Afscme
Local 444, retired
In the wake of the successful election of Kshama Sawant, an open socialist to the Seattle City Council, I looked up Socialist Alternative on Wikipedia. I found that Wikipedia’s US history of Socialist Alternative and the CWI to which the US group is affiliated, appears to have skipped over years when the group had a considerable influence in the US labor movement given its relatively small size. The “official” history is not a history at all. This is not an accident. This is what the Socialist Alternative historians have written on Wikipedia:
In the wake of the successful election of Kshama Sawant, an open socialist to the Seattle City Council, I looked up Socialist Alternative on Wikipedia. I found that Wikipedia’s US history of Socialist Alternative and the CWI to which the US group is affiliated, appears to have skipped over years when the group had a considerable influence in the US labor movement given its relatively small size. The “official” history is not a history at all. This is not an accident. This is what the Socialist Alternative historians have written on Wikipedia:
“Socialist Alternative was
originally formed as Labor Militant in 1986. In the mid-1990s, Labor Militant
became part of a national campaign to form the US Labor Party
where it became influential in the New York Metro Chapter. Labor Militant
members argued that the Labor Party should vigorously run candidates against
the Democrats, whereas the national leadership of the Labor Party wanted to
take a more cautious approach. After accusations of electoral
fraud in the New York Metro
Chapter around the vote to run candidates against Democrats, the chapter was
subsequently closed.”
The
official history jumps from 1986 to the mid nineties, apparently a ten-year
period where nothing much happened. Then
the historians write: “From 1998 to 2002
Socialist Alternative was active……..”. I want to attempt here to introduce the many
young people who have joined or are supporters of the tremendous work Socialist
Alternative has done of late, to some important history that has been left out
and think about why some of us have been written out of history so that with
some effort and some luck, the new fresh layers joining Socialist Alternative can rescue the organization from the
bureaucratic centralist clique that heads it.
What
the Socialist Alternative historians have
done here is provide the reader with a tailored description of
nothing. According to this “official” history, Socialist
Alternative began as Labor Militant in 1986. However, before we founded our
paper in 1986 a paper called Labor Militant, we already used the name Labor
Militant, and before that, the Labor and
Trade Union Group. Comrades since
left or expelled like Martin Legassick, Marcie Barnett, John Throne were among
the earliest contributors to the founding of what is now Socialist
Alternative. When I joined in 1984,
there were three of us in Oakland CA, all union activists, Margie Clouser, (CWA)
John Reimann (Carpenters) and myself (AFSCME.)
The
early US section of the CWI also built various campaigns among the youth, in
particular in Seattle where the Youth Defense Campaign had about 250 members.
There were YDC campaigns in Chicago, New York and perhaps in Boston but I am
not sure. Here in the East SF Bay Area we had a very strong working class
branch with members of Afscme, the Carpenters, CWA, Maritime unions,
electricians, Teamsters and teachers at various times. This strong rank and
file union base was a factor in helping these comrades stand against the
negative influence of the union bureaucracy. We had active branches in Oakland
CA, Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia and Seattle. We had three
branches in Canada I believe, Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton at one time. Many
of the older members, present leading comrades in SALT, are still active. They
are collaborators in the whitewashing of history.
In
Oakland, before we had a US paper we used to sell the British paper and I
assume comrades did in other branches around the country. We also sold the Panther paper that was
produced out of London UK and that disappeared as quickly as it appeared with
no explanation as to why. Most of my activity was in the workplace and the
labor movement.
Thanks from Sri Lanka for 444 support |
Read letter from Rob Rooke here:
Labor
Militant and Afscme local 444 also played a role in the aftermath of the Rodney
King verdict and exoneration of the cops. I used to visit a former LA gang
leader in prison, he had organized the gang truces after the King verdict and
was framed by the cops and given a 10 year sentence. LM organized a Free Dewayne Holmes campaign
in the labor movement with local 444’s help.
LM was involved in numerous cases of youth shot by police, like Jerrold
Hall, and also had a member who was on death row, another former gang member
who was eventually executed by the state.
Local 444 to Israeli embassy on Mahmoud's behalf |
ILWU local 6 endorses Mazzochi meeting |
Also
in the eighties, myself and another co-worker were elected Local 444 delegates
to a Labor Notes conference in Detroit. At
that conference Anthony Mazzochi of the since disbanded Oil, Chemical and
Atomic Workers Union was speaking on the need for a Labor Party. OCAW merged with the United Paperworkers’
International Union in 1999 after existing for 82 years. If you have seen the movie Silkwood, it was
Mazzochi Karen Silkwood was going to meet when her car was driven off the road
ending her life.
LM
had discussed this labor official as he was traveling the country calling on the
need for workers to have our own party.
We approached Mazzochi in Detroit and asked if he would come and speak
at a public meeting in Oakland CA on the issue of a Labor Party based on the
trade unions. He said that he would if
invited to do so by a union. I raised
the issue at my union meeting and Local 444 officially invited Mazzochi to
speak and the meeting, was a great success. With the support of Afscme Local
444, the meeting was also endorsed by SEIU locals, ILWU local 6, and other
Afscme Locals and I think the Teamsters. I still have the video of that
meeting. Mazzochi told us afterwards that it was the success of that meeting that
led him to form Labor Party Advocates in the mid nineties. There was also a
meeting in NYC that he spoke at and comrades in NYC were very much involved in
this effort.
LM
also sent the West Coast full timer, John Reimann, a member of the carpenters union
and since expelled from it for his role in the 1999 wildcat strike, to Chiapas
where he spent time and discussed with the Zapatistas after that uprising in
the late nineties.
I was perhaps the most widely known oppositionist in Afscme
at one point, a union in the US that had about 1.3 million members in it at the
time. It was I think the fastest growing union in the country back then. Before
five of us were expelled from the CWI the Oakland branch was the most union
oriented. We were practically all active in our locals and the higher bodies.
The expulsions meant the collapse of the CWI branch with the strongest links to
the rank and file of the union movement where our influence was significant
given our relatively small numbers, due in many ways to the local to which I
belonged. I had already built somewhat
of a rank and file base in this union before I met and joined the CWI. The CWI more than any other force, helped me
understand the period we were in and how we got there, which meant I has a much
clearer understanding of the dynamics that existed in the movement and my
workplace especially. Why could I not
get my co-workers active? Why would the
union leadership not fight? And how could I change that? In short, the CWI
helped me develop perspectives based on the material conditions around me and
helped me fight for reforms and raise the ideas of socialism in the workplace
in a way that was not ultra left and disconnected from the consciousness.
In the early nineties I handed out a one-page article at one
of the International conventions in San Diego to which I was a delegate. I was
an elected delegate to most of the Afscme Conventions from 1980 to 1996. It was
a piece called “lets be realistic” or something similar (I have it somewhere).
The purpose was to test the waters, see what the mood was like for building
some sort of United Front within that union. It was critical of the
leadership’s politics and philosophy that was handed to us in a concise
nutshell every time they refused to take on the bosses, “ We have to be
realistic” we are always told as a justification for concessions.
AMSU flier for convention caucus meeting 1996 |
The Afscme Activist went on to be subscribed to by locals in
10 states (usually 50 copies each for their meetings) from Arizona to Wisconsin
as well as having 250 individual subscribers.
We also sold it at meetings, union gatherings and events and at other
conventions like the California State Labor Federation which I attended, and
District Council meetings. The Labor Notes crowd for sectarian reasons and because
it was too critical of the bureaucracy, avoided it like the plague.
I was on the LM National Committee and at our meetings we
had decided this was to be a United Front effort. We accepted that in such a formation it was
possible we could lose the leadership of it and would take our place in the
ranks if that happened, although at the stage we were in it was unlikely.
Supporters would send me articles and suggestions and we got to a point where
we decided we would try to get the workers involved in more than a secondary
way as supporters etc. by electing an editorial board at the convention in
Chicago in 1996. As the editor and a prominent rank and file member of Afscme
with a very supportive local, it was natural it was me that had encouraged
these Afscme members to support the newsletter and bring them in. So in Chicago we took two steps. One was to
elect the editorial board and the other was the holding of public meeting of
rank and file activists, particularly those whose locals had supported the paper.
The public meeting was a great success with over 100 rank
and file members attending and mostly absent the usual suspects, the left and
the so-called revolutionaries. We had planned to run Afscme Activist candidates
at the next convention two years down the road as a means of building a caucus.
The election to the editorial board would have been a success as it would have been the beginning of a real opposition caucus around a newsletter with a growing audience in a major US union. The two CWI comrades that came, one from the East Coast and another from Chicago, voted against the formation of an editorial board and tried to wreck it. The position now apparently was that the Afscme Activist was not the publication of a United Front but a Labor Militant/CWI organ. This was news to me not to mention all the rank and file unionists connected to it. The comrade from New York (unbeknownst to the rest of us they were in secret discussions with the Walsh/Taffe faction behind our backs) along with other Afscme comrades in Philadelphia did very little to build this United Front using the Afscme Activist as a tool, despite having the two largest Afscme District Councils on their doorstep. The NYC council, DC 37, had 128,000 members at the time.
The election to the editorial board would have been a success as it would have been the beginning of a real opposition caucus around a newsletter with a growing audience in a major US union. The two CWI comrades that came, one from the East Coast and another from Chicago, voted against the formation of an editorial board and tried to wreck it. The position now apparently was that the Afscme Activist was not the publication of a United Front but a Labor Militant/CWI organ. This was news to me not to mention all the rank and file unionists connected to it. The comrade from New York (unbeknownst to the rest of us they were in secret discussions with the Walsh/Taffe faction behind our backs) along with other Afscme comrades in Philadelphia did very little to build this United Front using the Afscme Activist as a tool, despite having the two largest Afscme District Councils on their doorstep. The NYC council, DC 37, had 128,000 members at the time.
I
was trusted by these (mostly women) that had helped build the AA. After the
vote, when the two CWI comrades, Steve Edwards and Tom Trottier, opposed these
rank and file union members being on an editorial board of a newsletter they
were central in building, the workers were perplexed. I still remember the
looks on their faces. I never lied to
them about my CWI membership or our US group but they couldn’t figure out why
my comrades behaved the way they did. So I told them. I am still clean with
these people today.
As
the Afscme Activist had magically become a Labor Militant publication or
“organ” as it was put to me. The CWI demanded that I handed over the names and
addresses of the Activist subscribers to the group. I refused to do so. My
position was this was not my decision; it was the decision of the United Front. It was also becoming apparent to me that the
position they were taking regarding the Afscme Activist was for purely
factional reasons. The CWI leadership in
London was working behind the scenes to expel John Throne. There was also other
stuff developing, the secret discussions with a degenerate named Carlos Petroni
and his group who helped expel us then left the CWI after some crap I don’t
know what. So my position re the CWI’s tactics was when the so-called vanguard
does not represent the interests of the class, the vanguard has to go.
I have no regrets for my years with the CWI. The CWI taught
me a great deal. I am a better man for my association with the CWI and a
healthier one by being expelled. But for all the money I donated, we had
ferocious fundraising drives; it was still worth it. But what gets me about CWI
people I am still connected to via FB or other means, is they have claimed they
didn’t know that I was expelled and that the CWI hasn’t expelled anyone. Where
the hell did they all go I wonder? There
are literally thousands of socialists, dedicated revolutionaries and activists
from all walks of life who are outside the left groups, not just the CWI. There
are more revolutionaries outside of left groups than in them.
Surely, the question has to be asked why so many dedicated
loyal revolutionaries end up this way.
They treated us worse than the bourgeois do. John Throne, who was the
leading figure here in the US was becoming sicker by the day as he has an auto
immune disease (the CWI spread the rumor he had Aids and accused him of
extortion and stealing money, outrageous slanders that the accusers have never
retracted. He was dumped and had no health insurance or job). John Reimann our full timer had been out of
work for 10 years. I was fortunate in that I had a public sector job. What is
it that one closes one’s eyes to all this?
Is it the desperate desire to belong?
I
don’t intend to go in to the details behind our expulsions in depth. Differences became more apparent after we
became involved in Mazzochi’s labor party efforts. We never had the position
that a labor party would be built with Mazzochi’s method, going after the one’s
and twos. We intervened in Mazzochi’s campaign because we knew that many
genuine workers, fresh layers of activists, would be drawn to the campaign and
we believed it was important to be there to help them maintain their political
activity (hopefully with LM) after it became obvious Mazzochi’s efforts would
come to nought. This was to come sooner than later as the left wing of the
labor bureaucracy, many of them members of socialist organizations, became
involved once a section of the labor leadership did so.
Proposal for public forum for Mazzochi, Sanders and Stump |
The
last thing I want to say is that the most aggrieved here is the working class
and particularly those that helped the CWI through me, play a significant role
in the trade union movement and also in the formation of Mazzochi’s Labor Party
Advocates. It was the Walsh/Taffe faction’s US comrades that got lost in that
trade union milieu and how the original division first manifested itself. Changing
the name of the paper to “Justice” was tell-tale enough; it would offend no
one. Everyone believes in Justice. It was diverted to organizational details
and John Throne was the target as the “top down” guru. I agree he was top down, so was John Reimann,
Alan Akrivos, Tony Willsden, Steve Edwards Rob Rooke and others still around
today. And so was I. All of the
leadership was. Brand new young
ambitious student comrades like Philip Locker opportunistically jumped on this
bandwagon although we hardly knew them and had no interaction with them at all
for the most part.
We
all agreed to and accepted a false method. The Taffe/Walsh faction used this to
rid the CWI international of John Throne who was not on board with the program and
was questioning the CWI’s methods and Reimann who raised issues that were not
popular also. They were both on international bodies, I was not. It was thought
I might come on board but I was not about to scapegoat two comrades who had
played such an important role in making the CWI a small force within organized
labor and in this country as a whole.
That the organization had serious flaws is correct, we all agreed to the
methods. Some of us drew conclusions, saw the weaknesses and have admitted
them. Others refuse to do so and still either participate in the slanders,
either directly or by their silence. All
for a peaceful life.
Some
rank and file members of my local played a huge role in helping the CWI grow
and gain influence, they gave it credibility in a sense that we were not an
organization of usual suspects. We had
genuine worker supporters. The CWI betrayed my local and its members, and the
working class as a whole wanting to control and eventually destroy a United
Front simply for factional reasons.
Like
the Stalinists, the CWI has written Afscme local 444 out of history, strike and
all. John Throne who played such an important role in building the CWI here and
always did the work on the ground with all of us has been written out of
history as has Lisa Hane, a worker who was our treasurer and one of the
builders of the Seattle Youth Defense Campaign. Socialist Alternative history
begins in 1996 and before that a vacuum? There have been similar occurrences, splits
and expulsions in many countries where the CWI has a base. In Ireland, two women members of the Irish
parliament, Clare Daly and Joan Collins are no longer in the CWI. Instead of
slanders and demonizing former comrades, it is crucial the CWI membership
discuss these issues from the ground up and in a political way.
In
countries where there was an active opposition these are not mentioned. This is
information the SA members have to have. An organization that does not discuss
these issues from the ground up cannot survive. We were all part of the method
that led to the leadership handing down the line and with the help of a loyal
full time apparatus, the members being convinced of its greatness. The slate system for electing the leadership
for example is profoundly undemocratic, expecting a new person to challenge the
outgoing leadership’s slate. Some of us
have admitted these mistakes and are trying to learn from them, not just
mistakes in general, but openly admitting our role in perpetuating them.
We
have also drawn the conclusion that the internal life of the CWI was always top
down, always bureaucratic centralist. It
mattered less during the post war boom when the perspectives were generally
correct but after the collapse of Stalinism in particular, the organization
began to disintegrate. New young members
excited by the successes should be aware that the CWI has had great successes
before. It had members in the British Parliament, controlled the City of
Liverpool Council, had over 10,000 members and organized the Anti-Poll Tax
federations that helped bring down Thatcher.
I
want add that this is primarily a commentary based on the author’s experiences.
There are many comrades that played important roles that I have not mentioned
here, comrades on the East Coast, Canada, like Steve Pybus who has since passed
away, and other comrades throughout the world from Ireland to South Africa. The
CWI like all the left groups has an unhealthy internal life. Why does the
leadership keep this history and the history of the numerous oppositions and
dissenting opinions from their own members?
For
years, I told my co-workers the former Soviet Union could not go back to
capitalism. We were wrong. What happened
to the Panther paper, the splits and decline?
These issues, like all issues as well as the history of an organization
has to be discussed thoroughly throughout an organization from top to bottom,
not the other way round. Not brought to
the membership after the leadership has decided the line on it. The new young comrades joining the CWI in the
wake of the recent successes must remember that they are not the first such
successes, it is the duty of the membership to ensure that a democratic
internal life becomes the norm.
There
is one simple issue that should warn us of the degeneration of an organization,
or its incorrect methodology. Any organization that has the same leader for 45
years (and almost always male) is not a healthy one.
Heavens
forbid they gain state power.
Related
commentaries:
3 comments:
I was part of SA for a while until a couple years before Sawant's success. In general, the group was opaque about the group's history and positions. I watched new members who brought a certain brilliance with them, and were eager to contribute, get swatted down by leading cadres because there was already a different, settled opinion on the matter. Even today, there's still no easy way for a new or prospective member to learn what the party line is on certain issues, and if you want to do anything but hawk newspapers to the same few dozen activists or to college students, you have to know what they are.
The internal structure is already one that strongly tends toward groupthink, and the opacity of the group's history makes it practically impossible for a member to effectively counteract any of it. The failure to learn any modern psychology, game theory, or political science, is only exacerbating the problems, as the leadership trots out (ha! pun intended!) in response to any criticism the same tired quotes from Lenin and others as though they were the infallible wisdom of the Buddha.
My conclusion is that Socialist Alternative and the entire CWI function like a cult. I'm not the first to make this claim, either. It's hopelessly dysfunctional and soul crushing, and the membership is better off just getting out before they waste too much of their life on this or any other fossil of the Leninist dinosaur.
Hi Myra, thanks for taking the time to comment on this piece. Is there some way I can contact you? My e mail is aactivist@igc.org or you can use the blogs e mail to the right of the main page at the top.
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