Poem of the Week: A Whole Wheat Poem [For Peggy]

A WHOLE WHEAT POEM [FOR PEGGY]

Gary Allan Kizer

When a friend bakes you bread,
You eat their labor, which requires respect and teeth.
Eating the bread is your own labor, exchanged fairly
And no longer a commodity.

I cannot bake bread in return, I cook cans
On a lightbulb and they would be cold in the mail.
But I can write poems for bread bakers
And give them away free.

The bread you buy in the store is sour,
Too many hands have passed it toward the market.
You can no longer taste the bread bakers love,
All you can taste are sadness, routine.

Next time you go shopping, ask the man for
Bread with love in it, the free bread.
Free bread? With love in it? We're fresh out,
He'll answer, if he answers at all.

If our work tastes bad, think of those
Who own it, who buy it for enough to eat
Stale bread with. Think of those who stamp
A price on things we should do for each other.

When a friend bakes you bread, it in no way helps
Build your body strong in twelve different ways,
Or keep phony monks in business. It quietly asks you
To eat the revolution without rat shit mixed in.


from Let A Single Flower Blossom
(the greenfield review press, 1977)

[This poem touches several issues, especially the question of labor done for love as opposed to labor done for hire, one also addressed by Morris Rosenfeld in an earlier PotW, "For Hire."

Gary Allan Kizer wrote several superb poems. This chapbook is out of print, unfortunately. To give you a better idea of where he's coming from, here's part of his introduction to the chapbook, as it has more information than is readily findable on the Internet:

I was born on a farm outside of Salamanca, New York. Soon after, my parents moved to Buffalo and went to work in the munitions industry toward the end of WWII. My dad split when I was five and I was raised in Buffalo by my mother and two older sisters. Following that came public school, young romance, juvenile delinquency and my first experience as a ward of the State. After 13 months of that, I cam home at 16, forged a birth certificate for 18 and went into the merchant marine. I also met a good woman. We lived common-law for 6 years and raised 5 children. I worked in the steel plants and as a roofer during the last 3 years I spent with my family. Then a man died and i went to Attica State Prison with a life sentence on my back. That was 9 years and 5 different prisons ago. I began reading Karl Marx during my third year in prison. About the same time, the State judged me as being incapable of rehabilitation. I hold the same opinion of the State. Read the book and see who's right.]

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"Jobs Now… Jobs at a Living Wage! " says Local 108's Charlie Hall, Jr.

November 1 Storm Update (scroll to end of post for update)

Black NJ: RWDSU Local 108 Joins POP Daily Pickets!

On Wednesday, October 19, the 116th day of the Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice, Local 108 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, AFL-CIO (RWDSU) joined the People's Organization for Progress and other community-based organizations, individuals and Newark residents at the Lincoln monument in front of the Essex County Hall of Records between Springfield Avenue and Market Street.

Local 108's participation was an important development in the proposed 381-day campaign. While many individual union members have participated over the past months, while labor organizations have sent out members, this was the first time an endorsing union local has come out in force with their leadership.

"We must grasp Newark's unique situation," Charles Hall, Jr., President of RWDSU Local 108 said. "While national unemployment figures hover around 10%, Newark's numbers are 22%, double-depression levels!"

"In this situation, politicians' promises fail to spark hope among the city's unemployed," Larry Hamm, NJ Chairman of the People's Organization for Progress added. "When unemployment among minority youth approaches 75%, Mayor Booker's claimed 'concern' about jobs looks more like a campaign slogan than an actuality."

The Daily People's Campaign's goal of at least 381-days of continuing picketing was conceived by the People's Organization for Progress to recall the length of the Montgomery Bus Boycott 0f 1955-56, but as this momentous movement enters its fourth month, local residents …and supporters far beyond Newark's boundaries… are linking it to the many Occupy! actions (Occupy Wall Street!, Occupy Chicago!, Occupy Boston!, Occupy London!, etc., etc.) that are drawing national and international attention.

Perhaps, as the Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford has noted (see People's Organization for Progress protest), POP's Newark "demonstration marathon" shares a community of interest with Occupy Wall Street. To me it appears that by uniting labor and the community against the failed banking and government policies that reduce the vast majority of Newark's citizens to poverty, the People's Daily Campaign is Occupy Newark!

Update: 

This past weekend, during the late-Fall blizzard (which plunged most of the Newark-area into almost a pre-electronic age situation as it brought down trees and power-lines all over Northern NJ) the People's Organization for Progress kept our daily picket active, sent a delegation to Wall Street and issued the following statement in support of Occupy Wall Street:

Statement of Solidarity from POP 

and the Daily People’s Campaign Coalition 

To the Occupy Wall St. Movement:  October 2011

The Peoples’ Organization for Progress (POP), the statewide social justice organization, based in New Jersey and rooted in the Black Freedom Movement, extends greetings of Solidarity to the Occupy Wall St. Movement (OWS).  We too are part of the 99%...who are victims of the current vastly disparate distribution of economic and political resources and power in the U.S. social system.  With you, we are the “have nots,” who are resolved to fight back against the effects and the roots of the economic downturn and the accompanying political repression that is necessary to maintain the status quo.

The “Great Recession” in the rest of Americas is full blown Depression in Black America and the communities of other oppressed nationalities: Latinos and Native Peoples.  We suffer double national levels of unemployment.  The sub-prime predatory mortgage attacks by robber financiers have been exposed as intentionally targeting Black and Brown borrowers.  Foreclosure and eviction are epidemic in our already impoverished communities; accelerating social decay and generational setback in already minimal wealth accumulation.  The devastating effect of Government withdrawal from social service and safety support is exponentially magnified in these neediest of communities.  The diversion of national treasury to wars of plunder and occupation and the historically unprecedented concentration of trillions of dollars of private wealth in the hands of the 1% deprive the U.S. Working Class, the Oppressed Nationalities and the small capitalists and support strata, who constitute, the Middle Class, of necessary resources for national reconstruction, necessary in the wake of the crisis.  The 1% is at war against the 99% at home abroad.

Like you, POP is resolved to Fight Back!  In response to the ruling class, the 1% efforts to burden the 99% with the ill effects and costs of the meltdown of their monopoly capitalism, while preserving their domination of society’s economic and political resources, we have put forth “The Daily Peoples’ Campaign for JOBS, PEACE, EQUALITY and JUSTICE.”  Inspired by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the campaign projects 381 days of daily protests against fundamental aspects of their war on us, demanding:

•A government sponsored national jobs program like the WPA of the 1930’s Depression,

•End the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever U.SD. military is projected abroad; and, repatriation of the wasted treasury  for national reconstruction,

•Preserving and strengthening workers’ rights and collective bargaining,

•A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions,

•Opposition to privatization of public education and guaranteed availability of university education without indentured servitude to finance capital,

•A national single-payer health program for all residents,

•End to police brutality and state repression of our fightback

The campaign is endorsed by in excess of 50 community, labor, faith-based and student organizations, who mobilize their constituents to join the picket line for at least one day of the 381, which was the duration of the 1957 Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, which jumpstarted the modern Civil Rights Movement.  Like the MBB, POP and our Coalition strive to organize allies in the Fight Back; to generate a political climate of resistance among the inactive masses of victims and; to advance the movement against Imperialism and for transformation of the U.S. social system to one that serves the 99%, rather than the1%.

Wall St. Occupiers and Occupiers across the country and around the world, POP and the Daily People’s Campaign Coalition unite with your resistance to the dictatorship of the Imperialism, led by U.S. Imperialism over our world.  To novices to the Struggle, we extend welcome!  Every fight for freedom and liberation requires the exuberance, idealism and energy of youth that young soldiers of OWS bring to the struggle.  Your courage in standing up and fighting back is inspirational.  Your fight against Wall St. greed and for the interests of the 99% are the right thing to do, placing you on the right side of history, for in spite of sacrifice and setbacks inevitably we shall win.  As you are part of the historic continuum of resistance, we say:  “Occupy Wall St. Live Like Them; Dare to Struggle and Dare to Win!”

POP and the Peoples’ Daily Campaign Coalition look forward to opportunities for joint work in building the Peoples’ resistance to oppression and exploitation.  

(to view this statement as a reprintable leaflet, click HERE, on leaflet)

[Thanks to sister Ingrid Hill, POP's Corresponding Secretary, and Angenetta Robinson, POP's Treasurer for the excellent photographs in this FotM blog]

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Gary Goff Is Going To Jail!

Gary Goff has been a good friend of mine for more than a quarter of a century, as has his partner Martha Cameron. We have strategized together, marched on Washington together, picketed red-lining realtors in his Brooklyn neighborhood together and protested too many wars and occupations undertaken by this country's rulers together. We have never been arrested together, though.

So when Gary told me that he was planning, at age 64, to go to Washington and take a bust doing civil disobedience, I was a bit surprised. Lately, much of his activism has been as a NYC employee and elected officer of his local in District Council 37 of AFSCME, at a time when civil servants are very much in the system's crosshairs.

Naturally I wanted to know what the hell he'd be facing arrest for, and why he thought that the situation demanded it. As he and Martha (who will be right there, doing logistics and media tasks in DC for Gary and other protesters) head for Washington, I am honored to publish this powerful and cogent answer to my questions.

Gary Goff: Why I'm Going to Get Arrested Next Week

I'm going to Washington, D.C., next week so I can get arrested. "Why?" you may ask.

The short answer is that I want to do what I can to prevent an environmental disaster. The long answer is a little more complicated. Here’'s what it'’s about.

TAR SANDS

As we run out of easy-to-reach oil and gas, we are turning more and more to high-risk extraction methods:– deep-ocean drilling, hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and tar sands refinement. Fossil fuels from conventional sources are bad enough. These are so much worse. Extraction is riskier, dirtier and infinitely more costly to the environment. Soil, oceans and freshwater are routinely contaminated.

The BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico exposed the dangers of deep-water drilling. The Oscar-winning documentary Gasland has opened our eyes to the dangers of fracking. But tar sands? Most of us in the United States don't even know what they are.

The world’'s largest deposits of tar sand--naturally occurring soil that is saturated with a sludge-like form of petroleum--are located in northern Alberta, Canada. For every barrel of crude oil extracted, four tons of tar sands are strip-mined and four barrels of freshwater are contaminated. According to Friends of the Earth, “during tar sands oil production alone, levels of carbon dioxide emissions are three times higher than those during conventional oil.” About 400 million gallons of freshwater are used daily. The residue--a toxic stew loaded with cyanide, ammonia and other dangerous substances--is stored in “tailing ponds” that are so large they can be seen from space. Indigenous communitiesliving near these ponds have high rates of renal failure, lupus, hyperthyroidism, and rare forms of cancer.

Scientists say the safe limit for CO2 in our atmosphere is 350 parts per million (ppm). We are currently at 392 ppm. The Alberta tar sands will likely add an additional 200 ppm. “If the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially "game over,"” says Jim Hansen, NASA'’s leading climatologist.

The TransCanada Corporation plans to build the Keystone XL Pipeline to carry crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to refineries nearly 2,000 miles away on the Gulf Coast of Texas. This pipeline will cross 71 rivers and streams (including the Missouri, Yellowstone, and Red Rivers), the Ogallala Aquifer (which supports agriculture throughout the Midwest), any number of delicate ecosystems, and an active earthquake zone. One person has called the whole scheme a bomb with a 2,000-mile fuse.

Leading environmental organizations point out the real danger of pipeline leaks: tar sand oil is much more acidic than conventional oil, and therefore much more corrosive. TransCanada says the risk of pipeline leaks is minimal--one leak every twenty years at most. But since the Keystone Project began two years ago, the pipeline has already had 12 major spills!

JAIL

At this point you might be thinking,

"“Okay, I get it. The tar sands are a bad idea. That pipeline is a really bad idea. But why go to Washington during the hottest, stickiest time of year? Why go out of your way to get arrested?”"

Here’'s the deal: Any pipeline that crosses the U.S. border needs a special Presidential Permit. If we are going to stop the expansion of the Keystone XL Pipeline, we have to convince the Obama administration not to issue the permit. Several weeks ago an impressive group of scientists, activists. and indigenous leaders put out a call for people opposed to the pipeline to engage in peaceful civil disobedience in front of the White House. (Click to see the Invitation.) This will not be a one-day action; it will take place every day from August 20 to September 3. So far, over 2,000 of us have signed up.

The older I get, the more I find myself thinking about the world I will leave my children and grandchildren. The race to the bottom, the juggernaut of greed that is bringing on global climate change, is truly frightening to watch. I don't know if getting arrested at the White House will stop it, but I have to try.

That’'s it. I've covered the basics of the issue and my thinking about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Below are some things you can do to help and some additional information.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Spend Some Time in the Slammer

If you would like to join the actions in Washington over the next couple of weeks, here'’s how you too can get arrested. And just think of the benefits: when the teacher asks how you spent your summer vacation, you'll have something interesting to say. (Click here to register.)

Tell President Obama: Stop the Pipeline!

I know, I know, another online petition. But petitions do matter: this one does, for sure. It will help support people like myself protesting in Washington, but more important, it will put Washington on notice that the American people are aware of--and oppose--this looming disaster. So do it; it only takes a minute. (Click here to sign the petition.)

Help Out the Folks Who Live on the Front Lines Every Day

Working-class communities, communities of color, and small farmers are disproportionately affected by environmental problems. The Keystone XL Pipeline is no exception. Indigenous communities in Alberta are already suffering: in Fort Chipewyan, with a predominately First Nation and Metis population, 100 of the 1,200 residents have died of cancer. If the pipeline is built, working people and people of color all along the way will be hit hard. Many of these people would like to be part of the Tar Sands Action, but they can't afford to make the trip. Tar Sands Action has set up a special fund to defray their costs. (Click to see donation page.)

LABOR AND THE PIPELINE

The American Petroleum Institute claims that the pipeline will create “hundreds of thousands” of new jobs--as many as “465,000 jobs,” according to one API official. Union leaders representing the Teamsters, Plumbers, Operating Engineers, and Laborers have endorsed the pipeline, stating that it will “spur the creation of 118,000 jobs.” In hard times, the importance of jobs cannot be denied, but we need to be wary of such claims. Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, who often write on labor issues, examined these figures closely and found them to be grossly inflated--a combination of wishful thinking and flimflam. The U.S. State Department'’s own estimate? Somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 new jobs over a period of three years.

And it'’s not just about jobs. The labor movement needs to represent workers in all aspects of their lives. As the late labor leader Walter Reuther once said, "“What good is a dollar an hour more in wages if your neighborhood is burning down?" What good is another week’'s vacation if the lake you used to go to is polluted and you can't swim in it?” What good is a union job if all we’'re doing is building our own gallows.

LINKS

Tar Sands Action is the website developed by the protest’'s organizers.

One excellent source is Keystone XL Pipeline from the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

The Guardian newspaper in Britain generally has good coverage of environmental issues, including several useful pieces about tar sands and the pipeline.

The Global Energy Crisis Deepens by Michael Klare is an in-depth look at how the end of conventional oil has lead to the development of more dangerous fuel sources. Klare has written extensively about the global impact of resource scarcity – specifically regarding war and politics.

For an excellent labor perspective on this issue, see Pipeline Climate Disaster: The Keystone XL Pipeline and Labor by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith.

Labor activist Joe Uehlein is one of the original signers of the Tar Sands Action Invitation. As a young man he had a union job constructing the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. See his piece, Joining the Labor Movement and the Sustainability Movement: Together We Can Stop the Tar Sands Climate Catastrophe.

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May '70: 16. The Other Side Of The Chasm

40 years ago today, around 100,000 people marched down Broadway in Manhattan. With thousands of safety helmet-wearing members of various construction unions in the lead and American flags everywhere, it was perhaps the largest single demonstration in support of the war during the whole Vietnam era.

As the march traversed the Wall Street area, it was greeted by cheers from crowds on the sidewalks and showered, from the upper floor offices of bankers, stockbrokers and lawyers, with spirals of tape from stock tickers.

Naturally the media gave the march intense play, contrasting it with the campus protests, by that point near the end of the third week of the national strike. And this hooray-for-war rally was in fact a direct outgrowth of the campus explosion. Specifically, it was the culmination of two weeks of orchestrated actions in NYC aimed at pushing the idea that the working class of the US supported the war and hated the protesters, starting with the intensely violent “Hard Hat riot” attacks on peaceful protesters which I wrote about on May 8, forty years after the event.

Two subsequent demos, on May 11 and May 16, targeted the city administration, especially the anti-war mayor John Lindsay (a Republican), with protesters calling him a “commie faggot.”

All were more or less openly organized from the top by Peter J Brennan, the president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York and vice president of the city’s Central Labor Council, and it was he who pulled together the May 20th march. As with the May 8 riot, workers continued to be mobilized by their unions and to receive paid time off from the large construction companies to take part.

These demonstrations were localized in NYC and didn’t spread like wildfire, the way the student protests had after the invasion of Cambodia, That’s a phenomenon which requires a little comment, especially for those who weren’t around at the time.

In the first article in this series, I wrote of how deep the split was that the Vietnam War had produced in US society. Those of us who militantly fought to end the war remained a distinct minority, but through our work (building on the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people to liberate their country), a lot of people had gotten pretty sick of the war.

Still, in a Gallup poll commissioned by Newsweek Magazine very shortly after the killings at Kent State, 58% said that the students were primarily at fault. Only 11% blamed the National Guard. Maybe the numbers were exaggerated, the methodology was flawed, etc, but enough of us came from small cities, from towns, from rural areas--hell, from families--where this was the conventional wisdom to know that Newsweek wasn’t way, way off either.

There was an question of privilege here. The draft was the only way the ruling class could maintain upwards of 500,000 troops at a time in Vietnam and college students had had the best set of options for avoiding or postponing having to show up for the fateful physical. Those who had served in previous wars, and those of our own generation who didn’t have that chance, mainly for reasons of class, had plenty of motive to resent those who did.

Beyond the war, the poll reflected a backlash against the whole new role that young folks were playing in society. We were setting the social norms--in politics, in sexual behavior, in clothing, in music, in every aspect of society, and we were rejecting, wholesale, the values and practices that our elders had lived their lives under and tried to inculcate in us.

In fact, one big reason that the New York City stuff wasn’t a nationwide phenomenon was the legacy of the ‘50s, with its suburbanization, conformity and red-baiting: quite simply, Good Americans (white ones) didn’t demonstrate. Period. It was us, the black sheep, the outcasts, the unAmericans who did.

Click here to read this series from the beginning.

Click here to read the next installment.

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Workers Erupt in Durban, in Peru--and in Nishinari

South Africa: One day province-wide strikes called by COSATU to protest soaring electricity prices and also the threat they pose to jobs slammed the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal on July 9, paralyzing industrial Durban. Five more are slated for next Wednesday, to be followed by a national shutdown August 6.

Peru: A one day national strike called by the CGTP union federation to protest soaring prices, especially of food, and neo-liberal policies on July 9 saw 200 arrested and the government building in the Madre de Dios region burned.

These strikes actually made the US news in the last two days--the business news anyhow. And well they might. Anger and unease in the working class of various countries is growing as inflation mushrooms and crisis looms. And these were political strikes, aimed at the government rather than individual firms or employers associations.

But I'm writing this to kick you another place name to go with KwaZulu and Madre de Dios--Nishinari.

Nishinari is a neighborhood in Osaka, Japan. The action there was almost 4 weeks ago and took place on a much smaller scale, 2 days, around 200 people. Day laborers in Nishinari rioted, fighting the cops with rocks and firebombs, setting up burning barricades. The workers were angered by police brutality, lack of jobs and the earlier arrest of a leader. Even the Japanese economy has taken on a more neo-liberal shape, with a growing section of the populace driven into poverty even as the social safety net shreds.

But 200 people? Last month? Hey, Jimmy (I hear you grouse), I'm as partial to riots as the next lefty, but what on earth makes this worth writing about?

Well, four things. First, frankly, is the simple fact that an important Financial Times reporter named Michiyo Nakamoto spun a whole op-ed piece around Nishinari yesterday, talking about phenomena like Japan's almost 2 million "freeters"

who take on whatever temporary jobs they can find and generally have no benefits. Thousands of freeters, in their 20s and 30s, sleep in internet cafés and are unable to find stable employment because they lack a permanent address.

Second, she seems to not only report on but unite with a growing Japanese critique of neo-liberal deregulation as trashing Japan's prized egalitarianism and social solidarity.

Third, though Nakamoto doesn't mention it, I seem to recall Nishinari being the site of similar struggles two decades or so ago, with young radicals joining in with the day laborers then and helping them organize. I wonder if the same dynamic is at work here, given that a short report in the Daily Yomiuri led with the arrests of "nine men and a high school girl."

Fourth, I just like the little rush of optimism I get from commentary like Nakamoto's conclusion that

it may not be too far fetched to conceive of the social unrest witnessed in Nishinari spreading to other parts of the country.

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