Confronting the KKK in rural Maryland: June 1971
I don’t mind telling you how scared I was that morning of June 20, 1971. That was the day we were going to Rising Sun, Maryland to picket the Klan at a picnic they were sponsoring. The fear was deep and profound. Butterflies in the stomach? Well, I had a gang of scorpions brawling down there.
Sure, this was Maryland, not Mississippi. It was 1971, not a few years before when the Klan was still leaving a trail of bodies all over the South. But part of the Klan’s power was its ability to install fear in people. It was sure working on me.
So why was I going to travel through rural Maryland to picket a Klan picnic? Well, a few weeks earlier the little Maryland radical collective I belonged to had received a call. It came from a socialist group based in Wilmington, Delaware. They were members of an organization called Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF).
They told us that the Klan had been causing trouble in a workplace where YAWF had connections, pitting workers against one another along racial lines. People were afraid and YAWF wanted to cut through that fear by standing up to the Klan. The Klan was also blanketing the tri-state area of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware with hate literature.
In 1967, the KKK had launched an arson attack on Laurel, Maryland’s small black community, sparking 3 nights of racial violence. Laurel African Americans organized armed patrols in the community until the Klansmen were arrested. The small Maryland Klan was still a potential threat and was showing signs of life again. YAWF wanted us to bring as many people as we could to Rising Sun, where the Maryland Klan traditionally had their gatherings.
Rising Sun, Maryland today. It was once a major center for Klan activity.
Filed under: Race and gender, Society and Economy
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Fight for $15! Because we can’t survive on $8.25
It was a cold clear Saturday morning on December 22, 2012 when I got off the CTA Green Line and walked toward the St. James Cathedral to join with members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC). WOCC was planning march and sit-in to demand a living wage of $15 an hour for Chicago’s downtown retail and restaurant workers. The Illinois minimum wage is now $8.25, far below what is needed to support families or even individuals. WOCC hopes to talk directly with the downtown business community.
The Hawk, Chicago’s legendary icy wind off the Lake, was not present as I crossed the Michigan Ave bridge on the way to the Cathedral. The Hawk can easily cut through the North Face jackets favored by many Chicagoans and makes carrying a large protest banner as tricky as sailing a schooner around Cape Horn. And leafletting to passersby when The Hawk comes down? You can lose dozens of fliers in an instant if you relax your grip and then have to chase a passel of airborne leaflets through crowds of shoppers and tourists.
The weather was with us that day.
WOCC was a new union in town, barely a month old, but had already pulled off two successful public actions including banner drops at Macy’s department store and marches through Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile (aka MagMile) shopping district.
Filed under: Society and Economy, Unions
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The 2nd Amendment and the Enforcement of Tyranny
What is not often talked about in regards to the 2nd Amendment and its “well regulated militia” is that one of its original purposes was to enforce tyranny. In order to maintain the vast slave empire, the slave states organized “slave patrols”, creating what amounted to a vast totalitarian police state over much of the young Republic. Slaves of course were not among those people who had the right “to keep and bear arms.”
The slave patrols were among the “well regulated militias” of our early history and contributed to the militarism of that region, a militarism necessary to put down slave rebellions.
Filed under: Militarism, Race and gender, Society and Economy
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Is the Mob cleaning up at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport?
Mayor Emanuel’s latest O’Hare Airport janitorial contract seems to be coming with pinkie rings and tailored silk suits attached. Yes, City Hall is reaching out to the Outfit again, renewing a Mob friendship that dates back at least to Mayor Big Bill Thompson of the Prohibition Era. Thompson’s heart went all aflutter when he heard the name Al Capone. The Outfit is a local Chicago name for what most Americans call the Mob or the Syndicate.
City Hall’s courtship with the Mob blossomed publicly under Mayor Richard J. Daley who, as Chicagoland old timers will recall, was pals with such Mob luminaries as Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, John D’Arco, Fred Roti and Jake Arvey. After all, the Outfit is really just another business seeking political favors and doling out campaign contributions.
Today’s City Hall-Mob relationship at O’Hare Airport is shown in the graphic below. Vendors at O’Hare get their contracts through City Hall:
Filed under: Society and Economy, Unions, US politics
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My Chicagoland Black Friday in words and pictures
As I was writing this blog post on Sunday morning, news came from the Associated Press about the real human cost of our Black Fridays:
“DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh’s capital, an official said Sunday. Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe. Bangladesh’s garment factories make clothes for brands including Wal-Mart, JC Penney, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Carrefour and Tesco.”
Walmart stocks up on products manufactured under deadly sweatshop conditions. It organizes Black Friday sales knowing they can touch off riots in their stores. Then Walmart sends security guards and police after peaceful demonstrators who only seek justice in the global workplace. Who said irony is dead?
I didn’t hear of any Black Friday shopper nastiness in Chicagoland, but there were a number of peaceful demonstrations against Walmart and other retailers who exploit and abuse their own employees and supply chain workers around the world.
My Black Friday began at around 4:30 am with a drive from my home in Oak Park to Bedford Park, a suburb south of Midway Airport. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) had rented a hotel meeting room there as a staging area for Walmart protestors, plus buses to carry them to several Chicagoland Walmart stores and eventually to downtown to support food and retail workers there.
It was dark and deserted within the complex of hotels, but when I found the yellow school buses, I knew I was in the right place. Once in the lobby, a UFCW staffer saw me and guided me to their meeting room where staff people were already giving away lime-green Our Walmart tee shirts, buttons and signs. About 30 people were there drinking coffee and munching on donuts.
Filed under: Society and Economy, Unions
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Will worker justice take flight at Chicago airports?
“I make $10.50 an hour, which is not a living wage here in Chicago, but due to the new victory which we won…in a year I’ll be making a living wage. This is a huge victory not only for me but for my family and my coworkers and their families as well. I will be able to move my kids into a safe neighborhood and with the new contract I will be able to afford health insurance.”—Tamekah Shivers, O’Hare Airport concessions worker who recently gained a union contract
O’Hare Airport is a confusing crowded warren of human activity. Even Chicago natives get lost in O’Hare, an airport that always seems to be under construction somewhere. Fortunately there is an abundance of small shops where harried travelers may find refreshments and reading material to lower their stress levels. The same is true at Chicago’s much smaller and more human-sized Midway Airport.
At O’Hare you may meet Tamekah Shivers, an O’Hare concession worker. She is a single mom with 3 young boys. Her 8 year old has Downs Syndrome and her 3 year old is a sickle cell anemia carrier. Perhaps you’ll get a meal served by Aida Olavarria who supports her daughter and grandson on her small O’Hare restaurant salary. If you buy a coffee and pastry at an O’Hare Starbucks, you may get back some change from Peggy Willis. Willis is determined that her 3 year old son will go to college when he is older, no matter what. Read more
Filed under: Society and Economy, Unions
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Don Moore 1942-2012: A lion who roared on behalf of public education
“Don Moore was the most persistent, thoughtful, smart advocate I know,” said Anne Hallett, director of the Grow Your Own teacher preparation program. “He would get his teeth into something and not let go.”
“We have lost a giant. We have lost a lion.”—Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis
It’s easy to stereotype public policy wonks as data driven, numbers crunching, analytical geeks with horn-rimmed glasses and bad haircuts who provide the research for the real organizers who go out into the real world and mobilize for social change. Chicago’s Don Moore, who died last August, defied that misleading stereotype. Besides being Chicago’ s premier educational researcher, Moore was a coalition building organizer par excellence, a strategist with a grand vision for educational democracy and one who possessed a deeply held moral vision. It was a vision that still stirs those who knew him even after his life’s journey has ended.
He was a genuine educational reformer, not a fake like the Michelle Rhees of today. Rhee and those like her call themselves “reformers” but use hi-stakes testing and school privatization to generate profits for huge corporations who hope to gain control of Amerircn education.
Don Moore always put children over profits understanding that a child is always more than just a test score.
Filed under: Education, Society and Economy, Unions
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Educational apartheid in Chicago and the black teachers revolt of the 1960’s
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) organizer Brandon Johnson, who is a black man, recently spoke about a conversation he had with veteran black educator Dr. Grady Jordan about racism in the schools today. Jordan told him, “Black teachers fought hard. This is a direct retaliation to what we built in the 60’s and 70’s. They’re trying to kill you, son. What are you going to do about it?”.
Black teachers did fight hard in Chicago, a city with a violent racial history that included a dangerously repressive political machine and screaming white supremacist mobs. Confronting Chicago’s educational apartheid policies also meant risking one’s career, no small thing, especially for those to whom that teaching position represented the first time a family member had graduated from college and emerged from Jim Crow enforced poverty.
Chicago’s educational apartheid has a history which includes the racial segregation of its schools, the allocation of resources on an unequal basis and second class treatment for teachers of color. It was Jim Crow North. But there was also resistance, a resistance which grew into a powerful social movement during the 1960’s.
Filed under: Education, Race and gender, Unions
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Seven Days that shook the Windy City: Reflections on a Chicago teachers strike
“The CTU is teaching the USA a lesson in working class love and solidarity. It’s a transformational moment for the membership of the CTU and its allies. How can they transform the horn honks, the raised fists, the friendly waves and the kind words of encouragement into a political force to be reckoned with?”
It was of course, more than a Chicago teachers’ strike; it was a city-wide working class protest. Parents and concerned community members walked the picket lines. Workers of all types who passed in their trucks, buses, taxis and passenger cars joined in with honking, friendly waves and fist raising.
There was serious carb-loading and elevated caffeine levels for days as strike sympathizers brought muffins, cookies, donuts, pop and coffee to picket lines. Labor professor Steve Ashby organized a scheme (originally used in the Madison uprising) where strike supporters called in pizza orders to help feed the legions of volunteers who came to the Chicago Teachers Union(CTU) Strike HQ in the Teamsters hall on the West Side.
In response the mayor and his allies launched an expensive propaganda campaign against the strike that even the best efforts of the CTU and its allies could never match in its reach and scope. TV and radio ads blasting the union were all over the air waves. The local corporate owned news media was almost uniformly hostile. The national media was no better.
Their money was wasted in Chicago’s working class neighborhoods. Chicagoans backed the teachers by a substantial majority. As CTU president Karen Lewis put it,“Let’s be clear — this fight is for the very soul of public education, not just only Chicago but everywhere.”
Filed under: Education, Race and gender, Society and Economy, Unions, US politics
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Chicago teachers join Elwood IL warehouse workers to confront Walmart
The chants rang out across Vincennes Ave in the Chatham neighborhood of South Side Chicago:
“1-2-3-4 No one should be working poor!
5-6-7-8 Come on Walmart, play it straight!
We’re working families
Under attack
What do we do?
Stand up! Fight back!
There ain’t no power,
Like the power of the people,
Cuz the power of the people won’t stop!”
Striking teachers from the Chicago Teachers Union(CTU) had joined Warehouse Workers for Justice(WWJ) at a rally aimed at Walmart to protest its employee abuses and the dumping of millions of dollars into school privatization efforts. It was the afternoon of Tuesday September 18, only a few hours before the CTU House of Delegates ended the teachers strike. I had come to the rally with a CTU retiree.
