Americans Haven't Quite Reached This Spot Again...Not Yet

 

Florence Owens Thompson and children, March 1936

Dorothea Lange's iconic photo of Florence Thompson and three of her children will, it seems, forever be imprinted on the psyches of Americans as an image of untellable suffering in this Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Most people will have little or no idea what was going on or who these people were or even where or when this picture was taken. It is the most singular icon of the Dust Bowl Era/Great Depression, without doubt or dispute. There are other photos from the era that resonate to be sure, but nothing like this one.

First off, I think it is of some note that this picture was taken in 1936, when the Depression, or at least its worst aspects of mass suffering, was perceived to be mostly over. FDR, the New Deal and all that.

It was taken on California's Central Coast, not Dust Bowl Oklahoma, and though Florence and her older children (not these -- her younger children were born in California) were from Oklahoma, they had been in California mostly working in the fields up and down the state since 1931. They were not Dust Bowl refugees -- at least not any more. They were migrant laborers in the fields of California, like tens of thousands of others did then -- and still do.

 Of course in those days, many of the California field hands were white. Nowadays, not so much. Nearly all of the field hands today are Hispanic, mostly from Mexico, though many are from Central America, and not a few were born and raised in California of Mexican or Central American parents.

For a time, and even in Thompson's time, it seemed to be possible to go from the fields in California to a fairly comfortable, fairly middle class lifestyle in one or at most two generations. That passage seems far from certain now. In this country today, if you're born poor, you'll most likely stay poor the rest of your life. Same for any children you might have. There is less social and economic mobility in the United States today than perhaps at any time in its history, less mobility in fact than in most other places in the developed world.

Florence and her children were poor to be sure, but they were not truly destitute at the time of the photo, though that's how they were portrayed by Lange and the press, a press which glommed onto the photo immediately and presented it as a portrait of despair and destitution of unparalleled magnitude in this land of plenty, and this after three years, three years!, of the New Deal.

According to the story Florence told later, what happened was that the family -- which included Jim Hill, her (common-law?) husband at the time, her older children and these younger ones -- were traveling from fields they'd been working in the Imperial Valley toward Watsonville near Salinas, where they hoped to find more work, but the timing chain on their Hudson broke and they coasted into a large ad hoc migrant camp (that held at that time maybe 2,000 or 3,000 hopeful workers) in Nipomo. (I'm very familiar with all these places, having lived and worked in or near California's agricultural areas most of my life. There are also other connections which may come up in other posts.)

The workers were there because they'd heard there was field work to be done picking peas, but when they got there, a freezing rain had ruined the crop and there was no work.

Many of the migrants in the camp were destitute and starving, but Florence's family were not. Comparatively speaking, they were doing OK.

Florence and her children were laying over in the camp while Jim Hill and the older boys were in town getting the car fixed so they could continue their journey north toward Watsonville. While in the camp, Florence said they subsisted on frozen peas they collected from the fields and the few birds the children were able to kill for the cooking pot. Hungry children came by and asked if they could please have a bite. Once the car was fixed, they moved on.

That they had a car and were used to the migrant labor life in California was to their advantage. While they had advantages that many others didn't, their life in the fields could not have been pleasant.

California's field hands were and are terribly exploited, often wretchedly housed and provided for, and frequently treated with feudal levels of abuse. Migrant field workers in California were and are beneath the level of an oppressed underclass; they were frequently seen and treated as disposable slaves by their employers.

Eventually, the Florence and family moved to California's Central Valley, still doing mostly farm labor, but apparently settling down near or in Modesto,  where Florence would meet and marry George Thompson, a hospital administrator, and from 1945 onwards, the family would live in modest financial security.

Florence claimed to be a full-blood Cherokee, born ("in a teepee") and raised outside of Tahlequah, OK. Her blood father was a Christie, and so could have been full-blood Cherokee, but he abandoned Florence's mother (of the Cobb family, and thus likely not full-blood Cherokee) before she was born. Her mother then married Charles Akman, of Choctaw descent. (All this, according to the Wiki...)

The other day, I was in the company of a genealogist out of Tahlequah who is a Christie descendant on his mother's side, and he said he'd been trying to trace Florence's Cherokee ancestry and was coming up short. Of course Cherokee lineages can be complicated. Just ask anyone who's tried to demonstrate their blood quantum to the satisfaction of the authorities of the Cherokee Nation. It can be quite a complex and drawn out process, even for full-bloods.

Of course Florence, even if a full-blood Cherokee (which is unlikely in any case), would not have been born "in a teepee" as teepees were not used by Cherokee people (nor by Choctaw) at any time.  But then, people tell tales...

The Cherokee Christies were and are based around Wauhillau, OK, not far from Tahlequah, and Florence's biological father was said to be Jackson Christie, who appears on the Dawes Rolls from Wauhillau as a full-blood. Her mother, a Cobb, however, is the more problematical ancestor, as there is no Mary Jane Cobb listed on the Dawes Rolls, and the only Mary Cobbs listed are of 1/4th and less Cherokee blood quantum. Of course, there were plenty of Cherokee of all blood quantums who were never listed on the rolls, so nothing conclusive can be said about Florence's mother's Cherokee ancestry -- or lack thereof.

That a Cherokee genealogist cannot trace her with any certainty is interesting but not unusual, given the fact that Florence's biological father (apparently a full-blood Cherokee) ran off before she was born, and she was raised by a (supposed) Choctaw adoptive father. Well, in Indian culture, she wouldn't have been raised by either father but instead would have been brought up in her mother's matrilineal household, with slight contact with "fathers." But if Florence's mother was a Cobb (there's no reason to doubt it), it's quite possible she was less culturally Cherokee, and so she might not have raised her daughter in the culture. On the other hand, she just as well might have.

Florence kept company with several men and (officially) married two of them though both died before she did. She had six or seven children, all of whom seem to have had great admiration for her. She appears to have engaged in field work in California for as long as she had to and was physically able to, but when the opportunity arose, she left the fields to work in hospitals, and by 1945 she had settled down in Modesto with her last husband, a hospital administrator -- which no doubt relieved her of any obligation to work the fields of California again.

When Dorothea Lange took that iconic picture, Florence's situation was not as dire as it was made out to be in the press, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking it was somehow "good" just because she and her children weren't actually stranded and starving, and she hadn't actually sold the tires on her car to buy food. The family's car would be repaired, and they would move on. But that didn't mean their situation was much better than miserable.

The status of the thousands of others at the Nipomo camp really was dire, though, and some actually were starving. The "Migrant Mother" picture of Florence and her younger kids led to the transport of tens of thousands of pounds of food to the camp to help succor those still trapped there. The fact that Americans could still be in such appalling circumstances, years after the advent of the New Deal under Roosevelt, came as a shock to many who had convinced themselves the New Deal had eliminated this level of destitution and desperation.

It did not. It wasn't until the 1960s and the Great Society programs of the Johnson Era that "Freedom from Want" was actually made a social and political principle in this country, a principle that we may note is being dismantled as our governing representatives seek ways to cut benefits for the masses, including Social Security and food stamps, while continuing to increase rewards and benefits for the highest of the mighty.

This is why the National Surveillance/Security State has become so essential to those few who are accumulating such remarkable rewards during a period of such economic decline and hardship for so many. As we see the identity of "terrorist" re-defined over and over and over again to include more and more individuals and groups that might one day prove problematical to the rule by the very few and the unfettered exploitation and impoverishment of the masses, we see the true nature of the Security fetish of Our Rulers. We see the "why" being answered with action.

We are all, ultimately, potential suspects and thus we all must be surveilled. This is essential for the survival and continued prosperity of Our Betters. Uppitiness must be channeled and controlled, revolt must be suppressed.

I find it interesting that some people who point out that this is the way it has been for a long time are being denounced as "Obots" and whatnot, when they are trying to get across the notion that some people have been yelling about the Surveillance State and the Security Fetish of the Ruling Class for many years and have generally been ignored or shushed, on the fictional basis that it's not really happening, or if it is, it isn't really all that worrisome, or if it is worrisome, it's better to keep quiet about it. Instead of taking it seriously when something might have been done about it, too many of those with prominent platforms in the media and on the internet were either silent or extra cautious, fearing that if too much was said or made of it, or if objections actually led to action, the Stasi would be on their tails like white on rice.

Now, interestingly, they aren't afraid, nor do they hesitate to accuse those who were calling for action years ago of being tacit supporters of universal surveillance and the security state all along. It is very much a through-the-looking-glass and down-the-rabbit-hole situation, by no means the first in these realms.

Now it's an all-important issue, but what's to be done about it -- apart from arguing and debating in endless circles?

In 1936, Americans discovered to their shock and horror that the New Deal hadn't really accomplished what they thought it had set out to do, and many millions of Americans, symbolized by Dorothea Lange's portrait of Florence Thompson, were still suffering severely. They would be reminded again in the 1960s with exposés of economic and social hardships  all over the country. In those days, Americans and their representatives in Congress assembled were empowered to and capable of doing something to alleviate that suffering.

Now? Not so much. No, let's be honest: not at all. Our Rulers are actively instituting programs of impoverishment and suffering for the masses, and the public is advised to acquiesce quietly or be subjected to the tender ministrations of or brutal suppression by the bloated National Security State -- as has been demonstrated against various groups and individuals for years. We are well past the point where the People might have intervened to halt or reverse our collective disempowerment.

Now the options for reversing what's been under way for so many years are highly constrained. Lawsuits are among the options available. But when the courts are part of the problem...

Congressional agitation is potentially useful, but when congress itself is part of the problem...

Popular outrage is hard to sustain when the Ruling Classes really don't give a shit about what the People want any more...

It's another fine mess we've got ourselves into...

From the AntiFa Trenches, c. 1938 (contd)

Antifascist poster, Spanish Civil War, c. 1938. "The foreign fascist hordes are trying to invade our territory. Antifascists! Block their road, bar them forever from our soil!"

There are so many parallels and similarities between the situation we face now and the situation faced by Americans during the 1930's and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, but there are also many profound differences. Perhaps the most troubling is the absence of any political ideology to counter a revived fascism that has been taking over the world.

One can say what one will about the merits of Communism, or the lack of them, but it was a coherent ideology opposed to fascism, and at the time the example of the Soviet Union could be and was held up as a model antifascist society. It was deeply -- and ultimately fatally -- flawed, of course, but it was something.

 Now? What is there?

Occupy is self-consciously non-ideological and apolitical. It operates in a space outside the framework of routine civil society -- which is one reason why it has been significantly successful, despite repression by authorities and more than a little internal dissension.

But unless something can stand as a counter to the modern neo-fascists, the fascists win. And hands down, they are winning, spectacularly and consistently. They have been doing so for decades, to the point where their victories are taken pretty much for granted as the way things are, the baseline from which any opposition is expected to arise. In other words, the neo-fascist reality is the one we all live in now.

In 1938, fascism was the political reality through much of Europe -- we forget that most of Europe was, by 1938 or 1939, ruled by fascists and what Magil and Stevens call "semi-fascists." Fascism was the reality in much of Asia and Latin America as well. Colonial Africa could not escape the fascist march.

The United States, as Magil and Stevens amply document, was riddled with overt and covert fascist elements and organizations, found in every aspect of government and throughout what passed for civil society, especially but not exclusively in the South.

I would argue that part of the reason for the pervasiveness of fascism at the time was "fashion." Fascism was new and energized, revolutionary in much the same way that Soviet Communism was, but with the key difference that fascism was the modern mass movement, the modern revolution if you will, that provided crucial support for the very sort of hypercapitalism that had so recently been responsible for crashing economies all over the world.

Fascism is the response of late-stage capitalism to existential crisis. The World War, the Russian Revolution(s), the financial collapse of 1929, and the mortal blow to the peoples of the capitalist democracies delivered by the Great (and at the time seemingly Endless) Depression, was perceived by many, inside and outside the system, as the quintessential Crisis of Capitalism that would quite likely lead to its ultimate demise.

Fascism was demonstrated as a functional alternative to both Communism and Capitalism in Extremis. There are many reasons why it was so successful at the time, chief among them that fascists gave people a common national purpose and it put people back to work. Global Capitalism on its own, as we've seen since the Crash of 2008, cannot do that. "Nations" are simply in the way, and keeping substantial numbers of people unemployed indefinitely is a necessity to ensure profits continue to rise (unemployment works by driving down wages and benefit costs).

Fascism was highly regimented and militarized in the 1930's, aspects which we note are largely absent from the neo-fascism of today.

Imperialism is still very much apparent, but no longer are vast armies assembled to undertake the conquest of foreign lands. According to modern military doctrine, mass armies are no longer necessary for conquest of desirable foreign territory or control of resources. Bribery works very well, and what can't be bought can be rather easily seized and held by a small, mobile, technologically advanced army together with a sufficient number of mercenaries to handle extraneous matters and occasional wet work. And of course remote controlled Death From Above machines take the place of thousands of military personnel.

As targets soon discover, there is no adequate defense against modern warfare.

Civil society and civilian life are largely neglected by the neo-fascist cabal of global rulers we see today. Apart from constant surveillance and sporadic repression of nascent uprisings, the ruling class essentially ignores most of what's going on in "The Street." There is an incessant barrage of propaganda from every corporate outlet.

 Everything the common people are allowed to  have is due to the "gifts" of the elites, and everyone is supposed to be grateful for what little -- or much -- they are given. But nothing comes without a cost.

Because taxes are seen as punishment for failure, only the "lesser people," who by definition are failures, are forced to pay taxes.

 Rent seeking, extraction, gambling, plunder and pillage now constitute the elite "economy" -- if you want to call it that. For man of the rest of us, subsistence has become the New Normal.

This is about where global fascists would have been by now if the unpleasantness of World War II hadn't intervened.


And so we continue with excerpts from "The Peril of Fascism" by A.B. Magil and Henry Stevens, published in 1938 by International Publishers, the American publisher for the Communist Party of the United States.

The Bonus March of 1932 was undoubtedly one of the epoch-making mass struggles in American history. It was initiated in a very modest form by a small, militant veterans' organization, the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League (later renamed the League of American Ex-Servicemen [Note: the League disbanded in 1935, its members joining the American Legion and other veterans' organizations.] but it grew far beyond the plans of its original sponsors. Members of the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans disregarded the instructions of their national officialdom and joined with the members of the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League and with unaffiliated veterans in the great trek to the nation's capitol. All told, about 20,000 of them gathered in Washington and camped for nearly two months in Anacostia Flats.

Hoover blasted the ex-soldiers out of Anacostia with the gun-fire, tear gas and bayonets of the United States Army. But he also helped blast himself out of the Presidency. Bloody Thursday, July 28 [1932], aroused the entire country. The great veterans' struggle broke through the anti-bonus policy of the Legion chiefs and won from the Portland, Oregon, convention in October, 1932, the first endorsement of immediate payment. [Note: the "bonus" was legislation passed in 1924 providing per-capita payment of $1 a day for those engaged in domestic military service during WWI and $1.25 per day for service overseas, payable in 1945. The Bonus March was organized in 1932 to demand immediate payment so as to alleviate some of the suffering caused by the Depression.]

The army of bonus marchers that staggered out of Washington in rout and apparent defeat became the nucleus of a movement which, gathering ever wider popular support, marched forward irresistibly until it culminated in 1936 in the passage by the 74th Congress of the bonus bill over President Roosevelt's veto.

The Bonus March revealed not only the strength of the veterans' movement, but also its weakness. It was only natural that among men who had little experience with rank and file organization and who only yesterday have been ardent patrioteers there should exist considerable political confusion. And there were not lacking at Anacostia Flats buzzard of reaction on the hunt for prey. We have already mentioned the Key Men of America. It was the Key Men, with the collaboration of General Pelham D. Glassford, at the time Washington police chief, that foisted on the marchers the Oregon adventurer, W. W. Waters, as commander-in-chief of the Bonus Expeditionary Forces. Waters surrounded himself with a host of shady characters, among them Harold B. Foulkrod, former manager of the Philadelphia branch of the Burns Detective Agency, who was named "legislative representative." These individuals sedulously used the  Red scare to divide the veterans. They were helped along by Father Coughlin who sent a $5,000 check to the B.E.F. "with absolute instructions that they who benefit by this donation be clear of all Communist leaders and Communist suggestions."

Out of the Bonus March emerged what was one of the country's first openly fascist terrorist organizations, the Khaki Shirts, also known later as the U. S. Fascists. It was launched by Waters, with himself as leader. The shirt idea spread rapidly, and Father J. R. Cox of Pittsburgh attempted to entice veterans into the Blue Shirts.

The passage of the Bonus resolution by the 1932 Legion convention marked the first step toward directing the organization away from the reactionary policies which it had hitherto pursued. But economic issues are inseparably bound up with questions of civil liberties, with the preservation of democracy itself. The leaders of the American Legion had early shown a decidedly pro-fascis bent and a special affection for Mussolini. In January, 1923, only two months after Il Duce has established the world's first fascist dictatorship, National Commander Alvin Owlsley, in an interview with the Newspaper Enterprise Association, expounded on the philosophy of the Legion's royal family in the following candid words:

If ever needed, the American Legion stands ready to protect our country's institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who menaced Italy... Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.

The history of the Legion during most of the years since its inception certainly indicates that its leaders have attempted to live up to these "ideals." They have sought to suppress meetings of labor and liberal groups through the Legion's well-financed National Americanism Commission, directed by Homer Chaillaux, have incited red-hunts in the colleges and distributed large quantities of red-baiting literature, including that richly imaginative work, Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling's The Red Network, which lists among the country's dangerous Reds Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mayor La Guardia of New York City. In 1934-35 the Legion chiefs actively cooperated in the Chamber of Commerce-Hearst crusade against democracy. At the same time these super-nationalists have not neglected their international contacts. A Paris dispatch of Hearst's Universal Service published in the New York American as of June 25, 1935, stated:

Reports that the Prince of Wales, Colonel de la Rocque, head of French war veterans, and American Legion chiefs are cooperating to unite veterans to force their respective government to present a united front against Communism impressed delegates to the International Chamber of Commerce meeting. [The Prince of Wales, (later King Edward VIII and now the Duke of Winsor) at the time was making overtures to the German fascist war veterans' organization in line with the British Tory government's policy of rapprochement with the Nazi regime.]

But the membership of the Legion were beginning to move in a different direction. Many posts were adopting resolutions condemning strike-breaking and attacks on democratic rights. In San Francisco and Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Legion posts officially participated in parades for slain strikers.The Blissville Post of Queens, Long Island, after placing Paul Crosbie, an avowed Communist, on trial, ruled that "Communist membership is not sufficient reason for expulsion." In New Jersey the state organization of the Legion in 1936 opposed compulsory saluting of the flag for school children. In the same year, the Americanism Committee of the New York County Posts of the Legion adopted and circulated a pamphlet called: "Americanism, What Is It?" which advocated an Americanism that was a far cry from the Hearstized brand that the Legion chiefs had been propounding. In June, 1936, the convention of the New York County Legion voted opposition to teachers' loyalty oaths and urged higher relief allowances.

...

Let it be remembered that ex-servicemen have played an all-important role in the development of fascism in other countries. In Germany, the National Socialist Party was organized in 1919 by army officers who won their first successes among returned soldiers. In Italy, Mussolini formed his first terrorist bands from among former soldiers. In France, the core of the fascist forces has been the veterans' organization, Croix de Feu (now the Social Party) led by Colonel de la Rocque. In the United States, as we have seen, the Legion was groomed by its founders and early leaders to play a similar role. That their dreams are farther from realization today than at any time in the Legion's history is a tribute to the strength of the democratic sentiment among the World War veterans and the American people as a whole and their growing awareness of the social and political forces that are shaping the world today. The fight against professional patriotism and fascism in the American Legion has not yet been won, but recent developments offer hope that the men who went through the blood and muck of the war may yet avoid the tragic mistakes of their comrades in Germany, Italy, and France.

 

From the AntiFa Trenches, c. 1938 (contd)

Anti-Fascist Spanish Civil War Poster, c. 1938

What really strikes me about this book ("The Peril of Fascism -- The Crisis of American Democracy" by A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens, International Publishers, 1938) is how contemporary it seems. What was going on when this book was written closely resembles what's going on now, particularly the overbearing of the state and the violent suppression of dissent. Magil and Stevens see this as the hallmark of fascism, just as many observers do today, but in 1938, fascism was still something relatively new and revolutionary. Now it's something old and reactionary.

Liberals and progressives today may be primarily concerned with preserving what they can of the status quo against the tide of cruelty and barbarism being led by the modern day neo-fascist vanguard. It's a losing strategy, as it was in 1938. But in 1938, there was an ideological answer, and the world would soon enough be engulfed in flames to test it. Now, there seems to be an absence of ideology to counter the march of neo-fascism. The rebellions and revolutions around the world are for the most part not ideologically based, and so they seem to have little real substance (and as we have been seeing in North Africa, they don't produce the intended results.)

Some additional excerpts from "The Peril of Fascism" to help set the scene of what was going on in the 1930's. The parallels to today are obvious, and yet the differences are, too:

It was during this period that the Supreme Court emerged as perhaps the principal institutional bulwark of reaction. In previous periods, when the Presidency had been under the firm control of big business, the court played a role secondary to the executive branch of the government as an impediment to progress. Now, however, with the Presidency in the hands of Roosevelt, the conservative corporation lawyers who dominated the Supreme Court came to the rescue of the economic royalists. When the reactionary drive against Roosevelt was at its height in the spring of 1935, the Supreme Court went into action and nullified one New Deal law after another. Among the first to go was the N. R. A., which from the viewpoint of big business had outlived its usefulness. After that came the A.A.A. decision which attacked the principle of government taxation for farm relief. Other decisions nullified the railroad retirement act, which made railroad pensions compulsory; voided the Fraizer-Lemke act, providing partial relief to mortgage-ridden farmers; and set aside other progressive legislation, all in defense of the privileges and prerogatives of big business.

Never before had the Supreme Court attempted to exercise on such a vast scale its usurped powers to nullify Congressional legislation. From 1803, when the court first claimed its powers to void the law of the country, until the Civil War, the court wielded this power only once -- in the notorious Dred Scott case, which played an important part in precipitating the war between the states. It was not until after the Civil War, when monopoly capitalism developed the power of the judiciary as a means of strengthening its own rule, that the courts began to exercise their usurped powers on a considerable scale. From 1860 to 1932, the court refused to recognize the right of Congress to enact laws in 60 cases. At no stage, however, did it wield its autocratic powers with the vigor it did in 1935-36 when it rendered 12 decisions against Congress.

This development was of the most far-reaching importance for the future of American democracy. It meant that five reactionary lawyers, constituting themselves as a majority of the Supreme Court, arrogated the right to pass on all reform laws and to nullify the will of the people. At the present stage of American political development this autocratic exercise of power can be correctly described as fascist in tendency. By means of its usurped power, a majority of the court can, by judicial fiat, frustrate the proceses of even capitalist democracy. Here is one of the specifically indigenous forms in which the growing fascist tendencies of American big business was manifested.

But an even more obvious expression of the increasingly fascist temper of American reaction was the wholesale use of violence against workers and farmers. In the three years from 1933 to 1935 inclusive, state troops were sent against strikers and demonstrating workers and farmers at least 60 times. In 1934, 49 workers and farmers were killed by soldiers, police or armed mobs of vigilantes. In 1935, 39 were killed. Countless thousands were wounded with bullets, clubbed, beaten, tear-gassed, maimed. Thousands of others were arrested and jailed on trumped up charges for exercising their elementary democratic rights to free speech and assembly. In 1935 alone, the International Labor Defense estimates, there were nearly 18,000 recorded cases of arrests of workers and farmers who participated in strikes and unemployment and other demonstrations.

A crop of criminal syndicalism and sedition cases, unparalleled in recent years -- wrote the American Civil Liberties Union -- marked the drive of the reactionaries against demonstrations of the unemployed and organization of the workers in the left wing unions. Criminal anarchy, criminal syndicalism and sedition laws were invoked in Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Oregon, and in Georgia an insurrection statute was used in the same way.

Besides this "legal" use of violence was the extra-legal terror exercised by vigilantes and other gangs of fascist terrorists. In 1934, 1935, and 1936, armed terrorist groups cropped up in various parts of the country, organized and financed by employers and operating with the tacit, and in some cases, with the open consent of the police and other officials. These gangs -- composed, on the one hand, of underworld criminals, and on the other, of the "best people" in their communities -- were the shock troops of American fascism. They constitute the counterpart, even if in embryonic form, of Hitler's stormtroopers in Germany. They raided workers headquarters, kidnapped and beat labor organizers, intimidated recalcitrant officials -- all for the greater profit and glory of big capital.

Anti-working-class violence reached its highest pitch during and immediately after the San Francisco general strike in the summer of 1934. The strike, which was the most effective action of its kind in American history, struck fear among the capitalist bourbons throughout the country. The more panicky "princes of privilege" had visions of immanent revolution. The more realistic saw that the victory of the San Francisco marine workers would lead to a resurgence of the labor movement and encourage trade union organization in every industry. Both were determined to crush labor by every possible means.

The reign of terror inaugurated in California after the San Francisco strike approximated fascist rule. "Law and order," civil liberties and democratic rights were violently brushed aside by the police and fascist mobsters -- all in the name of law and order.

Literally thousands -- said one writer in the Nation, describing the situation in California in the summer of 1934 -- including many noncombatants have been gassed, had their skulls cracked, been trampled upon and shot. Countless homes have been entered. Private property has been ruthlessly destroyed.

The class-conscious workers of California are living in terror today. Except in Los Angeles their movement has been driven underground. They are listed, photographed, studied, harassed, and constantly attacked by their enemies. They have no protectors, no newspapers in which to appeal to public opinion. When they attempt to win better working conditions, they are met with special clubs four feet long, gas bombs, iron pipes, billies and bullets.

In Imperial Valley during the strikes this year, police, private armies and vigilantes committed every crime in the calendar upon their victims, who comprised the migratory workers and their allies, labor organizers, lawyers of the Civil Liberties Union, and the International Labor Defense. Hundreds were arrested; gas, water, and fire were used to terrorize the unfortunates, some of whom were working for 35 cents a day... Stockades held prisoners of war; chain gangs were improvised to punish them; all roads were blockaded against either food or moral aid for the victims...

In Northern California the red hunt was hardly a hunt. It was a war... Encouraged by statements of Governor Merriam, Mayor Rossi and Police Chief Quinn, the minor mayors of the Bay cities, vigilantes under many names -- "safety committees," Minute Men, White Guards, Silver Shirts, Ku Klux Klanners -- roamed the highways at will, acting in much the same manner as their German prototypes, the Brown Shirts.

The fascist reign of terror in California had its counterpart in many other communities throughout the country where workers and farmers struck or demonstrated for better conditions and for their democratic rights.

Sixteen workers were shot to death in the national textile strike in September, 1934. Seven were massacred by deputies at Honea Path, South Carolina; three in Trion, Georgia; others were killed in Greenville, South Carolina, Saylesville and Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Six were bayoneted by state troops in High Point, North Carolina. In Georgia, Governor Talmadge, an outspoken admirer of Hitler and a supporter of the American Liberty League, established concentration camps modeled after those of Nazi Germany.

In scattered areas throughout the country -- particularly in the South, in California, in coal and iron towns -- local regimes which were fascist in character, if not in name, were set up to prevent trade union organization. In these regions, the right of free speech, press and assemblage, the right to organize, strike and picket were completely abolished. Citizens enjoyed only such right as the employers and their private armies and mobsters were willing to permit -- and these were few indeed.

Such fascist fever spots had long existed in many company towns and sections of the South, but now the disease spread to many additional communities and assumed more virulent forms.

This was especially true in the southern plantation areas, where the vestiges of chattel slavery and the tradition of the violent suppression the Negroes created favorable conditions for the growth of the fascist germ.

Describing the suppression of the sharecroppers' strike in Arkansas in the autumn of 1935, an organizer for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union wrote in the New York Post:

At night deputy sheriffs and masked men ride the roads, on the lookout for secret meetings of the union... Beatings are frequent and killings are not uncommon. Planters even organized a fascist band, wearing green shirts and carrying the swastika as its symbol. .. Hundreds of our members have been beaten and scores of families have been driven from their homes by terror... At least ten of our members have been killed.

And so it went, on and on throughout the country, and this was during the heady day of the New Deal presided over by the saintly "leftist" FDR. Most people today are completely unaware of these aspects of the New Deal, and many people believe that things were somehow better then than they are now. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

While there are many parallels between then and now, for those who refused to stay in their "place," things were not only worse then, they could be and often were deadly.

The peril of fascism was all too real.

The Second Bill of Rights

Every now and then I mention that the "left's" approach to the situation we face is out of whack when the primary objective seems to be preserving what can be preserved of the status quo in the face of the Rightist Republican onslaught.

Rather than even think of New and Improved policies of their own, the tendency on the "left"* is to argue the demerits of the Rightist proposals, and then lose the argument in Congress and the media, then repeat the process over and over again, and then complain that the debate is always being moved rightward, and it's just not fair.

Well, no. No it isn't. Fair, that is. But I would suggest that the reason why the debate keeps moving rightward is because so many times the "left" never even tries to move it in the other direction. They always fall into an Argument Trap which requires a dutiful reflection and consideration on the Rightist's proposals which always uses the Rightist's premises as the starting point. There may be a routine denunciation or two thrown in, but nine times out of ten, the Argument Trap the "left" finds itself in is inescapable: the Rightists have proposed something which the "left" is then obliged to argue. The "left" rarely proposes anything but is constantly arguing against the Rightist's proposal and in favor of the status quo.

There is no possibility of progress under the circumstances. Reversion is inevitable.

The Rightists seem to know that -- which is one reason they tend to chortle as much as they do at the antics of the "left."

Democratic leaders and online "leftists" never seem to get it, or if they do, they do so on Rightist terms. Which means going along with the Rightists.

It reminds me a little bit of the Civil Liberties struggles that crop up from time to time. The course of events is moving many primary civil liberties backwards at a furious pace. The Bill of Rights is essentially a dead letter, for example. The Constitution itself is under fierce legislative, executive and judicial assault. No matter; the Civil Liberties crowd sees incremental improvements here and there, particularly in gay rights these days, and that's enough to demonstrate "progress." The overall picture of course shows plenty of progress, just in the wrong direction. While valiantly hanging on to what they can of the tattered shreds and remnants of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Civil Liberties crowd is losing the overall and long-term battle for rights and liberties for the masses -- which are being canceled wholesale at home and abroad in the name of "Security" -- aka "Freedom and Democracy." One should be stunned...

That's why The Second Bill of Rights is a necessary way of looking at things; otherwise we will constantly be moving backwards on important economic and political matters without even recognizing there is another way to go.



There are two versions of FDR's Second Bill of Rights speech posted here -- the first is his Fireside Chat from January 11, 1944, in which he details the economic issues the world and the nation will face as the Second World War is brought to a conclusion; in the second film version of the speech, he is focused more on the elements of social/economic justice than the larger picture. It's also pretty plain on film that Roosevelt is showing signs of extraordinary strain and stress.

In his radio speech, FDR mentions the "rightist reaction." Indeed, it is always trying to drive us backwards, and he says that going back to the way things were in the 1920's is a sure recipe for the triumph of Fascism.

Sure enough, here we are.

But unless you are prepared and able to think outside the Reactionary Rightist parameters you are doomed to going backwards -- where they want to take you.

It's not so much the elements of FDR's Second Bill of Rights that I'm focusing on (though they are important basics); it is the way of thinking and looking at problems and issues that's important in these times.

Social and economic justice are not side issues to be dealt with on the margins. They are the primary issues for most people. It's fundamental for opinion leaders in media -- new media included -- and in the ruling class to get that.

But nearly all of them have forgotten -- if they ever knew anything about such icky things in the first place.

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Note: Republicans and Libertarians tend to go into fits of incoherent rage whenever the topic of The Second Bill of Rights is raised, or for that matter whenever economic and social justice threaten to rise from the dead and become paramount concerns once again.

One might want to contemplate why Republicans and Libertarians are so threatened by economic and social justice issues, and who they actually represent.

Greider in The Nation

The End of New Deal Liberalism

William Greider

Society faces dreadful prospects and profound transformation. When both parties are aligned with corporate power, who will stand up for the people? Who will protect them from the insatiable appetites of capitalist enterprise and help them get through the hard passage ahead? One thing we know for sure from history: there is no natural limit to what capitalism will seek in terms of power and profit. If government does not stand up and apply the brakes, society is defenseless.

Exactly.

Chris Hedges has also been hammering home the point that the Liberal Class is extinct having sold out to the Corporatist Overlords, and there really is no institutional Vox Populi any more.

As Greider says that from a practical standpoint, and Hedges puts in moralist terms, the only way forward -- for the People -- is for the People to take charge of their fate from the hands of the Unified Corporatist/Government.

A century ago the populist rebellion organized farmer cooperatives, started dozens of newspapers and sent out lecturers to spread the word. Socialists and the labor movement did much the same. Modern Americans cannot depend on the Democratic Party or philanthropy to sponsor small-d democracy. We have to do it. But we have resources and modern tools—including the Internet—those earlier insurgents lacked.


[...]


Reformers today face conditions similar to what the Populists and Progressives faced: monopoly capitalism, a labor movement suppressed with government's direct assistance, Wall Street's "money trust" on top, the corporate state feeding off government while ignoring immoral social conditions. The working class, meanwhile, is regaining its identity, as millions are being dispossessed of middle-class status while millions of others struggle at the bottom. Working people are poised to become the new center of a reinvigorated democracy, though it is not clear at this stage whether they will side with the left or the right. Understanding all these forces can lead to the new governing agenda society desperately needs.

While recognizing the problem is good, and understanding that action has to be taken to correct the problem, ultimately the issue boils down to risk and Revolution. Americans are not -- yet -- willing to take the risk of Revolution to re-create a New America.

The TeaBagger Movement may be funded and manipulated by a handful of billionaires intent on using the energy of populism to institutionalize their dream of full corporate control of government. The billionaires are willing to risk the potential for real Revolution inherent in the ignorant mobs they have curried and are unleashing. Historically speaking, these efforts don't work out too well, revolutionary mobs have a way of getting out of control and going off in unpleasant directions. That's just how it goes.

What do the billionaires do then? For example, if the TeaBaggers force government default on its bonds by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, what do the billionaires do? They own many of those bonds after all. What do they do?

Or if, somehow, the 'Baggers are able to get free of their thrall to Corporatist propaganda (some of them at least talk as if they could), what then? What if the 'Baggers turn on their corporate overlords? What do the billionaires do?

And if by some chance the workers of the world actually unite and align with the 'Baggers to force revolutionary change (however that might be accomplished), what do the billionaires do?

Finally, left-liberals need to start listening and learning—talking up close to ordinary Americans, including people who are not obvious allies. We should look for viable connections with those who are alienated and unorganized, maybe even ideologically hostile. The Tea Party crowd got one big thing right: the political divide is not Republicans against Democrats but governing elites against the people. A similar division exists within business and banking, where the real hostages are the smaller, community-scale firms imperiled by the big boys getting the gravy from Washington. We have more in common with small-business owners and Tea Party insurgents than the top-down commentary suggests.

Clearly, the Corporate Overlords have rooms full of people thinking these potentials through. Obviously, they have most of the world's governments, not just the United States Government, comfortably in their pockets. Can the unrest among the masses be permanently defused and revolutionary fervor forever channeled into corporate-productive avenues, or will the People finally reach the point of no return -- and turn on their masters?

With no institutional support for the public interest or the public will, not even tangentially, any genuine new populist movement (of which there is none on the Left) faces a hard row to hoe.

But as Greider says, we've been here before, under worse conditions than now. The outcome of the uprisings of the past were not at all what the populists and anarchists and communists and other agitators had in mind, and yet the outcome in this country is what we've come to revere as New Deal Liberalism.

New Deal Liberalism is gone now.

Time for something else again.

"What He Shoulda Did Was..."

So. As far as we know, His Serenity has devoted the remainder of his regime to dealing with obstructionist Republicans, bringing them along as it were, and to making his owners happy. The rest of us figure not so much in national affairs. No, to be more accurate, the rest of us figure not at all.

At best we are annoyances. At worst, our man Rahm comes up with outbursts like, "Fucking retards." Well. The feeling, I'm sure, is mutual, as the White House's plunging polls indicate.

It didn't have to be this way. There was so much Hope for Change.

If there had been an honest effort to deal with the household debt problem in the United States, for example, instead of devoting almost all the economic efforts to serving the interests of those at the top of the economic pyramid, then some of the animosity that's built up over the Health Care issue might have dissipated or not emerged at all.

The Obama economic policies have been eerie mirrors of Hoover's at the beginning of the Great Depression, with -- not surprisingly -- similar results. Gee, how does that work? Household debt problem is enormously greater for many Americans because the costs for all the top-loaded bailouts and whatnot are falling on the middle classes and the poor, and they're breaking under the strain with record numbers of bankruptcies and foreclosures, none of which does a damned thing to raise the country out of the recession but simply digs the hole deeper.

And no matter what, the Economic Brain Trust around Obama will not even consider doing anything about it. It goes against their ideology, and they can't conceive of doing anything to directly help the lower orders beyond what is being done: extending unemployment insurance somewhat. If you can qualify to begin with and continue to qualify for extensions. Good luck.

These same people will not do anything substantive to reduce unemployment. They will not put into place any kind of public sector jobs program that addresses the absence of employment in the private sector; they will not do anything to prop up wages or benefits.

Well, Hoover wouldn't either. It was against his ideology, and he couldn't do it.

I'm reminded of the contrast between the current administration's point of view and that of the Roosevelt administration in the midst of World War II, when during Roosevelt's last election campaign -- when he was physically ill, and when he surely didn't need any more accolades on his legacy -- he offered a startling proposal, almost inconceivable to the modern Ruling Class:

He called it The Second Bill of Rights and it grew out of his famous Four Freedoms framework enunciated on January 6, 1941.

To review the Four Freedoms:



The Second Bill of Rights built on the notion that the political rights guaranteed in the Constitution "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness," particularly with regard to economic freedom, and freedom from want.

What he proposed was a means toward a political solution to the question of want.

The Economic Bill of Rights would guarantee to Americans:

A job at a living wage

Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies for farmers and businessmen

A home

Medical Care and good health

Social Security and protection from economic uncertainty

Education


Obviously, the man was a Damned Dirty Communist.

In fact, the proposition he was making in 1944 was relatively mainstream, growing out of ideals that had been developing in the United States since the latter 19th Century. At the time, what he was proposing was not radical at all, especially given the fact that the nation was at -- or actually exceeding -- "full employment" with most of the men off at war and the women hard at work in industry or services; most everybody was housed -- however inadequately, and there was a severe housing shortage that caused a lot of households to double up; free public education through up to high school was universal, and in some areas, college education was also tuition free.

Yet looking at these propositions today, they seem almost impossible to imagine, even as the nation's people spiral ever farther into destitution while the handful of UberWealthy dance their jigs and have their hirelings count their bags of money.

Joblessness in this country is at levels we haven't seen in this country since the Great Depression, so the first "right" of Roosevelt's five Economic Rights, if implemented today, would have an immediate impact on the public's perception of well-being. Remember, Roosevelt was making his proposal at a time of full employment. Imagine if he had made it in 1933 instead of 1944.

Strict regulation on business, monopolies, and war profiteering were in place in 1944, something almost unheard of now, and these regulations were enforced, a strange concept to us moderns. So the exploitation of farmers and small business people for the benefit of a few was far more difficult then than now, and Roosevelt's proposal to protect farmers and small business people was merely common sense.

Absence of adequate housing in America had long been a crisis, solutions explored every conceivable way from the end of the 19th Century until well after World War II. During the War, the housing crisis became acute. Having a decent home -- or just the promise of a home -- was seen as a major advance for Americans. The post-World War II building boom would start to deal with the pent up demand, but there would continue to be terrible rural housing conditions (as there still are for many farm workers) and many urban dwellers as well. The massive numbers of foreclosures experienced for the last several years have forced millions of Americans out of their own homes, and there has been no adequate follow up to determine what has happened to them. Americans need a decent housing policy once again.

We're still wrestling with the notion that Americans have a right to medical care and good health, a cage match which seems to be unresolvable, but which is swiftly draining the United States of whatever public wealth that hasn't already been stolen by the Oligarchs and Plutocrats.

Social Security is under direct threat by every one of the Powers That Be. We may well see it extinguished in our lifetimes.

Access to public education in the United States was still not fully available in 1944, though in most regions it was theoretically guaranteed/required through 9th or 10th grade. The major problem, of course, was segregation, which was practiced almost as widely outside the South as it was in the South. It would be another decade before segregated schools were outlawed, and more than another decade after that before public schools were actually desegregated -- which was countered by an expansion of private (and essentially segregated) schools for whites, and the defunding and deterioration of public education in general.

Higher education is becoming more and more difficult for average Americans to obtain, and K-12 public education has been deteriorating for years, so much so that the United States has one of the lowest functional literacy rates in the developed world. How did this reversal come about? It was, in my estimation, deliberate policy implemented during and after the Reagan administration to ensure that Americans would never again be educated sufficiently in public schools to attempt the kind of student revolts that characterized the 1960's, and to ensure that those educated in private schools were conditioned to acceed to the needs and interest of the Ruling Class. It is astonishing to review the issues that drove so much of the student revolts of the '60's and realize that at root, it was anti-corporate, rejecting and resisting the notion that university students were being "manufactured" as "products" to be "sold" to corporate interests. Today, university students more or less celebrate their future as corporate tools.

We need a new public education policy.


Finally, Roosevelt's proposal of an Economic Bill of Rights was a matter of security -- something that today is limited to "Homeland" Security, ie: the perception of being "secure" from attack by terrorists.

How far we have fallen.

And how very much farther we still have to go.

FDR Fireside Chat, January 11, 1944: