More Classwork at UMass

Posted on July 14, 2017 by John Oliver Mason

In a couple of days, I shall return to the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst for more classwork at their labor Center, where we take such classes as Labor Law, Labor History, Labor and the Economy, Labor Research, Immigration, and Contract Negotiation. This is all accredited, graduate-level work leading to a Master’s degree. I have always believed in education as a form of empowerment; if a person knows the real history and facts, that person cannot be so easily manipulated. It also carries a responsibility-if you know something touted in the media or in politics is a lie, you MUST speak out against it.

If you would like to learn more about this program, contact UMass at http://www.umass.edu/lrrc/.

The Mason Missile, July 5, 2017

Posted on July 5, 2017 by John Oliver Mason

Greetings!
I’m approaching my sixth decade, and I feel great. I’m carrying on with my classwork at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in Labor Studies, and I will pass on what I have learned to other working and low-income people.

This has been the 241st anniversary of the founding of the nation-or is it? In June of 1776, the Continental Congress, meeting in what is now Independence Hall in Philadelphia (yay!), listened as Richard Henry Lee, delegate of Virginia, read his resolution “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”

That resolution put into words the reality of what went on at the time; the Continental Congress already authorized the Continental Army under George Washington, along with a postal system-the kinds of things governments do. In January 1776, Thomas Paine-a person that needs more mention in our nation’s history books-published the small book Common Sense, which also put into words the movement towards independence by the colonies. There were however still members of the Congress who hoped for some form of reconciliation with Britain, fearing catastrophe from an all-out war.

(Revolutions are not ONE spectacular event that makes for a great movie; a revolution is a series of events challenging the legitimacy and the power of the old regime, and eventually a political body forms to give it focus and a system of directing the revolution, be it the Continental congress of the United States, or the Bolshevik party of the Russian revolution.)

A “Committee of Five” was formed by the Congress to draft a formal resolution as to the reasons for declaring independence. In that committee were John Adams of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Robert Livingston of New York; Jefferson, being known as a polemicist for the colonies’ cause, had the job of writing up the draft of the Declaration, with some changes recommended by Adams and Franklin.

On July 2, the Congress read and began debate on the Declaration, along with revisions and editing; finally, on July 4, 1776, the congress formally adopted the Declaration. (There was much political wrangling over the Declaration, this being a political event worked on by politicians; but that does not make it any less an important document.)

What do we have to be proud of this holiday? Not our “President,” a “man” consumed by his ego and ignorance, a schoolyard in the most powerful office on the planet, a man who uses his office to line his pockets in his real-estate holdings, a man who insults women and uses them as sex toys (including HIS OWN DAUGHTERS), a man who hints at violence in his rallies and in his Twitter tweets-

BUT, you say, all of this is a distraction, we have to focus on the substantive issues of the day, the terrible stuff his administration does-like pushing the “health care” bill that not only seeks to destroy Obama’s legacy, trump’s reopening of the digging of the Keystone XL pipeline and of the Dakota Access pipeline-environmental catastrophes waiting to happen-weakening environmental regulations on coal mining, and banning people from majority-Muslim countries (that is, those he has no business dealing with).

I agree, we MUST be on top of trump and his minions, and the policies they implement. BUT, let’s not be either-or here-EITHER focus on his bizarre behavior OR his policies. It’s these silly antics that show us the kind of man he is, how he views the world, how he would use the office of the President of the United States to carry out what he would deem to be “Correct”-but correct for WHOM, his family, his bottom line, or his country?

IF he is pulling all these silly stunts to distract public attention from his policies, could he NOT have found a more dignified way to do it? Or is dignity something he doesn’t understand? How does it look like, to have our commander-in-chief acting like a damn fool to implement policy?

Hopefully the trump experience ends the idea of having a “businessman” put in elected office to run the office, and the country, in a “businesslike” manner. A corporation is an organization formed solely to make a profit for those invested in it; a government is an organization formed to administrate the needs of society, answerable (hopefully) to the general public.

And what kind of business model does trump have? He purchased real estate in New York and Atlantic City, promising that everything he touches is grand and spectacular, and he is worth more money that God; and, when he went bankrupt, instead of being monitored and harassed like any of US who would be in debt, finds a way to cut a deal to satisfy the banks he owes money to, along with refusing to pay contractors who did work on his buildings. The bankruptcy laws of this country are twisted to the benefit of the rich deadbeats, and we little fish are at their mercy.

Still-I am pleased that the REAL patriots are stepping up, not intimidated by the trump regime, using both the internet and good ol’ shoe leather to let the members of Congress who precisely they are to represent-in town halls, in public demonstrations, in visiting Congress-members’ offices-when they’re not hiding from their constituents’ ire.

And what are we to make of trump’s supporters? The story goes in the commercial media is that trump’s voters are working-class people who are afraid of losing their jobs, or have lost their jobs, and trump is giving them some hope, however false. Another story is that trump’s voters are the same balls-out racists and haters who could not stomach an African-American man as President, and the traditional racial order is again attacked. Could BOTH be true?

The bottom line-BOTH parties have failed the American people. The Republican party has, since the Jimmy Carter administration, been a home of religiously based haters, fearful of the advancement of LGBT people, of honest sex education in schools, of the challenge to traditional gender roles and to what is a “man” and a “woman” in our culture, hoping that their attaining state power would restore “traditional family values;” and also, since the Richard Nixon campaign of 1968, a haven to conscious or sub-conscious racists fearful of the advancement of races they have been traditionally taught to consider less that human, fearful that THEY themselves would be in a subordinate position, and associating certain races to such social maladies as crime and drugs.

The Democratic party? Since the New Deal and the Great Society, the Democratic party has had the aura of carrying out needed social legislation and advancement of traditionally put-down people: workers and unemployed in the 1930s, African-Americans and other minorities in the 1960s. But the Democratic party sought to attain control of these groups and their activities, so that they would not go “too far” against the some political system that benefits BOTH parties, while adopting the proposals of the protest movements.

Now, the Democratic party is once again just as decadent as the Republican party. After the Mondale loss of 1984, “moderate” elements of the party sought to remove from power the so-called “special interest groups,’ a code word for unions, minorities, etc., forming under the banner of the Democratic Leadership Council, at one time led by Bill Clinton. And the same groups, labor, minorities, etc., are told they have NO choice but to still stick with the party, since the Republicans would be FAR worse (setting the bar pretty damn low).

To both parties, the American voter is ignorant, bigoted, and swayed by tough talk against some perceived enemy that really doesn’t pose a threat. Trump, just as much a product of the social-economic elite, thinks the same way about the same people who voted for him, picking up the “birther” movement and cheering on any assaults his followers make on protestors, calling for brute force at home and abroad, and he tries to connect with them-as does every other aristocrat seeking working-class votes-by acting like “I’m just as ignorant as you are” (and indeed, they’re not all that wonderful, in spite of their wealth).

This is the task of REAL American patriots, to make our stand against trump and his minions, but raise American to a higher self, to make it great for all its people; and WW the people, the working and low income people of America, are the TRUE loyal opposition, and WE are the ones who can and will carry this work out.

Bye!

Mid-Atlantic States Labor

Posted on May 5, 2017 by John Oliver Mason

Mid-Atlantic States Labor

Source: Mid-Atlantic States Labor

An article I wrote about the May Day celebration May 1 is now available on the web site Mid-Atlantic States Labor.

The Mason Missile, October 23, 2016

Posted on October 23, 2016 by John Oliver Mason

Greetings!

You simply MUST get out and vote this November 8; the stakes have never been higher for this country for a long time. Donald Trump is simply unfit to be President of the United States. His calling to build a wall against Mexico, characterizing all Mexicans as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers; his call for a ban on Muslims entering this country; his contempt for women in any capacity but subordinate to him; his associating with the most infamous racists like David Duke, and aligning with the racist “alt-right” movement; his encouraging assaults on protestors in his rallies; his willful ignorance about foreign affairs and the launch system for nuclear missiles; his refusal to say he would abide by the election results, win or lose-all these indicate the kind of President he would be, a dictator.

A myth in our politics says that “If we give the running of our government over to businessmen, they’ll run it as a business, efficiently and cost-effective.” Well, let’s see how businesslike Trump has been-Trump steaks, Trump vodka, Trump Shuttle airlines, trump magazine, Trump World magazine-all failed business ventures. Trump University-charged with fraud. His casinos and hotels-bankrupt. He has been able to negotiate his way out of trouble, since the bankruptcy laws are so weighed in favor of corporate types like him; but does he think that Putin, Kim Jong Un, or the Ayatollahs of Iran would cut him any breaks, give him any favors?

And Hillary-there is no other choice but to vote for her. Hillary Clinton DOES have political and governmental experience, albeit too much playing safe on the side of corporations. I fear that, IF we the people don’t constantly monitor the Clinton administration 2.0, it would be just like Bill’s regime, too much in favor of the corporations and shying away from those nasty unions, signing such trade deals as NAFTA in Bill’s time, and TPP, which lies dormant in Congress like a disease.

I believe a collapse, or at least a severe alteration is the “two party system,” is on the way; the most successful insurgencies in this election, in each of the parties, have come from people from outside the major parties-Bernie Sanders in the Democratic party, Donald Trump in the Republican-representing the aspirations of each party’s base.

But look at the differences between each party’s base! Bernie Sanders’ who wears the title “Democratic Socialist” with pride, spoke out against the corporate corruption of our democracy with their campaign “contributions,” and has mobilized a new generation of young activists, who can run for officer lower down the ticket-Senator, Governor, US Representative, state legislators, municipal council-members, township supervisors; those lower-tier offices, while they don’t usually generate the press coverage that a presidential run would have, would be the offices that have the most direct impact on people’s lives. This new generation does not fear the word “socialism,” like back in the Cold War era, and they don’t share the idea that something is no good if it doesn’t increase the profits of hedge-fund managers.

As for Trump, he has reaped what the Republican party has sown-coded appeals to racial animosity formed the staple of republican campaigns, such as the Goldwater campaign of 1964, to the “law and order” and the Southern Strategy of the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972, the Reagans campaign of 1980, where, in Mississippi, near where three young Civil rights activists were killed by the Klan, he proclaimed, “I believe in States Rights,” the slogan for the effort to suppress the Civil rights movement, and to preserve the slavery system before the Civil War. Plus, we can’t forget how that genteel country-clubman George HW Bush was not above allowing his manager Lee Atwater to bring out the Willy Horton ads, with the fear of Black men being released from prison to rape and kill white people.

A part of the phenomenon of working-class people voting for obvious plutocrats is fear-the fear of losing their jobs and their source of income to pay bills and provide for their families; not at all a small thing. Also, people are socialized to go to the same place and the same time and leave at the same time for work-it becomes an ingrained habit, and the worksite becomes like a cult, where the devotees depend on the Leader.

Commentary has mentioned how these tactics of fear around race, and how racial prejudice among working-class white people is effective in bringing out the votes for Republicans, has been SO effective; but think about it-what has this meant for working people of all races and demographics? How have they benefited, besides a false sense of security? These same politicians who worry so much about the safety of the public give tax breaks to corporations and allow them to export jobs to nations with poor human rights records, to utilize their impoverished workers who are beaten down when they even think of organizing into unions. Sooner or later, the tactic of race-baiting stops working, and workers know who their real allies and enemies are.

I take this time to talk up the Labor Studies program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where I am studying now. It is a valuable program, providing education for union activists and officials in Labor Law, Comparative Labor Movements, Labor History, Labor and the Media, among other topics. Now, following good capitalist logic, the administration of the university plans to eliminate the program because it is not “profitable”. (Does a thing HAVE to make someone else richer to be of any use to society?) I am one of several students taking part in a movement to preserve the program, and we are joined by labor bodies in the nation. To join the movement, please look up http://savethelaborcenter.weebly.com/.

And AGAIN, get out there and VOTE like your nation depends on it, because it does. Bye!

The IWW at 110

Posted on June 24, 2015 by John Oliver Mason

I am currently reading volume four of Philip Foner’s History of the Labor Movement in the United States, on the history of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the “Wobblies,” which was, in the period before the US’s entry into the First World War, the most colorful and radical labor movement in this nation’s history-and this June is the 110th anniversary of the IWW.

In June 24, 1905, a convention of the nation’s leading radical labor activists gathered in Brand’s Hall in Chicago to organize a labor movement that would be an alternative to the conservative craft-based union organizing of the American Federation of labor (AFL). Under Samuel Gompers, the AFL focused on organizing according to craft, which meant that several unions would be in the same factory, with differing contracts that would expire in different times, and if one union went out on strike the other unions in the factory would remain on the job, thus weakening the workers’ bargaining power. These craft unions concentrated on white, native-born workers, neglecting the Black, female, and immigrant workers that would be used in the mass-produced manufacturing jobs that required little skill, thus making the craft unions and their specialized members irrelevant.

Also, Gompers, apparently trying to make his labor movement socially acceptable to the corporate titans dominating the economy and therefore the country, pretended that the goals and aspirations of both labor and management were one and the same, and there was no real class conflict.

Assembling for such an alternative to the conservative craft unionism of the AFL were such leading radicals as Mary Harris “Mother” jones, the legendary organizer of mine workers; Eugene V. Debs, organizer of the American Railway Union, and perennial candidate for President under the Socialist Party of America; Daniel De Leon, Socialist theorist and leader of the Socialist Labor party; and William D. “Big Bill” Haywood, legendary organizer of mine workers and Secretary-Treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners, who presided over the convention.

Haywood began the convention, “Fellow workers, this is the Continental Congress of the working-class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working-class from the slave bondage of capitalism. The aims and objectives of the organization shall be to put the working-class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters.”

This was the long-term goal of the IWW, the organization that came out of this convention-organize the workers according to their industry, without regard to race, nationality, or gender; then, when the workers are organized, they would go out in a great general strike, and collapse the capitalist system and have a society run by the workers through their unions, the idea called Anarcho-Syndicalism, of which the IWW was the greatest exponent in the United States, scorning the AFL’s belief in trying to negotiate with the coroprate moguls of the era and in political campaigning.

The depth of the IWW’s militancy is found in the Preamble of the IWW Constitution: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.

The history of the IWW is filled with dedicated activism towards organizing unskilled workers, immigrants, African-Americans workers, and female workers-workers which the old AFL would not bother with. The IWW fought to organize workers in the lowest-paid and oppressed occupations of that time, like lumber workers and agricultural workers, who were recruited by employment agencies, or “sharks,” who for a fee would send migrant workers to lumber camps or farms which had poor toilet facilities, poor food, and bunkhouses filled with lice.

The IWW made its name with the “free speech fights” in the western lumber and agricultural cities, where their activists got on soapboxes to speak to workers and citizens, and as soon as they started with “Fellow workers and friends,” they were grabbed by police and enraged “respectable” citizens-who formed vigilante gangs or served as “special police”- and were hauled to local jails, where the IWW activists continued their protests, which included singing spirited protest songs, and the fire department would turn the fire hoses on them. At that, the IWW office sent the word out to all their available members to go to these cities, attempt to speak on the street corners, get arrested, and continue the protest in jail, causing a burden for the jails and the courts. These workers, shunned by the AFL and scorned by respectable people, felt pride in themselves, uniting in a great revolutionary cause.

Part of the IWW’s legacy, along with their demonstrations and strikes, are the songs they sang, sung to the tunes of the popular songs of the day, and of the religious hymns played by the Salvation Army bands, paid by the capitalists to drown out the IWW street speakers. Joe Hill, one of the IWW’s greatest activists, was also its greatest songwriter, writing such great protest songs for the IWW as “Rebel Girl” (in honor of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, on of their most famous activists), “The Preacher and The Slave” (to the tune of “In The Sweet By and By”), and “Casey Jones The Union Scab.” Charged in Utah with the murder of a grocer over the man’s wife, Hill was the focus of a worldwide campaign to exonerate him, the charges being an excuse to remove a prominant agitator. HIll was executed by a firing squad in November 2015; before his death, HIll wrote to Bill Haywood, “Goodby, Bill, I die like a true rebel. Don’t waste time mourning, organize.” (The story was that Hill himself ordered “Fire!” to the firing squad, indeed dying like a true rebel.)

Another great IWW martyr was Frank LIttle, a veteran of the Free Speech Fights in the west. Little was active in organizing lumberjacks, oil field workers, fruit pickers, and metal miners, once arrested in Spokane for reading the Declaration of Independence. A member of the IWW’s General Executive Board, Little vocally opposed the United States’ entry in to the First World War, and he was also active in organizing copper miners in Butte Montana, and was beaten and lynched on August 1917, with notes pinned to his clothes warning other workers; Pinkerton detectives and possibly city police were involved in Little’s murder.

Among the greatest triumphs of the IWW was the great strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. Thousands of workers- underpaid, living in deplorable slums, despised for coming from Eastern European countries and called “wops,” “polacks,” “hunkies,” and other ethnic slurs-went on strike over pay cuts-no small matter for underpaid workers-and other issues, effectively shutting down the textile mills of the city. The IWW sent in their finest organizers-Bill Haywood, Joe Ettor, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (the legendary “rebel girl”)-to guide this strike comprised of 22,000 unskilled workers, comprised of dozens of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups.

The main strength of the IWW was its ability for spectacular protests and demonstrations, spirited songs, and dedicated activists willing to risk their lives to help workers attain a better future; but its main weakness was its inability to sustain its victories, to form a cohesive structure to run a union and handle its health and welfare system and enforce contracts with employers. The IWW, ideologically opposed to dealing with the state and considering the government, with its police, courts, and military an enforcer for the corporate masters-which it was-counted on the solidarity of workers, rather than formal contracts, to fight off oppression from the capitalist of that day. (Solidarity among workers is wonderful, but having friends in political office certainly helps.)

When the United States entered the First World War, corporations and the government found the excuse to repress the IWW and other radical movements, especially after the Russian Revolution; the fear and possibility of social uheaval in the United States were real among corporate and governmental elites. Although Haywood, then IWW Secretary-Treasurer, and most of the IWW leadership wanted to maintain a low profile about the war, federal, state, and local law enforcement, along with company detectives and freelance vigilanties (including the re-forming Ku Klux Klan) sought to destroy the IWW, with federal agents (including future FBI director J. Edgar Hoover) raiding IWW halls, seizing the union’s records and publications, and vigilanties assaulting and killing IWW members.

One such case was the Centralia (Washington) Massacre, when in 1919 members of the newly-formed American Legion raided the IWW hall and the Wobbies inside shot at the raiders in self-defense; one fo the IWW members, Wesley Everest, was a lumberjack and veteran of the First World War, and he was oooverpowered by the mob, hauled to the local jail, was turned over to a lynch mob, and was hanged and shot.

During the First World War, over a hundred of the IWW’s leading officials and activists, including Bill Haywood, were put on trial in Chicago, for 10,000 for each of the defendants. After a long show trial worthy of the old Soviet Union, Haywood and the other IWW defendants were convicted of “conspiracy” and sentenced to 20 years in prison each. Many of them were sent to the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, along with other radicals and dissenters such as Mennonite pacifists.

With the founding of the Soviet Union and the forming of the Communist Party USA, several prominent Wobblies, like Haywood, took up the offer to defect to the new state, in hopes of helping to build the first state of, by, and for the workers. The fledgling Communist party promised to pay the bail money for Haywood and the other defectors, but he party reneged on the deal. After a campaign for amnesty by the IWW’s supporters, Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin College released the imprisoned Wobblies; but the union was divided by whether or not they should accept clemency and stay pure in their revolutionary intent, and whether or not to ally with the Communist Party.

The IWW is now a small radical faction; but its legacy of demonstrations, songs, and militancy lives on.

JLC Labor Seder

Posted on April 12, 2015 by John Oliver Mason

Just about every Jewish movement you can think of has its own variation of the Pesach Seder, which updates for modern times while being loyal to the Pesach message of the liberation of the Jews from “Mitzraim,” the Hebrew name for Egypt. (“Mitzraim” literally means “the narrow place,” the place of few opportunities and no where to move, the place of limitations.)

On Thursday, April 9, I went to the Labor Seder of the Philadelphia chapter of the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), an organization of Jewish trade unionists, organized in the 1930s to combat the rise of Fascism. This took place in the Calvary Center for Culture and Community, 48th and Baltimore Avenue. They had the traditional Seder place with the Maror, the Haroset, the Karpas, lamb bone, the salt water, and the Matzah, and the traditional blessings were said. But contemporary issues were addressed in the Seder, like the poor relations between law enforcement and minority communities, and police shooting unarmed African-American men.

The Haggadah also dealt with labor struggles earlier in American history, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911, the organizing of farm workers, and the problems on inequality in this wealthy nation. “Mitzraim” is not something in the past, there are still places and problems with people stuck in narrow, limited situations; and there will always be people fighting to get out of them.