by Jeff Crosby, Dec 12, 2008

‘Lynn for Obama’ volunteers get ready to knock on New Hampshire doors in October as part of the effort to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.

At our November local union meeting, our vice president, Alex Brown, posed the question: What do you hope for from the Obama presidency? There were a dozen answers, but they boiled down to “bring the jobs back,” “health care” and “bring our soldiers home.”

If hope was results, this would already be the greatest presidency of all time. I admit it—I’ve wasted too much of my time parsing lists of possible Barack Obama appointees and pestering people in Washington I think might know something about who might get which job. 

The appointments Obama is making look like the ultimate Bill Clinton comeback. I was happy to work for Clinton over Dole. But President Clinton also brought us the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the “end of welfare as we know it” and the repeal of Roosevelt’s Glass-Stegall Act, which prevented the banks from participating in some of the worst financial speculation. Clinton announced that “the era of Big Government is over.” Each of these acts was a rejection of the New Deal and an accommodation to the neo-liberal policies of free trade, privatization and deregulation. We went from Nixon’s “We’re all Keynesians” to an unspoken, “We’re all neo-liberals.” This is not what I had in mind when I spent my weekends tracking down undecided voters in New Hampshire.

But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. The discussion should not be “What will Obama do?” Instead, we should be asking, “What will we do?”

Here in Lynn, Mass., and across the country, the Obama campaign spurred not just hope, but action. Independent of the Democratic Party, three supporters found a list of nearly 500 people with Lynn Zip codes who had volunteered online but had never been contacted. The three started calling the list from the union hall and soon 90 people were phone banking Virginia and Florida from Lynn, or knocking on doors in rural New Hampshire. A school committee member, the only elected person of color in a city where nearly half are people of color, started a second phone bank from the hall as “Latinos for Obama.” The groups continue to meet. 

Franklin Roosevelt was no radical when he was elected president in the beginning of the Depression in 1932. He tried a bunch of things, in fits and starts, sometimes pro-labor and sometimes not. The New Deal managed a compromise with the apartheid Democratic Solid South to establish a thin legal basis for unions—based only on the constitutional fault-line of the right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

But the New Deal also gave us the idea that the government should act to help the people. My own family benefited from the GI Bill, which my Dad always calls the “greatest social program ever invented.” I look out over my morning coffee each day at a pond built by the Works Project Administration (WPA). 

Why did good things happen? Scratch every instance of social progress and you’ll find a social movement. The Bonus Marches after World War I gave us the GI Bill in 1946. The unemployed councils in the 1930s helped produce unemployment insurance (UI) and the WPA. Early union organizers and strikes brought us the National Labor Relations Act, such as it was. 

The social movements that led to the greatest advances of the New Deal do not exist at the same level today. Unfortunately, one cannot summon a social movement by an act of human will—I know that for a fact because I’ve tried. So making great strides for working people under an Obama presidency won’t be easy.

For their part, corporations know that power and threats get results, and already the vultures are in full cry. When the folks in pinstripes offer their remedies, “Fix the economy” sounds a lot like “Crush labor!” and “Stomp the autoworkers!” and “Eliminate health insurance for the retirees!”—they howl, repeating systematic lies that UAW members make $70 an hour. The real hourly rate is in the $28 dollar range and new hires would start at $14 an hour. Eliminating decent jobs and the right to form a union by a majority sign-up (the Employee Free Choice Act) is the top priority of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Chamber spokesman Randel Johnson predicts a “firestorm bordering on Armageddon” when the bill comes before Congress. Capital is politically nimble, and it never sleeps.

Facts and suffering are not major obstacles when the corporations feel their interests threatened. These are the same deep thinkers who, during the Depression, said unemployment insurance would “destroy initiative, discourage thrift, and stifle individual responsibility”—this specific quote from the Illinois Association of Manufacturers. 

Fortunately, many of the unions are mobilizing already and have no intention of sitting back to see what comes next. Along with other AFL-CIO unions, my own union leafleted its members on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, to educate the public about the Employee Free Choice Act, and we’re gearing up for a hard push on health care and the Employee Free Choice Act next year. SEIU is pushing a broad accountability mobilization for the first 100 days. 

It’s never too early to get started. Back in Lynn, the North Shore Labor Council, the Lynn for Obama crowd and other community allies are putting together a celebration on Inauguration Day. This will be a historic Election Day. Millions are going to Washington, D.C., and millions more will want to come together to share the moment when Barrack Hussein Obama becomes president of the United States. A rejection of Bush. The first African American president—and a community organizer, at that! And a president-elect who, when workers in Chicago last week refused to leave their factory after their wages weren’t paid and the plant closed without warning, spoke in their support: “They are absolutely right!”

So we are going to party together on Inauguration Day, but it will be a Party with a Purpose, a Party with a Program.

Electoral upsurges are notoriously fickle. They ebb after the election. In a country like ours, where no one bothers to read the platforms of the political parties, electoral movements are dependent on personalities and candidates. This presidential election could be different—if we make it different!

At our Inauguration Day event in Lynn, we will do two things. First, unions and community allies will make a pitch about ongoing organizing and draw the newly energized electoral activists into something that has staying power. To get in the door, you will have to sign up for something. Without organization, good intentions are dead weight. 

Second, the Inauguration Party itself will feature short presentations on the issues that are most important to us—just as we did in our November union meeting, only a lot louder. Good Jobs! Health Care! Peace! For our part, the labor council will be pushing Employee Free Choice Act cards. And we’ll be working the press. Every news outlet will be prowling for person-on-the-street interviews, asking: “What does this election mean to you?” 

We’ll be happy to respond: Good jobs! Health care! Peace!

Of course, first and foremost, Inauguration Day is going to be a celebration. You know what I mean: short speeches.

So let’s get started.  No time to lose. If President Obama wants to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt, let’s help him along. As the president-elect himself put it, “This election is not the change we want, this election is an opportunity to work for the change we need.” 

January 20, Inauguration Day. Celebrate and party—Party with a Program.

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