Allow me to make a confession. I’m a 52 year old fat bastard, white and proud Union member, and I fully support Black Lives Matter…
Fully and utterly support!
“Why?” Many of my brothers and sisters ask.
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As if the idea of standing for justice for all no longer affects us.
Is the concept of fairness and decency is not our concern - Have we forgotten where we have come from?
What so many of my brothers and sisters don’t understand is that the fight for justice that Black Lives Matter represents is exactly where the fight for worker’s rights was 100 years ago. It is no slight to say they are not on new ground at all, but rather are standing precisely where unions stood a century ago.
We are them. They are us. Young! Angry! Thirsty for justice! And like us in 1920’s, they need to be heard.
We are them. They are us. Young! Angry! Thirsty for justice! And like us in 1920’s, they need to be heard.
Let me state this as bluntly as possible. There is no activity that Black Lives Matter does that we did not perfect a century ago. In no way am I disparaging this. They are borrowing time-honored techniques from a previous century's movement just as that movement borrowed them from those who came before.
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Anything that people complain about BLM doing, the Labor Movement did. We did those things to get us the privileges we have today. In fact, those things are the reason we have the rights we currently enjoy.
Did we block streets in the course of our strikes and protests for better wages and treatment? Hell yes! All the time! There were strikes and marches that shut down entire cities and even states for days at a time. In the fight for just the eight hour day, hundreds of thousands marched across the nation month after month and year after year. They shut everything down. They needed to!
Were we violent? Oh my god! Our Grandparents were tough as nails. Does anyone think that they just asked nicely to be given living wages and be treated like human beings? Our great grandparents fought like hell itself for the rights that so many of us now take for granted. And we fought violently against authorities who beat or shot workers in these actions. Many of these periods of civil unrest led to the destruction of rail yards, factories and entire city blocks. Cities shuddered to a halt with the rage in the face of the injustices that occurred when companies had the police departments and the courts firmly in their pocket or could hire mercenary armies to maim or kill workers.
Year after year, our predecessors rioted and burned shit down.
But we didn’t loot, right? Do you really believe that? There have always been looters and there always will be. In every period of labor unrest, looting was widespread. The shopkeepers, clerks and capitalists were always against us. They hated what unions stood for and many had little problem with looting and burning shops to the ground.
But last week the rioters looted Target!!! Get real. With the anti-worker attitude that Target and so many other mega-companies have, our great great grandparents would have had little issue burning Target after Target to the ground.
Did we kill people? Yes. The usual scenario was as follows. The police or mercenaries would shoot a few workers, and the workers would shoot several of them in return. Police firing into crowds or ambushing workers would often lead to full scale violence often devolving into all-out war where dozens or even hundreds died.
Let me give you some events to look up. The Battle of Blair Mountain, The Ludlow Massacre and aftermath, The Great Railway Strike of 1877, The Memorial Day massacre of 1937 to name just a few off the top of my head. Oh, and for all our sakes look up the Minneapolis Teamster Strike of 1934.
Look them up and learn.
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When workers grew so desperate, they did terrible things. And rest assured, when their brothers and sisters or sons and daughters were shot before their eyes, they often rioted with frightening force.
These were not isolated incidences. This violence happened repeatedly decade upon decade. So much so that most American cities built armories downtown to help put your grandparents down if they ever had the temerity to rise against the powers that be. Understand that these armories were not built against foreign invasion, but rather against our union brothers and sisters.
This is our history! Learn this so you not only can protect the rights you have, but so you can recognize what is happening now?
What does all that violence and destruction produce? In our case? Everything! There is not a right we possess today that did not in part arise from violence or the threat of violence by our great grandparents. You may as well ask what good violence did in the Revolutionary War?
Our opponents have never given us rights until they are exhausted, until we have risked our lives time and time again standing up to them. In so many cases, we had to demonstrate that every victory they had was a pyrrhic victory. That is where it didn’t matter if the authorities won every battle, the victories would be so expensive that they were never worth winning.
Understand that I am in no way justifying killing and violence. I grieve for those hurt on the sidelines. I sorrow for those who lost business and livelihoods, and I weep for the officers injured and killed. In addition, I also know that often violence becomes the enemy of any movement and often wrecks what has been achieved. Yet most riots, contrary to current conspiracy theory are not planned. They are the inevitable rage created by a system that crushes people in its gears. Violence stems from desperation which stems from injustice. Rioting and other violence is inescapable in a system where for many, justice cannot be found.
The long term solution to rioting is not more police. The solution to rioting is setting up a system where injustice is dealt with.
Worker violence raged across this nation for 50 years until Unions were legalized and workers had another outlet for their grievances.
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And yet many of the same people who have benefited all their lives from the same tactics that Black Lives Matter is using are now whining about inconveniences in their lives? How have we forgotten so much? Do we think we are shopkeepers and clerks now? Have we moved out of the working class? Do we believe that if we pretend we are on the billionaires’ side that they’ll continue to feed us with tidbits dropping from their table? Do we think that they won’t eventually drop us to the floor to be ground under their heels?
And if when that happens and we have stood for no one else, who will stand for us?
But above all justice is still the centerpiece here and as a matter of justice, the facts are brutal. Black people are 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police. How is this not a tragedy worth any inconvenience? Unarmed black men are being killed because they don’t obey the police fast enough, because they don’t bow low enough, because even handcuffed and lying on the ground they are presumed to be such a threat that four officers can slowly suffocating a helpless and pleading man to death.
Can you imagine seeing a video of your son or daughter slowly strangled to death? Can you envision how you’d feel watching their gasps for air? How would you feel if your son’s murder was just another in a long line of murders where justice was virtually unknown? Where the perpetrators would get off either utterly free or with a mere slap on the wrist?
Imagine the rage you’d feel?
I fully support Black Lives Matter because even though my child is white, I can imagine them being slowly suffocated under the weight of a human knee.
In the last week, I have imagined it time and time again…
I admit that I do not know and I fervently hope to never know how that feels, but I can imagine… and that’s enough for me.
For two centuries, the Labor Movement has been a push for justice and is not complete. BLM is a push for justice right now and is just beginning. No matter how I look at it, BLM is a sister organization to my own.
As Unions, we should remember enough of our history to understand what the desperation and suffering of our grandparents when they were on the bottom of society. And we should remember that it has always been our goal to lift everyone up to our level rather than tear anyone down.
Therefore I, a white, 52-year-old, fat-bastard of a Union member stand in solid support of Black Lives Matter.
A fight for justice has always been at Union's core, and I’m not about to give that up now.
Floyd was a recidivist criminal with an extensive rap sheet which included home invasion and threatening a pregnant woman with a knife during it.
ReplyDeleteHe was also full of the drugs fentanyl and meth.
Did he deserve to die? No.
But neither is he deserving of martyrdom.
And the kicker is that the cop literally followed his training.
So the question is , if you are really interested in justice, what happens when the cop uses this defense in court? He could reasonably make the case that he was following his training and the suspect who did resist arrest also spoke throughout the incident suggesting he could breath?
I suspect that the cop will be made an example of but only to placate political sensitivites. And that's hardly justice.
And I'm a left wing trade unionist too, but I'll judge each case on it's merits. I'll be fucked if I'll follow the herd on this or anything else.
Steve R
ReplyDeleteGeworge Floyd was still a victim of police homicide to wnhom he was not threat at the time of his death.
I would suggest that saying "I cannot breathe" is self-explanatory. It is not sonethibg that people are in the habit of saying.
If he can talk he can breath, and if he followed instructions from the outset he'd be walking the streets now. If you see the longer bodycam footage of the incident you can see how difficult he became, and if you look carefully you can see a white tablet in his mouth.
DeleteNot even the cop who followed his training wanted him dead, even the language he used was to get compliance and nothing vindictive about it.
I suspect as per usual the mob wanted a riot and found a proxy justification via edited media. T'was ever thus.