12/19

John Sabotta
for Union Square Journal

"We know how to do that stuff better"

I like to work late at night.

And, sometimes, when I work, I have the TV set on. Even at the best of times, there's not much for me to watch -- and, after midnight, television presents an even vaster than usual wasteland, making no insistent demands on my attention, providing an almost subliminal background soundtrack to my efforts.

Since I'm not really paying much attention, the TV tends to stay on channels I'd normally never tolerate for more than a second. Which explains why I found myself watching TVW Channel 23, the Washington State Public Affairs Channel. The usual fare of TVW is nicely summed up in this quote from their website: "TVW provides unedited television coverage of state government deliberations and public policy events." This means things like the proceedings of the Benchmark Committee of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation, with testimony from representatives of, say, the Freight Mobility Strategic Investment Board. Really edge of the seat stuff. Uncut, with no commercial interruptions.

(And here I must digress -- what a fantastically, beautifully evasive moniker, the "Freight Mobility Strategic Investment Board!" What, exactly is it? Is it a business? Is it a government board? What does it do? What can it possibly do, with a name like that? Invest in freight mobility? Plan freight investment strategy? Is it a cover for foreign agents, unregenerate renegade Chekists or GRU-men, androids, aliens, ghosts? Alas, probably not.)

However, the fare this evening seemed more interesting. Channel 23 was repeating a live broadcast of a meeting of the Seattle chapter of something called the "Labor Party."

It may come as a surprise to the reader that there is such a thing as an American Labor Party. The phrase "Labor Party" invariably brings to mind the British Labour Party, a progressive organization dedicated to such monuments to revolutionary liberation as "the largest-ever investment in CCTV security systems for car parks, town centres and other public places," and introducing trial without jury at the "discretion" of magistrates. The more obscurantist of you may also recall an organization called the "US Labor Party," an adjunct of the industrious Lyndon LaRouche, advocating the usual combination of Schiller, animosity towards the House of Windsor, and big public-works projects. (A friend of mine, after reading a number of Mr. LaRouche's discourses, conceived of her own ideal LaRouchian public-works project -- putting the entire Middle East up on stilts, allowing the Mediterranean to flow freely beneath the region, in order to facilitate irrigation and provide employment. For some reason, she has never actually brought this brilliant proposal to the attention of LaRouche's New Federalist.)

Be that as it may, this newest Labor Party has nothing to do with either Tony Blair or fusion-powered populism. Judging from their website, the Labor Party intends to become a specifically union-oriented political party, claiming to represent the political interests of organized labor. We are told that the "Founding Convention" was held in 1997,and the party program orates:

"We come together to create this Labor Party to defend our interests and aspirations from the greed of multinational corporate interests. Decades of concessions to corporations by both political parties have not produced the full employment economy we have been promised. Instead income and wealth disparities have widened to shameful extents. We offer an alternative vision of a just society that values working people, their families and communities."

The party program goes on to demand an amendment to the Constitution to ensure a "living wage" for all workers, and calls for, among other things, "guaranteeing universal access to quality health care."

Interspersed with such openly rapacious, loot-your-boss, old-fart-seniority-protection proposals as mandating paying laid-off workers two months severance for every year of service are piously vague requests to "protect our families" and "end bigotry." The leadership and membership of the Labor Party claim that they are "the people who build and maintain the nation but rarely enjoy the fruits of our labor." The same paragraph snarls that "We are the people who make the country run but have little say in running the country," and intones that "We, the members of this Labor Party, see ourselves as keepers of the American Dream of opportunity, fairness, and justice."

How closely the Labor Party is linked with the mainstream of the American labor movement is unclear, and the web site is less than forthcoming on this point. One hint may come from the position paper entitled "Toward A New Labor Law," which delicately suggests that support for "non-majority unions" and a "second look" at the principle of "non-exclusive representation" might not be such a bad idea. The unions named on the website strike me, at least, as being distinctly of a "non-majority" nature, even in the "non-majority" context of organized labor in general. Looking through the archives, I also noted that great enthusiasm is shown for the anti-WTO movement and the massive demonstrations in Seattle. Since a considerable portion of that movement is not merely against economic injustice, but against most industrial activity at all, one wonders just how enthusiastic the bulk of organized labor is at the prospect of joining a Popular Front with rabid left-anarchists and Earth Firstoid environmentalist fanatics. A simple, wholesome, earth-friendly society would have little opportunity for paying "we, the members of organized labor," two months severance for every year of service ("okay, Sky Child, you can have an extra bushel of turnips for every year you spend pulling the commune's plow") and "guaranteed access to health care" would consist mainly of hoping to avoid the inevitable outbreaks of malaria, typhoid, cholera, or bubonic plague. In contrast, putting the entire Middle East up on stilts seems a more moderate, and certainly more labor-friendly, position.

At any rate, before me on my television set was the Seattle chapter of this new Labor Party, holding what they were pleased to call a "post election forum." Since, as far as I can tell, the Labor Party high-mindedly refrains -- so far -- from actually running anybody for public office (it should not be inferred from this that the Labor Partyites are crypto-anarchocapitalists), the exact purpose of this "forum" seemed less than obvious. The setting was a non-descript conference room somewhere (possibly the downtown "Labor Temple," a hideous brick and art deco New Deal Utopia pile taking up valuable commercial office space) with six or seven members of the ruling Washington State Labor Party politburo sitting at table, facing perhaps twice that number of economic-justice-seekers. I missed the first part of the meeting, and started watching just as the chairperson called for questions from the (nearly deserted) floor. I was slightly puzzled when the chairperson rather vehemently repeated that she only wanted questions, not statements -- but I had forgotten, since my days at the University of Washington, what leftwing activists were like. One by one, the rank and file trooped up and proceeded to ignore the restriction on statements. After a perfunctory stab at a query, most would proceed to launch into interminable little self-serving speeches, illuminating how they, personally, were working with diverse groups and minorities and neglected youth (and why couldn't there be more of that?), larded with general praise of how great it was they were all there and how the speaker felt empowered by the gathering, etc., etc. One or two didn't even bother with the bourgeois pretense of a "question," and simply launched into freeform rants -- one old leftist, a somewhat disheveled, rambling party, finally had to be cut off by the irritated chairperson. Interest in the actual mechanics of organizing their "party" seemed of little interest to the membership.

The flow of empowering blah was, however, interrupted by exchanges and discussions of a distinctly more interesting nature. At the time of the meeting, it seemed fairly certain that Republican Slade Gorton had lost his bid for re-election to the Senate to Democrat Marie Cantwell (Ms. Cantwell, a liberal millionairette who is four-square for the interests of "the children" and "the family" and four-square against the Bill of Rights, has what another, and sadly reprobate, friend of mine liked to refer to as "big, submissive teeth.") Gorton has always been loathed by Seattle liberals and leftists, and his defeat was cause for general rejoicing among the progressive vanguard of the Washington State Labor Party. However, someone brought up the ominous possibility that Slade (as in "Who Paid Slade?" a popular parlor-pink bumper sticker) might be offered a Cabinet post by the evil Bush administration. This was greeted with outrage, on the grounds that if someone lost an election, it would be "undemocratic" to offer them an Administration position. One of the panel members -- a overweight young woman hunched over her microphone, with long straggly black hair, shifty eyes and a self-satisfied smirk -- suggested that in the event, a "visit" to Slade's house should be carried out by (presumably) "demonstrators."

The Florida election dispute, then in full cry, was an emotional topic. The impression given was that Republican White Terror was holding sway in Broward and Palm Beach, with mobs of rabid Young Republican fascists stuffing ballot boxes and beating up vote counters. One person asked the panel if they knew what organized labor in Florida was doing about the situation. This was answered by one of the few people in the room who looked as if he actually belonged to a labor union -- a skinny party with a crewcut and protruding ears -- who replied that he understood there to be a dispute between the Democratic Party people and the labor people on the scene -- that the labor people wanted to start going to the streets in a serious way, and the Democrats were balking. He added, referring to the so-called Republican "riot" that supposedly stopped the vote count, that "we know how to do that stuff better."

The rest of the event held little interest, but these words stayed with me. "We know how to do that stuff better" is certainly true, as even the most perfunctory look at the history of the labor movement, and the history of labor violence, will show. This particular meeting seemed futile, almost ludicrous. But the example of the anti-WTO protests suggests that it would be a mistake to completely dismiss these people. Since then, Gore has conceded -- and yet, despite this, we kept hearing of quite serious attempts to tamper with the Electoral College, and we hear of threats of organized protests. The bitter rhetoric on both sides has hardly abated. It is not surprising that the Democrats -- or the more responsible elements in the Democrat leadership -- may have thought twice about proposals to escalate the struggle in the streets coming from labor radicals. It's impossible to see what lies at the end of a road like that. But how long will people who believe that "we are the people who make the country run but have little say in running the country" continue to listen to cautious, timid politicians who want to win elections and play the political game?

"We know how to do that stuff better." How many people, on all sides of a hopelessly divided nation, with a thousand real and imaginary grudges against their fellow citizens festering in their memories -- how many people think just that, and wait for the day when they intend to demonstrate exactly what it is they "know better?"

© John Sabotta 2000  All rights reserved


Previously by John Sabotta...

The Cinema Mystique (11/24/00)