DSA, Socialists, Unions and an Answer to a Query.

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired *

I wanted to add a little to this video so I'll do it here as I'm trying to keep it short. In this video I raise when I took a bunch of youth to my labor council with a resolution that the council have some response to the situation that existed after the LA uprising in response to the Rodney King beating. They were initially denied entry. I eventually got them in. One of them was a young guy named Peewee. Now I knew Peewee as a child, he is unfortunately dead now and was not one of those hanging out at the corner for good reason. But nevertheless, he was one of them that played Dungeons and Dragons in my house when he was small, so I knew him well until he graduated and I was told not to call him by his real name anymore up there but as Peewee. (I still have no idea what that game they played entailed).

Some weeks after that meeting I was backing out of my driveway as my wife and I were heading to the store, I lived two doors down from the corner and the two liquor stores on each side. As I started to head up to the corner I could hear some noise from the car and also noticed a young black guy approaching that I didn't recognize. But he was with the group at the store. He sort of bent down, as I sat there wondering what was up, and he pulled some shrubbery from under the care that was causing the noise. I had trimmed some shrubs earlier and one was caught under there.

Despite knowing those guys up there it was unusual for them to put themselves out in this way, plus, I didn't know him. So I thanked him for removing the obstruction causing the noise and he replied with "Peewee told me what you did at that meeting", he said nothing more than that and went back to the corner. We had handed out the resolution calling for the council to organize protests against police abuse, racism and for jobs.

It was a great confirmation to me of how right we were to do that. Imagine had the leadership of the labor movement, not just in my county but the state or even nationally, actually responded this way, the affect it would have had after the King events and the subsequent acquittal of the cops. It would have transformed the balance of class forces, certainly in my town, Oakland. It would have eased racial tensions as millions of black youth and other youth of color would have seen the unions and the racial divide in a totally different light.

And that is why as I say above, the labor hierarchy does not take such actions, refuses to really go on the offensive and fight to win; they are terrified of such a movement. It is the same reason they have attacked some of  those allies of the teachers in Kentucky and elsewhere.  For them it can only lead to chaos as they worship capitalism and the market so when it goes in to crisis and has to intensify the attacks on workers, the poor and the middle class and we all resist this, they suppress that resistance.

But I'll never forget what that youth did that day. It is one of those events that grounds me when I feel the desire to retreat.

This video is in response to a question I got in relation to this previous post.