Thomas Paine and the Wisconsin Workers

A quick note: I see that Tea Party groups are organizing a march to counter the massive protests being spearheaded by pubic workers in Wisconsin, a response to the governors' attempt to essentially eliminate public sector unions. I will be shocked if, as usual, the founders' eighteenth century economic thought and broad ideas are not easily converted by that march into a standard union-busting drumbeat from the days of the Pinkertons.

Uncomfortably for the Tea Partiers, when we examine the actual record of a key revolutionary icon, Thomas Paine, we find a man who himself was an agitator for justice and dignity for public workers. Paine's legacy for U.S. independence is of course vital; he famously wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, which played a crucial part in moving many North American colonists firmly in support of independence and the construction of a democratic state. Paine, however, was not a long-time resident of the colonies - in fact he only moved to Philadelphia in 1774.

What was he doing before? Well, most immediately prior, he had worked as an Officer of Excise, a tax collector, in Lewes, England. That is until he joined a movement of fellow excise officers demanding that their wages be increased to allow these public servants to escape poverty. Throughout the winter of 1772-1773 Paine worked to organize and prepare a petition to Parliament, an attempt which failed. The following year Paine was fired from his job and would make his way to Philadelphia.

The main contribution Paine made to this effort was to write his first political pamphlet, The Case of the Officers of Excise. While many of the specifics in this piece are more relevant to the eighteenth century world, in it we can find some of the same principles at work in Wisconsin today:

On the problems of low wages:

When a Year’s Salary is mentioned in the Gross, it acquires a Degree of Consequence from its Sound, which it would not have if separated into daily Payments, and if the Charges attending the receiving and other unavoidable Expences were considered with it. Fifty Pounds a Year, and One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing a Day. carry as different Degrees of Significancy with them, as My Lord’s Steward, and the Steward’s Labourer; and yet an Out-Ride Officer in the Excise, under the Name of Fifty Pounds a Year, receives for himself no more than One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing a Day.

After Tax, Charity, and sitting Expences are deducted, there remains very little more than Forty-six pounds; and the expences of Horse-keeping in many Places cannot be brought under Fourteen Pounds a Year, besides the Purchase at first, and the Hazard of Life, which reduces it to Thirty-two Pounds per Annum, or One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing per Day.

On the questions of wealth and poverty:

The Rich, in Ease and Affluence, may think I have drawn an unnatural Portrait; but could they descend to the cold Regions of Want, the Circle of Polar Poverty, they would find their Opinions changing with the Climate. There are Habits of Thinking peculiar to different Conditions, and to find them out is truly to study Mankind.

The final call for justice:

With an Addition of Salary, the Excise would wear a new Aspect, and recover its former Constitution. Languor and Neglect would give Place to Care and Chearfulness. Men of Reputation and Abilities would seek after it, and finding a comfortable Maintenance, would stick to it. The unworthy and the incapable would be rejected; the Power of Superiors be re-established, and Laws and Instructions receive new Force.

The King Identity

I have already written a version of the now requisite "Martin Luther King was a progressive/radical" entry. I am confident I will write similar posts in the future. While having King as a sanctified American hero is certainly a merited and wonderful reality, it has also led to a collective amnesia about the scope of his vision. Put simply, King was both a transcendent figure who could rise above politics and someone who progressives and radicals clearly can claim as a member of the family. To claim otherwise requires a heady mixture of denial and ignorance.

Given that, let me talk about a (hopefully) upcoming event that holds potential to introduce the complete King to a larger audience. Recently, I came across the news that English director Paul Greengrass has written a screenplay and is looking to make a film entitled Memphis. Greengrass is best known to a wide audience as the directer of the second two Bourne movies. According to NY Mag, "Greengrass wrote the movie . . . based on his own original research, and that it looks at King’s life while trying to organize the city’s sanitation workers in the spring of 1968, just before his murder on April 4 of that year."

While some of the web gossip is concentrating on the potential for the movie to tackle conspiracy theories around King's assassination, I hope that is not the case. Certainly Greengrass has trafficked in conspiratorial thinking in the Bourne movies, as well as in his (in my opinion) very underrated film Green Zone, but he is not an Oliver Stone. Focusing on conspiracies would, among other problems, distract from the true (and very fraught) drama one can find in the story of King's involvement in the Memphis strike and the turmoil of his own life in those last days.

While a director best known for creating incredibly visceral action scenes might seem problematic, my eagerness about him tackling this project comes from some of Greengrass' other films, namely Bloody Sunday and United 93. Both films are superb examples of how to compellingly present historical episodes on screen; they hew closely to the real history, while creating real tension and drama. For the moment, I will focus on Bloody Sunday, which recreates the events of January 30, 1972, when English soldiers killed thirteen protesters in Derry, Ireland. The film has been compared to the Battle of Algiers, which is both an apt comparison and an impressive complement.

As with The Battle of Algiers, Bloody Sunday evinces an intense fascination with the mechanics of political activism (how do protests get organized, the internal politics of movements, etc). This in itself is promising, for the politics of King's involvement in the strike and the dynamics between the many players are a vital part of this story. Furthermore, Bloody Sunday shows not only Greengrass' interest in these matters, but also his ability, through sharp dialogue, strong acting, and his ever restless camera, to keep such scenes interesting and even spellbinding. In addition, Bloody Sunday, while clearly taking a side, allows for the nuances and complexities of politics to shine; time is given to the English soldiers to show the context they were operating in, without excusing their actions.

To make this more concrete, here is a scene near the end of Bloody Sunday which captures much of what I mentioned above:



Suffice it to say, I believe Greengrass to be an excellent person for this job. Returning to the idea of historical memory, the potential of a major film being released centered on King's work in Memphis is quite exciting. While I doubt the film will transform the popular narrative about King, it can at least open up an avenue for challenging the "Santa Claus" version that dominates popular discourse. By choosing to depict King not during his heights at Birmingham or Selma, but rather as a much reviled radical prophet, Greengrass' film can educate more people about the King who stood firmly for workers' rights and believed that true justice meant profound change to our economy and society.

Labor on the Screen

In time for Labor Day here is a non-representative sample of four of my favorite on-screen depictions of organized labor from U.S. history:

(1) Matewan: John Sayle's account of the 1920 strike by coalminers in the West Virginia town of Matewan conveys better than any other film I've seen the lives, struggles and issues surrounding workers in the U.S. at the opening of the 20th century. The film digs not only into the relationship of workers and bosses, showing the extreme measures undertaken by companies to stop unionization, but also addresses how the racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. (this was a time when being an Italian or a Pole or a Jew set one apart from the white Anglo-Saxon norm) played into labor's fights. A fascinating sequel is yet to be made depicting the West Virginia Mine Wars that the Matewan incident ignited. That conflict culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, where around 10,000 armed miners fought against private security forces, state militia and eventually federal troops (who even used bomber planes from World War I) in the largest insurrection in U.S. history since the Civil War.

Here's a key scene from Matewan that plays as an excellent (if slightly didactic) primer on race and labor, with a lot of resonance for today:




(2) Salt of the Earth: Of the films on this list this is certainly the forthrightly propagandistic. The film is based on a real strike by mainly Mexican-American workers against the Empire Zinc Company in 1951. Salt of the Earth has achieved a level of infamy because many of the key figures who made it were members or allies of the Communist Party and the union it examined, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, was expelled from the CIO in 1950 for its leaderships' communist affiliations. Given the film's 1954 release, it suffered the full effects of McCarthyism, going largely unseen at the time of its release and only slowly becoming recognized as a classic of political film making. Most of the actors and actresses are non-professionals and in fact are the very people the story is based on. While partially worth viewing purely for its historical value, Salt of the Earth is also remarkable in its forthright feminism, as the union men learn to respect their female comrades (remember this is at least a decade before the "second-wave" feminist movement truly came into its own). Additionally, the portrait of conflicts between Mexican-American and "Anglo" workers carries obvious importance for today.

Here are the first ten minutes:




(3) Norma Rae: It's really too bad Sally Fields' "you like me" Oscar speech is better remembered than the message of Norma Rae. The film is somewhat similar to Matewan in its exploration of the tensions between an outside union organizer and the local workers. Based on the life of Crystal Lee Sutton and the campaign by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union to organize the J.P. Stevens company, a notoriously anti-union company based largely in the South (in Sutton's case, North Carolina). It's also an important film for delving fully into the added difficulties faced by women workers (who are now or soon will be the majority of union members) and by having a female protagonist it helps cut against the cinematic stereotype of union workers as burly, white men. Also a great film to see because of its focus on labor in the New South during the 1970s, a decade that's increasingly being recognized as pivotal to understanding our present, including the fate of workers in the U.S.

Here's the classic "Union" scene:



[Minor Spoilers Ahead]

(4) The Wire, Season 2: In the show's second season we move from the inner city to the port of Baltimore and the trials and travails of a local dockworkers' union (which is closely based on the International Longshoreman's Association, that provided the inspiration for On the Waterfront). In particular, the season focuses on the efforts (legal and illegal) of the local's secretary-general, Frank Sobotka, to save his union and the decent life it has provided. The second season is sometimes seen as a detour from the main plot of the show, however thematically it is vital to understanding the modern U.S. In exploring why the drug trade proves so attractive to so many in the inner city, one must understand the impacts of deindustrialization and the failure to make the new, service heavy economy, one that produces not only jobs, but good jobs. The timing of deindustrialization is also critical for understanding the plight of so many inner city African-American communities. After World War II, many southern African-American communities increasingly moved northward to secure well-paid manufacturing work in a second Great Migration. Yet, they moved north just as those same jobs began to move south, as companies sought out less union-friendly locales, first in southern states and then overseas, leaving northern African-American communities without a strong economic base.

Put another way, what we see starting to happen with the hopelessness and turn to crime of Nick and Ziggy Sobotka is what happened to the parents and grandparents of Avon Barksdale or Bodie.

There's so much more to be said, but I'll leave it with this scene in which the police arrive at the union local's headquarters to serve subpoenas on several members. In response, Frank Sobotka delivers an impassioned speech (starting at minute 2:00) about the resilience of the unions in the face of problems caused by their own corruption, as well as attacks by business and government.

MLK: Judge On the Content of His Actual Beliefs

Banalogies friend Seth D pointed me to this piece from the Moderate Voice, which honestly is best read as an Onion-esque parody of a "sensible" moderate position. The author, Rick Moran, seeks to find a reasonable middle ground between those who believe the Tea Party is the inheritor of the civil rights legacy and those who vehemently disagree. As Seth noted to me, Moran writes as if Martin Luther King Jr. were some ancient figure whose views on modern issues we can only speculate on. This allows him (without linking to any sources) to state, for example, that King "would have scoffed at the modern interpretation of 'social justice.'" Perhaps most ludicrous is Moran's attempt to make King out to be a skeptic of government interventions to achieve greater social justice, asserting that King would have opposed programs based on ideas of "positive rights" because he believed that "change would come only when the hearts and minds of Americans were turned from hate and that only through Christian love and charity."

This is not a matter of difference of interpretation; these statements are factually incorrect. Look at the demands of the March for Jobs and Freedom in 1963; among them are higher minimum wages and a "massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers - Negro and white - on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages." When King was murdered in 1968, he was assisting with a sanitation workers' strike and building to the planned Poor People's March, which again demanded massive government intervention to end poverty.

Not only were King's views on policy clear, so were his politics. Let's take the movement's fight for voting rights. Most of the time, the struggle for full suffrage rights is discussed in a way that make the goals of the movement mainly philosophical. Thus, the main point of fighting for full suffrage rights was for African-Americans to be equal citizens to whites. While this was a vital element, King and the movement also saw gaining full voting rights as a pragmatic tactic towards larger objectives, as seen in his 1961 speech to the Transport Workers Union:

"The campaign to grant the ballot to Negroes in the South has profound implications. From all I have outlined, it is clear that the Negro vote would not be utilized in a vacuum. Negroes exercising a free suffrage would march to the polls to support those candidates who would be partial to social legislation. Negroes in the South, whether they elected white or Negro Congressmen, would be placing in office a liberal candidate, if you will-a-labor candidate. (APPLAUSE) No other political leader could have a program possessing appeal to Negroes."

How about King's views on conservatives? Well, right before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he gave a lecture that included comments on that year's presidential election, in which Lyndon Johnson crushed conservative champion Barry Goldwater. As Rick Perlstein and others have shown, the modern right in many ways came into its own with Goldwater's campaign and a direct line runs between the Goldwaterites and today's conservatism. Here's what King had to say about Goldwater and the right-wing movement of the day:

"Another indication that progress is being made was found in the recent presidential election in the United States. The American people revealed great maturity by overwhelmingly rejecting a presidential candidate who had become identified with extremism, racism, and retrogression. The voters of our nation rendered a telling blow to the radical right. They defeated those elements in our society which seek to pit white against Negro and lead the nation down a dangerous Fascist path."

A lot of history is open to interpretation and debate. Indeed it is often highly problematic to say what a historical figure would have said about current events. However, on the question of King and modern conservatism, there really is no question where he stood.

Still Forgetting Walter

I swung by the "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday which attempted (as many have pointed out) to appropriate the legacy and meaning of the black freedom struggle for the religious right/Tea Party movement. As Saddam Hussein might say, such an assertion may represent the "mother of all banalogies." This is one of those cases where interpretations of history do not even come into play, we are talking simple facts. In this case, it is an indisputable truth that Martin Luther King, Jr. and the key figures around him were progressives and had strong leanings towards Scandinavian style social democracy or more radical forms of democratic socialism. The black freedom struggle had an important economic component, one which many in the movement felt could only fully be addressed by first winning civil rights, but certainly not only through such measures. Figures in the movement forthrightly identified as progressives and attacked conservative political figures and ideas. Really the only way to miss all this is to pretend (as so many seem to) that the entire message of the movement is summed up in King's "content of their character" line, even a reading of the rest of the "I Have a Dream Speech" showcases the importance King placed on poverty and power relations.

It was this sort of assertive amnesia which reached its zenith during a video tribute to King at the rally. The longest single image from that montage featured a slow-motion shot of King at the rally sharing a joke with Walter Reuther, whose birthday is today. Now, I didn't expect people to recognize Reuther, but still the irony was overwhelming. Reuther was then president of the United Auto Workers, perhaps the most powerful (and one of the more progressive) unions in the U.S. at the time. Reuther and his compatriots, while a pragmatic lot, retained a vision of society that much more closely resembles the nightmares Beck sees in Obama's policies than in the reality of the current administration. They wanted to transform the U.S. economy through social insurance programs and economic planning to ensure full employment, good jobs, and even sustainable development.

It was these very views that helped cement an alliance (albeit one which strained and even broke at points) between the black freedom struggle and the labor movement. To cite one concrete detail, a good portion of the funding for the logistics of the August 28, 1963 rally (including the sound system which brought "I Have a Dream" to the world) came from the UAW's coffers. If Glenn Beck wants to be an heir to this he can feel free, but I have my doubts.