Working Class Heroes

by WCH Contributor and Florida firebrand progressive truth seeker Charlie Lindamood

There is a one word theme that weaves in and out of every greedy, unreasonable action committed by the Congressional Repubs and their friends, the Teapartiers.. “Corporations”.

Why would Repubs want to bring down the U.S. Government and cause so much chaos, destroying America in the process? Wouldn’t they suffer too? Wouldn’t it hurt their “bottom lines”?

Maybe this was supposed to happen in 2008. Perhaps this is why Bush deregulated the Banks and the Fed collectively closed their eyes to what was about to happen ..Crash!!! Then, the newly elected  President of the United States, President Obama, actually began to accomplish real repairs (seemingly unheralded and unwanted by Republicans in Congress).

He even saved Auto Manufacturing,  God help him, he saved those same Corporations and banks that, like now, seem to be willing economic failure..

The corporate owned Republicangress and Senate have filibustered every jobs bill, fair trade bill and small business loan bill.

Now they are deregulating and defunding  the EPA, Research & Development,, Family Planning, Education, Medicaid… the list goes on.  While they pretend to care about the future of our children, they try to pass a bill to repeal the child labor laws. Corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash…oh yes, they are the “Job Creators” but only when the Corporations have destroyed America, democracy and the Middle Class..then they will create jobs, but they will be”cheap labor jobs”– with no one to complain to or represent your point of view as you work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week!…The “Corporate” States of America doesn’t need any big brother or sister. They have Republicans and their own Teaparty to do their bidding.

I began this essay in July of 2011……

Now here it is, April, 2012, coming closer to for another Presidential election. The angry Republican Congress and Senate, along with their sponsors who go by the name of “Citizens United,” have been “outed” in a book written by Roger Draper!

Roger Draper’s book will undoubtedly become a “forever” best seller and hopefully will chime the Waterloo of the same men who in effect threw the middle class and most Americans under the bus.

Here is a list of the many different wars the Republican Congress and Senate have declared upon the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on behalf of the Corporations and the Lobbyists whose money fuels their treason.!

WAR ON UNIONS…..

WAR ON COLLECTIVE BARGAINING…

WAR ON THE MIDDLE CLASS…

WAR ON TEACHERS…

WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION…

WAR ON PUBLIC WORKERS…

WAR ON THE POOR…

WAR ON THE SICK…

WAR ON SENIORS…

WAR ON CHILDREN…

WAR ON WOMEN….

WAR ON IMMIGRANTS…

WAR ON CLEAN ENERGY…

WAR ON CLEAN WATER & AIR…

WAR ON ALTERNATIVE ENERGY…

WAR ON WAR ….EVEN WAR ON THE “CHEVY VOLT”

WAR ON ANYONE WHO WOULD WRITE LEGISLATURE THAT WOULD “PROMOTE” A HEALTHY GROWING ECONOMY AND STRONG MIDDLE CLASS!

Our country and all Americans have suffered because of the self-righteous greed of these traitors.

Our freedom and our country have been brought to the brink of ruin by a few non-good Un-American men.

We’ve been sold down the river. The one way to grab our country and yank it back from these traitors is to vote for Obama and Democratic congresspeople and senators on November 6th.

As excerpted from PBS’s ‘American Experience‘:

A lot more than 2,000 miles separated the Rockefeller estate from Southern Colorado when on Monday April 20, 1914, the first shot was fired at Ludlow. One of history’s most dramatic confrontations between capital and labor — the so-called Ludlow massacre — took place at the mines of the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I).

The face-off raged for fourteen hours, during which the miners’ tent colony was pelted with machine gun fire and ultimately torched by the state militia. A number of people were killed, among them two women and eleven children who suffocated in a pit they had dug under their tent. The deaths were blamed on John D. Rockefeller Jr. For years, he would struggle to redress the situation – and strengthen the Rockefeller social conscience in the process.

Federal mediator Ethelbert Stewart comments on the situation – October 1913:

Theoretically, perhaps, the case of having nothing to do in this world but work, ought to have made these men of many tongues, as happy and contented as the managers claim … To have a house assigned you to live in … to have a store furnished you by your employer where you are to buy of him such foodstuffs as he has, at a price he fixes … to have churches, schools … and public halls free for you to use for any purpose except to discuss politics, religion, trade-unionism or industrial conditions; in other words, to have everything handed down to you from the top; to be … prohibited from having any thought, voice or care in anything in life but work, and to be assisted in this by gunmen whose function it was, principally, to see that you did not talk labor conditions with another man who might accidentally know your language — this was the contented, happy, prosperous condition out of which this strike grew … That men have rebelled grows out of the fact that they are men.

Why today should be marked in red on your calendar – April 20th

by Scott Martelle, reposted with permission from scotmarttelle.com

This date has a habit of sneaking up on me. I look at the calendar and am a little shocked to see it rounding out again. There are others who have the same feeling, I know (a few post on Facebook). But it remains just another day for most people, including labor supporters, which has long struck me as a bit of an insult to history.

It was 98 years ago today that a day-long gun battle erupted at a coal strikers’ tent colony at the edge of the Great Plans in southern Colorado. The violence led to the suffocation deaths of 11 children and two mothers (they died in an underground bunker as fire swept through the tents above), but it also represented one of the most extreme encounters between workers and their bosses, and state military forces. Another child and several men were killed that day, too, including the apparent cold-blooded murders of union miners by National Guardsmen The deaths at Ludlow occurred within the sweep of a seven-month guerrilla war between the miners and their supporters, and mine guards and the Colorado National Guard. At least 75 people were killed in what amounted to open insurrection. Yet few of you have ever heard of it.

With the centennial looming – the strike began in September 1913 – I’m hoping the events at Ludlow gain more of our national attention. Meantime, after the jump you’ll find a short excerpt from Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West, my first book, about that long ago day in southern Colorado:

The fighting grew in intensity, and confusion. Linderfelt’s men made three attempts to move from Water Tank Hill northward, hoping to dislodge the strikers taking cover in the railroad cut. Lt. Lawrence led one of the first forays but made little progress before a bullet struck Pvt. Alfred Martin, thirty, of Denver. Blood gushed from a neck wound and Lawrence used his thumb to try to stop the flow, then fellow soldiers bandaged him up. As they retreated they tried to carry Martin with them, but the gunfire was too intense, so they hid him beneath a bush as the strikers pushed them back toward Water Tank Hill. When they regained that land near dusk, they found Martin dead, and word spread among the soldiers that he had been badly mutilated – shot a second time through the mouth at close range, and his face crushed in as though struck with a rifle butt. Some time in the morning a bullet also hit a striker in the temple, and he either crawled or was dragged into the water well, where he lay, delirious with pain, on the top platform as more than 20 women and children huddled below, listening to the echoes of gunfire above. “He was hurt so bad,” Korich said, “he cried and cried.” On the road outside, Primo Larese, 18, the son of a Trinidad brewery worker, stopped to watch the fighting while en route to visit a friend in Hastings. A bullet ripped off the top of his head, killing him instantly.

The battle was not being fought in a vacuum. Around 10 in the morning, Ora Linderfelt, the lieutenant’s wife, made a panicky call to the Trinidad National Guard armory, where the new Company A was being put together. “She said the troops at Cedar Hill were being killed and that they wanted to have help.” The soldiers rounded up their gear, including a machine gun, and headed for the train station. In what by now had become a common occurrence, the union crew refused to work the train, and the soldiers were delayed an hour until a less recalcitrant crew could be found. The troop train arrived in Rameyville, on the southern side of the hill overlooking the Cedar Hill military outpost, around 1 p.m.. With no wagon to move the heavy machine gun closer to the battle, the troops commandeered a car near the station driven by W.J. Hall, who was out for a drive with a friend, the friend’s daughter and another man. “I was under the impression that it was of no use trying to resist letting them have the car.” Hall knew a few of the soldiers, but not all. One named Jack Cold placed the gun in the back of the while another handled the tripod. Still others slid heavy long boxes of ammunition – about six inches high, a foot wide and eighteen inches long – in beneath the gun. Hall slowly drove up the hill to a crest overlooking a steel bridge, where the soldiers unloaded the weapon and ammunition. While Hall was there, a commander he didn’t recognize gave the order of the day: “For those men to go in and clean out the colony. For them to drive everyone out and burn the colony.” As Hall drove back down the hill, the machine gun opened fire, adding to the constant chatter from Water Tank Hill.

Reinforcements chased in from all directions. Mine guards and scabs emerged from out of the Delagua and Berwind canyons to join the militia, and armed strikers headed south from Aguilar. Two doctors, Aca Harvey and Joseph Davis, arrived in a horse-drawn buggy after being summoned by union officials to tend to wounded strikers. But their buggy was stopped by several men who had gathered near Bayes’ ranch, northeast of the colony. “They told us we couldn’t go any further, that it wouldn’t be safe.” Harvey could see some of the strikers and militiamen jockeying for position in the distance, guns cracking. Harvey decided to press ahead alone, figuring one doctor stood a better chance of slipping into the battlefield than two. Davis climbed back in the buggy and headed back to Aguilar. But after Davis left, Harvey realized he would need help toting his medical bags; Bayes volunteered and the two men, moving low, headed for the arroyo.

One striker was reported lying wounded near the pump house off the C&S tracks just north of the colony, next to the well hiding the women and children. The two men followed the arroyo to within 100 yards when shots rang out from around Dominic Ray’s stone farmhouse about 300 yards west of the water well. One of the bullets whizzed past Bayes’ head, and he dove into a low spot for cover. Other bullets narrowly missed Harvey, who was trailing behind and even more exposed. The doctor scurried across a barren section before diving into a cutout. He unfurled a small white flag he had ripped from a cotton sheet and tried to signal that he was not part of the battle. “Every time I stuck it out, it would be shot at.”

Bayes waited more than a half hour for Harvey to catch up with him. When the doctor didn’t move – “I think it was cold feet,” Bayes said – Bayes dropped back with the bags, left them with Harvey, and headed home. A handful of strikers, meanwhile, made their way to Harvey and began returning fire on the stone house, offering cover for the doctor to sprint across the open space to the rail bridge. “I found a man there who was shot through the head. He was not dead, but he was dying.” This may have been Rubino, the man felled running for the arroyo. The strikers told Harvey of another wounded man further north, by the pump house. His pockets stuffed with supplies, Harvey crawled along the rail line until he reached the water well and slipped over the edge. He saw the Korich family, the Gorcis, Thomas and others, huddled with fear and damp, and two wounded men on the upper level, just out of reach of flying bullets. “One of the men that was shot crawled away,” Harvey said. The other man, the one Korich heard crying, stayed in place, Harvey trying to treat his wounds.

William Trent Pancoast’s novels include WILDCAT (2010) and CRASHING (1983). His short stories, essays, and editorials have appeared in Fried Chicken and Coffee, Night Train, The Mountain Call, Solidarity magazine, and US News & World Report. Pancoast retired from the auto industry in 2007 after thirty years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. Born in 1949, the author lives in Ontario, Ohio.

Bill is a WCH Contributor who has allowed us to post this, novel in installments. We expect to bring you a chapter a week.

“Most novelists haven’t been anywhere near an auto plant, let alone worked in one, but Bill Pancoast has. Wildcat takes us inside a spontaneous strike at an Ohio stamping plant in theVietnam era, showing how righteous anger, insane hijinks, and bloodshed can break out when workers decide to do something–anything–about brutal and boring working conditions.”–Christopher Phelps, Associate professor,American Studies,University of Nottingham

Chapter 4

A Profane Man

Milt Jeffers was born profane. His mother had told him, his father had told him, his teachers had told him what a miserable, profane being he was, and he had always laughed. He ignored his parents as he stole from them and had his way. He laughed at his teachers as they were forced, by his overwhelming evidence of intelligence—he could pass any test they threw at him and argue his position with great skill—to give him all A’s and B’s. By the time Milt Jeffers was thirteen, he knew that he was rotten to the core, and it did not bother him. At age sixteen he was already a successful used car salesman, pushing nearly sixty units a year at the car lot near the high school.

His mother had known from his birth that the son who came into being with such an easy labor, who slid into this world as if charmed, was evil. By the time he was a teenager, his mother had had her fill of Milt’s incorrigible ways. He would not accept guidance in any form and had taken to smoking and drinking at an early age. And for his mother, it was these two vices that came to represent his overall profanity and which she finally seized upon as the main reasons for his condemnation. She hated it when he sat in the living room smoking Camel cigarettes and drinking his dad’s Stroh’s beer. Sat there like he had a right, even though he knew how much she hated it, and maybe hated him, too.

Just before his seventeenth birthday Milt Jeffers’ mother had told him, “I have decided that you will have to move out of this house if you keep smoking and drinking.” They had been alone in the kitchen, she preparing the daily supper for the family and Milt getting ready to leave for his job selling cars. He walked on past her to the back door, started out, then turned back to her and said, “Well, fuck you, then.” And he went on out the door. It was this remembrance of profanity to his mother that he was thinking about when the phone in his office at the union hall rang on this day after Thanksgiving in 1970.

“Asshole. You stole my turkeys.” It was the plant manager.

“You stupid fucker. I told you I needed a job for my brother-in-law. And next week I’ll need one for my cousin. You’re lucky all I did was steal your damn turkeys.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many dumbfuck, hillbilly relatives you got? I thought they all already worked here.”

Milt chuckled. This plant manager he could get along with just fine. All Milt really needed to do was keep the plant running smooth enough not to interrupt the guy’s drinking schedule, and he could help himself to anything he wanted. Not like that last fool who was so ambitious he went by the book on everything. “Be over here in an hour,” John Dunham, the plant manager of GM’s biggest stamping plant, maybe the biggest stamping plant in the world, said to Milt Jeffers and hung up.

Milt’s thoughts turned back to his mother. It had never been anything personal, and he knew she knew that. Gradually she had come to see through his evil, especially with the coming of his three children, the only grandchildren she had. And now, as she became more confused all the time with the artery problem or whatever was making her confused and forgetful, his mother more and more sought solace in the love that Milt’s three beautiful and loving children bestowed plentifully upon her.

Milt had graduated from high school and prospered as a used car salesman at the car lot. But then he got caught jumping titles for the second time, and the boss showed him the door. Milt couldn’t blame him; he might lose his dealer’s license if the dealership ever got caught jumping a title. One of his customers got him a job at the GM plant.

He would have quit the day he hired in if his wife had not been pregnant. About the only thing he had ever done right in his profane, miserable life was take care of his children. So he stayed, going through the mind-numbing ritual of running a stamping press day after day.

It didn’t take him long to recognize that power was just lying around to be usurped, and things were just lying around waiting to be stolen, at the plant. His committeeman got fired three months after Milt was hired, and he ran for the job. The union had been voted in earlier that year, and no one had a real power base built up in that short period of time, so Milt had no trouble getting elected. Being a committeeman in a union was a lot like selling cars. Most people, you just told them what they wanted to hear and everything would be okay. “Yes sir, that transmission is just like new. That old lady never once kicked this baby into passing gear. Listen to it when we leave the stop sign here at the corner. Hear that whine? That’s new gears you hear there, boy. New gears!” And at the shop, “Don’t you worry about your foreman. When I’m done with that stupid motherfucker, he’ll kiss your ass for doing your job!” And sure enough, Milt Jeffers delivered. Foremen dreaded him–Milt Jeffers would fuck them up. He had gotten so many foremen fired through the years that if Milt Jeffers said the sky were pink, a foreman would grin and nod and shuffle his feet all at the same time.  He had served as committeeman, shop committeeman, and for the last three years as shop chairman. He was the top dog, the union equivalent of plant manager, except he had to be elected every three years by the five thousand men in the plant. The union head honcho had to be smarter and better than the plant manager. At age thirty-two, Milt Jeffers was the youngest shop chairman in any General Motors plant.

It was a sunny, unseasonable day in Ohio, the temperature approaching fifty as Milt and Jimmy nudged the Cadillac through the picket line. Jimmy was always with him, a smart guy who played lackey, who had enough smarts to serve his master but never ever consider being master. Jimmy was gopher and diplomat all rolled into one. He could run for pizza and beer or represent his master at the localUnited Waymeeting with equal ease. Born in Vulcan,West Virginia, “just a ways south of Matewan” he used to tell people who wondered where Vulcan was. Never mind that nobody knew where Matewan was either. Jimmy’s claim to fame was that Cotton Top Mounts, the guy who started the Hatfield-McCoy feud, was Jimmy’s fourth cousin on his mother’s side and that his great grandmother’s maiden name was Mounts. Jimmy wasn’t afraid of anything. That was really why Milt Jeffers had chosen him. Jimmy would get to drinking moonshine now and then and didn’t have enough sense to go home and go to sleep. Oh no. He would ask for the baddest motherfucker in the bar. Most times folks let Jimmy have his night to be king and had a good time with it, watching him shout at whole barrooms full of grown men that he was going to kick their sorry asses. But once they had been out at the Roundup, the little hillbilly bar down the road from the plant, and a new guy was there–he said he guessed he was the baddest motherfucker anywhere. Well, Jimmy and he went out to the parking lot, and a big group of guys had already formed. Jimmy gave up nearly a hundred pounds to this guy, a fellow hillbilly come up north trying to find work, and Jimmy said, “Just remember, motherfucker, this ain’t over till one of us is dead.” Then he took his shirt off and pulled out this big damn skinnin’ knife and started dancing around slashing with that thing like a crazy man. That big, old fellow stood there frowning at Jimmy, covering up his innards with his huge hands just in case Jimmy took a swipe at his vitals, for what seemed like a long time but was probably only ten seconds, and then started backing real slow out of the circle. “Fucker’s crazy,” he muttered a few times until he made it to the safety of his car.

A week after that, Jimmy became a skilled tradesman. And after Jimmy had stumbled up and down the press lines with a screw driver and hammer for a full week, Milt pulled him off the line, marched him up to the plant manager’s office, opened the door without knocking, and said, “Jimmy’s coming with me and will be my assistant till I come back and tell you different. He’ll be on the clock twelve hours a day just like me.” That was all it took. Wherever Milt was, Jimmy was there. Whenever Milt was in a meeting, Jimmy was, too. As long as Milt was chairman, Jimmy would never hit another lick. Today Jimmy would be running for pizza and beer for the pickets.

“Boys, I’m proud of you,” Milt Jeffers said as the pickets pressed up against his car. “And Walter Reuther would have been proud of you. I’ll be buying the pizza and beer today to honor Walter’s memory.” The group snickered and grunted at this news. “Be ready to work the weekend,” Milt said and sped off down the ramp. He stopped at the bottom, where the four plant security guards were stationed to keep an eye on the pickets. They didn’t question the chairman for driving on to the plant grounds; the one standing agreement Milt had with the plant manager was that, no matter what, both of them would have access to the plant.  Milt stopped, buzzed the window down, and the young men walked over to see what he wanted. “How was the holiday? Your families all well? You boys get enough turkey to eat?”

“Sure did, Milt. How about you?”

Milt didn’t answer but knitted his brows together in mock concentration and said, “Hadn’t you guys better be gathering up the rest of them turkeys before they start stinking?” And he motioned to the shrubbery along the brick face of the building where here and there could be seen the white plastic butt of a turkey. He pulled away and glanced in the rearview mirror. Already the guards were starting to search the bushes for the leftover turkeys. “Them’s good turkeys back there,” Jimmy said. “Folks down home was all glad to get the turkeys you gave me on Wednesday. They all said to tell you thanks.”

“Glad to help…folks around here got it too easy today, Jimmy,” Milt said as he wheeled the big car into his reserved parking place next to the plant manager’s.

John Dunham got to be a plant manager because his father-in-law was a vice-president for General Motors. And it just so happened that the old man was here for the holidays and sitting with John when Milt and Jimmy walked into the plant manager’s office.

“Jimmy, get the keys for that company Caddy out front and go on and get the pizza and beer.”

“Ah Jeez. You can’t do that,” John said resignedly. “You’re on fucking strike and you want to have that little freak driving around town in a company car?”

Milt laughed. “Ain’t it great? General Motors is a wonderful company to treat its employees so well.”

“No fucking way,” John said, getting mad now.

His father-in-law held up a hand to silence him. “Hell, let him take it. I’ll be responsible.” Then Harold asked, “Where do you keep the booze?” The main reason Harold had come over to the plant with John was to get away from the women and kids and have a drink or two.

John pointed to the cabinet, and the old man quickly produced a bottle of vodka and three glasses. “John tells me you like a snort now and then,” Harold said and started pouring. What the hell, Milt told himself. He could outdrink either of these birds if that’s how they wanted to settle the strike. They tossed the first one down.

“What’s it going to take?” Harold said importantly.

Milt was properly impressed by Harold’s position and sat assessing the man. Finally, Milt laughed. “It’s real simple—pay us for yesterday and today, and we’ll be back to work tomorrow.”

The old man sputtered and choked on his drink. When he had recovered, he snorted, “Are you nuts? Nobody in Detroit will ever buy that.”

“We’re not in Detroit,” Milt said simply.

John poured more drinks. Ahh…the first drink of the day was always the best. He leaned back in his chair, barely listening to the heated conversation.

“You got any ice,” Harold asked his son-in-law.

“Nah, we get it from the cafeteria…but they’re closed.”

“Come on,” Milt hollered and got up. “Let’s run down to the corner and get some.”

“Go ahead,” John said. “I’ve got a little paperwork to get ready…we should be able to get this little disagreement cleared up in short order.”

Harold downed his vodka and followed Milt. As they climbed into his Caddy, Harold was impressed. “Hell, you drive a nicer one than I have right now.” In a few minutes they had pulled into the Roundup. There were a couple dozen cars there, mostly autoworkers waiting their turn for picket duty or having a few beers after their picket shift.

“Ain’t scared of hillbillies, are you?”

Harold scoffed. “Hell, man. I don’t guess they could be any meaner than a crazy Jap atIwo Jima.” Harold had been a Marine Captain when they took the barren pile of rock and wasn’t scared of much of anything except his wife Mabel.

They sat down at the bar and Milt hollered, “Lookee here, boys. We got a GM vice-president here with us. That’s how important we are!”

Several of the guys gathered around, and momentarily, a pint of clear liquid was used to pour drinks for Milt and Harold. “Better have beer chasers with this stuff,” Milt told the girl behind the bar. Harold hadn’t had moonshine for so long that he had forgotten how devastating to the human brain it could be. He downed the shot and poured half a beer after it. It hit him immediately. He relaxed onto the bar stool and felt very good. The world was suddenly a great place. This stupid hillbilly sitting next to him in ruralOhiowas a good guy. Everybody was good people. He found a fellow Marine and they talked animatedly aboutIwo Jimaand other battles. They sat for an hour drinking shots.

“When’s the last time you had a blowjob, Harold?” Milt asked the vice-president of General Motors. It took Harold a minute, but then he fuzzily recalled the convention inLas Vegaswhere he had bought himself one. He just nodded through his developing stupor. A blowjob would be a good thing. His glass was full of the shine again, and when Milt called, “Let’s go,” a few minutes later, Harold drained it.

By the time Harold reached the car, Milt had the back door open. Waiting in the backseat was a woman they had seen earlier in the bar. Harold slid on into the car and the door shut behind him. It didn’t take Margie long to get Harold’s pants down. She was busy when Milt tapped on the window, and she motioned him away..

Milt popped open the door, sighted the instant camera, and clicked. Harold didn’t even notice. Hell, he was getting a blowjob! Milt got two more pictures for insurance.

When they got back to the plant, Harold was slouching lazily against the door in the front seat. Milt had to stop for pizza and beer when Harold saw the food the pickets had. Milt set him on a camp stool and got him a beer and slice of pizza. He got the Polaroid camera out of the glove box and framed Harold and the pickets against the General Motors sign by the highway, with the plant in the background. Harold held up his can of beer when he saw the flash go off, and Milt snapped another.

When they finally made it back to the office, John was irate. They had been gone for nearly two hours, and his wife and mother-in-law were looking for the men. Milt guided Harold into the office and put him in a chair. The shine had really fucked him up, and he leaned against the wall for a few seconds before burping and passing out.

“You rotten son of a bitch,” John said slowly to the shop chairman.

“Hell, I didn’t know he was a drunk, too.” Milt shuffled the Polaroids like playing cards on the conference table.

“What have you got there?” John asked.

“Strike settlement,” Milt answered and slid a couple of the pictures across the table.

John looked in amazement at the pictures. In the first was framed Harold’s head and body with Margie smiling up at the camera from Harold’s lap. The second showed him having a beer with the strikers in front of the plant. John shook his head sadly. “What’ll it take?”

“Holidaypay for Thursday and Friday. Work one hundred per cent overtime this weekend. And the jobs for my relatives…oh, and Margie’s son needs a job.”

“Who’s Margie?” John asked.

Milt flipped over an ace and slapped it onto the table. There was Margie, busy doing what she needed to do to get her son a job at the General Motors plant.

Publisher’s Preface : Those of us who work to bring you this ‘Working Class heroes’ blog recognize that you can’t please “All of the people, all of the time.” With that thought and many others in mind, we present this essay on the “Keystone XL Pipeline” – a contentious subject on its best day. It may not be all of the negative things that its detractors claim it will be, and it will probably not be all of the positive things that its supporters promise. As with most situations and issues, the truth probably lies in the middle. The ground that so few of us actually talk about. Among the facts that are not in dispute is the role that eminent domain will play – the taking of people’s land for the better good; common cause. Whether you agree with her or not, the writer of this piece is passionate, and we wish not to stand in the way of those who stand and speak! Please read her work with an open mind, and if you must disagree, do so civilly. Thanks – Ron

by WCH Contributor and Florida firebrand progressive truth seeker Charlie Lindamood

TransCanada, a Canadian/foreign corporation, is threatening U.S. land owners with eminent domain in order to seize their land for a project called the XL Pipeline.

Republicans held a hearing and pushed through a vote (30-20) allowing legislation to be passed that would strip any related regulatory powers from the President – with the specific intent of enabling the unimpeded passage of  the bill that would grant permission for the building of the Canadian XL Pipeline. The power will be turned over to a “special” committee for passage: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  FERC is a group of 4 or 5 previously appointed individuals who will determine whether the XL tar sands oil pipeline will be built and whether American land owners have rights to protect and deny TransCanada access to.their land.

These American landowners who have paid the US Government the required annual taxes and maintain their land holdings by the laws of the U.S. Constitution, but FERC will determine whether Trans Canada has the right to declare “eminent domain” and allow passage of the tar sands pipeline, which will result in an outflow of  oil sludge to be buried 4 feet below their land, with possible leakage and contamination of their water, the earth’s aquifer, their livestock and their crops.

Unfortunately, as we listen to and watch the hearings, it seems apparent that this legislation,which strips the President of power to issue any decisions or vetoes on this ruling, is a preconceived plan to push this bill through as expeditiously as possible. Here are some of the more disturbing facts that were stated and then put into the Congressional records.

1) Trans Canada has already mailed letters to land owners threatening that if they do not comply or agree to allow Trans Canada’s right to drill and lay pipeline 50 feet wide by 4 feet’deep across the length of their land en route to Texas, they,Trans Canada -which is still a  foreign Corporation- will declare eminent domain and seize their land. If a land owner decides to fight their demands legally, Trans Canada will keep them tied up in court til they are essentially bankrupt, with the result that Trans Canada will win anyway. 

2) When Trans Canada’s President was asked by Representative. Markey if he would guarantee that the tar sands oil transported from Canada through the U.S., to be refined in Texas, would supply the U.S. and not be exported to other countries he answered in the negative.

3) According to Representative Markey, the United States is just the middleman in a multi-national oil deal among Canada, South America, Europe and China. The U.S. is being used as a conduit to transport Canadian Oil. The extraction will take place in Canada, oil will be shipped through the U.S, and will then be exported to other countries tax free. Trans Canada made it clear to Representative Markey in the hearings in December 2011 that the refined oil will be exported from Port Arthur and not kept in the U.S.

4) Port Arthur,Texas is a “Foreign Trade Zone“. Thus Trans Canada will not have to pay the U.S. any taxes on the exported oil.  

5) Democratic Representative Markey of Massachusetts, mentioned previously, introduced an amendment that would not allow the oil to be exported but would insure that it remain in the US for consumption. The amendment was voted down - not passed- by the Republican majority and a few “blue dog” Democrats.

6) OPEC will still control the price of oil. Any expectation that U.S. consumers will pay “less” for oil/gas products, once the pipeline is built, is just hype.  The number of jobs that the Oil Pipeline will create has been greatly exaggerated and will only be temporary, at best. Approximately 2,000 to 4,000 jobs will open for the duration of the construction of the pipeline.

7) Corporations now have the power to lobby politicians to write illegal legislation  that allows a foreign corporation the right to seize land belonging to tax paying, American citizens.This is legislation that allows foreign corporations to jeopardize the safety and purity of United States water table and aquifer, with contamination assured . This legislation allows pumping of  crude poisonous tar sands oil underground -through towns, farmlands and rivers- to a tax free export zone in Port Arthur, Texas where it will be refined and then shipped out of  the USA.  The XL Pipeline is not and never has been intended for USA “energy security”. It is about multi-national oil deals and larger profits.

We must stop this pipeline. Multinational and foreign concerns simply cannot be granted carte blanche to trespass, unbridled and unregulated, on our property and our lives.

This has never been and should never become the American Way. 

“In most of the recent books, articles, and analyses of General Motors, few armchair critics have bothered to write about the company’s attitude toward the rank-and-file workers who build its cars. Fortunately, we now have Bill Pancoast, a front-line autoworker in one of GM’s key factories for many years, to thank for filling that void. In this slim volume, Pancoast packs in accounts of the company’s behavior before, during, and after “wildcat” strikes, the union’s response, and the very human stories of life and death on the line. For those trying to understand why the auto industry is where it is today, Wildcat will provide some of the answers.”

WCH Contributor Patrick Murfin’s writing can be found regularly at the blog Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout

Times are hard and getting harder.  Few among us sitting here have been untouched by the economic collapse that has turned our safe, secure world upside down.  If we have not lost our jobs, had our wages or hours slashed, lost the value of our homes and investments, we have loved ones who have and we live in gnawing dread that we are next.  If soup lines do not stretch around the block and broken men in gray overcoats and battered fedoras do not shuffle forlornly by, it seems only a matter style and time until something very like those old grainy scenes are visited upon us again.

In other times and other circumstances Thomas Paine wrote that “These are the times that try men’s souls.” And Shakespeare lamented the “winter of our discontent.”  They aptly describe our common condition today.

These times challenge our old assumptions about ourselves, our communities, and our place in the world.  We no longer feel we are the captains of our own destiny.  The gulf that divides our old identities as beneficent givers of alms to the less fortunate and the alien recipients of that charity has collapsed.  Suddenly we are not us and them.

To survive—even to thrive—in such a time calls us to turn, quite unexpectedly, to a new way of being, and a new ethic.  It is time for us to consider the unique working class virtue of solidarity.

The Working Class Virtue of Solidarity

We have to start somewhere.  Maybe the best place to start is by asking what solidarity really means.  Like so many other things, it is easier to say what solidarity is not.

Solidarity is not sympathy.  Sympathy is a passive emotion.  It also implies a separation from the object of sympathy and can teeter on pity, which is just sympathy tinged with revulsion. Empathy might be closer to the meaning in that it implies a common understanding of the distress.  But empathy is also passive.  Solidarity demands action.

Solidarity is not charity.  Charity implies a power and privilege differential.  The more powerful and more privileged deign to give to the less fortunate who are expected to respond with appropriate gratitude and humility.  Solidarity is mutual aid among equals.

Solidarity is not altruism.  Altruism is supposedly selfless giving requiring sacrifice but expecting no reward—except perhaps praise for being saint-like.  Solidarity recognizes the commonality of our conditions and expects to by right receive support as well as give it.

Solidarity is not family.  Families—and by extension surrogate families like clans, nations, religions, races and others—are expected to support their members out of blood obligation. Solidarity demands respect for commonality with the other.  Solidarity with the stranger dismantles walls and promotes peace instead of a mad scramble over scarce resources.

Solidarity is not utopian.  Utopians conjure up sweet dreams of the perfect.  Utopians may simply drift on in the opium cloud of that dream. More dangerously, some utopians construct rigid ideologies around their vision which eventually require the ruthless suppression of anything and anyone not in conformity to that ideology.  Solidarity is rooted in the common realities we face together and is interested in addressing the roots of the problems as well as ameliorating the immediate effects.

Solidarity is not all warm and fuzzy.  Warm and fuzzy denies oppression.  Solidarity recognizes that there are those whose own narrow self-interest causes them to exploit, subjugate, and abuse others.  And solidarity demands common action to defend against such depredations and—yes—boldly to ultimately defeat the oppressors.

Solidarity is a recognition of our place in humanity, an ethic, and an active response to our common interests.

The roots of solidarity are ancient. Most early unions had two sources. The first was basically an extension of the old guild system.  It strictly followed craft lines.  But when master craftsmen morphed into capitalists employing journeymen and bound apprentices the employees and bondsmen often united against them.  This was the model of British craft unionism, and, to  a lesser extent, the American craft unions that eventually evolved into the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The word solidarity began to crop up. But it was solidarity within the craft.  Workers of one craft felt no compulsion to support workers of another, even when they might be employed on the same job or in the same industry

The other source was the beneficial societies, brotherhoods and lodges that were created often in support of “the widows and orphans of the brothers and the lame and aged in their need.” Some of these societies were ethnic like the Loyal Order of Hibernians among the Irish. Others were organized within an industry or across a community.  They often aped the popular Masonic lodges with mysteries, rituals, and secret wisdom of their own.  But if workers gathered for mutual support, it was no stretch for them to come together under the auspices—official or unofficial—of these lodges and brotherhoods to confront their employees to address grievances, demand reductions of hours and boosts in pay.

In the dangerous Pennsylvania coal fields, where any dissent was ruthlessly suppressed by employers, Irish miners came together in the Hibernian lodges to create the super secret Molly Maguires who terrorized their bosses with blasting powder and assault until they were finally penetrated and broken up by an Irish Pinkerton detective.

The first truly national American labor union, the Knights of Labor, was just such a fraternal organization complete with its own mysteries and ritual.   But its lodges admitted workers of all industries, skilled and unskilled alike, immigrant and native, and sometimes even including non whites.  Its leaders, including Grand Master Workman Terrance V. Powderly, abhorred strikes and sought to prevent them.  But the members thought otherwise and freely exercised the option.  The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, while not called by the Knights was spread and supported by its lodges.

It was in the Knights, and in the anarchism, socialism and other working class movements developing in Europe, that the modern concept of solidarity was honed and developed.

The Russian Anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin laid out the basic principles in his classic book Mutual Aid:  A Factor in Evolution.  For the first time he argued that commonality of interest and mutual support was a positive trait in evolution both among animals and among humans.  Mutual aid countervailed against “the law of fang and claw,” and the Spenserian corruption of Darwin’s theory into the ruthless “survival of the fittest” then used to excuse exploitation of the working and poor classes.

Karl Marx applied the same idea and based his hope for liberation of the masses on the basis of solidarity of the working class across all artificial divisions.

Internationals—global associations of working class union and political organizations—began to promote solidarity across borders as a way to end wars.  Workers, they argued, should not be “recruited to shoot holes in each other just because they wear different uniforms.

Of course the dream of international solidarity to end war was shattered by the First World War when the labor unions of Europe and the extensive Socialist Parties by in large failed to rise up against the war and sometimes enthusiastically enlisted in patriotic support of their various Fatherlands.

In the aftermath of the dreadful carnage of that war, the dream revived.  But now it was identified with the new Bolshevik regime in Russia.  Communism became the international bugbear of the ruling elites across the globe.  And although the apparent success of the Revolution in Russia appealed to many workers, the eventual realities of Stalinism dimmed their enthusiasm.

Capitalists everywhere furiously attacked every demonstration of working class solidarity as part of the “Red menace.”  In this country it let loose the worst repression in our history, the Red Scare of 1918-20, during which  thousands were deported, labor unions and socialist organizations suppressed, and hundreds jailed—including the entire leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World and the man who had attracted three million votes for President of the United States in 1912, Socialist Eugene V. Debs.

In Europe it was even worse.  Fear of Communists was the door through which the Fascists and Nazis swept to power unleashing their own forms of “White terror.”

Debs may have been the most articulate advocate of solidarity.  He said:
“We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’…Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.”

Since that time we have gone through much, including the Great Depression, war on an unspeakable global scale, unprecedented prosperity, a civil rights revolution, the women’s movement, more war, and now economic emergency again.  All during those years the advancements that have changed world for the good have come through the exercise of solidarity.  Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela, all recognized its power.  Their victories would have been impossible without it.

Conversely, the ills we have suffered have occurred when solidarity failed, when we allowed ourselves to be divided against each other by race, religion, language, age, or sex.  Certainly the beneficiaries of inequality recognize the value of solidarity—and practice it among themselves. The Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko asked with exasperation, “Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?”

Now, to survive and thrive we must turn away from unmitigated individualism without losing respect for the individual.  We must observe true solidarity in our community, nation and the world or we are all doomed to an ugly future. Maybe Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel said it best:

“This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century — solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.”

Likewise one of the greatest success stories of solidarity in action is the non-violent movement for Indian independence led by Mahatma Gandhi, and as the Indian experience; the American movements for women’s rights, Civil Rights, and full inclusion of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender folks in all levels of society; and the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa all attest, solidarity is not just limited to the labor context.

Solidarity is the response of the weak and marginalized to overwhelming power.  Individuals learn that no act of their own can truly change their condition of oppression and exploitation. Those in power have the means, and an overwhelming motive, for ruthlessly slapping down any one who dare pop up in opposition.  But members of oppressed class come to realize one simple truth:  They can’t kill all of us.  Not only that, they discover that together they represent a resource without which the exploiters cannot continue to reap wealth and benefits.  Their power lies in both their number and in the dependence of the powerful on them.

Also, the weak and excluded look for allies.  They recognize others in similar condition and seek to make common cause with them for the benefit of both.

Solidarity relies on group identity and group consciousness.  It does not necessarily negate the individual, but it demands the individual acknowledge a wider loyalty than his or her immediate self-interest.

In the words of an old proverb, solidarity demands simply the commitment of “One for all and all for one!”

So for us to employ that working class virtue today, we must identify who “we” are, identify the forces that oppose our aspirations, and make the commitment to unite in struggle.

A friend recently moved to Evansville, Indiana. He’s been a life-long liberal thinker, but has probably never worked a union job. He’s fairly talented and enterprising and desires to build his own business, having experience in that field already. He has always respected my opinion (being several years my junior) and occasionally seeks out my advice. The move to Indiana was precipitated by family residing there; he was only there a few weeks when he called with a strange request. Could I and would I write about his daughter’s employment situation? Then he went on to explain.

It seems this young single mother is making “good money” on an assembly line making car parts for a foreign car manufacturer. The hook is this; get hired, learn the job, show your ability to produce, and 8 hour days become 10 hour days. Be successful at that and 5 day weeks become 6 day weeks. Produce, produce, produce. Six 10 hour days/week. A single mother with precious little time for her family, making ‘good money’. There’s the rub, they hire these people -desperate for a decent paycheck- who will do or attempt to do anything to achieve it. They push them, take all of the productivity they can from them, and then start creating ways to make it harder to comply. Once they’ve used them up, they toss them aside and get new ones.

Such a terrible system. So far removed from my father’s America; the America of the “Greatest Generation”, those men who went off to war, came home to build a better life. I sat pondering this situation, wandering what, if anything can be done about it. My upbringing and gut instincts have always told me that we should stand up for what is right. As I tried to mull a possible blog post, quite probably a rant, the door opened and my sister-in-law came in. Wonderful lady – my wife is lucky to have a sister who cares about her so much. Her work career however has been radically different than that of the rest of her family; they are largely union people. I’m not saying that she is anti-union, just that she has found herself at an age and time in her life (and in America in the 21st century) where she has ended up working in a local factory that is distinctly anti-union and always has been.

As she and I sat exchanging pleasantries and chit-chat, the discussion turned to kids. Her only daughter is a teacher who probably earns twice what her mother does. My wife and I have two sons who are severely under-employed. I asked my sister-in-law about the staffing situation at her workplace. She promptly told me that they started everybody at $9.50/hr, but that they only hire through an agency that then takes $1/hr from the checks of the “new hires”. She added that this company is having difficulty staffing one of their production lines. It seems that they are short workers for their “night shift”, 7pm to 7am. When I commented that those 12 hours are tough for young people, she told me that they are working these folks 7 days/week! WOW! Having problems getting people to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week ? Lazy, worthless Americans! And just a few years ago, this company ran an ad in the local newspaper that read “If you enjoy working in a non-union environment”. Really!

Round and round in my mind all of these details were going. I had recently written about CAT, Inc., bringing jobs from Canada to Indiana, in a deal that saved CAT about $20/hr. Now, on this day, in a matter of an hour, I had a call about a young single mother in America’s heartland being worked beyond having a life with her children, AND a discussion about a company that is “having trouble” getting employees to work a scant seven 12hr days/week. This day was only getting better. That afternoon, my brother and one of his buddies stopped to visit. These two are both “bootstrap” construction type guys, 50-ish, accustomed to working in a much looser environment than those of which I’ve spoken. During the course of the conversation, one of them said something about not objecting to working “4 10s”. Then it occurred to me.

That is where it all started to get away from us.

Dad had known that when it started and had warned me of it. It all took so long evolving, that I hadn’t really seen it, even though I watched every step of it. Once people showed “THEM” that we were willing to work more than 8hrs/day, the rest was a natural enough progression. After the days became 10hrs, it was just a matter of time until the week reverted back to 5 days, then 6 days, then 10hrs became 12 hrs…. You see where I’m going here ? Yes, we have all watched it happen, seen it all go down. Do you remember the 2003 effort of the Bush administration to do away with overtime pay ? Does Scott Walker’s move make anymore sense to you now ? “THEY” only need keep us divided and envious to keep us poor and willing to do “THEIR” bidding. Union jobs do not “fall out of the sky!” They are made union by the people with courage and strength enough to stand for what is right. This is my upbringing; my passionate belief.

My gravest concern has become that companies -GREEDY CORPORATIONS- have adopted the lock-out as their weapon of choice. Even those who stand, united, and demand fair treatment now find themselves negotiating not with how well the company has done with the good performance of their workers, but rather by “community standards”. In Williamson, NY, the Mott’s Applesauce company demanded concessions from their workers, not because they weren’t making money, but because the people across town didn’t pay that well. To top that off, there is a constant, unending supply of SCAB labor. In my own experience (albeit I didn’t know in 1987 that they were allowed to hire permanent replacements) Dad had told me that we would never get people to stick together. To everyone’s amazement, 93% of us stood firm! It was the community that helped the GREEDY CORPORATION, our own neighbors sold us out, took our jobs. It happens everywhere these days. Even places that have traditionally had “good labor relations” are demanding concessions because they can. They know the playbook. Lock-out the union members and hire their neighbors. Such a shame!

And this is where the idea of not crossing a picket line comes in.

See, if we start building unions again -which we basically have to do in order to reassert our rights as human beings who deserve a 40 hour week and a living, not subsistence wage- we all have to stand together. We cannot say to ourselves or each other, “Oh, I’m getting more or less decent pay, so I don’t care about the people in this picket line.”    We have to see this erosion of our rights as something we ALL have to redress together, something we have to push for and maybe even sacrifice for at times – TOGETHER.  Whatever our differences in politics, race, sex, orientation, – these must cease to matter. Corporations sure don’t care. They simply want to divide us in every way possible so we don’t stand up for and with each other. Our best weapon is simply in standing together, in unionizing so that we speak to any corporation with a united voice through our duly elected union stewards and representatives. And yes, it means going on picket lines. And not crossing those of others.

The more people who unionize and win better wages, hours and rights to be represented by union members of our choice, the more power all unions acquire and the better everyone’s working conditions become. We rebuild the middle class. Once more our job places become democratic, not authoritarian.

And it all starts by not crossing picket lines. And by marching in our own.

You read and you can see what our children are going through at their workplaces. It is time to give them hope for their futures and reclaim a voice in our own.

DON’T CROSS THAT PICKET LINE.  NEVER, EVER CROSS A PICKET LINE!

William Trent Pancoast’s novels include WILDCAT (2010) and CRASHING (1983). His short stories, essays, and editorials have appeared in Fried Chicken and Coffee, Night Train, The Mountain Call, Solidarity magazine, and US News & World Report. Pancoast retired from the auto industry in 2007 after thirty years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. Born in 1949, the author lives in Ontario, Ohio.

Bill is a WCH Contributor who has allowed us to post this, novel in installments. We expect to bring you a chapter a week.

Chapter 2

Jobs

Thomas Greene was the five hundredth man hired at the General Motors Cranston stamping plant. It was fall of 1956, and word had spread fast-down Route 23, through Chillicothe and Waverly and Portsmouth in Ohio, and on down through Kentucky and West Virginia, the manpower providers for the Ohio and Michigan auto industry. 

To Olive Hill and Somerset, Hazard and Pikeville, Flattop and Redbush and Louisa in Kentucky, and over to West Virginia to Fort Gay and Williamson, Welch and Logan, and Matewan and Vulcan, and down along the Big Sandy, and then the Tug River to Bluefield, and all throughout the Cumberland Plateau, where men were used to the harshest of all work, coal-mining, word had spread when the hiring began. Automotive drove the migration, but if you didn’t get on at the car factory, there were steel, tires, appliances, all waiting to be made or built up north.

Thomas was lean and strong and smart, as were most of the men coming north for work. Word traveled fast from relatives already there. He had heard from an aunt in Matewan, who had heard from Crazy Jack. “They’re hiring Monday, fifty men, but you got to be here in line.” A few would show up on Saturday night with blankets and a box lunch fixed by the wife or Mom or Sis or Grandma, and their sober vigil for the opportunity of a lifetime would begin. By late Sunday night, the last slots had been filled. Thomas Greene was 37th in line when the processing began Monday morning. 

The men were herded through the executive parking garage along folding tables with chairs set before them, and they filled out paperwork. On either side of them were the automobiles they would be making, and most of the men had never seen so many beautiful cars in one place. Even the dealerships down home usually only had two or three new models on hand. There was a black Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and a new ’57 Chevy convertible, bright red with a white top, an Oldsmobile with the Rocket V-8, a classic Roadmaster Buick, and a big, blue Pontiac Bonneville with the new 347 cubic inch engine. 

Not a man there failed to take a few moments off the task at hand to look at one of those babies and imagine himself behind the wheel with his wife or girl, prompting the guy in charge to bellow every few minutes, “Keep your eyes on the paperwork, boys, not on the cars.”

The guys that couldn’t read and write very well were helped along by the folks in the white shirts, and Thomas thought that was a mighty fine thing—not penalizing a fellow because he couldn’t read. He was further encouraged by the lieutenant at the end who, after glancing over page one of Thomas’s application, said, “Army Infantry, hey? Welcome aboard. That was some rough going in the Ardennes.” The lieutenant gave a relaxed salute as he linked Thomas’s unit to that part of the action in 1944. The nation was not so far away from WWII and the victory that one’s service record was not an immediate source of respect.

“Yes sir. But we got her done.” A few minutes later, Thomas was thinking what a fine and friendly place this was going to be to work, when his name was shouted out. Oh, no. He turned to the reject table where several other men had already gone and been shown the way out. “Yes, sir. No, sir. 1941. Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant came over to the table. “What we got, Ed?”

Ed had overheard the earlier conversation between the two vets and said, “Well, Lieutenant, seems this fellow’s been in some trouble,” and he shrugged towards Thomas.

“Sir…Lieutenant….”

The lieutenant took the application and glanced over it again. 

“Who started it?”

“They did. Donny, he was the sheriff’s son, he said something rude to my girl.”

“What’d he say?”

“He hollered, ‘Fuck her. I did.’”

“It’s not a felony,” the lieutenant said.

Thomas Greene got the job. After a few minutes of safety training, Thomas’s group of ten was led out to the factory. The place was like a thunderous cave, with welding smoke, oil mist, and concrete dust as thick as fog in the air. Sirens from the cranes wailed away, motion everywhere as men not only made the car parts, but finished the plant construction. Thomas Greene had never seen a picture of insanity, but if there was one, he was sure he was looking at it.

Sheriff Thomas Greene put these memories from his mind as he pulled to a skidding stop at the main gate in front of the GM plant. For a few moments, he just sat and stared at the mess on the ramp. Big Bill came limping over as Thomas got out of the cruiser. “Now what?” the sheriff asked.

“Damndest thing you’d ever see in your life. These assholes stole our turkeys, and then attacked us with them.”

Thomas looked down the ramp towards the plant—there were turkeys everywhere, some lying in little piles along the edges, others by themselves in the center, and at the bottom, a huge sloppy pile of frozen turkeys. A security guard about a third of the way down, on turkey cleanup detail, angrily kicked a pile of the hard birds and recoiled, swearing, in pain. 

“Getting hard to find good help,” the sheriff chortled as they watched the guard hopping around. 

Big Bill shouted into his megaphone, “Gary! You damn fool! Just pick the bastards up.” And at that, a half dozen of the other guards hooted and hollered at the hapless Gary.

The union guys were long gone, back to the safety of the union hall.

“Anybody get hurt?”

“We have a couple of guys at the hospital for x-rays, and I’ll probably be there later…you know how GM is about documenting everything.”

By now several other cruisers had arrived–one from the city, a state patrol car, and another sheriff’s department cruiser, and the other lawmen were listening in. The city cop was actually the Chief of Police himself since dealing with GM was always tough; the company wanted to control the police reports, always trying to make the union look as bad as possible.

The four cops moved off to the side and huddled together. Thomas and the police chief had sons playing together on the city football team, and they talked about their chances in the district playoffs, the farthest the local team had ever advanced—two more wins and they would be state champs. The state patrolman got a call on his radio and went over to his cruiser. Ten seconds later he had his lights and siren activated and gave his comrades the thumbs up as he sped off. They had an agreement for calls here at the plant—anything involving confrontation, the company always called it “violence,” belonged to the sheriff’s department. 

Beer in the parking lot, thefts, chickenshit stuff belonged to the city police, and the state patrol always showed up as a courtesy. There had never yet been any real violence at the plant, but you never knew as a cop when that extra cruiser would make the difference.

“What’s the boss going to want here, Bill?” the sheriff asked.

“You never take this shit serious, Tom. Somebody’s going to get killed out here sooner or later.”

“Well,” Thomas Greene started off, trying to hide his laughter, but couldn’t help himself and waved his arm at the ramp and the frozen turkeys. “What the fuck you want, Bill? Somebody calls in a disturbance and I get out here and find out you just got your asses kicked with frozen turkeys. It’s always some goofy shit like this. You can’t beat these guys.”

Big Bill spat through his front teeth at a piece of gravel and hit it, then picked out another. “I ain’t in charge here,” he said looking back to Thomas. “It only looks like I am.”

“Guess I never thought about it that way. You do seem to get stuck with more than your share of the mess.”

Big Bill was thinking, as he watched the sheriff drive away, that he always got stuck with the shit. How come he always got the short end of things?

William Trent Pancoast

PUBLISHER’S PREFACE: We first met Ron Horvath in the ivy towers of Academia back in the Dark Ages. He had already served his military duty, including a tour in Viet Nam. He was an artist. Also, he was a free spirit, adventurer, philosopher with a tremendous grasp of history and literature. He has spent the last 30+ years living on the Maine coast, working for a tool company that manufactures hand tools for the craftsman/artisan. He has traded his painting for creating the finest handsaws known to man; each of which he has accomplished with conviction and commitment. He has been an out-spoken, out-numbered, liberal Progressive voice whose writings have appeared in many Maine and New England papers and such. We asked him specifically to write this piece on public education – a rarity for WCH, since we don’t often give assignments – and he was happy to oblige. Won’t you please read, enjoy, share and consider the points in this fine piece? Thank you!
It is interesting to note that Harvard College was founded within seven years of the birth of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. So it was that in a country still strange, still mostly wilderness, still without most of the comforts that even the early seventeenth century could provide in many of the civilized countries of Europe, and where producing enough food to feed a small number of immigrants was problematic to a degree that would exclude most intellectual pursuits, the very idea of education nevertheless held a place of priority among a struggling and isolated people. I would like to believe that it still does.

Once this country got off the ground, so to speak, it became apparent to the world that Americans had aspirations. The first Yankee seamen, the first American crews to land on European shores amazed the denizens of the “old world” by their rate of literacy, and free public education was among the first demands made by nascent labor organizations in our earliest days. Workers knew then that knowledge was the key to that upward mobility which was the promise of this new, open and supposedly egalitarian society. It was the first step toward what would become the “American Dream.”

That dream is now in danger. The Republican Party, riding on a surge of right wing fanaticism, is attacking public education just as it is attacking any “public” institution as being the antithesis of their demand for a society based on the “free” market, privatization, and capitalist principles. Public education is seen as another dreaded example of invasive government, of social engineering, of the inculcation of “liberal” views into the minds of their children, in other words the threat of an open society to the security of closed minds.

Charter schools, one of the new innovations in education, have become a favorite stealth program among Republicans for destroying public education. Charter schools were the inspiration of Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to 1997, who, in 1988, had the idea that a group of public school teachers would ask their colleagues for permission to create a small school that would focus on the needs of dropouts and problem students. Shanker became disillusioned with the idea when he realized that business organizations saw it as a profit making opportunity and were pushing an agenda of school privatization.

Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, and author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” says that the promise of charter schools has not been fulfilled.

“The only major national evaluation of charter schools was carried out by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond and funded by pro-charter foundations. Her group found that compared to regular public schools, 17% of charters got higher test scores, 46% had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37% were significantly worse…”

Even this mediocre success is easily explained by Ravitch as a process of exclusion. “The students who are hardest to educate are left to regular public schools, which makes comparisons between the two sectors unfair. The higher graduation rate posted by charters often reflects the fact that they are able to “counsel out” the lowest performing students… Those who survive do well, but this is not a model for public education, which must educate all children… They also fail to recognize that the best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers.” In other words charter schools solve the problem of poverty in the old, time proven fashion of the political right. They ignore it.

Ravitch impales the recent “documentary” film that glorifies charter schools, “Waiting for Superman,” and its creator, Davis Guggenheim.

“The propagandistic nature of Waiting for “Superman” is revealed by Guggenheim’s complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools. Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools? Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000–$400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students?”

In the midst of this controversy we get Republican candidates who, like Rick Santorum,denigrate public education in favor of home schooling. And yet we have to ask ourselves how many working families could follow Mr. Santorum’s advice? How many families where both parents must work to support themselves and their families could afford to cut their income in half or more while one parent stayed at home and educated their children? How many are equipped, or trained, to do so?

I fear that a religious ideologue like Santorum is more concerned with indoctrination. Mr. Santorum, on the other hand, fears the introduction of any teaching that will conflict with the rigid belief system that he feels is his privilege with which to indoctrinate his children. He fears any opposing knowledge. Science and objectivity have no place in his ideology. He fears to compete against other beliefs. Indeed he fears ideas themselves. He fears the imagination. He is terrified by possibility. He is horrified that science may actually insert some semblance of and potential for intellectual differentiation into the calcified mindset that he demands his children carry with them all their lives. He fears that, once exposed to public education, they may actually accept the beliefs and principles of others as having legitimacy in the “market place of ideas.” Indeed, he fears openness itself, and sees public education as one of the pillars of an open society.

And it is an open society that the conservative right fears most of all. If the Republicans have their way public education will die a slow, miserable death, starved of funds and ignored by government. It will return society to the days of segregation where the poor, the minorities, the disabled, the undesirables will be weeded out of “good” schools and cast off into holding facilities -for lack of a better term- where they will be prepared to serve as the lowest common denominators in a corporate controlled system of wage slavery. Indeed it is the egalitarianism of American public schools -the leveling effect- that truly rankles the right wing. People are not born equal in their ideology and should not be encouraged to think of themselves as “deserving” equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work, or any chance to climb the ladder of success to levels where they obviously don’t belong. No one, in the conservative mind deserves anything, unless of course, your parents and grandparents earned it for you.

But even more offensive to Republicans is the idea of government setting the terms of education to cancel out regional prejudice and ignorance. In their minds the south should be allowed to re-write history, to abolish any mention of slavery or Jim Crow laws, to ignore the Civil rights movement and describe the Civil War as the “war of northern aggression.” State control over education would mean the same indoctrination that Mr. Santorum fears, except that it would be the indoctrination of programmed ignorance, of creationism over evolution. Local control with no government oversight could mean schools created by and for the Klu Klux Klan, white supremacists, skinheads, or any religious cult anxious to turn their children into reproductions of themselves with no outside influence to spoil the brew. How many children in this country would be hamstrung in any hopes for a meaningful future by being spoon fed whatever favored myth or prejudice their parents or local official desires. One has only to look at the worst and most primitive places in the middle east where students are taught the Koran and little else,  guaranteeing their future fanaticism to Islam and a life of poverty, brutality and deprivation, for them and the generation that follows. Indeed, any school or educational system based on any fundamentalist beliefs –religious or otherwise- would produce the same results. Why would we permit that here?

One has to wonder if Santorum’s attacks on public education aren’t just part and parcel of the Republicans’ class war against the poor, the working, and the middle classes. The formula is straightforward. Attack unions to keep the working classes divided. Attack wage laws to keep them poor. Attack labor laws to keep them weak. Attack voting rights to keep them impotent. Attack women’s rights to keep them servile and constantly producing new recruits for the military and drones for the work force. And attack education to keep them all too stupid to do anything about it.

Destroying formal institutionalized education for average Americans would go a long way toward destroying the upward mobility for which the American life style was once famous. It would result in the re-creation of a permanent underclass mired in ignorance, politically impotent and malleable to the requirements of the corporate, capitalist state.

The other result would be a permanent over class. This is the real goal of the corporate elite, to fix their own position in the political firmament, at the top of the social and economic structure, to become a new aristocracy with the political power to control art, science, culture and thought, to define reality according to their own dictates and enforce that reality for the masses. With the pseudo-Christian right at their side how long would it be before Mr. Santorum’s kind would be proclaiming rule by divine right for the capitalist class. “God helps those who help themselves” has become scripture to conservatism even though it is nowhere to be found in the Bible.

Knowledge is power and by inhibiting education conservatives hope to disempower the working and middle classes. Democracy is the rule of the people, after all, and Republicanism is the rule of the “right” people. By limiting education those who think of themselves as the right people hope to limit political power to themselves.

Ron Horvath
Maine