Political Dynamite! American Unions Vote to Form Labor Party

This is an absolute bombshell! In this piece from the Jimmy Dore Show, Dore and his co-host, Ron Placone, discuss the sensational news that a meeting of union leaders that convened on October 24 have passed a resolution condemning the two-party system and pledging them to consider setting up a separate, independent labour party.

The resolution was introduced by the chair of the political committee of AFL-CIO, Lee Saunders, and Randi Weingarten, the head of the teacher’s union. This is particularly remarkable, as Weingarten was responsible for throwing the union’s weight behind Hillary Clinton regardless of the views of its members. Dore states that when they asked American teachers how they felt about their union supporting Killary, they said they weren’t consulted. Those are America’s two largest unions.

Weingarten said that the system had failed working people for decades, and that it had taken away the pillars supporting working people’s rights to good jobs and benefits on behalf of the rich and corporations. The resolution was passed at a meeting of about 50 delegates in an upstairs room where the convention was being held. The delegates contended that both the Republicans and the Democrats were under corporate domination.

Mark Dimondstein, who was the foremost promoter of the idea of a labour party, is the president of the postal workers’ union. He has been calling for it ever since NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – was set up in 1993, which he said showed that both the Republicans and Democrats were in the pockets of the capitalists. Dore and Placone chuckle over the fact that Dimondstein must be having the biggest ‘I told you so’ moment, and encourage him to gloat all he wants, as he’s earned it.

The meeting was split over whether they should first start up an organisation and start discussing issues, or get into political races and risk becoming the ‘spoilers’ in the current two-party system. Dore states in response to this that it’s the two-party system that’s rigged. That’s how Americans now have Trump: it was due to a rigged Democratic primary and electoral college. One delegate, Velasquez, stated that the new party should compete in politics, but start at the local and state levels. Dore asks rhetorically why they should, and argues instead that they should compete at all levels. All the delegates agreed, however, that the Democrats have not done them any favours. They never have, and they never will. Dore believes that the reason why Velasquez wanted them to limit themselves to local and state level politics, was so that they don’t get called ‘Ralph Nader’, after the left-wing American politician, who attempted to run as a third party candidate.

Saunders and Weingarten are also members of the Democratic National Committee. The main resolution, however, said that they would set a pro-worker agenda, that would stand regardless of party. Dore states that this is similar to what they had in mind when they went to Canada for Peter Alard. That all the progressives would get together and produce a litmus test. They will thus endorse any political candidate in any party, provided that they support their pro-worker objectives.

Dimondstein said that they couldn’t take half a loaf, a quart of a loaf, an eighth of a loaf, or even crumbs any more. Dore states that they weren’t even being offered that under the present system. And he was applauded when he said that even when the Democrats got control of both the presidency and Congress in the 2008 election, they did not follow through with reform of labour legislation and other priorities for working people, but instead passed the Transpacific Partnership – TPP – the free trade deal. Dore and Placone states this was done by Barack Obama. They also make the point that it wasn’t done by Russian secret agents amongst the DAPL and Black Lives Matter activists. Dore states that it wasn’t the Russians, who threw the election but Barack Obama, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Haliburton, Exxon, the Koch brothers, the people in New York, who had 200,000 people thrown of the voting rolls, and the Electoral College. He stated that the Democratic Party hadn’t done anything for them despite having the presidency, the Congress and the Senate. Dore states that this is what he and other progressives had been saying, but they were told they were stupid, petulant, children. Now the labour unions agree with them, and its those who called them stupid and so on, who now have no political sense. The people in the Democratic Party, who called them that and gave America Hillary Clinton are the people that are ultimately responsible for Trump. They are everything that’s broken in the Democrat Party.

Dimondstein stated that the Republicans entrenched union-busting, Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street, and Jimmy Carter deregulated trucking. Dore reminds his viewers that, thanks to Carter, we now have truckers working 18 hours or so and taking methamphetamines to get to their destinations on time. Dimondstein made it clear that constructing a labour party would be a long-term plan and require both community and labour support, but it would be wrong to confine the movement for a labour party to the current two-party system. Dore goes on to say that if everyone, who felt this way had actually voted for the Green Party at the last election, it would have radically changed the political landscape. They might still have had Trump, but the Democrats would have been wiped out and the opposition instead would have been the Green Party with a genuinely radical agenda. Instead, half or eighty per cent of all progressives are trying to reform the Democrats, which he thinks is a fool’s errand.

Dore and Placone are amazed that this story has received so little press attention. It should receive more, as the 2016 election showed how little footing the Democrat Party now has with the working class. Placone states that it’s now time for progressives and working class organisations to stop endorsing the lesser of two evils, because that can result in the more evil getting into power, and the lesser evil becoming worse. He states that we have now reached the crisis point with that, and if we haven’t, he doesn’t know what will wake people up. But whatever it is, it’ll be too little, too late. Dore suggests that it might be when the ice caps finally melt so that the coastline is now in Minnesota. Obama would probably come back to open the arctic for drilling just one more time. He has been responsible for opening it up to drilling twice. Dore also points out that there are a lot of people interested in forming a third party – progressives, Greens and others – and it’ll eventually happen.

This is absolutely stunning. If it goes ahead – and I sincerely hope it does – then America will be transformed into a country, whose political system is far more like that of Europe. Especially if Bernie and the progressives manage to get single-payer healthcare passed.

What the American unions are discussing is precisely what the British Labour party went through a century and more ago. The Labour party has its roots in the Lib-Labs, the trade unionists elected to parliament as working class members of the Liberal Party. Then after the passage of the Taft Vale judgement, which ruled that trade unions could be sued for damages and losses caused by strikes, they then decided to form an independent party to press for working class policies. This was the Independent Labour Party. The Labour Party as it is now was founded in 1901 as a party formed from the unions and various socialist organisations and societies.

As for pressing for all political parties to put forward pro-worker policies, that was the goal of the Fabian Society when it was founded. There’s a lot of sheer rubbish spouted by the American right-wing conspiracy nuts about how it was some kind of secret society. It wasn’t. And it’s still around. It became part of the Labour party. I should know. I was a member briefly in the 1980s. I’ve blogged about some of their pamphlets I bought and read, even citing them. Unfortunately, they’ve now been heavily infiltrated by the Blairites, and are one of the chief sites of anti-Corbyn activism in the party.

And something similar appears to have happened in Canada in the 1960s and ’70s, when hippy radicals formed the New Democrat Party up there.

If this does go through, it should encourage similar left-wing movements around the world, and strengthen the genuine socialists in the British Labour party and the European socialist parties.

And I’ve no doubt that the capitalists and big corporations will now try and throw everything they can at it to stifle this vital new change. I’m not surprised that very few newspapers carried the story, because the newspapers generally represent the interests of big business. And big business and the capitalist class is absolutely terrified of the unions and genuinely working class organisations. That’s why the British press, including the pro-Labour Mirror, has been so consistently against Jeremy Corbyn.

However, it has also been pointed out that before the First World War, America did indeed have a very strong left-wing movement. There were the Communists, the Wobblies and Eugene Debs and his attempt to form a labour party for America. What set this back was the Cold War, which allowed the forces of the right to smear and vilify them as part of the global Communist threat. Now that Communism has fallen, fewer Americans are being taken in by this ruse, and the spirit of Eugene Debs lives on.

I hope this all goes through, and that it’s successful. If that happens, then the world will be a fair bit better for working people.

God bless it, and American working women and men!

American Comedian Lee Camp on the Real Reason Iran’s Been Put ‘On Notice’

This week Trump’s administration officially put Iran ‘on notice’ for the crime of testing a ballistic missile in their own country. The missile wasn’t capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, but nevertheless Trump and his Nazis accused it of preparing to acquire them.

In this edition of RT’s Redacted Tonight, the host, comedian Lee Camp, suggests the real reason Trump has warned Iran of a possible invasion should they not comply with America’s wishes, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. No, it’s for the simple reason that Iran is planning to ditch the dollar as the currency for trade in oil. He cites newspaper reports and Perkins’ Confession of an Economic Hitman to show that one of the reasons for the Iraq invasion was that Saddam Hussein was also considering abandoning the dollar. As was Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi wanted to set up the gold dinar as Africa’s and the Middle East’s rival to the dollar and euro.

As for Iran being put ‘on notice’, Camp remarks that they just might have worked out that America was threatening to invade them through the number of US bases encircling the country.

Camp then contrasts the ire of America’s corporate elite to this financial outrage, with the way Trump tolerates and encourage the destruction of the environment. BP has just been allowed to resume drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico, despite the oil spill that devastated the region’s ecosystem the other year. And what are they calling their new rig? Mad Dog II.

He also discusses Nancy Pelosi’s terrified reaction when a young member of a TV audience put her on the spot by telling her that Millennials don’t support capitalism. This is true. A recent poll showed that American young people don’t. Cue nervous laughter from Pelosi and the hurried response that ‘We’re capitalists’. She then went on to burble bilge about ‘stakeholder capitalism’, and so, as Camp remarked, try to position herself as supporting capitalism and working people simultaneously. He also jokes about the Democrats’ extremely weak response to opposing the Republicans.

He also talks to Naomi Karavani about the Republican’s criminalisation of the DAPL protestors. North Dakota is considering passing legislation to allow drivers to run down protestors. They also have footage of some politico claiming that the protestors were all paid and bussed in specially, and that after leaving the DAPL protests they will simply go on to the next one. He also reports how the DAPL protestors, including elderly ladies, who have done nothing except peacefully block the way and pray, are now ‘terrorists’. They also want to amend the laws on rioting so it includes simply standing there when told to go away.

Finally on the show he talks to John F. O’Donnell about Trump’s intention to repeal the Dodd Frank Act. This is the act that obliges the big financial firms to put away hundreds of millions of dollars to provide against another financial crash. This would allow the banks to pay out millions to shareholders, but it would mean that they would once more become that bit more vulnerable to financial collapse. O’Donnell also discusses Trump’s abolition of the financial regulator, that has forced pay day loan companies and other companies to pay money back to victims of financial wrongdoing.

He reports Bernie Sanders’ response to this, in which the veteran left-wing Democrat called Trump what he is: a fraud. Trump had promised during his election campaign that he was going to reign in Wall Street. Now he’s doing his best to strengthen it and expand its power.

Warning: Camp is one of the young, edgy comedians, so there is language and some might find some jokes offensive. Like when compares the tired excuses of the American military for their warmongering, that they’re attacking to prevent the other side from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, to a couple with Alzheimer’s in a retirement home.

Camp is, however, exactly right in his criticisms and the report about Iran and its intention to move to an alternative currency instead of the dollar has more than the ring of truth. Greg Palast in his discussion of the Iraq invasion in his book, Armed Madhouse, states that the American economy is to a very large extent insulated from many of the financial crises that hit the rest of the world’s countries because the dollar is the world currency for the oil industry. The moment an alternative currency is set up – such as Gaddafi’s Gold Dinar – much of America’s economic strength is wiped out. Hence the aggressive response to any oil producing state that dares to do so.

We’re being threatened with being taken into another war, simply to keep American oil billionaires rolling in it. More of our brave squaddies may die, and the innocent people of another country massacred and its oil and other industries looted.