Reader Comments: Truth About Springfield and Haitian Immigrants; On Divided Labor Union ranks and Elections; Choices and Profiles in Political Cowardice; Israeli Strikes on Lebanon Are a Further Escalation — U.S. Must End Military Aid Now; more....
While Donald Trump and J.D. Vance try to tear an Ohio town apart, Ohioans themselves have a more heartening response. While the nasty headlines swirl around them, Springfielders and Ohioans are making a point of saying no to Trump and Vance’s toxic message.
The complaint, filed by Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) in Clark County Municipal Court, alleges that Trump and Vance, by amplifying those claims, had a “direct impact” in spurring the 33 bomb threats that rocked the southwest Ohio city.
The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city made up of good, decent, welcoming people. They are hard workers — both those who were born in this country and those who settled here from Haiti.
“The caregivers of 1199SEIU stand in solidarity with the Haitian community in the face of vicious, racist attacks by Donald Trump and JD Vance,” 1199SEIU President George Gresham said in a statement. He blasted the duo for “spreading hate and blaming immigrants for the challenges our country is facing” because they don’t have “any real plan to improve the lives of the American people.”
Central Brooklyn is home to thousands of Haitians and other Afro-Caribbean immigrants, many of whom work in health care. 1199 says it has thousands of members from the Haitian diaspora, and Gresham praises their “extraordinary” contributions to the field of health care and the labor movement.
The item about Al Smith and immigrants, etc., failed to note, as most others fail as well, that Trump is son of an immigrant mother (from Ireland), and a father who was son of immigrants (from Germany).
Point being that Trump and supporters are not "anti-immigrant" but are anti Non-White immigrants.
Vance admitted on CNN that manipulating news coverage was the whole point of the fake stories they were telling (while of course arguing it was “disgusting” to suggest that the ensuing bomb threats that closed schools and hospitals had anything to do with their rhetoric).
I recommend this excellent Jamison Foser post about how the press should cover the lies about Springfield. To quote Foser:
When Donald Trump lies that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets, that should be the hook for an article about Donald Trump’s long history of lying; about the fundamental lack of honesty, character, and integrity that this demonstrates. The result of Trump’s lies shouldn’t be articles about immigration, it should be articles about Donald Trump’s lifelong dishonesty and the consequences it poses, and articles about Trump’s lengthy history of directing hatred at racial minorities, and about his lengthy history of intentionally inciting threats of violence as well as actual violence.
It is possible to have a good-faith discussion of immigration policy, but this isn’t it.
Question of the week. The report below of a split in the Teamsters union over the leadership's non-endorsement of Kamala Harris for president sounds good from the "Left", or "progressive", perspective.
Does this make the Teamster leadership's non-endorsement stance wrong? What is the best stance for leaders on issues where a substantial minority, or 50/50 division exists?
What union leader wants a 60/40 strike vote, for example?
Generally speaking, a divided union is a weaker union, since solidarity is the overwhelming source of its strength. There are reports saying internal union polling showed a substantial split among members between Trump and Harris.
The Teamsters did an overall magnificent job preparing for national UPS contract negotiations last summer and in mobilizing for an overall labor fightback against the effects of both inflation and hellish working conditions through the pandemic and inflation. Their bargaining successes -- without a national strike -- were the product of careful national preparation of the locals and districts for a united bargaining agenda. That agenda included solidly demonstrating the members' ability and capacity to strike.
Locals and Districts are clearly going their own way. Given the many existential issues rapidly emerging for the US both nationally and internationally, an internal struggle in the Teamsters can now be expected to intensify.
Will "solidarity" be strengthened, or weakened by this struggle?
In my lifetime there have always some "left", or "super-syndicalist -- one big union" trends that views replacing more conservative labor leaders as the chief remedy to labor setbacks.
I plead guilty to having been in that faction at times.
As a young worker in the silicon valley electronics industry, I had an opportunity to witness a conversation between Jim Matles, a founder of UE, and Charles Newell, a lead organizer in the giant E. Pittsburgh Westinghouse factory -- the first of its kind organized on an industrial basis. They were lifelong friends and comrades in the labor movement. Jim epitomized all the qualities of the best proletarian fighters that led the upheaval of the 1930's. He was not quite a Wobbly -- he believed in signing contracts! But he was with them in spirit, and "super" or "pure" unionism was the closest to the working class consciousness and moral values he believed in that one could get in America. Both Jim and Charles had been part of the socialist and communist movements, but, as Jim said more than once: "In America the only way to talk about socialism is to talk about baseball -- and what is a fair game.".
"...if only the [AFL-CIO] Executive Council had not crawled on its belly...", he would say, summarizing the long line of setbacks organized labor suffered following Taft-Harley and the split in the labor movement over federal demands to expel "communist" unions, and impose sanctions against boycotts and mass, political or public worker strikes, and permit employers to threaten workers jobs in union certification elections under the guise of "free speech".
To this, Charles would reply: "Jim -- if unions are not schools of socialism, then really, what is the point?"
Charles left the labor movement. Jim stayed, until his dying breath in 1975.
There is a great story about Jim's "pure, rank and file, unionism" and it origins in his heart, not just ideology, that I learned from a UE-GE leader in Hudson Falls, NY, who had participated in national bargaining sessions.
The corporate bargaining team from GE was well known in big biz circles for its "first, best, last, and final" offer approach to "good faith" bargaining with unions. The tactic was named "Boulwarism" after its author, Lemuel Boulware, who was the vice president of employee relations at General Electric. The tactic had led to a 109 day strike by all unions party to the national GE contract.
The company wanted to set a better tone for the next contract, and greeted the coordinated bargaining committee with a sumptuous array of pastries, cakes, and other amenities.
Jim always favored a stance of scrupulous integrity in relations with the company. "Be civil. Be respectful. Indignation -- never anger. Shake hands -- but NO BELLY-RUBBING!". In Jim's view, if you fall for blandishments or bribes of any description, the member trust in their leaders will be eroded in equal or even greater proportions.
Nonetheless the pastry trays and other temptations were clearly drawing the attention of most of the committee who were not inclined to turn down a free feast over moral turpitude.
At which point Jim launches a brief rap on the downward path and the road to hell -- but concludes: "However, I am your elected leader. If we are going to hell, I am going first."
The bargaining actually went better that time, maybe. The fatal decline of GE from its arrogant perch as the world's most profitable corporation and Big Daddy to Ronald Reagan, was still 20 years away.
Asked to explain himself, he is reported to have replied: "Integrity is important in all union matters. Unity is more important."
Israel has been rocked by an explosion of protests in recent weeks, with trade unions staging a general strike on September 2 and an estimated 750,000 Israelis taking to the streets on September 7 to demand a hostage deal with Hamas.
It is not only Netanyahu’s far-right government but the entire Israeli political establishment that is united around policies that reject the very basic realities of the land on which we live: there are millions of Palestinians in this country, and none of them are going anywhere; and there are millions of Jews in this country, and none of them are going anywhere.
The only hope for safety and security lies in an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that ends the Occupation, allows Palestinian people their right to national self-determination in an independent state, and respects the rights of both peoples to live in freedom, justice and independence.
THIS IS NOT NEW !
BLACK WORKERS FOR JUSTICE & OTHER LEFT LABOR ORGANIZERS HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR THE LAST 5 DECADES ! COME CHECK OUT OUR BWFJ ARCHIVES>>>>
ANGAZA SABABU LAUGHINGHOUSE
co- founding bwfj member
Thanks for that. Now I feel less guilty about not paying my current dues to the DSA.
What destroyed the Old Left, and broke the New Left, is happening again. There is a phrase, "the perfect is the enemy of the good", and that's what they want. Our way, or we'll take our ball and glove and go home and not play.
They are utterly ignoring what has happened twice in France in the last 15 years: when it looked like the right was going to take power, ALL OF THE LEFT ORGANIZATIONS said "this will not happen", put aside their differences, and voted as a block.
When I first joined the DSA in '16, I think, after a lifetime of not joining socialist groups, they were pushing socialist candidates within the Democratic party. This tells me they've fallen into the old trap that broke the left before, and it's utterly foolish.
Vote for Harris, or get Trump. Those are your choices - there are no other. Not this year.
mark roth
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It seems only fair to print my reply to Max as you sent his article out to your readers.
"Max Elbaum’s overheated polemic on the question of strategy for socialists in the 2024 election. Smith argues that Elbaum’s “Block and Build” strategy is nothing new and has proven a disastrous failure over decades. For socialists to devote our resources to campaigning for Harris/Walz, who have promised to continue being active partners in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, is certainly a violation of principle. But Smith persuasively argues that it is certain to marginalize the Left and ensure that the Trumpite far-right continues to grow and to be seen as the only political alternative in the face of the persistent crises of U.S. capitalism."
Dozens of labs around the world are striving to grow models of human embryos to study development, fertility and therapies. They are entering uncharted ethical territory.
Israel’s recent strikes on Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people including women, children, and paramedics, are exactly the type of regional escalation of hostilities that we predicted would happen without a ceasefire in Gaza. Right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has faced massive protests including a general strike, is attempting to stay in power by expanding the war and killing additional innocent people.
He is doing so with billions of dollars of weapons and military funding from the U.S., money that could be better spent providing jobs, education, healthcare and housing for people in the U.S. We reiterate our call that President Biden immediately cut off all military aid to Israel, as the only mechanism available to get Israel to agree to an immediate ceasefire, before the conflict escalates even further.
Air traffic controllers at work in the control tower of Boston's Logan Airport in 1968. A new oversight report found that US aviation systems are plagued by legacy equipment and are in need of upgrades. (Photo: Bob Dean/The Boston Globe // Nextgov/FCW)
Several systems, some which aid in navigation and communications, did not have modernization efforts in place, the GAO said.
The U.S. government’s top auditing shop on Monday said that 51 of the Federal Aviation Administration’s 138 air traffic control systems are “unsustainable” and are in urgent need of modernization.
The Government and Accountability Office report, which was ordered following a January 2023 FAA outage linked to a faulty ATC system, found that 37% of the systems have outdated functionality, lack spare parts and require specialized maintenance in order to overhaul them.
FAA “did not prioritize or establish near-term plans to modernize unsustainable and critical systems based on its operational assessment. Until FAA reports to the Congress on how it is addressing all critical systems, Congress will not be fully informed on how FAA is mitigating the risks of these systems,” GAO said in its analysis.
The ATC systems undergird weather, navigation, communications, traffic optimization and other airline operations. Specific systems deemed unsustainable were not provided for security reasons but GAO noted that “29 unsustainable and 29 potentially unsustainable systems have a
critical operational impact on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace.”
For 15 of the systems, FAA did not have any modernization investment plans, the report said.
Legacy equipment has been a prevailing issue in modern government networks, said Rob Joyce, the former head of the NSA’s cybersecurity directorate. Besides stolen credentials or compromised passwords, outdated IT often creates pathways for hackers to break into federal networks, he noted.
The White House’s FY2025 FAA budget request includes $8 billion over five years for facility replacement and radar modernization. It also requests $140 million for its Enterprise Network Services program, which the agency says can help with cybersecurity and resilience needs.
Many of the highlighted critical out-of-date systems are not expected to be updated under current modernization plans until the 2030s, GAO said.
House Transportation Committee leadership, including heads of its aviation subcommittee, had asked GAO to review aging FAA systems, the report indicated. Those lawmakers did not return requests for comment. The audit was conducted from August 2023 to September 2024.
Modernizing these systems will be key for adapting to cyber threats and preventing related issues, said Mark Weatherford, the former undersecretary for cybersecurity at DHS. “[Legacy systems] are a threat that, not just the government, but every private sector company on the face of the earth should be concerned about.”
The Transportation Department, which oversees FAA, concurred with most of GAO’s recommendations.
“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is committed to the safety of the National Airspace (NAS) and recognizes the importance of system modernization and is working diligently to maintain and upgrade all NAS systems,” said Philip McNamara, DOT’s assistant secretary for administration, in embedded replies to the GAO findings.
Aviation security became a top-of-mind issue in recent weeks after Washington State’s Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was subjected to a ransomware attack after hackers breached the Port of Seattle’s systems and demanded some $6 million in a ransom payment. A Sea-Tac official and others testified before the Senate Commerce Committee last week about the incident.
The FAA itself is in the midst of a rulemaking designed to shore up the cybersecurity of aircraft and aviation equipment. Comments on the proceeding are due in late October with a final rule expected in 2025.
OCT 1 at The Apollo: Ta-Nehisi Coates takes centerstage for a candid and robust conversation with MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin to discuss his ground-breaking new book of essays, The Message!
Join New York Times bestselling author, McArthur Genius and Apollo Master Artist-In-Residence alum, Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation on the evening of the release of his timely new book of essays, The Message.
About The Message
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.
“[Coates] is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language,”but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.
In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
Each ticket includes the purchase of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ newest release, The Message.
This special online conference in Kagarlitsky’s honour will address the double aspect of his contribution: his wide-ranging analysis of the left’s dilemmas in the face of multiple global crises and the advance of the far right; and his resistance — together with other persecuted anti-war activists in the Russian Federation — to the authoritarianism of the regime of Vladimir Putin.
Each session will run for 90 minutes, made up of a 10-minute introduction by the moderator, 20-minute presentations by the speakers and 20 minutes discussion. The main time given is Eastern Daylight Time (US and Canada), while the times in paratheses are, respectively, Central European Time, Indian Standard Time and Australian Eastern Standard Time.
INTRODUCTION
09:15 – 09:30 EDT | 15:15 -15:30 CET | 18:45 -19:00 IST | 23:15 - 23:30 AEST
Trevor Ngwane (South African socialist activist and author) and Fred Fuentes (editor, Links, International Journal of Socialist Renewal) present the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign and the aims of the conference.
OPENING ADDRESS
09:30 – 10:00 EDT | 15:30 -16:00 CET | 19:00 -19:30 IST | 23:30 - 00:00 AEST
Speaker: Nancy Fraser
THE LONG RETREAT (presentation and discussion)
10:00 – 11:45 EDT | 16:00 -17:45 CET | 19:30 - 21:15 IST | 00:00 - 01:45 AEST
