Alinsky's Legacy, Obama and Labor's Challenge

Earlier yesterday, a friend of mine who works for a labor union posted a note on Facebook that read "Just left the White House. It's a new day for the labor movement!" I quickly asked if he was there as a tourist or as an organizer. I found out he was there representing labor when the Obama administration announced the creation of the Task Force on Middle Class Working Families.

I couldn't believe it. As a union organizer who has been on many campaigns, I've come to discover how federal labor law tends to favor the employer. Thus, I have always viewed the White House as synonymous with "the boss" or the "management" of a facility who instills fear into workers when they try to organize. In fact, over the past few years, union members and organizers go to the White House not to sit in on meetings or press conferences, but to protest. We are agitators who get kicked out of shop floors, march on the streets, and have doors slammed on our face. It's not everyday that someone in power opens their door and invites us in.

In addition to the task force, Obama also signed three executive orders that would reverse some of the anti-union labor policies enacted by the previous administration. Obama's pick for secretary of labor, his signing of the Lilly Ledbetter bill, and yesterday's actions all signal that the labor movement now has access to the highest levels of power.

But the timing of Obama's actions is significant for another reason. Yesterday was the birthday of legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky, who started his organizing work in Chicago and went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation, a network that was established to recruit, train, and develop community organizers all over the country. He is also the author of "Rules for Radicals," a practical guide to grassroots organizing that almost every good organizer has read and whom many consider to be a major influence on the way Obama ran his campaign. Indeed, the community organization Obama worked for shortly after finishing his undergraduate work practiced the Alinksy model of agitation and action.

It is not a coincidence that Obama decided to announce the task force and the new pro-union policies on the birthday of the man revered by so many experienced community organizers. I believe he is sending a message to both labor and grassroots organizers that he has not forgotten his roots and that his administration is committed to the work of empowering everyday working people.

However, organizers and progressives must also remember Alinsky's thoughts about the very word that represented Obama's campaign: change. He wrote, "Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict."

Obama and the Democrats are still not united one hundred percent behind the Employee Free Choice Act. They also have many former Wall Street people running around the White House. There are people in the cabinet from the former Clinton administration who were responsible for the deregulation of the banks that helped create the economic mess we are now in. Change still must come from the bottom and, with a lot of corporate interests hovering around Obama's shoulders, it may require the "abrasive friction of conflict."

Comments

[katyann]

Thanks, jimbobre, for recalling here the inspiring work Saul Alinsky did in Rochester. He helped to bring enormous changes in the way all Rochesterians viewed themselves. I was disgusted last summer when the Republicans tried to smear Alinsky's memory along with all community organizers such as then-candidate Obama.. These fools are forever romanticizing a period when the status quo was what you described and far worse. Alinsky was a brilliant organizer who helped create justice that pulled everyone up, including the people who sullied themselves by oppressing their neighbors.

[jimbobre]

Saul Alinsky doesn't get enough mentioned for helping make affirmative action policy and practice in America. In 1965, The Rochester (NY) Council of Churches brought Alinsky in to organize the black community after the 1964 riots. Alinsky organized a community organization, which took the name F.I.G.H.T. It's leader was a minister named Franklin Florence. At that time, 16 companies based in Rochester were #1 in the world producing their products. None of them, Including Kodak (50,000 local employees), hired black workers. F.I.G.H.T. took on the task of forcing these companies to hire blacks. Xerox, led by liberal Joe Wilson, set up a program to bring blacks into his company.

Kodak, Rochester's god, refused to even discuss who they hired. F.I.G.H.T. and Alinsky waged a year long struggle, which gained international attention, to force Kodak to hire 600 black. In early 1966, Rochester's leaders set up a program (to save kodak's face) for companies to begin hiring black workers. Local colleges also agreed to increase the number of black students. I became the 1st black person (at age 19), in March 1966, to be employed in a white collar job at French's Mustard Co.

I believe that episode was the effective beginning of affirmative action, as companies and schools around the nation began to set up variations of the Rochester program to avoid what happened to Kodak (the 27th largest co. in the nation).

[jimbobre]

Next to the personal computer, affirmative action gave the greatest boost to the U.S. economy over the past 40 years. By forcing the market to use the intellectual and physical capacity represented by women, black, Hispanic and Asian Americans, the market was able to grow to its current size (4 times larger than in 1965). There aren't enough white males available to run a market this size by themselves.