Brothers on the Line: The Reuthers and the UAW

Great film. Saw it last night ! DC.

Film review: “Brothers on the Line.”  By Maurice Isserman

“Brothers on the Line.” Directed by Sasha Reuther. Produced by Sasha Reuther and Nancy Roth. Edited by Deborah Peretz. Running time: 80 mins.  Release date: 2012.  Distributor:  The Cinema Guild (non-theatrical/educational).

Some years ago, in a provocative article for The Nation magazine titled “I Dreamed I Saw MTV Last Night,” historian Jesse Lemisch questioned the Left’s attachment to outmoded/provincial forms of cultural expression, notably labor/radical documentary films with heroic narratives and folk-music-heavy soundtracks.  “One of the chief problems in left expression,” Lemisch wrote, “centers on the question of authenticity. Can people on the left speak honestly in their various voices, or must they pretend to be somebody else and speak in a voice that they imagine, erroneously, to be mainstream American?”

Join the March on Washington – Saturday

“You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. . . . There must be a better distribution of wealth . . . and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speech to the SCLC staff, Frogmore, S.C., November 14, 1966

We March for the American Dream – August 24

Democratic socialists Bayard Rustin, Walter Reuther and A. Philip Randolph (ABOVE)  helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago.

They knew that ending legal segregation and winning political rights for African Americans were essential, but not sufficient, to ensure justice and freedom for all. Without access to good education, to health care and above all to decent jobs that paid living wages, the vote was not enough.

Detroit Bankruptcy and the assault on labor

Remarks  for DSA Youth Conference August 9, 2013          Jack Clark.

This morning’s session focuses on the future of the labor movement.  That’s proper.  For all its flaws and its current weakness, labor remains the largest and most strategically important social movement fighting for ordinary Americans.  It’s difficult to imagine a revitalized liberal-left coalition without a strengthened labor movement.  It is impossible to imagine the development of an American democratic socialist current in the absence of a strong working class movement.

With that said, I am not beginning my presentation with a look at labor itself.  Rather I want to start by looking at attacks on labor and particular one influential attack that uses the crisis in Detroit as the reason to attack unions. .  I’ll take a provocative look at a large question posed by one of labor’s foes and  suggest a large theme that might inform our struggle, and I’ll end by suggesting some specifics on what we want to fight for as allies and participants in labor’s cause.