[Peace] FW: Workers Against War

[Marianne Brun]

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Datum: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 19:27:45 -0500
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Betreff: Workers Against War

Counterpunch
January, 2003

Workers Against War

By JoAnn Wypijewski

"Our membership is split 50-50. Fifty percent don't believe a thing
President Bush says, and 50 percent think he's a liar."

As entrails to ancient augurs, the water in toilets on upper floors
of the Sears Tower presents to us signs, omens, the coded messages
from which to coax the metaphors for our age. Lapping back and forth
within the bowls, the water betrays the ceaseless stress and sway of
America's tallest building. "The whole thing is basically just a
steel skeleton. Think of the steel as a wire", my friend Marty
Conlisk, a union electrician who has worked on just about every
skyscraper in Chicago, suggested. "What happens when you put stress
on a wire? It bends. Enough stress, over enough time, and it snaps."
Outside the Tower a banner exhorts passersby, "Stand Tall America".
Marty figures that "one day they're going to have to take the
building down, or it's going to come down".

I was in Chicago for a meeting on January 11 of about 100 union
antiwar advocates or activists from across the country, gathered
there to initiate a national labor organization against a war that,
in its hottest phase, has yet to begin. The term "historic", used
throughout the day, was not misplaced. Among the group were Staughton
Lynd from Youngstown, who'd chaired the first demonstration on
Washington against the Vietnam War in April of 1965; Frank Emspak
from Wisconsin, who'd chaired the National Coordinating Committee to
End the War in Vietnam when it called the first mass days of protest
in October 1965; and Jerry Tucker from St. Louis, who was present
when unions formed a peace faction outside the ultra-hawkish AFL-CIO
in 1971, by which time, as he notes, the Vietnamese had won the war.
Something profoundly different is happening now, and while it's
unclear how broad labor opposition will become, its very existence,
now given national expression, represents the deepest crack in the
supposed consensus for war.

The working class, unions particularly, aren't usually associated
with antiwar sentiment. Immediately after 9.11, the Machinists
famously bellowed for "vengeance not justice," John Sweeney said the
unions stood "shoulder to shoulder" with George Bush in the war on
terror, and many labor leftists dove for cover, saying even raising a
discussion on the prospect of endless war was too risky. There was a
war at home the latter argued-the sinking economy, assaults on
immigrants-and it could be neatly filleted from the war abroad.

At least as many people were killed in Afghanistan as died in New
York, and in exchange for fealty to national security through
slaughter, the Machinists got layoffs at Boeing, layoffs in the
airline industry, a concessionary contract at Lockheed Martin.
Sweeney and Co. got to watch as Bush intervened against the West
Coast longshore workers and threatened to strip dockworkers
permanently of the right to strike, as civil servants first in the US
Attorneys' offices, then in the Office of Homeland Security lost
collective bargaining rights, as immigrants were fired from their
airport screening jobs and unions forbidden to organize, as 850,000
government jobs crept toward the privatizing block, as unemployment
rose, benefits ran out, the rich got goodies and government workers,
soldiers included, were stiffed on pay. For its part, the timorous
left got more evidence than needed of the naivete of its argument.
(It also has to be said that a few bold labor leftists have paid for
their early stance against war with the loss of their elective
offices, but they were never under illusions that principle comes
without a price.)

Now enters US Labor Against the War. Its creation does not signal an
about-face by top union leadership, though that is to be desired, but
rather the convergence of an antiwar spirit first expressed in ad hoc
labor organizations in New York, San Francisco and Washington, then
in an increasing number of local labor bodies throughout the country.
The AFL-CIO is still in the war column, though more reluctantly. The
executive council of only one International union, AFSCME, has passed
a resolution against war on Iraq. That one considers such an invasion
a distraction from the war on terror and "a last resort", assuming
the UN gives the go-ahead, but it is interesting because at the
union's convention last June the leadership did all it could to
silence and isolate antiwar delegates. Ultimately, it could not
ignore what was percolating from below.

US Labor Against the War is the result of a similar process. Since
9.11 at least forty-two locals, fourteen district or regional
councils, thirteen central labor councils, five state federations,
four national labor organizations and twenty-two local committees
have passed antiwar resolutions. These represent more than two
million people, and that estimate is low, as many more labor bodies
have gone on record than were counted in time for the Chicago meeting.

"We are having this meeting because our members demanded it", Jerry
Zero, secretary treasurer of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, which
hosted the gathering, said at the outset. "Our membership is split
50-50. Fifty percent don't believe a thing President Bush says, and
50 percent think he's a liar."

Local 705 is the second-largest local in the Teamsters. Zero, who has
long been identified with progressive causes, calls its members
largely conservative. While there are members who dispute this, it's
fair to say that truck drivers in the Heartland do not fit any
standard antiwar profile. Last October at a general meeting a member
of the local introduced an antiwar resolution. His father fought in
Vietnam and bears the psychic scars. The statement does not embrace
or even mention the war on terror, the disarming of Saddam, UN
inspections or international military coalitions. It simply states,
"We value the lives of our sons and daughters, of our brothers and
sisters more that Bush's control of Middle East oil profits", and "We
have no quarrel with the ordinary working-class men, women and
children of Iraq who will suffer the most in any war". After noting
the economic implications for the US working class, it resolves that
"Teamsters Local 705 stands firmly against Bush's drive for war".
Zero said he had expected vigorous disagreement and was stunned when,
out of 403 members present, no one spoke in favor of war. The
resolution passed 402 to 1.

705's resolution became the template for the resolution ultimately
adopted, with additions and alterations, as the statement of US Labor
Against the War. (See below.) Here, though, there was lengthy,
passionate debate. It's worth reviewing that briefly for the larger
lessons it holds.

First, disagreement needn't lead to ruin. As Bob Muehlenkamp, a
longtime labor organizer who coordinated the Chicago meeting, noted,
the subject at hand was one of the most emotionally and politically
charged issues humanity faces. It would have been bizarre, even
troubling, if everyone present-from union staff to principal officers
to radical rank and file-had moved in sheeplike agreement. People got
excited, ideas were fought over, compromises reached; no one stormed
out or tried to scuttle the project, and by the end of the day people
who had been at opposite poles of the debate said they could work
with the result.

Second, a united front requires a confrontation on just what is
unifying. Debate hinged on whether the new group should support the
disarming of Iraq, containment of Iraq, UN multilateralism and
inspections, or whether, like 705's statement, it should stick to
simple principles of national and international class interest and
opposition to war. The whole morning had been spent setting the table
for the group to adopt the former position. Muehlenkamp pointed out a
series of internal union polls showing that people are more likely to
oppose war if the US goes ahead without UN approval. David Cortwright
of Keep America Safe/Win Without War, which he described as "a
mainstream patriotic coalition of Americans who are concerned about
Iraq but don't want to go to war" and which includes the Sierra Club,
Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, the NAACP and religious
groups, had been invited to speak. He went into copious detail about
UN procedures-a subject guaranteed to encourage the average person to
switch off-and explained how "we can win against Iraq, we can win the
war on terrorism" without an invasion or other US unilateral action.
It was all perfectly understandable. Washington is crawling with
labor officials, some International union presidents, who would like
to take a stand against war but are scared. They might be emboldened
behind the shield of the UN, shoulder to shoulder now with liberal
business leaders.

The problem is, at least half the people in the room believe that the
war on terror, the threats to Iraq are part of a US imperial policy,
that the US has and will manipulate the UN, that evidence against
Iraq can always be manufactured or exaggerated for convenience sake,
that solidarity with workers of the world places labor in natural
opposition to a war agenda and that any talk about crises in the
Middle East cannot ignore the question of Palestine. Bill Fletcher,
formerly education director of the AFL-CIO, now the head of
TransAfrica and a convener of the United for Peace and Justice
coalition, spoke strongly on these issues and then warned, "We have
to have a broad level of unity. If we make anti-imperialism the
premise of our work then we're building a sect, and I'm too old for
that".

Somehow along the way, though, the UN position got defined as the
neutral one. A draft resolution was presented reflecting that, to
which a group of delegates counterpoised a modified version of 705's
resolution. Thus began the debate. (Interest declared: I attended the
meeting as a delegate from New York City Labor Against the War, which
was formed soon after September 11, and this substitute draft
resolution was initiated by two of our group's conveners, Michael
Letwin and Brenda Stokely.) There were flared tempers, even moments
of redbaiting. It seems some people had so prepared themselves for a
sectarian hijacking of the proceedings that they were responding to
some imagined revolutionary manifesto rather than to the plainspoken
prose of a Chicago truck driver. And of course other people stood to
denounce labor bureaucrats, the Democratic Party, or sometimes just
to hear themselves talk.

Out of this wrangle came a basic understanding: unity demands
simplicity and allows for differences. The final resolution has
elements of both proposed drafts and includes neither patriotism nor
Palestine; it makes no rhetorical flourish on the nature of
fundamentalism or capitalism; it neither embraces the UN nor
denounces American imperialism. It therefore allows all of those
subjects and many more to be freely explored and debated in
discussion and organization among workers, which is, or should be,
the whole point.

Third, no one has a monopoly on representing workers' view of the
world. It's not true that workers are all conservative flag-wavers
any more than it's true that they're all organic anticapitalists
waiting to be turned loose against the system. One of the problems
with drafting resolutions that are meant to reflect what workers
think or what workers will be comfortable with is that the process
can so easily tip into essentialism. In Chicago there were moments
when it seemed all of organized labor was being characterized as
obsessed with terrorism and national security, scared to death,
inclined to support military action though movable depending on the
details. Yet again and again delegates would tell of how the workers
had surprised them: how they voted unanimously against war, how
discussion was heartfelt and strangely one-sided, how the head of the
local building trades council, against all expectation, took an
antiwar stand. Many things determine the picture: race, sex, age,
income, experience-and sometimes nothing anyone could have predicted.

What can probably be said without fear of contradiction is that a lot
of people are confused and their information is bad, and that even if
they have misgivings about war they don't think it's a subject for
the union to take up. That last is a legacy of decades in which
unions either recused themselves from discussion on the most
compelling political issues of the day or were complicit with
government policy and thus developed no independent analysis. Given
how anxious union leaders are said to be about sticking their necks
out on the war question, maybe the most valuable thing they could do
is to initiate open forums, where information could be shared and
issues engaged in freewheeling fashion. As at Local 705, their
members might surprise them. Similarly, those labor bodies that have
taken a stand might further the discussions they've already had. If
they've passed resolutions supporting UN but not US intervention in
Iraq, what if the UN gives America its fig leaf and the sons and
daughters of the working class go into battle? What if the go-ahead
is bought with US bribes and threats? If labor bodies have passed
straight-up antiwar resolutions, what happens if a war on Iraq begins
and is answered by terrorist attacks in the United States?

The debates are far from exhausted, and this is a time to talk with
people, not at them. In this spirit, on the night before the Chicago
meeting, Local 705 co-sponsored, with local labor antiwar activists,
a panel discussion the likes of which ought to be replicated in union
halls, schools, community centers, veterans groups, anywhere that
people open to experience and to the strong, true voice of the heart
may gather. It was billed as "Labor Voices and Veteran Voices Against
War" but that hardly captures it. Bill Davis, an early joiner of
Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the chief steward of a UPS
Machinists local in Chicago, called it "a dream come true", merging
his labor and antiwar identities. And his talk, about the nature of
the military and its recruitment, the economic draft, the plight of
veterans, the history of the American Legion as a home for
strikebreakers, vigilantes, Klansmen and warmongers, put the class
angle of militarism up front, inescapably.

Loretta Byrd, recording secretary of Teamsters Local 738 in Chicago,
talked about family and home, the twin threats of war and
joblessness, and proved there are more compelling ways to say no to
war than through union resolutions, prompting the audience, "We've
all heard that song 'War-What is it good for?'" and then, shaking her
finger, "'Absolutely nothing.'" I imagined that through everyone's
head might have been running "It ain't nothing but a
heartbreaker/friend only to the undertaker... induction, then
destruction, who wants to die?"

Trent Willis of ILWU Local 10 out of Oakland described the heavy
weather for longshore workers. Brenda Stokely, who is also president
of AFSCME District Council 1707 in New York, reminded people that
"the things that are worth fighting for always take a lot of nerve"
and then challenged the crowd, in words applicable far beyond that
room: "If you cannot talk to your relatives about your politics, your
politics are irrelevant. If you cannot talk to your neighbors about
your politics, your politics are irrelevant. If you cannot talk to
your co-workers about your politics, your politics ain't worth
having."

Dan Lane, who trade unionists across the country know from his
galvanizing role in the Staley struggle of the early 1990s in
Decatur, spoke of growing up in a boys' home and entering the Marine
Corps at 17 because "it was just a natural progression" from the
boot-camp style home and Saturday afternoons spent watching Hollywood
war movies. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam, saw more carnage
than a soul is meant to handle, beat up an officer, was demoted from
sergeant, collapsed, came home and went through twenty-two jobs in
four years. He recalled that during the Staley struggle Illinois was
called "The War Zone" because of all the strikes or lockouts there at
the time.

"There is a war that is continually being waged against workers", he
said. "That is the way of life. It's a war where people don't usually
come out and have strikes. It's a war where someone is just forced to
sign a piece of paper. Because that's what most people deal with
going into negotiations every day. It's not about negotiations; it's
about them telling you what you're supposed to accept. And most of
the time, people accept; you don't hear about them."

The war abroad had come home. It just took a while to realize it had
always been home.

Rather than spend gobs of money on ads in The New York Times that
nobody reads, antiwar groups, particularly those like US Labor
Against the War, ought to take this kind of talk on the road. There
isn't so much support for the war program that some real soul-to-soul
and pressure in the right places can't turn it around. During
question time an 18-year-old from DePaul University who is trying to
rouse students against the war said he thought the veterans should
come to his school. After all, he said, he has only 18 years of
knowledge and experience, "and that's not a lot".

For more information, US Labor Against the War can be contacted at
katie007 at msn.com.


JoAnn Wypijewski, a journalist in New York, is a member of the
National Writers Union/UAW 1981 and New York City Labor Against the
War.


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