NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9798

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From: New Liberation News Service <[e-mail]>
Subject: SF CLUW leader: No to Democrats!
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/* Written  4:41 pm  Jan  4, 1993 by [e-mail] in
igc:labor.newsline */
/* ---------- "SF CLUW leader: No to Democrats!" ---------- */
 The Organizer, 4017 24th St., Suite #19, San Francisco, CA, 94114
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Editors' Note: Following is the presentation made at the Dec. 5-6
Labor Party Advocates conference in Detroit by Millie Phillips,
president of the San Francisco chapter of the Coalition of Labor
Union Women.

I'm very honored to be an invited panelist at this conference. I
joined Labor Party Advocates almost as soon as I became aware of
it. As some of you may know, I was a co-coordinator of the July
Independent Labor Political Action conference held in San
Francisco by the Labor Party Forum and am now a member of the
steering committee of the Labor Party Organizing Network formed at
that conference. I'm presently working on building Tony
Mazzocchi's upcoming Bay Area tour along with other Bay Area LPA
activists.  Let me turn to the subject of this panel: labor and
the Democratic Party.  There are a lot of arguments against the
formation of a labor party. Some of them involve whether it is
realistic to break with the Democrats. Can it win elections? Will
it pull votes away from so-called 'progressive' Democrats, thus
ensuring the election of conservatives? Is a labor, that is,
union-based, party the way to go? Is labor an adequate base? With
the labor leadership disproportionately white and male and often
coming from a background where progressive politics were
red-baited, is it realistic to build a party that will not only
make a serious break with the Democrats but reflect gender and
racial diversity and be genuinely international in its approach?
Need for a clean break First of all, we must be absolutely clear
of the need to make a clean break with the Democratic Party. We
cannot be diverted by the 'friends of labor' argument. We must
expose the Democratic Party, along with the myth of 'progressive'
Democrats, for what it is: an absolute con job.  Even among the
most liberal of Democrats, there is not uncompromising support for
the most basic agenda of organized labor, such as the right to
strike. Ron Dellums, from our area, voted in a way that
effectively denied railroad workers the right to strike. [See
pages 8-9 for more on this topic.] What more basic issue is there
than the right to strike? Dellums is said to be under
consideration as Clinton's secretary of defense. Given that
Clinton's foreign policy positions are in some ways even to the
right of George Bush's, do you think he would consider someone who
wasn't willing to carry out his agenda?  As Baldemar Velazquez [of
FLOC] stated, one of the key issues facing labor and all of the
American working class is the North American Free Trade Agreement.
We all know Clinton supports it. The allegedly ultra-liberal
congresswoman from my own district, Nancy Pelosi, voted for
fast-tracking NAFTA. When challenged. weakly, by labor leaders,
she argued that NAFTA would 'create jobs' and she had to consider
the larger welfare of the California economy, extremely hard hit
by the present recession.  From a worker's perspective, NAFTA
would be an absolute disaster for California, where heavy industry
has been gutted, high-tech industry is in decline, and even
severely exploitative and underpaid jobs in agriculture are being
eliminated by U.S. corporations that have moved operations to
Mexico.  Clinton and Big Business Clinton's answer? 'Free
enterprise zones' in South Central L.A., 'jointism,' privatization
and deregulation (translate union-busting) for those of us who
aren't already absolutely impoverished. And on issues that aren't
specifically labeled labor, the record is the same.  If Clinton is
so pro-choice, why did he support parental consent laws in
Arkansas and tolerate the institutionalized sexual harassment of
AFDC recipients? Why did 'feminist' Dianne Feinstein oppose
domestic-partner legislation and repeatedly try to slash the pay
and benefits of city workers when she was mayor of San Francisco?
And on the environment: Why did Clinton help Tyson Chicken, famous
also for its anti-worker attitudes, get exemptions from polluting
rivers? Why did almost all the Democrats in Congress support the
Gulf War which, outside of its other atrocious features, is one of
history's greatest environmental disasters? Why the renewed push
for nuclear power as a 'solution' to the greenhouse effect?  Why,
when it is obvious to workers terrorized by rising medical bills,
declining insurance coverage, and blatant medical discrimination
in employment, that a Canadian-style healthcare system is an
absolutely necessary and immediate need - and cost- effective to
boot - does Clinton support a minimal reform plan originally
raised by Richard Nixon?  The answer is starkly obvious. The
Democratic Party is one of the twin parties of Big Business. As
Clinton said to the California AFL-CIO convention earlier this
year, 'the real future of Americans is in putting labor and
management back on the same side again.' You don't have to be Karl
Marx to realize that the fundamental interests of workers and
management are noticeably different!  John Ong, chairman of the
Business Roundtable, sums up Clinton's side:  'Clinton is
addressing our agenda.' With many union leaders proclaiming the
Clinton victory as our victory, it will be even harder to fight
Clinton's version of crushing labor. Clinton is already a proven
strike-breaker. Will he sign no-scab legislation as promised
without demanding that it include the fatal pay-off of compulsory
arbitration?  Labor party or New Party?  We must break with the
Democrats, but is a labor party the way to go? What about the New
Party, the 21st Century Party, the Greens and others who, on the
surface, appear to appeal to a broader base, aggressively drawing
in the feminist and environmental movements, for example.  Given
that sexism, racism, homophobia and national chauvinism aren't
lacking in the upper echelons of organized labor and even, on
occasion, among the ranks, many women I work with in CLUW are
looking to the New Party. They aren't sure a labor party will
truly represent them as women.  But there is one very basically
wrong thing about the New Party and other such alternatives,
though they are right to make policy demands and encourage
diversity: They don't call for a clean break with the Democrats.
They openly support endorsing 'friendly' Democrats.  Sandy Pope,
former executive director of CLUW and now a founding leader of the
New Party, aptly compares the relationship of progressives and the
Democratic Party as an 'abusive relationship.' She states: 'The
best way to end an abusive relationship is to develop the ability
to leave it. We need a meaningful threat of exit from the
Democratic Party - a new party that can punish unaccountable
Democrats by running against them and reward nice ones by not.' As
anyone who has worked with victims of domestic violence can tell
you, her conclusion is flat out wrong. You end an abusive
relationship by leaving. You don't make manipulative deals with
abusers. Our role, as labor party advocates, is like the role of
battered women's shelters and support groups:  We provide the base
outside the abusive relationship which gives the victim a place to
go when she leaves, a place where she can develop her independent
strengths and skills.  An abuser plays with his victims. He
apologizes, promises, cajoles, until the victim returns and then
he does it again, and again. Doesn't that remind you of election
year? Honey, give me one more chance and I'll never hit you again.
No! We don't need alternative parties that can lead us back in
again. U.S.  history is peppered with these. The American Labor
Party [see article page 14], the Progressives, the Populists.
Recently, Jesse Jackson's Rainbow played a similar role.  Jerry
Gordon, an organizer of this conference, said it right ' My view
is that the labor movement should break with the Democrats -
immediately, decisively, irreversibly, and definitively.' That's
my view, too.  Unions at base of effort I agree that the unions
should be at the base of this effort. The unions are the only
organizations in the U.S. that are based on working people. No
other progressive movement has the financial and volunteer
resources and level of organization that we do. When we choose to
use it, we have organized economic power greater than any other
social movement.  But, I think if we are to be successful in our
effort to break with the Democrats, we must broaden our appeal to
support the diversity of the labor movement and reach out to the
entire working class. Women, people of color, lesbians and gays,
immigrants, and those who have lost the opportunity to earn a
decent union wage, must be embraced by our efforts and be fully
integrated into the labor party movement at all levels.  We need
to develop a basic program to achieve goals of particular
importance to women and other oppressed sectors, as well as defend
basic rights for labor as a whole. Calling for universal health
insurance would be a good place to start. We can address
reproductive choice, education and housing, taxing the rich,
converting the military budget to domestic social service
spending, and extending active solidarity to our brothers and
sisters in other countries.  And, since there can be no reform
without survival, we will be most successful if we are staunchly
environmentalist and proudly antiwar. Taking an uncompromisingly
pro-worker position on any one of these issues counterposes us to
the Democrats. But, more importantly, it gives us something to be
for not just against. This will attract those activists already
committed to these battles into our ranks.  Running candidates for
office To demonstrate our seriousness about building a party, not
just a pressure group, we could also begin to support efforts by
union-led coalitions to run candidates for public office. The
efforts in New Jersey show the way forward.  There, a group of
union locals and labor councils are preparing a slate of
independent candidates for local office.  I hope we will hear more
about this later. Independents can be elected with the resources
of organized labor behind them. While it is true that our first
victorious officeholders may be outvoted, nonetheless, they can
use their public presence to organize issue campaigns among their
constituencies and gain valuable media coverage for our ideas.  We
all know people who held their noses and voted for Clinton, and
for state and local Democrats, because they didn't feel they had a
choice. In all honesty, they didn't have credible alternatives to
vote for. That really won't change by itself. We must change it.
Though Labor Party Forum and Labor Party Organizing Network are
not counterposed to LPA, I am helping to organize them because I
want to work on building the next steps toward a labor party now.
I see those steps as developing a diverse movement such as
reaching out to groups like Black Workers for Justice, putting
forward a basic program, and beginning to run candidates. I didn't
feel LPA was moving quickly enough on these issues, and I wanted
more of a focus on reaching out to the broader community and
developing international links. But what I'm seeing here today is
what I hoped all along LPA could be.  Let's seize the moment Now
that the Democrats are in power, we need to be ready to seize the
moment in each of their pending betrayals. I would like to see LPA
build a national conference soon. We need to build visible LPA
chapters in every area of the country. Though our work for a labor
party has taken different forms in different areas, we should have
as a goal working together to achieve an absolute break from the
Democratic Party. That is the most profound responsibility of our
era.  The bipartisan attack on organized labor and against all
workers' standard of living is a key element of the New World
Order. These are Bush's words, but Clinton and the Democrats'
program, too. The New World Order also includes the continued
assault on the world environment and the continued use of military
threat and action to police the world on behalf of multinational
corporate profit.  Given that the environmental crisis is rapidly
reaching the point of no return, that there is still a danger of
U.S. military aggression escalating into nuclear war, given the
horrors of mass starvation, the very survival of all humanity
depends on developing a decisive working class political response.
Our unions here have the resources to build a political party that
could lead this response. Let us not be found lacking in this, our
historical mission.  Thank you.