Today in Labor History—July 23

Henry David Thoreau

July 23, 1846 – Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay his $1 poll tax in protest of slavery and the U.S. involvement in the Mexican War. (From Workday Minnesota).

Copper Miners, Copper County, Michigan, 1905

July 23, 1913 – Northern Michigan copper miners struck for the 8 hour day, higher wages and union recognition. The strike continued until April 12, 1914. During the strike, 600 were arrested for inciting to riot, 500 for violating an injunction against picketing, and the WFM's president, Charles Moyer, was shot, beaten and forced out of town. Also, on Christmas Eve, 1913, the women’s auxiliary of the WFM organized a party for miners and their families during which someone shouted “fire” causing a stampede that killed 73, mostly children. The identity of the crier was never determined, but many believe it was a member of the Citizen’s Alliance, which was used by the mine owners to attack strikers and crush their movement. (From the Daily Bleed)

July 23, 1967 – Seven days of social unrest, fighting with cops, anti-business and anti-government actions began in Detroit. By the end of the riots, 43 were dead, 2,000 wounded and 5,000 made homeless. It was the largest riot of the century, sparking additional riots throughout US. (From the Daily Bleed)

Posted by Michael Dunn

Mind-Numbing Finger Wagging By the SF Chron.

In her hit piece, “Mind-numbing protests meet pepper spray,” (San Francisco Chronicle, 4/14/12), Debra Saunders makes the University of California, Davis police out to be innocent victims of abuse by spoiled brat students, implying that their pepper spraying of students at point blank range was somehow justified. However, worse than the finger wagging, which activists have come to expect from the corporate media, are the numerous inaccuracies, exaggerations and omissions in her piece, including the reason why students were protesting: the 18% tuition hike for the 2011-2012 school year.

Let’s start with the most serious omission: students were seated and protesting nonviolently. They were doing nothing that was physically threatening to anyone, including the police. The legality, rationality and civility of their tactics are irrelevant. There was simply no justification for pepper spray or any other form of police violence. Furthermore, the pepper spray was sprayed directly into students’ faces, though it is not supposed to be used any closer than six feet, and it was a high potency variety that had not been approved for use on nonviolent protesters.

Saunders devotes much of her piece to the irrational argument that tactics like linking arms, setting up tents and chanting provoked police into pepper spraying them. This is absurd, tantamount to the argument that name-calling justifies a beating. Police could have ignored the students (they weren’t harming anyone). They could have issued citations on the spot or even arrested them without using pepper spray. She argues that students were warned they would be pepper sprayed and the “smart thing” to do was to leave, which is like saying that an abuse victim is to blame for not leaving her abuser or that a child is to blame if his father warns him first that he will be beaten with a coat hanger.

There are many rational reasons for the students to have remained, such as the common (if naïve) belief that the police will not use chemical weapons against nonviolent demonstrators. Indeed, Saunders accuses one protester of “taunting” police by saying, "You are going to shoot me for sitting here? Is that what you said, officer?" Yet this statement could just as easily be interpreted as a statement of disbelief.

Saunders lambasts the Reynoso report (which correctly placed blame for the incident entirely on the campus police and administration) of failing to address the “need to educate students about the difference between free speech and civil disobedience.” However, the commission’s purpose was to determine the causes and legitimacy of the pepper spraying incident, not to critique pedagogy or curricula. Even so, her point is just plain silly. Is free speech necessarily more noble or legitimate than civil disobedience? One should not forget that free speech is often legally used by hate groups to promote violence against people of color, GLBT’s and women and that civil disobedience has repeatedly been utilized in many well respected and legitimate struggles (e.g., underground railroad, civil rights movement, women’s suffrage, poll taxes).

She even criticizes the university administration for occasionally discouraging prosecution of student activists, as if this confused students into believing they were immune from punishment. This is ridiculous. People who engage in civil disobedience expect consequences. Their goals are to overwhelm the system with arrests and encourage media coverage of their cause. The students knew they were taking a risk. Furthermore, while administrators have discouraged prosecution from time to time, many more students have been prosecuted without intervention by the university. And in the few cases where prosecution was discouraged, taxpayers ought to be thankful, as it saved them thousands of dollars in unnecessary legal expenses.

Wisconsin Worker Sent Home For Wearing Union Shirt to Work

(Image from Flickr, by Buschap)

An employee of the Lincoln Hills School in Irma, Wisconsin, was sent home without pay last week for wearing a union t-shirt on the job, according to the Waussau Daily Herald. The employee was Ron McAllister, a youth counselor, who was wearing a t-shirt and jacket with an American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) logo.

The state Department of Corrections, which oversees the school, opened an investigation into the incident this week and sent a memo to staff members saying that workers are permitted to wear union clothing, despite the fact that their administrators sent a worker home for doing so. Not surprisingly, AFSCME is mistrustful of the DOC and continued with a planned demonstration against the DOC and union-busting governor Scott Walker on Monday. More than 70 people attended the protest outside Lincoln Hills School. AFSCME believes that Lincoln Hills Superintendent Paul Westerhaus sent McAllister home on Walker's behalf. McAllister also happens to be president of AFSCME Council 24.

No Unions Allowed

It was not just McAllister’s shirt that was offensive to management. Last week, he found that someone had gone through his office and removed an AFSCME sign, and he said a supervisor told him that union signs and union clothing were not allowed. So he removed his union jacket and shirt and started to unbutton his pants to remove his “union” underwear, before being sent home.

McAllister may be rekindling an old protest tactic made popular by the Doukhobors, a Russian Christian pacifist sect, many of who migrated to Western Canada in the 19^th century (with the help of Tolstoy, Quakers and Peter Kropotkin), who have protested in the nude since the early 20^th century. Canada even passed anti-nudity laws in response to the Doukhobors and have arrested hundreds of them for violating this law.

Doukhobors marching nude in Langham, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1903 (from Wikipedia)

Do As The Doukhobors Do

There’s a new tactic to use, my dear

If you have a protest on one wants to hear,

Just attend a rally where the b ig shots meet

Strip to your hide and walk down the street.

Way up in Canada, Doukhobor lads

Were sent to public schools disapproved of by their dads, So the Doukhobor mamas said “That’s enough”

And they went to the meeting in the buff.

Chorus:

Do as the Doukhobors do, honey,

Do as the Doukhobors do.

If public policy gets on your nerves

And no one pays attention to you

Throw away your dresses and your lingerie too,

And do as the Doukhobors do.

Our women hold meetings to stop atom tests,

They’re not afraid of billy clubs, cops and arrests,

They sign those petitions ‘til they’re sad in the face

And still they seem to be getting no place.

The little boat EVERYMAN couldn’t leave port,

Bomb tests continue of every sort

We’ve got to do something that’s wild and new,

And do as the Doukhobors do.

(Chorus)

Of course, down in Cannes on the coast of France,

You’d get no attention minus bras and pants,

If you’d hit the beach in a grin or less,

They’d think you had on last year’s bathing dress.

But up there in Canada at twenty below

People keep covered from head to toe.

Kennedy would send a cup of coffee or two

If we did as the Doukhobors do.

(Malvina Reynolds, 1962).

Occupy DOE—Opt Out of High Stakes Testing

United Opt Out National is calling for the occupation of the federal Department of Education  next year, from March 30 to April 2, to bring an end to high stakes testing and corporate profiteering from public education. The movement encourages parents to use “opt out” rules (available in many school districts) to keep their children home when standardized tests are given.

Unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, United Opt Out has a concrete list of demands. Furthermore, unlike the occupiers’ nebulous desire to “make the rich pay,” United Opt Out’s demands are relatively modest and could actually be achieved quickly with the right pressure by parents, students and teachers.

Some of their demands include

• An end to high stakes testing and punitive policies (particularly when they punish students or influence teacher pay and job security)
• An end to corporate interventions in public education and education policy
• An end to corporate run for-profit charter schools that divert public funds away from public schools
• Restoration of librarians to all schools and communities
• Student-to-teacher ratio of 25 to one (or lower)
• Increased nursing and on-site health services
• Free daycare and preschool     
• Fully funded arts and athletics programs

How Can Opt Out Win Its Demands?
The most effective way to end high stakes testing is if no (or very few) high stakes exams are given. Having students and their families opt out is one means to this end and this has been the emphasis of the Opt Out movement.  However, teachers could also refuse to participate. Considering how many fewer teachers than parents would need to be organized to achieve the goal of no (or few) tests given, this seems like a much more effective approach.

Of course teachers could face reprisals for insubordination and failing to do their job, which is one reason the unions have not backed this tactic. However, teachers risk reprisals for most job actions, including strikes, a risk they were once more willing to take over issues concerning student safety and wellbeing, pay and working conditions. Furthermore, when large enough numbers of teachers or any other group take a collective risk, it is much harder for the authorities to punish them. A few teachers refusing to give the test could easily be reprimanded or fired, but 80-90% of teachers doing this in a given district are unlikely to be fired, as it would be impossible to replace them all.

When one considers how devastating high stakes exams are to both students’ wellbeing and teachers’ working conditions, it would seem like an obvious cause worth fighting for and worth taking risks for. High stakes exams take away class time from content standards, critical thinking and real learning. Many schools and districts have replaced arts, music and even science with test preparation and reading and math support classes to help struggling students meet the demands of the tests. And despite this, increasing numbers of schools are still being deemed failures under NCLB.

Schools that have been deemed failures are under phenomenal pressure to improve test scores quickly. Consequently, teachers are saddled with reforms that require them to work longer and harder, without extra pay or any evidence that the reforms will solve the problem. At the same time, schools have been downsized due to budget cuts, forcing teachers to do even more to cover for the decreased staffing, often at lower pay.

High stakes testing is certainly not the only factor devastating teachers’ working conditions, but it is a significant one. And it is one that the teachers’ unions should be fighting through concrete and coherent job actions, like strikes or simply refusing to participate.

What Is The Connection Between Occupy Wall Street and High Stakes Testing?

The Opt Out movement has endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have called for an end to the Wall Street occupation of public education. While their website does not list specific influences of Wall Street on public education, there are ample examples (see here, here and here). Bottom line: Wall Street bankers, hedge fund managers and financial speculators have been investing heavily in private, for-profit charter schools, education management organizations (EMOs), and curriculum and textbook publishing.

However, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Opt Out movement has obscured the actual economic relations in this country, and the world, by focusing on Wall Street. Capitalists in general (not just Wall Street) have been attacking the public sector in part to weaken the last remaining stronghold of unionism (36% of public sector is unionized vs. 7% of the private sector, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics). This is another reason why the unions should be much more active in resisting high stakes testing.

Capitalists are not only interested in destroying the unions. They are also always on the lookout for untapped (or moderately tapped) sources of profits, which is exactly what the private sector is. Rather than the government monopolizing the public sector, capitalists want to control it and profit from it. The consumers (i.e., taxpayers) and their demand for public services are not going to go away. In fact, they are obligate consumers and the government could even coerce them to pay more in taxes, which would mean even greater potential profits for the private companies that run “public” sector enterprises.

High stakes testing and NCLB are part of the overall strategy to increase the profitability of public schools for private business. Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress on their test scores for three or more years can be compelled to purchase tutoring services from private companies, convert to charter schools (that can be run by private, for-profit EMOs), and purchase canned curriculum from big publishing houses (see No Capitalist Left Behind). This does not even take into account the hugely profitably testing industry.

It also doesn’t take into account the numerous other ways that corporate profiteers are skimming off tax dollars from public education in order to turn huge profits. School cafeteria concessions, for instance, are dominated by a few large transnational corporations like Sodexo and Aramark. Seed, candy and tchotchke companies exploit student fundraising needs by offering overpriced, mass-produced junk that students can sell to parents, neighbors and teachers and keep a portion of the sales income for their clubs, bands or travel plans. Tech companies are selling districts millions of dollars’ worth of assessment, management and accountability software.

ILWU Shuts Down Tacoma and Seattle Ports, Smashes Longview Terminal

In response to police violence and employer intransigence, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, WA yesterday, the New York Times reported this morning. The ILWU has been in a year-long struggle at the new $200 million EGT Terminal in Longview, WA, where the employer (EGT) has been hiring non-union workers in violation of the ILWU contract. Earlier this week, union members blockaded trains from entering the port and were assaulted by police armed with rifles and rubber bullets, pepper spray and clubs. Many were arrested and injured.

Yesterday, around 500 longshoremen stormed the new terminal in Longview with baseball bats, smashing windows, damaging rail cars and dumping tons of grain from the cars, while over 1,000 more shut down the ports of Seattle and Tacoma by staying home from work (see the New York Times article). Both actions appeared to be wildcat actions, as the ILWU claimed they had not authorized them.

EGT, a joint venture between U.S., South Korean and Japanese companies, not surprisingly, condemned the actions, accusing the ILWU of criminal activity. However, no union members physically hurt anyone and their actions came in response to police violence against nonviolent demonstrators that did injure people, including women and children.

When capital is threatened, it is considered acceptable and necessary to use violence against workers, even when they are engaged in peaceful and nonviolent protest. However, it is considered unacceptable for workers to defend themselves or their working conditions in any way, particularly if it impinges on bosses’ ability to maximize profits and especially if it includes vandalism or sabotage even when it does not result in any physical injuries.

Judge Ronald Leighton of United States District Court in Tacoma expanded the existing restraining order to block all longshoremen in Washington from shutting down ports. (The previous restraining order only applied to the Longview local).

The original restraining order was issued on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board ostensibly because the ILWU was engaged in “unfair” labor practices by “improperly” harassing scabs. However, workers cannot allow the courts or the government to dictate how to protest their exploitation and expect to be successful. Also, one must wonder what kind of harassment (if any) the government would consider proper and allow?

Judge Leighton, who issued the original restraining order, said there was a peaceful way to protest. “It requires some restraint,” he said. “Your clients have none of that.” He added that they must also obey local laws (quoted from the New York Times article).

Yet the train blockade was both peaceful and nonviolent until the police came in with guns, pepper spray and clubs.

More importantly, labor cannot and should be limited to simply protesting, which is essentially just organized complaining. Rather, workers achieve success in struggles with their employers by halting profits through job actions like strikes, blockades, boycotts, slowdowns, working-to-rule, and sabotage.

The requirement to obey laws is absurd. The laws were written and are enforced primarily to protect private property and capital. The law overwhelming favors the wealthy and the bosses over the interests of working people. Laws are routinely written, interpreted and rewritten specifically to limit working peoples’ ability to protest, resist and fight their exploitation and oppression. It is completely justified and necessary to disregard and resist laws that are unjust or that harm us.