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Lackluster Democratic Speechifying 9-4-03 |
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by Bill Gorrell
(No verified email address) |
15 Sep 2003
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LIUNA Local 703 member Bill Gorrell's rant about the Democratic presidential debates. Originally aired 9-4-03 during the Illinois Labor Hour, WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign. |
I’ve got a couple of things to talk about today. First, I heard that Charles Bronson died last weekend and that in addition to his acting career, he work as a coal miner in his youth. Perhaps he drew on that experience when playing Jock Yablonski in the movie “Act of Vengeance” released in 1986. Unlike the “Deathwish” series where Bronson dishes out vengeance, Yablonski is the victim of political revenge. Our older listeners may remember that Yablonski was murdered in 1969 after he challenged incumbent Tony Boyle for the presidency of the United Mine Workers.
Yablonsky was a high-ranking Mine Workers official fed up with the corruption and anti-democratic practices of the union, who ran against Boyle as a reform candidate after spending years as Boyle‘s lackey. Boyle put a contract out on Yablonski that resulted in the brutal murder of Yablonski, his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, the film plays like a network “Movie of the Week” and with Bronson’s Yablonski giving rather lackluster speeches during his campaign. On the other hand, the usually wise and cuddly Wilford Brimley is cast against type as the stupid and vile Tony Boyle. In addition, young Keanu Reeves is chilling for a few short minutes as one of Yablonski’s assassins.
You might find “Act of Vengeance” as I did on a cable channel. For a more informative and grassroots account of the same Mine Workers election, see the book “Which Side are You On” by labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan. Geoghegan began his career as a labor activist by serving as a poll watcher during the election recounted in “Act of Vengeance.”
I watched some more lackluster speechifying this week during the latest Democratic debate held at the University of New Mexico and broadcasted by PBS. Kucinich displayed the most fire along with the best ideas, although I really enjoyed Gephardt’s repeated references to George W. Bush’s “miserable failures.” Actually, this was not as much a debate between candidates, as it was a bitchfest against Bush. For the most part, the differences displayed by the candidates were more on the level of nuance than major substance.
However, there were a few sparks between Leiberman and Dean on international trade. Leiberman quoted a newspaper interview where Dean stated that he wouldn’t have trade agreements with nations that didn’t “observe fully American standards.” He claimed that the result of holding other countries to our standards would destroy our trade agreements with most of the rest of the world and cost us millions of jobs. Leiberman went on to say, “if that ever happened, I’d say that the Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression.“ Dean responded by backpedaling to a position where he would insist on trading partners following standards set by the International Labor Organization.
For the most part, all of the candidates agreed that our trading partners need better labor, environmental and human rights standard, whether those standards are enforced by dismantling current treaties and trade organizations or by modifying existing ones. Kucinich explained that we must do away with the WTO and our free trade agreements because the WTO says that requiring labor, human rights, and environmental standards in trade agreements is, “WTO illegal.”
Except for Kucinich, the candidates seem to accept the idea that we must work with the status quo on trade and that the sky would fall if we did too much too soon. I see these opinions as extending the colonial and imperial attitudes that have inflicted untold suffering on billions of people over the last five hundred years. You know the story. First, white people arrived in big ships and rode up on big horses to meet the friendly natives. Of course, these white people also had big guns and big swords. Instead of treating the indigenous population with respect and dignity by fairly trading with them, the invaders usually began using their technological advantage to rob, rape, and pillage from the get-go. Of course, the white people were blessed by the Christian god and possessed the divine right to plunder the world’s resources and enslave the world’s heathen population. Even if the indigenous people traded their religion and the rest of their culture for values of the invaders, the proto-capitalist pirates said that the natives were racially inferior and thus had no rights but the right to serve as the slaves and playthings of the European and American conquerors.
Tragically, it is beyond the pale, perhaps even beyond the understanding of almost all American politicians to recognize that the great nation they continually praise as a beacon of freedom and democracy and progress was built on the suffering and massacre of unknown numbers of Indigenous Americans, Mexicans, Central Americans, African slaves, Filipinos and more peoples than I have time to list here. They don’t recognize that our current privileged status is sustained by the descendants of the same people enslaved, impoverished, and exploited by our ancestors in the name of god and country. They don’t admit that it was the children of our working class who served as cannon fodder for the elites’ conquest of the world. They don’t mention how the rest of the world continues to suffer under the burden of our unbalanced and unfair use of 40% of the entire planet’s resources, much of which goes to fuel the cruel military machine that simultaneously dominates the globe and perverts our society, economy, and our people.
The answer is not a Democratic president. The answer is the total repudiation and dismantling of the pirate system we call capitalism here, and for that matter, in Europe. Only then will the rest of the world have a chance to develop. Only then will the vast majority of the world’s people have a chance at a free, healthy, and decent life. Only then will our puppet dictators throughout the world be forced to step down. Only then, can we quit being the world’s biggest, gluttonous, bigoted, pirate nation and truly become the fabled beacon of truth, freedom, democracy, and progress that we have falsely claimed to be for centuries.
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