Pretext." The use of the term "riot" to describe these events associated Benjamin Franklin, Italian Harlem, and Covello with the most backward and disreputable forces in American society. The subtitle of the Times article tied the disturbance at Franklin to student strikes organized by the Communist-led American Youth for Democracy that were in progress in other high schools in support of a city-wide boycott organized by the public schools' physical education teachers who were demanding additional pay for after-school supervision of student activities. However, Franklin did not have a chapter of the American Youth for Democracy and no student strike was ever proposed-or carried out-at any time there. The Times also extensively reported on assaults on African American students who had boarded buses after school, an occurrence about which no other newspaper reported and for which no evidence was proffered. Covello insisted that the Times reporter, Alexander Feinberg, whose byline appeared on this article, was not present at any of the flare-ups and had culled emotion-laden testimony after the fact. The Times coverage was the most damaging because is was the most prestigious daily in the city.

The headline of The New York Daily News article – "2,000 High [School] Students Battle in Race Riot"-epitomized the single most inaccurate and incredible reportage of this incident. First, the figure "2,000," which was cited in no other report, grossly overestimated the number of participants in a dispute in a high school with an enrollment of 1,200. Most disturbing, of course, was the appending of "race" to "riot" in the headline, terms which were contradicted by the text of the article which reported that: "Almost miraculously nobody was seriously hurt, although there were battered heads and bruised faces." The New York Post published two similar stories in its two editions, one of whose headlines used the term "riot" and the other the milder description "school race strife." In contrast to the articles' headlines, the texts of both articles characterized the incidents in Benjamin Franklin as "flare-ups" and a "free-for-all." Both articles, however, linked the Benjamin Franklin incident to the much more serious racial disturbances simultaneously occurring in Gary and Chicago.

On Sunday, September 30, the City's press published more balanced reports on the Benjamin Franklin incident. The Daily News article ratcheted down its description of the incident from "riot" to "street battle." The News also mentioned that the five African American students who had been arrested "were arraigned in Youth Term Court and were paroled in the custody of their attorneys." Surprisingly, the Daily Mirror, a tabloid notorious for sensationalizing news, dropped the Benjamin Franklin incident into the seventh paragraph of an article about police measures in response to the overall agitation in the high school system. A short article published in the left-leaning daily, PM, characterized the incident as an "outbreak of street fighting ... among several hundred white and Negro pupils [in which] no one was injured." In closing, the article quoted Covello: "The real trouble is not the school. The trouble is that adults mix into the situation." Il Progresso Italo-Americano's article described the incident at Benjamin Franklin in its headline as a "tumult," and in the text as an "uproar" among "more than five hundred students." The only new perspective on the Benjamin Franklin event came from the Sunday Worker's article, whose headline characterized the Benjamin Franklin event as an "Anti-Negro Riot," which was part of a "Nationwide Racist Plot." The text of the article did point out two neglected facts: "two Negro lads" had endured injuries and although five African American boys had been arrested, "No whites were touched by the police."

Covello understood that the sensationalizing of this incident in segments of the press threatened to discourage boys from enrolling in Benjamin Franklin. In an unpublished article, Covello revealed that "Today, families in the areas adjoining the East Harlem area, particularly from Yorkville [a predominantly Irish and German American community south of East Harlem], use every subterfuge to send their boys to schools other than Franklin." The capacious, almost palatial, edifice that had been erected to house Benjamin Franklin had been designed to accommodate three thousand students. Nonetheless, even after James Otis Junior High School, with its enrollment of one thousand, was located within the building, there were still far too few students to fill this monumental edifice's well appointed classrooms. In the evening, however, Franklin's adult enrollment had swelled from 1,500 in 1938 to as many as four thousand during the war years in courses as varied as Russian, Advanced English or vocational courses such as "Doctor's Office Assistant" and "Switchboard."

At his home, on Sunday evening, September 30, Covello convened a meeting, with seventeen well-chosen people, who developed a strategy and tactics to combat this assault on their school and their community. William Spiegel and Sal Pergola were invaluable liaisons to the student body. Abraham Kroll, a reliable and close associate, had served as Covello's Administrative Assistant from the founding of the school in 1934. The four names which are illegible on the minutes were most likely members of the high school's faculty. Rose Russell, the leader of the Teachers Union (CIO) represented both the faculty and the Left. Fred Kuper, the law secretary to the Board of Education, provided a direct link to Benjamin Franklin's governing body. Daniel Dodson, the Executive Director of the Mayor's Committee on Unity, would ultimately write the key report on this incident. Rose Covello (née Accurso), herself a Mathematics teacher, assisted Covello in every aspect of his work. Miriam Sanders (Mrs. Vito Marcantonio) was the "head worker" of Harlem House, and one of the local community directors of the East Harlem League for Unity, an organization formed in 1943 for the purpose of developing "better understanding among nationality and racial groups."

Most important was the presence of the most prestigious member of the community, Vito Marcantonio, who represented the community in Congress from 1934 until 1950. Marcantonio's reputation rested in part on his sponsorship of civil rights legislation in the House, where he led the fight against the poll tax, fought to make lynching a federal crime, and to ensure the funding of the Fair Employment Practices Commission. In the House, he had achieved a national reputation as a spokesman for the Left. In the City, he was the leader of the American Labor Party (ALP), and in East Harlem he forged its multiethnic, multiracial population into an unchallenged political coalition. The childless Covello and the orphaned Marcantonio were lifelong collaborators.

The group agreed to draw up of a fact-sheet to counter the biased reportage. It then focused on returning the school to normal, which more than anything else meant students learning in classes. Marcantonio recommended that "teachers visit homes of absentees [and that] Negro organizations send out representatives to all Negro students' homes-if absent." There was also discussion of the creation of a brochure, "mimeographed copies to be sent to leaders in [the] community for their signatures." Someone suggested using the newspaper articles about the racial incidents in social science classes as "an example of how bad reporting is done. The minutes of this meeting then bluntly stated: "Plan for parade-very carefully planned-try to have it come from students." It was recommended that the "student suggestion for parade" come from "VO [varsity organization] leaders," and that the "boys responsible for incident on Thursday ... take initiative." Marcantonio committed to contact Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to obtain permission for the parade. He was also charged with convincing "Joe Lewis or Frank Sinatra" to attend a rally. Remarkably, except for a proposal that a film strip be created for use in local movie houses, everything that was proposed in this one meeting was actually carried out.

Covello and Marcantonio knew that the attitude and actions of the Italian American community were the keys to repairing the damage caused by the racial incidents that took place on September 27th and 28th as well as well as enhancing the prospects for racial harmony in and around Benjamin Franklin. The content and thrust of the brochure that came out of the September 30th meeting reflected that conviction. Entitled "Who Gets Hurt?/Chi ha sofferto da tutto questo?", its text responded: "The Italo-American Community; the Negro People; Every Group in the Fight for Liberty!" Clearly, the key assertion that this leaflet had to sustain was that an attack on the African American boys outside of Benjamin Franklin also hurt the Italian Americans, because in the mêlée only African Americans got hurt. The flyer supported this premise by making three points. First, it reminded its readers that "The same people who hate us, also discriminate against us, also hate the Negro people, the Jews, the Catholics, the foreign-born. They hate everyone who wants America to be free for all the people." The flyer stated that "Benjamin Franklin High School is an example of how the people can unite and live peacefully together." It also pointed out that Franklin is "one of the most beautiful, most modern, best equipped of any school in the city." Finally, it reminded the readers that the OWI documentary, "The Government was proud of us-proud enough to show us at work to the Italians at home, to the French, to the British, and many others." The text next attacked "the reactionaries, who would divide us, include some traitors among our own people.... our own ‘Bilbos' [who] are as dangerous as the Bilbos of Mississippi." (Theodore Bilbo was perhaps the single most virulent racists in the Senate.) It closed with these slogans: "Stop Hate Talk"; "Build the People's Unity"; "Keep Our School Free of Discrimination and Hate-Free to Grow."

The name "Bilbo" was current because two months before, he used the salutation "My Dear Dago" when he responded to a letter written by Josephine Piccolo, a resident of Brooklyn, castigating him for attempting to block the appropriation for the Federal Fair Employment Practices Commission. From the floor of the House, Marcantonio demanded an apology from Bilbo (which he did not offer) on behalf of Piccolo, who had three brothers in the armed forces, one of whom had died while in service. Covello and Marcantonio seized upon Bilbo's slur of Piccolo as the lynch pin of their effort to engage the Italian American in a campaign affirming interracial cooperation.

Clearly, the flyer was intended solely for circulation in the Italian American community. After all, the African American people did not need to be convinced by anyone that Bilbo was an abomination and a threat. The translation of the leaflet into Italian was not only done to accommodate the first-generation Italian Americans, many of whom could not read English well, but because Covello believed that: "The familiar language must be used. It is the idea and not the language itself that is important." The brochure was used to enlist in this campaign Italian Harlem's prominenti who received a letters from Covello which stated: "The attached statement is being signed by the leading people of our community. Our plan is to have it printed in leaflet form and to distribute thousands of copies in our community. If you want your signature to appear on this leaflet, please sign the attached statement and return it immediately."

On Monday morning, October 1, Covello conferred at the school with a number of people who could credibly verify his version of these events, including: Walter White, the Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Walter O'Leary, the Director of the Bureau of Attendance; Assistant Chief Commander John De Martino; Ed Lewis of the Urban League; Edith Alexander, an African American, who was the Associate Director of the Mayor's Committee on Unity; and Saul Battle, the first African American New York City patrolman, who was then a City Parole Commissioner. Directly and indirectly, these individuals began to lend their reputations and connections to the cause of defending Covello and Benjamin Franklin High School. That same morning Covello convened a general assembly to enlist the students in the fight-back campaign. Covello laid down the law. He explained to the students: "Our student body represents forty-one nationalities or races, yet we never had such an outbreak as the one that occurred Friday." He then intoned his mantra: "We must not have intolerance here." Sal Pergola, who followed, admonishing the students: "We don't want Bilboism here. ... A few days ago we slipped. Let's not do it again." At a faculty meeting held on Tuesday October 2nd., the teachers and staff were armed with the facts: a chronologically organized fact-sheet, which was prepared by a "committee of teachers." This document established that the scope and consequences of the events were far smaller and much less virulent than depicted in the press coverage.

The tone and content of Monday's newspaper articles reflected the beginning of a turnabout. The Times quoted Covello to the effect that "the battles" at his school were "merely a boys' fight," and that "outside elements, unorganized but vicious, might have contributed to the difficulty." The removal of the racial conflict from the school-after all, the fights did take place outside the school and school operations were not interrupted-distanced the incident from Covello and Benjamin Franklin. On Tuesday, Covello's voice was widely heard throughout the City through reports on Monday's student assembly. The arch-conservative Journal-American (an afternoon paper) printed in bold type this terse quote of Covello: "We must not have intolerance here." It also reported that attendance at Franklin on Monday reached 60 percent, which in view of the lurid press coverage was evidence that Benjamin Franklin was returning to normal. The most dramatic change was in The Post, whose African American journalist, Ted Poston, endorsed Covello's "contention that three slightly related racial incidents had been magnified into sensational stories of racial conflict." Poston added that Covello's version of these events was "strongly supported by eyewitness and community leaders. ... [as well as] several teachers, including two of the five Negro members of the staff." The second edition of the Post also published a photo of two Franklin students-an Italian American boy with his arm around the shoulders of an African American boy-studying together. The article closed by quoting Covello to the effect that: "Stories ... which smear a community unjustly play right into the hands of Bilbo and his ilk." The shift in the Daily Worker's coverage was hardly less dramatic. The headlines on Monday's paper blandly stated "‘One of Those Things': Cops Call School Riot." The same issue of the Worker reported a Teachers Union proposal that at Franklin the Board of Education reduce class size to twenty-five students and hire at least twenty-five additional teachers, especially trained for remedial work. In a somewhat different vein, a third article prominently printed a joint statement issued by Marcantonio and Benjamin Davis, Jr., a City Councilman elected on the Communist Party ticket from Manhattan, that warned New Yorkers to "be on the alert against fascist provocations such as caused the East Harlem anti-Negro riot." This extreme language was somewhat incongruously followed by criticisms of the "exaggerated and distorted stories appearing in the reactionary press." The article then quoted Marcantonio and Davis as calling on "the parents of all children, both Negro and white, to see that the children attend school today." The coverage in Harlem's weekly People's Voice, which was financed and staffed by the Communist Party, closely resembled the Daily Worker articles.

On Wednesday October 2, press coverage affirmed Benjamin Franklin. The Mirror printed Covello's pledge that "positive action will be taken to prevent future outbreaks." It further cited his assertion that "in the eleven-year history of the school, the multiracial student body had gotten along like members of one family." The Daily News, the Daily Worker, and Il Progresso spoke favorably of Monday's student assembly. The News described it as the beginning of a "campaign for cooperation between white and Negro students." The Worker focused on Pergola's speech excoriating Bilboism. Although it led with material on the police measures that had been put in place to ensure the safety of the students, the Times also quoted Covello's mantra: "We must not have intolerance here," and reported on Walter White's pledge to plan an "affirmative program" of fostering better relations among members of the school body as well as among persons living in the neighborhood." The most thorough and thoughtful coverage, however, appeared in the Herald Tribune. An editorial, "All Is Not Well," suggested that "in difficult districts [sic] such as Harlem and the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn ... [the Board of Education must provide] smaller classes and money for extra positions." It also called for "community re-education led by the schools...." It published White's crystal clear declaration that "What happened on Friday was not a riot." In greater detail than other papers, it also described visible signs of racial harmony and cooperation. Uniquely, the Tribune account quoted as some length Saul Battle, the African American Parole Commissioner, who stated that "it seemed rather unfair that only Negroes were arrested in a flare-up that involved both Negroes and whites."

White's interpretation of these events, as the leader of the pre-eminent African American organization, carried great weight. However, Covello also knew the importance of Battle's presence. In a seventeen-page unpublished manuscript, "The Community School and Race Relations," he wrote: "We are not living in a fool's paradise. When necessary, police action will definitely be taken. We have already had Negro policemen assigned near our school, and in fact more than one, to give our Negro students a feeling of greater security. [This decision has also been taken in order to] point out to the neighborhood that Negro police and Negro teachers have been accepted by the city and school authorities on the basis of equality."

The best news of all was first carried by the afternoon paper, The World-Telegram, "on Tuesday all except 10 percent of normal attendance showed up for classes." Hence, the first goal of the fight back-normal attendance-had been achieved. In addition to all the other measures enacted, the normalization of attendance also resulted from a letter from Covello to the parents of absent students that stated: "It may be that this absence was caused by an expression of fear that your son might receive personal injury. We wish to assure you that the majority of the boys of this school were in classes today; everything was peaceful, and at no time was there any hint that anyone might be injured. Accept this assurance that conditions in this school are completely normal. I urge that you have your son return to school at once." Articles in other City papers were supportive of Benjamin Franklin and its administration. The World-Telegram reported that a telegram sent by Algernon Black and William Andrews, the co-chairs of the Citywide Citizens Committee, to LaGuardia, placed the blame for the racial incidents on "adult attitudes which are aimed at segregation and inequality." They also criticized the Board of Education for "failing to provide enough competent teachers ... [as well as allowing] overcrowded classes and overworked substitute teachers."

PM quotes Covello as saying that he was going to meet with a small group of alumni living in East Harlem to form "personal police groups to break up troublesome groups of boys outside the school." It is clear that Covello and Marcantonio personally intervened in this situation in the most immediate ways. A life-long resident recalled that during the evening following the radial outburst, Marcantonio approached a group of older boys with whom he was hanging out with and asked them not to loiter around the area of the school. One of the boys shouted out to Marcantonio: "If you had a sister, would you want her to marry a n------?" He then recalled that without saying a word, Marcantonio turned on his heal and walked away. Covello also talked to the members of a social club, whose headquarters, on East 118th Street and Pleasant Avenue, faced the site where the attack on the African American students had occurred.

The linchpin of the fight back campaign took place on Monday, October 8th at 8:00 PM, in the auditorium of Benjamin Franklin High School. Billed as a "Community Mass Meeting," it clearly intended to bring together the leadership of Italian Harlem and the residents of Italian Harlem for the single purpose of reaffirming and manifesting the commitment of the Italian American community to Benjamin Franklin as an integrated school. Covello and Marcantonio visualized this assembly as a means of manifesting the unanimity of the community's leadership on this issue as well as providing a way for enlisting the community members in the fight-back campaign.

On Saturday, October 6th, Covello made a special effort to reach Italian-speaking members of the community by speaking on radio in Italian in order to give "a very brief and very exact exposition of the facts" of what had occurred at Franklin on September 27th and September 28th. He closed by inviting his listeners to attend the meeting at the school in order to join together with "eminent citizens of our community who will present to you, in English and Italian, the true and fair exposition of the facts." As someone who "for eleven years [who has] worked all year around, day and night, seven days a week," Covello appealed in a letter to the parents to "assume your share of the duties as citizens of this Community" by attending the assembly where he noted he would report to them in English and Italian. On his Congressional stationery, Marcantonio sent a letter of invitation to community residents, which exhorted them to remember that: "The Benjamin Franklin High School belongs to the people, ... and we must defend it. American democracy is based on the principle of equality. We cannot permit the ugly head of race hatred to rise in our midst."

Gathering the prominenti of Italian Harlem was the next task. On October 1st, letters of invitation were sent to forty-three leaders, thirty-four of whom accepted. Covello and Marcantonio had succeeded within one week in assembling: State Senator, Richard Costanzo; State Assemblyman, Hamlet Catennacio; Democratic Party chieftain, Frank Rossetti; judges; labor leaders; heads of veterans clubs; and morticians. Most important, the local clergy endorsed this effort. Catholic clergy attended from every Italian national church-Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. Lucy's, Holy Name, and St. Anne's. The pastor from the Jefferson Park Methodist Church, of which Covello was an active member, also accepted the invitation. Among the minority who did not respond were: Joseph Piscitello, a functionary from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, who Marcantonio had defeated in the 1940 ALP primary; Frank Ricca, his defeated Democratic opponent from 1942; and Joseph Cioffi, the Democratic Party candidate in 1944 for State Assemblyman who had been defeated by the Republican-ALP candidate, Catennacio. Within one week's time, Covello and Marcantonio had successfully summoned the political, social, and religious leadership of Italian Harlem. Significantly, there were only four non-Italian Americans among the thirty-four community leaders who attended the assembly: two Irish American Catholic priests, who served at local parishes, one social worker, and one medical doctor.

One thousand parents ("mostly Italian American," PM reported) attended the Community Mass Meeting. The headline of "Who Gets Hurt?" and the responses "The Italo-American Community!," etc., appeared on the top of the assembly's program along with this slogan: "No man is safe unless all men are safe; no group is safe unless all groups are safe." The program was highly ritualized. It started with the color guard of James Otis Junior High School marching into the auditorium, while the audience stood to sing the "Star-Spangled Banner," followed by "A Better America," the OWI-produced documentary, and then Covello's introductory statement, the text of which is not available. The program ended with "brief statements by leading citizens of the East Harlem and sponsors of the Community Mass Meeting." PM, the only newspaper to cover this event, published this excerpt of Marcantonio's address: "[The street fighting] would delight Bilbo and [John] Rankin. We've got to fight the Bilbos and Rankins all over the world. We, of Italian origin, know the meaning of discrimination because we have been exploited, so we refuse to discriminate against others. We have no quarrel with any people; we have no quarrel with Negro people." (PM noted that the audience booed the names of Bilbo and Rankin.) Although we have no copies of the other talks, we do have a message from A. Salimbene, a business representative of a local of the Excavators and Building Laborers Union, who because he was unable to attend because of illness, wired Covello this statement: "In the highest form of democracy, tolerance is the greatest need. To live together, work together, and study together regardless of race, creed, or color is what our fighting men gave their lives for.... In a democracy such as ours, this must be our daily creed. I urge this meeting to resolve that we will always fight for freedom for all peoples regardless of race, creed, or color." Following the speeches a resolution was presented and unanimously accepted that reaffirmed "our profound belief in the American principle of racial equality and tolerance [and] pledged to go forward in unity and solidarity in an ever-expanding program of better understanding among all racial and cultural groups in our community."

The morning following the Community Mass Meeting, Covello distributed a letter to the faculty and students that reproduced the resolution, which he asked be discussed in every English class. He further urged the faculty and students "to take positive action by signing the pledge [card] to march in the Columbus Day parade on Friday...." This reminder was reinforced by a letter from Covello the parents requesting that they sign consent cards so that their children could march. He closed by urging their "cooperation in this manifestation of unity among all our people, by the participation of your son, and if possible, yourself, in this parade." The faculty also received a letter from Covello seeking their participation in the Columbus Day Parade, which closed: "Let us affirm by positive action how deeply we feel on the question of segregation, discrimination, and the fomenting of race hatred." Actually, preparations for the parade were under way in advance of these missives. At an all-day student conference held on Wednesday, October 3rd, The Herald Tribune reported that: "A Negro boy proposed a resolution that all the boys of the school march en masse in the city's Columbus Day parade, to demonstrate their unity to the entire city." During this student conference, students developed a series of slogans, including: "Christian, Jew, Negro, White-Americans All-Unite and Fight Race-Hate." The Chair of the English Department, Robert Shapiro, requested that the English teachers work together with the students to create "slogans that are brief and dramatic. They should be expressions of: 1) the democratic spirit of unity of races; 2) respect for all individuals; 3) our school unity."

Benjamin Franklin's participation in the Columbus Day Parade became news even before it happened. Columbus Day morning, The Mirror reported that "A feature of the parade will be the participation of the student body of Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem, scene of recent racial disturbances. The students voted to take part as a demonstration of American unity and solidarity, their principal announced." The following day, four New York City dailies published stories that included mention of Franklin's participation in the parade. The Times remarked that a "delegation of five hundred students of Benjamin Franklin High School, led by their principal, Dr. Leonard Covello, and flanked by parents ... marched in a demonstration of unity, signalizing the restoration of interracial harmony and good-will at the school, where disorders occurred on September 27 and 28. The Times did not, of course, here or any other place, note that on the day following these "disorders," it had published a headline terming them "a riot." Noting that the Franklinites marched behind a huge banner which proclaimed that they were "Americans All," The Tribune increased the estimate of the Franklin delegation to six hundred, which it noted constituted "fully half of the student body of the school, [who marched] ... as a demonstration of its ‘American unity and solidarity.'" The Mirror stated that: "Notable among the ten thousand students who took part was a large group of white and Negro pupils from the Benjamin Franklin High School...." The article also noted that: "A burst of applause greeted a float on which one of the girls from the high school personified the Statue of Liberty. She was flanked by banners reading: "Americans All-Negro, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant." Il Progresso, printed the Franklin story under a subheading-"Every Race, Every Faith," which after relating some background described how "[The students] were marching together one after the other-the whites, the Negroes, the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Jews-with Prof. Leonard Covello, the principal, at the head. The public comprehended the significance of this ‘fusion' and applauded from the heart."

On October 23, 1945, the finale of this remarkable campaign took place. The most popular singer in the United States (who not inconsequentially happened to be Italian American) came to Benjamin Franklin High School to add his voice to the chorus demanding "unity and solidarity" across racial, national, and religious lines. From 1944 until 1948, Sinatra became very involved in supporting a wide variety of progressive organizations and causes, but most especially the fight against racism. In 1945, for example, he made thirty appearances around the country speaking against prejudice. PM published an article on the morning of the event where Sinatra (who is described as toying with a gold St. Christopher medallion, on the back of which was engraved a Star of David) said that he was "Going to lay it on the line" during his talk at Franklin. In the middle of a program that started with an organ prelude, flag salute, Bible reading and band selections and ended with "expressions of our School's thanks to Frank Sinatra, Ambassador of good will," Sinatra told the students that hate groups had sent "delegates and agents among the kids" to talk up race prejudice.... This country was built by many people of many creeds, so it can never be divided.... No kid is born and two days later says: ‘I hate Jews or colored people. He's got to be taught.'" The Daily News reported that Sinatra pointed out that there are no discernible "biological differences between races. ... He also asked the high school students to serve as "neighborhood emissaries of racial good will." The Daily Worker, the only other City daily newspaper to cover this event, reported that the boys liked Sinatra because as one boy said, "he speaks our language." Curiously, Sinatra did not sing "The House I Live In," a Popular Front anthem that Sinatra had dramatized in a ten-minute documentary, but one of his least memorable songs, "Aren't You Glad You're You?," which was totally devoid of any social or political content.

Covello and Marcantonio's success in leading this movement depended on their deep roots and prodigious service to this community. Covello had arrived in Italian Harlem from Italy at the age of nine; Marcantonio lived his entire life within a four-block radius in Italian Harlem. Subsequently, they lived in adjacent brownstones at 329 and 331 East 116th Street, which was three blocks from Benjamin Franklin and on the same block as Marcantonio's political headquarters, 247 East 116th Street.

In the House, Marcantonio was a singular voice defending the rights of the foreign-born, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and. specifically Italian Americans. Marcantonio's delivery of service to his constituents was legendry. Every Sunday at his East Harlem headquarters, he listened to the petitions of his constituents until the last of these was heard. Annually, thousand upon thousand of residents in Italian Harlem had some problem resolved or at least attended to by Marcantonio and his staff. One of his biographers has stated: "Few men in public life has been so intimately linked with a particular urban neighborhood ... the man was the product and personification of the neighborhood."

Contemporaries described Covello as "almost a little god in East Harlem," and another as "the dean of East Harlem. He is undoubtedly the most experienced person in the community and his activities were more widespread and extended over a longer period than any other person." His involvement with East Harlem extended far beyond Benjamin Franklin. For example, when he identified its lack of a newspaper as both a reflection of, and a contributing factor to, the disunity of East Harlem, he spearheaded a group which in March of 1941 founded the East Harlem News, an eight-page tabloid that appeared monthly until 1943. East Harlem News, which featured articles in Italian and Spanish, published announcements and news about the community's numerous social clubs, churches, and of course Benjamin Franklin. Under the headline, "Towards Building a Better Community," the front page of its first issue, for example, announced the monthly "community night" at Franklin where readers had the opportunity to join a community committee, including: Housing, Health, Juvenile Aid, Racial Committee, Adult Education, Parents Association, Citizenship and Naturalization. These committees both afforded services for the community and linked the school to the community.

Covello and Marcantonio had led the campaigns first to found the school, which was initially, housed in two antiquated public school buildings, and some years later to obtain a new facility for the school. When its new edifice was opened in 1944, Marcantonio stated at its dedication: "[Benjamin Franklin] is interracial in character and community-wide in the scope of its work.... It can truly be said that this great building is indeed a monument to democracy in education." Their highly visible and tangible service to Italian Harlem gave them enormous prestige and credibility. Therefore, the community, its leaders, and residents accepted their evaluation as to the gravity of this situation and accepted the course of action they proposed. Their actions had also given them enormous credibility trust with African Americans

Covello and Marcantonio built this fight-back on the ideology of the left New Deal, especially as articulated by Henry Wallace and the Congress of Industrial Organization. This political perspective insisted that democracy (social democracy, if you will) was dependent on working class unity, which was endangered by racism, anti-Semitism, and nativism. Therefore, they did not try to shame or bully the Italian American community, but to appeal to its best instincts and sense of self-interest. They succeeded in convincing this community that what was at stake was its reputation, the viability of their school, and a connection with others who had been systematically left out of the American dream. Within the community, the Harlem Legislative Conference-a coalition of more than one hundred political, social, and religious organizations in Italian, Spanish, and Black Harlem – had widely disseminated this point of view. The ALP, which had a large presence in the community, also promulgated this outlook. Community centered education was, of course, congruent with this outlook. The infusion of the school and the community with activities based on this political perspective created the foundation for Covello's fight back. Its success helped prevent a recurrence of a racial incident, reinvigorated Benjamin Franklin's progressive mission, secured Covello's reputation, and helped perpetuate Marcantonio's leadership.

Photo: Frank Sinatra performs for Armed Froces Radio, 1944. Department of Defense

President Obama, the Tea Party Opposition Movement, and History Repeating Itself

Mon, 03 May 2010 09:49:00 +0000

There is a growing movement of the conservative and libertarian Republicans whose base and locomotive force is driven – and held hostage-by the Tea Party phenomenon. Firstly, this is technically, indeed, truly a "movement," per se. Secondly, make no mistake about it, it is not at all revolutionary or progressive, but, on the contrary, is reactionary (it is backward, obsolete, and irrelevant). Thirdly, it is not at all unique and original – historically speaking, but is historically repetitive (which is partly why it is reactionary, that is to say, in opposition to history and progress, by going back to untenable solutions to problems of the past).

President Obama -and his opposition, in many ways, is historically similar to both historical epochs...those of Abraham Lincoln and Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. Both of the latter presidents arose to the call of great historically necessary challenges caused, in part, by their predecessors (or their reactionary inadequacies), culminating in a bitter struggle and ensuing opposition. The former president was embroiled in a period of a profound economic and moral struggle between that of a dying, archaic plantation system versus that of a newly rising system of industrial capitalism. The plantation system of the South was dependent upon (and reflective of) a traditionally privileged elite, a land-propertied aristocracy dependent upon slave labor, while capitalism is and was dependent upon a wider market of "free labor." Since the formation of the nation, reflected in Thomas Jefferson's original (yet, altered version of the) "Declaration of Independence," there was a battle over slavery. Hence, Lincoln found himself immersed in the long-term moral, social, political, legal, and-more importantly, many would say-economic confrontation of freemen/free labor vs. chattel slavery/slave labor, while FDR faced the Great Depression, where the reality and impossibility of laissez-faire capitalism continuing without an unprecedented regulation and massive state interference via social programs (protection in order to prevent total collapse and mass starvation) came to fruition and were deemed necessary in the aftermath of unregulated capitalism under the Hoover administration.

Even though most historians and economists would agree that FDR saved the nation - making him the most beloved and popular president in the history of the U.S., winning an unprecedented third electoral victory - he had a strong and powerful opposition...the ruling class. Big business hated FDR regulating, "meddling" with their unlimited and unbridled wealth and power, based upon the super-exploitation of labor. "Big government" and "regulation" were the enemies of Big Business. The well known names of J.P. Morgan and DuPont, along with other, lesser known names, such as Prescott Bush (the father of President George Herbert Walker Bush, and the grandfather of George W. Bush) -and the leading organizations of the opposition, the American Liberty League and the American Legion (with William Doyle at the head), led a conspiracy to overthrow the government via a violent military coup, along with plans to assassinate Roosevelt. This did not come to fruition, however, due to General Smedley Butler backing out of the conspiracy of the military coup. Big business (content with Herbert Hoover's "pull yourself up by the bootstrap" individual independence ideology) did not at all like Roosevelt's Economic Recovery Act; the "New Deal," the Social Security Act, taking the U.S. off of the gold standard, etc. These measures, however, truly saved the nation from total collapse and disaster, especially the majority, the masses, the working class of America. FDR's actions were nothing more or less than desperate attempts at solving the contradictions of capitalism, from over-speculation and greed per se to mass unemployment. The Obama administration is this history repeating itself, but it is also that of Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War era, reliving the battle cries of the Confederacy, with general bigotry and racism in full bloom within the Tea Party Movement.

Similar to FDR, Abraham Lincoln was also perceived as a savior to working people, especially southern Blacks who were brutally exploited slaves. Lincoln's opposition and eventual assassination reflected a divided nation with a seemingly unified confederacy with emotional battle cries of "secession," "nullification," and "state's rights," immediately following Lincoln's election in 1860. This is type of opposition, complete with slogans and epithets shouted out at politicians in agreement with Obama, is carried on today (or ought I say, "is rearing its ugly head," and resurfacing, once again) within the Tea Party Movement.

So, I submit to the reader, President Obama, actually a Black moderate liberal from the land of Lincoln (the first American Black president), who found himself elected within the next period of a fundamental economic crisis (a second Great Depression, only to be rivaled by the original) – brought on by unbridled greed and de-regulation-had to regulate and predictably bring on the wrath of libertarians and pro-Confederate bigots. His opposition, grounded in the growing Tea Party movement, originally (growing out of the historical Reagan "Ignorantsia"– as opposed to the Intelligentsia ) of "Birthers" who doubted Obama's American birth certificate and accused him of being a Muslim, which – even if it were true, I believe, is still legal in America, began (as with Lincoln) immediately following his election, and was consistently and comprehensively peppered with racism, death threats, Confederate flags, and battle slogans. "Secession," "nullification," "state's rights," "keep the government out of my health care," etc. shout the Tea Partiers. Southerners sought to nullify Lincoln's election, as "Birthers," likewise, sought to nullify Obama's election. Furthermore, as with the opposition to FDR, deceptively false and accusative slogans of "government-run" and "socialism" have constantly plagued Obama, not just by Tea Partiers, but reflecting the entire Republican Party and its elected officials and pundits. The enemy, for Tea Partiers, is not "Big Business," but "Big Government." As with FDR, Obama's regulation (enabling the credit, and thus, capitalist economic system to function at all, in addition to saving over thirty million people who had no health care), was hardly socialism, but, on the contrary, a capitalist solution to a capitalist problem (brought on by the de-regulation of Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush). At the time, socialists and communists were divided between praising FDR for saving the nation and/or condemning him for saving a broken capitalist system from its immediate demise and preventing communism from its immediate inevitability.

Karl Marx referred to this last stage of-state interference with-capitalism as "state monopoly capitalism," a capitalism that has run its predictable and inevitable course from its earlier stages of "competitive capitalism" and "monopoly capitalism." State monopoly capitalism is a stage that requires state control, regulation, and protection of both the ruling class monopolies and the majority of people. So, as with FDR, Obama is hardly a socialist.

What little known/startling facts about the Civil War fit in with the present thesis? From where did most of the leading (and more philosophical, which is to say, intelligent) Civil War historians get their analysis? The leading newspaper circulation at the time of the Civil War was the New York Daily Tribune. A major contributing news correspondent in the U.S. at that time was none other than Karl Marx. His brilliant and meticulous attention to detail reflected in his news analysis. The leading turn-of-the-century Civil War historian, Charles Beard (1927), as well as, later, Arthur Cole (1934), and then, even later, the esteemed team of Carl and Edith Becker, were greatly influenced by Marx and his analysis, as is the most prestigious contemporary (post-Civil War) Reconstruction historian, Erich Foner (1984). Beyond and besides his so-called (an overly-exaggerated) "economic interpretation of history," Marx's analysis (overshadowed by his historical materialism and theory of class struggle) reveals a great deal of profound facts and illusory notions, as they unfolded in the history of the Civil War era. It would do us well to take heed of Marx's news analysis of this period, as it developed dialectically, for it further increases our insight into the fallacious veil of opposition endemic to both Lincoln and Obama.

It is this writer's assessment that the greatest philosopher before Marx was G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel had commented on how history repeats itself. Marx added, "The first time as tragedy, the second as farce." This, I believe, is how I would describe and sum up the opposition to Obama. Marx saw the Civil War as "the Second American Revolution," not from the standpoint of the Confederacy, but that of Lincoln and the Union. The Union, that is, the United States represented both an economic and ethical position of progress, albeit one of capitalist freedoms. The Confederate South, on the contrary, represented the counter-revolution. In addition, Marx poignantly demonstrated how "the South" was really never "autonomous," amounting to little more than "a battle slogan," being "against the will of the people," since there was hardly any democratic majority vote, beginning with the issue of "secession" from the Union as well as a matter of "forcing slavery against the will of the settlers" – e.g., in Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky, and most certainly pertaining to any attempt at "nullification" regarding Lincoln's duly elected, democratic victory by a majority. At first – and ironically, only South Carolina reflected an honest majority vote to secede from the Union, and then, Texas later joined in. Almost half of the population of Georgia were slaves! Marx, reflecting upon the South as a political-economic system, referred to the southern plantation system as an outmoded economy based entirely upon slave labor and landed property...and an "oligarchy of 300,000." In a letter to Engels, Marx described the entire process, state-by-state, of how undemocratic practices and "terrorism" by minorities brought about secession from the Union, adding, "...incorrectly reported in the English papers. With the exception of South Carolina, there was everywhere the strongest opposition to secession." A real popular vote only occurred in a handful of states; e.g. in Kentucky, only a few thousand voted for secession, whereas 100,000 voted for the Union ticket. And in Tennessee, a little over twice as many people voted for secession (104,913 for, 47,238 against).

There are no obvious intellectual leaders of the Tea Party Movement...why?...primarily because it is not based at all on truth, facts, intelligence, knowledge, education, history, logic, philosophy, critical thinking, etc. In this respect it is not just "the Party of No," nor the self-described party of "hell no," but much like the "Know-Nothing Party." The movement and its leaders are riddled with contradictions. The most celebrated leading speaker for/at the Tea Party functions (that is, most demonstrations and talks) is Sarah Palin, a woman who claimed that she would rather cling to her guns and religion and go fishing and hunting. Statements by these Tea Partiers are reminiscent of the Nazi, Goering, who said "every time I hear the word culture, I want to reach for my gun" (as opposed to Woody Allen, who said "every time I hear the word gun, I reach for my culture"). For the apparent leaders of the movement, such as Sarah Palin ("don't retreat, reload") and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, there is much of this violent call-to-arms and anti-intellectualism (not just non-intellectual pride). Another head of the Tea Party (and "Secessionist") Movement is Rick Perry, governor of Texas. Another, yet more intelligent Tea Partier is successfully opposing Senator McCain in Arizona, but ironically, was a "no show" at Tea Party events (as was the recent Tea Partier who won in Massachusetts...and also a "no show" at the ultimate Tea Party demonstration in Boston on tax day!). These Tea Party leaders like Palin and Perry actually boast and pride themselves on not really knowing much....about history, politics, being intellectual, "too deep." For many of the leaders in the movement, like Perry, Palin, Bachmann, etc., they do not know much and do not want to know much; they do not care to know, and are woefully under-educated individuals. Again, that is precisely what is at the root of this form of populism. It is the new "Ignorantsia." They condemn public education as a failure, and then de-value education per se, "education-for-education sake." Only the "3Rs," along with technology and a strictly vocational preparation (and even that, only in the private sector) is valued, not just by Tea Partiers, but by almost all conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans in general. I believe that many Republicans want to jump on the bandwagon of Tea Party popularity, yet stayed back at a distance (as "no shows" at T.P events) since it did not seem to be a very legitimate movement. However, in the recent evolutionary build-up to tax day, the movement has grown significantly while, at the same time, it has shed some of its obvious racist bigotry and talk of violence. Hence, it does seem to be in the process of legitimization (even though, at the tax day rally, Tea Party speaker Bob Marshall, Republican from Virginia, amped-up the violent rhetoric, once again).

Moreover, at the same time, the Tea Party Movement has also erroneously invoked the name of Thomas Jefferson on many occasions. They selectively and/or ignorantly eliminate the basics for which he stood, including a good, well-rounded, and free public education; against total freedom of trade, e.g., the necessary right of government to interfere with property rights at times, an anti-monopolist and pro-worker stand; his opposition to war, favoring and enacting the embargo against England; his unpopular anti-British/pro-French support in America for his friends, the most radical Leftists of the French Revolution, Robespierre and the Jacobins; his unswerving freedom of as well as freedom from religion, protecting the rights of atheists and others; and many other crucial points in total opposition to the Tea Party Movement. Their lack of education is woeful and their contradictions are many: they like their Medicare and Social Security, but hate anything "government run;" they hate the government ("bailing out") interfering with the banking industry, but desperately love capitalism and the interest-bearing capital of lending and borrowing that it is based on (in order to buy and sell their cars and homes); they hate taxes and Obama's tax plan, yet it is the lowest it has been in a long time (lower than taxes under Republican presidents, especially for the middle class), not to mention one of the lowest tax rates in the world...in the capitalist world; they are confused and selectively choose and actually invent what is constitutional and what is not -e.g., the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and concerning the legality of the federal income tax, Article I, Section 8. (1) of the U.S. Constitution states: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"); and, thus, the new Tea Party Movement has very little to do with the original Boston Tea Party – the latter reflected a tax imposed by England, causing the slogan, "no taxation without representation," while, in reality, our federal tax/es reflect the votes by our duly elected representatives in Congress.

Similarly, much too much misinformation surrounds all of the American presidents mentioned thus far. For that matter, the same, of course, can be said about Karl Marx himself. Although economics and the historical progress of economic systems were quintessential to his analysis and theories, so was social justice, and progressive reforms – whether or not they led to or fomented revolutions. This is why Lincoln was Marx's friend and why Marx supported him, wholeheartedly. This is also why Lincoln thanked Marx for all of his support. This is also why Marx's American friend, Joseph Weydemeyer, helped Lincoln get elected and re-elected, and fought as a colonel in Lincoln's army against the Confederacy. The correspondence between Marx and Lincoln (via Ambassador Charles Francis Adams) is particularly interesting, both relentlessly seeking freedom and the liberation of all workers, with a premium on and prerequisite of freeing Blacks. It is a boldface lie that Lincoln didn't care or wasn't that interested in freeing the slaves. As Marx points out, Lincoln's pre-electoral speeches, especially his "A House Divided Can Not Stand" speech merely emphasizes holding the Union together so as not to alienate Southerners.

History can teach us much, especially a deep, thoughtful history, a critical-philosophical approach, so as not to repeat the same mistakes of the past. Tragedy does become farcical at a point, and it is this writer's opinion that the Tea Party Movement and the Republicans in general have already surpassed that folly. The real, historical basis for democracy in America began with free public education and the town hall meeting, with freedom of speech – as a process of learning, exchanging rational ideas, not of a mass media TV moment to shout down a speaker, accompanied with fallacious sound bites, and closing down all dialogue (including debate, an intelligent, honest debate of substance). A well rounded education (also called a "liberal education") is the first prerequisite against the ignorance described in this essay, and the opposition to absolutely necessary measures taken by all three American presidents who rose to the occasion in times of crisis (along with many others), Lincoln, FDR, and Obama.

White House Photo

Make Wall Street Pay

Mon, 03 May 2010 09:29:00 +0000

Remarks of AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka at Wall Street Rally NYC NY
April 30, 2010

Sisters and brothers, thank you for coming here today.

Last week our President came to Wall Street. President Obama's message was simple: Wall Street must stop making up its rules as it goes along and start living by the same laws as the rest of us.

Wall Street must create, and not destroy. Create real products, real services, real jobs -- not destroy real lives, real hopes, real dreams. And the bankers, brokers, and bigshots on Wall Street must understand that, in this country, we're all in this together – we all rise up or fall down together.

Today we come here, sisters and brothers -- 10,000 strong -- to bring Main Street to Wall Street. We speak for millions more, and for 13 generations of American history and for every "people's president" – from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt – who spoke truth to financial power.

We're here today for the folks who were played for suckers in the casino economy and will be silent no more. And the message we bring is this: Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

We're here today for the family in LA thrown out of their home and onto the street. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

We're here for the factory workers in Indiana packing their tools away. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

We're here for the electrician and the carpenter on the bench here in New York. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

We're here for the teacher being told we can't afford to teach our children. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

We're here for the cop and the firefighter being told we can't afford to protect our communities. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

We're here for the community banker who can't raise capital and the entrepreneur who can't get a loan. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.
We're here for the young men and women who can't afford to graduate from college. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

We're here for the retiree whose pension promise was betrayed. Wall Street, fix the mess you made.

Sisters and brothers, our history and our heritage teach us that America is about more than making easy money and looking out for number one. Our lives and our livelihoods are all bound together. And we are all paying the price for those who knew no limits on their greed.

Eight and a half million lost jobs—that's the price of greed—that's the real cost of bankers' bonuses and private jets and cute tricks like the one that got Goldman Sachs in trouble last week.

My friends, because we are one country, because greed runs amok here on Wall Street means lost jobs and shuttered stores on Main Street, we must have a different kind of economy.

We need to go back to basics, where good jobs, not bad debts, drive our growth. An economy where Wall Street is the servant, and not the master, of Main Street. An economy where banks help create jobs, not destroy them. An economy where once again we do real things in America.

So we have three simple things to say to the big banks: First, stop fighting Wall Street reform. Stop acting like what happened to our economy was some kind of accident, like a meteor fell on us. Take some responsibility for what you did. Call off the lobbyists.

Second, stop speculating and start lending. We bailed you out, it's far past time you started lending to Main Street.

Third, take responsibility for the clean-up of the mess you made. Pay your fair share of the cost of creating the jobs you destroyed.  Because what our country needs is good jobs now.

Tell me -- what do you want! Good Jobs Now!

And the labor movement has a plan for creating millions of good jobs now!

We need to extend unemployment benefits, invest in our crumbling infrastructure and green technologies, give aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services, and give leftover TARP funds to local banks so they can help small businesses.

Now some folks may be thinking – well, it's great that you have all these ideas to "create good jobs now" -- but how are you going to pay for them?

And so we have another message for Wall Street: When you engage in rampant and risky financial speculation, you're going to pay your fair share in taxes to create jobs!

When bank CEO's pay themselves tens of millions of dollars for successfully cashing government checks while we close schools and firehouses—it's time for special taxes for bank bonuses.

That means no more loopholes that let Wall Street billionaires in hedge funds and leveraged buyout funds pay lower tax rates than working Americans.

That means President Obama's simple idea that the banks that benefited from the TARP bailout should have to pay for the costs of the bailout.

And that means that we must tax speculation and support investment—a Wall Street Speculation Tax that would raise hundreds of billions of dollars we need to create the jobs Wall Street destroyed, to build a new economy on the energy technologies of the future.

Now by this point you can probably tell these issues get me fired up!

It's no secret that most Americans are angry. We're angry too. Angry at the big banks and Wall Street, and their lobbyists in DC who trashed our economy for eight years. Angry at the Republicans in the United States Senate who voted to oppose the American people and block debate on Wall Street reform – again and again and again.

But we are not hateful – we are hopeful. We believe in our great country.

We believe that in the end this is America— in our republic we the people will win over the forces of privilege and greed.

We're here today. We'll be here tomorrow. And we're not going to stop until we create the 11 million good jobs we need and rebuild the middle class!

And, I am convinced that together we will get it done. Not by laying back. Not by sitting back. Not by kicking back.

Brothers and sisters, by fighting back! By standing our ground together. Joining together. Working together. Building together. And by God, winning together.

Thank you brothers and sisters, God bless you, and God bless America.

(Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pamhule/ / CC BY 2.0)

We Are All Arizona!

Mon, 03 May 2010 09:23:00 +0000

"Don't say in Arizona,
No bigots have you met;
The ones who passed this racist law
are the biggest bigots yet!
(Everybody now!) Which side are you on, now?
Which side are you on?"

[chant] "Jim Crow Two-Point-Oh,
Racist laws have got to go!"

As this article is being written dozens of May Day demonstrations are taking place in more than seventy cities and towns around the country. Hundreds of thousands are marching in opposition to Arizona's new "Jim Crow 2.0" anti-immigrant law. The measure, Arizona SB 1070, orders state and local law enforcement agencies to strike out at foreign-born (or foreign-appearing) workers, mainly Latinos, with an iron fist when their only crime is breathing the state's air without some Federal bureaucrat's permission to do so. The new measure, which has been signed by the state's governor but is not yet fully in effect, was rammed through the state legislative process by the very same ultra-right-wing Republicans who loudly trumpet the values of "less government, less bureaucracy, and more individual freedom," values which appear to apply only if one is rich, English-speaking and have the luck to be born on the right side of the border.

The new law parades under the pompous and spectacularly deceptive title of, "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," pandering to an exaggerated public fear of crime and violence that has been puffed up by talk-show hosts and right-wing media outlets. English-speaking Arizona voters (many of them elderly, sun-seeking retirees from other states, prosperous suburban professionals and conservative, rural ranchers) are being panicked by a barrage of scare-tactic media fairy-tales about supposed inherent Latino criminality, even though El Paso, Texas, a nearby large border city boasting of a 75 percent Latino population, is currently the second-safest large city in the nation. Arizona's English-speaking workers are being invited to blame foreign-born newcomers for the economic and jobs crisis that capitalism's Great Recession is inflicting on their state, while Spanish-speaking workers are led to blame Anglos for their plight, instead of bosses, speculators and Wall Street scammers. It comes as little surprise that, outside of the mining industry, the state has one of the nation's lowest rates of worker unionization.

THE LAW ITSELF

SB 1070 declares "unauthorized" people to be criminal trespassers, intruders in their own homes, businesses and workplaces, or anywhere else in their state where they may have grown up, went to school, lived, worked and paid rent, mortgage or taxes for years.

In a sick rhetorical perversion of the language of human rights advocacy, under section 13-2929 of this law anyone who knowingly or negligently transports an undocumented person (a friend, an employer, on a date, picking up a hitchhiker, or even an ambulance or school bus driver) can potentially be convicted of "human smuggling," a type of charge last widely applied in this country against the heroes of the slavery-era "Underground Railroad."

Under the law, any vehicle used to transport an undocumented person as a passenger, even on the way to the hospital or while fleeing from the state, can be seized, impounded and sold. Knowingly "harboring" an undocumented infant in a day care center or kindergarten, or welcoming an undocumented adult to a church service, as a tenant, roommate, house-guest or lover, as a customer in a restaurant or as a guest at a birthday party is potentially punishable by fines up to $1000. Even free speech is muzzled: the very act of verbally "encouraging" unauthorized persons to enter Arizona (even from another American state!) is now a punishable misdemeanor with fines of up to $1000, although exactly why anyone would encourage someone else to enter a police-state like that established by SB 1070 is difficult to imagine.

And just in case any conscientious local or municipal authority wishes to abstain from the whole evil farce, private individuals are specifically authorized and encouraged to file nuisance lawsuits against public entities that are not enthusiastic enough in enforcing the provisions of this racist law. (Just imagine if uninvolved members of the pubic were empowered and encouraged to sue the Mine Safety Administration for not enforcing worker safety laws in the nation's coal mines!)

AMERICA REPUDIATES RACISM

Activists and demonstrators have denounced this new law as twenty-first century Jim Crow, referring to the viciously racist local and state legal codes designed to enforce peonage and second-class citizenship on African Americans in southern states from the end of Reconstruction until the victory of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. However, some have pointed out that SB 1070 is actually significantly worse than most of the old South's Black Codes, and has stronger similarities to certain pre-Civil War fugitive slave laws, to old South African apartheid laws, or even to the genocidal anti-Jewish laws of Hitler's Third Reich.

Materially strengthening accusations of naked racism, a nonpartisan Pew Research Center survey coincidentally released barely two days before the May Day demonstrations shows that most Americans now feel Latinos suffer worse discrimination than any other group. When polled in November, 2009, "nearly one-in-four (23%) Americans said Hispanics are discriminated against ‘a lot' in society today, a share higher than observed for any other group." According to the Pew Center report, "This represents a change from 2001, when [B]lacks were seen as the racial/ethnic group discriminated against the most in society. Then, one-in-four (25%) Americans said [B]lacks were discriminated against ‘a lot,' while 19% said the same about Hispanics."

Earlier, a Pew survey found in 2007 that "64% of Latino adults identified discrimination against Hispanics in schools as a major problem and 58 percent of Latino adults said the same about the workplace." And, in a poll a year later, "Fewer than half of Latinos [said] they are confident that police officers in their community treat Hispanics fairly," in contrast to the 74% of non-Latino whites who expressed confidence that police act equitably. In the same survey, 81% of Latino adults surveyed agreed that local police should keep strictly out of immigration issues.

Although pollsters now report that the American public is almost evenly divided over the Arizona law, the state's action has generated a firestorm of rejection from forces across the political spectrum. The Obama administration is considering a legal challenge to the new law, and a number of suits have already been filed to block its enforcement and challenge its provisions on constitutional grounds. Condemnation of the bill's draconian provisions has been virtually unanimous among mainstream religious leaders in Arizona and around the nation, and immigrant advocates and civil rights leaders across the United States have voiced strong opposition.

What is more, opposition to the racist measure has not been limited to left, liberal and moderate voices. During the last week key neoconservative fundraiser and politico Karl Rove, right-wing Texas governor Rick Perry, former Florida governor Jeb Bush (brother of former president George W. Bush), and even the brutal ultra-right regime in Honduras have all publicly indicated their disapproval of the measure. The government of Mexico has issued a strong travel advisory for its citizens to avoid travelling to Arizona, and Honduran de facto authorities warned on April 28 that "the Law SB1070, which classifies immigration as a crime in the state of Arizona, is a wrong step, and it does not offer right solutions for the immigration issue."

THE FIGHTBACK

While brushing aside mass national opposition as "political theater," legislative supporters of the law have already yielded slightly to public pressure by supposedly prohibiting "racial profiling" in the measure's enforcement. No hint is offered on how Arizona law enforcement personnel are supposed to be able to identify foreigners on sight without racial and ethnic profiling (By a suspect's thick brogue? Perhaps by the smell of corned beef and cabbage, crepes suzette or mealie meal on the suspect's breath?), but already several Arizona law-enforcement officers have filed suit against the amended law, objecting that they are being placed in the absurd, untenable position of being sued if they enforce its provisions, and sued if they don't. An op-ed columnist for the conservative Arizona Republic newspaper semi-seriously suggested that walking a Chihuahua dog may now constitute "probable cause" for arrest and interrogation in his state.

Several major cities around the nation have already enacted official travel bans to Arizona, and protests have greeted the Arizona Diamondback baseball team, whose owners provide major financial support for right-wing causes in that state. MLBPA [the Major League Baseball Players Association], the labor union representing big league ball players, has condemned the law as being against the interests of its members, many of whom are Latino. Meanwhile, other civic, political and fan groups around the country have begun exerting strong pressure to move the 2011 Major League All Star baseball game out of Arizona.

Even as giant mass demonstrations take place across the country, activists have been discussing possible further responses, some hearkening back to the ‘60's Civil Rights Movement. There are reports of demonstrators in Arizona wearing "I am an illegal alien" tee-shirts (with a picture of a bug-eyed, gray space-alien), while a few more serious activists are starting to discuss "Freedom Rides," nonviolent sit-ins, economic boycotts, civil disobedience and even a nationwide campaign of peaceful, nonviolent resistance if Jim Crow is resurrected in Arizona.

AVOIDING A WORST-CASE SCENARIO

Last year the Pew Center estimated that as many as 10% of Arizona's workers, more than five hundred thousand, lacked documents. In the unlikely event legal challenges and preliminary protest efforts fail and this horrendous law is allowed to go into full effect, we could conceivably be confronted with the urgent task of aiding and abetting half a million men, women, and children to safely escape from "Fortress Arizona" to neighboring free states, or else put ourselves and our personal freedom on the line to defend them in place. It is impossible even to speculate what form such a hypothetical struggle could eventually take, whether it would be like the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960's, something closer to the Underground Railroad of the 1840's and 50's, or even something completely new to America.

Yet it is not beyond the scope of fevered imagination to ask: As a progressive, would you be willing to be a station-master on some new underground railroad? What about a conductor? A financier? A scheduler, communicator, lookout, or driver? Would you be ready to put your beliefs on the line? If you live in a free state, would you be willing to host refugees from the Arizona tragedy under your own roof?

More importantly, how much are you willing to work and sacrifice right now in order to ensure such a situation never comes to pass?

CONSERVATIVES? OR, PLAIN OLD BIGOTS?

There seems to be superficial agreement between right, center and left political forces that America's immigration system is "broken," and that issues that sparked SB 1070 in Arizona must ultimately be resolved at the Federal level. Millions and millions of America's foreign-born workers live every day in permanent legal and personal jeopardy. These decent working people are left with no possible avenue for obeying the law short of death or deportation (which in many cases signifies the same thing). Whenever decent people are driven to desperation, no good result can be expected. Such a reality drives down wages and undermines the rights and safety of all workers, locals as well as newcomers. Even from an honest conservative viewpoint, maintaining a "Catch 22" situation where individuals cannot comply with the law no matter what they do, makes a joke of America's claim to be a "state of laws," and deliberately denying a significant sector of the population most of the possible benefits of the free market system ensures discontent, anger and instability.

However, one cannot assume that all those who pushed this law are honest conservatives. Some of these are merely opportunists or Republican Party hacks, but many of the law's most outspoken supporters are, to put it plainly, bigots: racists in the most despicable tradition of Jeff Davis, Theodore Bilbo, Ross Barnett and George Wallace. Today, the overwhelming majority of Americans reject racism, so progressives' task must be that of transforming people's gut repugnance for the sheer inhumanity of raw, stinking racism into active, material, nonviolent resistance, just as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did in his day.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

"Real immigration reform now!" is a demand that is already supported by broad masses of Americans of virtually all backgrounds and political views. However, will strengthened demands for immigration reform lead to national police-state measures like SB 1070, or to a real solution? Almost everything depends on upcoming elections and the balance of power in Washington, but there are immediate actions that the Obama administration can take now right now to ease the terrible situation faced by America's foreign-born workers and to proactively preempt anyone who might seek to impose future immigrant-hating laws in other states or at the Federal level.

The first and most obvious action required to disarm the poisonous pseudo-populist race-hatred that drives measures like HB 1070 would be a national jobs program to guarantee decent employment at union wages for anyone who wants to work, and adequate social benefits for those who can't. This needs to be "priority one" for anyone who really wants to fight the sinister forces that always seem to slither out of their dens whenever jobs are scarce, times are hard, and people are looking for someone to blame.
However, another important practical step that might well be taken with the stroke of a pen by Executive Order would be to retroactively extend the "Wet Foot-Dry Foot" policy currently applied to undocumented Cubans, in order to make it cover other economic and political refugees who are crossing or have crossed our land borders.

As background for such a decision, the Pew Center estimated in 2008 that some 94% of undocumented workers in Arizona are Mexican nationals, people whose homeland is at this moment in the throes of a violent drug-war that has cost over 20,000 lives, without any near-term prospects for peace in sight. Many of the killings in Mexico have been politically-motivated executions. This horrifying situation, just as much as poverty and joblessness, is what is driving waves of immigration from our neighboring country, and what makes the whole idea of deporting millions of Mexican workers from the United States as inhuman as it is ludicrously impractical. Even U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has recently suspended deportations over the bridges to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, due to extreme levels of violence in that border city.

In stark contrast, Cuba has been completely at peace for over four decades. The right-wing's arch-demon, ex-president and Cuban national hero Fidel Castro, is now retired and disabled, and the only true political prisoners left on the island are those languishing in U.S. concentration cells at Guantanamo. The last political execution anywhere in Cuba took place before most present-day Americans were born.

In 2010 virtually no one in the United States still believes in the big, bad bogeyman of "Communist tyranny" in Cuba, save a small core of older-generation Cuban-American expatriates in Miami. These irredentists retain such disproportionate political power in the "swing state" of Florida and at the national level that it is unrealistic to consider a change of U.S. immigration policy toward Cuba in the foreseeable future. However, this situation can easily be leveraged to positive advantage if the existing humanitarian policy toward undocumented Cubans (that spontaneous immigration should be actively interdicted, but that those who manage to make it here or are already here are legally protected), is continued and extended. Such a policy now seems to be vastly more appropriate for today's terrorized Mexican war refugees, and earthquake-ravaged Haitians than it ever was for Cuban rafters who are merely upset with their country's socialist system.

Of course, any executive or legislative action extending "Wet-Foot, Dry Foot" to immigrants from across America's land borders would meet immediate and fierce opposition from the same shameless racists who are terrified of the day (which will soon arrive with or without immigration reform) when white, English-speaking Protestants and other people of northern European descent will no longer be a majority in this country.

OUR ROLE NOW

America's best traditions, those of being a "land of freedom," a "beacon of refuge" for people fleeing poverty, war, violence and oppression, are values treasured by an overwhelming majority of Americans regardless of color, creed, language or national origins. The hour has come for all Communists and progressives to use our organizing skills, discipline, courage, unity and unshakeable commitment to "freedom or death" to help draw our nation into a sustained, focused ideological and material struggle against the racism, xenophobia and right-wing fanaticism that are responsible for SB 1070. Our tactics must run the gamut from talking, writing and singing, to organizing, petitioning, demonstrating and generating street heat, to contingency planning for the worst.

Of course, it is important not to panic or to overestimate the strength of the forces arrayed against us. As legal challenges and popular repudiation gain strength, the real chances that this bizarre and vindictive law will actually be enforced as written become less and less. Hopefully, this entire episode will soon end up as shameful footnote in the history books, a final, desperate death-rattle from the dying throat of American white supremacy. But whatever may be the immediate fate of SB 1070, now is the time for sincere liberals, religious and community leaders, civil rights activists and decent non-racists of every stripe, conservatives and moderates, libertarians and leftists, young and old, women and men, Black, bronze and white, to unite to smash Jim Crow in Arizona, or anywhere else it tries to rise from its grave. ¡No pasarán!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marineperez/ / CC BY 2.0

Going After Goldman

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:08:00 +0000

Unlike his CEO counterparts at JP Morgan and Citigroup, Goldman-Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was NOT absent as President Obama delivered his speech on financial reform on Wall Street this past week. Nor was Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York and a critic of (part of) the President's reform package.

Odd, one might think, given the fact that the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a civil suit charging Goldman with massive fraud. Even odder, considering the whopping billions just reported in profits and bonuses as the rest of country languishes in 10 percent plus unemployment numbers that some are calling "recovery."

Sam Webb sums up the fraud nicely in a recent Peoples World column. Essentially the largest and most prestigious investment bank in the world purchased hedges (Credit Default Swaps) against the likelihood that their own customers were going to lose money on mortgage backed securities that Goldman itself had recommended (and collected fees for such recommendations). Some economists call this "going broke for profit." Imagine a car dealer selling you a "lemon," collecting fees and commissions on the sale, and then going to Vegas to bet those same fees and commissions, perhaps even more money than the original car value, that you would probably return the car as worthless.

Or, even better, imagine an insurance company sells you a life insurance policy, but the uses the premiums to bet that you will die soon! (Perhaps this explains some of the "no medical exam required" life insurance ads on TV!) Now you have a sense of the scam Goldman and others have been running throughout the financial crisis.

Some apologists say: "Whats wrong with buying hedges? Farmers do it against bad weather?" Fine for farmers. Perhaps in energy as well. But what is the purpose of a financial system whose business model is betting against its clients – with its clients money!!???

Answer: there is NO purpose that serves the American people in such frauds. But that is not to say that there is no room for a private financial system that serves its IDEAL purpose, which is to efficiently allocate capital to useful AND profitable products and services. Especially in innovation fields, such financing can perform a valuable contribution to healthy economic growth. Our point, however, and I think the President's as well, is that these investments must be useful. And in order for them to be useful, strong regulation, in fact a progressive industrial policy, is required.

The de-regulation culture that has dominated financial policy ever since Reagan has driven capitalist prerogatives in the direction they always go if left to their own devices – short-term profits and speculation at the expense of longer term investments that are in more or less harmony with sustainable economic growth. In the first decade of the 21st century the US built a lot of second and third homes, and financed a lot of third and fourth autos in the driveway. During that time Germany, India and Japan invested heavily in solar, wind, green technologies, while we got vacation homes and two wars. Real median incomes rose in those countries (median is a good measure that captures where working people are in the "growth" statistics), but in the US they fell, or were flat. Oh yeah – we all got, instead, the limit on our credit cards extended beyond our ability to pay.

In my view, Blankfein attended Obama's speech, because 1) he wants, in the end, to cut a deal on the fraud case; and 2) Goldman would like to position itself as a "winner" in the new regulatory regime. and 3) he, as well as Bloomberg, would like to cut the "make them smaller" provisions advocated by Paul Volker, and the ban on "proprietary" sales (that means customized derivatives) from the current legislation under consideration in Congress. And, of course, Goldman is desperately hoping, itself, NOT to be broken up into small pieces, regardless what happens to JP Morgan or Citigroup or Bank of America, or Wells Fargo, etc, etc.

Further, Obama has little chance of a strong reform bill getting through Congress unless he can divide finance capital. Judging by the cynical right wing Republican and Tea Party backers – who are bankers!!! – funding phony "anti-bailout" propaganda and agitation, peeling off Goldman with carrots and sticks – I vote mostly STICKS – to back, or at least not oppose, reform is risky but perhaps necessary move. We should not underestimate the danger that a united front of finance capital presents. Clearly, a number of these interests are prepared to drown our democratic institutions in gangster-ism and blood to prevent their power from being rolled back a single inch!!

I vote rolling them back to at least the 40 yard line. That means,in brief:

1. Break up the mega banks that failed (that would technically not include Goldman, but it remains to be seen if the firm would have been solvent without the fraud). If the banks do not become smaller, they will capture the regulators and we will be right back in the same boat again.

2. Separate investment banking from commercial banking. Ban making investments with depositors money.

3. Force investment banks, this would include Goldman, to go back to being private partnerships – that way they can't use public stock or other means of capturing other peoples money for bets they don't believe in themselves.

4. It may not be possible to ban all derivatives, or even all custom derivatives. But they CAN be forced to be traded on exchanges; and they can be subject to a transaction tax, which will greatly increase their transparency.

5. More personnel on the regulatory bodies must come from outside the banking system, and reflect broader public interests than the financial sector.

A more profound question is: what are the longer range implications of a smaller financial sector? Of a "progressive industrial policy"? No doubt, the subject of a different article. On the one hand some argue that financial services will head offshore to Hong Kong or the Caribbean. That is possible, and such an event could raise US government debt service costs. However, who would bail these firms out next time their binges explode? Further, I think it unlikely that a new era of growth and wealth will arise primarily from commodities – physical things we buy. If, instead of investment in ever more automobiles, for example, we build high-speed, comfortable mass transit systems we are still "wealthier" as a society. But the wealth is captured in a public good as opposed to a private commodity. More public goods and services – fewer commodities – that's the short answer!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/financialreform/ / CC BY 2.0