My mother works as an elementary school Teacher's Aid in Upstate New York. In light of Governor Cuomo's earlier statements regarding going after NY public employees, along with what is going on in the Midwest I felt compelled to ask her when her next union meeting was. She told me it is tomorrow, so i asked her if I wrote something would she read it? She said yes, being the good mother that she is ;). Below is what I have written for her to read.
Thank you to my fellow union members for allowing me to speak. These are most assuredly very interesting times that we are living in and experiencing. There is something in the air, in the ether, that is perhaps beginning to reignite the flame of a once seemingly unstoppable movement. Sadly, that flame has become a flicker of its former self, and in some places I would say it has expired altogether.
Surveying recent events around the globe one would be truly remiss to ignore the larger undercurrent of what is driving these events forward. People everywhere desire basic fundamental rights, as Jefferson so eloquently phrased it on that hot July day, the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” People are tired of enduring repression, tired of enduring hardship they had no hand in creating, and perhaps most painful and significant of all, absolutely weary of being ignored and discarded as pawns and cannon fodder by the ruling elite.
The average American had truly thought that we were past all of this, and rightfully so. We had a strong, vibrant Middle Class that could more than adequately feed its families, pay the bills and have enough left over for some well deserved leisure time. Now I cannot help but get a sense that serious uncertainty and puzzlement have entered our collective consciousness.
Again, America had truly a well entrenched and secure middle. A massive contributing factor to this lifestyle was organized labor. It is irrefutable that the unionization of the working men and women of this country gave birth to the great American Middle Class. Now however, organized labor is under immense attack. As I speak, working men and women in Wisconsin are protesting by the tens of thousands against a governor who is doing all in his power to strip collective bargaining rights away from public employees. These workers, who most likely never thought of taking such action even a year ago, are now occupying the State Capitol building, demanding that their rights be upheld and by extension their own personal security. For they realize that if they lose this right they will be a lone individual trying to eke out a decent livelihood as opposed to a strong band seeking out a collective benefit.
Many other governors are closely watching these events in Wisconsin as they have hopes of passing similar measures in their own states. Turning to our own state, Governor Cuomo in recent weeks has publicly bashed public employees and has proposed massive budget cuts directed at education. These cuts will affect people in this very room.
All of these measures are being brought about under the banner of “austerity.” However, I would argue that it is not the working families of this country who need to be more austere. It is not the NYSUT that needs to be more austere. It is the billionaires and robber barons on Wall Street, who with their speculation and casino style market formulas have wrecked the economy, literally. Governor Cuomo has apparently joined this ilk and has allied himself with the very people he should be condemning. Condemning and using the state’s resources to prosecute and claw back restitution that is justly due as penalty for their fraud and other crimes.
Turning back to the union movement, why it must be strong and how all of this relates to what I have just stated. Freedom of Association is a long held American ideal, as it should be. However, we take labor rights for granted, not even for granted, as a given that has come into being because it should. As if it naturally came to be. Of course any brief investigation into organized labor's history will destroy that notion entirely. It is a story of loss, deprivation, sorrow and bloodshed.
In 1892 the Homestead Strike near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was violently put down after hired thugs fired into the striking steel workers. In 1894 the Pullman Strike was crushed when 13 striking railroad employees were shot to death by strike breakers. In 1897 the Lattimer Massacre was the scene of 19 unarmed striking coal miners gunned down by hired thugs. Starting in 1912 there was the West Virginia Mine War, where the coal company owners formed a private army of mercenaries to yet again slaughter striking workers. The Ludlow Massacre in 1914 saw the death of 2 women and 11 children as they were burned to death as the striking miner’s tent city was attacked. In 1931 in Harlan County coal miners were again locked in a violent and bloody strike against coal operators. The famous organizing song that was born of this terrible tragedy relevantly asks, “which side are you on?” In 1937 the Flint Sit-Down Strike commenced, and after a month and half of continually occupying manufacturing plants (along with having to repel several attempts by strike breakers trying to enter the plants) GM was forced to recognize the UAW. Many people point to this moment as the birth of the Middle Class. It set into motion a chain of events that lead to regular people receiving living wages, decent benefits and security for decades afterword.
The vast majority of these strike actions were over the demand for a few extra pennies in wages. Even these humble demands were flat out rejected and the elite deemed it appropriate to resort to violence to stamp such thoughts out. Of course this brief history also excludes an enormous amount of smaller incidents. Smaller only in historical scope, not in the scope of how grieving spouses, mothers or fathers felt as their loved ones were the latest casualties of yet another crack down on workers trying to obtain their rights. The rich and corrupt and the powers that be called them rebels then, we use patriot instead.
They want to break us again, disperse our movement to the outermost fringes of society. It is not enough that statistically over and over again the American worker is the most productive in the world, a productivity that allows the fat cats and robber barons to grow ever richer with our labor and our toil, never theirs. It is not enough that the average family loses more and more of its earning potential as wage stagnation increases yearly, not enough that the average family's savings is evaporating into bankster’s and CEO’s bank accounts. No, they demand more. They demand that I, and you, become so meek and tame, so docile that they can drop all pretense of playing fair on an even playing field and commence sticking their hands in our pockets in the bright light of day. Shall we let this stand? Do we not see this farce for what it is?
I know this is a relatively small group in a seemingly unimportant meeting. However, movements, as just as they might be, have to be ignited somewhere and at sometime. In fact, I feel it in my bones that what is taking place in many parts of this beautiful planet, and more specifically in the mid-west, is the reigniting of a once proud cause. We must add our voices to this righteous chorus or be condemned to slip further into the morass of a modern indentured servitude, a servitude where we all have so much debt and so much fear that we are afraid to even dare to unbend our knee.
We are not in a union just to say we are in a union. Organized labor is the last best hope to prevent the complete dismantling of the Middle Class. Our union, the New York State United Teachers, must stand together with the whole union movement. Wringing our hands will not do anymore.
Our foes are strong and wise and wary, but strong and wise and wary as they are they cannot erase the spirit that is ripening in the hearts of workers, the seeds of which were sown by the working men and women of former generations. And the seeds sown by these brave generations are indeed coming to a grand ripening today.
They think that they have pacified us, they think they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half, they think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything, but the fools, they have left us the bygone spirit of a labor movement striving for fundamental rights and while our hearts hold these ideals, working men's and women’s rights shall never be put asunder. Solidarity.