PIGS & POODLES

PIGS & POODLES

(The following are edited remarks by Mike Alewitz, at the Bring the Troops Home Now - Teach-In Against the Wars, UConn, Storrs, CT 3/26/11) 

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It started with a Valentine card.

On February 14, teaching assistants from the University of Wisconsin–Madison distributed "We ♥ UW: Don't Break My ♥" Valentine cards to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, in order to protest against the so-called Budget Repair Bill. That act called for employee concessions to make up a $3.6 billion budget shortfall, as well as gutting collective bargaining rights for state workers.

The next day, tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated in and around the state capital demanding, "Kill the Bill!” The protests grew. Teachers and workers occupied the Senate chambers and by February 26, the crowds swelled – they were estimated to be up to 100,000 people.

 

International Movement

Demonstrations in solidarity with Wisconsin and against similar initiatives have now taken place in all 50 states. Expressing a newfound internationalism, protesters at these many actions have carried signs or indicated that they had been inspired by the revolts sweeping the Arab East.

The growing worldwide movement is far different than anything that we have experienced before.  Vast emigrations of the world’s peoples, development of the Internet and use of satellite devices has allowed for a global shared experience.

We are all doing this together.  The conditions of modern capitalism are molding us into one giant organism. When workers set up hospitals and education centers in Tahrir Square, it was copied in Madison Wisconsin. Our cultures are being shared. We are becoming a global, self-conscious, unified class.

We are collectively engaged in the largest political discussion in human history. Millions of people, whether in Syria, Yemen, Greece, Madison or Storrs, we are all grappling with the big question: What do we do now? How do we advance the working class struggle for social and economic justice?

 

Just Four Little Piggies

There’s some confusion about that in our newly awakened class – particularly here in the US.

In CT, this was exemplified by the fact that union leaders invited Governor Dannel Malloy to speak at a rally in solidarity with Wisconsin. Malloy is trying to do the same thing that Scott Walker is–forcing $3.5 billion worth of concessions out of working people, through a tax increase and wage cuts of 2 billion from state employees.

In reality, in CT, as in Wisconsin and nationally, there is no lack of money. The state is awash in wealth - it’s just that the working people who produced it are not going to see any of it - it’s been stolen and is being kept hostage by the super-rich.

If you took the top four hedge fund investors that live in this state – just four individuals -  and taxed their wealth 100% after the first $2 billion, you would completely eliminate the budget shortfall. Not only that, you would have enough money to provide $10,000 per year for every college and university student in the state for the next four years. That’s how much money they have!

The four individuals would hardly notice. Steven Cohen and his family could continue to live in a 35,000-square-foot palace in Greenwich, with their 6,734-square-foot ice rink (complete with Zamboni machine), indoor pool, basketball court, golf course and massage and exercise rooms.

Paul Tudor Jones would keep his Greenwich mansion and his 3,000-acre wildlife preserve on the Chesapeake Bay that includes islands in the marsh shaped to form his initials, PTJ.

 

Tax the Corporations

Now some you may be thinking: “Alewitz, you heartless bastard – how can you consider making these poor people scrape by on a mere $2 billion?”  

Well, (without getting into the issue of the  trillions of wasted dollars for the war machine) as an alternative, we could raise the money simply by taxing the record profits of the Fortune 500 companies headquartered in our state.

These billions in profits came as companies continue to hold onto obscene amounts of cash while laying off workers and wringing more productivity from the remaining staff.

Take, for example, General Electric, headquartered in Fairfield - the nice people that designed the Fukushima nuclear power plant.  Although GE posted a record $14.2 billion profits, they paid no Federal taxes. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

Imposing a modest tax on GE alone – just one company -  would eliminate our budget deficit.

But that is not to happen under the Democratic Party government. Gov. Malloy says he does not want to punish success. 

The fact is, Malloy and Scott Walker and Barak Obama serve same masters.

 

Poodles

We are not facing a “right wing” or “Republican” offensive – it is a 30 year anti-worker offensive by both parties.  The two parties of the employers are waging war on workers both here and abroad. Right now, the Democratic Party in Wisconsin is trying to get workers off the streets and into a meaningless electoral recall campaign that is designed to fail.

For help in demobilizing people, the Democrats have turned to their pals in the labor officialdom.  If you wonder why so-called labor leaders would invite Malloy to address our rally, it’s because they are completely tied to the Democratic Party. Their job, quite simply, is to negotiate concessions for the employers.

That’s why, while workers in WI were demanding “Kill the Bill,” union officials rushed in to capitulate and grant all the economic concessions.

These officials have more in common with the employers than the workers.

The Presidents of just three of the unions most affected - the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers – they each get paid between $400,000 – $500,000 a year.  

In 2008, nearly 10,000 union officials or staff in the US brought home salaries greater than $100,000, consuming over $1 billion of their member’s money. That does not include the automobiles, housing allowances, expense accounts, junkets, perks and everything else that comes out of the bureaucratic trough. Below them, tens of thousands of other staff people are crawling their way up the bureaucratic ladder

.

They live in a different world. That’s why they always talk about “working families” and “middle class” jobs.  They try to obfuscate that we are the working class. Single moms don’t exist. The poor are invisible.

 

Mass Action

Instead of trying to turn our protests into a pro-Democratic Party electoral movement, they should be calling a general strike against the war and concessions. If working people shut this country down for one day, you would see an end to all this anti-labor legislations. 

While our unions have grown small and atrophied, the organization of modern production has placed enormous potential power in their hands.  Any number of small unions can make the wheels of production throughout the entire country grind to a halt. We will get to that point by fighting concessions and organizing against the war.

Egypt has given us all a glimpse of the power of the mass action of our class. We have to build on that.  We have to learn from them. Events like the bombing of Libya and the unfolding catastrophe in Fukushima are stark reminders that if we do not take power out of the hands of these insatiable, oil-based, profit driven corporations and their poodles, the very existence of our species is at stake.

What you do individually matters – it was the heroic action of a 27-year-old Tunisian street vendor that started this. What we do collectively will determine it’s outcome. 

We may not have all the solutions individually, but our collective discussion and experience will provide the answers for how to advance the struggle. Only the power and action of millions can win peace and justice. 

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Above: THE PIG, THE PORK CHOPPER AND THE COMPANY MAN

Detail, The Resurrection of Wesley Everest, Centralia, Washington

by Mike Alewitz

________________________________________

Mike Alewitz, Artistic Director

LaBOR aRT & MuRAL PRoJECT

c/o Department of Art

Central Connecticut State University

New Britain, CT  06050

National Pi (in the Sky) Day

National Pi (in the Sky) Day

 

JOE HILL
by Mike Alewitz/ 5' x 7'/ 1992

Joe Hill 

Wobbly, Fellow Worker, Artist, Musician, Revolutionary

Framed-up by the Utah mining bosses and executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915.

The Preacher & the Slave

Long-haired preachers come out every night,

Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;

But when asked how 'bout something to eat

They will answer in voices so sweet

Chorus

You will eat, by and by,

In that glorious land above the sky;

Work and pray, live on hay,

You'll get pie in the sky when you die

And the Starvation Army, they play,

And they sing and they clap and they pray,

Till they get all your coin on the drum,

Then they tell you when you're on the bum

(Chorus)

Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out

And they holler, they jump and they shout

Give your money to Jesus, they say,

He will cure all diseases today

(Chorus)

If you fight hard for children and wife-

Try to get something good in this life-

You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,

When you die you will sure go to hell.

(Chorus)

Workingmen of all countries, unite

Side by side we for freedom will fight

When the world and its wealth we have gained

To the grafters we'll sing this refrain

Chorus (modified)

You will eat, by and by,

When you've learned how to cook and how to fry;

Chop some wood, 'twill do you good

Then you'll eat in the sweet by and by

                                   --- Joe Hill

Bread & Roses

BREAD & ROSES

Lawrence Textile Strike - March 12, 1912

5' x 7' Banner by Mike Alewitz 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Lawrence_Textile_Strike

Bread and Roses

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, 

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray 

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses, 

For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses." 

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men -- 

For they are women's children, and we mother them again. 

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes -- 

Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses. 

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead 

Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread; 

Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew -- 

Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for Roses, too. 

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days -- 

The rising of the women means the rising of the race -- 

No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes -- 

But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses. 

By James Oppenheim

1882-1932

LUCY PARSONS - March 7, 1942

LUCY PARSONS

d. March 7, 1942

Sindicalismo Sin Fronteras

by Mike Alewitz 

Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT) Building

Mexico City, April 1997/ Approx. 8' x 30'

 

 

* * * *

 

On April 5, 1997, a public inauguration of two new murals was held at the auditorium of the Frente Autentico Trabajadores (FAT) in Mexico City.   The event was part of a cross-border organizing project of the FAT and the United Electrical (UE) union.  The following is based on a dedication speech given by artist Mike Alewitz of the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP).  Alewitz and Daniel Manrique Arias of Mexico completed similar murals in Chicago in late summer:

 

 

Sisters and Brothers:

 

It is a humbling experience to come to Mexico to paint, for this country is the home of the modern mural movement, and gave birth to some of the greatest public art of this century.  Here is where the Rivera, Orozco and Siqueras were inspired by millions of peasants and workers to illustrate the historic conquests of the Revolution.  On a smaller scale, we are attempting to illustrate the UE-FAT efforts to build international solidarity and cross-border organizing.

 

It was Emiliano Zapata who gave the greatest political expression to the Mexican revolution, and it is under his watchful eyes that our mural unfolds.  We have also included the figures of Albert and Lucy Parsons.  Albert was one of the Haymarket martyrs, framed up and executed for his leadership in the Chicago labor movement’s fight for the eight-hour day.  

Lucy was also a leader in that movement, and she continued her revolutionary activities until she died at an old age.  She was of African-American and Mexican ancestry, was an early leader of the feminist movement, and a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. 

The Parsons hold in their hands some bread and a rose.  “Bread and Roses” was a slogan of the Lawrence textile strikers; women who demanded not only the bread of the union contract, but the rose to symbolize that workers deserve a rich spiritual and cultural life.

 

The quotation in the painting is from August Spies, also executed on November 11, 1887: 

“If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement...the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil in want and misery expect salvation-if that is your opinion, then hang us!  Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you-and in front of you, and everywhere, flames blaze up.  It is a subterranean fire.  You cannot put it out.” 
 

 

How fitting a quote for this land of volcanoes.  This is precisely what is happening today, as first a Los Angeles, and then a Chiapas explode, here and there, precursors of a generalized conflagration.  Our class is like the core of the earth, being compressed under ever-greater pressure, until forced to explode.

 

We are using this cultural project to illustrate our collective union vision.  Unions are the first line of defense for workers.  They keep us from getting killed or poisoned.  They allow us some basic human dignity.

 

Unfortunately, too often our unions resemble exclusive clubs, or worse, criminal gangs.  Even unions that pride themselves on being progressive are often bureaucratic and autocratic.  Without the full and active participation of the membership, all the weaknesses of our organizations emerge.  As workers, we often must not only battle the employers, but our own conservative leaderships as well.

 

This is a particular problem in the United States, where employers keep us stratified and divided.  They attempt to pit low-wage workers against the more privileged.  They use divide-and-conquer tactics to convince us to be for “labor peace.”  But labor peace is the peace of slavery, whether in the U.S. or in Mexico.

 

The Frente Autentico Trabajadores is helping to lead the struggle for genuine union democracy.  There have been, and will continue to be casualties in this historic fight.  And today we dedicate this mural to those who have been victimized in the struggle for union democracy.  This mural is the product of not only artists, but the thousands of workers who built our unions.  This is their mural.

 

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to denounce the criminal policies of the United States government.  In particular I denounce the economic sabotage of Mexico and the criminal embargo of Cuba.  

The gang in Washington does not speak for me, or millions of other American workers.  They are waging war upon our class.  They are my enemy and your enemy.  They represent the past - we are the future.  If we continue to forge these links of solidarity, they can never prevail.

 

Mike Alewitz

April 5, 1997

Mural Credits:

Assistants: Daniel Manrique Arias, Gustavo Diaz, Eduardo Candelas, Veronica Hernandez Martinez, Daniel Lopez G., Robin Alexander and numerous volunteers 

 

Robin Alexander, Christine Gauvreau, Benedicto Martinez and Gary Huck were instrumental in organizing the project

MALCOLM X - May 19, 1925

MALCOLM X

May 19, 1925

 X - Feb

Banner/ 5' x 12' by Mike Alewitz

“I'm not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an American...I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see an American dream, I see an American nightmare...They have got a con game going on, a political con game and you and I are in the middle. It’s time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and then we can deal with it like it is...”

                                                

- Malcolm X

MALCOLM X - Feb. 21, 1965

MALCOLM X

February 21, 1965

MALCOLM X - Feb

Banner/ 5' x 12' by Mike Alewitz

“I'm not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an American...I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see an American dream, I see an American nightmare...They have got a con game going on, a political con game and you and I are in the middle. It’s time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and then we can deal with it like it is...”

                                                

- Malcolm X

KAREN SILKWOOD - We Will Never Forget

KAREN SILKWOOD - b. February 19, 1946

We will never forget.

History of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union/ Union Action 

by Mike Alewitz 

One of five portable murals/ 7' x 10'/ 1994

http://picasaweb.google.com/Alewitz/HistoryOfTheOilChemical7AtomicWorkersUnion#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood

OCAW Reporter/ September-October, 1994

 

 

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On Monday, Aug. 29, muralist Mike Alewitz gave the following talk to the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union Convention in dedicating his mural on OCAW history to Karen Silkwood.

 

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THANK YOU, BROTHERS AND sisters. My purpose in being here today is to dedicate this mural, and before I do that, I want to say a few words about culture in the labor movement.

 

In 1913, a young journalist by the name of John Reed visited Paterson, N.J. during the historic silk workers' strike. He wrote an article for a magazine, and said: "There's a war going on in Paterson, but it's a strange war. The violence all comes from one side and it's directed against the workers."

 

John Reed, who was very young at the time, went to the workers. He learned of their struggle. He learned of the years that the workers in Paterson had spent overcoming the craft divisions within their industry. He learned of the years they'd spent overcoming the gender divisions, because there were a lot of women working in the silk mills — and overcoming the national divisions of many nationalities working together that couldn't even speak the same language.

 

He learned about how these workers had forged solidarity, and a unity, that enabled them to shut down Paterson, N.J., to shut down the silk industry there in a great struggle against speed-up and for basic human dignity.

 

In the midst of that historic struggle, Reed went to his artist friends in Greenwich Village, enlisted them in the struggle, and together with the workers, they organized a great pageant, which was a popular art form at the time.

The workers marched from Paterson to Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. They rigged up lights over Madison Square Garden that spelled out "IWW" for the Industrial Workers of the World.

 

Audience became performers

 

The workers marched in off the street and onto the stage where they re-enacted the different episodes of their historic strike, and the actual strike leaders, people like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and "Big Bill" Haywood, gave speeches they had actually given during the course of the strike. The workers led the audience in the singing of their strike songs.

 

The audience became the performers; the performers became the audience. It was the greatest pageant that had ever taken place in U.S. history. It pretty much destroyed pageantry as an elitist art form from that time on, because it told the stories of the workers.

 

John Reed understood that the real drama that was going on in society — the real drama in the world — was taking place in the streets of Paterson, not on the stages of fancy clubs in Manhattan. In 1913, the real story was what was taking place in Ludlow (Colorado), and in Paterson, and that has not changed to this day. It is still working class issues that provide the real drama for what is going on in society.

What could possibly be more dramatic than the plight of millions of immigrant workers driven into this country in search for economic betterment or political freedom? What could possibly be more dramatic than the Caterpillar strike going on in Illinois?

 

Genuine drama

 

What could be more dramatic than when oil workers shut down a country, as they have done in Nigeria, and lead a general strike that challenges the very foundations of power in an important African nation? That's genuine drama, not what we're fed on TV. It would be a good special to have — oil workers in a Nigerian strike on an HBO special.

 

Just as the workers in Nigeria realize that they produce the wealth (workers in this country are beginning to realize it too), they also produce ideas of culture. The Wobblies, as IWW members called themselves, understood that very well. Their cultural work was inseparable from their political activity of organizing. So they wrote song parodies, they cartooned. Before they went to jail, they would each learn different poems so they could recite them to each other while they were in jail.

 

Any living labor movement immediately turns to art and culture to inspire its members and those it wishes to win over. That has always been the tradition of the American labor movement. It was a tradition of the sit-down strikers who organized orchestras to serenade their members when they were inside the plant, and then transformed them into brass bands to march around cities when they had won their strikes. These same workers conducted theatre and wrote poetry.

 

That's what our little project — the Labor Art Mural Project (LAMP) — is trying to do. We're attempting to resurrect these traditions. It comes from our experience painting murals with P-9 strikers who waged a bitter strike against the Hormel Meatpacking Co., and with Pittston miners, painting on their walls and writing songs in the struggle against the mine owners.

 

Relearning some traditions

 

Cultural work is one of the traditions that has to be relearned, just like many of the other traditions in the labor movement that have gotten somewhat rusty:

Like the tradition of extending solidarity, wherever it may be, including across borders;
Like the tradition of ignoring illegal back-to-work injunctions handed down by judges in the pockets of employers (there are no legal injunctions — slavery has been outlawed in the United States);
Like the tradition of not voting for employers' political candidates, or the tradition of organizing the unorganized that you've been addressing at this convention.

 

In 1994, just as in 1913, there's a one-sided war going on, and if these traditions are not put back into practice, and if they're not relearned, then as President Wages pointed out this morning, the labor movement will perish.

It's been a privilege for me to sit here listening to some of your initial plans. I believe OCAW is attempting to ensure that the labor movement does not die, and in doing that, you've taken on a responsibility that goes beyond your own members and speaks to the hearts and minds of all workers — workers in other unions, workers who are unorganized, and workers who are just arriving in this country.

 

I believe this is most clearly expressed in your promotion of Labor Party Advocates, in the idea that workers are entitled to an independent voice in politics, just as they are entitled to an independent voice in culture. So here, I must put on my LPA cap on top of my artist's beret and take this opportunity to thank Tony Mazzocchi, who, I believe, has earned a special place in the labor movement. It is not an accident that the clearest voice over the past years in advocating the formation of a labor party is also in the forefront of promoting cultural activities for the labor movement.

The next project of LAMP will be a mural project with mushroom pickers in Eastern Pennsylvania. These workers have self-organized themselves into a union much as CIO workers did decades ago, much as drywall strikers recently did in Southern California.

 

These workers, mostly Mexican immigrant workers, have organized themselves into a union and are attempting to bring themselves into the AFL-CIO. If the labor movement does not embrace these kinds of workers and bring them into the AFL-CIO and into organized labor, someone else will get them.

 

And with that in mind, and with the tasks' that you have outlined in mind, it's a privilege and honor to dedicate this mural to Karen Silkwood.

 

A great heroine

 

Karen Silkwood was a great heroine. Not because she was murdered - the atomic industry has murdered many people. It's not an industry known for is respect of the sanctity of life. This is an industry that conducted tests on retarded children, that gave them irradiated milk and told them they were members of a science club. They've murdered many.

 

It wasn't dying that made Karen Silkwood great, it was how she lived that made her important for us and for the rest of labor. She made a conscious decision to place the interests of humanity and of her fellow workers above the interests of her job, and as some of your officers have pointed out at this convention, that is something that the workers alone can decide to do. No politician, no union official can change the world today; only workers can do that. That was expressed, I thought, very well by all of the artists in the presentation this morning.

 

So I dedicate this mural to Karen Silkwood because she showed us how to live and how to extend solidarity in real life by building her union.

 

They can't kill our movement'

 

I present this mural to you, the elected delegates of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, who represent the great rank and file of this union and those who, in the future, you will organize into its ranks.

 

The bosses killed Karen Silkwood, but they can't kill the union, they can't kill our movement. Karen Silkwood will rise again. Others will fill her shoes, new battles will unfold, labor will march forward.

 

Thank you for allowing me to be a small part of that process, to say these few words, and good luck on your convention. ■

 

Mike Alewitz directs the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP) at Rutgers Labor Education Center where he is Artist-in-Residence for the New Jersey Industrial Union Council. He is a well-known artist painting in the magic-realist tradition, and has organized and executed projects for the United Mine Workers, United Auto Workers and many other unions.

10  OCAW Reporter

September-October, 1994