Lessons For Wisconsin from the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37

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Lessons for Wisconsin From the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37
by Mark Naison, Fordham University

With the state legislature in Wisconsion occupied and surrounded by thousands of state workers and their supporters, and with schools closed throughout the state because of teachers calling in sick, I cannot help but think of the greatest strike and building occupation in the history of the American labor movement- the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37. Though the Wisconsin struggle is being led by government workers, and the Flint Strikes involved workers involved in automobile production, both movements took place during the worst economic crisis of their era and were fighting for the same goal- collective bargaining rights for working people through a union of their own choosing- and were much more about dignity and respect than about income.

The Flint Strike, which involved the occupation of 9 General Motors automobile plants over a six week period, transformed the history of the industrial labor movement. During December of 1936, when the first GM plant was seized and occupied, the entire automobile and steel industries in the United States were union free. When the strike was finally settled, both General Motors and United States Steel agreed to bargain collectively with the CIO ( Congress of Industrial Organizations) unions seeking to organize their industries.

The Flint Strike , though it was precipitated by local conditions- a fierce unrelenting speed up on the GM assembly line , the involvement of a Ku Klux Klan like organization called the Black Legion in suppressing labor unrest in GM plants- was part of a national movement to win bargaining rights for industrial workers. As a result, the Flint workers were supported by the national leadership of the CIO-led by the formidable John L Lewis- as well as their own national union, and numerous leftwing organizations including the Communist Party. Though only GM workers actually occupied the factories, at key points in the strike, thousands of union workers were mobilized to come down from other cities to make sure that right wing Citizens Committees were unable to storm the plants, and that food and medical supplies were delivered to the striking workers. There were also doctors, nurses, lawyers, and journalists who came from all over the country to help the strikers. By the second week of the sit-down strikes, it was clear to everyone involved that this had become a truly national movement

The same dynamic must operate if the Wisconsin movement is to achieve its main goal- removal from the governor’s legislative program of any effort to weaken the bargaining rights of public workers in the state. Unions around the nation who face similar initiatives ( in Ohio, Tennessee and New Jersey) must send delegations to join the occupation and the protests and give whatever financial and legal support is necessary to teachers who are keeping the local schools closed. National union leaders who have a high public profile, people like Richard Trumka and Randy Weingarten, must not only come to Madison to offer their support of the movement, they must head straight to the White House to demand that President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders come out aggressively in support of the Madison movement. Student social justice organizations must send delegations to Madison to join the thousands of students at the state’s public universities who have been a central part of this movement from the beginning.

This movement has to be approached as the single most important labor struggle in the United States in the 21st Century. If the governor destroys collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin, you can be sure that similar initiatives will succeed in other states. If he

Is forced to take attacks on collective bargaining off the table by the strength of the protest, it will reinvigorate not only the entire labor movement in the United States, but the movement to prevent Congress and state legislatures from destroying what little of a safety net we have in the United States of America

The stakes could not be higher. So if you are in a union or part of a progressive organization, press your leadership to send people to Wisconsin. Insist your elected representatives pass resolutions in support of the Wisconsin movement. And get ready to fight the same battle in your own state when the time comes

Solidarity Foreover!

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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book White Boy: A Memoir, published in the Spring of 2002.

Five Dead Niggers vs. Eleven Uttered Niggers: A Racial Scorecard

Saturday Edition
Five Dead Niggers vs. Eleven Uttered Niggers: A Racial Scorecard
by Mark Anthony Neal

One index of contemporary race politics in the United States is the recent arrest of accused Israeli serial killer Elias Abuelazam and Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s on-air utterings of the word “nigger.” On their own merit, the Abuelazam arrest, in which he is accused of stabbing thirteen men, five of them fatally, and virtually all of them Black, should easily trump the meltdown of yet another way-too visible, highly compensated so-called celebrity. But such is not the case; while Schlessinger’s rant has been the talk of the chattering class on faux news programs and the blogosphere, even eliciting an apology by Schlessinger herself, the Abuelazam case has been buried in newspaper accounts, as Tom Socca points out in his smart piece “How Many Black Men Do You Have to Murder to Make the Front Page of the New York Times?” At the crux of the media’s seeming disconnect is the reality that eleven uttered “niggers” are a better news story than five dead “niggers.”

The mainstream corporate media’s gravitation to the Schlessinger story, might be excused if it actually forwarded an honest and critical conversation about race—or rather Black/White relations—but a cursory listen to the Schlessinger broadcast, which has gone viral, is a quick reminder of that impossibility. Weeks after the Shirley Sherrod controversy, in which commentators collectively missed an opportunity to illuminate the realities of racial terror and violence for the Youtube generation, Schlessinger’s comparison of the racist sentiments felt by a black women caller involved in an interracial marriage, to the routines of “black comedians” on HBO is juvenile.

That mainstream media felt compelled to cover a story, that should have been outright dismissed as pure folly, only highlights how childlike mainstream corporate media’s coverage of race politics have been. At this point we shouldn’t expect anymore from an institution that has devoted a summer long vigil for a drug-addicted B-list, former child actor, who happened to spend a few days in jail for driving under the influence.

In the case of Abuelazam, the mainstream media is often reticent to claim racist intent, in the face of attacks that seem evidently racially motivated; no doubt this contributes to their unwillingness to highlight a story in which the vast majority of the victims are Black. Thus the Abuelazam case, which focuses on a series of murders over the past four months in Flint, MI (arguably ground zero for the current financial crisis), like a similar case involving a series of murders of Black women in Rocky Mount, NC last year has flown way below the radar.

Giving mainstream corporate media some benefit of the doubt that they want to get the story right—indeed Abuelazam own mysterious racial identity complicates this—the darker explanation of their coverage is the fact that their core audiences could really care less about the death of a bunch of niggers, whether they be the men in Flint, Michigan, the too many black women victims of domestic violence (often at the hands of men who look just like them) or even the world’s most popular basketball player being burned in effigy in Cleveland.