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Trumka Warns ‘Forces of Hate’ Fanning Flames of Workers’ Economic Anger
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An economy that seems to work for just a privileged few, 11 million vanished jobs and a bailout for banks and Wall Street—but not working families—is fueling justified anger in workers. Speaking last night at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told an audience about the “forces of hate” and “radio voices” that are frantically fanning the flames of that justified anger to divide working people.
There are forces in our country that are working hard to convert justifiable anger about an economy that only seems to work for a few of us into racist and homophobic hate and violence directed at our President and heroes like Congressman John Lewis. Most of all, those forces of hate seek to divide working people—to turn our anger against each other.
Trumka said a progressive movement that includes mobilizing union members and electing public officials “committed to bold action to address economic suffering” and can fight back against the forces of hatred. But he told the Harvard audience that an “alliance between working people and public minded intellectuals is also crucial.”
It is all about standing up to entrenched economic power and the complacency of the affluent. It’s an alliance that depends on intellectuals being critics, and not the servants, of economic privilege.
The code words of hate and overheated rhetoric spewed against President Obama and lawmakers have been heard before, Trumka said.
When President Franklin Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” other voices were on the radio, voices saying that what we really needed to fear was each other—voices preaching anti-Semitism and Nazi-style racial hatred.
When President John F. Kennedy stepped off the plane in Dallas on November 22, 1963, radio voices were calling for violence against the President of the United States. And the violence came—and took John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and so many others.
In fact, just yesterday, a California mother said Fox News commentators’ hate speech drove her son to make death threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The nation survived the 1930s Depression, Trumka said, because working people discovered they could elect leaders “who would fight for them, not the financial barons who had brought on the catastrophe.”
This is a similar moment. Our politics have been dominated by greed and the forces of money for a generation. Now, amid the wreckage that came from that experiment, we hear the voices of hatred, of racism and homophobia.
I think this is an important point to make here at Harvard. The economic elites at JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and the other big Wall Street banks are happy to hire intellectual servants wherever they can find them. But the stronger the alliance between intellectuals and economic elites, the more the forces of hatred—of anti-intellectualism—will grow.
He warned that massive unemployment and growing inequality threaten our democracy and that “the stakes couldn’t be any higher.”
If you care about defending our country against the apostles of hate, you need to be part of the fight to rebuild a sustainable, high wage economy built on good jobs—the kind of economy that can only exist when working men and women have a real voice on the job
Click here for Trumka’s full speech.
Also yesterday, CNN tapped Trumka as one of the day’s “Most Intriguing People.” Click here.
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17 Comments
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Trumka warned that “massive unemployment and growing inequality threaten our democracy and that “the stakes couldn’t be any higher.”
How are we to stop the ‘growing inequality’ as long as we continue to allow ‘cheap’ labor to infiltrate our country?
Brother Trumka’s speech is a start. It’s clear that a lot of the conservative “intelligentsia” are people who stuck a wet dollar bill in the air and decided to head in the direction the money is going no matter what their internal values might be. Then there is the idealogical idiot who believes so fervently in their anti govt. and free market fundamentalism that no matter the tragic and miserable consequences they never give up the religion. The latter are beyond help, and like any addicted person will have to hit personal bottom to make a change. But maybe the former can be convinced that the current state of the global condition requires commitment and these people can help by at least getting degrees in Science and Engineering instead of Economics and Investment Banking and the production of phantom wealth. I’m doing my part, I’m a plumber!
Everyone should pull their money out of big banks and put it into credit unions and small town banks. If you have credit cards with these big banks, pay it down and switch over to credit union cards. Refinance your autos if you can with small banks or credit unions. Invest in starting employee owned companies. Take this country back. Tell everyone to do this. Pass this on to everyone you know. Show the banks that you will not be abused. Stop buying foreign goods, which might mean putting a moratorium on spending. We need to invest in our country, goods and services by Americans.
Still through all the talk, and other sidestepping this Union still has not fixed the problem with the Health Care reform. Fix it already! Fix the “Cadillac Tax” before Union members and Retirees pay dearly for this unfair tax.
Come on! Don’t avoid the issue by focusing on something else. You folks did not do anything but roll over on this issue.
Americans should stop buying foreign cars. Even if they are produced in the U.S., the profits go to foreign countries. One more dollar over there is one less dollar over here. Americans have made Toyota rich (200 billion dollars business) and have sacrificed our U.S. auto business( GM was a 56 billion dollar business) Americans should support the domestic auto bailout by buying domestic autos to pay back the bailout.
Without a political alternative to the twin parties of capital and ALL capitalist parties labor has no voice. Of course with the launching of a fighting workers’ party the present leadership of the AFL-CIO would be howling on the right to condemn workers fighting for a workers government as “socialists or communists” just like the nuts are doing today.
Good time to push for “card check” the massive crimes of Massey Energy must be confronted at the longwall, at the beltline, and in the parking lot.
If labor does not assert itself now, we will never recover.
Jt
IBEW 108
Tampa
good suggestion benlomand.
Ex member of IBEW 1245
Remember to check the VIN number for country of origin. 1=USA 2=Canada 3= Mexico
The solution is to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and organize all of the car plants here in the U.S. and boycott any domestic branded cars and trucks made outside of the U.S. A Chevrolet or Dodge Ram truck made in Mexico is particularly galling after all of U.S. plant closures and the beating the UAW has taken.
Remember, don’t get mad, get even! boycott so called U.S. cars and trucks that are being produced in Mexico. The only ones profiting are at the corporate offices in the towers in Detroit. That doesn’t pay your families bills!
The title of Mr. Trumka speech is about “hatred” about how the media is promoting hatred between the rich and the poor by filling your minds that the conservative intellectual is more better then the democracy.
Their failure has brought this drama to the forefront to use “hatred” to bring back the conservative stakeholders plan of completion.
Mr. Trumka have gone to the school were Lil George received his business degree by telling the facilities that they need to STOP the “hatred” and start helping American workers build back America to the grounds that we the people have built for all, not just a hands full of alliance that the Bush family made with them with semi-conductors back in the early 80′s.
If your read the latest website with the Dept. of Labor/SEC web chat strategic plan, as well as OSHA’s overview it will show how many stakeholders questioned whether this plan specifically would address ergonomics. These chips have been placed in your automobiles and telecommunications.
The hate group’s fearfully need to stand by this family whom they trusted to bring lots of money into the investor pockets are they will be just like the people who they bankrupted by corruption.
We need to have the public officials to help start a movement to bring this “hatred” to a revolution so we all can become one, not divided.
I can honestly say Mr.Trumka that the union here in Arizona has done nothing but raise our union due’s.
I want to know why my wages are about 2 dollars an hour better than my fathers were in 1974 and yet my union due’s are 3 times higher than his was? I understand that Arizona is an anti-union,anti-labor conservative republican state..but why is the union due’s not proportionate to the hourly wage?
And I can honestly say, as a former local officer that I am so tired even 6 years later of hearing and reading “the union” does nothing, “the union” should… who the devil do you think the union is?
Didn’t Mommy teach you that if you want something done do it yourself?
Get active, get educated, get helpful.
I love Richard Trumka,
I think that’s true, if the intellectuals don’t take our side then some of us will begin to hate them
I am a 30-something woman who would rather eat raw rattlesnake than join a union.
Mr Trumpka, you are the epitome of the union thug swinging a baseball bat at those who want no part of your criminal organization. Fortunately, most Americans see you and your ilk for what you are and want no part of you. Hence, your magnificent drops in membership and associated dues. May you spend the rest of your life paying for the misery you heap on others.
For the regular union folks out there, I don’t want to be actively against you. If, however, you allow this fat thug and his ilk to “represent” you to me and my fellow citizens, you will be treated with the respect you deserve–NONE. If you attempt to force my company to unionize using “cardcheck” and threats of violence, we will respond and we will win.
Never submit. Never surrender.
Visceral Rebellion
I have not seen any “racist and homophobic hate and violence” on either side. Lets not fan the anger.
We promise to love Nancy and her friends when they stop sending jobs overseas and start creating some real union jobs here.
Please call for a “Millions March” to confront the Republican Congress in Washington DC in mid October. One of the purposes of such a march should be to SHOWCASE the serious WAR that people who want to work, face in the upcoming election to defeat the “New Republican Corporate Party”.
Unholy NJ death wishers
Fury as teachers ‘pray to slay’ Christie
By CARL CAMPANILE — THE New York Post
Posted: 2:43 AM, April 10, 2010
A furious New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie yesterday tore into the state’s teachers union for circulating a memo that featured a prayer for his death.
“To pray for my death” is “beyond the pale,” said Christie, who has long been waging war against the New Jersey Education Association.
The newly elected Republican governor made it clear that he was speaking about the union leaders, not the state’s teachers.
“I’m sure there are teachers all across New Jersey who . . . are going to be ashamed. Ashamed to be a part of a union leadership that would actually pray for the death of an elected official,” Christie said.
“I wonder what the children of New Jersey will think when the leadership of the teachers union is praying for the governor to die?”
The NJEA memo included a mock “prayer” suggesting Christie should suffer the same fate as Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and celebrity pitchman Billy Mays, all of whom recently died.
It was signed by NJEA field representatives and distributed to union members in Bergen County, The Record of Hackensack reported.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/unholy_nj_BailThvJGGa7EUiOqO2QaK#ixzz0knvyTKMG