6-15-06, 8:58 am
More than half a century ago he as a graduate student at the University of California refused to sign the anti-Communist 'loyalty oath' that the state legislature had passed shortly before Joe McCarthy got going and lent his name to the purges, blacklists, and general policy of political segregation that the whole capitalist class launched against Communists particularly, but also broad left activists of all kinds, to suppress dissent.
They never really got Wells, although they kept on trying, at Penn State where he was fired in spite of mass protests, and even at Rutgers. At Rutgers he played a leading role in building the American Association of University Professors as a trade union and collective bargaining agent and in training as a Labor educator students who went out and became organizers and leaders of the labor movement for three decades, In labor and in other academic field which have some connection to the left, there is a practice of rewarding those who educate the least but publish the most in establishment journals, get grant money from establishment foundations and other sources, and in effect contribute the least to labor as a movement, except to bring to it the mentality of the medieval artisan guilds who determined who could be a baker, a carpenter, etc, and what the standards of work were to 21st century education—a pre industrial mentality that has continued to permeate traditional academic work, however it is recycled and propagandistically 'redefined.' Wells Keddie’s life was lived in opposition to that do nothing good for nothing approach to scholarship and teaching (to paraphrase Harry Truman’s famous putdown of the Republican 80th Congress) in labor or any other kind of education. But I am not going to present a tribute to Wells by dealing biographically with his life, but rather to use satire in a form that he loved to strike a few blows against his and Labor’s enemies. Wells sang labor songs and left political songs in the folk tradition and loved them. At the tribute to Wells, a chorus of New Jersey labor singers, including long-time New Jersey labor and peace organizer and activist Carol Gay (who won the Democratic nomination to run against right-wing Republican Chris Smith and would bring joy to the workers of the world if she won), sang some of these songs, including Joe Hill, which everyone knew. Students of Wells got up and talked about being fired from jobs as they fought for workers rights. Like Wells, most of the people at the tribute (including myself) who were employed were not receiving equal pay for equal work with their establishment peers, particularly in the universities, but everywhere else. None of those establishment types were really there at the tribute, including those in the Rutgers administration who had profited from Wells accomplishments while they disdained him. That was the way he would have wanted it and, while they may think of themselves as working within the system to maintain the institution and keeping silent for tactical reasons, we all openly know what they probably suspect—that regardless of the situation they have nothing to say. The closest thing there was to an establishment person (and I am saying this very much in jest) was Bill Kane, president of New Jersey’s Industrial Union Council (IUC), a body which proudly seeks to continue the progressive inclusive unionism of the pre-merger, pre-purge and blacklist CIO. As I listened to the songs I was inspired to think of what the world would be like if we really won and the champions of big business and the rich or former rich were on the outside looking in. I began to imagine the songs they would sing in tribute to one of their own, maybe a writer on labor’s need to develop a philosophy of compassionate conservatism. These are some of the songs I thought might be sung at such a tribute:
'The Ballad of Jay Gould'
I Dreamed I Saw Jay Gould Last Night Alive as He Could Be Why Jay, I Thought You Died of Being Rich I Never Died, Says He/I Never Died Says He From San Diego to Guantanamo/ From Bagdad to Bayonne As Long as Scabs Are Breaking Strikes/ And Judges and Politicians Are Bribed Jay Gould Will be Alive/Jay Gould Will Be Alive
Then I thought of the 'Investors Internationale' as it might be sung by demonstrators from the American Enterprise Institute:
Arise Ye Prisoners of High Cholesterol Arise Ye Owners of Junk Bonds For Injustice on Fox News Thunders Adulation A Global Market is in Birth Tis the Final Bell on Wall Street Let each investor Take his place The International Brokerage House Will Underwrite the Human Race.
Well, I thought of some others, from Outsourcing Forever to This Land is Murdoch’s Land, but that is enough. Wells Keddie will live on in the struggles of the people he educated and the lives he touched (his dog was even named struggles). The establishment types who made more money and received greater accolades then he will soon be forgotten by the very people who paid them and praised them, since they really had nothing to say or do that was memorable, and, unlike Wells, can be easily replaced,
