Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

HOW NOT TO RESPOND TO TRAGEDY: AN INCOMPLETE LIST

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Steve Bell: “Do you think we’re going to be able to pass substantial Medicaid cuts and Social Security reform in the middle of this? You can’t put that much on the plate.”

Bill O’Reilly: “A lot of the people — a lot of the people who stayed wanted to do this destruction. They figured it out. And that’s — I’m not surprised.”

Rick Santorum:”There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”

Grover Norquist: “I don’t think Republicans will be fooled into taking this necessary spending and using it to oppose pro-growth tax cuts.”

Barbara Bush: “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”

George Bush: “Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house–he’s lost his entire house,” cracked Bush, “there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.”

TWO THOUGHTS

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Zichronam livrachah.

Disasters like this one provide a dramatic reminder of why we need a social contract through which people commit to mutual sacrifice for mutual prosperity and security. They make pronounced the limits of a worldview in which people are atomized entities threatened by the oppressive restrictions of a government which would have the gall to spend their money. The outrage of ordinary citizens at our leaders’ failure to take reasonable measures to ensure their safety is not the sign of weakness the radical right would have us believe any call for government action to be – it’s the rightful grievance of people who know they deserve a better deal which makes the investments necessary to protect them and their families. Hurricanes are a reminder that our interests are interconnected, and that justice demands finding common cause in common challenge, not appealing to the charitable private impulses of individuals as the single means to confront public crises. We may a thousand points of light, but we share the same space.

But even as these horrific events remind us of our common vulnerability, they demonstrate yet again how deeply the impact of such threats is determined along lines of race and class. By and large, those who have been unable to make it out of the devastated city have certain things in common – and contra Bill O’Reilly, they don’t include a desire to lay in wait so they can rape and plunder. A week ago, a friend was defending the old idea that property requirements for voting make sense because they restrict voting to those who have something to lose and therefore have a stake in what government does. I suggested that if we were really to assign votes based on one’s stake in what government does, the poorest would get the lion’s share because they’re the ones who have only voice, not exit, at their disposal when the government fails them. This week shows all too graphically how high the costs can be when elite decisions and oppressive poverty make a terrible situation that much worse.

JAMES DOBSON: NOT A STAND-UP GUY

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I know, I know: tell you something you don’t know. That said, though, check out a little research I did over at TPMCafe about his relationship to another one of your favorite Religious Right figures.

FIGHTING WORDS

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Kevin Drum: “what’s the point of a strong economy if it produces higher poverty rates, declining private sector healthcare coverage, and stagnant incomes?”

Bill Scher: “By not representing all Americans, our constitution laid the seeds for own “arduous, difficult … painful process” – our own civil war…It killed more than 600,000 people and left a scar on the nation that lasts to this day. Such is the risk a nation takes when it does not fully represent all of its people from the beginning.”

Jonathan Tasini: “The concept of a House is one of comfort, stability, predictability, and ownership. In today’s world, it might behoove unions to behave less from a place of comfort and defense of the House, opting, instead, to launch campaigns that might, in fact, endanger some institutions…”

ON EMBOLDENING

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In the wake of Russ Feingold’s call last week for a clearly-defined timetable for withdrawl of American troops from Iraq, President Bush has been stirring himself from his vacation long enough to offer a series of iterations of the same tired argument that announcing plans to withdraw troops would be letting the terrorists win (a category which, to review, includes smkoing pot, buying knock-off merchandise, and treating intelligence claims with skepticism, but doesn’t include buying an SUV, writing gay people out of the constitution, or renewing the PATRIOT Act). The latest edition of this argument, deployed for the liberal policy threat du jour, is dressed up in tactical sounding language about “emboldening” terrorists, but the thrust is nothing new: There are evil people who must be defied, and they want us to take troops out of Iraq, so we must do the opposite. Comforting rhetoric for some, but not much of a military strategy.

In Iraq, as elsewhere, there may be a certain number of fanatics willing to sacrifice anything under any circumstances, but there’s a much larger number of people who weigh their choices based on an array of perceptual, factual, emotional, and social, factors which drive one towards or against an act of terrirism. Bush would have us believe that an announcement of a schedule for American withdrawl would inspire more of these people to take Iraqi and foreign lives. This would require that there be a significant number of angry people not currently “emboldened” to take action because it seems futile, who on hearing that US troops would be leaving would decide that insurgents could make a dent after all and would suddenly become violent, targeting – according to Bush’s rhetoric – the very troops whose tenure in Iraq had just been announced to be temporary. The sad truth is that terrorists are indeed making a dent in Iraq, and they seem to be plenty emboldened. More credible, I’d say, is the opposite theory: the creation of a clear timetable for American withdrawl, with doing little to satiate insurgent leaders, would deprive them of their greatest recruiting tool and send a signal well beyond Iraq’s borders that the United States government does not have imperial ambitions in the country. As Feingold himself argued two months ago:

When I was in Baghdad in February, a senior coalition officer told me that he believes the U.S. could “take the wind out of the sails of the insurgents” by providing a clear, public plan and timeframe for the remaining U.S. mission. He thought this could rob them of their recruiting momentum. I also think it could rob them of some unity. All reports indicate that the forces fighting U.S. troops and attacking Iraqi police, soldiers, and civilians are a disparate bunch with different agendas, from embittered former regime elements to foreign fighters. The one thing that unites them is opposition to America’s presence in Iraq. Remove that factor, and we may see a more divided, less effective, more easily defeated insurgency.

IF YOU’RE REALLY AMBITIOUS, JOIN THE CHEERLEADING TEAM

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My guide to the campus political scene for Yale’s Class of ’09 is up here:

Some Yalies devote themselves to engaging in debate on pressing issues like health-care policy and whether women should be allowed to vote. The latter question is up for debate only at the Yale Political Union, where politicians, policy wonks and the occasional foreign dignitary show up each week to debate the issues and get hissed at by students in bow ties or occasionally receive some approving thigh-striking from students in bow ties. And every week, each of the YPU’s six political parties — three for conservatives, one for liberals, one for people who like drinking and one for people who are running for president — meets to debate the issues that divide its membership (what to drink, women’s suffrage, etc.).

BIBLICALLY INCORRECT

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Democracy for America just e-mailed to announce an on-line petition against Pat Robertson’s fatwa on Hugo Chavez reminding the pastor of the biblical commandment that “Thou shalt not kill.” I’d be all for spreading a little gospel to the everyone’s favorite venal, hateful, antisemitic (didn’t stop the ADL giving him an award for supporting the Israeli occupation) pastor, except for one problem: There is no biblical commandment that says “Thou shalt not kill.” There is a biblical commandment saying lo tirtzach. But that doesn’t mean “Do not kill” (not reason to dress it up in Old English). It means “Do not murder.” The Torah has lots of words for killing itself, but they don’t show up in the Ten Commandments – they show up at the various points where God affirmatively commands Israelites to kill particular people or peoples.

That’s not to say that opposition to violence itself doesn’t have support in Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s just to say that opposition to killing people across the board has no more grounding in the literal meaning (or p’shat) of the Torah than, say, opposition to aborting fetuses. What the Torah is clearly against is murder – killing unjustly. And the plentiful body of (inter alia) Jewish commentary on what counts as wrongful killing provides plentiful arguments for serious discretion in the use of lethal force. One cluster of examples would be the set of restrictions on the application of the death penalty which rendered it virtually impossible for human beings to carry it out (rules like the traditional prohibition on executing anyone based on a unanimous verdict, because a unanimous verdict suggests that the jury didn’t struggle with the issue hard enough). Needless to say, there are no lack of compelling religious arguments for why murdering a democratically-elected foreign leader in cold blood is something other than a good idea.

IT’S ABOUT TIME

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Looks like, while Zach still refuses to admit that he imposed a quota on Eidelson quotes on the quote page of his old website (pre-“Education in the Streets”), he has mysteriously unearthed a couple he wrote down back in the day but inexplicably decided to just sit on…

Speaking of me using words, my latest TPMCafe Auction House post – this time on Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist’s sketchy dealings with the Coushattas, the Choctaws, and the Christian Coalition (oh my!), is up here.

Got back to the Have this afternoon (sorry for this summer’s relative lack of posts on Have-related program activities), and needless to say, looks like it’s going to be a busy year. More soon…

TAKE THAT

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I just voted against Jim Gerlach in a push poll and believe me (ethical qualms about push-polling aside), it felt almost as good as voting against him for real did the last time. Actually, the friendly recording told me that I could press 2 if I wanted “to not re-elect Jim Gerlach.” From my telephone keypad to God’s ears…

SOLIDARITY CHARTERS

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Two weeks ago, John Sweeney made a partial concession to local organizers’ and officials’ widespread resistance to his bid to bar those Change to Win unions which have left the AFL-CIO from participating in any state and county labor groups it supports. Under Sweeney’s proposal, SEIU, Teamsters, UFCW, and Carpenters locals could seek “Solidarity Charters” to participate in the local groups on a few conditions. The first, at least in theory (I’m not in a position to crunch the numbers) seems fair: Given that these locals’ dues to their international unions are no longer contributing to the funds the AFL-CIO contributes to support local alliances, locals which participate in such groups under these charters should pay extra dues to offset the AFL-CIO’s contribution. Other stipulations, though, are more problematic: Members of Change to Win unions currently in leadership roles in local groups would have to publically disavow their own unions’ decision to leave the AFL-CIO in order to keep their jobs. No member of one of these unions, no matter what they said, would be eligible for election to leadership in a local group in the future. And, more ambiguously, Change to Win unions participating in these groups would be “bound by whatever actions or decisions of the [AFL-CIO] that are binding on all affiliated local unions” – whatever those may be. What Sweeney’s offering now isn’t a dignified partnership – it’s a subordinate relationship which isn’t justified by the check the AFL-CIO sends groups like the LA County Federation of Labor and doesn’t speak to the facts on the ground those groups are facing.

The Change to Win unions’ response, shown in this letter from Andy Stern to SEIU locals, has been a rejection of each of the stipulations, including the extra fees (which Stern unfairly calls “discriminatory”). Meanwhile, a group of state and local labor leaders have written to Sweeney praising his “good faith” effort to find a way to work together while voicing sympathy for unspecified “objections” to its specifics.

It remains to be seen whether a compromise, or at least a counter-offer, will emerge. If not, we may see unions and community allies shifting resources out of these state and local groups and into new ones which could set their relationships to the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition on new terms. Lest we forget the stakes, this week’s strike at Northwest is a telling demonstration, as Jonathan Tasini argues, both of why labor needs the kind of reform Change to Win is fighting for and of the potential costs if the movement fails to maintain solidarity in the wake of the split.

AMERICAN APPAREL

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Last month, Zach linked to this Village Voice piece reporting that American Apparel, the New York clothing outfit promoting itself as worker-friendly and advertising itself in the left alternative press, treats its workers in a manner which falls far short of its progressive image (much like, well, the Village Voice itself):

In September 2003, American Apparel workers began organizing with UNITE to address concerns like no paid time off, problems with production methods, conflicts with supervisors, and lack of affordable health care…Charney resorted to time-honored bad-boss techniques: interrogating and intimidating employees, distributing anti-union armbands (and T-shirts!), holding captive meetings, and worst of all, threatening to close down the plant altogether if the drive was successful. The union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, the result of which was that the company had to promise to drop its union-busting tactics, but for now, at least, the union drive is derailed…three employees have filed two suits alleging, among other things, that Charney invited an employee to masturbate with him, gave an employee a vibrator as a gift, exposed himself to an employee, conducted business in his underpants, and instructed an employee to offer a shopper a job on the spot because he wanted to have sex with her.

Some other folks showed up to defend American Apparel in the comments section, and Zach responded ably, and further in a post here:

Attempts by commenters to dismiss the sexual harassment complaints strike me as contrived, as extremely sketchy, as insufficient, and cast doubt on the veracity of other claims they are making. Whether or not any of this goes to trial, these claims, like all claims of sexual harassment at work, need to be taken seriously. Otherwise you end up with Clarence Thomas. I find Dov Charney’s statement in the infamous Jane article, quoted by a Washington Square News columnist, that “women initiate most domestic violence,” deeply troubling…Commenters claim that UNITE HERE duped workers into believing Charney didn’t want the union but offer no proof of this. I remain skeptical…Commenter “Julio” argues that workers could have simply gone up the block to the LA Times to complain. I wonder how long they could have kept their jobs if they had done so openly or had been discovered doing so clandestinely. I’m not buying Julio’s argument…Why is Dov Charney so opposed to his workers having a collective voice? What kind of equilibrim has he created in which workers can’t speak unless through channels initiated and controlled by management? Just who printed those armbands anyway? How does an ostensibly “pro-labor” or “pro-worker” company justify captive audience anti-union rallies and threats of plant closure? High wages, benefits, and even paid time off are no substitute for a voice on the job. If American Apparel’s corporate brand managers want to keep representing their product as “socially responsible,” they have some questions they need to answer.

Check it out (as well as this intriguing digression reminding us of what noble and necessary worker resistance to reactionary unions actually looks like). Looks like – as is all too often the case (check out Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool– American Apparel’s “progressivism” exists more a marketing strategy than as a principled commitment. Just listen to Dov Charney – who claims his company is sort of “capitalist-socialist fusion”, defend busting unions: “”If you ask 1,000 CEOs worldwide if they thought a union would be an obstacle to the company, I think the majority would say it’s a risk.” No surprise from the man who believes that “women initiate most domestic violence.”

DISENGAGEMENT: FORMALDEHYDE OR CATALYST?

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The Gaza pullout is one of those political events like a geometrical plane: it’s massive or nearly invisible, depending on the angle from which you look at it.

The idea that leaving Gaza represents a historic change of hearts on Arik Sharon’s part, while it makes good copy, isn’t grounded in much evidence – certainly not enough to disprove the more convincing and more characteristic explanation Dov Weinglass (Sharon’s Rove) gave to Ha’aretz last year:

The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians…It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president’s formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians…there is an American commitment such as never existed before, with regard to 190,000 settlers…there will be no timetable to implement the settlers’ nightmare. I have postponed that nightmare indefinitely. Because what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns.

Weinglass identifies a series of factors which have made it necessary for Israel to make some kind of visible concession, including the growing ranks of seruvniks refusing to serve in the territories (no blue-haired pot-smokers, he observes), and the signing of the Geneva Accords by opposition parties on both sides. If the Gaza withdrawl represents a new understanding on Sharon’s part, it’s a new understanding of the extent of pressure on his government to demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice for peace, not a discovery of his inner peacenik. His statement to the press that he would not definitively rule out future concessions by Israel in the West Bank at any time in the country’s future doesn’t change that.

That said, the fact increasing non-violent resistance to occupation, as well as a range of external factors (Arafat’s death, though after the original announcement, certainly contributes) and demographics, have built pressure for peace and justice to the point that the man who pledged “more Elon Morehs” would give up any territory at all is huge and worthy of celebration.

As for what this means for the chances of a West Bank withdrawl, seems to me the establishment of a state of Israel with just and internationally recognized borders will likely continue to be a very slow process, and Sharon opposition to such remains as strong as ever. But I’m inclined to agree with Ian Lustick that Sharon’s gamble that chaos in Gaza will heighten Israeli opposition to giving up any more of the occupied territories is likely to backfire, simply because Israel’s borders have now been recognized by the Likud party and many more Israelis as a strategic one rather than an absolute moral and religious principle. During the first Intifada, Lustick explored the process by which the idea of returning occupied territories crosses the threshholds from being undiscussed to being seen as incitement to civil war, and from being seen as incitement to civil war to being seen as a political question on the public agenda, with an extensive and ultimately hopeful comparative analysis of Israel’s challenge to one which faced Britian in Ireland and France in Algeria. In that framework, the current chatter about civil war amongst Israelis can be understood as a sign of how far we’ve come from the pre-Oslo days when a Palestinian state was simply off the agenda of the Israeli public.

As for the scenes on the ground in Gaza this week, it’s of course an ugly and divisive situation (a Likudnik relative who lives in a West Bank settlement reports having his tires slashed because his car had no anti-disengagement orange on it). The IDF appears so far to have largely shown the kind of restraint – even in the face of settlers throwing acid – that it has sadly failed to show in dealing with Palestinian protesters, violent and non-violent, since the second Intifada broke out. Here’s hoping for further restraint on all sides, and that the Israeli public will continue to recognize disengagement as a necessary, if difficult step. And that further steps on all sides will follow bimhairah, b’yamainu (speedily, in our days).