One Year Down the Time Line
Plus: Unions can save us!
The Left Coast is celebrating one year of existence on March 21
The Year 2020 began peacefully. I drove to Ocean Beach (San Diego) to visit my long time friends Jeff and Carole. We had all lived on Horizon Avenue in Venice in the 1970s. Jeff and I were both veterans which impelled us to form a Venice Chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Soon, we were one of the most active chapters in the country. Ron Kovic (Born on the 4th of July) joined our chapter. We began to hobnob with Tom and Jane (Hayden/Fonda). VVAW became VVAW-WSO (Winter Soldier Organization), which meant we could recruit women on an equal basis with men. Carole became active, as did my partner, Linda.
Everything changes with time. Linda and I moved out of Horizon Ave. Jeff and Carole moved all the way to Ocean Beach, where they live today in the midst of a community of like-minded refugees from the Sixties and beyond.
After spending some time with them in early 2020, and meeting their friends, who instantly became my friends, I headed north to Venice. There I stayed with a fellow Venetian in a pleasant non-winter climate during February and early March. Strange news began emanating from China, where a new virus was spreading around the country. Then it leaped the Pacific (and the Atlantic), and became an imminent threat.
I knew Venice wasn’t safe for me. Too many people I knew didn’t take the virus seriously, and thus it became a threat to me. On March 10, I said my phone goodbyes to everyone, jumped in my electric car and lit out for my Bat Cave in Oregon. I arrived the next day, and immediately felt safe, but isolated.
It was that isolation that caused me to send out a poll to a dozen close friends about the idea of a news and information sheet. The poll also included a list of possible names for it. The Left Coast was the overwhelming winner.
Convergence and coincidence conspired when I received an email from Matt Taibbi that he was henceforth using something called substack, rather than Rolling Stone, for communications. I checked it out and found that there were no ads, no censors, and that there were levels of participation for readers from free to a monthly or annual fee.
A year later, substack still exists and is bigger than ever. There is grumbling from the old, old media, like the New York Times, and from authoritarian pundits on the old new media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) who can’t stand the idea of free speech and a free press. “How dare they say anything they want,” they groused
On the other hand, The Left Coast thinks it should be up to the readers to censor it by the act of reading or not reading. But this battle is just beginning. The fact-checkers-for-hire are chomping at the bit. Who knows, we may be looking for a new home before another year rolls around.
Much has happened in the past year. Covid-19 has claimed 2.7 million deaths worldwide and 538,261 U.S. deaths.
The marches sparked by the brutal deaths of George Floyd, and many other Black people, went on day after day in June and included the largest numbers of protesters in history.
The economy slid to depression levels with 20 million people put out of work. Meanwhile the rich got richer, with billionaires increasing their wealth by more than $1.3 trillion in the past year.
There has also been an upsurge in socialist and union support during this period. Oh yes, Trump is no long president (hooray), and I’m back in Venice.
Please do whatever you can to help support democratic, unionist and socialist media, starting with The Left Coast. Since our humble beginnings a year ago, TLC has struggled to inform our readers of a wide variety of issues that are outside the scope of other media, including progressive media. We even have a “Left Coast” imitator (not worth looking up). Quite a number of our readers have opted to sign up for at least a minimum subscription. If you are reading nearly all of our articles but haven’t subscribed, what are you waiting for?
Will Unions Restore Democracy in this Country?
Labor unions have been on the decline since around 1950 when a wave of fear drove communist organizers and other progressives from the House of Labor. That wave of anti-communism was directly linked to racism. At the time, the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) was planning to organize the South. In 1946, Operation Dixie began, with many unions participating. They won by bringing Black and white workers together in a hostile environment that was still feeling the grip of the Confederacy.
Now, there is a chance that the first U.S. Amazon Fulfillment Center located in Bessemer, Alabama, will vote for a union. Balloting will end March 29, but the results may not be known until mid-April (not a good system).
There are at least two reasons why union drive may succeed where others have been turned back by intense corporate propaganda. First, approximately 85 percent of the workers are Black. If they have not been in a bubble for the past year, they will vote union.
Second, Bessemer used to be the heart of the iron mining and steel working belt of Alabama. Union organizing drives, both successful and unsuccessful, went on for years in Bessemer. Most were led by the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, a radical organization based in Colorado. In the South West, it fought for the rights of Chicanos and Mexicans, most notably portrayed in the film “Salt of the Earth.” In the South, the union fought against racism. This attitude has been picked up in the current unionization struggle by the RWDSU.
Amazon is going all-out to squash the union drive. Scores of union-busting consultants have been hired at up to $10,000 per day. They are up to all the anti-union tricks including mandatory meetings with company officials, and a new mailbox in the company lobby where loyal workers will presumably drop their No Union votes.
The union, the RWDSU (Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union), an old CIO union, founded in 1937, is not without allies. A Black Lives Matters caravan from New York City is on the way to Bessemer to support the 5,800 workers. The local BLM chapter in Bessemer is active, as is a local coalition of clergy. Many unions are working overtime in support of the RWDSU effort. Even Joe Biden issued a video of support.
Biden said, “There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. No supervisor should confront employees about their union preferences.”
Now, let’s follow it up with legislation, Joe. The recent record of the Democratic Party on union rights has been spotty, to say the least. When Obama was campaigning for the presidency, he supported restoring “Card Check” recognition of unions.
The original labor law, (also called the Wagner Act) passed by Congress in 1935 authorized “Card Check.” This means that if more than 50 percent of the workers signed cards for a union, it would be sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board and the union would be authorized to negotiate a contract covering wages, hours and working conditions.
Labor Law was revised in 1947 once the Republicans gained a majority. Called the Taft-Hartley Act, it struck “Card Check,” union shops, and prohibited Communists from holding office in a union.
Once Obama and Biden won the 2008 election, talk of “Card Check” was never heard of again. Instead, we still have unfair elections where corporations spend whatever it takes to defeat a union campaign.
Unions bring democracy to the workplace. That’s why the support of unions is so important. Bessemer could be the turning point that puts us on the track to a more democratic country. If the election is lost, we’ll pick up and go to the next place that workers fight for their rights.