A resurgence of grassroots populism to beat back the proto fascist forces that have the country in a death grip how can we make sure demagogues such as donald trump are denied power deedee couldnt plan the editor of the nation in the next republic the rise of a new radical majority profiles 9 activists including the labor activist jane mc alvey the mayor of jackson mississippi choke way and the environmental activist jane cleave who are battling back against the ruling elites joining me in the studio to discuss his book the next republic is d. D. Good and planned so i think you would argue that the assault against american populism which began with wilson in world war one before that even before that. Gave rise to the decayed political system and trump thats right well i mean that there are a couple of ways to talk about it but you have to realize that populism which is an american invention well its used as a curse word you know by liberals in europe its an american invention and it describes a working Class Alliance between poor farmers the working class in the u. S. And initially at least africanamerican sharecroppers in the south and it was the most dangerous threat to the american all darkie that ever existed i urge your viewers to read lawrence goodwins the populist moment if they dont already know about it so they can learn about it but it was viewed as a threat by the original gilded age titans in the 1900 centuries they destroyed it part of it turned rancid and antisemitic and racist but it never went away and in a sense the the force of populism the program the omaha demands which were the Peoples Party platforms when with a world well they wanted an 8 hour day and they wanted the federal government to give loans to farmers so they could retain their land and use their crops as security for their loans that was you have to realize that in in the 1900. 8 of them what was called the crop lean system where you would take out a loan in order to pay for the seed for your crop will thats how sharecropping bush sharecropping is a little different because the sharecropping the the. You were a tenant on somebody elses land thats where you often be in debt but you often be in debt yeah but the good crop lean system was much bigger than sharecropping and kept farmers all over the south and the midwest in debt peonage for generations this. You know indigenous populism that you correctly point out has been with us so its it is crushed i mean as Dwight Mcdonald said the rock world war one the right. One was the rock on which these populist movements were broken the you know much of the propaganda and espionage act the sedition act were directed at these populist figures including eugene debs and others and the goldmans deported in the the palmer re after the bombing raids actually will soon see origins of the National Security state right exactly and and the rise of the f. B. I. And hoover percent hoover specifically to deal with these populous then you have quite a repressive period in the twentys where unions are outlawed and then with the breakdown of capitalism in the thirtys you have a resurgence than we beginning with taft hartley 14747 you have again this repressive. Resurgence in the 1960 s. 1971 powell memo and now were really at the bottom i mean they have really put the heel of the boot on our neck and i think what your looking at in this book is what lets all hope is the next wave well yeah i mean i would i would put it slightly differently i mean besides the profiles of activists there earth 3 historical chapters in the book theres a chapter called the whiskey the whiskey republic which is about what ordinary yeoman farmers who fought for independence from britain thought they were fighting for theres the lincoln republic which for me i live part of the year in vermont and vermont never had slavery and it also had the highest rate of participation in the union army of any state so what were those vermont farm boys fighting for what did they think they were fighting for they were fighting against something called the slave power which was essentially oligarchic financial power based on human exploitation and then i have theres a chapter called the roosevelt republic which is about the new deal the strike waves of the thirtys the rise of labor radicalism and once. In that all of these particularly the lincoln republican the roosevelt republic the rock that they were broken on was racism the failure of the Roosevelt Coalition was that he had to accommodate southern democrats and exclude africanamericans from the new deal and that created the conditions for the new Deal Coalition to be fractured by the cold war and fractured by trumans red scare lets talk lets start at the beginning. Were you talk about. Organizing labor and. There is this criticism which i found interesting of saul alinsky the great kind of organizer out of chicago wrote rules for radicals i mean quite successful as an organizer well it depends on how you define success and i think thats one of the things thats interesting i mean as i say in the book i mean i have rules for radicals behind my desk at the nation and you know ive had it behind my at my back for i dont know 35 years its influenced everybody from barack obama to Hillary Clinton but. You know i think its influenced them a lot and i think thats part of a problem maybe the negative and thats thats why i found janes critique prevalence be so interesting because her point is when you do organizing when you do when youre organizing workers the question is who has agency do the workers have agency themselves or do that does the organizer have agency and alinsky was constantly telling his funders and his sponsors that he was the alternative to this to communist organizers in the cia oh he said you know the church has funded him in the back of the yards because he said i can beat the communists their own game i can do better organizing but part of his approach is to parachute people in like barack obama who had no ties to the community where they were organizing and and who maintained a kind of top down approach and also at least in janes portrayal a fundamentally dishonest approach because they didnt they would use local problems they would use local issues and they would keep everything local and they will avoid you know alinsky said you shouldnt take on the larger Economic System we shouldnt talk about socialism you shouldnt aim at. Changing National Power relations you should aim at changing local power relations now we all need victories every Movement Needs victories to sustain itself but her critique of alinsky is that there was a fundamental dishonesty at work in the way his organizers operated well in that sense it was narrowly focused on a particular issue usually within the city of chicago certainly when he began well on it and it wouldnt tell the people what they were what the wider goal was and also that it avoided it actually avoided Building Sustained economic power so lets talk a little bit about how. You know when she organizes which you use as a kind of template how that other model works sure well this is thats why janes the 1st chapter in the book because its under an organizing under conditions of extreme adversity and i think we can all agree that right now were in conditions of extreme adversity particularly for the left and yet ive met jane because i was going out to nevada to do some reporting and i wanted to talk to somebody who worked out there and who knew the political terrain and she worked for sci you out and out in nevada and eventually got pushed out of the union that was the drama thats in her book raising expectations and raising hell but part of the way this kind of organizing works is you do a power analysis and so you you do a power analysis of Europe Opposition lets say your opposition is a meat packing plant so you want to know who owns it who the Board Members are where they go to church what where they said that yes im in a fascinating that you forget the word but that interconnectedness you know that it that it wasnt just focusing on the meat packing plant but its whole of the auxiliary forces thats right yeah what she calls the whole worker organizing realizing that workers are not just people who go to a factory and have a job or or go to a plant have a job or or go to teach school or were. In a hospital and have a job they belong to churches they belong to bowling leagues they send their kids to Little League they you know they have all these other associations and so any Union Organizer whether theyre using janes method or or other methods and her method by the way comes out of 1199 which is a radical new york based union thats where she was trained. You do a power analysis of your opposition thats normal but what jane does thats also different is she does a power analysis of the workers and shows them that they although they may think they dont have any power they have access to power that their their ministers may have you know access to politicians that they can withdraw their buying power from supermarkets you know that they carry nonunion packs meat that they can you know they can exert not just moral pressure but economic pressure i mean her name as an organizer is to build a super majority where you have 90 percent of the workforce willing to walk off the job and her point is that unless you can stick a pole in the levers or the gears of the economy youre not going to have power in america so how do you do that its also. Understanding how the system creates these kinds of conditions that these are systemic problems. With and this is of course her criticism of alinsky theyre not the problem of a particular factory or but thats right well i mean thats right thats again one of the reasons why its the 1st chapter in my book is because its about building power and solidarity and the those things go together that you need to have you need to organize in a way that the workers themselves are the agents and they have a sense of their own agency and therefore a growing sense of their own power but part of that is political education and helping people see that theyre part of a system of oppression that yes you can. You can get a better job you know you can get more pay at this hospital or you can get more pay you know at this casino to take the example thats pertinent this week. But you know if thats all youre fighting for if you get a Cadillac Health plan and youre a coal miner this is exactly what john lewis did in the 1900 s. And fortys is he agreed that they could automate and fewer and fewer miners and they had better and Better Benefits and then the whole colon stranded being decimated on the back is well worth asking the unions when we come back well continue our conversation about the rise of a new radical majority with d. D. d use to do most of their sort of immigrant bookstore sneakers have supreme believe with google who are the birth. Mother which she said thats. Going to do. Were definitely walking until were done in a we not go no where were walking until. March if you wish it was if you need to break she. Not. To chase possible sensibile so. Welcome back on contact we continue our conversation about the pushback against the ruling elite and the rise of a new grassroots populism with d. D. Plan so you raised john lewis unions because unions became established unions. Became part of the problem well they became yeah they became part of the establishment they were given a seat at the table in a certain way where they got crumbs from the table depending on how you describe it but yeah i mean you know there was a enormous rise in organized working class power in the United States in the 1930 s. Many of the most gifted organizers in the Steelworkers Union in the Auto Workers Union and in the coal unions were communist Party Members who went into the unions and who in the case of louis were recruited by those who are organized and written out of American History down while louis said somebody said to louis you know what are you doing bring all these communists into your union and he said who gets the the who gets the bird the 100 the dog you know he felt he could control them and indeed when they served his purposes he he purged them but that happened on a much wider scale because of taft hartly and lets explain because its a very Pivotal Moment in American Labor history explain what taft hartly was was the the not the 1st but one of the 1st assaults against roosevelts new deal thats right the 1st was actually shutting down the federal Theater Project under the dyes commission before the war talk about the importance of taft hartley and then what happened to the Union Welfare so you have to remember that the new Deal Coalition was a coalition of that was built around the power of organized labor it was organized labor it was the solid democratic south and it was certain enlightened capitalists who bankrolled the Democratic Party and you know certain certain nonrepublican Northern Industrial so it was all those things together and in that sense it was an it perhaps inherently Unstable Coalition but after roosevelt debt died the chamber of commerce and the sort of Republican Party had always had a purge labor clamped on labor wish list bill almost like the bills that alec you know drafts today and so they drafted taft hartly which required you. Unions to officers to swear that they were not members and had never been members of the communist Party Loyalty to loyalty oath which then gave them the excuse to start the purge well thats right and if you didnt if you if you couldnt if your officers wouldnt take that loyalty or if the new were not eligible for any of the and l. R. B. Adjudications elections benefits you wouldnt be recognized by the n. L. R. B. Now some unions a couple of unions one alone and they didnt take the loyalty oath and of course they they suffered enormously but some of them came through but most unions purged their officers which meant that they got rid of most of the most Gifted Talented in the experienced organizers now truman vetoed taft tartly. Because he was a democrat and although he acquiesced in the red so there were other restrictions on taft hartley besides the loyalty oath while there were there are all sorts of restrictions on what it banned secondary picketing right so you couldnt you couldnt go out and support of another union strike i mean it it has put a series of shackles on union and working class power truman vetoed it and it paid his veto was overridden not because the republicans controlled the congress because they didnt but because southern democrats who are afraid of for example the cia is project dixie which was an a campaign to organize cotton mills in the south using and integrate the work force in cotton mills in the south they didnt want that so they so democrats acquiesced in task in taft hartley and in the sense that was the beginning of the destruction of the roosevelt republic and that assault on Union Activity more dow at the height of think what was it 36 percent of the American Workforce was unionized and now were down to what 88 percent 11 percent if we count Public Sector unions many of those are not allowed to strike. And that decimation you know theres an important point which is and again this is a point that not my point its janes point but its an important one which is that the strike is not the strike is the key weapon for labor you know and the reason that the strike is the key weapon is because the only weapon that the working class has is our numbers that we are many they are few if shelly put it and so if you cant strike if you cant withdraw your labor if you cant cause a crisis for the employer then you are essentially defenseless lets talk about business because word you use as fundamental the creation of crisis what does that mean if you spell that out well what that means is what happened on the west coast of the 1930 s. When harry bridges. When they refused to load ships that were taking or oil or weapons to spain when they shut down the west coast ports it means that you bring in economy to a standstill it means that you are mine the owners of the country who does the work here and how reliant they are on the people who do the work i want to quote her. From your quota for this is you strike isnt just a tactic its a manifestation of power thats right the power of the majority and then i think youre quoting her to win the hardest fights to win a president ial race to reclaim the United States of america at the statehouse level to actually tame Global Capital we cannot rely on advocacy and mobilizing because they surrender the most important and only weapon that ordinary people have ever had which is large numbers thats absolutely right and i think that is fundamental so lets but theres you touched on Something Else too which i think is in the current climate important to talk about which is the difference between organizing and mobilizing so we on the left do a lot of mobilizing right you call a demonstration you want to protest womens march yeah the womens march the perfect example but you know so is a lot of the el salvador Central America protests that you and i probably went on and i was in i was. I was there as a reporter for 5 years so i want a lot of marches i can tell you and you know there was i was marching with the they were great but the problem is that your your call or the fight for 15 is another example of of mobilizing not organizing youre talking to people you agree with youre getting your turning out people who already agree with you which is nice but its not the hard work that was lets go back to the point i mean jane makes exactly that point that the point of organizing is to talk to people who dont exactly exactly thats thats thats the thing that we on the left find difficult because it is difficult its less immediately rewarding you know people arent saying oh yes were all progress as we all agree together they say. No you know im Hillary Clinton said that shes going to shut out deprive a lot of minors of jobs why should i vote for her you know or theyre saying you know theyre saying things that dont chime in with your Cultural Values so you have to make the effort to to cross that culture a bridge to convince somebody that you do have common interests that are more important than the cultural bridges that then the cultural things that divide you what has the assault against populism done to the country and why is trump the kind of natural result what i think because you had in 2016 a country where people when trump talked about american carnage the liberal media didnt like his language they felt it was overblown but then theyd never obviously been to the mon valley in pennsylvania and seen you know entire gutted towns empty steel mills you know empty auto factories. If that was your life if your town revolved around steel mills or an auto factory or metal works and it was the kind of place where somebody once said to me and youngstown you could quit a job at 11 in the morning and walk out of syria book you have another job after lunch and suddenly there are no jobs anywhere you know what american carnage is and you know what trumps talking about and the thing is. People were desperate for change they were desperate for a sense that workers mattered and had dignity which is very different from giving them a universal income and saying dont bother us was right driving you to go away and and so the and Hillary Clinton had closed the door to a populism of the left because she was the opposite of a populist she was somebody who thought that you take 250000. 00 for giving a speech to Goldman Sachs because of course thats just what you did actually 675 for 3 speeches. So you know if the if the door on the left was closed and you wanted out at any price people would take the door to the right and i think thats what happened so how you know where do we start because you you a new report out of youngstown the steel mills arent there there are jobs arent there thats right so with deindustrialization that Manufacturing Center that factory. Provided a kind of structure by which you could organize and build a union and push back and you could have a decent job people in the working class could have dignity they could send their kids to college if you know if we live in a world where Everybody Needs to go to college they didnt have to worry that if their wife got sick they were going to lose their house or their husband got sick they were going to lose their house you know there was a there was a possibility of a dignified life and if you go around the country by the way and its not just heavy industry its like worcester ohio where they used to make rubber made you know. Plastic things you know or newton iowa where they used to make these to make maytag washer dryers you know these are all places where trump gave speeches he knew what he was doing you know he was signaling i know i see you i recognize the fix youre in and you know trust me now of course it was a con but you know you write about how the Democratic Party didnt go there thats right and i think there was one place you talked about how it was a kennedy in this. Mckeesport pennsylvania kennedy and nixon had debated there 47. 00 imagine and John Fetterman whos now the deputy Lieutenant Governor of pennsylvania but was then the mayor of braddock which is a outside of pittsburgh its a steel town outside of pittsburgh he said to me the politicians never come here these are the place the houses and they were come and a month later trump came and gave a speech so you know i think part of it is that. People felt recognized and part of it is that that. These these particular jobs may never be coming back but whats whats really interesting in crucial about for example the Green New Deal is that it provides both an ecological rationale which which appeals to people who care about the planet which you know given the chance as most of us but it also provides the rationale for an enormous select economic stimulus for domestic oil thats a really model on the. Public works 12 roosevelt employees 12000000 workers exactly thats thats what i mean even that you know notorious radical paul krugman used to say. About obamas stimulus package that it wasnt nearly big enough and that was absolutely right you know and that but the Green New Deal its going to need to be big but if it is big if it is its scale then youre offering people in these places real hope because youre offering them real to i think you touch on an extremely important point and that is the word dignity and john paul the 2nd not a pope i love wrote a wonderful and cyclical on labor where he talked about exactly that the importance that work is not just about exchanging labor for a wage it is far far more than that it is about self actualization dignity of place in the community he actually talks about the importance to work to maintaining the family. And i think thats what youre cognizant of well i think 1st of all of the church has always been good on the dignity of labor whatever whatever there are many flaws have always been good in the dignity of labor i mean this pope is very good in that hes led to this one but other popes have also been going to the degree of labor in the thirtys the church issued a really important signal in cyclical in the dignity of labor which was a big factor in bringing catholic a. F. L. Unions into the new Deal Coalition so thats always been true and its also worth saying that its only people whove never had to really work for a living who dismissed the dignity of labor you know but yes i think its a very important thing to offer people it ought to be a very important part of any democratic small d. Politicians. Offer to voters and you know and the fact that the Democratic Party in fact had nothing to say about it for the last 16 years this is a tragedy well lets hope that all the figures you profile in this book. Rebuild from the ashes of this new populist wave that has been occurring in American History well i think you know the last thing ill say about that is that the book talks about labor but it also talks about Racial Justice and Environmental Justice the hollowing out of Rural America and the importance of movements like the Womens Movement like Gay Liberation and the point is that its a new radical majority if youre a small d democrat like i am then you have to believe that we have to put together a majority its not that were the vanguard that were led in this that were going to win because were right were going to win only if we can put together sufficient numbers to win and so the coalition that i outlined in this book every piece of it is essential its not like the old we can just do it with labor rights we need every piece of great thank you that was author and editor of the nation magazine d d gotten plan about his new book the next republic the rise of a new radical. Banks. The u. S. Economy was booming gaining numbers of people when they do. You can work 40 hours d in a week and still not have enough to get housing everybody believes america still is the land of up to the reality of those who were not financially quality and unlike Affordable Housing or living minimum wage gave many people naturally. Thats been a problem with the city knows turn limits on. The food that. He says yes that requires the. Most vulnerable abandoned on the streets to become the invisible. Live from the World Headquarters of our t. America in our Nations Capital this is the news with rick sanchez. Hello again everybody im rick sanchez to all of you who are watching us from all over the world either on a regular t. V. Or on portable t. V. Using the portable t. V. Out of course were so glad that youre there i want to try to tackle today in the question that deep down
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