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Feckless Democrats and Business Unionists Fail Early Trump Era Tests

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Making Deals with the Devil

As inspiring as the big marches were last week, it didn’t take long for evidence to emerge that there are still plenty of folks in the Democratic party and elsewhere who just don’t get what time it is. As I wrote on Martin Luther King Jr. day, it was dismaying to see prominent Democrats like Senator Cory Booker and twelve of his Big Pharma funded friends vote against Bernie Sanders’ effort to reduce prescription drug prices before the inauguration.

And that low bar was then pushed a bit further down when ex-Democratic Vice Presidential candidate and consummate corporate tool, Joe Lieberman, gleefully presented Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos while slamming American public education at her confirmation hearing. At that same hearing, Lieberman also failed to disclose that his law firm represents Trump.   [Read more…]

The Final Assault on Public Education is On in Earnest

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During the halcyon days of the Trump transition period, the Education Committee confirmation hearing of Betsy DeVos stood out as perhaps the most jarring example of the craven cynicism that defines the new regime.

The headlines said it all, with nearly every major media outlet noting DeVos’s scant qualifications and terrible performance with extreme skepticism. The New York Times expressed “Big Worries About Betsy DeVos” while the New Yorker outlined “Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Schools.” Over at the Washington Post, they wrote “Six Astonishing Things Betsy DeVos Said—and Refused to Say—at her Confirmation Hearing” as Esquire opined that “The Betsy DeVos Hearing Was an Insult to Democracy.” The Los Angeles Times editorial, “Betsy DeVos Embarassed Herself and Should Be Rejected by the Senate” pithily observed that “what disqualifies her is her lack of understanding of existing law and policy, and her inability to address them thoughtfully.”

But, of course, the new leader of the free world was undaunted by all of this as he signed a stack of executive orders, one of which was his formal nomination of DeVos for Secretary of Education, saying simply, “Ah Betsy, Education. Right?”   [Read more…]

Big Questions for Local Labor in 2017

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2017 awaits us fierce as a tiger with major assaults looming on multiple fronts. As I have written here quite recently, it is not an overstatement to say that we face existential threats. With so many things to worry about in the near future, what should labor and progressives be focusing on in anticipation of the coming storm?

Let me start by saying that our first order of business should definitely not be whether you are with or against the imperiled San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council President. It should also not be about which side you choose in a toxic internal struggle between factions inside of the San Diego labor movement. As I have said elsewhere, the honorable and prudent course of action would be for labor leadership to take these issues off the table because they will prove to be fatal distractions if we allow them to stop us from confronting a long laundry list of crises to come after inauguration day.   [Read more…]

San Diego Labor Opposes DAPL Pipeline

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The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the heroic struggle against it have ignited a big battle inside of American labor. Earlier this fall an excellent article in Common Dreams outlined the split over DAPL at the national level with key trades unions and AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka backing the pipeline and criticizing the protests while other large national unions were issuing statements supporting the Standing Rock resistance.

Here in California and elsewhere, Trumka’s letter in support of the pipeline received strong condemnation. For instance, a response to it that I penned as chair of the California Federation of Teachers Climate Justice Task Force challenges the AFL-CIO leader in the strongest possible terms: “In sum, your statement is factually inaccurate, morally suspect, politically inept, and does not stand for the values that should guide a progressive union movement worth being a part of in an era of stark threats to the future of our children.” I have yet to receive a response.   [Read more…]

Will the Trump Presidency be an Extinction Level Event for Labor? We Better Hope Not

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Last week in the bluntly titled “Trump Presidency Could Kill Labor Unions,” distinguished journalist Harold Meyerson ponders the possibility that the 2016 Presidential election was “an extinction-level event for American labor.” Noting the sad fact that a high percentage of union households (about 43 percent nationally) went for Trump, Meyerson wastes no time in outlining what the costs will be for working class folks in America:

Now, Trump, the Republican Congress, and the soon-to-be Republican-dominated Supreme Court are poised to damage unions—and the interests of working people, both union and not—even more. Indeed, within the GOP, the war on unions engenders almost no dissent. Since Republicans were swept into office in a host of Midwestern states in the 2010 elections, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin have all effectively eliminated collective-bargaining rights for public employees and subjected private-sector unions to “right-to-work” laws that enable workers to benefit from union contracts and representation without having to pay their union any dues. Previously, such laws were largely confined to Southern states, whose respect for worker rights has improved only somewhat since they were compelled to abolish slavery. As the GOP has become steadily whiter and more right-wing, those Southern norms have become national.   [Read more…]

From Mission to Microchip: An Interview with California Labor Historian Fred Glass. Part 3

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It seems like a million years ago now, but back in my Labor Day column, I gave a shout out to Fred Glass’s seminal new labor history of California, From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement.

To learn more about this story and what about it is most important, I am pleased to present the third and final installment of my three-part interview with Fred Glass, author, teacher, union member, and long-time Communications Director for the California Federation of Teachers.

The entirety of this interview was conducted before the election which brought disastrous news for the American labor movement that will surely be dealing with a multiple-front assault from the Trump administration and an unchecked Republican Congress bent on imposing right to work nationally, overturning Obama’s pro-labor executive orders, threatening the very existence of public sector unions in particular, and stacking the Supreme Court with anti-labor judges for a generation. In light of this dire outcome, I contacted Fred to see what he thought of labor’s chances of surviving the onslaught in California. The interview ends with that answer.   [Read more…]

You Want It Darker: Why Trump and What Next?

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I spent the days after the election, one that I too had hoped and predicted that Clinton would win, mourning and comforting despairing friends, colleagues, and students afraid of what the future will bring. Where I teach at San Diego City College, the majority of the students are part of the America that Trump hates. There is terror at the thought of family members being deported, unease at the prospect of discriminatory policies based on religion, race, gender, and sexuality, and fear of a cynical climate-denying opportunist bent on sealing the fate of the endangered natural world.

Most of all, there is grief and rage over the murder of hope.

Somehow it was fitting that Leonard Cohen died this week after penning one last shout: “You Want It Darker”   [Read more…]

Some Good Things Procrastinating Progressives Can Do Down Ballot

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Greetings procrastinating progressive poll voters! After you are done voting against Donald Trump and attending to all the high profile races that have received plenty of attention elsewhere, there are a myriad of other issues to decide. Here is my list of good things progressives can do down ballot:

*Vote to Fund Education and Elect Actual Educators to School and College Boards: Of course, the central statewide ballot measure to vote for is Proposition 55, which extends Proposition 30’s taxes on the wealthiest Californians while leaving the sales tax behind. If you value public education, this is an obvious vote.

And while you are at it, vote for actual educators for education board seats, not corporate education reformers or political opportunists with no real education experience or expertise. There are several key races in our region where you have a chance to really make a difference on this front.   [Read more…]

The Transportation Justice Argument Against Measure A

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By Jim Miller

In weeks past, I have shared this space with colleagues from labor and the Climate Action Campaign, the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, the Sierra Club and SD 350, as well as the Environmental Health Coalition, all making the case against Measure A. This week, I am pleased to present the final guest column, this one from Mid-City CAN, yet another of the many labor, environmental, and community allies who are part of the Quality of Life Coalition opposing Measure A.   [Read more…]

The Environmental Justice Argument Against Measure A

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The campaign for Measure A was busy this week sending one mailer to Democrats greenwashing their flawed initiative by citing an Astroturf “environmental coalition” that popped up just in time for the election, while in another mailer to Republicans they signaled that conservatives should vote for A because environmentalists and labor oppose it. Welcome to dishonest, doublethink business as usual politics in San Diego brought to you by moneyed interests.

Of course the reality is, as anyone who has paid attention to this column knows, that progressive labor and nearly all of the serious organizations that care about climate and environmental justice oppose Measure A. A few weeks ago, I published a column I co-wrote with Nicole Capretz of the Climate Action Campaign and Nick Segura of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers outlining Measure A’s fatal flaws from a progressive perspective. This was followed in subsequent weeks by columns on Measures A’s deep inadequacies with regard to sustainability and climate by Jana Clark of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation and Save Our Forest and Ranchlands, and David Harris of SD 350 and Ruben Arizmendhi of the Sierra Club San Diego.

This week, I am pleased to share this space with Diane Takvorian, the Executive Director of the Environmental Health Coalition who will make the environmental justice case against Measure A.   [Read more…]

Why Measure A is Bad on Climate and Bad for the Region

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Last week I ceded my column space to Jana Clark, a board member of both the Cleveland National Forest Foundation and Save Our Forest and Ranchlands who explained why environmentally-minded San Diegans should vote no on Measures A and B for a sustainable future for our region.

This followed a piece I co-authored with Nicole Capretz of the Climate Action Campaign and Nick Segura of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 569 explaining why progressives from labor, community, and environmental groups should say No Way to Measure A.

This week, I am pleased to share my usual spot with David Harris from SD 350 and Ruben Arizmendi, Chair of the San Diego Sierra Club, who will explain how Measure A is a manifestation of a “planning as usual” mindset that gave our region a transportation plan that “flagrantly disregards the State’s GHG [greenhouse gas] reduction mandates.”   [Read more…]

Vote No on Measures A and B for a Sustainable Future for San Diego

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Much of the reporting on the early campaign surrounding Measure A is falling victim to the proponents’ attempts to greenwash their deeply flawed measure by representing a few astroturf “environmental” organizations in league with big money from corporate interests and a handful of unions doing the bidding of downtown insiders as a “split” in progressive circles. This is unfortunate as the fact of the matter is that the opposition to Measure A by the Quality of Life Coalition represents a historically significant new alliance between progressive labor and nearly all of the local environmental organizations doing serious work around climate.

Two weeks ago in this space I was pleased to co-sign a column as Chair of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council Environmental Caucus along with Nicole Capretz, the Executive Director of the Climate Action Campaign, and Nick Segura, Business Manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 569, explaining why progressives should say No Way to Measure A. In that same spirit, this week I am happy to cede my usual spot to Jana Clark, a board member of both the Cleveland National Forest Foundation and Save Our Forest and Ranchlands to explain why both Measures A and B are bad for San Diego.   [Read more…]

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