On Wednesday Mary Kay Henry, Head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) sent out a video of the International Executive Board decision to endorse Barack Obama for re election in 2012. This made SEIU the first Union to make such an early endorsement. I found her message uncharacteristically uninspiring and confusing as she tried to mesh support of the Occupy Movement with the endorsement. The Occupy movement is a huge outpouring of rage against the 1% who control both political parties. What makes this movement larger and stronger than those in the past is that it does not steer people into the electoral arena but focuses on the puppet masters.
My immediate take on the endorsement video was that there was no unanimous vote on the International Executive Board (IEB) for the endorsement. Indeed it may have even been a close vote. I felt even more vindicated in my belief on Thursday when it was reported that Mary Kay (kudos) was arrested at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge...with George Gresham, President of SEIU 1199 (SEIU's largest local). In addition the opening page of the International's web page has changed over the last 24 hours. The video is no longer there. In its place is a picture of Obama and numerous articles about Occupy Actions and SEIU involvement. Maybe schizophrenia can be a good thing in this case.
Of course ultimately what matters is not the decision of the IEB or even if the process was contentious or unanimous. It is all about the rank and file. When they are deciding how to spend their time this next year, will it be to enthusiastically hit the pavement to re-elect this President or will it be to join a movement which is taking on the 1% who will be calling the shots regardless of the result in 2012? We know that the "lesser evil" mantra will be everywhere. But will that worn out motivator to get the working class to vote against their interests also work to get them out there to actually spend their precious non working hours working for that candidate when there is an alternative approach at the nearest park or street corner? It will be interesting to watch.
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10 comments:
Thanks for this post.
Although contradictory on the surface, the endorsement of Obama in 2012 and support for the Occupy movement can be squared.
To my mind, its all about the priorities. If the IEB is looking to a social change model where movements like Occupy are the moving political force towards change and the Obama campaign is about letting things get no worse, than OK.
If the priorities are reversed though, where support for Occupy and similar movements is based on funneling discontent into the electoral arena, then we have an approach which will stifle real change and is thus counter productive to the tasks at hand... At least from a left perspective.
Of course, I have no idea as to how the discussion was framed by the IEB and without such a framing its hard to tell what the real priorities are.
Here, it is up to Mary Kay and the IEB to explain their logic to the rest of the union... This explanation is what seems to be lacking right now.
SEIU is taking some bold steps for a US union in participating in the international protest movements. This needs to be encouraged, especially today, and it's a political choice here: you can focus on the endorsement and call it uninspiring or you can focus on SEIU's role in protests locally and nationally and be inspired. It's up to you.
SEIU was not the first union to endorse Obama. The SEIU International Executive Board did not divide over the question. There is no contradiction in supporting Obama, especially as a part of the larger fight-the-right strategy, and supporting Occupy. Witness what happened nationwide yesterday.
What people may be picking up on is the ambiguity the most prorgressive people feel, and the political realignment taking place in labor generally, as we try to live in creative tension with an administration which has not met our core neeeds while fighting the right at the same time. I encourage people to look beyond the election, and even the next 5 years, when we discuss this realignment. Think dialectically. What are the specific quantative and qualitative changes taking place which will create a new situation?
I think that this article brings up important concepts. How will people choose to spend their time and decide where to put their energy. Are people really going to spend their precious time campaigning once again for Obama? Do they really think that Obama has courageously represented the interests of working Americans over the last few years? I haven’t seen very many signs or heard chants that declare how we need to support our President - because he has our back - so we have his. Maybe the Presidency has simply become much less relevant as corporate powers control more and more of America. Maybe we should just admit that and deal with it, instead of deluding ourselves that if we just vote this one person in and sign a few online petitions, that we will see change that we can believe in. People have lost faith in the ability of government to represent the best interest of the people, and to regulate and protect us from corporate greed ; this is why people have taken to the streets, rather than focus on yet another political campaign. Why should people keep dumping time, money and energy into a broken system?
I am personally bored of the lesser of the two evils mantra argument. I also feel that because I am a progressive, many democratic politicians take my vote for granted, while they steer their politics toward the center right. They think that progressives do not have anyone else to vote for - essentially we have become irrelevant to them. We should all start seeing this situation for what is really is, not for the fantasy of what we want it to be.
No one is saying "that if we just vote this one person in and sign a few online petitions, that we will see change that we can believe in."
No one here is saying that we should make our decisions based on the lesser of two evils, though, in a sense, I think that's an okay formulation for the time being. I would rephrase it as saying that we have to dtermine what the best opportunities for struggle are and vote accordingly. Are you okay with Republicans running the country? I have yet to get an answer to that question from any of my friends on the left who are anti-Obama.
And my basic question remains unanswered: What are the specific quantative and qualitative changes taking place now which will create a new situation? What is your concrete relationship (political practice) to those changes?
Until these questions can be answered in a coherent way by the anti-Obama, most often "ultra-left", groups I think we have to live in creative tension with the administration and work for the defeat of the ultra-right next November as part of a united front. What's your alternative strategy?
Since the original posting was (unnecessarily) critical of SEIU leadership when that leadership did something right I have two fair questions for you: were SEIU leaders wrong or right to take arrests last week? And is this original posting fair or not to SEIU and its leadership?
I have a special problem with the formulation that "I am personally bored of the lesser of the two evils mantra argument." First, it trivializes what is being said--there is no "mantra" and that line of logic avoids the basic question of whether or not you're okay with Republicans running the country or not.
Second, one's personal boredom is not a coherent way of making political decisions. When 98% of African-Americans support Obama while there is an actual loss of Black political power across the solid south or traditional Black Belt, the matter of personal boredom begins to sound like the assertion of white skin privilege.
This is a good debate and these are difficult questions for me. Although I said last Sunday that the SEIU board endorsement of Obama and likely use of union funds to support his campaign would bother me (if I were a union member), it is not so simple. First, I know nothing about how the union works, how well the board represents the rank and file, and so on. Second, if part of the rationale was balancing that endorsement with active support of OWS etc., that could be a smart tactical move within union politics but I know nothing about that either. Third, if part of the rationale was to support the president as an African American then that is a quite complicated situation. See the many letters to the Nation in the November 7 issue (http://www.thenation.com/article/164056/letters) in response to Melissa Harris-Perry's column suggesting electoral racism by liberals abandoning Obama
(http://www.thenation.com/article/163544/black-president-double-standard-why-white-liberals-are-abandoning-obama). Fourth, if part of the rationale was a lesser of two evils type of argument, I can see how an organization might be compelled to act differently than an individual. To the extent an organization thinks it has influence on members actions, it may tend to be somewhat conservative in a self-preservation sense.
But here's a question. If the trends are so seemingly unequivocally rightest regardless of the two parties, only differing in degree, then could not the worst right bring about a bigger opportunity for change sooner? Tricky I agree; it could just slide right into a more authoritarian regime (or bring on other disasters) as well as a more humane one. I can only hope that regardless of my vote, if it is back to more years of more right rule then the more humane outcome will prevail.
And I do hear ethnicguy's challenge about political practice.
I'm not sure that I grasp all of Blanco's points fully, but I hope that he will write more and more often.
Let's start with two notes of clarification. First, dues money and political money in unions must be kept separate and unions are held to higher standards than any other organizations or corporations in society in terms of accounting for time and money expended in political work. Even if this were not the case, most unions---and I think that SEIU is among them---no longer depend on union dues to run and function. There are so few union members left that most unions could not exist on dues income alone.
I fully support the SEIU endorsement and I hope that my own union (CWA) also endorses quickly. We need all the time we can get to do education and agitation and form the necessary alliances, all of which cannot be produced at the last minute.
Second, the SEIU endorsement had nothing to do with Obama's race or with "racial politics."
I agree with those who say that a kind of "white flight" is taking place in voting and politics; many whites have abandoned Obama at a crucial time, leaving African Americans once more to be this nation's best hope. That this takes place as there is an actual and quantifiable loss of Black political power in the solid south, or the Black Belt, speaks volumes. And I find it unconscionable that elements of the ultra-left are taking the lead in this white flight.
I don't believe that the differences between the Republicans and Democrats are matters of degree, but are matters of kind. There are elements within the Democratic party we work with and can work with, but there are no such forces among the Republicans. The original post could have been critical of the search for liberal Republicans by many unions---SEIU included---but it focused instead on attacking a progressive union officer and an endorsement at a crucial political moment.
I don't think that a victory by any right forces would help us. Such a victory would demoralize many among the most progressive forces and unleash a level or repression and an economic crisis we can't handle as a class, nationally and internationally. Still, I'm open to hearing more from Blanco about his thinking on these matters.
Two short comments:
1. Throwing around these supposed poll numbers of 98% is preposterous. These polls always are of "likely voters". African Americans have increasingly voted by not voting (with 2008 being an exception). But regardless, any poll that says 98% anything should have its methodology examined.
2. If you are a Socialist or even call yourself a progressive you need to read more than NBC commentator/"The Nation" columnist Melissa Harris Perry to analyze what is happening in the African American Community. And pay attention to the reaction that particular article got from any African American..Nil to opposition
Thanks for responses. First, ethicguy your second paragraph suggests you want to or plan to spend some of your time working on the president's re-election. I think we differ there. I am much more interested in spending my political time supporting the Occupy movements, the Green Party, and the anti-war movements which much more closely represent my values than the Democratic Party.
For both ethnicguy and Ann, I'm not African-American and I don't read material exclusively concerned with their issues. My issues with Obama have nothing to do with his race. I twice voted for Ralph Nader rather than white candidates. If that's irresponsible in someone's views I respect those views even though I differ with them. I am somewhat inclined to give Obama the benefit of my many doubts but I haven't decided at this time. However, I really resist the need for affirmative action in the election of a president. And I would much appreciate polling that assessed possible white flight in comparison with voting in other presidential elections.
I agree that some politicians affiliated with the Democratic Party are different in kind. In Congress, however, those politicians (the progressive caucus, Feingold in the past, Sanders, and refreshingly Merkely, and a few other senators currently) are too few to affect legislation very much. Just as supporting Occupy X is, certainly at this time, a way of expressing a critique of the current economic and political system, I consider voting for those who share that critique just as valid an action.
Finally, what is "our class"? I'm retired so I'm not technically in the working class. When I worked at EPA I was a professional scientist, not part of the classical working class. If the class is some part of the 99%, or those who now are, or were when they worked, part of the class of workers who did not own or, in the case of government workers, were not appointed by politicians, then that is a large class. There are still many fuzzy positions it seems to me, like various managers in goverment. I suppose one way to clarify is those who would be eligible to join a union if there is, or could be, one at the place of work. Thus, managers at EPA were excluded from voting on, and joining, a union of professional staff.
In response to Anne's comments, no one said 98%. The number is 92%. Whether that's likely voters or a cross-section of the African-American community I don't know, but the point is that the Black masses--an overwhelmingly working class core force--support Obama. Among that 92% are the most class-conscious African-American political forces. White flight from the presidency has limited what could be accomplished and, more seriously, has left Black progressive core forces isolated as there is an actual loss of Black political power taking place in the solid south or Black Belt. We will be paying a price for this as a movement for years to come.
I can think of many real reasons for low voter rates among African-Americans: practical disenfranchisement, redistricting, mass incarceration, effective disinformation campaigns run by Republicans and their front groups in Black communities. It's hard to make the case that Black working class people have abandoned the Democrats in big numbers.
Granted that my ideas form out of my daily contact with grassroots Black union leaders and what I read, The Nation among many periodicals. I trust both sources to inform me and both say the same thing. It seems classist to discourage a working class person from reading.
Responding to Blanco: I do indeed plan to spend time helping to get progressive Democrats and Obama (and I am not saying he is progressive)elected. I don't see the electoral alternative to doing this: every other road forward, the Greens included, seems to run into quicksand and I'm most interested in fighting the right seriously and holding the line against more backward steps. I don't see the contradiction between doing that and supporting Occupy and other movements or being in the streets generally. One moves the other forward, I think: this is the essence of the dialectic.
I think that anyone who works for a wage or salary, either in the production and distribution of commodities or provides commodified services, is structurally part of the working class. I don't think that wage levels, "professionalism," retirement, government service, etc. matter if we're thinking structurally. I have noted elsewhere on this blog that the rate of exploitation may in fact be set higher in certain highly-paid white-collar jobs than in certain lower-paid blue-collar jobs. It is the condition of exploitation, the wage relationship and the production or distribution of commodities and commodified services which conditions class relationships and identity.
That said, class is also a multifaceted relationship. It has a history, a present and a past, that gives it meaning quite aside from whatever structural understandings we may have. Real, living human beings are constantly engaged in forming class identities and (re)discovering and (re)interpreting what class identity is. You can't really freeze time and take a poll on who is and isn't working class, admit them to a club or union and have it mean anything. You can, on the other hand, talk about origins, occupation, developing consciousness and solidarity in the context of historically developing class relationships. I think that that helps us better understand class and class consciousness. I highly recommend the introduction to E.P. Thompson's "The Making Of The English Working Class" as he explains this much better than I do.
Thinking dialectically is new to me; I have to work on it, as on what is class. In Corvallis CCDS we had a discussion about what is a capitalist. The consensus seemed to be that a person who owns a "small" business with no employees should not be so categorized. But how many employees and what size of business changes the categorization was less clear.
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