Democrats and Super Pacs

 

Dem Voters Want Dem Pols Who Do Things

ALEXANDER SAMMON

The Joe Manchin wing of the party lost big on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s primary elections were defined by historic super PAC spending attempting to quash a number of progressive candidates and an attempted hostile takeover of the Democratic primary process like we’ve never seen. At last count, just a handful of super PACs had dumped $18 million to influence the outcome in favor of moderates. The expectation in politics is that the person with the most money wins. And that played out in several races Tuesday night. In numerous races, massive super PAC money backed moderate candidates with institutional endorsements and little enthusiasm. But surprisingly, progressives largely won the argument that voters want to see their representatives fighting for an agenda rather than fighting to stop it. The candidates most tied to trying to slam the brakes on progress were defeated. The candidates who organized their communities in favor of getting things done for the people were successful. And in one incredible instance, voters saw through the hollowness of millions of outside dollars. The night’s early returns were headlined by the triumph of Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman over moderate House Rep. Conor Lamb for the state’s Democratic Senate nomination. Fetterman was expected to win, but did so resoundingly, winning every single county while holed up in a hospital bed recovering from pacemaker surgery. Fetterman is a bit of an unorthodox progressive candidate. He’s championed a $15 minimum wage, weed legalization, Medicare for All, and higher taxes on the rich. He’s also embraced Title 42, the immigration policy that the Trump administration enacted to turn away asylum seekers using COVID as a pretense, and pledged to support Israel. The latter decision likely kept some of the massive super PAC spending from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project PAC and Democratic Majority for Israel PAC out of the race. Still, Lamb benefited from millions of dollars in super PAC spending thanks to Penn Progress, a super PAC composed primarily of financial titans and set up specifically to buoy his candidacy, despite the fact that Lamb has previously condemned corporate money in elections.

Unfair Redistricting - West Sacramento

May 16, 2022 Dear City Council, Re: Redistricting in West Sacramento City Elections; City Council Selects Horrible Map for Minorities and Poor People. Undisputable data shows Map 4a  discriminates against poor people but even more blatantly discriminate against Latinos and African Americans who are most concentrated in Broderick/ Bryte. The city council is turning the CVRA on its head. Map 4a splits a Latino/Black minority area in much the same way governor De Santis split a Black district in Florida so they could not elect a candidate of their choice. The whole reason for the CVRA lawsuit was to use the CVRA to create a remedial district for the historically underserved and marginalized Broderick/Bryte community North of Sacramento Avenue. Instead, the City (Orozco, Ledesma, and Daunte) chose a map that will prevent the poor Latino/Black areas from ever electing anyone. The unfairness to Broderick is easily proven. In Map 4a, Broderick has 3027 registered voters and the area south of Broderick has 3816 registered voters. That is a huge difference. Splitting Broderick from Byte virtually guarantees that Broderick will be unable to elect a City Council representative of their choice. The demographic maps of the city show that Broderick has very different problems than the affluent Bridge district. Broderick has a concentration of Spanish speakers, unemployed, and a myriad of social problems. Given the difference in registered voters, Broderick would have to vote in much higher numbers than the Bridge District in order to have any chance of winning. However, the data shows that voters from poor neighborhoods do not vote in higher percentages than middle class neighborhoods. Moreover, Map 4a dilutes the Latino vote in Broderick which is 33% Latino by grouping it with areas only 25 % Latino and with which it has far less community of interest. Map 4a is also unfair to Bryte. Bryte has 35% Latino voters, but it is districted with more affluent areas south of Bryte that have a much lower Latino voter percentage of 25 % Latino and does not share a community of interest with Bryte. Map 4a intentionally dilutes the Latino minority in Bryte vote so they can never elect a candidate of their choice either. The city council is turning the CVRA on its head. The stated public policy reason for the CVRA is to prohibit “the use of an at-large election in a political subdivision if it would impair the ability of a protected class, as defined, to elect candidates of its choice or otherwise influence the outcome of an election.”  There is a community of interest between Broderick/Bryte that does not exist with the more affluent areas South of the Freeway with which Broderick/Bryte have been grouped. The CVRA requires a court to implement “appropriate remedies,” including the imposition of district-based elections, that are tailored to remedy a violation of the act. Please post my letter. Please include this letter with the map you submit to the court for approval.  Respectfully yours, Carlos Alcala President Dolores Huerta Club of Broderick/ Bryte. Chair Chicano Latino Caucus California Democratic Party

 

May 14. March Sacramento

 

Texas Governor Seeks to Ban Immigrant Children from School Plyler V Doe

 Texas Governor Ready to Challenge Schooling of Migrant Children

Gov. Greg Abbott may target a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that requires schools to educate undocumented children. Some conservatives see an opening for a fresh look at old precedent.

 

 

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has taken a hard stance on immigration, using the issue to beat back challengers in the Republican primary.Credit...Brandon Bell/Getty Images

 

By J. David Goodman

May 5, 2022

Sign Up for the Education Briefing  From preschool to grad school, get the latest U.S. education news. Get it sent to your inbox.

HOUSTON — With the Supreme Court signaling a willingness to reverse decades-old precedents like the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Thursday that he would seek to overturn a 1982 court decision that obligated public schools to educate all children, including undocumented immigrants.

Mr. Abbott’s comments opened a new front in his campaign to use his powers as governor to harden Texas against unauthorized migration. And they demonstrated just how expansively some conservatives are thinking when it comes to the kinds of changes to American life that the court’s emboldened conservative majority may be willing to allow.

The latest proposal for closing public schools to undocumented children significantly widens the range of precedents up for debate. After a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked this week, focus had been primarily on other rights that could be legally linked to the 1973 decision, such as access to contraception and same-sex marriage.

Little has changed in the legal landscape surrounding the education of undocumented children since 1982, when the court issued a 5-to-4 decision to strike down a Texas law allowing schools to refuse admission to unauthorized migrant children, legal experts said. Several attempts over the years to chip away at the decision in the case known as Plyler v. Doe have been unsuccessful, including an effort by Alabama more than a decade ago and in California in the 1990s.

May Day

 Dear Friends,

Let me take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a very happy May Day.

The concept behind May Day is extremely profound. It is the understanding that real power lies in solidarity, and that when working people in our country and around the world come together, there is nothing that can stop us in the struggle for justice. 

It is also a day in which we recommit ourselves to take on the incredible greed and power of the corporate elite and the exploitation and misery they create — not just here in the United States, but internationally.

Clearly, one of the great crises facing the global community today is that the basic right of ordinary people to control their own lives at home and at the workplace is on the defensive.

And the root of this crisis is the fact that a handful of incredibly wealthy people are exerting enormous economic and political power over the planet.

These are people who are so addicted to greed that they are willing to step over working people, many with families and young children, in order to satisfy a pathological desire for more, more and more wealth. 

Unbelievably, in the global economy today, the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 99 percent, and a handful of billionaires own more than the bottom half of the people around the world — and that is more than 3.7 billionpeople.

And things have only gotten worse during the pandemic.

Extremists Are Using Lies to Undermine America’s Public Schools:

  We Need to Take a Stand

BY RANDI WEINGARTEN AND JONAH EDELMAN

APRIL 29, 2022 2:12 PM EDT

Randi Weingarten is President of the 1.7-million-member American Federation of Teachers and Jonah Edelman is the CEO of Stand for Children

Just as extremists have used the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election to undermine American democracy, far-right advocates of privatizing public education are using Big Lies to undermine public schools. Supporters of public schools must see these ugly attacks for what they are and take a stand against them.

In a recent lecture at ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, culture war orchestrator Christopher Rufo detailed the strategy for replacing public education with a universal voucher system. “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust,” Rufo explained. Earlier in that same lecture, describing how to lay siege to institutions, he noted the necessity to create your own narrative and frame and advised his audience they “have to be ruthless and brutal.”

Rufo and other dark money-funded extremists follow a consistent playbook for attacking public schools.

First, they concoct lies, smears and distortions that stoke fear and anger, such as that eight-year-old white students are being taught to hate themselves because they are responsible for slavery, and that kindergarten teachers are grooming five-year-olds.

Next, these falsehoods are spread on social media and by Fox News and the click-driven, controversy-obsessed mainstream media.

Finally, extremist state politicians champion cookie-cutter bills provided by those same national voucher backers to “solve” the manufactured “outrage,” often under the banner of “parents’ rights.”

What Russia Has Done in Ukraine _ Photos

 https://www.aol.com/photojournalist-describes-russia-left-behind-090001497.html

Photojournalist Carol Guzy, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner who has documented the humanitarian toll of some of the world’s most horrific wars and natural di... 

For those who have been convinced by Russian propaganda that the atrocities in Bucha were somehow "staged" this photo journalism from Carol Guzy might be revealing.

Whose Side Are We On? The War in Ukraine and the Crisis of the Left

 

By Van Gosse and Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Portside

 

April 19, 2022 - Whose side are we on? That is the question that anyone professing a commitment to anti-imperialism should be asking, when a sovereign nation is invaded by a Great Power.

 

Blinded by American Exceptionalism, however, many of the U.S. Left are not able to answer the question, and their silence speaks.

 

We must always oppose empire, under any heading. No nation has the right to dominate another, let alone invade and occupy it. That was the principle we as leftists affirmed in 2003, when George W. Bush led the United States into a war of aggression against Iraq.

 

We should state it plainly, in terms of international law. Aggressive war is the first crime of war, from which all the others flow. As the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg stated, “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” 

 

Vladimir Putin has now committed this crime of war, and that is the premise from which we should analyze the crisis in Ukraine: Whose side are we on? That of the war criminals who started the war, or those who are defending their sovereignty? 

 

For ourselves, we are on the side of the Ukrainian people against an unprovoked war of aggression by an imperialist Great Power demonstrating in unmistakable terms what V.I. Lenin denounced as “Great Russian chauvinism.”

 

Here are some questions to consider.

 

Does Russia have “legitimate security interests” in Ukraine and other nations bordering it?

That premise has been affirmed repeatedly by various antiwar organizations, so we need to underline: states large and small have one legitimate security interest, which is to have their sovereignty respected—not to be invaded, bombed, blockaded, or subverted.

 

That is the limit of Russia’s security interest regarding Ukraine. It has no “legitimate interest” in dominating, controlling, or dictating policy to the states bordering it, any more than the U.S. does. Many of us have spent decades denouncing the politics of the Monroe Doctrine, what Theodore Roosevelt defined in 1904 as the U.S.’s right to “the exercise of an international police power” in the Americas, which led to military occupations all over the Caribbean and Central America between 1898 and 1934, the CIA-organized coup in Guatemala in 1954, and the invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. That is what it looks like when a Great Power claims “a sphere of influence.” No one claiming to be anti-imperialist should concede any legitimacy to a Russian “sphere of influence.”

 

But hasn’t NATO expansion threatened Russia?

 

As anti-imperialists we oppose militarism in any form, including permanent military pacts, and the aggressive militarism promoted by the U.S.-led NATO alliance. The best way to protect the rights of small nations is to seek demilitarization in Europe and everywhere else. But it is utterly wrong for us to dictate to nations in Eastern Europe whether or not they join an alliance because of the concrete threat that Russia poses to their sovereignty. This is the message the Left in those countries has sent us, and we must respect it as a basic principle of internationalist solidarity. We have no more right to tell them what to do than the U.S. does to pressure or subvert the government of Canada if it chose to leave NATO and conclude a treaty of friendship with China.

 

Doesn’t the United States share responsibility for this war?

 

Like all major historical events, the war in Ukraine has many causes, and many actors were involved. Focusing on what the U.S. did or didn’t do takes the focus off who started it, and absolves Russia from its sole responsibility for initiating a war of aggression. Beyond that, it betrays an Americo-centric view of the world that is at odds with reality. The United States is no longer a world hegemon, it does not determine the course of history, and presuming its centrality makes the U.S. into an exception, standing outside and above the normal relations between states.

 

Shouldn’t we focus on peacekeeping by opposing all weapons transfers to Ukraine?

The Ukrainians have a right to defend their country, and that includes the right to seek aid from anywhere they see fit. It is everyone’s interest to keep this war from spreading, so we should oppose any measures, such as a no-fly zone, that would widen the zone of war across international borders and draw in more nations.

 

We are not pacifists. The Left should avoid confusing pacifism, as in opposition to war in any form, with anti-imperialism. We cannot stand aside and simply condemn the violence. It is in Putin’s hands to stop the war now; until then, we take the side of the Ukrainians.

 

[Van Gosse is a Professor of History at Franklin & Marshall College, and Co-Chair of Historians for Peace and Democracy.

 

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a past president of TransAfrica Forum and a longtime trade unionist and writer.] .

 

Oligarchy and Corporate Welfare in the U.S. – Sanders April 20,2022.

 Oligarchy and Corporate Welfare in the U.S. – Sanders  April 20,2022.

Today in America, the unfortunate reality is that the rich continue to get much richer while the working class is struggling to get by. 

Oligarchy and massive income and wealth inequality are on the rise. The billionaire class has seen its wealth explode during the pandemic. Meanwhile, half of our people continue to live paycheck to paycheck and the high inflation rate is making life for the working class even more difficult.

Yet in the midst of all of the crises we currently face, Congress will likely be voting next week on a bill that provides tens of billions in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable corporations and wealthiest people on the planet. This bill provides $53 billion to the profitable microchip industry with no taxpayer protections and, if you can believe it, another $10 billion to Blue Origin, a space company owned by Jeff Bezos. 

Amazon, which is owned by Bezos, is a company which, in a given year, pays nothing in federal income taxes after making billions in profits. And, by the way, in a given year Bezos has himself paid nothing in federal income taxes despite being worth nearly $200 billion.

Jeff Bezos has enough money to buy a $500 million yacht.

Jeff Bezos has enough money to buy a $23 million mansion with 25 bathrooms in Washington, D.C.

No. I do not think that the taxpayers of this country need to be providing a $10 billion bailout to Jeff Bezos to fuel his space hobby.

This upcoming legislation is related to an extremely important issue that is rarely discussed in the corporate media or on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and that is how we proceed with industrial policy in this country. 

Now, let me be clear. I believe in industrial policy. And I believe that it makes sense, in certain circumstances, for the government and the private sector to work together to address a pressing need in America. 

But industrial policy means cooperation between the government and the private sector. It does not mean the government providing massive amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations without getting anything in return.

In other words, will the United States government develop an industrial policy that benefits all of our society, or will we continue to have an industrial policy that benefits the wealthy and the powerful?

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.” I am afraid what Dr. King said 54 years ago was accurate back then, and it is even more accurate today.

    

On the Sacramento Shootings : Sac Poor People's Campaign

 Statement from the Sacramento Poor People's Campaign ( Sac PPC)  regarding the Mass Shooting in Sacramento

 

 

 

 

It is with grief and concern that the Sacramento Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival learned the news that 6 people had died, and many more wounded, in downtown Sacramento in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 3, 2022. It was a chaotic scene of a conflict and gunfire after the nightclubs closed around 2 am. We know that as many as 100 shots were fired. 

 Of course, we support more effective legislation to control firearms, such as automatic weapons, but these types of laws do not reach the root causes that bring violence to our communities. The root cause of the rising violence around us is the failure of our society -- at every level of government -- to address the basic needs of our people and to end the scourge of poverty. 

 We need good schools, actually great schools, and community centers, playgrounds, sports, and opportunity -- as well as every other form of support for families. We must make sure that each and every family is economically secure, well nourished, and well housed, with access to health care. We must open the way for all to go on after high school to higher education or training so that all can experience the fulfillment of a meaningful life and work and make a contribution to society in the way that best suits them. This is the only way we can free ourselves from the stress and desperation that haunts our neighborhoods and spurs our people to turn to gun violence because they can see no other kind of life. 

 We can do this. We can heal our communities and end the culture of violence and destruction. We must invest in our communities and our people's lives. It's not a dream -- it's a vision of the future that we can make happen if we unite and work together for that moral revival that we so urgently need. Join the Poor People's Campaign as it mounts a massive campaign in Washington D. C. on June 18,2022 to make our voices heard!

 Thank you and Ashe

 Sacramento Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

The Reality Check: HONORING DOLORES HUERTA'S LEGACY

The Reality Check: HONORING DOLORES HUERTA'S LEGACY: HONORING DOLORES HUERTA'S LEGACY Photoessay by David Bacon The Nation, April 2, 2022 https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dolores-h...

Last fall I walked from Poplar to Delano, Calif., in honor of Larry Itliong, who started the 1965 grape strike and boycott there, with Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers (UFW). She was 91 then, and I had a hard time keeping up. She sent me a note afterward that ended, "Sí Se Puede con El Rojo Tocino." It was a beautiful joke.

"Sí Se Puede" are three words we all use now, but she invented this confident way of saying "Yes We Can!" "Tocino" was the nickname the union gave me in the years I worked as an organizer-it means "bacon," my last name. And calling me "El Rojo," or "The Red," in this way honored my politics.

When I came back from a solidarity work brigade in Cuba in the 1970s, I landed in New York City with no place to sleep. I called Dolores's daughter, Lori, a friend from California. Not only did I get space on the floor of the NYC boycott's headquarters, but Dolores and her partner, Richard, César Chávez's brother, took us out to eat. Over pizza I enthused about the island. I had stars in my eyes, for both Cuba and Dolores, and still do. I went to work for the UFW as an organizer a few months later.

There was often tension in the union about radical politics, and being called a red was sometimes the route out the door. But for Dolores and Eliseo Medina, being a good organizer was the bottom line-doing what the workers needed.

Over the years, long after I had left the UFW and worked for other unions and then as a photojournalist, I would see Dolores again and again. Going to Watsonville to cover the organizing drives of strawberry workers or to Salinas for the strikes in the vegetable fields, I knew she'd be there. It was a profound experience to watch her in union contract negotiations-this diminutive woman facing off against the beefy growers across the table-and see the sense of power it gave workers.

Returning from Iraq, where I photographed workers after the 2003 US invasion, I took her picture in the front line of marchers against the war. When we were in Sacramento trying to stop the anti-immigrant, anti-affirmative-action, anti-bilingual initiatives, she was the first to speak out.

So when she called me El Rojo Tocino, I thought, "What a compliment!" I hope I live up to it.

Break the Silence - MLK

 Breaking the Silence: An Intergenerational Call for Unity and Action

 

April 4, 2022, is the 54th anniversary of Rev. Dr. King’s assassination, and the 55th anniversary of his historic "A Time to Break Silence" speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City. Register to join this national webinar on Monday, April 4th at 7:15pm ET, which will include a pre-recorded reading of the speech and a live panel discussion with well-known activists hosted by a broad coalition of civil and human rights, peace, and justice organizations.

Cesar Chavez and California Framworkers

Chavez and author Campbell ,1972. 

Let us be clear.  Chavez was religious, but he was not a saint. Neither were the growers, their  Teamster collaborators, nor corporate agribusiness saints.  Celebrations should not be about hero worship or uncritical praise, nor  should we ignore the present oppression of farm workers in the U.S.  

What they did  accomplish along with Philip Vera Cruz ,  Marshall Ganz, LeRoy Chatfield, Gil Padilla, Eliseo Medina and  hundreds of others was to   organize in California the first successful farm worker union against overwhelming odds. 

Each of the prior attempts to organize a  farm worker union  had been  destroyed by racism and corporate power.Chavez, Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and the  others deliberately created a multiracial union; Mexican,  Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and  language lines, as well as immigration status  always left the corporations the winners.

 

The violent  assaults  on the farmworkers and UFW from 1960- 1980  along with the current reconquest of power in the fields  by corporate agriculture are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class- in this case corporate agriculture and farm owners.  Strategic racism as described by Ian Haney López  in Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class ( 2014) is the development and implementation of  racial practices because they benefit a group or a class. 

 

Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing.  They allied the union   with churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the growth  of Latino politics in the U.S.

 

The UFW and Chavez and Huerta have always had severe critics from the Right and  from corporate agriculture. Dolores Huerta  has  been  banned from the history text books in Texas and Arizona as too radical. Both also have critics from the left.  

 

Miriam Pawel in The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement(2009)  uses individualist, personality driven reporting to assert  that Chavez himself organized “Witch hunts” to expel union staff who disagreed with his leadership.  See Steve Early’s essay  non Talking Union. http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/a-union-of-their-dreams-becomes-a-nightmarehas-ufw-history-been-replayed-in-seiu/  

What the left critics allege, 

Frank Bardacke’s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. (2011), Verso. is the view of a well- informed observer  who  worked in the lettuce fields near Salinas as is Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of  Work and Struggle in the Fields of California (2012) by Bruce Neuberger.  These books, along with Pawell’s have been reviewed in prior posts on Talking Union.  See review here. http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/its-a-long-way-from-delano-to-watsonville-a-review/

These books argue  a peculiar point of view:   they  strongly and persistently imply that the  current  problems of exploitation of workers  in farm labor was caused by the destructive behavior of  Cesar Chavez,  his instability, and his ego  - not by corporate agriculture; not by the racist state in rural California

On the other hand Cesar Chavez was  given the U.S. Presidential  Medal of Freedom posthumously  in 1994, and Dolores Huerta ( A DSA Honorary Chair) was given the Medal of Freedom in 2012.   Teaching materials and videos have been made recording their work.  Schools, scholarships, foundations,  organizing institutes and political organizations  have been named after them.  Few  labor or Latino leaders  have achieved such positive recognition.   

I, for one, wonder why these authors and some  other left writers  see the major problem as the growth of  what they see as a legend and myths about Cesar Chavez ( and recognition of the UFW) rather than the major problem being the role of corporate agriculture, exploitation and racism.

When writers take this view,  they then  need to explain why and how the parallel decline of the Teamsters, the ILGWU, the Auto Workers , the Steelworkers, the IAM, and other unions  occurred during this  same era.   Compare the period of decline of 1977-1986 in the UFW to the complex battles of  the Reuther Brothers to gain control and to keep control of the  United Auto Workers, including the UAW’s relationship with the AFL-CIO . (1949-1970).  The UAW went from 1.5 million members in 1979 to 390,000 in 2010, and the United Steelworkers and other unions  suffered similar declines. 

It doesn’t require a theory of emotional instability and personal interventions  to explain that the smaller, less established, less well funded  union – the UFW-  suffered dramatic  declines  from racial oppression and the brutal assault on the union  in the fields of  Texas, Arizona and California.

The above critics under play the role of the corporate assault on unions, and in particular the assault on a union led by  Mexican American leaders. This was, after all,  the era when  Ronald Reagan came to power in California along with the organization of the forces that came to be called neo-liberalism.  It was also a time of  consolidation of racial power in agriculture.  

Marshall Ganz, who was a leader in the union and a participant in the internal struggles, tells a more complex and more complete story in his book, Why David Sometimes Wins. (2009) See  the review in Talking Union http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/why-david-sometimes-wins-marshall-ganz/

This isn’t to say that Chavez, Huerta and many on the UFW Executive Board  did not have shortcomings.  They did.  Ganz describes  several of these in his  book and in interviews he participated in for the new book, From the Jaws of Victory by   Matt  Garcia (2012).  Ganz provide some well researched and insightful observations on the dynamics of a union trying to transition from a movement to a union- or to something else.   This analysis is helpful to organizers trying to build unions. 

There were conflicts and internal contradictions.  Not many movements last for even ten years let alone thirty.    In addition to the assault from corporate agriculture, the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism and racism, the UFW was confronted  with internal union struggles for democracy,  an intra union assault by the Teamsters,  and with the tumultuous and disruptive  politics on the left in the 60’s and 70’s. 

In my opinion, Bardacke, Pawell, and Neuberger under analyze the nature of the racial state and  the interaction of racial and economic oppression in the fields.  And, these critics significantly  failed  to see the they dynamics of  the struggle for  Chicano/Mexican American self determination within the UFW. 

The role of racism, and the individual reactions to systemic structural racial oppression are complex and  vary in part based upon the differences in experiences of the participants.  As the Chicano movement argued at its core- the experiences of U.S. born and reared  Mexican Americans and Chicanos were different than the experiences and the perceptions of racism of Mexican immigrants, both documented and undocumented.   There are a diversity of racisms and a diversity in the manner in which workers   learn to respond  to oppression.  Chicanos and Mexican Americans grew up, were educated, and worked in an internal colony.  Their schools, their unions, and their political experiences were structured along racial  lines.  They learned colonized structures.  The authors do not sufficiently  acknowledge the struggle of the UFW and the Chicano Movement in breaking this colonial legacy. 

Marshall Ganz in Why David Sometimes Wins,  does a better job of describing the internal dynamics of UFW organizing- after all he was there.  He describes  some of the racial fault lines of  farm worker organizing.  Ganz was the director of organizing  for the UFW in Salinas and a long time member of the UFW executive board.

Chavez knew well some of  the failings of unions  in the 1960’s, including  the problems of a growing internal bureaucracy, but the UFW in the 1980’s  was not able to create a viable  democratic union movement.  Marshall Ganz argues that Chavez deconstructed the organizational strength of the UFW in the 1979 -1981 period in an effort to keep personal control of the union.  (Ganz, p. 247 ) 

The critics  who blame individuals for the union’s decline  also miss the important rise of Latino politics in the Southwest today.   Chavez and the UFW played  a significant role by training  generations of future leaders as organizers as is well described  in Randy Shaw’s, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21^st. Century.   The UFW was a  place  where hundreds learned organizing skills, politics, discipline, and how to work in multi racial  movement politics – skills needed by many on the left.   Today hundreds of union and community leaders, particularly in California are veterans, trained in for the long distance struggle of  the UFW. 

The Current Situation – Strategic Racism 

 The movement led by Cesar Chavez , Dolores Huerta  and others  created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers for a time.   Workers learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay,  unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable.  Then the corporations and the Right Wing forces adapted their strategies of oppression.  

            

The assault on the UFW and the current reconquest of power in the fields are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class- in this case corporate agriculture and farm owners.  The current renewed oppression is a product  of strategic racism including  a complex structure of institutions and individuals from police and sheriffs, to immigration authorities and anti immigrant activists, and elected officials and their support networks.  These groups foster and promote inter racial conflict, job competition, and anti union organizing,  as strategies  to keep wages and benefits low and to promote their continuing white supremacy in rural California. 

 As the union was weakened by the Right Wing corporate assault, the conditions in the fields returned almost to their prior level of exploitation.  The Agricultural Labor Relations Act had it budget cut  by 30 % for years under Governor Deukmejian in 1982- 1986 along with other assaults on the law.   Now, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops and only a small percent are protected by  union contracts.  Over 200,000 indigenous workers, mostly from Mexico, harvest the crops in the Southwest.  They are Mixtec, Zapotec, Triqui and more.  They do have a few health, safety and wage protection by California labor laws,  along with the right to  farm worker collective bargaining elections and binding arbitration  established significantly by the political activity of the current UFW – more than farm workers have in any other state.  For a record of this period see David Bacon’s,  The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (2013). 

 

Duane Campbell is a professor emeritus of bilingual multicultural education at California State University Sacramento, a union activist, and a former  chair of Sacramento DSA.  He was a volunteer for the UFW from 1972- 1977. He is the Director of the Mexican American Digital History project. www.MexicanAmericanDigitalHistory.org 

SCTA On Strike in Sacramento

 BY

PETER LUCAS

The Sacramento school district is pleading poverty in the face of demands for more student support and a pay raise to keep up with inflation. Teachers and school workers aren’t buying the district’s excuses — and now they’re on strike to change its priorities.

Teachers and school workers attend a rally in Sacramento, California. (Ian Lee / Jolie Media

Three years after a one-day strike, Sacramento teachers are back on the picket line — this time for however long it takes to win a new contract.

The 2019 demonstration was unique in that it was not over unaddressed workplace issues or to reach a deal on an upcoming contract. Instead, teachers walked out to defend their already agreed-upon contract, which the district reneged on after its signing. That one-day strike culminated in a rally at the district building where thousands of educators, school workers, and community supporters gathered to demand the district honor the contract.

Now, almost three years later, teachers have walked out again — but this time they don’t know when they’re going back. Sacramento teachers are on an open-ended strike to demand pay that reflects the cost of living under inflation, more support for students, and the preservation of their health care plan.

The Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) announced the strike date at a rally last week attended by an estimated twenty-five hundred people, including teachers, school staff, and supporters. Among them was Sacramento City Council Representative and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Katie Valenzuela.

“The district’s messaging — implying that teachers are putting students at risk by striking — is disgusting.” Valenzuela, who previously worked in education policy, told Jacobin. “No one cares more [about students] than the school workers.”

Roughly eighteen hundred classified school staff — including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, yard monitors, and custodians — represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021 are also striking.

Olivia Minor has worked transportation services in Sacramento City Unified School District’s (SCUSD) for ten years — nine as a bus driver before getting promoted to dispatcher last year. Her kids also attend SCUSD schools. When asked about her working conditions she told Jacobin, “Things are getting out of control. I have to call more and more parents to say their bus route is getting canceled because there isn’t enough staffing.”

According to Minor, 25 percent of the district’s drivers have left over the past eighteen months. “Given all the requirements and restrictions to be a driver — including [monitoring] the medication someone takes — it’s such a stressful job for not enough pay.”

The school workers’ contract expired in June of 2020, but the district has not responded to proposals made in bargaining back in October, according to the union. The union also claims that requests to bargain throughout the past weekend have been ignored. Instead the district offered a bargaining date of March 30 — which will be six days into the strike.

Striking teachers and school workers on the picket line in Sacramento, California. (Ian Lee / Jolie Media)

On Tuesday, the United Public Employees (UPE), representing principals, vice principals, and other administrators in Sacramento schools, sent out a letter claiming that its members have “lost confidence in the district’s ability to provide effective leadership.” The letter includes a survey that shows more than 70 percent of its members believe the union should take a vote of no confidence in the superintendent Jorge Aguilar, and that more than 40 percent of UPE members support the SCTA strike.

Aguilar recently received a raise of $34,126, earning him a total salary of $414,818 — at a time when the district is pleading poverty when teachers demand equitable pay. Since Aguilar became superintendent of SCUSD in 2017, SCTA has filed eighteen unfair labor practice charges against the district.

Nate Starace, who has been teaching at McClatchy High School for almost twenty years, says the letter bodes well for SCTA. In addition to the encouraging support from admin — which has typically sided with the district on workplace issues — Starace says the fact-finding report has bolstered their case. The report, which was conducted under the the California Public Employment Relations Board after the district declared an impasse and whose findings were unanimously endorsed by SCTA, concluded that the district ought to provide employees with a retroactive across-the-board cost-of-living increase.

Belén Moreno, who is in her first year of teaching in SCUSD, explained why she is walking off the job despite not having been in the district for long:

My students and my coworkers have inspired me. My students deserve the very best from their teachers which means their teachers have to be treated like humans. A stronger contract would provide us with enough security — a fair salary that reflects the market — to allow me to catch my breath and refocus, spend more time on teaching than figuring out how to live on month-to-month pay, and attract more qualified teachers to a district that is suffering from a shortage.

 

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/03/sacramento-city-teachers-association-strike-fair-pay-student-support

 

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