US Pirate Attacks in the Caribbean Will Aggravate Emergency in Cuba / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{At least eight US warships have been deployed to the Caribbean Sea | Source: venezuelanalysis.com}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Hitting two birds with one stone, the U.S. government, top-level disturber of the peace now brandishing a Caribbean armada, strikes out against Venezuela – and Cuba too, indirectly. The U.S. military on December 10 seized a large oil tanker in the Caribbean bound for China. The ship carrying Venezuelan oil had previously offloaded 50,000 barrels of oil to a smaller ship for delivery to Cuba.

Cuba depends on oil supplied by Venezuela. High U.S. officials want to cut off Cuba’s access to oil from Venezuela and thereby deliver a decisive blow against Cuba’s government. Presently six other tankers sanctioned by the U.S. government and carrying Venezuelan oil are at high risk of being seized.

Cuba’s Foreign Relations Ministry issued a statement saying in part that, “This act of piracy and maritime terrorism … represents U.S. escalation against Venezuela’s legitimate right freely to use and to trade its natural resources with other nations, including hydrocarbon supplies to Cuba …[Such] actions have a negative impact on Cuba and intensify the United States’ policy of maximum pressure and economic suffocation, with a direct impact on the national energy system and, consequently, on the daily lives our people.”

This reference to a “policy of maximum pressure” invites a look at ominous developments unfolding in Cuba as the maritime drama plays out. Cuba’s government has recently resorted to measures that are extraordinary enough as to indicate worsening crisis in Cuba. The U.S economic blockade has led to shortages of supplies, food, and income. The impact over the course of decades has been wearing and cumulative. Now death rates are up and newer generations are decimated by migration.

Recent measures taken by Cuba’s government, explored below, strongly suggest Cubans face an emergency. U.S. activists responding to their government’s warlike preparations in the Caribbean – another emergency – have good reason to urgently build their solidarity not only with Venezuela but with Cuba too. What follows here is a report on extreme measures recently taken by Cuba’s government. The object is to portray these measures as so unusual as to confirm the existence of Cuba’s last-ditch situation and, that way, motivate Cuba’s U.S. supporters toward action.

Dollarization

Cuba’s government recently introduced monetary regulations allowing citizens to buy and sell some goods and services using the U.S. dollar. A report published by a government-oriented news service refers to a “pragmatic recognition of today’s reality” and to “a partial and controlled dollarization of [Cuba’s] economy.” The government will be “allowing certain economic actors to trade in foreign currencies under specific circumstances.”

The new regulations apply to transactions with foreign manufacturers, investors, traders, shippers, financial institutions – and to families abroad sending remittances. The immediate goal is “to directly incentivize the generation of foreign exchange earnings, allowing those who contribute to this generation to keep a significant portion of their earnings in hard currency.”

The broader purpose is “to increase national production, improve the availability of goods and services, and create conditions for a future return to the strengthened Cuban peso.” Policy-makers want to stimulate exports, augment the supply of goods available in Cuba, and increase both national production and foreign investment. Another goal, referred to as “[r]eduction of distortions,” is elimination of informal or illegal foreign currency markets.

The new regulations allow “authorized commercial establishments … [and those] domestic suppliers supporting export or import substitution activities to use dollars and other foreign currencies in international transactions.” Parties permitted to use dollars are authorized self-employed workers, privately owned businesses, cooperatives, and state enterprises.

These parties have permission to deposit dollars in Cuban banks – dollars accumulated from exports of goods and services, from on-line sales and from sales realized through the Mariel Special Development Zone. Banks will accept dollars purchased from foreign currency traders and dollars sent as remittances from families abroad.

The government’s new authorization of the U.S. dollar as a national currency may well be unsettling to Cubans perceiving implications of a dependency relationship with the northern neighbor. The necessity to have done so reflects the urgency of Cuba’s current situation.

Pressing needs

Overtones of a new situation entered into the decision of the Cuban Communist Party’s Central Committee at its meeting on December 13 to postpone the 9^th Party Congress set for April 2026. Party Congresses have taken place every five years.

Making the announcement, Leader of the Revolution Raul Castro emphasized the need to “dedicate all the country’s resources, as well as the effort and energy of the Party, Government, and State cadres, to resolving current problems, and to dedicate 2026 to recovering as much as possible.”

Likewise, Cuba’s Council of State announced on December 10 that the upcoming session of the National Assembly of People’s Power set to begin on December 18 would be meeting for that day only, by video conference. In 2024, Assembly delegates met in person for two sessions for a total of 24 days.

A spokesperson explaining the shift stated that, as is “known by all, the electricity situation and the current state of the economy, and also difficulties with the [multi-virus] pandemic and the health situation … create a complex situation for carrying out the Assembly. There is the problem too of the rational use of resources.”

The 11^th plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee taking place on December 13 was also a one-day session; video conferencing provided access for members living outside Havana. Concluding the meeting, First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel, president of Cuba, mentioned particularly that:

At the end of the third quarter, GDP has fallen by more than 4%, inflation is skyrocketing, the economy is partially paralyzed, thermal power generation is critical, prices remain high, deliveries of rationed food are not being met, and agricultural and food industry production is not meeting the needs of the population. There are also the costly losses caused by the devastating passage of Hurricane Melissa …

Donald Trump has just launched his pirates onto a Venezuelan oil tanker, shamelessly seizing the cargo like a common thief. This was the latest episode in an alarming series of attacks on small boats and extrajudicial executions of more than eighty people, based on unproven accusations and amid an unprecedented and threatening military deployment in a declared Zone of Peace …

[However,] we are the children of a people who carried out a revolution 90 miles from the greatest imperial power on the planet and who have successfully defended it for more than six decades … Only a heroic people who defend a Revolution, who have the example of the history of that Revolution, are capable of enduring what we have been living through all these years.”

Henry Lowendorf of the U.S. Peace Council, queried for this article, highlights the central role of the U.S. government. He states via email that, “The U.S. has been trying to crush the Cuban revolution for over 60 years. So far it has failed. But with new intensity and the newly accelerated war on Venezuela, the U.S. is desperately working to cut off all life support to Cuba.”

A dark setting brightens a bit with good news out of California, as reported in the Cuban press. The Los Angeles Hands off Cuba Committee led in organizing a shipment from Los Angeles to Cuba by way of Jacksonville, Florida of a 40-foot container with medical supplies worth $1 million. Participating were members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and International Association of Machinists, along with Global Health Partners and the PanAmerican Medical Association.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.}

US Labor Must Weigh in on Cuba / By W.T. Whitney

_{^{Photo credit:}} _{^{Juan Carlos Dorado}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Taking note of International Workers’ Day, several Latin American news sources this year cited José Martí’s 1886 essay “A Terrible Drama;” two of them republished it, here and here. There Martí reports on events in Chicago in 1886 and the fate of the so-called Haymarket Martyrs – seven labor journalists and agitators railroaded to prison and given death sentences. Another received a 15-year prison term.

Martí, who would become Cuba’s national hero, was living in exile in the United States. He relates how strikes for the eight-hour day were underway on May 1, 1886 in Chicago and nationwide, how the Chicago police killed one striker and wounded others on May 3, and how a mass protest against police violence took place the next day in the Haymarket area. There, a bomb exploded, seven policemen and four workers were killed, and dozens were wounded.

The court lacked evidence that the defendants, anarchist by inclination, were involved in the violence of May 4. Martí describes the execution of four of them and the suicide of another. An appeals court judge commuted the sentences of two defendants to life in prison. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld pardoned those two and the remaining prisoner.

The Socialist International in 1889 declared May Day to be an annual celebration of labor militancy.

José Martí’s account, “A Terrible Drama,” is a foundational contribution to the history of the U.S. labor movement. Martí defended working people – U.S. workers in his writings, and Cuban workers in words and deeds, from 1886 on. The combination of author and story points to a connection between U.S. labor activism and workers’ struggles in Cuba. Its time has come.

The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, lasting decades, has led to shortages, misery, and despair. Nations of the world voting annually in the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemn the blockade. It violates international law.

Domestic opposition to U.S. policies on Cuba, while persistent, vigorous at times, principled, on-target, and diverse, has fallen short. U.S. government measures aimed at destabilization remain in force. Upping power of the people with labor combativeness would make a difference.

Unions and labor activists know how to organize and how to confront recalcitrant political and economic leaders. They will be active on Cuba’s side, once they realize that working people’s struggles in the two countries are linked, or so our theory goes. In addition:

· Labor unionists involved in struggle count on unity, the power of numbers, and sometimes solidarity from counterparts, often from abroad.

· The current Cuban Revolution is the product of a revolutionary tradition. U.S. workers confronting their own government on Cuba would be expressing solidarity with a revolution whose progenitor, Jose Martí, defended U.S. workers fighting for the eight-hour day. They would be paying back.

· Social revolution and ordinary labor struggles are battles of ideas. The writings of Martí, maximum leader of Cuba’s early revolution, speak to Cuban and U.S. workers alike. In that way they are connected.

Martí wrote about working people and their lives. He contributed greatly to the ideas and substance of revolutionary struggle in Cuba and also defended African-descended and poverty-stricken Cubans with a seemingly unqualified egalitarianism. For example:

· “And let us place around the star of our new flag this formula of love triumphant: ‘With all, and for the good of all.’”

· “A nation having a few wealthy men is not rich, only the one where each of its inhabitants shares a little of the common wealth. In political economy and in good government, distribution is the key to prosperity.”

· “In Cuba there is no fear whatever of racial conflict. A man is more than white, black, or mulatto. A Cuban is more than mulatto, black, or white … True men, black or white, will treat each other with loyalty and tenderness for the sake of merit alone.”

Workers are oppressed

Responding to the Haymarket affair in his “A Terrible Drama,” Martí reflects upon the situation of U.S. working people:

“The nation is terrified by the increased organization among the lower classes … Therefore the Republic decided … to use a crime born of its own transgressions as much as the fanaticism of the criminal in order to strike terror by holding them up as an example …. Because of its unconscionable cult of wealth, and lacking any of the shackles of tradition, this Republic has fallen into monarchical inequality, injustice, and violence …

“In the recently emerging West … where the same astounding rapidity of growth, accumulating mansions and factories on the one hand, and wretched masses of people on the other, clearly reveals the evil of a system that punishes the most industrious with hunger, the most generous with persecution, the useful father with the misery of his children – there the unhappy working man has been making his voice heard.”

Martí’s “A Terrible Drama” appeared in La Nación newspaper in Buenos Aires in January 1888, some 19 months after the Haymarket events. The delay may have stemmed from Martí’s ambivalence about the anarchist leanings of the accused. Previously published segments of his report do appear under the title “The First of May, 1886” in historian Philip Foner’s anthology of Martí’s writings published in 1977. Excerpts follow:

“Enormous events took place in Chicago, but rebellion exists throughout the nation. In the United States … a firm and active struggle has been in preparation for years … …[T]hings are not right when an honest and intelligent man who has worked tenaciously and humbly all his life does not have at the end of it a loaf of bread … or a dollar put away, or the right to take a tranquil stroll in the sunlight… Things are not right when the one who in the cities … lives a contemplative life of leisure so exasperating to the miner, the stevedore, the switchman, the mechanic, and to every wretched person who must be content with seventy-five cents day, in raw winter weather …Things are not right if shabby women and their pallid children must live in tenement cubicles in foul-smelling neighborhoods. …The reasons are the same. The rapid and evident concentration of public wealth, lands, communication lines, enterprises in the hands of the well-to-do caste that rules and governs has given rise to a rapid concentration of workers. Merely by being gathered together in a formidable community which can, at one stroke, extinguish the fires in the boiler and let the grass grow under the wheels of the machinery, the workers are able successfully to defend their own rights against the arrogance and indifference with which they are regarded by those who derive all their wealth from the products of the labor they abuse.”

Deeds and words

Martí acted on behalf of working people. He organized Cuba’s independence struggle that culminated in war with Spain in early 1895. Under his leadership, the process became a social revolution.

From exile in New York, Martí outlined goals, strategies, and methods. Traveling widely, he arranged for Cuban exiles in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean – many of them workers, many African-descended – to select the revolution’s leadership, provide funding and supplies, and approve goals and proposals. Martí persuaded the military heads to accept civilian leadership. He created and edited the independence movement’s newspaper Patria.

Aware of U.S. aspirations to dominate Cuba and the entire region, Martí led in confronting U.S. imperialism – never good for workers. In 1891 he wrote “Our America,” an essay demonstrating commonalities among diverse peoples inhabiting all the land extending from the Rio Bravo (the Rio Grande) south to Patagonia. Martí highlighted their shared cultural and political orientations that set them apart from U.S. and European societies.

In a letter to a friend shortly before he was killed in battle on May 19, 1895, Martí insisted that: “It is my duty … to prevent, by the independence of Cuba, the United States from spreading over the West Indies and falling, with that added weight, upon the other lands of Our America.”

Attacking military installations of the Batista regime on July 26, 1953, revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro were honoring José Martí, born 100 years earlier. For Castro, Martí was “the Apostle of Independence … whose ideas inspired the Centennial Generation and today inspire and will continue to inspire all of our people more and more.”

For the sake of justice and in view of connections with Cuban workers, U.S. working people would do well to press upon their government the necessity to end the blockade of Cuba. Labor unions, the principal means for expression of workers’ sentiment and power, have prime responsibility in this regard.

They would be acting as did West Coast dockworkers who blocked arms shipments to Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship, cargo arriving from apartheid-ridden South Africa, and, recently, arms shipments bound for Israel. U.S. unionists actively opposed their government’s support for authoritarian El Salvador in the 1980s and supported Iraqi workers after the U.S. invasion there. They collaborated with Mexican miners and other workers over many years. Recently U.S. unions issued statements and approved resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

_{W.T. Whitney}_{is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

Maine Activists Meet with Cuban Ambassador in South Portland / W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Chargé d’Affaires Lianys Torres Rivera, Ambassador of Cuba | Credit: July 26.org}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Word came to the Let Cuba Live Committee of Maine that Cuba’s ambassador to the United States, Lianys Torres Rivera, would be in Portland on other business and wanted to meet with Mainers working for decent U.S. relations with Cuba.

Accordingly, on February 13, in the evening, 40 or so activists from throughout Maine gathered at the hall of Teamsters Local 340 in South Portland to dialogue with the ambassador. Ms. Torres Rivera previously served as Cuba’s ambassador in Vietnam.

She began with a brief survey of Cuba’s current situation, emphasizing that while the country’s economic situation is very difficult, her government’s priorities are unchanged. All citizens’ basic needs are being met, education and healthcare receive maximum support, and Cuba’s solidarity extends throughout the world, to the Global South in particular.

Citing Cuba’s great need for economic development, the ambassador critiqued the U.S. economic blockade as causing shortages that affect every aspect of life in Cuba. She mentioned the false U.S. designation of Cuba as a terrorist-sponsoring nation. That’s the mechanism the U.S. government uses to block the flow of money to Cuba from international financial institutions.

She and her audience agreed that President Biden could remove that misplaced label “with the stoke of a pen.”

Questions and answers occupied most of the session with Ms. Torres Rivera. Questions touched on: education in Cuba, increased Cuban migration to the United States, Cuban medical solidarity with the rest of the world, visits of U.S. delegations to Cuba, and U.S. promotion of social media as a device for broadcasting U.S. anti-Cuba propaganda.

In a comment that particularly resonated with her listeners, Torres Rivera recalled that it was through Cuba’s revolution that she, a daughter of a poor farming family, gained an education preparing her to be an ambassador.

Two members of the Portland City Council were on hand. Great enthusiasm was evident as discussion turned to the prospect of the Portland Council joining other city councils in the United States in passing a resolution condemning the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba.

Facilitating the meeting was Barbara West of Let Cuba Live. Other organizations represented at the encounter were Maine Veterans for Peace, Peace Action Maine, a couple of labor unions, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Communist Party of Maine – that had made arrangements for the meeting.

To conclude: Anyone wanting to work toward ending the U.S. blockade of Cuba and/or learn more about Cuba might contact Let Cuba Live. Call Barbara at (207) 841-2917 or Tom at (207) 743-2183.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr.}_{is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

Worker Empowerment Stalls in Venezuela as Left Unity Fractures / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

Indigenous spokespeople, Venezuela (archive) | venezuelanalysis.com/

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president from 1999 until 2013, inspired and led a “Bolivarian Revolution” that sought independence from U.S. domination, regional integration and so-called socialism of the 21^st century. Obstacles are many: capitalism in control of the national economy, unrelenting rightwing political opposition, U.S. intervention – and longstanding political divisions among left forces.

Worker empowerment languishes in such a context. We offer an explanation, and doing so, attribute the divisions to differing approaches to the predicament of Venezuelan workers.

Several months ago, union workers in many sectors were vigorously protesting low wages and demanding that wages be paid in dollars, to counter inflation. Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president after Chavez’s death in 2013, reprimanded them for not “understanding the effects of the blockade and the oligarchy’s economic war.”

The government faces terrible challenges. Contributing to economic disaster are U.S. sanctions and depressed oil prices over ten years or so. Oil exports have accounted for most of Venezuela’s export income. Economic crisis surely diminishes prospects for worker empowerment.

Impact of economic crisis

Recent developments tell much of that story. The U.S. Justice Department on May 4 lifted restraints on the sale of Citgo company’s assets to the creditors of the Venezuelan state and of Venezuela’s state -owned oil company, PDVSA. Citgo is PDVSA’s U.S.-based oil company. Worth $13 billion, it owns three oil refineries and 4000 gasoline stations.

U.S. authorities confiscated Citgo in 2019. It gave Citgo to those rightwing opponents of the Maduro government who between 2015 and 2021 constituted a majority in Venezuela’s National Assembly. This group will be managing the sales of Citgo shares to the company’s high-rolling creditors worldwide.

Rather than retrieve annual Citgo profits of a billion dollars or so, the government has lost them. Income from the sales of oil products had enabled the government to pay for healthcare, schools, housing, and more. The larger picture is that $30 billion in Venezuelan assets have been “blocked, retained, or confiscated.”

The U.S. State Department on May 3 announced that $347 million in Venezuelan funds now frozen in U.S. banks will be returned, not to Venezuela’s government, but to that former opposition bench in the National Assembly. For the United States, that’s Venezuela’s government.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan workers are struggling to survive; worker empowerment is a distant dream. Presently, one third of Venezuelan children are undernourished. The poverty rate has fallen a little but remains at 50%. In one of the world’s most unequal societies, wealthy Venezuelans have access to imported goods, dollars, and the proceeds from illegal businesses. The latter make up 20% of the national economy.

The economic crisis hurts Venezuela’s working class. It impedes efforts to strengthen it. We must know the extent to which Venezuela’s government supports workers.

Shifting alliances and labor rights

President Maduro in February 2018 was seeking support in presidential elections that year from the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). He appeared at the PCV headquarters and declared the PCV “to be the principal party in founding and defending democracy in the 20^th century.”

The government’s political party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the PCV signed a “Unitary Framework Agreement,” which backed “the rights of the working class and the working people.” The PCV did support Maduro in elections in May 2018.

Within months, however, the government introduced its “Program of Recuperation, Growth, and Economic Prosperity,” which, according to labor historian Omar Vázquez Heredia , provided for “major devaluation of the official exchange rate, elimination of price controls and import tariffs …[and] regressive labor reforms … [such as] elimination of the right to strike.” He adds that dollars had already been disappearing through smuggling, hoarding, import fraud, and governmental corruption.

The new anti-worker measures showed up in the government’s “Memorandum 2792” of October 2018. ThePCV critiqued the government’s ready support for business interests and questioned its delivery of scarce dollars to foreign creditors and to Venezuela’s business sectors to help them import and distribute foreign goods.

Analyst Héctor Alejo Rodríguez notes that the government, through its October memorandum, “flattened the wages for all sectors and unilaterally cancelled all the collective bargaining agreements of the workers.” Workers, he points out, were already dealing with “acute shortages, loss of social gains, deterioration of public services and the systematic destruction of [their] incomes and rights.”

At a May Day rally in 2023, former labor leader Maduro told workers that funds were unavailable for salary increases, also that their “economic war bonus” would continue and their monthly food bonuses increase. The minimum wage would be equivalent to $5.25 per month – and lose value due to inflation.

President Chavez created the “Great Patriotic Pole” electoral coalition. The PCV joined, and backed Chavez in the 2006 and 2012 elections, and Maduro in the 2013 elections. Chavez created the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in 2007. He counted on smaller leftist parties to relinquish their identity and join the PSUV.

The PCV and other parties refused, provoking Chavez in 2008 to threaten the PCV’s destruction. PCV leader Oscar Figuera declared that his Party would still affiliate with the Patriotic Pole, but would remain independent. After all, as he noted, “We have just completed 77 years struggling for socialism in Venezuela.”

The PCV broke with the PSUV in 2020 and formed a new electoral coalition, the People’s Revolutionary Alternative (APR). Party leaders say they are “Chavista” and anti-imperialist, but want oil monies used more for industrial development and rural productivity and less for paying on foreign debt or for capitalists to use as they wish.

Meanwhile, the government stepped up “criminalization of labor protests” and forced the retirement of many labor leaders. APR candidates have been dismissed from jobs, or jailed. The PSUV presented speakers who denounce the PCV and at the same time falsely claim to have been PCV members or to have been expelled by the PCV.

Some clarity

Mostly tellingly, a flurry of killings has recently taken the lives of PCV activists. In Apure state alone, in 2023, thugs murdered Communist journalist José Urbina and Communist community leader Juan de Dios Hernández.

In Venezuela presently the prospects for worker empowerment, not to speak of working-class political power, are dismal. A distant observer lacks full knowledge of local realities and is ill-equipped to assign blame. In any case caution is the watchword in passing judgment that might detract from unity in the broader political movement.

Now a neighbor weighs in. Writing May 8 in Seminario Voz, the Colombian Communist Party’s newspaper, Ricardo Arenalescriticizes the PSUV. He cites the killings and false PSUV accusations.

Arenales cites a communication from the PCV Political Bureau to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who on April 1 met with

representatives of Venezuela’s rightwing political opposition and who was about to meet with regional foreign ministers. Petro is seeking to ease political conflict within Venezuela and somehow to end U.S. economic sanctions against Venezuela.

The PCV letter calls for negotiators to attend to “the political and social forces that are on the fringes of the polarizing diatribe.” The PCV rejects “a pact among the elites … [which] is built on the ruin of the popular majorities” and which represents “the interference of foreign powers in the solution of conflicts that exclusively concern Venezuelans.”

Arenales implies that rightwing powerbrokers in Venezuela and abroad use negotiations to incapacitate the PCV. He mentions that, “under the heading of sovereign resolution of conflicts in the brother country, … the right of the Venezuelan Communists to exist and struggle cannot be denied. For that to happen would be a serious contradiction in the building of democracy.”

Arenales reports that “parties and intellectuals of the world” and regional groupings in Latin America like the Sao Paulo Forum are proposing mediation processes for the sake of “rapprochement among the PCV, PSUV and Venezuelan government.”

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

Labor Voices: A vision of true democracy – Organizing the vast majority to take collective control of their lives / by E. Martin Schotz, MD

I am writing for anyone who is concerned about the lack of a serious worldwide approach to climate chaos, anyone who is concerned about racism, poverty, patriarchy, violence, poor health of so many, anyone who is concerned about peace — anyone who wants to participate in and see political change on these issues.

The great German physician Rudolph Virkow, a pioneer in the field of public health, once remarked, “Politics should be practiced as if it was medicine on a grand scale.” I am thinking about this as I ponder the weakness of the labor movement in the United States, the weakness of the peace movement, and the left in general. What is the diagnosis? And where does a cure lie?

If these questions concern you, I am writing to request that you gather a group of like-minded people in order to explore three books and how the wisdom in them can be developed and applied. These three books were written by the same author, Jane McAlevey. Their subject is complex and of the utmost importance. — how the vast majority can be organized to take collective control of their lives. The books are entitled in order of their appearance Raising Expectations and Raising Hell: My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement; No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age; and A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy.

Who is Jane McAlevey? She has a long history as a leader and political organizer beginning in high school and college around issues of women’s equality, the dangers of nuclear power, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. After traveling and working in Central America she worked for the Earth Island Institute educating the environmental movement in the US about ecological consequences of US military and economic policies in Central America and then worked at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee on environmental issues. From there the New Voices leadership of the AFL-CIO recruited her for an experimental AFL-CIO organizing in Stamford Connecticut. The Stamford Organizing Project was working on a model for rank and file worker-based social movement unionism. In this project, in addition to focusing on workplace issues, unions connected workers to non-workplace issues that affected their communities. Union members utilized their connections to churches and faith based institutions, sports clubs, and social groups of all kinds to build alliances between labor struggles and community struggles. Following this work she joined the SEIU where she worked as Director of Strategic Campaigns and then as Executive Director and Chief Negotiator for SEIU Nevada in the process demonstrating the power of the Stamford approach.

The reason I recommend reading all three books is that taken together you get a rounded picture of McAlevey’s background, development, experience in and practice of an approach to union organizing and community organizing that is needed, if the vast majority are to be effectively engaged in tackling the pressing problems that confront us as capitalism collapses. If three books seems like too much, start with one. I want to emphasize that although union organizing and community organizing are not the same thing, what McAlevey discusses seems to me to be of great relevance to community organizing as well as union organizing.

The roots of McAlevey’s approach go back to the industry-wide organizing that was critical to the emergence of the CIO in the 1930’s. The books focus on the most difficult kinds of labor struggles, in which it is necessary to organize 90% of the shop floor and 90% of the community in support of the union, if the union is to be able to win. As described above, in order to accomplish this, it is not enough to approach workers as just people on a job. It is also necessary to see workers as whole people, as community members whose needs and interests extend beyond just wages and benefits. For McAlevey the union is there to aid in the struggle for wages and benefits, but it is there primarily as a means by which workers can take collective control of their lives. McAlevey’s approach is radically democratic with no such thing as a “labor aristocracy” or “labor bureaucracy”. There are the workers and there are the employers. The union belongs to the workers completely.

It is not by accident that this approach, which communists helped develop, was largely abandoned after World War II. Coming out of World War II “the powers-that-be” in the United States wanted to quiet the unrest that had developed in the 1930’s and to be able to pursue US corporate imperial interests at home and throughout the world. The population had to be propagandized to support the “Cold War” and to see the Soviet Union as their enemy. And there was a determined effort during the McCarthy Period to demonize communists and exclude them not only from the labor movement but from the life of our society generally. The “powers-that-be” needed to turn the US labor movement away from class struggle and toward what McAlevey calls “class snuggle”. “Class snuggle” is a process in which employers and certain labor leaders collaborate to narrowly define workers’ interests and in the process help labor bureaucrats become powerful, wealthy and corrupt.

Fortunately the approach that McAlevey describes was not completely abandoned, and where it is still being practiced, it has yielded some big wins. As examples amongst other campaigns McAlevey discusses the recent teachers’ union organizing and strikes in Chicago and Los Angeles.

As I read through McAlevey’s books I was stunned by the fact that what she was talking about was completely new to me despite years working within the left. Of the many things that impressed me I will mention here only four.

First, McAlevey emphasizes the importance of setting concrete goals so that you can know if you are succeeding or not. Contrary to this, most of the organizations, with which I have been associated, have pursued a line of action that could never fail and consequently could never succeed, because the goals of the organization’s activity were always vaguely defined.

Second McAlevey discusses the importance of making a power analysis of the community or group you are hoping to organize. Who knows whom? Who influences whom? Who are the community’s “organic leaders”, the people to whom others listen. These “organic leaders” often don’t see themselves as activists or leaders, but their opinions carry great weight with many others. If you are going to organize 90%, reaching these “organic leaders” and winning their active involvement is critical.

Third, McAlevey describes in detail what she calls the “Structured Organizing Conversation”, a specific way an organizer can go about connecting with organic leaders and uniting with them in the organizing effort.

Fourth, McAlevey makes a clear distinction between what she calls “advocacy”, “mobilizing” , and “organizing.” Advocacy involves advocating for something. This essay is an example of advocacy. Mobilizing involves calling out the people who are already on your side. Organizing involves reaching and involving in the struggle the vast majority, those who don’t yet understand that they have a vital interest in being actively involved. From this perspective, the organizations, with which I have worked, have been involved in education, advocacy, and mobilization, but not really organizing. This is why what these books can teach us is so critical.

Becoming an accomplished organizer is no small achievement. It is every bit as complex as becoming a true artist in any field. So reading these books won’t turn anyone into an accomplished organizer. But they can provide crucial insight into the science and art of organizing. Reading them as a group may ignite a desire in some to begin experimenting with organizing in a different way. Such an endeavor will need the support of a group. At the very least these books will help partisans of a people’s movement to more concretely conceive of how radically democratic labor unions and communities can be organized for the political battle that is needed.

Dr. Schotz is a child psychiatrist who is active in the peace movement in Western Massachusetts