My daddy was a union man. Represented by CWA. Communication Workers of America.
We're talking mid- to late '60s. Feisty, the union, then.
Every two years or so, almost like clockwork, a strike.
During which we, in this here family, didn't eat too good. Always Ma Bell would push the CWA to a place where the people of its workers didn't eat too good. Where the union reserves had run out. Where my daddy was repairing, for money to feed us, the tennis courts and the swimming pools of the father of my best friend; my best friend, Steve. Steve's father a doctor, a professional, undisturbed by union roilings.
It was in these days, that I learned about class. Where my daddy, sweating buckets, so that we might eat, labored at the bottom of a hole, so that I might eat boiled peas, brought up from the bottom of a pool, excavated for pleasure, for my best friend.
Understanding, here, class—even before I was precluded, several years later, from dating the young women, grown from young girls, that I had known all my life. Because the place I had come from, was from the wrong side of the tracks. Can't be with those, can't date those women. No-no-no.
It has always been fashionable, to dis Leon Trotsky.
Not, though, with me.
To this day, I still burn to the man, a candle.
Even as in these days he is especially maligned, because American nincompoops who once identified themselves as people of Trotsky, have in the past 20-30 years or so mutated into "neo-conservatives."
I have never understood how people made such a transition. For what Trostsky stood for, was this: revolution, everywhere.
It was his understanding, his belief, that no one, anywhere, would get much of anywhere, unless everybody else, did, too.
And then, out of nowhere, the truth of Trotsky, suddenly and amusingly reborn, as Tuesday night the inevitable results rolled in from Wisconsin.
With the gobbledy-geek Walker prevailing, because public employees, protected by unions, had been successfully disaffected from the mass of the people.
Once upon a time, in this country, it was "when once big union day."
Unionization began in the private sector. With sweat and toil and blood. Only later, did unions envelop public-sector employees.
These days, the pirates of capital have long since succeeded in sucking all life-blood from unions in the privater sector. There, they barely exist.
Unions hang on, these days, in this country, in public-sector unions. And these unions just didn't do much, over the past 30-odd years, as private-sector unions all around them, ended.
Come June 5, and everybody expecting "one big union day." No. So many Wisconsin people long before succubussed into resentment of unions, much less "one big union day."
All that started dying more than 30 years ago. GOoPers saw that. Dems didn't. As unions retreated to their enclaves and hidey-holes and declivities and ghettos. No more "one big union day." Little tiny timid tuck-holes, instead.
Leon Trotsky, icepick embedded in his brain or no, remains right. Either everybody, everywhere, free. Or it's all no good at at all.
What if the world has moved post-union, as it has moved post-national, post-christian, and post-terran? What, in work-space, should be proposed then?
and i will hang my head hang my head low
and i will hang my head hang my head low
and i will hang my head hang my head low
and i will hang my head hang my head low
and i will hang my head hang my head low
and i will hang my head hang my head low