Irreconcilable

Oil Spill Talk on July 10, 2010

2010-08-10T15:26:00.000-07:00

35-40 minutes.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2zmN7ZcQVs

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL1lI60dOBQ

Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbYS49zHNOk

Part 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbYS49zHNOk

Launching Warships and Unions: Industry, State-Led Economics, and Working-Class Ideology at Depression-Era New York Shipbuilding Corporation

2010-06-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

Behold, my thesis. I had to write a good deal of this while working full-time at a sewage plant, listening to my co-workers (one of whom was a former shipbuilder at Phila Navy) groan about contract negotiations. At least it was authentic. While flying out of Philly to a revolutionary socialist conference in Chicago, I unexpectedly got a bird's-eye view of the NYSC shipyard in person not even a week before I would finish this. Anyone who is curious or confused about Obama's brand of "socialism" (corporate welfare) should read this, as well as anyone interested in Phila/South Jersey local leftist history. The Great Depression/New Deal time period is more relevant now than it ever has been in US history. May this be my contribution to what I am sure is going to be a massive wave of young (and possibly older) organic revolutionist intellectuals attempting to grasp the terrible times and terrible world they live in.

The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (IUMSWA) was founded in 1933, during the Great Depression, at a shipyard in Camden, New Jersey. Its first local, Local 1, was located at a shipbuilding company there called New York Shipbuilding Corporation which relied heavily on government purchases of ships, especially military contracts. A headline in the Camden Courier-Post reporting on a reunion of the organization in 1986 said, “Launching warships – and unions,”[1] capturing the peculiar dual legacy of a place which made both military history and labor history. The union was only successfully established even in its home base by a pair of strikes, in which governmental intervention at the highest levels played a decisive role.

The story of the IUMSWA’s founding strikes demonstrates a trend which was prevalent in American society during the New Deal and Great Depression. This trend was the politicization of the economy. This phenomenon took several forms and meant different things in different contexts. Generally it implied that the boundaries traditionally existing between what are considered the distinct categories politics and economics break down – private business interactions came under the jurisdiction or focus of the state or society in general. In the context of government actions, politicization of the economy took the form of greater government oversight of corporate behavior through regulations and labor laws, or direct government participation in the economy. In terms of labor, politicization of the economy occurred in the minds of working people. In practice it meant laborers began to view their work or their economic conflict with their employers as something that required governmental intervention. They also came to view their work and conflict as significant to society beyond themselves, in various ways. Labor and government also intersected: the state absorbed the pressure of economic conflict by placing itself between labor and management as a mediating force. Politicization of the economy has been present in many if not all periods of American history. However, it was especially prevalent and visible during the 1930s and played itself out in Camden, New Jersey.

In the Orbit of Philadelphia

Philadelphia was founded in 1682. Despite its secondary status today, it was the primary economic center of the United States until 1830, surpassing even New York City. In the colonial era, Philadelphia was second only to London. Howell Harris, a historian of the Philadelphian metal trades, wrote that in the early twentieth century, “the value of the goods that Philadelphia produced exceeded that of forty-five states and territories.”[2] One of the most crucial sources of Philadelphia’s wealth was its location on the side of the Delaware River, between landlocked agricultural areas to the West and the Atlantic Ocean. Early in its history the city showed its potential for rapid growth. From 1726 to 1776, the weight of goods being traded on Philadelphian-owned ships increased by eighty percent. One fifth of all shipping owned by colonists (soon to be called “Americans” instead) was owned by residents of Philadelphia. Furthermore, just before independence the American colonists either built or owned an entire third of the British Empire’s shipping. During this time the majority of commodities made in the New World actually cost more to transport abroad than to produce. Philadelphia was therefore one of the most crucial centers of one of the most crucial economic activities, in both North America and the world.[3]

Shipbuilding was one of the hallmarks of Philadelphia’s entrance into and leadership of industrial modernity. Iron-hulled ships were an icon of industrial development, and they replaced wooden ships between the 1870s and 1880s. Various factors contributed to this development. As industrial progress marched forward, improvements in productivity across the board allowed the cost of ship production to drop by a third in Britain between the 1850s and 1880s.[4] Wood prices increased in North America, and the cost of steel descended. Finally, steam engines replaced sails as the primary means of propulsion on ships, and wooden hulls were incapable of safely and reliably bearing the speed and strain of steam-powered propulsion. In 1913 the USA produced 276,000 tons worth of trading ships, and Philadelphia was producing about a third of American ships throughout the 1910s. The US built less than one-sixth of the total weight of ships produced by Britain in 1913, but during World War I Europe fell behind and the USA became twice as productive.[5]

Philadelphia did not simply transport commodities but also created them. The city was renowned not simply for the volume of goods it created but the variety, “everything from buttonhooks to battleships.”[6] The city featured a high level of division of labor, and while it contained a small number of large factories, it was predominated by small and medium shops with skilled or semiskilled laborers. It was in this environment, across the river from Philadelphia, that Camden would possess both the proper geographic location and skilled workforce for the presence of a company like NYSC.[7]

State Capitalism and the War at Home

The federal government was a powerful player in the NYSC’s labor disputes. While it played a mediating role, and sometimes a dictating role, the government’s intervention in the situation had actually begun before the existence of the IUMSWA. The US shipbuilding industry had often historically been partially a creature of the state, and rose and collapsed with American participation in wars and their conclusions. Shipbuilding in the USA had declined with the end of the Civil War, and was re-established with the boom in American trade to Europe created by World War I. Another dip and resurgence occurred between the first and second world wars.[8] However, not all of these booms occurred without artificial stimulation. In fact, several of them might not have happened at all without government intervention. While the US government guaranteed credit to shipbuilders in 1936, the Shipping Act of 1916 was crucial for establishing the precedent of a politicized economy which expanded considerably in the 1930s.

The Shipping Act of 1916 called for the formation of a Shipping Board which would be granted $20 million, though NYSC claimed that by the end of the spending spree, the amount was more in the range of $3 billion. The Board would use its funds to commission or purchase ships for mercantile use, often leasing them to private firms for operation. To be sure, there was debate and disagreement in Congress over the proposed bill. The vote was close and mostly fell along party lines. A Republican senator called the proposal “a measure of state socialism which, if established, will inevitably destroy individual liberty.” While the definition of socialism above may be disputed, the senator was unquestionably correct in sensing that something noteworthy was taking place. In the form of the Shipping Board, Congress created one of the first government-operated business firms, participating in one of the most explicitly commercial sectors of life no less.[9]

The argument in favor of the bill was that “United States commerce was in a vulnerable position without a large ocean-going merchant fleet,” and furthermore that “the private sector was either incapable or unwilling to provide such a merchant fleet.” NYSC’s corporate history corroborated the sorry picture: “When the World War began, the United States had under her flag in overseas trade, only fifteen ships. Less than ten percent of our ocean commerce was at that time transported under our own flag.” [10] The private sector was naturally reluctant to invest in shipping because German submarines threatened to sink all ships trading with Great Britain. Financial insurers for shipping, crucial for balancing the risk of losing high-price, cargo-laden vessels, would not cover ships for the risk of German attack. Some economists might consider the slowdown of US shipping to have been a rational collective assessment that the risk of trading in wartime was not worth the potential reward. This did not satisfy American commercial ambition as expressed by the US government, and even before the Shipping Act’s passage, the Congress voted to capitalize the insurance of ships for war damage. Each individual shipping firm was less willing to take risks that could be afforded by something as large and wealthy as the federal government. State capitalism, or governmental management of economic affairs, allowed for the benefits of concentrating large amounts of capital into one unit – the government’s Shipping Board. Therefore the government was capable of expending and risking resources in the name of commerce that even commercial interests themselves could or would not.

The government’s commercial ambition was not without grounds – time would tell that a huge opportunity was developing. In 1916 the Allies of World War I dramatically escalated trade with USA. The timing was just right. From 1913 to 1918, the total tonnage of ships built by the USA per year increased from 276,000 to four million. NYSC itself built its peak of approximately 200,000 tons worth of ships in 1921. Business flourished, opening the way for the Roaring Twenties, and it may well have been because of state-run commerce. Once this precedent was established, the US government was no longer as skittish about establishing a merchant marine fleet or spending on a navy when the need for either presented itself. A similar but smaller spending bill was passed by Congress in 1928. Such practices continued and expanded through the 1930s and 1940s. [11]

Besides serving as NYSC’s main customer, the federal government acted as a coordinator of information-sharing between shipyards, both public and private. In 1918 the chair of the US Shipping Board sent the president of NYSC a friendly letter, warmly thanking him for all he had done for the war effort through ship construction. The letter then politely requested that the NYSC president send a reply containing any innovations in ship construction – essentially asking NYSC to donate its trade secrets for free. This relationship continued later; by World War II the Navy was sharing the construction innovations of its own shipyards with New York Ship. During the World War I buildup, the government’s Emergency Fleet Corporation even allocated funding and resources to expanding NYSC’s private ship construction facilities, building an entire new yard section with state-of-the art equipment.[12]

Besides practically commissioning the entire shipbuilding industry, the Camden area itself was built up by the federal government. The jobs boom in the Camden area created by World War II naval construction caused a population influx of about 44,000 people. This caused a housing shortage in 1941. IUMSWA president John Green and others called upon various authorities to fix the housing situation. The Federal Works Administration came through by building five hundred housing units, creating Audobon village. While this was considerably after the IUMSWA’s founding strikes, such practices had already shaped the working environment in Camden. In fact, during the merchant ship construction surge of World War I, the federal government oversaw the construction of almost 1,400 houses in the Camden area.

Director of the Federal Works Administration John Carmody said “Audobon Village is bombers, and tanks and ships combined.”[13] This serves as an explanatory background to the decisive intervention of the federal government in NYSC’s labor disputes. Camden was to great extent an investment by the US government. The government built Camden so that Camden could build a navy. The government wanted the navy for which it paid, and would not have production halted by a dispute over wages. However, the government does not always side with labor during work stoppages. There are many instances in labor history of police acting as enforcement for management and helping defeat strikes by clearing picket lines or escorting replacement workers. The federal government took the opposite stance in Camden. Not only did the government need for a navy, but it may have wanted to appear favorable to labor. This made sense in the context of national politics and the labor movement at that time.

The spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration has been characterized as “the New Deal.” When given a second look, this phrase suggests bartering and negotiation. The New Deal was a new social contract. This begs the question of why, exactly, a new social contract was necessary. The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression could serve as an impetus for steering governmental policy in a different direction. According to some philosophies, they could even justify expanded government participation in the economy. However, such a policy would merit a name that signified a restructuring, or new wave of national planning – an American version of a “five-year plan” or the “Great Leap Forward,” possibly. A “New Deal” was necessary not only because the “old deal” had destabilized, but also because many people were in practice rejecting the old deal by going on strike. In 1934, 1.3 million workers were involved in 1,740 strikes and lockouts. Across the river from Camden, the Philadelphia strike count spiked from thirty four in 1932 to ninety eight in 1933.[14]

However, all of that activity was a shadow of what could have become a much larger problem. Between the AFL, CIO, and other independent unions, organized labor included over 4 million workers in 1936. The height of the Great Depression featured 23.6% unemployment. Most frightening, the unrest had the potential to take on a political form. This was demonstrated earlier during the postwar strike wave in 1919 when thirty five thousand workers joined a strike initiated by longshoremen, which among other things declared its sympathy for the Russian Revolution. Understandably, the political climate of that time period was defined by a wave of hostility to labor and leftist groups which foreshadowed the later Red Scare, but this had faded by the 1930s.[15]

Such a situation was disruptive, and a government that intended to retain its sovereignty would be interested in finding a way to calm the situation and restore order. One of the results was greater intervention by the Department of Labor in labor negotiations. Instead of crushing the strike waves, the New Deal attempted to accommodate them, or at least to project such an image. In 1931 the Department of Labor handled 385 conciliation cases and by 1934 that number had grown to 1,140 cases. From 1931 to 1935 it handled a total of 4,124 disputes.[16] This was besides the array of federal agencies created by the National Recovery Act charged with regulating and overseeing labor relations in various industries, such as the Industrial Relations Committees (IRCs).

The surge in labor action around the USA at the time set a general tone which might incline various layers of government to take a pro-labor position. This could have happened for moral reasons, because the activity of workers made workplace problems visible, as opposed to their relative absence in public awareness during times of less labor conflict. Labor Secretary Perkins was particularly sympathetic to the NYSC workers and was instrumental in convincing Roosevelt to take decisive action.[17] This could also have happened for pragmatic reasons, as politicians realized that if they crossed labor, it might confront them with a show of force that would result in either the vilification or public humiliation of the public official. Politicians opposing the union would have faced national negative publicity stemming from the union’s activities in Washington, D.C., or local bad press due to the popularity of the strikes in Camden. They also may have decided that if they could not beat labor, they would join it, and took actions which courted the labor vote with varying degrees of sincerity.

In this context, the odds were already stacked in the favor of the IUMSWA if the government intervened in the dispute. However, a factor that aided the IUMSWA in gaining a hearing with the government was the fact that they were indirectly public employees. The union at NYSC, when challenging management’s right to make decisions, often called for federal intervention, implying that the management and labor conditions of NYSC were not a private corporate affair but were the concern of society at large. While they were making this case for selfish reasons, they had a point – society at large was in fact paying for NYSC’s contracts. John Green, IUMSWA organizer and eventual president, denounced the NYSC as “feeding at the trough with public funds – taxpayers’ funds.” While NYSC’s use of public money was not the only reason Green thought the government should enforce workplace rights – his socialist affiliations might have also had something to do with it – it was a compelling argument. For example, the government was directly accountable for conditions at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, just down the river, because wages there were directly set by Congress.[18] The position of government-funded private entities, or private companies whose sole customer is the government, could be viewed as similar to a private management group operating what is essentially a government-owned institution. The company acts with a degree of autonomy but is aware that its sponsor can effectively step in at any time and demand a change of course. Likewise, while sometimes criticisms for unpopular actions are aimed only at the corporation, creating a red herring of private mismanagement for what should actually be a political scandal, sometimes blame finds its way back to the sponsoring government. The fact that NYSC was formally private, even though government-funded, created a schism between its use of public funds and its labor standards which did not meet those of public-sector shipyards. The IUMSWA denounced this schism and exploited it in order to gain sympathy, collecting signatures in Camden for federal intervention which the union leadership took to Washington during its lobbying trips. [19]

This, combined with a national mood that was both labor-sympathetic and volatile, placed pressure on the government. The simple fact that the New Deal involved government spending was not necessarily enough to placate the working class upsurge. Citizens had to see that this government spending was going to what they perceived to be the right places. A socialist group that included some of the IUMSWA leaders, such as John Green and Phil Van Gelder, labeled the National Recovery Act as “a gigantic attempt to use methods of planning – state capitalism – in the interest of the most powerful financial and industrial magnates.”[20] Roosevelt conceivably may have wanted to limit this perception of his policies, at least among the labor movement if not among business leaders. Such a view could further enrage or radicalize an already-unruly labor movement. It was in this context of a highly politicized economy that the IUMSWA’s founding strikes and the federal government’s further intervention occurred.

The Shipyard and the Strikes

Ironically named for the city at which it was originally intended to be located, New York Shipbuilding Corporation was founded in Camden, New Jersey in 1899. NYSC arose alongside many other newly-established private shipyards which were capitalizing on the USA’s growing overseas power and influence in places such as Latin America and the Philippines. The shipbuilding industry was considered most similar to the construction business, and the founder had previously overseen tunnel construction.[21]

NYSC was a critical shipyard for both the mercantile buildup during WWI, as well as the naval expansion of WWII. A company-written history of NYSC claimed that they pioneered the way in shipbuilding production techniques later adopted across the industry, having introduced massive roofs for year-round construction in all weather, templates for mass production, a shipyard layout that allowed for efficient flow of materials throughout the yard, and a “wet” construction bay which eased the transition between construction and launch. NYSC constructed 200,000 tons of merchant ships in its peak during 1929. The firm also built two hundred and eighteen ships that were involved in naval combat during World War II, and from March 1942 to March 1943 built $217 million worth of ships, before inflation. This may have been the highest annual rate of output in a single shipyard in human history.[22]

The time period of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America’s founding strikes, however, did not reflect this record of glory. Ship production was barely emerging from one of its interwar ebbs, though business was increasing. It was not a moment of glory for unionism at NYSC, either. The company’s labor culture, if one even existed, was dominated by the company union and a network of management-sponsored (and unattended) shop committees, called the Employee Representation Plan. Previously the American Federation of Labor had been established at NYSC during the strike waves centering around 1917. While shipbuilding declined after the war, the AFL was eliminated at NYSC as each craft union ineffectively struck in isolation, unaided by other shipyards or even other crafts at NYSC itself. Of course the confidence of workers to fight was sapped by the conditions of unemployment. Phil Van Gelder, one of the initial union organizers, claimed that between 40% and 50% of shipbuilders were unemployed. He later wrote “Work was so scarce for all these years right up to 1933, that most men were afraid to kick for fear they would lose their jobs. They took it on the chin and kept their mouths shut.”[23]

In order to stave off unemployment, the practice of sharing the work by granting fewer hours became widespread. In some cases, lower hours were even a demand of shipyard workers because of the grueling nature of the work. However, cutting hours was often a sleight of hand covering an effective pay reduction. Other times, wage cuts were enacted openly, and management cited the Depression as the reason. One 15% reduction in 1932 was the last straw for many people who would become the founding organizers of the IUMSWA. Worse, it would later be learned that NYSC had in fact been making profit from the beginnings of the naval buildup, simultaneous with wage reductions and layoffs. Workers hopes were piqued with the election of Roosevelt, whom they perceived as a potentially pro-labor president. One of the reasons for starting the union, however, was the fact that pro-labor reforms were either being enacted too slowly or were for some reason ineffective. Van Gelder said, “When the NRA [National Recovery Act] was set up, the government forced corporations to raise the wage rates. But hours were reduced at the same time, leaving us just about where we were before.” Such maneuvers were especially offensive to workers who harbored high hopes because President Roosevelt was increasing ship orders. They assumed workers would share in the new economic stimulus.[24]

After management cut hours in 1933, unionists at NYSC began holding half-secret meetings on and off the shipyard, which benefited from extra word of mouth but were certainly not mentioned to management. Some of the unionists entered the existing pro-management company union in order to fight from the inside, and William Mullin captured the presidency of the Employee Representation Plan. He then used it as a venue for advocating a fighting union, and even used his power as president to dissolve the company union so that the IUMSWA could take precedence.[25]

In 1934 the union attempted to appeal to the Industrial Relations Committee (IRC) for shipbuilding, establish under the New Deal’s National Recovery Act. The New Deal IRCs were usually governed by equal representatives from management and labor as well as a few from the government, but in this case the labor counterbalance to management could not be relied upon because it was staffed by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL was either indifferent or hostile to the IUMSWA, because of its founding decision to strike out on its own independently of the AFL in order to reject organizing by skill group.[26] Once the union was established, and both management and the shipbuilding IRC had proven uninterested in discussing the union’s main demands, Local 1 leadership sensed that a strike was both appropriate and possibly winnable. The membership voted in support of a walkout on March 24^th and acted on it three days later.[27] About 3,000 employees formed a picket line to prevent management from reopening the yard with replacement workers, and the plant was effectively shut down. The Camden community immediately responded to news of the strike, given that NYSC was one of the larger employers in the area. Most residents wanted the strike to end quickly but leaned towards favoring the union. Within a week of Local 1’s strike, a wave of city-wide work stoppages had also occurred.

During the deadlock of the strike, both the union and management attempted to gain favor with the labor mediator departments which they sensed would be more sympathetic. NYSC courted the shipbuilding IRC, and the union pursued the attention of the Labor Department but also Congress and the executive branch. The last nail in the coffin for NYSC management, already facing a determined workforce and a fairly sympathetic community, was the Navy’s threat to tow away a ship that was being worked on at NYSC before the strike, to be taken elsewhere for completion. On May 11^th, management increased their proposed wage hike to a level that the union found acceptable. After slightly more than a month of picketing, the union won almost a 15% increase, reversing the earlier wage cut, as well as securing formal recognition of the union by management.[28]

The next, more decisive strike in 1935 took place because the NYSC was using the AFL in order to claim that the IUMSWA was not the sole representative of the employees. There had been a change of management, and the new regime was more directly hostile and anti-union. Stonewalling by NYSC and the AFL meant that Local 1 was never truly recognized or acknowledged by the IRC, causing consideration of a new work stoppage. In April Local 1 elected a committee to organize and represent the action. The union sent a request to NYSC for a new contract, asking among other things for another 15% wage increase and preference of union members in hiring and layoffs. Once again, the National Recovery Act shipbuilding committee proved to be an obstacle to the IUMSWA’s demands, and dedicated its efforts to searching for ways it could declare some of the union’s demands to be in violation of the law. Management tactics were much heavier-handed this time around, with NYSC representatives talking to workers one by one and warning them against participation in any strike action. The government, however, eventually came to favor Local 1. An increasingly left-wing mood caused a high-ranking official within the central National Recovery Act Board to scold the IRC, as well as denounce and countermand their statements that Local 1 had been acting illegally. Various members of Congress began to sympathize with the strike, including the famous anti-war Republican Senator from North Dakota Gerald Nye, who led a committee investigating the role of financial and military-industrial interests in promoting US involvement in World War I.[29]

On May 4^th, the membership voted to authorize a strike if NYSC did not entertain granting a wage increase and other demands. Though the Labor Department had sent a representative at the last minute, the wheels were already in motion and once again 3,000 picketers stood in front of the gates of NYSC on May 13^th. The union set up a system of round-the-clock picketing, with each member required to join the mass picket twice a day at the times workers would normally change shifts, and also again at a specific hour. Community support for the strike was more active this time, with landlords agreeing to accept delayed rent payments, small businesses providing goods, and South Jersey farmers sending food. Almost every Camden civic group in the city showed some kind of verbal or material support, as well as each Camden chapter of the political parties, from the Communists to the Republicans. Even the mayor of Camden backed the strikers and, though he wavered occasionally, for the most part forbade Camden police from aiding management. He declared “Your cause is my cause,” demonstrating the extent of the influence over public officials exerted by both Camden’s economic dependency on shipbuilding, as well as the moral or political force of coordinated actions by ordinary workers.[30]

As both sides of the conflict continued to hold out on their demands, the IUMSWA turned to lobbying in Washington more and more. The debate became a public debate, involving accusation and denial of Communist subversion in Local 1. By July, this was coupled with competing movements to persuade NYSC workers to go back to work, or pickets and union events exhorting them to stay on strike. The strike took on a very political and social character, not merely limited to interactions around the physical workplace. William Mullin, the pro-IUMSWA insider from the company union, said that the strike was being “fought in the newspapers.” On July 23^rd, management attempted to reopen the yard forcibly, but the police lacked confidence in clearing the picketers out of the way. Only three hundred and twenty people entered a plant usually operated by over three thousand laborers. The next day the strike grew more violent. Strikers turned over streetcars full of replacement workers and fist-fought with company enforcers. The conflict decentralized and spread through the community, with less serious acts of intimidation and vandalism suffered by replacement workers and union organizers. After three days the company gave up on attempting to reopen the plant without the union’s approval.[31]

The clash at the front gates of NYSC had created considerable publicity, helping to generate governmental (and public) interest and sympathy at the national level. This was in addition to the fact that the strike had been going for more than two months and the Navy was still waiting for the ships it had ordered. Furthermore, as negative publicity grew, divisions within the government began to emerge, such as debate in Congress and head-butting between the Labor and Navy departments. At this point President Roosevelt intervened, and informed NYSC that if it did not meet with its employees, it would no longer receive government contracts. While government representatives appeared to mediate negotiations, at first they proposed a contract that was little different from the conditions that had already been prevailing in the shipyard. The workers voted it down and even booed at the names of the Navy and Labor Secretaries for lending their legitimacy to a bad contract. This displayed that the shipyard workers were willing to work with the government but also retained considerable independence from it. The continued deadlock prompted Franklin Roosevelt himself to write a proposal to the negotiators which was more favorable to labor, which both sides adopted. The yard workers returned to the job on August 29^th and watched as negotiations were finalized in their favor over the following months. As the company dragged its feet and public sensitivity remained high, FDR gave copies of the following memo to his Secretaries of Labor and the Navy in late July.

I think you had better tell the N.Y. Shipbuilding Co. that:

(1) They must arbitrate

(2) They must meet their employees

(3) They will not get allowance for loss of time under Navy Contract from now on if they don’t.

(4) They will not be allowed to bid on new ships if they don’t settle.[32]

This was one of the harshest actions the federal government could take toward NYSC management, short of nationalizing the shipyard. The union bragged that the pair of strikes had resulted in “the highest average wage rates on the east coast.” Interestingly, NYSC’s corporate-written histories did not give a single mention to the entire sequence of events described above.[33] While the IUMSWA enjoyed a number of favorable conditions such as a sympathetic community and beneficial federal intervention, none of it would have happened without workers who developed their own point of view about the workings of the world, and who believed in their own cause enough to rock the boat.

Politicized Workers in a Political Workplace

Thinking of laborers as people with ideas beyond going to work every day and relaxing in the off hours is not conventional. However, throughout their struggle, New York Ship workers were forced to grapple with questions of economics, politics, and ethics. For a long time, a working-class perspective at NYSC found no articulation or embodiment. Instead discourse was dominated by company literature or the risk-averse, respectability-seeking American Federation of Labor. NYSC ran a newsletter, Yorkship News, “published in the interest of the employees of the New York Shipbuilding Corporation.” Many of the articles were thinly-veiled attempts to boost productivity and ensure workplace discipline by reducing the perceived differences between labor and management. One editorial from 1920 did this quite literally by blaming the end of the “good old days” on “YOU and I. YOU being the management and I the worker.” The editorial warned employees that if they were not productive, both they and management would lose Navy contracts of increasing scarcity, and then attempted to humanize management’s disciplining of the workforce by reminding them that managers, too, have obligations to meet. “If you were the boss and responsible for getting the work done…wouldn’t you lay off the man who was not producing first? Sure you would!” Of course this hypothetical situation was entirely not applicable to the majority of NYSC employees who would never hold a management position.[34]

The philosophy contained within the corporate newsletter was not limited to employee-management relations at NYSC but touched on issues of economics and class far beyond the shipyard itself. Another article in the same issue of Yorkship News titled “Production or Distribution?” criticized the idea that anyone would benefit from redistribution of wealth. The message downplayed class differences; one article claimed “a progressive economist told me the other day that I was probably overestimating when I stated that a complete leveling of all incomes in the United States might possibly increase the income of the average worker by 10 percent.” Given the perspective of negligible class difference which the author put forward, the logical conclusion would be that the working class (and everyone) would be helped most not by redistribution of the economic pie, but by a general enlargement of it. The anonymous author then criticized the “stupidity” of “labor leaders who are endeavoring to improve the conditions of labor by limiting production” – “limiting production” meaning either limits to the working day or strike-actions. The statements of NYSC management raises interesting questions. Were they knowingly saying what benefited them, regardless of its truth? Did their class position motivate them to believe their own propaganda? Even if their writings contained a visible class bias, did this necessarily mean their statements were not true? Whatever the case, this kind of thinking was part of the consciousness of NYSC employees for a long time.[35]

In the course of the union’s activity, workers would develop a rather different perspective on economics and employee-management relations than articulated by the corporate newspaper. Phil Van Gelder wrote a pamphlet in 1936 on behalf of the IUMSWA called the Book of Facts for Shipyard Workers. It chronicled the rise of the IUMSWA but also served as a general justification for its existence. One of the first points that the IUMSWA history made was a condemnation of the company unions as mouthpieces for management. “They called in the company union stools and said, ‘Boys, business is bad. For the good of all concerned we will have to have a wage cut.’ The company stools, as always, answered ‘Yes, boss,’ and the wage cut went into effect.”[36] Van Gelder’s history explicitly rejected the ideas of shared sacrifice and labor-management partnership advocated in Yorkship News, dismissing it as the ideology of “company stools.”

Using statistics borrowed from the Nye Committee, the Book of Facts contained an understanding of economics dramatically distinct from that put forward in Yorkship News. This new perspective had the effect of justifying a spirit of separation and conflict between labor and management. The development of an alternative perspective by the NYSC employees necessitated illuminating often-hidden areas of life, such as wage levels and profits. The Book of Facts claimed that “the big shipbuilding corporations keep their wage scales a secret.” They had good reason – the overwhelming majority of laborers at New York Ship were earning over 15% less than their Navy-employed counterparts. The Book of Facts argued this was not simply a NYSC problem – “the Camden rates, on the average, are the highest on the Atlantic Coast, as far as private shipbuilding yards are concerned.” Comparatively low wages, however, were less offensive viewed in isolation than when they were compared to the immense profits that private shipyards were reaping using taxpayer money. While repeatedly cutting wages or laying off workers from 1932 to 1935, NYSC had actually made $6 million before inflation. By then it was slated to make $13 million more from fresh contracts. The Book of Facts attempted to make the numerical differences concretely understandable. Written below the numeric breakdown of profits for the entire shipbuilding industry, which totaled $66 million, was the statement, “If it was paid out to the men who do the work in the shipyard, $1,000,000 would give every one of 4,000 men $5 extra a week for a whole year. Figure it out.” [37] In an era when unions often struggled against wage cuts, an additional $5 per week proposed would have been a substantial victory. All of this was in 1936 dollars which were approximately one fifteenth as valuable as 2009 dollars. More important than the accuracy of the union’s numerical claims (though backed up by a Congressional committee) was the fact that IUMSWA members developed a suspicion of massive class inequality directly affecting their lives. Participation in strike actions probably enabled openness to this idea among employees just as much as the idea, in turn, encouraged a willingness to strike. As in the case of management’s expression of its opinions (or interests) in Yorkship News, the ideas and information that IUMSWA publications put forward were those that benefited the interests of the union – though, again, this did not necessarily rule out that what they said could have been true.

As mentioned above, the 1930s were a time of considerable government intervention in the economy. The US government had long participated in infrastructural projects. Until the Progressive Era, however, the idea that the government should protect ordinary citizens from problems in the private sector was not widespread. During the New Deal the government signaled again that state spending and intervention could be expected to redress the needs and expectations of ordinary people. The IUMSWA paid attention to labor-related legislation, and viewed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act as a factor working in their favor and therefore boosted the shipyard workers’ confidence. This awareness of the nation’s laws, as indicated in a pamphlet written by the IUMSWA’s Education Committee, also surpassed conventional low expectations of shipyard workers as apolitical beings focused only on the daily grind.[38] Whether due to the example of the government or other factors, in the 1930s many people in the 1930s ceased to recognize a rigid boundary between economics and politics, or between private transactions and social decision-making. During the deadlock of the 1935 strike, a shouting match between negotiators on both sides was recorded in IUMSWA union minutes of May 21^st, 1935, worth quoting at length.

McCann: I think as an American citizen I have the right to discuss with you and say whether I shall work piece work.

Campbell: No, that shall be a matter of employment. You don’t have to work here if you don’t want to.

Pommerer: Isn’t that the same thing as joining the Union – you have the right to join it or stay out?

Cameron: Yes, but the management is running the plant.

Pommerer: It is our muscles that built that damned plant before you ever thought of Camden. I have dropped many hours of sweat in there as a kid. We built it – not these executives.

Campbell: Are you through?...

Green: These men have banded themselves into an organization and I think they have a right to sell their labor and say under what conditions they shall work. Don’t you think that is their prerogative as a free American citizen?...

Campbell: You don’t have to work here…[39]

Though not explicitly calling for workers’ management, any inroads into company decisions by the influence of the employees implied a degree of it. NYSC was formally a privately-owned workplace, at which no one had any rights which the owner did not grant – and yet IUMSWA felt as if workers could demand workplace rights anyway. If management was acting as a ruling elite within a space that the IUMSWA believed was the domain of civil rights, then it logically followed that they were morally and politically equivalent to contemporary dictators or pre-Enlightenment monarchs. By making a mental equation between political rule and private ownership, some of the workers came to see management as a literal obstruction to their rights. Furthermore, they believed that the federal government had a responsibility to enforce this idea if management would not.

Tom Gallagher, one of the early organizers, said “the obligation of the federal government is clear. It must force this corporation to come to terms with the union or else let somebody else step in who knows how to manage a shipyard.” John Green said to a session of Congress, “Up to the present time we have been unable to move that firm from its original position. We feel that the New York company has got to be moved, and if that is done it will have to come from Washington.” [40]

The workers of NYSC not only made demands of the political sphere, but were also quite dependent on it for their economic well-being, and knew this. Working in an industry which was funded by the state and that mainly bloomed during wartime was sure to have effects on laborers’ perceptions and values. In Suburban Warriors: the Origins of the New American Right, Lisa McGirr theorized that Orange County, California’s conservative tendencies were encouraged by the residents’ economic dependency on military contracts from the federal government.[41] The beliefs of the IUMSWA’s membership reflected a moderate-left version of the same phenomenon. They were aware of their economic reliance; in 1936 the IUMSWA president wrote, “Today there is no shipbuilding in the country to speak of outside of naval shipbuilding.”[42] The unionists had repeatedly relied on federal intervention during their strikes, and felt they could do so because they worked in a publicly-funded industry. This encouraged a hybrid of New Deal liberalism and moderate socialism among the workers and union leadership. Notably there was a lack of substantial Communist Party presence in Local 1, which made sense given that an organization which wanted to overthrow the government was basically biting off the hand that fed the shipbuilding industry.[43] Besides limiting the more radical left-wing tendencies, dependency on Navy contracts both created liberal tendencies within the union and encouraged it to incorporate war into its worldview.

One crucial way in which the NYSC workers imagined themselves in the larger political world was by enthusiastically supporting the USA in World War II. This was only typical of the labor movement at this time, with even the formerly anti-government Communist Party falling in line and embracing the war effort.[44] The IUMSWA’s Education Committee, a body which was pivotal in setting the union’s ideological tone, wrote a pamphlet called Unionism at Work. In it they claimed that in Camden the union had “shown the way to other organizations in patriotic activities” and had even donated tens of thousands of dollars to various war funds or charities in Allied nations.[45] The most curious thing about the political outlook which the NYSC workers developed was its combination of labor-oriented progressivism with militaristic patriotism. The second tendency was not emphasized immediately in the early strikes of Local 1; labor struggle was at the forefront. As World War II enveloped more and more of the world, and with the intervention of the USA, the second, formerly dormant tendency took prominence.

Nowhere else was the syncretism of progressive labor ideology and nationalist militarism better displayed than in the captions for a series of woodcut drawings published by the IUMSWA, Workers at War. They were written by William Frazier, also part of Local 1’s Education Committee. The introduction’s vision of wartime national unity involved the racial progressivism which was stirring during the era, and cast unionism and patriotic militarism as comparable forces:

MEN and women; white, black, yellow; mechanic, laborer, white collar worker; those who build the ships, and those who man them in battle – this is America at war…On the home front solidly joined together in one strong industrial union; on the battle front firmly knit into one great fighting force.[46]

This ideological mixture was reinforced by the apparent similarity between unionism and militarism, as they both involved mobilizing ordinary people into highly organized units which inevitably entered some kind conflict. It equated the workers’ solidarity in unions with the spirit of collective zeal in wartime nationalism. The booklet referred explicitly to the similar semblance of the two phenomena: “In the last two and a half years the American people have learned a great deal about action, on the battle front and on the home front. They have learned that action plus unity of purpose spells Victory.” This may have allowed for Camden workers to connect the two in their minds. However, while the two were aesthetically similar, they worked at cross-purposes. After all, the entire basis of unionism implied logic which was at odds with perfect national unity. Unions made little sense unless the participants believe that there is a difference between the workers and the owners – a difference which still existed even if both the workers and owners are all purebred Americans. The contradiction was not simply theoretical but existed in practice as well. For naval shipbuilders, striking for gains at work implied sabotaging the war effort by slowing the production of destroyers. Supporting the war effort meant never taking a stand by stopping production, or even racing to obediently produce as many ships as possible. In practice, the workers could not wage class war and national war simultaneously. At NYSC the workers chose the second option, with little in the way of any conscious acknowledgement of the implications. Workers at War bragged of their production record: “These are shipbuilders who, with labor-management cooperation never before known, have hung up a production record that has amazed the world.” This cheery proclamation of national harmony and industriousness contained a total abandonment of the spirit of separation and class-consciousness which the early organizers had struggled so hard to establish. Nonetheless, the pamphlet also embodied the high hopes of laborers that accompanied World War II. A common expectation amongst workers was that post-war America would be friendly to labor. They saw themselves as sacrificing for their nation in the present so that in the future their investment would pay off and their nation would stand by them in terms of economic wellbeing and other causes such as racial equality. Some may have even expected a dramatic social reordering bordering on radicalism in the post-war period, not least demonstrated by the post-war strike wave. The fact that World War II involved conflict with nations embracing fascism, a system that was extremely hostile to labor, may have also catalyzed the equation of the war effort and domestic class struggle in workers’ minds. One of Frazier’s captions contains all of the complex, intersecting attitudes and hopes held by NYSC workers, as well a bitter and angry warning that they remembered such hopes had been disappointed in the past. “This is America battling for victory over fascism, struggling for a new and better social order which must come at last. Another river of sweat and blood must not dry up in disillusionment.” While this could be interpreted as an exhortation to fight the Axis powers all the harder, it was also a reminder that American workers had seen hard times and expected them to end in return for their sacrifices.[47]

One fascinating incident speaks volumes about the effect of this contradictory political orientation of the NYSC employees. Due to the emotional investment of NYSC workers in the New Deal, the strike waves of the 1930s, and the Second World War, the passing of President Roosevelt was a very poignant day. A union bulletin about the event even referred to him as “our Great Leader.” On April 14^th, 1945 all businesses in New Jersey were asked by the Governor to close at four o’clock in honor of FDR’s funeral services, except for war-essential industries which received a suggestion to partake in a five-minute moment of silence. However, when labor representatives asked NYSC management about the five-minute moment of silence, they forbade even a five-minute work stoppage in honor of FDR. This was an outrage to the employees. Various angry and rebellious proposals of work stoppages were put forward. However, this was at odds with the workers’ commitment to the war. The bulletin said “The belief that our late President would not want his death to cause any serious stoppage in the War effort ruled out these suggestions.” (“War” is capitalized, as if it is a holy thing.)[48] The instinctive reaction to use work stoppage as a means of rebellion against management, combined with their subsequent self-policing against such actions, demonstrated the contradictory position in which the shipbuilding workers’ ideology placed them. Earlier, in the 1930s, the workers at New York Ship had shut down production, feeling as if they had FDR’s blessing and support. Later, they favored continuing production even during the equivalent of a national holiday, and understood their continuation of production as an act of loyalty to the same FDR and the war effort which he had overseen. Therefore, IUMSWA’s alliance with FDR had a double tendency, and was the concrete embodiment of their conflicting commitments to both labor militancy and wartime patriotism. In the 1930s, before war had touched the USA, FDR was the political symbol which embodied their confidence and righteousness in striking. By the 1940s, once the USA was in the war, FDR was the very same ideological symbol which made Camden shipbuilders feel they should not strike. The workers were using their power to stop production for a moment, but ironically only in order to affirm that they ought not to shut down production, and that they were part of the war effort’s eager workforce. It was as if they were saying, “Shame on management for making us work during Roosevelt’s funeral – now let’s get back to work for Roosevelt.” Management did not need to repress labor activity, not least because of FDR. The shipbuilding workers’ belief in Roosevelt had caused them to limit their own combativeness. The rebellious action of the workers signified that in their minds they may have been standing up for FDR’s memory as a labor hero, but that very same figure was the reason that labor had to make sacrifices. While their bulletin lashed out at the plant management for refusing to honor FDR’s funeral, any potential labor conflict had been muted by the shipyard workers’ own investment in World War II. FDR’s revealing statement that he was “the best friend the profit system ever had” thus came true at NYSC.[49]

Aftermath

The end of the war brought simultaneous high expectations but also a recognition that wartime agreements might no longer be binding, either formally or informally. In 1946 a union bureaucrat at NYSC submitted a report to the membership, warning of this new situation. “This membership must realize that we are now back to normal times and that collective bargaining will be done with representatives of the Corporation and the Union, as in the past…There are no more agencies to which this Union can appeal if the Corporation is not inclined to go along with any proposals.” By this it was meant that the government would no longer be favoring labor during disputes, nor even intervening in the negotiation process. The committee reported that they were trying to hang on to some of the gains from the New Deal and wartime, but analyzed the situation with a tone suggesting the unionists should lower their expectations: “You must also realize that in collective bargaining there is such a thing as giving and taking.”[50]

After this, Local 1 struck for over four months, starting in 1947 and ending in 1948. As earlier, their willingness to be confrontational paid off. The union won a small wage increase, the right to automate the payment of union dues out of company paychecks, and back payments for striking workers. The press release which detailed the union’s victory listed NYSC and IUMSWA as members of the negotiating committee. Some federal mediators were mentioned but did not seem to provide any decisive intervention in either direction.[51]

The NYSC workers were not alone in resuming their war footing on the home front when the war between nations was over, though they fared better than other workers. One of the best-kept secrets of labor history is the massive post-war strike wave in the 1940s. As troops came home from World War II, their high expectations were met with unemployment and the deterioration of labor-friendly contracts made during wartime. Within a year of the war’s end, more than five million workers in the USA had been involved in a strike. The upsurge was very brief, but contained the highest density of strikes and striking workers in US history to this date. This strike wave was shut down as President Truman used the War Powers Act to take over industries in order to legally defeat strikes. He then returned the industries to private employers. Given this change in tack, perhaps the NYSC workers were quite fortunate that their strike had little in the way of federal intervention.[52]

As early as 1954, the union at NYSC (having changed names several times by this date) displayed anxieties over the potential closure of NYSC as they witnessed layoffs and a decline in contracts. Louis Wolfson, a former junkyard operator with a reputation for buying operations and shutting them down, gained control of NYSC. The union newsletter On the Line reprinted scathing articles accusing him of using family political connections and even mafia ties to receive unfair non-competitive bids for government properties. One issue displayed a mortal fear that he would shut down the yard and made a moral appeal against this, drawing on the union’s record of patriotism. The newsletter said that the workers “did their bit in World War II” – indeed, they had “produced more ton per man hour than any other shipyard worker in the world.” Besides that this issue of On the Line made no particular call to action to the membership, the fact that the union resorted to invoking patriotic sympathy demonstrated that they were basically vulnerable and powerless over the situation, whether conscious of it at this time or not.

As it turned out, Wolfson intended to operate NYSC instead of shutting it down. For a time it continued to be a leader of sorts, completing the world’s first nuclear-powered civilian vessel in 1959. However, as government contracts decreased or were sent elsewhere, it became impossible to continue. After two decades of dwindling, NYSC closed in 1967.[53]

Conclusion

At the expense of sounding harsh or partisan, it is only natural to wonder if management and government used the workers at NYSC when such an alliance was beneficial, and then ceased to stand by the laborers once they were not as needed for the goals of management or the government. Of course, a similar charge can be leveled at the workers of NYSC. They were happy to invoke patriotism and even embrace American militarism when it accomplished their objectives. However, perhaps they made the mistake of becoming lost in their own propaganda, by believing too strongly in the patriotic militarist alliance between labor, government, and management which they could have been aware was only a tactical, conditional, and temporary cooperation. After all, their own behavior exhibited the instability of the relationship. Their strikes in the 1930s often involved language of a struggle between classes, or at least an entrenched conflict between workers and management if only at NYSC specifically. Union support for the government was not conditional, either – there were times when the IUMSWA condemned or booed at the names of government representatives. Perhaps the NYSC workers failed to see that the fickleness of their support for management and government was mirrored by a similar lack of commitment in the other forces. Indeed, the laborers may have given their support to the other forces more freely than they themselves realized. After all, believing that all the members of your country are operating as one unified team is a very pleasant and tempting belief to develop, especially in times of war. Most importantly, it may have been very tempting for workers to place greater faith in the other forces than made sense, simply because the idea that your country believes in and values your labor is a very comforting notion. Adopting the opposite idea could be painful and depressing in the extreme, even (or especially) if it were true.

The mere fact that the NYSC laborers worked on Navy contracts certainly shaped their consciousness. While sometimes laborers can feel indifferent to the products of their labor, the NYSC workers embraced the idea that their labor was significant for the fulfillment of a great ideal, and this allowed them to take pride in their work. Even if participation in World War II had been unrelated to or even contrary to the interests of workers at NYSC, identifying with the war effort allowed them to feel significant, even powerful. Both corporate-written and union-written histories and records of NYSC feature pictures of the boats constructed, often surrounded by captions bragging that either the corporation or the workers were part of American military power. Both longed to incorporate themselves into the post-World War II American apotheosis. The magnitude of the ships depicted in the lovingly-taken photographs makes it easy to see why a person working on such a gargantuan, awe-inspiring construct could hardly resist feeling some investment in the use to which it would be put. Of course, besides providing pride in their work, the war effort provided work itself. In the era of Keynesianism’s rise, it was hardly lost on the NYSC workers that governmental war spending was an economy-stimulating demand and was the source of their employment. Even if participation in World War II had been widely disliked by Americans, asking shipyard workers to oppose the source of their employment would have been at best complex and at worst unimaginable. Therefore the fact that NYSC workers drew their livelihoods from the war shaped them towards embracing American militarism and rejecting anti-state forms of labor politics as well.

All of this notwithstanding, the less debatable fact is that by the 1940s, significant sections of the IUMSWA embraced the nation’s syncretism of labor progressivism and patriotic militarism. Entering into this alliance resulted at first in a higher standard of living for NYSC employees, as they received plenty of work. On the other hand, embracing this ideology may have caused IUMSWA members to channel their attention and loyalties toward goals not traditionally connected to unionism or the working class. In a reversal of the initial transformation of workers’ consciousness at NYSC, class struggle over the distribution of resources became submerged beneath an alliance across classes. Whether or not it made sense for labor to take this stance is an issue we may see unfold again in our lifetimes, as globalization interconnects the working conditions of greater and greater amounts of laborers from different nations. Indeed, there are multiple parallels between the issues of the NYSC strike and the debates of today. Today we commonly hear accusations of a sharp class bias in government priorities, as the federal government commits hundreds of billions of dollars to bank bailouts while unemployment has grown and public schools face layoffs or even closure. Many people believe that the government should either stay out of the economy, or be guided by an altogether opposite class bias. Some people hope once more for a nationalist solution to economic problems, this time in the form of immigration controls. Most importantly, the combination of economic fluctuation, government involvement in commerce, and examples to follow in Greece and China may prompt history to repeat itself in the form of a large American labor movement.

[1] Barbara Rothschild, “Launching warships – and unions,” Camden Courier-Post, October 23, 1986.

[2] Peter Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (Chicago:

University of Illinois Press, 2007) 10-11.

[3] John T. McCusker, “Source of Investment Capital in the Colonial Philadelphia Shipping Industry,”

The Journal of Economic History 32.1 (1972): 146-7, 152.

⁴ C. K. Harley, “On the Persistence of Old Techniques: The Case of North American Wooden

Shipbuilding,” The Journal of Economic History 33.2 (1973): 377.

[5] Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront, 100.

Richard Sicotte, “Economic Crisis and Political Response: The Political Economy of

the Shipping Act of 1916,” The Journal of Economic History 59.4 (1999): 861, 880.

[6] Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront, 12.

[7] Kenneth Fones-Wolf, “Philadelphia Workers and Their Labor Organizations,” Invisible Philadelphia,

1995.

[8] Harley, “On the Persistence of Old Techniques,” 384.

Phillip Van Gelder, Book of Facts for Shipyard Workers: Story of the Rise of the Industrial Union of

Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (Camden: 1935) 4.

[9] Sicotte, “The Political Economy of the Shipping Act of 1916,” 862, 878.

[10] Ibid, 871.

NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation, (NYSC: Camden, 1949) 7.

[11]Sicotte, “The Political Economy of the Shipping Act of 1916,” 861, 879-880.

NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation, 72-3.

NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record, (NYSC Office: Camden, 1931) 8.

[12] Edward Hurley to S. Bellinger, letter, May 10, 1918.

Navy Department, Bureau of Construction and Repair, written instructions. “Destroyer Building Practice

at the Mare Island Navy Yard.”

NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record, 12.

[13] New York Shipbuilding Corporation exhibit. Camden County Historical Society museum.

1900 Park Boulevard. May 21, 2010.

[14] U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1936 ed.

(Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1936) 317-8.

[15] Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront, 101, 109.

Ruth L. Horowitz, Political Ideologies of Organized Labor : the New Deal Era (New Brunswick:

Transaction Books, 1978) 236.

Sharon Smith, Subterranean Fire: a History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States (Chicago:

Haymarket, 2006) 90, 102.

[16] U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics 1936 ed. 27.

[17] David Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards: Union Strategy in Three Northeast Ports, 1933-1945,

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 96.

[18] Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 5.

[19] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 48.

[20] Ibid, 26-7.

21 Ibid, 4.

New York Shipbuilding Corporation exhibit. Camden County Historical Society museum. 1900 Park

Boulevard. 21 May 2010.

[22] NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation, 72-3.

NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record, 11-12.

New York Shipbuilding Corporation exhibit. Camden County Historical Society museum. 1900 Park

Boulevard. 21 May 2010.

[23] Education Committee of IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, (Camden: IUMSWA, 1943) 13-15.

Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 3-4.

[24] Ibid, 4, 15.

NYSC to officers and employees, bulletin, July 28, 1932.

[25] IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, 13-15.

Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 36, 38.

Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 6.

[26] Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 28.

[27] Ibid, 7.

[28] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 42-7.

[29] Ibid, 54-8, 62.

[30] Ibid, p62-65

Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 9-10.

[31] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 77, 81, 83.

[32] Ibid, 89.

[33] Ibid, 92, 97.

Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 11, 22.

NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation.

NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record.

[34] “A Word in Passing – Not a Lecture,” Yorkship News, March 1920, p10.

[35] “PRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTION?” Yorkship News, March 1920, p11.

[36] Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 4.

[37] Ibid, 4, 15-16.

[38] IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, 19.

[39] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 71.

[40] Ibid, 84.

[41] Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: the Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2001).

[42] Van Gelder, Book of Facts for Shipyard Workers, 5.

[43] David Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 66-7.

[44] Smith, Subterranean Fire, 159.

[45] IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, 69.

[46] William Frazier, Workers at War: Seven Woodcuttings, (Cowen Publishing: Camden, 1944).

[47] Frazier, Workers at War.

[48] Marine Draftsmen Association to the Officials of NYSC, bulletin, April 1945.

[49] Smith, Subterranean Fire, 50.

[50] John P. Bonner on behalf of Negotiating Committee to IUMSWA membership, written report,

March 29, 1946, pp4.

[51] John Green to press, press release, July 26, 1948.

[52] Smith, Subterranean Fire, 170-2.

[53] Thomas W. Saul, “Promise or Menace,” On the Line, December 1954, p3-4.

“Wolfson Parlayed Loan of $10,000 Into $200 Million,” On the Line, January 1955, pp3-9.

NYSC to Mamie Eiseinhower, written invitation to attend launching of N.J. Savannah, July 21, 1959.

The Nihilism of Everyday Life

2009-08-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

The recording artist Nine Inch Nails often uses themes of denial of reality, especially in the form of solipsism, or the belief that the self is the only true being and that all others are illusions or actually mere projections of the self. Interestingly, these themes are often accompanied by the dissolution of the self. Identity lines and ethical boundaries rupture. For the full effect I recommend you listen to the below:

In Head Down he sings:

“This is not my face

This is not my life

There is not a single thing

That I can recognize…

This is all a dream,

And none of you are real…”

In Right Where It Belongs he sings:

“What if everything around you

isn't quite as it seems?

What if all the world you think you know

is an elaborate dream?”

In Only he sings:

“I’m becoming less defined

As days go by

Fading away

Well, you might say I’m losing focus

Kind of drifting in the abstract

In terms of how I see myself…

Sometimes I think I can see right through myself…

Less concerned about fitting into the world!

(Your world, that is.)”

In The Line Begins to Blur he sings:

“The more I stay in here, the more it’s not so clear.

The more I stay in here, the more I disappear.

As far as I have gone, I knew what side I’m on;

but now I’m not so sure. The line begins to blur.”

These motifs in Trent Reznor’s work are very evocative, and reflected not only lyrically but sonically, in the form of eerie, dreamy synthesizer echoes and disorienting shifts in context from static to cheering crowds, from whispering to shouting. This says something about our times.

As humans we desire human contact. We desire co-creation of reality, collaborative participation. True human contact exists through common labor. By acting upon the world outside of ourselves, we become ourselves. By actualizing our will in the world around us, we discover and create who we are. Only through free creative labor can there be any such thing as an “I,” and only through common creative effort can there be any such thing as “we.”

Throughout most of our lives, our labor is not cooperative at all, but competitive. We do not find ourselves in our work, but we are assigned rote tasks by bureaucracies, tasks which are not fulfilling because they do not come from us.

We do not experience people in any kind of unity. Other people devolve from partners in life to personal enemies, from personal enemies to impersonal competitors, from impersonal competitors to obstacle-objects.

Some people are lucky enough to have the money to remove themselves from the rat race. Effectively all they have done is reduced their frequency of contact with meaningless objects. We are superficially surrounded by people, but at a deeper level are alone. Naturally we are drawn to make our lives consistent with what is actually real, and our effective aloneness causes us to seek actual physical isolation from other bodies.

Our lack of genuine human contact begins to convince us that we are not even surrounded by people, but only the illusion of people. We are surrounded by irritating objects and obstacles merely masquerading in the form of people. We may not necessarily become self-conscious, self-labeling solipsists. We may give it a good deal of thought, we might not. Even if we do not consciously become solipsists, we are forced to behave like them. There is no difference between a solipsist philosopher and an ordinary person in practice, except a bit of awareness and clarity. Our circumstances drive us toward increasingly dealing with people only in professionalized, bureaucratized relationships – not human relationships. These relationships are either of commander and commanded between people of different rank, or of competition between people of the same rank. Whenever we speak to a person we are really speaking to a title, an office, a department, a division of labor. If we looked for a person, we could not find them. Nothing feels natural, everything feels foreign. As a great rebel of the 1960’s Mario Savio described, “We are strangers in our own lives.” Naturally this is a depressing arrangement.

This effective solipsism in turns leads to fantasy, denial of reality, belief that life is but a dream. Again this can manifest in the form of actual self-conscious nihilists or people who simply act as if nothing matters. This is because we humans as social beings find our reference points in real human relationships with real other humans. But in society’s current state we do not have very much in the way of real human contact, and therefore lose our reference points for reality.

Finally the perceived collapse of reality leads to a perceived collapse of the self. Without any grounding in reality, we ourselves lose that most self-creating thing: our labor, our ability to have a goal or desire, create a plan to achieve it, and act it out. If there is no reality – or in reality, no meaningful reality – then there is no point in doing any one thing over any other, or in doing anything at all. If there is no point in doing, there is no point in being. We come to see ourselves as passive objects in a system. We are part of a colossal machine built in a forgotten past for reasons which at some irretrievable point have become irrelevant to the actual practiced working of the machine. The machine hums on, running off of our going-through-the-motions.

Our position of isolation is destructive to our humanity not only ideologically but literally. It does destroy human reality, driving us further and further into insignificant and meaningless contexts, making which particular context in which we exist a matter of increasing indifference, Our condition is truly nihilistic, not simply in the attitudes it creates, but in what it actually is. It is truly our destruction, our non-existence as anything more than objects. When we lose each other we lose our anchor in reality, and when we lose our anchor in reality we lose ourselves.

Besides the fragmentation of the human population into isolated individuals, we also have an internal fragmentation of each individual because most of us do not control the content of our everyday labor.

At work, ours is not to question why, ours is just to do or die. Our labor is to focus only on a task, not on its significance. As we accustom ourselves to going through the motions, our human impulses dissolve into floating disembodiment. And of course after the disembodiment comes a break with reality, because if you’re not where your body is, you’re not really anywhere except la-la land. This is not an illusion, either. If you are not in your own life, you truly do not exist, except perhaps as a presence suppressed under the surface, waiting for your chance to break out.

Our experience of what is and our affirmation of what should be, our realities and our daydreamed desires, these two things never touch. We live half our lives as robot-objects and half our lives as ghosts. The divide between our inner and outer lives turns our existence as people into a series of thoughts and passions banging on the outside of real life, spectating and never participating.

College students are not excepted from this situation. Our future employers own us before we even walk in their doors. Our years in college and all the work we do are owned by the people whom we will work for – owned in advance. We are working toward becoming properly-shaped tools in their institutions. In Europe, payment for this training is spread across the entire population via taxes and free tuition channeled through governments. In the USA, we have the honor of paying for our own transformation into tools which meet our future employers’ specifications. Worse than all of this are the many required classes unrelated to our major or our interests.

No doubt all people should be exposed to the entirety of their culture, all of its categories of knowledge. However, a world-integrating vision is something which must come from the passions and curiosities of the student. It cannot be force-fed, as is attempted. Rather than becoming well-rounded people, we endure alienating busy work and are forced to stare for hours at people saying things about which we do not care. To engage in the entirety of culture is the greatest choice, but it is a choice that people must be free to make, especially by the time they are eighteen years of age. Of course in the technical sense no one is required to go to college. There is no law that says so. But this is really a fiction, much in the same way that the rich and the poor are equally free to sleep under bridges if they so choose. For most jobs of any decent life quality and pay, a liberal arts degree is required. We experience this alienation in the form of bureaucracy at our individual campuses but really it is a problem which invades campuses and originates in the private sector. Our alienation at college is only an extension of our alienation at our future jobs.

Living life as a robot is not only a workplace affair (as if the workplace has not now extended to the entire planet, especially in the academic practice of assigning homework). It is something extending to every corner of our culture. A homosexual living “in the closet” lives a half-life, going along and “passing,” appearing to conform to the approved sexual party line of the USA. Behind the scenes, their true passions live a secret existence. Their practiced life and their imagined life do not touch, object and ghost.

And it is not an issue affecting only a fraction of the population. If you were placed with a random set of any Americans and your well-being depended on the group getting along, it would be a bad idea to express any opinions. It would be an even worse idea to actually have them. In polite conversation with new acquaintances, the three forbidden topics are religion, politics, and sex, even though these are the things which are most genuinely interesting, or at least the surest signs of people who have gotten to know themselves and developed into full personalities. This unwritten rule of polite society can be summed up as: don’t have opinions. Worse, this can be boiled down to: don’t be yourself. Carried to its logical conclusion it means: don’t exist. Since these are the laws under which we live from childhood on, many people do indeed fail to exist, having no character or uniqueness (even if they do persist in creating Facebook accounts so they can write about their non-selves).

For many Americans, this undeclared law against existing is everyday life at the workplace – not only the alienation of the work itself, but the co-habitation of the workplace with other coworkers. In the activity which occupies one third to one half of our waking hours, the unwritten rules expect us to adhere to a strict non-participation in society’s exchange of ideas and culture. Once more these arbitrary impersonal relationships reduce our consideration of other people to hostile objects which merely obstruct us instead of as humans with whom we can share life. Work is one of the most dangerous places to be yourself. Fortunately we get to go home after work. Unfortunately the family can be even less welcoming than the workplace to the emerging ideological self. It seems our authentic existence has no refuge anywhere, causing many young people to identify much more closely with their friends, lovers, and occasionally fellow activists whom they have chosen, rather than with their coworkers and families whom they received by arbitrary assignment.

The only way to return to any kind of reality, any kind of “we” and any kind of “I,” is in the uphill battle against our condition. The only way to resist our alienation is through common struggles to challenge policies, situations, or hard-to-finger vibes that hold us down. Interestingly, any serious attempt to overthrow our condition of isolation must begin with the very goal to which we strive: common cooperative creative effort. In isolation, we are ghosts and objects in a bureaucratic hierarchy. In the process of gathering to challenge our circumstances, we are in-the-flesh human animals in a living democracy. In order to struggle against our isolated and powerless situation, we must overthrow its echo in our own minds, solipsism and separation from reality. This is not simply a change of perceptions but also means becoming mentally engaged in the world, in its culture, its politics, its news, its economics. This ideological shift is in turn itself a partial overthrow of a materially solipsistic and nihilistic condition. By weaving reality and humanity and ourselves back together in our minds, we make an important real step in weaving them back together in reality. It is, however, not the last step by any stretch.

Is picking up a sign and chanting an instant cure for the lack of authenticity, human closeness, and authentic human closeness in our lives? Absolutely not. There are no instant cures. The answer is a way of life, a lifelong striving to fight for yourself and fight for others; a lifelong struggle against the divisions between each of us as well as our lack of control over our economic lives. Such a struggle requires a lifelong striving to understand the world – its structure, its history, its buzzing present; a life of watching the news, reading history, thinking about that true science of everyday life known as economics, thinking about politics and why people do what they do, believe what they believe. We must live a life of all the difficulties of working with people, making mistakes, getting feelings hurt, and enduring disappointing failures, but also the occasional golden victory to share and celebrate, and the new conquered and liberated spaces where we can be ourselves, with and through each other.

NJ TRAILER PARK RESIDENTS FIGHT EVICTION AND WIN

2009-08-19T23:39:00.000-07:00

NJ TRAILER PARK RESIDENTS

FIGHT EVICTION AND WIN

by Matt Hoke

When Carol Lynn trailer park resident Al Ripa received a letter in the mail kicking him off his land, it didn’t surprise him. Ripa had never received as much as a friendly word or even a notice in the mail from his landlord Anthony Saduk in over sixteen years of living at Carol Lynn. But to other residents of the southern New Jersey trailer park, the letter was completely unexpected – one old woman suffered a heart attack upon reading.

Technically they weren’t eviction notices, but they might as well have been. Carol Lynn Resort had been advertised in 1978 as the only year-round trailer park in the area, which by the letter of the law was false advertising. For whatever reason, Carol Lynn exists in a legal limbo. On paper it is a seasonal resort, but with the petty requirement that for three months out of the year, residents would have to take a week-long vacation. In practice, Carol Lynn “Resort” is home to about three hundred permanent households, consisting mainly of disabled senior citizens and low-income workers.

The letters sent out to the residents in July informed them that New Jersey State Department of Community Affairs (DCA) now designated the wiring in certain trailers as a fire safety issue if inhabited permanently. Landlord Saduk, also a member of the Woodbine city council, informed the residents that he intended to enforce these regulations, and that as of November 1^st, 2009 the water would be shut off and the front gate would be locked. Throughout the course of the affair Saduk hid behind the idea that these had apparently been the rules all along, even if he had happened not to enforce them. Low-income and disabled people who had been living on the site for over a decade were surprised to learn that they suddenly lived on a seasonal resort. Without the money to get up and go, living in trailers not built to be easily moved, the notices were practically a death sentence to some residents. One Tennessee woman had sold her home and moved to Carol Lynn believing it was a year-round site just before summer. Some residents curiously observed that Carol Lynn seemed to be the only site in the state where these regulations were being actually enforced.

Realistically, some changes in the management staff and market conditions allowed owner Saduk to attempt a land grab, forcing the impoverished residents of Carol Lynn off of their sites while real estate was selling hot. Resident and informal leader of the fight-back, Al Ripa, calculated that Saduk could have made more than $45 million from the maneuver. Heavy construction equipment loomed ominously around the park, ready for renovations.

Al Ripa, a retired US Marine and senior citizen, wasn’t about to roll over and take it. Though he had the money to move and had been meaning to head for Florida anyway, Ripa couldn’t stomach the idea of walking away and letting it slide. He was concerned for his friends who physically and financially simply could not move. He said, “What if I threw my dogs out on the street? They’d arrest me for animal abuse. That’s exactly what he’s doing to these senior citizens.” Besides, the evictions were just one more example of trends he had witnessed for years:

They’re a bunch of high-class society suckers who don’t give a damn about working people. All the rich people in this country forget they wouldn’t have all that money if not for working people. We should fire ‘em all from their positions and replace them with workers.

They never have the money for what you want…but when they need to put a building up, or a pay raise, there’s money.

I’m not anti-American, but I’m scared of this government. You never know if one day they’re gonna just come in here and throw you on the street…There’s gonna be a war in this country.

But Ripa, a Marine, was ready for that. The day the notices came out, he began going door to door with plans to crash the next Woodbine city council meeting. Most residents instantly agreed. Some began going door to door with the news themselves. A few sighed and warned Ripa that he was wasting his time and there was probably nothing that could be done about it – mainly those for whom Carol Lynn was only a vacation home.

Within two days the entire trailer park had gone from despair and outrage to a determined anger. Ripa’s trailer became the movement’s headquarters, a buzzing hive of visitors constantly coming and going with ideas about what to do, questions, doubts. Ripa said that a handful of residents half-jokingly named him “the mayor.”

When the city council meeting came on July 17, the air was thick with tension as well more than fifty furious residents packed the usually dull and empty chamber. As if trying to spark the gasoline, landlord and councilman Anthony Saduk opened the public comment session by saying that he could not comment on any discussion related to the trailer park. This was followed by an immediate outburst from the gallery.

The meeting consisted of resident after resident taking their turn on the floor, verbally pounding Saduk for his cruelty and greed while the councilors fidgeted over their relatively light security. Cameras flashed and journalists from local papers jotted down quotes from the torrent of anger. Each resident’s tirade was fueled by Saduk’s arrogance in unconditionally refusing to even speak to the people whom he was trying to destroy, first at the trailer park and now in public.

The mayor of Woodbine, NJ William Pikolycky made the sad mistake of going to bat for the landlord who had excused himself from the conversation on cheap legalistic grounds. At the end, the caucasian Saduk said the meeting was a “lynch mob.” When asked about that comment, Ripa smiled, shrugged and nodded. It was hard to blame him.

Over the intervening weeks Ripa had several phone conversations of similar tone with state officials, including the state Department of Community Affairs chief Joseph Doria. He warned them, “Don’t you know that this is on YouTube?” He reminded them that election season was coming, and that via the internet, friends and relatives as far away as Canada and the west coast knew about the situation.

In a bizarre stroke of fate, news swept New Jersey shortly thereafter that police had rounded up forty-four people in a corruption sting, involving mayors taking bribes, laundering money, and even selling kidneys. NJ Governor Jon Corzine asked Doria to resign behind the scenes. Doria complied. This of course does not prove that Doria may have been taking money from landlords in order to write regulations that could help them evict their stubborn tenants – but it sure doesn’t help the suspicion. Widespread acknowledgement that New Jersey politicians are for brazenly sale also happens to make getting the rules re-written a little easier.

The next gathering to crash was at the office of Democratic NJ state senator Jeff Van Drew. He had pledged to help out the situation. The faces of the crowd set the mood – Van Drew had better come through with something and not try to justify the inhumane rules, or else he would have to face the wrath of the residents as well. After ominously trickling in group by group on the hot, muggy day, about eighty people had gathered to see what this man who claimed to be on their side would say and do. After being told by the county government to “get a lawyer,” they had reason to be skeptical. Some of them were wearing uniforms from low-paying jobs. Many of them leaned on canes, walkers, sat in wheelchairs. A shaded pavilion was reserved for those who needed it. The eighty present stood for more who were too disabled to attend or were asleep after their long night shifts.

Van Drew said that with Joseph Doria’s resignation, the DCA was pliant to popular demands. He had also done some research, and learned (completely coincidentally at this moment of rage and publicity reaching a critical mass) that it was really up to the municipalities to define the regulations for seasonal sites. The Woodbine mayor also happened to be there to announce that Woodbine regulations would now revert to the old rules, which effectively made Carol Lynn a year-round trailer park once again.

A few questions were asked in order to clarify the legalese. There was a moment of suspense as the residents wondered – could it really be? – if at the bottom of all the doublespeak was the fact that they could stay in their precious homes. As the questions were answered, they realized that yes, they were not being thrown onto the streets.

Across the yard swept a breath of relief. As Van Drew’s speech ended, one by one people began turning to each other and talking. Every other conversation started off with one person saying: “Well, we actually won.” A few were crying.

One keen-minded resident said that this was good but it wasn’t over yet. When asked why, he said “Saduk is vindictive, he’s retaliatory…he wants his money.” He then went from person to person spreading the idea of a tenant’s union.

At first Senator Van Drew appeared to be playing the role of people’s champion. That may have even been his intention in his own mind. Either way, he also played the role of damage control for a state government and status quo whose legitimacy is reeling in the face of corruption scandals. He addressed the crowd like he was scolding a wild animal out of its temper tantrum, as if their anger was somehow inappropriate. He said “don’t lash out at the people who are trying to help you.” Nobody had been lashing out at Van Drew himself, so what exactly was Van Drew trying to protect other than faith in a system that almost destroyed the lives of the Carol Lynn residents? Who were these invisible helpers that the residents had offended? Almost nobody of status had taken their side. The Woodbine mayor, likewise, was not a consistent populist. He defended and even spoke for landlord Saduk in the beginning and obviously only caved under the withering mass anger and growing publicity.

In mid-August the residents voted to create a chapter of the New Jersey Tenant’s Organization in order to take on other grievances which had been collecting and building over time. Not least of the complaints is a $700 increase in maintenance fees in the course of one year (with maintenance often not done), which some residents believe is also part of Saduk’s plan to clear people out. A few residents have also faced harassment, such as one who was told that his shed was two feet in height over regulation – and then after working on it was told that it was still two inches too tall and that the owner had to reduce it in two days or be evicted.

But all in all, the people of the trailer park stood their ground. The threatening construction machines disappeared. Those who seemed on the surface to be the most powerless people in Cape May County, New Jersey flipped the situation around, denying the will of a landlord politician and contradicting the New Jersey state government itself.

With Democratic representatives giving up ground in the healthcare and same-sex marriage debates faster than you can say “white flag,” people are finding that if they want to be treated right, they will not be able to rely on the leadership of politicians. But this is not a recipe for despair. The residents of Carol Lynn have led the way and showed us all that if we take a hard line, organize ourselves independently and stand up, we will win. Ripa kept this foremost in his mind during the whole struggle, and wants the world to know what the residents’ victory means:

I been saying for years, we got to stand up, we got to take it back, and it’s not gonna take one or two people. If it was one or two people they’d laugh at you, ignore you. But this is an example of lots of people getting together and making it happen.

I crashed a “Tea Party.” My experience.

2009-07-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

On the 4th of July, a bunch of conservatives had “Tea Parties,” where they find an area with water, hold a rally in which they rail against taxes, liberalism, and socialism, and throw tea bags in the water to invoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party. What a bunch of revolutionaries. /rolleyes
I crashed their tea party and spoiled their day.
It was a very rich and educational political experience.

I had two signs, two T-shirts, and a button, which I alternated.

Sign: “INDEPENDENCE FOR IRAQ: withdraw all troops, close all bases, save $3 trillion!”

Sign: “LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE/there is no democracy/without equal civil rights”

Shirt: “FUCK WALL STREET/I’d rather have healthcare”

Shirt: The other had a picture of Obama laughing and dropping pennies:
“Thanks for your vote/here’s your change”

The button simply said “glbt ally”

I wore a very wide reflective shiny pair of sunglasses to look badass. It would be me against the world so I could use the psychological edge.

As you can see, my signs were designed to expose the tea-baggers and their hypocritical nature. They don’t support “freedom” – they don’t support civil rights for gays. They’re happy to get taxed $3 trillion if a conservative is doing it and it’s for war – not if it’s a Democrat for social services. They all rail against big institutions like the Government and Wall Street, and my T-shirt tried to show them that they shouldn’t oppose socialized healthcare since passing it would be an attack on Wall Street. Hypocrites. I definitely made them uncomfortable.

My objectives:

Demoralize them by breaking their unanimity. The people at those tea parties are possibly the future of the possible emerging American fascist movement. Best to make them second-guess themselves before it gets that far. (achieved)

Creating a pole of attracting for opposition, emboldening anti-tea party hecklers. (achieved)
Exposing their hypocrisy to passersby, and maybe themselves. (both achieved)

Convincing perhaps a handful of tea-baggers or hostile passersby that socialism is not the enemy, and indeed is possibly the answer. (…probably not achieved)

Recruiting to the ISO, or at least spreading readership of Socialist Worker. (neither achieved)

Building my political nerve, capacity to be physically present and psychologically stable in the face of overwhelming opposition, and handling/countering heckling from crowds which may be hostile. (achieved)

Begin countering the tendency among leftists to be utterly afraid to challenge anything with an American flag on it, and to challenge right-wingers at their most confident moments, when they think they will gather uncontested. (achieved)

At first I walked in, wearing simply a blank white shirt with my political ones in my backpack, and with my signs folded up so no one could see. I wanted to drift through the crowd and check out what the sentiment was before I launched my attack.

Their signs said…
“Audit the Fed!!” (I told the sign-holder that I absolutely agreed with him)
“SOCIALISM: $787 billion/CAPITALISM: PRICELESS” (I corrected this guy later)
“No more tax funds for abortions/protect human baby rights”
“Say no to Obama-care! No national healthcare!” (Call Congress, phone number, etc.)
“Madoff got 150 years, we’ll give Obama only four years”
“The new face of slavery! (Obama’s face) Heavy taxes=heavy load/
This is Obama’s new plantation!” (All slavery references by middle-class white people are clearly racially motivated by reverse-racism paranoia or outright racism…more on their racism later)
“Enforce our immigration laws!” (again, I will cover the racism later)
“Stop the generational tax/we pick up the tab” (held by younger people…good point)

And the absolute best…
“SUPPORT THE TROOPS/WE’LL NEED THEM FOR THE COUP!”
I later shouted at the teenage female holding this sign that she was doing a great job supporting democracy on the 4th of July by supporting a coup against an elected official. Jesus Christ. My confrontation left her knowing that her irresponsible talk of right-wing insurrection would not be welcome among the general public. (Of course, I do the same thing from the left wing by calling for workers’ revolution. Heh.)

Unfortunately very little in the way of outlandish clothing. Just one conspiracy theorist in an old-fashioned three-tipped colonial-era hat.

I heard some old guy on a microphone which was too quiet giving some extremely unlively speech which did include a statement that we are all slaves. He had some vague, unconvincing analysis of when we lost our freedom…something about difficulty in starting up small businesses. Loser. I checked out everyone’s sign, made small talk, and had some signup sheet shoved at me. I signed it Jake Black, gave Jake a fake Gmail address and passed it on.

Early in the rally, conflict arose, started not by me. The Tea Party was happening adjacent to a restaurant. An old veteran wearing a baseball cap that said “Obama” and had American flag designs started shouting at them. I couldn’t tell what he was shouting but he was hopping mad.

After the old man in the Obama hat opened up the debate, I figured that the battle was already raging so it was time to come out of the closet. I put on my “FUCK WALL STREET” shirt and went up to the porch and unfurled my Iraq sign. They all knew what side I was on very quickly.

Once I was clearly involved in the argument, one of the people arguing with the old guy (all of them seemed to be vets) asked if I was ever in the military. I said I never was and (emphatically) I definitely never intend to be. He said that it was the military that defended my right to even state my opinion. I said no, it was labor warriors, like the Anarchists who fought for the 8-hour day in the 1880s and the Communist Party who fought for my wages in the 1930s. Because what’s free speech if you’re working or starving all day? They didn’t like my answer. They called me a socialist. I confirmed that. They didn’t know what to say to that. One told me to move to Russia. I said if he thought the USA was socialist, maybe he should move there. A lot of stammering after that one.

One of them said that if we withdrew from Iraq “we would give them another victory” like in Vietnam. I repeated his ridiculous claim – “give them another victory?” I said I would be happy to give a victory to a country that has its own people and deserves their own sovereignty. He shook his head, he didn’t like that idea. (?)

A woman who I later saw holding an anti-immigrant sign approached me while holding my gay marriage sign and asked if I had ever read the Bible. I said I had and I found it pretty unconvincing. She then shouted that I needed to really read it, implying that I obviously hadn’t read it for real…like I just said I had. Then she kept railing that God did not permit what my sign called for, and I just kept telling her that I didn’t care what the hell God said because I didn’t believe in him anyhow. Religion was not the dispute I came to start…I wanted to focus on economics, foreign policy, and civil rights. But as I am increasingly seeing, God damn it, religion is an issue in politics, as I am sure I will see in the gay rights fight coming to TCNJ. I still don’t think that it is the job of socialists or any progressives to make a case for atheism but I can better understand the argument for atheism as one (of many) progressive forces.

After that died down a bit I talked to him. He was a true progressive, he supported everything my materials said. Seemed to wince when I mentioned socialism to the other side, so I didn’t bother asking for his contact info.

I then passed to the other side of the street, because I figured that the restaurant owner would kick me off their porch soon if I didn’t do it first myself. Also I wanted to clearly distinguish myself from the tea party for passersby and be able to interact with them.

A disturbingly high amount of passing cars were giving sympathetic honks to the tea-baggers, though a few people really liked my gay marriage sign. I realized that a lot of people were probably just honking at the tea-baggers because they were waving American flags, and didn’t realize that it was a conservative rally. A Latino family on a second-floor balcony across the street was watching casually, occasionally cheering whenever someone waved an American flag. I noticed some anti-immigrant sentiment in the tea party, so I figured maybe the Latino family was also in this situation. I walked over to talk to them, from the ground-level sidewalk. I showed them my signs, and explained I wasn’t with the tea party, and just what exactly the tea party was. When I told them it was sort of an anti-Obama rally they looked very upset. They liked my causes, pretty unanimously said they wanted out of Iraq (even brought up Afghanistan) and supported gay marriage. They basically switched over to my side.

In fact, when some tea-baggers crossed to my side of the street with flags and other crap to try to diminish my presence to passersby, the Latinos shouted to me that I should hold my turf and keep them off “my” side of the street. I said I was all alone, maybe they should come down and help me.

Four of them...did. Four of their young guys came down, fanned out, crossed their arms and gave dirty looks to all the tea-baggers on my side until they chickened out and went back to their side of the street. They did this with almost tactical precision, in formation, like it was something they did on a regular basis. More likely they just had chemistry, they were family.

There are no words. What an awesome, spontaneous display of both solidarity and bad-assery.

Occasionally the Latinos would heckle the tea-baggers and yell something like “Go Obama!” A passing tea-bagger on a bike replied:
“You need to fuckin’ learn to speak English.”
(They were speaking fine English in American accent.)
I called after him that he was racist. Didn’t seem to bother him.

Soon enough a car full of Latinos would roll by shouting and heckling, calling them all “racist motherfuckers.” Totally deserved.

There was definitely a political race line. There was not a single Black or Latino on the tea party side. Most of them I encountered checked out what I was about and were all glad I was there.

The pro-life woman yelled at me that maybe I should read some of the history of this great country and see what it was really about. I informed her that I am in fact a history major. She said then why are you saying such ridiculous things. I said I could because I am certified to do so.

When I heckled the kid for her pro-coup-against-Obama sign, she told me that what I was proposing (gay marriage) was just unnatural. I told her that her iPod was unnatural.

Various people said they would pray for me. I almost sarcastically told them that I would pray to Satan for them too, to get a rise, but I bit my lip on that one, since there were some of them with whom I actually wanted to try communicating.

Sparked by my Iraq sign, someone across the street said that I could thanks George W Bush for the “current independence” of the people of Iraq. I said they weren’t free under Saddam, they’re not free now until the last soldier and based and oil company leaves, and the only way they’ll be free is if they do what the people of Iran are doing, and that’s the only answer. Nobody had a response to that since everyone loves the Iranian uprising except stupid Stalinist assholes like Workers’ World Party.

I was holding the gay marriage sign and a tea-bagger leaving on bike confronted me:

Tea-bagger on a bike: “This isn’t San Francisco.”
Me: “I’d like to make it that way.”
TBoaB: “This ISN’T San Francisco.”
Me: “It will be. Change is coming. Get ready.”
TBoaB: (frustrated grunting)

So many of these bastards just want to hit you with these thought-terminating clichés: “this is the way it is, this is the way it will stay.” “Ni**ger-lover” is also just such a fruitful-conversation-ender. They just try to intimidate you with strong but empty statements. So just stand your ground, hit them back with your own strong stance, a fact or two, and they completely fold. These people are made of nothing.

One woman leaving the Tea Party tried to tell me (because of my gay marriage sign) that children need a mother and father figure each. I asked why, she moved on. She said that homosexuality is unnatural. I told her that her polaroid camera is unnatural. She said God gave us brains to invent, so I countered, yes, we invented homosexuality with our brains. Then I admitted I wasn't religious so I couldn't really argue that anyway. She said she would pray for me. She said there was probably something that happened in my past that made me gay...I informed her I was straight. She was astounded by that.

The owner of the restaurant I was standing near came out and complimented my “Legalize Gay Marriage” sign. Probably has gay clientele.

I drifted back over to their side of the street.

I tried having a real discussion with someone across the street. I wanted to at least try to connect to some of the tea-baggers on the basis of discontent with the bailout and the economy. I approached the man whose sign said “SOCIALISM: $787 billion/CAPITALISM: priceless.” I explained to him that I am a real socialist and that I was totally against the bailout because it was taking money from the poor to the rich.
He tried telling me that when I was older and paying bills, what he was saying would make sense. I said that my whole political thinking is based on standing up for real ordinary people who work long hours and pay steep bills, and that’s exactly why I’m a socialist.
He told me that if you’re liberal when your twenty you’re thoughtless, but if you’re liberal when you’re forty, you’re hopeless. I told him I would come back and find him as a hopeless Marxist in twenty years, and that if I felt like it I could come up with some dumb phrase, too. I didn’t stoop to actually proving I could.
We got to talking about the difficulties of running a small business and I said yes it was true, and said that socialists are in favor of getting rid of a lot of the bullshit they have to put up with, as well as forcing banks to give them cheap loans. (Yeah, that’s true, read “Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It” by Trotsky.)
He asked me why socialism hasn’t worked very well. I told him that every time people try it, governments tend to shoot the people who are organizing for it. He asked me when such a thing had ever happened in the USA.
I gave him the example of troops being sent in to quash the general strike of 1919 in Seattle. He blamed this event on the dawn of progressivism, and I tried to explain to him that it was the unions getting troops called on them, not the other way around.
He tried to tell me that when he owned a restaurant, his employees loved him. I shrugged and said that some slaves love their masters.
Whatever, nothing good came out of that discussion. At least it was civil.

Sad conversation among right-wingers about why the 2008 campaign failed…McCain too old, Palin too young…or may bad policies, hello? Looking forward to 2012, when “the country will be ready.” (Maybe if Obama doesn’t follow through on enough promises, the country will be nice and hopeless and ready to vote Republican again, yeah.) Republicans are really, really grasping at straws and coming up with no answers.

One old man who was clearly on the Tea-Bagger side complimented me at the end for sticking to my guns, despite being solo. I already knew I had guts but his acknowledgement was gratifying. Respect from the enemy…some of the best respect you can get.

Several tea-baggers said to me that they are actually completely fine with gay marriage, though they did not speak up when the religious fanatics were after me over that issue. This is proof that my tactics worked and I demoralized their side by splitting their sense of unity, even if they just admitted it to me off to the side and didn’t shout it in front of everyone.

I drifted back to “my” side of the street.

It was getting to be the end of the tea party, so it was time for my last, most devious act.
I put my signs down, reached into my backpack, and to the horror of the tea-baggers, and unfurled the RED BANNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION (typed in caps to portray their shock). I asked for five minutes of their time. The pro-lifer (to whom I had previously declared that fetuses are not human beings) just ranted at me that I was out of my mind for a minute. I just smiled because I figured, hey, we’re all a bunch of extremist wack-jobs here. She finished up, and the rest of the crowd seemed polite enough to listen. My speech was very short and simple because I knew they wouldn’t tolerate anything over a few sentences. I totally made it up on the spot, and went something like this:

“People of the Tea Party,
I am not here to insult you. There is just something I would like you to know.
I know that many of you are here because you are upset about taxes.
I know that many of you don’t like the bail-out. You call it socialistic.
Well, I am a real socialist. I am not for Obama.
Obama is NOT a socialist. Obama is a capitalist.
I am against the bail-out because it was taking from the poor and giving to the ruling class, taking from the working-class and giving to rich bankers.
Please keep in mind that real socialists are out there and we want what is best for the working class.
Thank you for your time.”

I neither received nor expected applause, but nobody argued with me. I think they never expected to be confronted with a real socialist who was not their stereotype an evil scheming Jewish conspirator with a job in media or government, but someone who really stood for the working class, whether exploited by their employers or by government intervention. I am sure that some of them will never forget their first encounter with a real socialist.

Some conspiracy nut told me to look up “the creature from Jekyll Island” because he sort of agreed with my complaints against the way the bailout was done. It seems to be a conspiracy theory about the Federal Reserve. A lot of that going around these days. Capitalism is the problem, people, not a single one of its representative institutions. Think systematically.

My ISO signup sheet remained blank. Not surprising. But worth a shot, since my area usually has zero political activity. It was clear very early on that the tea-baggers were anti-socialist as well as anti-ruling class (ugh…). I was hoping maybe someone who disagreed with them would take interest in me. Nope. But I got some support, and I countered their presence and ruined the unanimity of their event. Rock on.

I was worried about the crowd and heckling issues. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to take it, mainly that I wouldn’t be able to keep up and think of things to say quickly enough. I have grown accustomed to quiet environments such as ISO meetings where everything is well-thought-out, nobody interrupts, etc. I prefer going to political meetings with a moderator, and have noticed that my opinion tends to dominate less in clubs without moderators. I think this is because to project a polite image I tend to avoid interrupting, but now I realize that I guess butting in is what I will have to do from now on.
Why? Because the tea party I learned that I can totally handle heckling, quick exchanged, quipping back and forth, conversation-ending statements, all of it. I can handle all of it. I took on thirty to fifty people all by myself and never came up short for an argument, a comeback, a fact, or just the will to keep looking an enemy in the eye, to keep talking to passersby even as the tea-baggers interrupted our conversations.

I can do it. I’m ready to give rabble-rousing speeches to homeless people, rally unemployment councils, and march on city hall to demand food. Given the persisting lack of financial regulation, I am sure the day will come sooner than we all think.
There were no police there the entire time. Interesting that the right-wingers don’t get patrolled the way I always do. I half-expected them to call in the cops just because I showed up.

Again, the best part was when the Latinos came down and defended my turf. My God.

Happy 4th of July, which I will henceforth celebrate as Anti-Imperialism Day. That was, after all, a big part of the idea behind 1776, right?
Solidarity to Iran as its people forges the way forward for democracy and workers’ revolution in the Middle East.