Obama woos Democratic bigwigs, offers to cut social security benefits

Happy after lunch with the billionaires in SF

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

So President Obama was here in San Francisco this week meeting with his constituents, not the vast majority of people who vote for him, but the people who bankroll the party that represents their interests and that Obama leads.

He had two do’s Wednesday night, one at Tom Steyer’s house where 100 people turned up to hand over cash for the party and the other at the house of another billionaire, Gordon Getty.  Steyer is a coupon clipper worth $1.4 billion according to Forbes.com. Getty, worth $2 billion, has his money by virtue of being the product of a union between two folks one of them the oil magnate J Paul Getty.

Steyer is looking to get in to Democratic Party politics more actively and has been suggested as a candidate for governor.  The two events raised more than $3 million and part of this drive is to get more Democrats in to the House and Nancy Pelosi returned as speaker. Pelosi, from an established eastern bourgeois family is the poor one in the crowd worth anywhere from $26 to $58 million.  Like all of them though, Pelosi’s wealth comes from investments, real estate, stuff like that.

It might have been a bit tense at the Steyer’s as Tom is a “…vociferous opponent of the Keystone Pipeline..”,  according to the media.  But Steyer won’t make too much fuss over that.  With his eyes on political prizes, making an issue of the pipeline, by pointing out Obama’s hedging the issue, would not be useful.  Like a lot of billionaires, Steyer likes to dabble in areas that are of concern to millions of people but not seriously; at 55 he has high hopes of playing a major role in the Democratic Party in the period ahead. “He (Obama) is doing everything he can on the issues that we care about.”, he is quoted in the media as saying, “He has political limitations ----so we really have an obligation to help him.”

Obama was not shy on climate change but never mentioned the Keystone Pipeline, he is among friends with the billionaires that finance the Democratic Party and wants unity.  He pointed out that  the issue of the temperature of the planet is not the main concern of most workers, workers main concern is “How do I feed my family” “The politics of this are tough.” Obama said. They are indeed, and keeping people in a state of debt bondage and in everlasting insecurity is one sure way of keeping people’s attention focused on the immediate, necessities food, shelter, health.  His billionaire backers gave him the “most enthusiastic applause” when he pointed out the gains that have been made in LGBT rights.

This should come as no surprise, such advances in no way threaten the interests of the people he is talking to, the class whose interests the Democratic party represents.  This is not to say this is not an important issue to those who are denied rights the rest of us have due to their sexual orientation, it is.  But we have to clearly see that this and other issues are used by the parties to avoid the most important issues for all people regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation etc. and that is food, shelter, education, a job (including for the immigrant population) instead of prison, health care, homelessness.

It is comical to hear politicians and supporters of the other party of the 1% harangue Obama for being, “On billionaire’s row” as a Republican Party ad did. The Republican Party is funded by the same class that funds the Democrats. After the two SF billionaires, Obama headed over to the Peninsula to meet with another coupon clipper that loves the environment, investor Mark Heising. He topped it off with lunch with Levi Strauss heir, John Goldman, and his wife Marcia. Goldman is a “philanthropist” apparently. For billionaires this means giving away other people’s money.  You don’t have too look far to see on whose backs Goldman’s wealth was made.

More often than not I have gotten in to some hot water with friends who vote Democratic because they are forced because they vote for this party to defend it.  Actually, they shy away from defending it because it’s impossible to defend it without admitting it is hostile to workers’ interests and defends the interests of the 1% ; so they simply omit the party at all when they’re voicing opposition to the capitalist offensive.  It is always the Republicans that are blamed for the offensive, for cuts in social services, wages, benefits etc. 

This morning (I started this yesterday) I see that Obama has opened the door to cutting social security benefits if Republicans will agree to higher taxes.  This horse trading is done under the cloak of shared sacrifice, us and Warren Buffet joining forces to save capitalism from the abyss.  The White House assures us that, "This isn't about political horse trading……it's about reducing the deficit in a balanced way that economists say is best for the economy and job creation."

How nice of them.  Their economic gurus limited to a perspective based entirely on capitalist economics want what’s best for the economy, for their economic interests that is.  Their interest in jobs, or setting the Labor process in motion is only if they control it and reap the benefits of it in the form of profits.

“He who pays the piper names the tune” as the old adage goes. The Democratic Party heavyweights Obama spent the last few days with are not the friends of workers and the middle class. We won’t be hearing loud protests from them on the reducing of social security benefits which Obama is offering to do by reducing the program's cost of living increases. They talked about that with him this week in private and gave him the OK   Our youth who are being driven deeper in to poverty, prison or the streets will not be dragged from the morass by these people.  But it is also not about Obama as an individual.

A political party does not exist in a vacuum, it represents forces in society, it is financed by those same forces, inextricably linked to them and the Democratic Party, like its counterpart across what they call “the aisle” is a party of the capitalist class.  The assault on workers and our living standards has continued under Democratic and Republican alike, the difference is a matter of degrees.

The 138 million or so eligible voters that opted out of the last election are not simply apathetic as many liberals claim. They have drawn the correct conclusion that neither party represents their interests.

Workers can only rely on our own strength, rely on it here and by linking with workers throughout the world under attack by the same forces. There is no way out relying on the generosity of billionaires, even the trendy ones.  Building a united mass movement in our workplaces, streets and communities using direct action tactics is what will bring results; is what can drive the austerity agenda back and build an offensive of our own against capital.  An independent political alternative arising out of such a movement is the answer to the betrayals and dead end of the Democrats.

Read More

OCAP Wins small victory for homeless in Toronto

Update on Toronto Shelters Campaign: City Council Votes to Open Beds for Homeless!

Submitted by ocap on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 04:41.

Thursday, April 4, 2013
It took months of community action, two occupations and some fifty arrests, but the City's claim that the overcrowded shelter system is 'meeting the needs of the homeless' has now collapsed.

On April 4th, City Council voted in favour of a return to the policy of opening new space when shelter occupancy reaches 90% (it is presently running at an official 96% average with some spaces, including women's shelters, at 99 and 100%). Staff are now instructed to take the measures necessary to achieve this goal including the opening of new facilities. Our efforts will now be devoted to ensuring that they do just that.

When the final vote was taken on the amended motion, one member of Council cast a vote against- Mayor Rob Ford. Ford had earlier told the media that he would return to the Council Chambers to explicitly vote against opening more beds for the homeless and he did just that. He had already delayed consideration of the shelter issue by placing on the agenda a proposal to open a Hero Burger outlet in Nathan Phillip's Square. He was able to win the burger joint, but his efforts to deny safety and dignity to homeless people were in vain.

This vote is a victory for community action. We said all along that
letting people die on the streets could be viewed as the ultimate result of the austerity agenda and we have shown we can fight back against that agenda and win. However, we are also clear that it will take ongoing action to ensure this Council vote translates into more beds and new spaces for the homeless.

Finally, pleased as we are with this victory, let's remember that we have won shelter beds for the homeless, not housing. We don't accept that people should sleep in hostels or that upscale development continues to push people and services out of the downtown core. We now have to build a powerful and united movement that can win housing for everyone in this city, and to push back against the gentrification of our communities. We know this will be a long and hard fight. The people who we've lost - members, friends, and the 'nameless' - they are not forgotten and we fight for a city where 'No More Homeless Deaths' is truly a reality.

Ontario Coalition Against Povertywww.ocap.ca
416-925-6939

I'd say three things stand out in the victory that has just been won around the crisis of overcrowding in Toronto's homeless shelter system:-

1. The dominant power structure at City Hall, gathered around the Mayor's office and the most senior levels of the administration, were determined to cram people into the shelters regardless of the human cost but they have been forced to give ground. Austerity is not inevitable and we can win victories even in the face of major attacks.

2. This particular victory is fragile as most victories are likely to be in the present situation. It is a given that the administration will do as little as possible to actually implement the Council decision to reduce the overcrowding. The gain we made will be worth something only to the extent that we continue to mobilize to force them to take real and effective action.

3. We can take a moment to feel some satisfaction at this win but we should also admit that it is a sign of our present weakness that we are fighting to prevent them from letting people die on the streets. We did not challenge homelessness but only eased the situation the homeless face. By gaining some additional shelter space, we took a few baby steps but we need to build a movement in this City that seriously fights for the right to decent and affordable housing for everyone.

 John Clarke, OCAP

Read More

Don't forget the Exxon Valdez

From Coastal First Nations. It could have done without the music but it's the sort of history that we are supposed to forget.

                                                                     *********

24 years later and this still gives us a sinking feeling. This is the actual radio call from the Exxon Valdez to Coast Guard, reporting the oil spill.

Released on the 24th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, this two-minute video reminds us of the dangers and costs that oil tankers and pipelines pose to our coastal waters. Produced by the Coastal First Nations (http://www.coastalfirstnations.ca), the video opens with Exxon Valdez Captain Joe Hazelwood's radio call to Coast Guard, accompanied by The Sound of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel. It concludes with a simple message: "Don't be silent. Vote for an oil-free coast."

Paul Simon's music label granted the rights to use the song for a small honorarium after the Coastal First Nations wrote to him personally, telling him about the Great Bear Rainforest and the danger that oil tankers pose to the coastal communities that live here. Please share far and wide!

Read More

Fast food workers plan surprise strike

From Salon.com

Breaking: Workers in some 50 restaurants expected to walk off job, potentially shutting down several eateries today

By Josh Eidelson

 
A protester holds up a sign at a demonstration outside McDonald's in Times Square in support of employees on strike at various fast-food chains in New York November 29, 2012. (Credit: Reuters/Andrew Kelly)

New York City fast food workers this morning planned to walk off the job in what organizers promised would be the largest-ever strike against the fast-growing, virtually union-free industry. The workers are demanding that chains like McDonald’s and Wendy’s raise their wages to $15 an hour and allow them to organize a union without retaliation. The campaign expected over 400 workers from 50-some stores to participate in the surprise strike, doubling the size of their previous walkout and potentially shutting down several fast food restaurants for the day.

“Obviously, it will piss off our bosses even more than before,” KFC worker Joe Barrera told Salon in a pre-strike interview. Barrera, 22, said that over his seven years in the industry, “we’ve had our complaints, but no one actually spoke out about it … I guess people were finally tired of the disrespect, under-compensation, being overworked, not having steady schedules and times, not having enough hours – basically, being played around with.” Workers from Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Papa John’s, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are also expected to join the strike.

Barrera, who’s paid the $7.25 minimum wage, said that a decent raise would allow him to stop skipping meals and start pursuing college. “Maybe I could afford to have a girlfriend, take her out on a date …” he added. “All of that money goes right now to just surviving.”
Fast food is becoming an ever-larger and more representative sector of the U.S. economy. “We should think of these jobs as the norm,” said Columbia University political scientist Dorian Warren, “because even when you look at the high-skilled, high-paying jobs, they’re even adopting the low-wage model” of management. That means erratic schedules, paltry benefits, and – so far – almost no unions. “These are the quintessential example of the kinds of jobs that we have now,” said Warren, “and of the kind of job that we can expect in the future for the next few decades.”

Asked yesterday about recent labor protests, a McDonald’s spokesperson emailed a statement saying, “We value and respect all the employees who work at McDonald’s restaurants” and that the majority of its stores are franchisee-run restaurants “where employees are paid competitive wages, and have access to flexible schedules and quality, affordable benefits.”

Today’s planned work stoppage represents a major escalation by Fast Food Forward, a campaign spearheaded by the community organizing group New York Communities for Change (a successor to the now deceased ACORN). The fast food campaign’s funders include the Service Employees International Union. As Salon first reported, the campaign went public with a previous strike on Nov. 29. A parallel effort is underway in Chicago, where workers are also demanding $15 an hour and unionization without intimidation, but so far haven’t gone on strike. While New York’s and Chicago’s are the only ones to go public so far, similar organizing efforts are underway elsewhere as well.

Reached over email regarding the Fast Food Forward campaign, National Restaurant Association executive vice president Scott DeFife warned that “Any additional labor cost can negatively impact a restaurant’s ability to hire or maintain jobs.”

If the nature of the fast food industry reflects what’s happening to U.S. jobs, the shape of the fast food campaign reflects the challenges unions face in fighting back.
Since 1935, federal law has promised workers who want a union the chance to hold an election and force their boss to negotiate. But that promise has proven pretty empty. Among the obstacles: The government-sponsored election process is rife with opportunities for intimidation and delay. Companies that fire workers for organizing risk only meager penalties, after what can be a years-long process. Even when workers win a unionization election, they’re as likely as not to be left without a union contract a year later, because companies can stall or stonewall negotiations.

So even though the law says that it’s up to workers whether to bargain collectively with their boss, it’s really up to bosses whether to bargain in good faith with their employees. To succeed, union campaigns have to mount enough pressure against companies to make the costs of holding out greater than the benefits. But courts and politicians have made that harder to pull off, by making one of labor’s key weapons – the strike – harder to effectively use. Many of the most effective strike tactics – from sit-down strikes that physically occupy a workplace, to solidarity strikes that spread through a supply chain – are now generally illegal. And “permanently replacing” striking workers – de facto terminating them by refusing to let them have their jobs back after a strike – is generally kosher under the law.

“It’s important to recognize that labor law is set up to prevent exactly this type of organizing,” Joe Burns, the author of “Reviving the Strike,” said of the fast food campaign.

The Fast Food Forward campaign reflects some of the ways unions are taking on this challenge: finding alternative leverage points against corporations, and reimagining the strike. NYCC executive director Jonathan Westin told Salon that the campaign “is taking on all of the different avenues that we can, to engage workers, community, clergy, elected officials, and allies, to do everything we can to change the conditions within the industry. And if that’s through labor law, great. If it’s through other avenues, where community folks are stepping up and doing things differently, that’s great.” As Salon reported, when a Wendy’s worker was told she’d been terminated the day after the November strike, clergy, politicians and other supporters won her job back within an hour by rallying inside and outside her store.

In recent decades, as strikes have declined, unions have increasingly turned to “comprehensive campaign” tactics designed to compel companies to budge through a combination of political, consumer, community and media pressure. Tactics in such campaigns can range from digging up dirt on management, to calling on customers to boycott, to lobbying against a company’s zoning application. Each of these can pack a punch. But unless the campaign is really engaging workers, companies can often just wait out the bad press while forcing employees to attend that many more anti-union meetings. Just look at Wal-Mart, which withstood a well-funded union-backed air war in the 2000s without really breaking a sweat.

Simply put, few things engage customers, threaten management and transform workers like a good strike. And so, with organized labor nationally very much playing defense, labor organizers have been grappling with how to make strikes work for non-union workers. Today’s fast food strike, the fall strikes by Wal-Mart retail and warehouse workers, and a February strike by janitors who clean Twin Cities Target stores all share a few apparent tactics in common.

Because it’s legal to “permanently replace” workers who just strike in order to win union recognition or higher wages, workers announce that they are striking in protest of violations of labor law by management (if the government finds this to be true, then permanently replacing them becomes illegal – though that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen anyway). Because modern U.S. strikes are often more about humiliating management than shutting down business, workers go out on strike for a single day rather than walking off the job indefinitely. And rather than waiting until a majority of workers are willing to take the risk of going on strike, organizers mount strikes with a minority of the workforce, in hopes that their courage – and their safe return to work afterward – will inspire more of their co-workers to join in the next time.

If organizers’ estimates (400 to 500 strikers today) hold true, that’ll suggest that such “minority unionism” is paying off for NYC fast food workers, at least so far. McDonald’s employee Stephen Warner told Salon that when he heard about other workers going on strike in November, “it gave me hope for a better future … I was very surprised.” He’ll be out on the picket lines himself this time, he said, “hopefully to set an example for the rest of the people in fast food, so that they know that change is possible.”

But can these efforts ever develop the clout to compel a company like Wendy’s to foreswear union-busting? Labor campaigns have won some victories against fast food giants before. As I reported for the Nation last month, a strike by 15 immigrant guest workers led McDonald’s to cut ties to a franchisee that had allegedly subjected them to shifts of up to 25 hours straight. Consumer pressure campaigns by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (a non-union labor group) have gotten chains like Taco Bell to sign agreements requiring improved conditions for Florida tomato workers. And members of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union that generally eschews legal union recognition, say their workplace has forced improvements in discipline, scheduling and pay in some Minneapolis Jimmy John’s stores. But getting industry giants to drop their opposition to collective bargaining would be a tall order, one that would likely require much larger strikes, in many more cities, to even be conceivable.

“The franchise structure makes it easier for McDonald’s or the other food chains to just cut a franchise loose and say they’re not responsible,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, who directs labor education and research at Cornell. That’s because it’s the thousands of individual store franchisee-owners who legally employ workers, but it’s the corporate headquarters that actually calls the shots. On the other hand, Bronfenbrenner told Salon, “unlike Wal-Mart, McDonald’s is much more vulnerable to consumer pressure, in that they have competitors.” While some labor campaigns focus all of their firepower on making an example of a single company, Bronfenbrenner said that this campaign’s strategy of mobilizing against all of the major fast food industry players could pay off if one chain decides to make a deal with the union in hopes of getting a competitive advantage by escaping labor strife.

Burns, a negotiator for an airline union, called the fast food workers’ willingness to walk off the job “a very positive sign” of “a major shift in organizing strategy” after years in which unions largely neglected strikes. But he predicted that the constraints of labor law — including the laws limiting “representational strikes” designed to win collective bargaining, and repeated “intermittent strikes” against the same boss — will come to pose a major obstacle. “In the long run,” Burns told Salon, “it’s hard to see a successful strategy organizing fast food that doesn’t involve violating labor law.”
While that hasn’t happened so far, the fast food strikers are drawing inspiration from a group of workers who famously mounted an illegal strike. Today’s strike date was chosen because it marks 45 years since Rev. Martin Luther King was gunned down in Memphis, where he was supporting striking sanitation workers who were demanding union recognition. At a New York City meeting last Thursday, two veterans of that strike met with fast food employees just before a secret meeting where workers voted to authorize today’s strike. “In order for you all to win anything, you’re going to have to stand up,” Memphis striker Alvin Turner, now 78, told the crowd. “You’re going to have to stand up and be counted … If you don’t stand up, you can kiss it goodbye.”

Read More

US capitalism's stooges in the Gulf states clamp down on dissent

Bush and Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed of the UAE

by Richard Mellor

Some of the Pentagon's best buddies in the Middle East are cracking down a bit.  I'm not talking about the Zionists whose brutality is well documented and funded by the US taxpayer but the medieval monarchies that Washington props up with our tax money.  After seeing such staunch friends of US capitalism like Hosni Mubarak fall prey to uprisings against autocratic rule, these 7th century feudal rulers threw a few hundred billion dollars at the masses in order to head off the possibility of the Arab Spring taking hold in the gulf states.  Most of these states rely on a lot of foreign workers, both skilled and unskilled which does present some problems in Saudi Arabia which has the world's highest level of youth unemployment outside of sub-Saharan Africa according to the Wall Street Journal. 

But the sheiks are getting a bit nervous.  As we saw during the Arab Spring, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook played a significant role in organizing protests and keeping activists connected and the rest of the world tuned in.  There are some one million Twitter users in the gulf states as well as Facebook users which has potential to upset the apple cart for the thugs that control these societies with US military backing.  Bahrain is a perfect example where peaceful protests for democratic reform were met with a brutal response from the monarchy and an invasion by Saudi troops at the request of Washington.  The 30,000 US troops in Bahrain were no guarantor of democratic rights there.

All the gulf states are clamping down on social networking sites and punishing dissenters who use them to criticize the regimes. Kuwait, the family run nation state that the US went to war to defend, just sentenced one twitter user to 5 years for "defaming" the ruling prince.  Another user, Rashid al Enizi got two years for tweeting that the ruling Sheik Sabah was "The coward that ran away after issuing an order." Dangerous stuff indeed. The reason for the attack was that his Shiekness had issued a decree limiting parliament's powers and then left the country for a nice vacation, no doubt to Monte Carlo or Las Vegas where these characters can use prostitutes, gamble and maybe drink and smoke a little something he'd have you whipped or even beheaded for back home perhaps.  Hence the "coward" label.  You can't call a macho Sheik with absolute power including over women a coward and get away with it.

Charles the first of England lost his head for dissolving parliament some 350 years ago.  Propping up such regimes in the 21st century tells us something about politics.  Economics and politics are inextricably linked.  Greece was a democracy but not for slaves.  We live in a democracy, a bourgeois democracy.  We get to vote every two or four years for one or the other candidates of Wall Street.

In Qatar a poet who put a video of himself on YouTube reading a poem praising the revolution in Tunisia that removed the the US's  stooge there was charged with "insulting the country's ruler and inciting the overthrow of the ruling family" according to the WSJ.  On appeal, the sentence was reduced to 15 years.  How nice. The ruling family of Qatar are the owners of al Jazeera, the Arabic and English language news service that was set up after the BBC's Arabic Language station was closed down. al Jazeera has won numerous awards and can be viewed in many countries although there is pretty much a blackout in the US.  No cable company airs al Jazeera here I don't think.  Still, al Jazeera doesn't have much credibility being owned by a ruling monarchy that hands out life sentences for supporting uprisings in other countries that demand more openness and democratic rights. Despite this weakness, for information, al Jazeera is far superior to US news outlets which are among the most censored and opinionated in the world.

Insult this friend of the US: get 15 years in the slammer

The support the US gives these regimes is one reason for the anti-American feeling that has grown over the past period and that has found expression at times in violent religious extremism.  The US media does on occasion publicly criticize it's friends in the gulf states but rarely in the mass media as opposed to their publications aimed at their own class like the Wall Street Journal which provided much of the information in this blog post.

The other destabilizing factor in the region of course is US support for Israel and this apartheid state's treatment of Palestinians. The fear mongering about Iran is a smoke screen and its hard to believe many Americans believe it but the media is so controlled and general knowledge about what is actually going on in the world so poor, that the US bourgeois feel very confident that their version of global events will prevail.

As Americans feel the effects of a declining world power, albeit one that can still blow all of us to pieces and will if not stopped; and having to pay for US capitalism's predatory foreign policy through declining living standards, cuts in social services, education transportation, public parks etc. we will be forced at some point to intervene.

Here in the US there are thousands upon thousands of small groups around various issues that have arisen since the Great Recession hit in 2007.  There are numerous groups around housing and foreclosures, health care, police brutality and opposition to environmental degradation like the Keystone XL pipeline and Fracking.

There will be an explosion at some point in this country as the inequality gap continues to grow and attacks on living standards persist in order to pay for US imperialism's global wars in defense of the corporations and the market.  One of the reasons for the delay I believe is that there is presently no social force of any real significance that can link all these individual forces of opposition together and provide an outlet for the tremendous anger and frustration that exists beneath the surface of US society.  Organized Labor can play this role but the Union hierarchy is a staunch defender of US capitalism and has the same world view as the bosses, with an army of full timers (many of them leftists or ex leftists of one type or another) the heads of organized Labor act to hold back and suppress any movement that threatens this world view.

Since the Battle in Seattle in 1999, US capitalism has increased its domestic surveillance and beefing up of police and security forces. As the UK Guardian reported in a piece about anti-drone Hoodies that can protect the wearer from thermal imaging, there is expected to be more than 20,000 drones in the skies over America in the next 15 years. These will be owned by law enforcement, security firms and private individuals of some wealth.

The Guardian: "In the UK, several police forces are already experimenting with drones, and not just for thermal imaging. "They can be equipped with things called IMSI-catchers that will work out the mobile phone numbers of any people in a certain area," explains Richard Tynan, research officer at campaign group Privacy International. 'If police deploy these things for crowd control there's no issue with them figuring out every single person who's in there – and their mobile phone numbers. They can also intercept calls and send out false messages. It's not just the police either. Cybercriminals can use these, or even business opponents. This technology already exists.'"

All this weaponry and the laws aimed at foreign terrorism will be used and is being used against youth and workers in the US as the movement against the offensive of capital and the placing of the US working class on rations intensifies.

We will see our "US Spring". 

Read More

A visit to a Baptist Church

Just getting started

by Richard Mellor

I just returned from a funeral service.  The father of one of my long time and closest friends passed away at the age of 95.  His son and I were part of the leadership of our Union at various times and he was the President of it at one point.  The Church, the Bible Faith Baptist Church in East Oakland was his father's church, Moses Cain 2nd.  Not in the sense that he attended it, but he built it and was the pastor.

Anyone that's been to these churches is aware of the atmosphere, the music, singing, the praising the lord, the preacher working the congregation telling them this is a time to be happy not sad. "The Holy Ghost is trying to get in," the preacher said when he thought the congregation was not significantly involved, "I'm fittin' to change the atmosphere in here."  My days in the English Catholic Church were not like this.

There was time allotted for people to speak of Pastor Cain and what he and his family meant to them in their lives, after all, this was a family church really.  It was very moving to hear these folks talk about what a good man he was and his family.  The family lived in a part of Oakland that is within what is referred to as the "Killing Zone" due to the internecine gang wars and murders of young black men by the police that take place in the area. But Pastor Cain was the father to everyone in the neighborhood people said.   He gave advice to all the young people or anyone else who needed help.

One woman in her seventies spoke of how he had advised her after she got married years ago.  The preacher reminded her of what the Bible says about the need to honor and obey your husband. She described having a difficult time with that one; was hesitant.  She got a lot of laughs as she was quite a character, a powerful working  class woman.  She questioned him about that as her husband was staying out late, going to bars, clubs and the like. Pastor Cain basically told her that if her husband wasn't leading a righteous life then she was not obligated to obey him.  She described it as her husband not following the Lord of course, after all, it was a church. But she said it was the right advice given that she disagreed with what her husband was doing. It is hard to captivate such a mood in writing but she was wonderful and I could see the women present liked it. The gist of it was that she was right and her husband was wrong; the "Obey" law is null and void.

Others talked further about what the pastor and his family had meant to their community as children, neighbors and friends.  He was born in 1917.

I had no intention of speaking partially because I felt it not right as I'm not a Christian, I don't go to church or even believe in god; this isn't a political meeting after all.  But as I am so fond of telling others who have tried to tell me when and when not it is appropriate to raise politics: "Everything in life is political."  Hearing all the others describe the role he played in their lives and the community in general and then reading the description in the program,  I too felt a need to express why I was there as a means of paying respect to him and his family. I have always felt comfortable in that church.

Though not a churchgoer I have visited that building for more than 25 years; we met there during the strike of 1985 sometimes.  I also met Pastor Cain and his wife briefly after being introduced to the family through my friend and union fighter Marvin.  When I visited their home I felt welcome there too.  I got to know his daughters, Marvin's wife Rebecca, and his brother Moses, as we worked at the same place. 

But Marvin and I became friends though the struggle against the boss. At work, he was a fighter for all people.  When we first met we were sitting in a dump truck and I was espousing the merits of socialism.  He listened attentively and when I'd finished talking, eagerly awaiting his thoughts about what I'd said, he pointed to the watch on his left hand,

"What is socialism going to do about this," he said.

Strange question I thought to myself thinking he was concerned about the watch. After a confused "Huh?" from me, he repeated it and it became clear he was talking about being black in America. So we had a long, further more detailed discussion about that and the rest is our history.

So that little church and the family that created it has a place in my life too.

When I spoke I said that and how I was political and was grateful to have known this family, especially my friend.  But I read that paragraph about his father in the program.  I said that he was a leader, a worker's and community leader. He was a teacher to the young people in the community.  More than one man spoke about the skills he'd taught them.  One laughed about churning ice cream in the back yard and using a sickle, or he might have meant a scythe which is a tool I was very familiar with. I also pointed out that his being the first Black American to get a job at a local manufacturing plant was a historic event and should not be forgotten that it took place when it did in so-called democratic America.

I found the words I wanted to share when I said that those who are held up as successful and leaders in our society, those our children are supposed to emulate are what I call "coupon clippers."  They do no productive Labor unlike Pastor Cain had done all his life and they suck the life blood out of our communities unlike Pastor Cain who gave to the community, served it and was a leader in it to the extent that he could be.  That he found strength to do this through his faith is not a bad thing.  I sort of liken these churches, so many of them small congregations, to the liberation theologists in the Catholic Church that the popes of  Rome helped smash.  They serve the working class and the poor and within any institution its class content matters.

As the congregation responded to the pastor's calls for celebration and praising I wanted to video it and was given permission but somehow I felt I shouldn't but did take one picture you see above. 

The program had a short piece on him:

"Moses was a cook at the Oakland Army Base. He was the first African-American employee hired by the Gerber Baby Food Plant in East Oakland.  He retired from there as a machinist.  He taught the children in the neighborhood gardening, landscaping, painting, roofing, general construction and other skills that he used around the community.  Many of the young men in the area regarded him as the neighborhood dad."

Working class history is fortunately full of such leaders, they are often the glue that holds the fabric together and at work, when they become involved in workers organizations as so many of them do, they strengthen our class in the struggle against the bosses. "Our" leaders don't make the history channel and if they do, they don't do it right.

If I wondered where my friend got his fighting spirit I can see that his father instilled it in him.

Read More

China, Genius, Joyce, small graveyard in Donegal.

James Joyce

I had to go down to the hospital very early today. On the way back I was exhausted and stopped in a coffee shop. And what do you know? My whole day was transformed. Somebody had left a copy of the New York Times behind, and there staring up at me from the front page was the man himself, wee Joyce. with his head and hat cocked in the famous pose. When my mother died she was buried in a small Donegal graveyard. Being an atheist I did not let the preacher speak for me. After he was finished I spoke of my mother's life and read two Joyce poems. Genius, which if it is genius, corresponds to reality, and Joyce's genius found its way into that small graveyard. Or to put it another way it is hard to keep a good man or woman down. So what was this article in the NEw York Times about? Well it seems that Finnegans Wake, the most complex of all his works has now been translated into Chinese, it did not say was it cantonese or the other Chinese language.

And what do you know the book is flying off the shelves. They have had to have a second print run already. MS. Dai the translator says: "It is beyond my expectations." It reached number two on the best sellers list. One reader said:" I am so desperate to know how it feels to read the most complicated book in the world." MS Dai deserves a medal. To translate Joyce's work she had to create new Chinese characters, a big step as the language already had tens of thousands of characters. Ms. Dai has not finished her translation completely. She says it will take another six years. Her husband who is gettiung very annoyed with Joyce because he hardly ever sees his wife. thinks it will take another 20 years. He is getting like Nora who got fed up with Joyce in her time and referred to Finnegans Wake as "That Chop Suey you're writing." HHHmmmmm, Choy Suey and a Chinese translation of Finnegans Wake. It gets more Joycean by the minute. Supporters of the book and of Joyce say his genius is that he pushes the limits of language. It is to be read as poetry say many.

A prominent Chinese writer says Finnegans Wake could inspire Chinese people to write. And maybe after they read it they will take literature seriously or even write." MS Dai, the vice Dean of the Department of Chinese Literature at Fundan University in Shanghai says:" The traditional writing style of Chinese literature needs to be changed after all these years.Someone needs to stand out and lead by his (or her) unique wriiting, like what James Joyce did in Western literature. Not bad from a boy from Dublin. Maybe change the literature of a country of over a billion. As I say they banned him in Ireland, they drove him out, then they had to retreat and put the bronze quotes from him on the Dublin streets and now he is penetrating the world and its most populous country.

I like the one about Blooms Day and the Joyce fans who were in Dublin from all over the world. A group of Japanese were outside one of the Joyce pubs with some sheets of Finnegans Wake translated into Japanese. A couple of Dublin wits were standing dragging on two butts hoping there might be a drink going. Maybe these Japanese would want to meet some real Jocyean Dubliners. They thought to themselves - no better men. But in spite of themselves they got caught up in the Japanese reading Finnegans Wake in their own language. After a while one turned to the other and said:" Bay Jaysus, I can understand it better in the Japanese." Joyce would have been proud.

Read More