Labor Has Always Had to Fight

It amazes me how cyclical is history. We tend to think that what we are experiencing at any given time as unique, but nothing, as “The Preacher” in the Book of Ecclesiastes says, is “new under the sun.”

I am speaking of the horrendous condition of our economy, the attack on labor, which includes a reluctance to pay working people their just due.

The year was 1893; the event was the Chicago World’s Fair. The fair was touted as the most amazing event of its kind, ever, outdoing the Paris Exposition, but the battle between labor and corporations was alive and well. The economy was horrid; banks were closing all over the country and the unemployment rate was embarrassingly high, but at the site of the World’s Fair, under construction, there were plenty of jobs.

The movers and shakers of the project wanted to get as much as they could for as little money as possible. That is normal. But labor protested. Because of the short time the project had to be completed, many workers were needed, and they were needed to work for long hours. People came to Chicago, and came from within Chicago, to find work and they got it.

Still, the unemployment rate nationally was abysmal, and activists warned that if Congress didn’t act, and act soon, there would be riots that would be uncontainable. Such riots took place even in Chicago, where because of the Fair, there was more work than anywhere else.

In August of that year, about 25,000 unemployed people stormed downtown Chicago. They resented Fair jobs being given to non-union people. Erik Larsen, author of The Devil in the White City records their frustration. He writes that their protests came through the voice of Samuel Gompers, who said, “Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders about homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots?”

Labor had to fight, and did so until the rights of workers were assured. Employees were paid a decent wage and employers had to honor eight hour shifts and pay overtime when it had been earned. None of the banks or corporations wanted to give in, but the reputation of the United States was at stake and there wasn’t enough time to quibble.

Perhaps we have too much time now. Legislatures are quibbling, and wanting to bring the ax down on working, union people. It seems to be a sorely misplaced agenda, as the nation struggles with horrible unemployment. Labor is again fighting for its life. In Ohio, there is an issue that will be on the November ballot to repeal SB 5, which eats away at gains made over the years for workers. Similar legislation is popping up all over the place. Good jobs are being outsourced while Americans are fighting for their very survival.

Larsen says in his book that Gompers was calling for a “fundamental change in the relationship between workers and their overseers.” That, says Larsen, was “dangerous talk to be suppressed at all costs.” Labor didn’t back down, though, and it’s my hope that labor won’t back down now, either.

We’ve really come too far as a nation to be willing to step so far backwards.

That’s a candid observation.

Change I Don’t Believe In

For the longest time, as I have watched our president, I have privately defended moves he has made that I have not understood. During his campaign, and even in his inauguration address, he talked about “reaching across the aisle,” pledging to be a president who worked bi-partisanship in a way it had never been worked before. He pledged to work with nations with whom the United States had had contentious relationships in the past. His was to be a presidency like no other; politics was going to be different.

As I have watched him, what I have seen is a sincere effort to honor his beliefs and pledges to the nation. He has sought to reach across that proverbial aisle, to listen to the opposition. He has compromised to the point of dismay, giving so much that the other side has decided to jump on the opportunity and take the olive branches being offered that have become a tree trunk of opposition.

But enough is enough.

The latest showdown between the president and House Speaker Boehner, with President Obama yet again backing down, has made me sad and angry. I do not know the reasons why the president chose the original date for his jobs speech; the Republicans say it was political grandstanding. I hope it wasn’t that. I hope that it was a legitimate and conscious decision, based only on the fact that he wanted both houses of Congress and the nation to get this very important message and directive as soon as the Congress returned from vacation.

Could he not have known that the Republican debate was going on on that same evening? If that is the case, he needs to fire someone who is advising him. He should never have been allowed to put himself in this embarrassing situation.

But, having said all of that, he is the president of the United States. I was embarrassed for him as Speaker Boehner came out and demanded that the president change the date of his remarks. I keep thinking that if such a faux pas had been committed by any other president, a planned debate hosted by the other political party would have demurred to the president and changed the date of its event.

Not with this group. This smacks of the type of disrespect that has been shown this president from the beginning, in spite of, and maybe because of, his efforts to “reach across the aisle.”

This president has given in, over and over, to the opposition. He has compromised himself and his principles and therefore, the welfare and well-being of the masses of Americans who love him and need him and some policies that will pull them out of despair. I keep thinking that this president, “my president,” if you will, doesn’t get it: that Washington does not compromise. They see compromise as weakness and they go after the weak with a vengeance. I believe in and respect the president’s desire to honor his own spirit and beliefs in trying to bend some for the opposition, but he has bent too much, and nobody but his opposition is being served!

The Bible says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against “powers and principalities.” The powers and principalities are swirling around the president, and I finally have to admit that I am having a hard time watching it, accepting it and swallowing it. I want this president to stand up to Boehner and say, “hell to the no!” if you will, borrowing a phrase from one of Tyler Perry’s “Madea” movies. I want this president to say “enough is enough.” I want him to put on some armor, if you will, and withstand the darts of the enemies.

He is in a tough spot, to be sure. The opposition in the House, which is comprised of way too many non-compromising sorts, newly elected, can smell blood, and they are going after the jugular. The spoils of the war between the executive and legislative branches of the government are leaving “the least of these” as the victims, lying on battlefields of economic despair and ruin. But the president has got to make a stand and show the opposition for what it is. He has got to show the opposition that enough is enough, that he has chutzpah and things are about to be different.

The opposition is dedicated to making President Obama a one term president. My 25 year old daughter came to me and ruefully said she doesn’t believe he’ll win a second term. Not many people believe he will, but even if that is the case, while he is in office, for however long that might be, he needs to stand up to Boehner, the Tea Party and any and everyone else who is ignoring “the least of these” as they load their political guns and aim them at the president.

There is such a thing as too much compromise. At this point, it just looks like the president is giving in – again – and that is change I do NOT believe in.

Just a candid observation.

About “The Help”

Well, I read the book, “The Help” and I saw the movie. I liked them both.

But as I was talking about both the movie and book with friends, we came to a consensus: what was depicted could never have happened. We came to the conclusion that such a book would never have come to print, and that anyone who participated in a “hush and tell” project such as the brave maids did in this fictional adventure would have been destroyed. The violence perpetrated against black people seeking dignity and equal rights back then, and the white people who tried to help them, was vicious, relentless and largely permissible.

What, then, was or is the value of this story?

Perhaps it is that some people, white and black, were introduced to the “race problem” or America for the first time. In the theater where I saw the movie, there was a young African American male who wept openly. I asked him how old he was; he replied 30. Somehow, the story of “how we got over” was never told to him. He was surprised, shocked, and while he was glad the Negro maids were able to tell their story, he was angered by how they were treated.

He said he had a new respect for his grandparents. Call that progress.

I suspect that this sugar-coated version of life in the South for black people “back then” was about all many people would take. The horror of that time period, the domestic terrorism that was a trademark of American life, is hard to recall, hard to remember, and hard not to resent. America is still infected with racism, but nobody will admit to the disease if the presentation of the disease is too rancid. Hence, this “feel good” version of what “the help” went through was all that could have been withstood at this point.

But the tragedy of not being able to tell the real story is that much of the country and the world (the book has been published in 35 countries) is that those who really want to keep blinders on will walk away thinking and truly believing that American terrorism was not so bad, that all of the hee-hawing that is heard from black folks is a bit overdone. Heck, if a group of Negro maids could get together and just tell the truth, then what’s everyone always complaining about?

That attitude begs the real story to be told. After reading “The Help” and seeing the movie, I delved into Alice Childress’ book, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic’s Life. The difference between the two books is stark…but that is not surprising. Childress was the great-granddaughter of a slave who was born in South Carolina who also once worked briefly as a domestic. Her experiences were far different than those of Kathryn Stockett. There is an authenticity in Childress’ book that is absent from Stockett’s.

That is not to say, however, that there was and is no value in Stockett’s work. If just a few more people can become just a little more knowledgeable about these United States and how it treated its African immigrants, the quest for a post-racial world might be a little more realistic.

Perhaps.

That is a candid observation.

God Help America

I keep hearing things, reading things, from GOP members entering the race for president, and I am bothered.

Michele Bachmann thinks that slavery was probably all right. According to a recent article in the New Yorker she agrees with Steven Wilkins, author of a biography of Robert E Lee, who wrote that the Civil War was a “holy conflict between the godly South and heathen north.” Wilkins’ idea – which Bachmann apparently supports – is that “most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable …existence.” She apparently agrees with Wilkins’ theory that the institution of slavery “bred mutual esteem between races as slaves adopted Christianity.”

Seriously?

Another one of Bachmann’s favorite authors is Frances Schaeffer, a theologian who according to Ryan Lizza, the author of the New Yorker piece, disapproves of just about everything that isn’t defined by evangelical Christianity as being worthy and good.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is now entering the GOP race for the presidential nomination, thinks that the country ought to get back to “biblical principles.” In a report I heard on National Public Radio, Perry thinks that God would want the United States to stop spending all its money, “trying to take care of everyone.” The reporter says that Perry thinks a government taking care of everyone is “slavery.”

What is troubling is not that Perry and Bachmann and probably a lot of the GOP contenders think this way, but that they are playing to a base of people who believe the same way. That being the case, of whom do they propose to govern? Black people, who should understand that slavery wasn’t so bad, that it was a holy institution of some sort? People who love the arts, something that one of Bachmann’s favorite authors decries as being anti-Christian?

What God do these people serve? What Jesus? And how do they propose to govern a pluralistic country when clearly they are only interested in white Christians, and evangelical Christians at that? I heard a news report that said one of the contenders thinks that religious freedom is meant only for Christians. Seriously? I hate to be redundant, but how can a person be a citizen of America and want to govern that same nation, whose legacy is one that celebrates diversity, when it is clear that at least some of the contenders would rather shove diversity to the curb?

Is that what they mean, “Let’s take our country back?” Do they want it to go back to the time when good ol’ white boys had their way, good ol’ rich boys, at that? Is it American to not be concerned with “the least of these?” Doesn’t Christianity say we as believers are supposed to do that? Then what the hell is Governor Perry talking about? He just had a prayer gathering, for goodness’ sake! For whom was he/they praying? For white Christians with money, at the exclusion of white Christians who are struggling? Were they not praying for the black and brown and other minorities of this country who are in need of hope and help? Do the least of these, the struggling masses, not mean anything to these contenders?

I am being very careful to listen, but it is hard stuff to swallow. I shudder to think of what happens to “the rest of us” if any of these GOP contenders win the 2012 election. God bless America, please. Better…God help America!

Just a candid observation …

On the ‘Race Card’

While I am not happy with the “deal” reached as concerns the debt ceiling, what I am more unhappy about is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.
Racism.
What I have seen and heard from lawmakers, Democrat, Republican and Tea Party, has given me pause. When you have seen, tasted, experienced and lived racism, you have to watch yourself and make sure that you are not being too sensitive, too defensive.
But from the moment President Obama has taken office, the racism – in the form of disrespect for him as a man, a person and as president of this nation – has been rampant. The ugly comments made on talk radio, the crude caricatures of him and Mrs Obama drawn by God knows who – have all felt uncomfortably familiar. When the Tea Party emerged, some of their signage and their words stung; when some of them reportedly spit on Civil Rights icon Congressman John Lewis, none but racism could be blamed.
Alabama Senator Mitch McConnell has had little success hiding his disdain for President Obama. It is his goal, he has said publicly, to make sure Mr. Obama is a “one term president.” Even in the midst of the recent debacle over the raising the debt ceiling, Sen. McConnell warned Republicans and Tea Partiers to be careful; their refusal to budge might help get President Obama back into office, and he said he wasn’t going to do anything that might make that happen.
It must go against everything Sen. McConnell and others in this country were brought up thinking, that a black man could be the leader of the United States. When Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature, I found myself wondering why the President couldn’t get more support. When, at his first State of the Union address, a member of Congress yelled out, “You lie!” I cringed. The audacity! This was the president of the free world speaking. The blatant disrespect for President Obama and for the office of president, as well as the arrogance that accompanied it, blew my mind. Are all bets off as concerns protocol and decency, just because the president is African American?
Like I said, I don’t like the deal that has been made as concerns the debt ceiling. There were no tax increases on the wealthiest people in this nation, or on huge corporations. As usual, those who can least afford it will end up paying the biggest costs in terms of loss of benefits and services. I don’t like it that President Obama compromised as much as he did – although I am glad he DID compromise.
But I like less the fact that racism is still alive and kicking. Its virulence is showing, and nobody wants to talk about it. But for those of us who have lived it, we can see it, feel it, hear it and taste it.
That would be a candid observation.