Monday, October 7, 2019
Who Would FDR Endorse?
OCT 01, 2019
During her
speech at Washington Square Park in New York last week, which drew a
massive crowd of both supporters and curious bystanders, Massachusetts Sen.
Elizabeth Warren evoked the legacy of Frances Perkins, the longest-serving
secretary of labor and first female member of the presidential Cabinet.
The Warren campaign’s decision
to stage a speech at the famous park in lower Manhattan was inspired partly by
the fact that it is a block away from the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory,
where 146 garment workers—most of them young immigrant women—died in a fire in
1911. The disaster, as Warren told her audience, prompted major reforms, which
Perkins was instrumental in pushing. As the presidential candidate put it in
her speech, “With Frances working the system from the inside, the women workers
organizing and applying pressure from the outside, they rewrote New York state’s
labor laws from top to bottom to protect workers.”
Twenty years later, Franklin
D. Roosevelt selected Perkins as his labor secretary (a position she would hold
during his entire presidency), and the administration passed everything from
Social Security and unemployment insurance to minimum wage and the Wagner Act,
which guaranteed labor’s right to organize. One “very persistent woman,” Warren
declared, “backed up by millions of people across [the] country,” achieved
major structural reforms that had a transformative effect on the country.
Warren isn’t the first 2020
Democratic candidate to give a major speech on the legacy of the New Deal. In
June, in his widely discussed speech
on democratic socialism, Sen. Bernie Sanders repeatedly invoked FDR and his
“bold and visionary leadership” as an example for what we need today.
Though some commentators (including
me) questioned the Vermont senator’s decision to make FDR and New Deal
liberalism the focal point of a speech about democratic socialism, which
presumably goes beyond Roosevelt’s brand of social democracy (a program
designed to preserve and stabilize American capitalism, not
replace it), from a strategic standpoint, it makes perfect sense to employ
Roosevelt as a model for the kind of leadership needed in the 21st century.
Roosevelt, along with members of
his administration like Perkins, fought for transformative change that was, in
Sanders’ words, “opposed by big business, Wall Street, the political
establishment, by the Republican Party and by the conservative wing of FDR’s
own Democratic Party.” At the time, Roosevelt was called everything from a
fascist to a communist, and he had to deal with smears from members of his own
party, such as 1928 Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith, who founded a
group called the Liberty League to oppose the New Deal. At a 1936 Liberty
League rally, Smith gave a then-27-year-old Joseph McCarthy a template for his
future tactics, painting Roosevelt as a Bolshevik in disguise: “There can be
only one capital, Washington or Moscow. There can be only … the clear, pure fresh
air of free America, or the foul breath of communistic Russia. There can be
only one flag, the Stars and Stripes, or the flag of the godless union of the
Soviets.”
Roosevelt and his
administration didn’t just face ad hominem political attacks, but institutional
barriers that threatened to make real structural reform impossible. With a
conservative majority, the Supreme Court ruled numerous New Deal policies
unconstitutional, and stood in the way of any kind of economic reform. At one
point, historian Jeff Shesol tell us in his 2010 book, “Supreme Power: Franklin
Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court,” FDR thought that the court would “nullify
virtually everything of significance that the administration had done.” This
thought didn’t lead Roosevelt to despair, however, as he believed that after
the “nine old men” overruled his popular reforms, it wouldn’t be long before
“the nation’s streets were filled with marching farmers, marching miners, and
marching factory workers.” In other words, Roosevelt was prepared for a fight,
and counted on popular support against the so-called “economic royalists.”
There would always be those who cried “unconstitutional” at “every effort to
better the condition of our people,” Roosevelt observed
in 1937. “Such cries have always been with us; and, ultimately, they have
always been overruled.”
Roosevelt’s struggle with the
Supreme Court culminated with his plan to add more justices to the court, which
ultimately failed, but not before the court—Justice Owen Roberts in
particular—shifted its tune on New Deal legislation.
Both Warren and Sanders have
invoked Roosevelt and the New Deal not just because of policies, but because of
the aggressive style of politics that Roosevelt and his team employed to
achieve such transformative change. Roosevelt wasn’t afraid of being denounced
as a communist or a dictator by right-wing detractors, and he eagerly embraced
conflict with the wealthy business leaders who funded such groups as the
Liberty League. Roosevelt used the bully pulpit to push his progressive agenda
and famously welcomed the hatred of his opponents, who stood against economic
and political reform widely supported by the American people—just as many
progressive reforms are today.
One of the most frequent
criticisms leveled at progressive candidates, often from centrists who claim to
sympathize with their agenda, is that their plans are unrealistic and will
never make it past Congress, let alone the Supreme Court. Reporting on Warren’s
speech at Washington Square Park, The Atlantic’s Russell
Berman observed that while Warren’s policy plans are “detailed and
specific, her strategy for achieving them is less so.” Like Sanders, Warren
calls for a sustained grassroots movement to pressure Washington, but,
according to Berman, “that was also Obama’s plea, and while the former
president was able to enact the Affordable Care Act, Wall Street reforms, and a
large economic-stimulus package early in his tenure, his entreaties for outside
help did not succeed in pressuring Republicans to support his plans.”
This is the conventional
wisdom one often hears today about the Obama years, and while it is certainly
true that President Obama faced unprecedented Republican obstructionism, it is
simply false to claim that the 44th president fought aggressively for a
progressive agenda and did everything he could to push for radical change. Even
before he entered office, Obama had settled on a “pragmatic” response to the
financial crisis, hiring centrists and neoliberal ideologues like Timothy
Geithner, Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel, while desperately working to achieve
a “post-partisan” consensus (which was far more naive than the progressive
approach toward movement-building).
One notable example of the
Obama administration’s timid response was its failure to push for legislation
that would have allowed judges to modify the terms of home mortgages,
colloquially known as “cram down.” As David Dayen reported in
2015, it was within Obama’s power to prevent millions of people from losing
their homes (just as it was within the administration’s power to criminally
prosecute bank executives for their fraudulent behavior). “The administration’s
eventual program, HAMP, grew out of the banking industry’s preferred
alternative to [cram down], one where the industry, rather than bankruptcy judges,
would control loan restructuring,” Dayen writes. “Unfortunately, the program
has been a success for bankers and a failure for most hard-pressed homeowners.”
The idea that Obama was once a
populist, and that a Warren or Sanders administration would end up just like
the Obama administration did, is simply wrong. The two leading progressive
candidates have already expressed a willingness to adopt the Rooseveltian style
of politics that Obama was never willing to adopt, and the 44th president never
favored the structural changes that the former do. “I am prepared to go to
every state in this union and rally the American people around [a progressive]
agenda to put pressure on their representatives, whether they are Democratic or
Republican,” Sanders recently remarked in an
interview, saying that he would also support primary challenges to
Democrats who are not supportive of progressive policies like “Medicare for
All.” This is an aggressive strategy in the tradition of Roosevelt, and it is
the only strategy that could potentially lead to his progressive agenda
becoming a reality in the future.
It is completely legitimate to
ask how progressives would pass major legislation without a supermajority in
Congress, and the fact is that Roosevelt had much more favorable circumstances
in 1933 than any Democratic president is likely to have in the foreseeable
future. There are certain measures that could give Democratic presidents some
wiggle room. Warren has advocated
eliminating the filibuster, for example, while Sanders has, curiously,
rejected this approach, favoring the complicated budget reconciliation process
instead.
None of this will matter,
however, if progressive Democrats don’t manage to create a wave of popular
enthusiasm for their agenda. It is important for progressive leaders to be
honest and forthright about this to their supporters. None of their proposals
stands a chance without a popular movement that goes well beyond the election cycle.
Roosevelt understood the power of popular will; perhaps it is time for
Democrats to refresh their memory.
Sara Nelson Is the Face of America's Resurgent Labor Movement
OCT 04, 2019
During the chaos that
transpired from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019, in the
most recent government shutdown, two speeches by a woman named Sara Nelson,
our Truthdigger of the Month, spread like wildfire across the internet.
On Jan. 20, as she accepted
the 2019 MLK Drum Major for Justice Award from the AFL-CIO, Nelson, the
president of the Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of
America (AFA-CWA), called
for a general strike and questioned why the labor movement was missing
in action during this crucial time for 800,000 federal workers.
“Almost a million workers are
locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when
our workspace is increasingly unsafe,” Nelson said. “What is the Labor Movement
waiting for?”
“Federal sector unions have
their hands full caring for the 800,000 federal workers who are at the tip of
the spear,” she went on. “Some would say the answer is for them to walk off the
job. I say, what are you willing to do? Their destiny is tied up with our
destiny—and they don’t even have time to ask us for help. Don’t wait for an
invitation. … Go back with the fierce urgency of now to talk with your local
and international unions about all workers joining together—to end this shutdown
with a general strike.
“We can do this. Together. Si
se puede. Every gender, race, culture, and creed. The American labor movement.
We have the power. And to all Americans—We’ve got your back!”
Days later, speaking to
another crowd in front of the Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., Nelson
passionately highlighted the security dangers flight attendants—and anyone on a
plane—during this period were facing while federal workers, including air
traffic controllers, worked without pay.
Lives are at risk because of
the gov’t shutdown, and these airline workers want Trump to take that seriously
“Many of these people are our
veterans,” she said in her Jan. 24 speech. “Many of these people are fighting
for our country right now, and we are not paying them.” When several air
traffic controllers chose to abstain from unpaid work the next day, forcing
flights to stay grounded in several busy airports, suddenly the Trump
administration had an added incentive to reopen government as fast as humanly
possible, proving the power workers have always held.
Democratic presidential
candidate Bernie
Sanders reportedly credited Nelson with helping shut down the
shutdown, telling her, “Between you and me, that’s what ended the shutdown. …
When planes looked like they weren’t taking off.” But he wasn’t the only one
who saw the role the rising labor movement star had played in those crucial
days.
Nelson started
organizing and intimidating corporate bosses not unlike President
Trump long before she made national headlines during the longest government
shutdown in U.S. history. A United Airlines flight attendant since 1996, Nelson
became the head of the AFA-CWA in 2014 after holding several positions at the
union, including vice president. Her activism began almost as soon as she
started working at United, and has continued throughout her tenure there as
she’s helped negotiate better terms for pensions, among other labor
improvements, not just for her fellow United flight attendants, but for the
50,000 members of the AFA-CWA who work at 20 airlines.
Now, Nelson
has been tapped for the head job of the American labor movement,
president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial
Organizations (AFL-CIO), despite the fact the current president, Richard
Trumka, still has a couple of years left in his term. The flight attendant
turned union president and fervent activist is a far cry from the American
labor leaders we’ve seen in the past few decades, and that’s precisely why so
many people, including her, want her to lead labor in the upcoming years.
Already, she’s been called “the most powerful labor
leader in the country.”
Not only does Nelson have the
passion and presence sorely lacking in other labor leaders—who, for instance,
can remember a single speech by Trumka?—she’s willing to fight at the
frontlines—not just for workers in her unions, but for all American workers—on
a number of crucial issues.
The AFA-CWA president
has testified
before Congress about the sexual harassment still rampant in her
industry, and has also thrown her support behind activism across the nation,
including teachers’
strikes in California, Wyoming and West Virginia, General
Motors workers protesting stagnant wages, and, most recently,
the global
climate strike inspired by Swedish youth activist Greta
Thunberg.
Nelson is also an outspoken
proponent of Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, stating her support stems from the
proposal’s focus on the need to address both the very real climate crisis
before us, along with better labor conditions and the creation of jobs.
When 2020 Democratic
front-runners Biden
and Sanders debated the Vermont senator’s Medicare for All bill, with Biden
saying Sanders’ policy would fly in the face of union accomplishments, Nelson
was clear where she stood:
A note to anyone who wants to
use union members as a wedge to oppose #MedicareForAll:
@UAW has one of the best plans in the
country, but management can still use it to hold workers hostage. #M4A puts power back in our
hands. #1u https://twitter.com/vyurkevich/status/1174036332320088065 …
Nelson faces an uphill battle
toward the leadership position she seems to have been born to take on. Since
its formation after a merger in 1955, the AFL-CIO, which boasts 12.5 million
members and is made up of 55 unions, has never had a woman in the top
office. The labor leader is also facing stiff competition from the
AFL-CIO’s secretary treasurer, Liz
Shuler, who’s also likely to run.
But adversity is something
Nelson is familiar with. As a woman, she has been consistently
underestimated and discriminated against, even harassed, by men in any
number of work situations. As she fights for women’s rights and workers’
rights, the Oregon native will not be cowed, no matter the challenge. Her
rising profile is evidence of this, if nothing else.
The AFA-CWA
president’s main inspiration for possibly running came after Trump was
elected after running a campaign that fed off blue-collar workers’ discontent.
“Trump took up so much of the
airwaves because he was off-script,” Nelson said. Unions, stuck in a defensive
crouch, barely participated in the conversation. “If we had someone who
could bring a different vision of what a union leader is,” she said, “it could
have been a moment that was really powerful.”
Nelson, by all accounts,
embodies that “different vision,” and with signs that the
American labor movement is on the rise, there is no one better to take the
lead than this strong, passionate woman who is a
great speaker, has earned her progressive chops as a worker, activist and
union leader, and understands the vital truth about the U.S. economy: Workers
have all the power, as long as they have each other’s backs.
Since we just celebrated Labor
Day in September, we have decided to make Sara Nelson our Truthdigger of the
Month—for all she has done and will do for American workers.
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