The Employee Free Choice Act languishes in Congress. ACORN, which registered millions of new voters in 2008, was forced to close after Congress' response to a scam viral video.
Progressives are rightly upset about both. These setbacks are one measure of the progress we've made, and have yet to make, as a movement.
More below the fold....
Those Were the Days, Part III - Paths of Progress (Non-Cynical Saturday)
This week Morning Feature looked back at the pace and cost of progressive change. Thursday we recalled the executions of ten Irish union activists in 1877. Yesterday we remembered the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. Today we weigh our progress and backsliding on wealth and race privilege.
This series was sparked by a coincidence. The executions of the so-called Molly Maguires in 1877 and the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964 both happened on June 21st. There were other coincidences as well. The Senate passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act on Juneteenth, the day before the three civil rights workers were arrested and their murders arranged. A Mississippi jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of manslaughter on June 21st, 2005 ... the 41st anniversary of the murders.
The big coincidence - which is not a coincidence - is that both the Irish union activists and the civil rights workers were engaged in the same struggle: to break the chains of privilege in our society. That struggle continues today, and it's all too easy to believe we've made no progress at all.
EFCA: Dead in the water.
Earlier this week, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) said Democrats may attempt to pass the Employee Free Choice Act - making it easier for workers to organize unions - in the lame duck session of Congress after the November elections. Critics were quick to condemn that idea, citing the primary victory of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) over union-backed challenger Bill Halter as proof that voters have rejected labor unions. The critics are wrong; a December 2009 Gallup poll shows almost 60% of Americans support labor unions, although that's down from a high of 75% in the 1950s.
EFCA was a campaign issue for many Democrats, including President Obama:
But the Senate hasn't moved on EFCA. The stimulus bill was the first priority after his inauguration, and then health care became the almost singular focus of Congress and the national dialogue. Banking regulation reform followed, and immigration reform and repealing Don't Ask/Don't Tell seem next on the horizon. EFCA, along with energy and climate change bills, are stalled in a Senate that seemingly can't walk and breathe at the same time, let alone chew gum.
Perhaps Sen. Harkin will succeed in getting the Senate to move after the November midterms, but for now EFCA is a ship without sail or steam ... dead in the water.
ACORN: Dead altogether.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN - had a long and worthy record of helping ordinary Americans. In 2006 and 2008, ACORN helped register millions of new voters, including many minorities. The total of new voters registered by ACORN was only a fraction of President Obama's landslide margin, but the group was targeted by conservative talk radio and pundits who claimed the 2008 election was stolen.
In the summer of 2009 conservative scam-blogger James O'Keefe set his sights on ACORN, repeating his 2006 tactics in the anti-abortion movement: go into an office with a hidden camera, lie to the workers, edit their responses to create the illusion of illegality, then "expose" them. O'Keefe's "pimp" video against ACORN was a sham from start to finish. For example, he and his female associate wore business clothes into the ACORN offices, not the "pimp and prostitute" costumes the video implied. But the video went viral and was taken as proof of ACORN's corruption.
Ultimately every charge in the video was disproved, and O'Keefe has since been indicted for his role in attempting to tamper with the phones of Sen. Mary Landreau (D-LA) in January, 2010. But the vindications were too little and too late. Cut off from almost all funding after the relentless attacks, ACORN shut down this past spring. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ... is dead altogether.
A measure of progress: metaphor vs. reality.
I described EFCA as "dead in the water" and ACORN as "dead altogether." Progressives are disappointed, even outraged in both cases. And we should be. But we should also note the progress we've made. In both cases, the word "dead" was a metaphor.
"Dead" was not a metaphor for ten Irish union activists in 1877. They were hanged on June 21st, after a trial in which their prosecutor was the mine owner whose workers they had tried to organize, based largely on the testimony of a private investigator under contract to that mine owner. As a Pennsylvania judge later wrote, "the state provided only the courtroom, and the gallows." The ten so-called Molly Maguires were among scores of labor activists killed.
And "dead" was not a metaphor for three civil rights activists working to register black voters in 1964. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered on June 21st and their bodies buried in an earthen dam, in a conspiracy involving over a dozen Klansmen including the county sheriff and a deputy. The killers were confident their crime would never be prosecuted, and for most that was true, at least in state court. Only one was charged with murder, and that indictment came over 40 years later. But for federal intervention, the case might have gone unsolved alongside scores of other Klan murders.
We progressives haven't yet broken the chains of privilege in America. Oligarchs, racists, homophobes, zealots, and misogynists are as determined as ever to reserve the benefits of our society for wealthy, white, straight, Christian males. They are well organized and well funded, and media headlines and pundits would have you believe they're winning.
They aren't. We are.
In 2010, we progressives can work together against them largely without fear that "dead" will be more than a metaphor. That may not seem like progress, but it is ... if we do actually work together. We must help organize unions, register voters, advocate with voters and our leaders for more progressive policies, and motivate those voters to turn out, in 2010 and beyond.
The struggle against privilege remains incomplete, and it won't be won by cynically complaining that nothing ever changes. It will be won by working together to make more changes happen. That is the legacy of June 21st, both in 1877 and 1964, and our challenge today.
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Happy Saturday!