Labor Day Speech—The Working Class Virtue of Solidarity

Note:  This is more or less what I will be saying at the  Labor Day Celebration on the Square in Woodstock today.  Local folks are encouraged to join us between 11 am and 2 pm.

We gathered here last year for the first time, a small band of folks called together by some local fans of Bernie Sanders who wanted to celebrate his hero Eugene V. Debs and his connection to Woodstock.  As a fan of both and an old Wobbly and soapboxer, I was thrilled to be asked to participate.

A lot has happened in the last year and here we are again.  Bernie Sanders, thanks to folks like those who organized the Labor Day event, went from being an obscure longshot, to the leader of a wide and deep political revolution, and came tantalizingly close to winning the Democratic Party nomination.  When he didn’t some folks were heartbroken, other mad.  Some picked up their toys and went home in a sulk and huff.  Some picked up Bernie’s challenge to keep the Revolution going by going deep and wide—running for local office and trying to recapture Congress from troglodyte Republicans.  That’s what the folks here in McHenry County have done.

Some folks swore that no matter what they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, who apparently has horns and is the spawn of Satan, no matter what, no way, no how.  Others have either swallowed hard and followed Bernie’s appeal and decided to vote for Hillary, or with more enthusiasm vow to actively work for her election along with the rest of the Democratic ticket.

People who were comrades in the campaign struggle a couple of months ago but are on opposite sides of the Hillary divide, are hurling invectives at one another, denouncing each other as traitors or saboteurs.  Relationships have been shattered.  That longed for political revolution is crippled by dissention.

Meanwhile genuine naked fascism has arisen as a mass movement and swallowed the traditional conservative party.  Ordinary Americans who have seen their lives and futures sacrificed time and again to corporate greed have been taught to blame their woes on a rotating cast of others—Mexicans and emigrants this week, Muslims and refugees next, women, gays, Black lives Matter protesters, scientists, the sick and the elderly.  Violence is in the air like the whiff of gunpowder.

In light of all this, on this Labor Day I want to commend to you the working class virtue of solidarity even if you have never considered yourself a worker. 

First we need to consider what solidarity is not….

Solidarity is not sympathy.  Sympathy is a passive emotion.  It also implies a separation from the object of sympathy and can teeter on pity, which is just sympathy tinged with revulsion. Empathy might be closer to the meaning in that it implies a common understanding of the distress.  But empathy is also passive.  Solidarity demands action.

Solidarity is not charity.  Charity implies a power and privilege differential.  The more powerful and more privileged deign to give to the less fortunate who are expected to respond with appropriate gratitude and humility.  Solidarity is mutual aid among equals.

Solidarity is not altruism.  Altruism is supposedly selfless giving requiring sacrifice but expecting no reward—except perhaps praise for being saint-like.  Solidarity recognizes the commonality of our conditions and expects to by right receive support as well as give it.

Solidarity is not family.  Families—and by extension surrogate families like clans, nations, religions, races and others—are expected to support their members out of blood obligation.  Solidarity demands respect for commonality with the other.  Solidarity with the stranger dismantles walls and promotes peace instead of a mad scramble over scarce resources.

Solidarity is not utopian.  Utopians conjure up sweet dreams of the perfect.  Utopians may simply drift on in the opium cloud of that dream. More dangerously, some utopians construct rigid ideologies around their vision which eventually require the ruthless suppression of anything and anyone not in conformity to that ideology.  Solidarity is rooted in the common realities we face together and is interested in addressing the roots of the problems as well as ameliorating the immediate effects.

Solidarity is not all warm and fuzzy.  Warm and fuzzy denies oppression.  Solidarity recognizes that there are those whose own narrow self-interest causes them to exploit, subjugate, and abuse others.  And solidarity demands common action to defend against such depredations and—yes—boldly to ultimately defeat the oppressors.

Solidarity is a recognition of our place in humanity, an ethic, and an active response to our common interests.

Solidarity enlarges our communities, builds bridges of respect that can span differences.  It does not demand lock-step conformity to some ideological purity to act together in mutual support.  It requires listening, really listening and not just waiting our turn to deliver a lecture.  When generations of feminists support Hillary Clinton passionately it means not sneering that they are voting their vaginas, but understanding why and ultimately standing with them just as we hope that they will stand with us for the dismantlement of corporate power. 

Solidarity requires humility and taking the risk of having our fragile identities challenged.  We cannot give more than lip service to Black Lives Matter unless we understand and take ownership of the White privilege understanding it is not a moral flaw but a condition we are born to.  By breaking down our defenses we can collaborate  in our mutual liberation with respect and understanding.

Most of all, solidarity requires commitment and  action.  There are no sidelines, no room for mere cheerleaders.  Each and everyone of us are called to put our bodies and our lives on the  line again and again in some meaningful ways.  And we are buoyed by the knowledge that others are prepared to do the same for us.

Can we make a promise this Labor Day to commit to the working class virtue of solidarity?  Can we face the challenges not just of the coming elections, but in defending women’s bodies and choice, dismantling the new slavery of mass incarceration, and standing in the Spirit Camp of the Standing Rock Sioux as they defend all of our water.  There is a lot to do.  No individual can do it all. But we can all do something. 

In the words of Ralph Chaplin in the great anthem of the Working Class:

Endorsing Bernie Sanders—Time to Ante Up

Bernie Sanders from unlikely outsider long shot to serious contender.

Back in March of 2007 when this blog was a toddler and read by dozens over at LiveJounal it—and that means me—officially endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic Presidential nomination as soon as he made his official announcement in Springfield.  Not that it meant a good God damn but it would give me bragging rights for hopping on the bandwagon when it was still a pony cart and Obama was still an upstart with a funny sounding name not well known to most Democrats.

Of course coming from Illinois made it easier.  I had met and chatted with Obama in the dust of Illinois State Fair when he was still an obscure State Senator and just beginning to consider a run for the U.S. Senate.  I remember being tremendously impressed but walking away telling myself that a guy with a name like that could never be elected state wide.  Two years later I was shown never to underestimate him as he swept aside primary rivals and mopped the floor with the GOP’s laughing stock last minute imported candidate Alan Keyes.  I saw him several times at modest sized campaign events and later as Senator at a town hall meeting at the Woodstock Opera House.  I concluded never again to underestimate the man.

In 2007 I jumped in with both feet for Barack Obama as soon as he made his formal announcement of his candidacy at the Old State Capitol in Springfield.

I recognized Obama as opponent of the War in Iraq—one of the few to vote against a free hand for George W. Bush—and a solid progressive who also had a knack for working practically with political opponents.  He was also the most spectacularly gifted orator to seek the Presidency since Lincoln.  Despite a long and often bitter primary slug fest against Hillary Clinton, the media’s presumed inevitability, and a general election campaign against an allegedly straight shooting maverick Obama swept to a stunning triumph in 2008.

I have to admit that election was one of the most emotional and personally satisfying moments of my life.

Obama would sometimes disappoint me.  I am at odds with him issues like the use of drones, continued support for the national security and surveillance state, coziness to Wall Street, and recently approval of Arctic drilling permits.  On the other hand, he inherited an unprecedented national economic emergency and dealt through most of his presidency with a rabidly obstructionist Republican Congress.  He often ran rings around his Congressional enemies most often blocking their most disastrous, reactionary, and racist plans.  They could do little but sputter and bluster.  He even managed to push through a far-from perfect Health Care plan which none-the-less made insurance and affordable health care available to millions and laugh off constant attempts to repeal or defund it.  He stood up to government shutdown blackmail and in his second term, oddly liberated by being a lame duck, accomplished a laundry list of impressive progressive achievement.  The most vilified president since Lincoln, Obama is on track to being recognized as greatest President since Lyndon Johnson—a man who also had a mixed legacy.

It is much later in the interminably long Presidential campaign season this year than when I endorsed Obama in 2007.  Yet I have sat on my hands.  Perhaps because I retired last year from my long run as McHenry County Democratic Precinct Representative, I have not tried my hand at political punditry.  I’ve been out of the game. 

Although she played coy, Hillary Clinton long considered to have a lock on the nomination if she wanted it and was widely believed to be unbeatable against any of the possible midget clowns the Republicans could throw against her.  I said so myself repeatedly in both electronic print and in innumerable private conversations.  Yet left Democratic activists and many progressive independents were dissatisfied with the former Secretary of State as relative hawk and a corporate Democrat with deep to Wall Street.

I watch the almost ecstatic boom for Senator Elizabeth Warren, the blunt spoken foe of the Big Banks and for sweeping economic reforms.  But Warren was having none of it, even as the internet and social media was ablaze with a Draft Warren movement.  I lost track of how many times she had to flatly declare that she wouldn’t run before here disappointed supporters finally believed her.

Only then did they turn, somewhat reluctantly, to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who was best known as the eccentric white haired coot who was elected as an independent and only caucused with Congressional Democrats.  He was said to be, openly and unapologetically, a socialist and was secular Jew and a former radical activist.  Has anyone so patently un-electable made a serious run at the Democratic nomination since, well, Barack Obama?

Sanders quickly won over the skeptical Warrenites by echoing her stand on the Banks and on growing income inequality.  He impressed them with a series of YouTube videos in which he sat down and directly addressed the camera to forthrightly present his views and concrete proposals on a wide range of issues dear to the Progressive hearts.  Then with little money or campaign organization Sanders hit the hustings.  Soon he was drawing record breaking crowds in places like Madison, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; Des Moines, Iowa; and even in the heart of red state Dixie from Texas and Alabama to North Carolina.  Small donors began to flood the campaign coffers of the man who eschewed contributions from big money PACs,

Through the spring and summer the media ignored the rising tide for Sanders.  When he surged to a lead in New Hampshire, traditional make or break first Primary state and began closing the gap on Clinton in Iowa, the first caucus state and Clinton seemed vulnerable to the constant Republican smear campaign yodeling the old Benghazi aria and mixing in the tempest-in-a-tea-pot non-scandal about here use of a private e-mail account, the TV talking heads and op-ed denizens finally began to take notice.  Of course they only did so to knock him down as an un-electable extremist.

One quickly picked up meme in the media echo chamber yoked Sanders to Donald Trump, of all people, as two sides of inarticulate populist rage.  That allowed them to ignore Sanders’s detailed policy proposals and equating them with Trump’s pandering sloganeering.

Hillary Clinton, long the presumptive nominee, enjoys solid support among self identified Democrats and devoted followings among Feminists and in the Black community.

Sanders’s rise and Clinton perceived vulnerability—more perception than fact as she maintains a commanding lead with hard core Democratic primary voters—encourage long shot candidacies by former Republican and Connecticut Governor Lincoln Chafee, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, and conservative Democrat and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb.  None of them stands a chance unless Clinton drops dead or is found sleeping with Donald Trump.  More seriously Vice President Joe Biden is making serious noises about running and could drain some of Hillary’s establishment support and be available as a compromise candidate in the event of a deadlocked convention, a scenario that is often talked/dreamed about but which has not happened since John W. Davis won the worthless Democratic nomination in 1924 after 103 ballots.

Clinton’s campaign problems are obvious, but likely not insurmountable.  Sanders, as her main competition faces his own problems beyond pointed media bias against him.  Despite a strong Civil Rights background, including dangerous stints with SNCC in the South, leading Chicago housing discrimination sit-ins, and a 100% NAACP voting record rating in Congress, Sanders has not connected strongly to Black voters who by in large are extremely loyal to Clinton.  Part of that seems to be due to living so long in Vermont, one of the Whitest states in the nations.  When a large Portland rally was disrupted by two protestors somewhat tenuously connected to the Black Lives Movement did image among Black voters, not even subsequent supportive statements by others in the movement could quickly undo the damage.

That hurts, but may not be insurmountable as he gets his message more clearly out and spends more time in Black communities.  Overcoming his own gender gap may be harder.  It seems like Sanders is the overwhelming favorite of white male progressives, a demographic that while sometimes energetic and often loud has never carried an election anywhere.  A lot of women like and support him, of course, but a whole lot of feminists are devoted to Clinton who has shown over and over in her long career that she is one of them.  They are the ones that fueled her long hold-out in the 2008 run-up to the Democratic National Convention when it was clear to almost everybody that Obama had sewn up the nomination.  A handful never forgave Obama and sat out the election, other never worked up full enthusiasm for him.  No matter that Sanders’s record on women’s issues, like Obama’s is nearly spotless.  Elizabeth Warren might have been able to peel away significant support from these women.  Sanders will have a much tougher time.

A very smart and sophisticated woman who is a facebook friend likes Sanders and his positions, but in her mind, continuing to break the grip of White privilege and patriarchy on the presidency that began with Obama, trumps all other considerations.  In some ways it is a compelling argument and one that resonates with many Black and other minority voters as well.

Things like this reflect the deep passion of Sanders's core constituency.

But Sanders’s biggest problem might be in the hard core of his deepest supporters.  They tend to be ideological purists and have little stomach for compromise or for any variation from a virtual progressive party line.  This may be related to the testosterone problem noted above.  Some of these folk quickly abandoned Obama in his first term for seeking compromise with the Republicans in Congress, not recognizing how sophisticated his game plan war.  Or they dumped him because he would not hold out for a universal single payer health plan, over pipelines and drilling, domestic surveillance, you-pick-your-pet issue, and in droves over drones.  If Sanders veers off course on any issue or show insufficient rigor the partisans of that issue will turn on him as well.

Worse are those who are already declaring that they can never support Clinton or anyone else who might win the nomination.  They already jump righteously on those who circulate social media memes promising to support whoever gets the Democratic nomination.  Some counter with their own meme vowing to write in Sanders if he doesn’t get the nomination or who will simply sit out the election if that is the case.  This attitude rightly offends actual Democrats as opposed to movement activists especially since Sanders’s ties to the party whose nomination he is seeking.  It also alarms a lot of sensible folk who worry that such navel gazing purity could be enough to hand the Presidency to some extremist Republican clown in a close election.  And those folks are not reassured by hearing the purest of the pure dismiss that concern because a GOP victory in such circumstances would clarify the contradictions and somehow speed more revolutionary change.  You actually hear this kind of bullshit tossed around by some on progressive sites like the Daily Koz.

Then there is the lingering question of Sanders’s electability.  I think there is a path for Sanders to win the nomination and the General Election, but it is narrow and tricky.  Virtually everything has to fall in place just so to make it happen—a rare event in politics.  So no matter how much momentum he has right now, he still has to be considered a long shot.

Yet his candidacy has invigorated the campaign which would otherwise simply be a prolonged coronation.  He has brought America’s most critical issues into sharp focus and is the only candidate in either major party with detailed proposals to fix what is ailing in this country.  He has already forced Clinton to the left, perhaps not as unwillingly as some suspect—you may recall that in 2008 many regarded her as more progressive and liberal than Obama on all but the anti-war issue.  He has reshaped the debate in Congressional races and certainly will impact the party platform.

And then there is the nagging thought that maybe, just maybe, if we hold our tongues just right in our mouths and balance on one foot on one foot he really can win.

In the end it comes down to whether now is the time to vote for what I really want or cast my practical lot with what I can settle for.  

Woodstock Square, the Old Court House, and Jail, site of a Labor Day Celebration sponsored by Sanders Volunteers/

Since I have been invited to address the Labor Day Celebration in Woodstock Square this Monday from 11 am to 2 pm which is sponsored by local Sanders volunteers, I suppose this is as good a time as any to shit or get off the pot.

Guess I will poop out a full throated endorsement of the candidate who more closely mirrors my own beliefs and positions than any other in my life time.  Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout and I both declare for Bernie Sanders for whatever it is worth and pledge to work for his nomination and election.

But I also pledge to support the ultimate Democratic nominee, whoever that is.