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.

Wall Street and the Founding Fathers

Yesterday's New York Times provides a nice, anecdotal (and I mean that in a good way), look into the worldview of Wall Street businesspeople who supported Obama for president, but now are turning on him over financial reform and his rhetorical corporate America. Of particular note for this blog is the contention by hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb that “[a]s every student of American history knows, this country’s core founding principles included nonpunitive taxation, constitutionally guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority and an inexorable right of self-determination."

Statements such as these go to what should be a core "banalogical rule": if someone is claiming their political views are the direct inheritance of the founding generation and its principles, it's likely they're oversimplifying. What makes the Founding Fathers a perpetual source of fascination and debate is that they were extremely complicated and even contradictory thinkers. Let's take as an example Thomas Jefferson, given that some of his pronouncements found themselves recruited for the complaints of businesspeople on Wall Street. Here are two Jefferson quotes on economics:

(1) "Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum of value." --Thomas Jefferson to William B. Bibb, 1808. ME 12:107

(2) "Money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations... Justice, honor, faith, must yield to the necessity of keeping themselves in place. The question whether a measure is moral is never asked, but whether it will nourish the avarice of their merchants."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Langdon, 1810. (*) ME 12:376

Do those two quotes make sense in the modern left-right context? Potentially, but not easily. However, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in an era when merchants and large-scale businesses were only beginning to emerge, they did. Taking Jefferson and his fellow republicans as a case study, we find that the views on economics debated by the founding generation mixed a variety of viewpoints that today we associate with left and right into patterns very different than today.

Jeffersonians certainly expressed some views which fit in well with conservative politics, as seen in the first quote. Jefferson was a strong proponent of free trade and territorial expansion to provide more lands for production. Support of such policies also led Jefferson to promote an aggressive foreign policy aimed at assisting U.S. export interests, something associated with both political parties, but often criticized from a progressive perspective. Jeffersonians also opposed government subsidies to businesses, seeing them as helping to breed monopolies which undermined a real free market system. One can also find in Jefferson's opinion on the constitutionality of a national bank his fears about excessive federal government power being employed in regulating commerce.

At the same time, Jeffersonians expressed grave doubts about merchants and manufacturers, questioning their loyalty and very morality, as well as criticizing wealth inequality as a major threat to nation and justice. As one example, take this quote from James Madison, who, in speaking about the future of the nation, urged that laws be passed "which, without violating the rights of poverty, reduce extreme wealth to a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence to a state of comfort." To those who might find the part about property rights a counter, one can find concrete expressions of Madison's view in places such as his support for a wealth tax in Federalist No. 21. Jefferson similarly advocated versions of progressive taxation and worried constantly about the "misery" wealth inequalities created, as well as the dangers to a fair republic they represented. As the modern corporation began to take form in the early nineteenth century, Jefferson grew increasingly concerned and his writings showed at least as much antipathy to early "big business" as to "big government." As an example, in 1816 he declared that "I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations."

What to make of this? Well, to put succinctly, Jeffersonians feared concentrated power - they believed a nation of independent farmers (white ones of course, slaves inhabited essentially a different universe), neither particularly wealthy nor poor, mostly unrestrained by government but also protected from the greed of merchants, represented the most just path for the future. Try grafting that into our modern, post-industrial national situation.

That said, I do not mean to imply that the thoughts of the founding generation bear no relevance on today. Many of the larger dynamics they faced are still issues today. Let's just remember they were complex people in a different time before enrolling them into today's fights.

"Business, always business": The Wire and the History of U.S. Capitalism

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The Wire is that rare cultural creation that is even better than the overwhelming praise would suggest. The show's explorations of urban inequalities, the failures of institutions, and the ambiguities of how people survive (and don't) are truly epic, yet manage to stay grounded in the experiences of its many and sharply drawn characters. Central to the show however is the emphasis David Simon, Ed Burns and co. place on the failures of the current economic model to provide opportunity and decent lives for so many people. One only need to watch the tragic story of Frank Sobotka, head of a local dockworkers’ union, to get a sense of Simon’s deep understanding of the way, particularly since the Reagan presidency, that the "profits before all" economic model has bred an increasingly unequal and in many ways dysfunctional society.

One of The Wire's main arguments centers on how deindustrialization and the failure (as of yet) for the transforming economy or our political system to ensure some matter of economic security for everyone (especially people of color in urban centers) contributes mightily to creating the array of issues associated with illegal drugs. Ironically (as the creators take delight in pointing out), although the drug trade exists outside many societal norms, it is at the same time as thoroughly capitalistic an enterprise as selling footwear or electronics. One can imagine a world in which, if they were legal, some of the despised drug kingpins might be hailed as innovative CEOs.

Building on the idea that the depictions of the drug gangs can teach us about business dynamics, I would like to suggest that watching The Wire contains lessons not only about the present, but also the past. As I plan to help show in a series of posts, watched at a metaphorical level,The Wire presents a solid introduction to the history of how organizational structures and the worldviews of U.S. business have transformed repeatedly over the past hundred years. That may sound a bit outlandish, but given that one of the leading scholars of the urban crisis in the United States, William Julius Wilson, is teaching an entire class based on the show, perhaps not. I'll have more to say about this, but for the moment, here's a sneak peak of what's to come:

1) "Games beyond the game": Avon, Stringer, and the Rise of the Corporation

2) "Making sense of this game": Prop Joe, Stringer, and the Post-War "Consensus"

3) "I ain't been one for meets no how": Marlo and the Robber Barons

4) "And of course, I'm not even Greek": The "Greeks" and the Multinational Corporation

Gay marriage opponents and the USSR

Maggie Gallagher, Chair of the anti-gay marriage group the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) called the overturning of Prop 8 by activist leftist judge (who in fact was a Reagan appointee recommended by Ed Meese) a "Soviet" style takeover. Which makes some sense as a metaphor but also raises a funny little historical issue. See, I know the specter of communism is supposed to be an indictment of liberalism, but if one looks at the actual policies of the U.S.S.R., they were actually much more in line with right-wingers on homosexuality. Starting in the Stalinist era, homosexuality was in fact illegal under Article 121 of the Soviet criminal code which made sexual relations among men punishable by a five year prison term. Communist propaganda not only in the USSR, but throughout Eastern Europe and also in Cuba (though its policies have dramatically shifted in more recent decades) depicted homosexuality as one more negative symptom of capitalism, painting it as a form of "bourgeois decadence." While all of this is certainly much more harsh than what NOM would like to see, perhaps in this area, Ms. Gallagher should rethink what a "Soviet-style" takeover would really mean.

FDR Would Appoint Elizabeth Warren

The historically-minded debate over "is Obama's presidency progressive?" seems the perfect topic for this blog, so it’s long past time I jump in. To summarize: On one side are those who look at Obama so far and see missed opportunities, political cowardice, and a presidency whose ideological marker seems more mushy third-way then strong progressivism. Obama’s failings often find themselves unflatteringly contrasted to the strength and principle that Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson brought to achieving their legislative aims. Perhaps the most cited example of this involves contrasting some seemingly weak-willed, overly nuanced Obama talk about big business with the fire of Franklin Roosevelt's "I welcome their hatred" speech in Madison Square Garden in November 1936. One could also note the extraordinary pressure Johnson often brought on members of Congress to vote his way on particular bills or even Roosevelt’s noble (though somewhat disastrous attempt) to purge ultra-conservative Democrats with more progressive ones in the 1938 midterm elections.

The other side, best represented by Michael Tomasky in his piece, "Against Despair," urges progressives to take a deep breath and look at the full records of Roosevelt and Johnson. Rather than liberal stalwarts, Tomasky and writers such as Eugene Goodheart, note the many compromises and failings of both Roosevelt and Johnson in fighting for progressive goals. One need only look at the essential exclusion of African-American workers from the original Social Security program (a compromise to Southern Democrats) to see that high progressive principle was not the only pillar Roosevelt stood upon. Overall, as Tomasky describes in writing about FDR, both his presidency and Obama’s provide clear demonstrations of the “difficulties inherent in trying to effect change, the readiness to accept half a loaf, and the regular reassurances sent to the moneyed classes that the liberals hadn’t taken over the candy store.” He then goes on to detail the historical and structural barriers Obama faces that FDR and LBJ did not: the ballooning of the filibuster, the evaporation of bipartisanship, the weakening of social movements like labor, etc.

Overall, I tend to agree with the tenor of Tomasky and others who, looking at the history, find that "all this has happened before and will happen again" so to speak, a subject I hope to come back to later. For now however, let’s focus on one area where a historical perspective does not place Obama in as good standing as an FDR: diversity of advisers.

Generally, both camps have ignored the specific issue of advisers when examining Obama historically. Goodheart does cite Obama's promotion of a "team of rivals" as a positive characteristic of his administration. At a forum about his article, I had the opportunity to ask Tomasky about Obama's lack of progressive high-level appointees; his response focused on the fact that Roosevelt’s cabinet did not overflow with aggressive liberals, but rather counted among its number several conservative appointees, such as Hans "let's cut the deficit during a depression, what could go wrong?" Morgenthau.

The point however is not to expect that Obama’s policy team would be totally culled from the precincts of The Nation or the Economic Policy Institute. Rather, where some disappointment with Obama in historical context seems merited revolves around the lack of an ideologically diverse set of core advisers. I differentiate this from his cabinet in general; on that count Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is an obvious progressive and strong cases can also be made for many on the energy and environment team such as Stephen Chu or Lisa Jackson. Thinking specifically about the economics team, the question though is how much he listens to those outside the Geithner-Summers pole of opinion. Solis for example has dramatically transformed the Department of Labor into a force siding with working people as it should (we have Treasury and Commerce Departments to look after business after all). But does Obama listen to her about larger economic matters? How much input did Solis have in health care or financial reform? Or Jared Bernstein for that matter?

Now, one could easily fit Tomasky and co.'s overall argument on to the appointee question: with the absurd filibuster continuing as a sort of tragicomical block on reform, what good would some more progressive advisers have? Perhaps none. At the same time, who knows what political and policy options currently receive scant consideration because there are not forceful advisers to make their case. As William Leuchtenburg and others have long argued, Roosevelt did not want to expend political capital on the National Labor Relations Act, although he did not fundamentally oppose the idea. It took the great upswell and pressure of organized labor to provide the space for people Roosevelt trusted (primarily then New York Senator Robert Wagner) to lobby him personally and bring the bill over the line. Similarly, it was the relentless lobbying by Frances Perkins that helped push Roosevelt to embrace and fight for the creation of Social Security. Are there similar situations for Obama? Perhaps regarding a public option or a different sort of jobs bill?

This is where Elizabeth Warren comes in. I don't know how good Obama and her relationship is or how much weight he places on her opinions. However, we do know that Nancy Pelosi takes Warren seriously, as do several key Senators. The fact that in the past she and Geithner have sparred to me is a big PLUS; they're both smart people and her presence could bring some needed variety and yes "rivalry" to Obama's team. Also, like strong progressives in past administrations, she can count on an independent public constituency (in some ways akin to Perkins, whose previous labor advocacy work gave her key allies in civil society) willing to support and assist her, one she has helped build through media appearances, including several with Jon Stewart. Certainly there are other good nominees who could run the agency competently. Warren however, would be an outsized voice, someone who could spark debate and maybe even cause some trouble from time to time. And history does show that it is often the healthy annoyances that catalyze real accomplishment.