WHAT WOULD A WOBBLIE DO

WHAT WOULD A WOBBLIE DO

Sometime during the fast-paced years of the 1960s I was in Washington, D.C. at a hearing held by a committee of the House of Representatives, a group of doughy-faced white men in suits who were quizzing a number of college students to find out what hell was wrong with them, why did they have to cause so much trouble over such things as civil rights, free speech, the war in Vietnam, why couldn't’t they be satisfied to study, graduate, and get a job as they were expected to? The hearing dragged on through the day as polite student body presidents tried to explain something they knew little about—what was really going on among radical students on their campus. At the back of the room, sat an elderly man (probably about my age now) waiting patiently to he heard. Late in the afternoon, there were smiles all around as he made his way to the front of the room, humor born from the odd juxtaposition of a old, white-haired man in work clothes following a group of earnest, fresh-faced kids in coats and ties. Apparently he was on the agenda, for the committee chair confirmed the man’s name and then asked his business. The man identified himself as a long-time member of the IWW, the International Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies.

With that news, a few of us sat up a little straighter and paid more attention, respectful attention, because sitting at the witness table in front of us was a genuine, honest-to-god, in-the-flesh member of a labor union that we idolized and romanticized—the Wobblies were the toughest, most radical, most demanding, most uncompromising, and sometimes most violent men and women in the history of the labor movement in the Unites States. They were also the most courageous and most victimized by violence at the hands of corporate bosses, shotgun-toting company thugs, armed mobs, local sheriffs, state police and the National Guard.

Founded at the turn of the twentieth century, the IWW was the first union to organize unskilled workers—lumberjacks in the Pacific Northwest, miners in Wisconsin, Montana and Minnesota, mill workers in New England, and migrant farm laborers wherever crops were being harvested. When the IWW called a strike, men and women dropped their tools, jumped on rail cars and headed cross country in support, sometimes showing up in such numbers their rough-edged presence changed the nature of contract negotiations. Those were the days before any child labor laws, mine, mill and factory safety laws—any laws protecting workers from accident, injury and abuse, laws which the IWW pushed for as they organized under the slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all.” But most threatening, the Wobblies believed their ultimate work was to create “one big union” and to organize until workers controlled all the means of production, positions which had earned the IWW a place on the federal government’s subversive list, which was supervised by the House committee of the day.

As the elderly gentleman addressed the committee, he spoke softly about fair wages, safety regulation, health care, job protection, a long list, and as he raised each issue, he referenced a recent accident, injury, or abuse of some sort which underscored the need for greater worker protection. He finished to a quiet room. The committee chair thanked the man for his concerns, and asked, was there a specific reason why he was before the committee that day. The man said he wanted the IWW taken off the subversive list. There was just a flicker of smiles among the committee members as the chair asked, why, after so many years, did he want the IWW removed from the list.

The man answered, “Because our work remains to be done.”

Let today’s union leaders judge their actions by that earnest man’s simple manifesto. The United States has, at heart, always been anti-union, sometimes violently so. But there have been times when presidents and congress have curbed the power and abuses of rapacious capitalism by encouraging labor unions, priming them in one way or another to create a counter balance to the big corporate giants, who say, might squander money on private jets and pay themselves millions in bonuses while seeking greater government protection or assistance. (Let us pause here for a quick fact check: John McCain among others likes to quote 26% as the tax rate on American corporations, which is correct, until you get to the deductions, which drops the average rate to 3%, the second lowest in the industrial world). Other presidents trimmed their sails for a different tact, such as Ronald Reagan who broke the Air Traffic Controllers union, which stared an avalanche of union busting and gave big business notice that a no-foul rule was in effect for them—-anything goes, boys, greed is a patriotic duty.

Now comes payback time with the economic mess, and what do we hear from the talking heads and so many politicians. Oh, those unions, they make it so costly to make a car, don’t they, Harriet. Yes, they do, Ozzie, gosh darn it. At the same time, people in power and press are mouthing whispers of concern about the decline of the middle class. Well, check it out, fools, the rise of the middle class accompanied the rise of post-war industrialization and the unions, which promoted and protected worker rights. Those unions were the lever that elevated workers into the middle class and yielded corporations and stock holders unimagined profits and luxuries.

Now that the high cotton has been harvested and the dry spell has come upon us, politicians, pundits and corporate leaders are talking about the “shared sacrifices” needed to save big industry, particularly auto manufacturers. In contract after contract the leadership of the United Auto Workers union has made concessions after concession: weakened job security, reduced wages, agreed to manipulating overtime, shortened lunch hours—and, check this out—most recently, the union has assumed major responsibility for the health care of current and retired workers. And, you might ask, what did Ford Motors barter away in exchange? Why, compensation to the union in the form of FORD MOTORS STOCK!

What would the Wobblies do? Turn this corporate-generated economic mess to their advantage. They would stiffen the backbone of their members, send organizers to every factory and shop where workers are being shorted or laid off, recruit new membership with the promise of solidarity and security—-people died for the rights that are being squandered-—“Big Bill” Haywood, Mary Harris Jones (AKA “Mother” Jones, Eugene V. Debbs and their Wobblie comrades would convince workers that power and wealth is never willingly shared—-it must be seized, and a crisis is the perfect time to begin.

A DRAFT DODGER CALLS FOR NATIONAL SERVICE

A DRAFT DODGER CALLS FOR NATIONAL SERVICE

When President John F. Kennedy spoke to the nation about giving back, rather than expecting more, his call resonated to the generation behind him. For the baby boomers, most of who were growing up in a comfortable middle class and had no expectations of ever leaving it, life seemed perfect, and clear. During the early 1960s, if you asked a college class, “do you believe in my country right or wrong,” only the odd-person-out would fail to raise a patriotic hand in affirmation. Many bright, excited students debated whether to join the Peace Corps or the CIA, whether to spy on the Soviet Union or help dig wells in Africa—both were considered equal as service to the nation’s New Frontier.

But for many of that generation, something had slipped off the tracks by 1966, the year a notice arrived for me to take my draft physical, the same year the U.S. had 400,000 troops in Vietnam, and the life expectancy of a combat platoon leader was measured in minutes. If you had reservations about the war, a draft notice presented no good choices, one only slightly less objectionable than another: you could apply for Conscientious Objector status, with little hope of receiving it; you could refuse induction into the army and head for prison; you could go underground and resist the war, knowing that inevitable you would go to jail; you could go to Canada, leaving home and family, perhaps forever; or go into the army. Author and Vietnam vet Tim O’Brien wrote about this dilemma, about agonizing over what to do, even came within a step of Canadian soil before he decided that he could not risk losing the respect of his family and community, could not bring down small-town shame and humiliation upon his mother and father, so, despite his reservations, he later wrote, “I was a coward. I went to the war.”

When I boarded the bus-load of potential draftees, including my best friend from high school, I shared O’Brien’s anxiety over what to do. But I was one of the fortunate few—the vision in my left eye was 20% beyond what the draft would accept. I had no idea until the black corpsman who did my eye exam said, “baby, you’re out, gone. If the Viet Cong hit the beach in California, the army ‘ill give you a typewriter.”

My relief was short lived. On the three-hour bus ride home I looked at those who had shared the day-long journey of medical poking and probing, mostly poor, rural white and black kids who were destined for a stop at boot camp on their way to the jungles of Vietnam. I imagined the misery that awaited them and perhaps their families, and I began to consider the war in different terms, still a reckless venture by the U.S. government yet made more personal by the faces of a bus load of kids. That day, when I was exempted from the war, my resolve against it hardened. (My high school buddy spent 20 plus years in the Marines Corps and remains my long-time, best friend.)

In the following years, as the war grew, so too did my opposition, and joining in fellowship with thousands of others, I wrote pamphlets, gave speeches, organized, marched, demonstrated, did draft counseling, and, like the pretentious radical I considered myself to be, did all I could to stop the war and disrupt the government—and drove myself half-mad in the process of failure.

A couple of decades after the war ended I went on a road trip with a friend, an acquaintance really, about whom I knew very little at that time. We headed for a small beach town that was gearing down to half pace for the winter season. Arriving in dark, misting weather we parked out bikes and reasoned that a bar was the best place to find relief from the fall chill. We ate fish and drank Tequila shooters while harmlessly flirting with the groupies who had accompanied the band up from Tampa.

As the drinking got serious, so did the conversation as I drifted into a story that had come to symbolize the defining years of my life. In November, 1969, during The March of Death--an anti-war demonstration of 500,000 people in Washington, D.C.--I had been a low-level officer, training marshals, helping with communications, doing this and that, anything to be part of what turned out to be the largest demonstration against the Vietnam War. I rambled on to my friend, explained how exhilarating it had been to be among like-minded people who had come from around the country for a shared purpose; but I also recalled in detail the sad, sorrowful events that filled the three day event, including the testimonials of weeping mothers and wives of sons and husbands never to return.

My friend was a patient listener. He ignored my hard-edged political narrative in favor of telling a story, his story actually. He had graduated from college in 1969, the year of some 3,000 antiwar demonstrations, including The March of Death, but those activities had no appeal to him. At that time he felt blessed, having been raised by good parents, educated at college, and living in a country he held dear as the greatest in the world. Uncertain what to do after graduation, he decided he should do something to show his thankfulness, to return some of the bounty he had been given, so he enlisted in the army and volunteered for service in Vietnam.

As I listened, I felt rebuked, thought he was defining patriotism in the narrowest way to suggest that following the government was the single, true path to responsible citizenship. But I was wrong. His was not a war story. It was a story about character. As he continued, he spoke of his experiences of the 60s and 70s that had caused him to make the choices he had: a belief in the promise of his country, a need to be take responsibility for its action, a sense of obligation to make a mark on behalf of the public good before setting out to make a mark for himself.

I pulled away from feeling scolded, and as we drank and talked we agreed that the same impulses, the same feelings of duty, the same need to act for the common interest that sent him into the army had sent me into the streets on behalf of civil rights and in opposition to the war. And that our very different experiences in those worrisome times had defined our lives in very similar ways, giving back to us more than we could have ever imagined: a since of community in an alienating world, a gift of being part of something larger than ourselves, and an understanding that a rich and full life must transcend personal glory and gratification. Those times, we agreed, more than any other, had defined us, had given us the values and ideals by which we judged our world and our place in it.

I trust the message of this lengthy narrative is obvious: during this time of redefining America, find something that moves you, join the cause, give of yourself, enlist in a purpose for the national good--it will reward you in ways you cannot imagine.

Dr. Huesos is an unrepentant New Leftist who rebuilds old Harleys.