Who’ll Speak Up?
“In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
–Pastor Martin Niemöller
Uriah Stephens, Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie, Paul Roberson, A. Phillip Randolph, Albert Shanker and a host of other long-dead champions of working-class Americans must all be spinning in their graves as workers and their rights are coming under attack all across America from the far right. In state after state, newly-elected Republican governors are speciously using budget deficits to scare legislators into rolling back hard-won gains of labor unions… while threatening to decimate the middleclass in the process.
Few can reasonably argue with the fact some aspects of labor agreements are in need of adjusting… some costs are no longer bearable by the taxpayer. But that’s not what this fight is about… this is a conservative attempt at union-busting plain and simple.
Currently, former Ohio governor Ted Strickland, at the behest of the Ohio Democratic Party, is beseeching folks to stand up for union members against the reactionary onslaught being launched by present governor John Kasich. And, in the name of unity, I (as well as other people of color) need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with unionists from around the state… no matter the fact that Strickland (nor any other whites) stood up with blacks when Kasich early-on failed to name any minorities to his cabinet.
And we’ll stand up with toll takers on the Ohio Turnpike who are facing severe pay cuts in spite of the fact the Teamsters Union (which represents those workers) has done everything it could over the years to keep blacks out of those jobs. Really, how many toll takers of color have you — or anyone else — ever seen working in a booth on the Ohio Turnpike?
A woman I was once very close to eventually became a toll taker years ago, and she went through racial hell… and the union that represented her did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Indeed, it only added to her hell.
Yet we’ll stand up for unions that never stood up for us because we still hold out hope leaders of the American union movement will eventually come to understand why unions now only represent nine percent of workers in America: In their heyday they were persuaded by management to not embrace black workers, the race card was successfully played… and this has lead to unions’ precipitous decline in this country. The movement lost its moral high ground. Nonetheless, unionization still holds out the best hope for workers to organize for fair treatment from employers… now more than ever as more and more companies treat workers as interchangeable parts.
Facts are facts and numbers are numbers: Union membership in America is highest among public service workers (35 percent)… jobs where Civil Service insured minorities had parity in the hiring process and protected their rights once they were on the job. Hell, the U.S. Postal Service virtually created the black middleclass.
No matter. We’ll stand up with white workers who didn’t stand up for us because to not do so would be short-sighted and foolhardy. As foolhardy as union leaders have been for not standing up for us over the years.
But stand up and do what? Make noise and disperse at the first barked order from someone in authority? Or, will unionized workers who march on the State Capitol next week be brave enough to do what Dr. King and his followers did? Join hands and say “We will not be moved.”
The time for civil disobedience in America may well nigh be at hand.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com.Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Who’ll Speak Up?”
Hank Wait
It is indeed time to stand up. Not just to stand up but to not sit down. Kasich and company will try to wait it out. Make them wait. Don’t back down. Also don’t forget when it is election time. This is NOT about budget problems. The governemtn workers, despite the fallacies spewed by the right, make LESS money than the private sector (ithis incudles their benefits) And if they do get rid of collective bargaining then it is time to strike and bring society to a standstill. That was what was gained by collective bargaining if they take it away go back to the way it was prior to it. Strikes work stoppage etc. It is war.
Carey B Yancey
The current of change is to be coped with sense of command and demand! The organized always had advantage over the unorganized in truth of life and this is the case now. Freedom is invented order to command and demand in nature. Thus is why education is needed of Human Culture. The haves are a developed order with options in play to keep in play to command and demand with rule and regulation to conserve powers understood as their invented special interest. Thus is why power corrupt of Human Culture invented from the past to influence now! But we are in the age of information to have enriched minds and hearts to secure freedom for all people of national family to blend and secure as United States of America. We are to realize free civil order as peace to render our greater good that command and demand to keep us all!