May Day 2013

Posted on May 3, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Mayfly

Wednesday’s May Day events remind us about how the people who participate in an event define it for their own purposes.  Initially a celebration of Spring, organized around May poles (and May flies?),  for more than 100 years, May 1 has been a day for celebrating  working people around the world (but not in the United States).

The May Day event was originally intended to commemorate the massacre of labor marchers at Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886.  Organized labor poured its efforts into May Day, and still does, but no one owns the calendar, or even the day.

By looking at May Day events, we can see how a range of activists are trying to define their own efforts–and the interests of working people.

As it did last year, Occupy Wall Street tried to use the occasion to showcase the broad range of activities Occupiers have undertaken since the encampments were cleared more than a year ago.  They put together a full schedule and spoke out on many issues, but turnout and attention were down from last year.

In Greece the largest unions used the occasion to continue their protests against harsh austerity policies, supporting a 24 hour general strike.  But turnout (an estimated 15,000), disruption, and attention were all diminished from similar events over the past few months.

In Los Angeles, organized labor and May Day are all about rights for immigrants. Supported by local unions, the turnout estimated in the thousands was reported to be largely Latino, and the demands were focused on immigration reform.  An impressive display and a clear message, to be sure, but less dramatic and much smaller than immigration rallies in the same place over the past few months.

May Day has become an available holder for activists to try to fill with their own concerns.  This year local concerns and local organizers overshadowed any national or international message–beyond a general concern for working people.

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Immigration politics inside and outside the Capitol

Posted on April 11, 2013 by David S. Meyer

The immigration rights activists returned to demonstrate outside the Capitol yesterday, as reports of a Senate compromise on an immigration reform continue to seep into media reports.

Most reports put the turnout in the tens of thousands–and noted sympathy rallies in at least 18 states.  Some substantial chunk was turned out by labor unions.  But there were lots of others.  Latino groups were well-represented, and Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP got the most prominent speaking slot.  The Washington Blade trumpeted the participation of gay and lesbian groups at the rally.  Not demonstrating outside, but very much on the minds of members of Congress, was the strong support for reform coming from business interests (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has founded and funded his own pro-immigration group.)

Do the demonstrations outside the Capitol affect the negotiations going on inside?  Sure, but it’s not a simple cause and effect (>200,000 and the waiting period for citizenship drops from 10 years to 8?  Unlikely.).  Rather, Wednesday’s demonstrations are part of a much larger set of campaigns that have pushed immigration reform to the fore, while the results of the last election gave Republicans in particular strong motivation to stand up to the organized and active anti-immigration movement.  Each discrete action is far less important than the much larger effort.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a visible player in the Senate negotiations, was well-aware of the political deficits of his party’s posture on immigration and the potential benefits of doing something on the issue.  These demonstrations are a reminder for all concerned.

The activists promise that they’ll be coming back to Washington until substantial reform is passed.  They’ll have to.

Although virtually everyone agrees about the sorry state of the current set of policies, negotiating the details of reform is no easy matter.  Inside the Capitol, legislators are arguing about guest workers, paths to citizenship, and border security.  The demonstrations and the citizen lobbying are efforts to stiffen the spine of would-be allies in negotiations, and big visible demonstrations are likely to yield almost invisible, but still significant, changes around the margins.

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Recovery for Occupy Wall Street’s library

Posted on April 10, 2013 by David S. Meyer

In the weeks that Occupy Wall Street created a protest village in lower Manhattan, activists put together a lending library of more than 5,000 volumes.  When the police cleared the demonstrators out of Zuccotti Park, contractors hauled all of the stuff that remained away, including the library.

The books weren’t burned, but the the haulers treated the volumes like trash.  Of course, there were also computers and cameras, tents and blankets, and bicycle generators, but the pictures of the library in pieces in a dumpster provided some of the more disturbing images from the eviction.

Occupy’s librarians sued the City of New York for damages, and yesterday the City settled, making a payment of $375,000.  (Read the settlement agreement here.)

Not quite an apology, the City issued a statement:

Defendants acknowledge and believe it is unfortunate that, during the course of clearing Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011, books were damaged so as to render them unusable, and additional books are unaccounted for. Defendants further acknowledge and believe it unfortunate that certain library furnishings and equipment likewise were damaged so as to render them unusable, and other library furnishings and equipment may be unaccounted for. Plaintiffs and Defendants recognize that when a person’s property is removed from the city it is important that the City exercise due care and adhere to established procedures in order to protect legal rights of the property owners.

The City will make payments to several groups of Occupiers for damage to their property, but just about half of the total will go to the lawyers who filed the case.

There’s got to be some point there.

For New York City, $375,00 is a relatively small price to pay for ending the litigation.

For the rest of us, this is a good chance to consider the paradox of political openness in America.  Demonstrators camped out in a tiny private park in the middle of the City, and then were summarily evicted, their property destroyed within minutes.  Yet the evicted were able to hold the City responsible for the property destruction, once they were able to enlist lawyers on their behalf.  More than a year after the eviction, Occupy Wall Street is once again in the news.

I haven’t been able to find a source on how the non-lawyers will use their settlement money.  Presumably, they’ll put it back into the cause in some way.  Although even half of $375,000 seems like a lot of money to most of us, we need to remember that this is in the context of a politics where a billionaire casino magnate can contribute $100,000,000 to candidates for office.

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Marriage equality and the digital political button

Posted on April 2, 2013 by David S. Meyer

If you visited a Facebook site last week you probably saw some version of the badge at right, representing support for marriage equality side of the cases the Supreme Court considered.  Activists encouraged people to change their profile picture to come out with their support for same sex marriage, displaying a Human Rights campaign symbol.

Rebecca Rosen, at The Atlantic,  reports that 2.7 million people changed their profile pictures.  There were all kinds of clever and stylish variations (samples posted at left), but the point was pretty obvious.

As we consider what changes in activism the new social media have wrought, it’s worth thinking about this digital button a little bit.

At first look, it seems like the online version of the political button, where the wearer puts his commitments on his lapel, showing everyone he passes what he cares about.  At best, the button encourages those who agree with you, and maybe leads to a productive conversation with people who don’t.  It also serves as a reminder about events outside the office or school or bus or church or gym.

The digital version of the button on Facebook seems to offer a bigger and less consequential audience.   You only see the profile picture of people who’ve acknowledged you as a “friend,” most of whom probably already agree with you.  Those friends and relatives who don’t share your values have already found ways to reconcile your unappealing political views with some of your countervailing virtues–and that probably means looking the other way when you post politics.  Sigh.

More generally, I wonder just how much the self-selecting online social networks that so entrance us do to promote political dialogue or opinion change.

They do, however, provide cool data for new figures.  Here’s a Facebook map of the United States, highlighting the parts of the country where participation in the digital badge was more extensive:

Rosen’s report tells us just about what we’d expect:

Facebook’s Data Science team also mapped out the likelihood of a profile-pic update across the nation, showing a pretty widespread geographic distribution everywhere outside of the south and parts of the plains region. The county with the greatest participation rate? Washtenaw County, Michigan, where the University of Michigan has its main campus in Ann Arbor. Facebook estimates that 6.2 percent of users who logged in in Washtenaw Country changed their profile picture. In general, college towns saw high rates of participation (such as Orange and Durham counties in North Carolina, home of UNC and Duke, and Johnson County, Iowa, where the University of Iowa is based), as did major cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and DC.

It’s not to say that the old style buttons weren’t just as easy to put on or take off, and the digital version certainly won’t damage your shirt or jacket.  But are you reaching anyone new?

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The Klan is back (it never went away), in Memphis

Posted on April 1, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Riding the bus to the rallyMembers of the Ku Klux Klan staged a protest rally in Memphis on Saturday.

They were protesting the City’s decision to rename three bridges.  The New York Times reports:

The old names were Confederate Park; Jefferson Davis Park, named for the Confederacy’s president; and Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, named for a Confederate lieutenant general and the Klan’s first grand wizard. The new names are Memphis Park, Mississippi River Park and Health Sciences Park, but the council may change those, too.


At first glance, it’s kind of amazing that the old names lasted as long as they did; the majority of Memphis’s population is black.

But it makes sense that the Klan would try to use this occasion to turn out its faithful.  The lost Confederate names are concrete symbols of exactly what drives Klan membership: white fears of the loss of status and privilege.  And perhaps citizen groups would turn out to counter protest, generating conflict and perhaps far more visibility to the Klan.  Clashes, arrests, and violence would generate national news and stoke that sense of threat that aids in mobilization.

But it was an overcast day.  The Times reports a turnout of about 75 demonstrators.  Police were determined to keep the event contained and non-violent.  Police cordoned off a section of the Downtown, and stationed officers in riot gear all around the contained area.  They bussed the Klansmen in from a local basketball arena, where they were asked to gather, searching the marchers before they could board the buses.  Although local authorities arranged for three buses, the Klan could only fill two.  The sound equipment they brought didn’t work very well, and even reporters had a hard time hearing the demonstrators as they marched in a fenced off protest pen.

Police asked residents to avoid the Downtown area, and promoted an Easter egg event on the other side of the city as an alternative.  A few counterdemonstrators came out to chant, but were separated by fences and a considerable distance from the Klansmen.  Klan chants, apparently, couldn’t be heard outside the immediate protest area.

The Commercial Appeal reports:

One Klan member who only identified himself as “Edward” wasn’t pleased with the event. “I wish it hadn’t rained on us, and that we hadn’t picked Easter weekend. We’d have had a lot bigger turnout,” he said.

Maybe.

The right to free speech, apparently, doesn’t include access to an audience.

Before you take too too much satisfaction in the KKK’s sad soggy mini-rally, think about what such police practices do to the causes you care about.

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Cesar Chavez birthday, Cesar Chavez holiday

Posted on March 31, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Today, March 31, is Cesar Chavez’s birthday; the holiday was celebrated Friday.  In commemoration, I’m reposting some thoughts on the holiday, originally posted 2011.

On my campus, we commemorated Cesar Chavez Day early, yesterday, rather than March 31 (his birthday), by closing.  The state established the holiday in 2000, and six other states have followed suit.  In California, the legislature calls upon public schools to develop appropriate curricula to teach about the farm labor movement in the United States, and particularly Chavez’s role in it.

A campaign to establish a national holiday has stalled so far (The Cesar Chavez National holiday website seems to have last been updated in 2008), but last year President Obama issued a proclamation announcing a day of commemoration, and calling upon all Americans “to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez’s enduring legacy.”

Political figures have many reasons for creating holidays, including remembering the past; identifying heroic models for the future; recognizing and cultivating a political constituency; and providing an occasion to appreciate a set of values.  Regardless of the original meaning, the holidays take on new meanings over time.  Columbus Day, for example, is celebrated as an occasion for pride in Italian Americans (e.g.), and commemorated and mourned as a symbol of genocide  and empire (e.g.).

Cesar Chavez’s life and work is well worth remembering and considering, particularly now.  His career as a crusader was far longer than that of Martin Luther King discussed (here and here) and he was far more of an organizer than Fred Korematsu (discussed here).  Chavez’s Medal of Freedom was awarded shortly after his death in 1993, by President Clinton, but many of his accomplishments were apparent well before then.

As a young man, Chavez was an agricultural worker; by his mid-twenties, he became a civil rights organizer, working for the Community Service Organization in California.  With Dolores Huerta (at left), in 1962 Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers.  Focusing on poor, mostly Mexican-American workers, Chavez’s vision for activism was right at the cornerstone of racial and economic justice.  Establishing an organization, however, is a long way from winning recognition and bargaining rights as a union.

Chavez was a tactician, a public figure, a charismatic, and something of a mystic.  Modeling his efforts after Gandhi’s successful campaigns, Chavez was an emphatic practitioner of active nonviolence.  He employed boycotts, strikes, long fasts, demonstrations, long marches, and religious rhetoric in the service of his cause.  He also registered voters, lobbied, and worked in political campaigns.  He was a tireless and very effective organizer for most of his life.

But holidays are best celebrated with an eye to the future, rather than the past.

On Cesar Chavez Day this year, we can think about the large and growing Latino community in the United States.  The 2010 Census reports that Latinos now comprise roughly 1/6 of the American population, and more than 1/3 of the population in California. This is the youngest and fastest-growing population in America today, and they are severely underrepresented in the top levels of politics, education, and the economy.   The civil rights map is at least as complicated as at any time in American history, but not less important or urgent.  (The struggle about the DREAM Act is reminiscent of the debate about Voting Rights 45 years ago.)  The future of American Latinos is very much the future of America.

And Chavez saw the civil rights struggle as a labor campaign.  When Chavez and Huerta started their campaign, nearly one third of Americans were represented by unions.  The percentage now is now just about 10 percent, and less in the private sector.

And public sector workers, even if represented by unions aren’t doing so well.  The ongoing conflict in Wisconsin is all about weakening unions that are already making very large concessions on wages and pensions.  The campaign in Wisconsin is part of a larger national effort, which is playing out in Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere.  Even in states where anti-union forces are weaker, state employees face lay-offs, wage cuts, and increased health and pension costs.  Importantly, we need to remember that you can’t attack teachers, nurses, police officers, and firefighters without hurting the people they serve: us.

Or should I say, US?

Cesar Chavez’s birthday is an opportune time for thinking about Latinos, civil rights, and American labor, and not just the start of Spring.

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Coming out and digging in

Posted on March 29, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Public opinion data provides strong support for the coming out strategy that has been at the core of gay and lesbian activism for decades.

The graph on the left (right), where the lines cross, is a familiar one for anyone following the gay and lesbian movement.  More recent polls show support for same sex marriage as high as 58 percent–although, as marriage equality opponents note, turnout matters a great deal.

The generational break-down, at the right of the figure, should also be fairly familiar.  Younger people are far more likely to support same sex marriage.  This bodes well for the gay and lesbian movement over time.  Both same sex marriage supporters and opponents will be getting older over time; more of the opponents will, uh, no longer be engaged in the political debate.

But it’s not just generational replacement.

Pew also asked people who have changed their minds why they did so.  Although you should always take such results with more than a grain of salt, the most common explanation for shifting to support marriage equality was knowing a gay person.

When more people come out as gay or lesbian, or as the friend or relative of someone gay or lesbian, fewer people will be able to avoid knowing a gay person.

A little coda: popular culture matters here.  American television viewers know Ellen DeGeneres or those sweet snarky fellows on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  The friendly folks on television may spend more time in your living room, sort of, than any of your neighbors.

When GAY seems less odd, it’s increasingly difficult to justify discrimination.

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Supreme Court spectacles, football, and same sex marriage

Posted on March 26, 2013 by David S. Meyer

No one should think that the oral arguments conducted today and tomorrow in the Supreme Court–or the decisions the Court will issue this spring–will resolve the evolving politics of gay marriage, and gay rights more generally.  The spectacle of the argument, however, gives advocates the opportunity and spotlight to weigh in on the issue.

On the steps of the Supreme Court building, activists for and against marriage equality demonstrated, holding placards, chanting, and arguing about the Constitution.

It’s unlikely that the demonstrators will influence the Constitutional interpretations of the nine justices who will decide the cases.  (Also interesting, but probably not influential, will be Jean Podarsky’s attendance at oral argument.  She’s a lesbian who wants to get married; Chief Justice John Roberts is her cousin.) But there are other audiences: reporters walking through the crowds to get a whiff of the arguments will have colorful footage of people who care a great deal about the upcoming decisions; there will be great pictures in newspapers online and off, and video all over the web.  Activists across the country will see their side fighting for them, know that they’re not alone, and hear about how important their efforts are.

Everyone else will get the opportunity to hear activist arguments about same sex marriage, which are less likely to emphasize Constitutional scholarship than personal stories and public values.  The Court argument gives activist a chance to make those arguments in a spotlight that isn’t always available.

Over 100 groups, USA Today estimates, filed amicus curiae briefs.  Ostensibly, this is about providing the justices with additional perspectives on the cases–beyond the voluminous briefs filed by the parties to the cases.  More significantly, the amicus briefs gives a range of interests a chance to weigh in publicly on the issue.  Briefs in support of marriage bans came from religious organizations and conservative political groups while briefs supporting marriage equality came not only from gay and lesbian groups, but also from business interests.  Don’t expect anyone to give up after the Court issues rulings.

The oral arguments also give mainstream media an excuse to cover the issue–again.  The Sunday political tv shows featured segments on the upcoming arguments, which offered not only speculation, but space for advocates to rehearse their arguments.  Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo  appeared on CBS News’ Face the Nation (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50143470n ) explaining why he has long supported marriage equality; growing up as a multi-racial child and witnessing prejudice, Ayanbadejo says, he thinks it’s important to be attentive to civil rights and discrimination.  He’s pretty good on tv, particularly for someone who makes his living doing something else.  (But have you seen anyone more effective than Evan Wolfson, who’s been practicing his arguments for decades?)

Scott Fujita, another linebacker, got a prime spot for an opinion piece in the Sports section of the New York Times.  Like Ayanbadejo, Fujita also makes the analogy to racial discrimination, noting that his father’s internment during World War II raised his awareness of prejudice.  And he notes the far more recent, and awful, experiences of gay men and lesbians denied access to the legal and social benefits of marriage.  Fujita concludes:

I don’t ever want to explain to my daughters that some “versions” of love are viewed as “less than” others. I’m not prepared to answer that kind of question.

Instead, in just a few short years, and in the same way we now sometimes ask the previous generation, I hope my daughters will ask me: “What was all the fuss about back then?” I’m looking forward to hearing that question.

Ayanbadejo, Fujita, and punter Chris Kluwe, along with a couple of dozen other current and former players, filed their own amicus brief. The court case gives them, and many others, the chance to take an extremely visible public stand.  (At this moment, the football players have a chance also to offer an alternative view of football’s gender politics.  See Philip Cohen for an overview of a less attractive view.)

When the Supreme Court considers a case, it also provides many others not wearing judicial robes an opportunity to make a decision as well.  Senators Rob Portman (Republican, Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (Democrat, Missouri) and Mark Warner (Democrat, Virginia) made a point of weighing in before arguments were heard.  They’re all speaking to a broader audience than the nine justices.  Ultimately, that broader audience is likely to be far more significant.

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Coming out and opinion change

Posted on March 16, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Senator Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, has announced a change of position on same sex marriage, presumably following a change of heart.  (Of course, it could go the other way as well.)  Senator Portman, formerly President George W. Bush’s budget director, and before that a Congressman who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, says that he began reconsidering his stance when his son Will, then nineteen and at college, told his parents that he was gay.

The story asks us to think about how people change their minds and their positions, and also provides yet more evidence on the importance of the strategy of “coming out.”  (I’ve been thinking about this for a while….)

Senator Portman took two years to digest his son’s news and think about what it meant to Will, to America, and to his own political career. He spoke with other prominent Republicans, including those who had come to support same sex marriage, like former vice president Dick Cheney, also the parent of an openly gay child.  He finally decided that he wanted his son–and people like him–to enjoy the same opportunities that he enjoyed, including the chance at a marriage recognized and supported by the US government.  He wanted to go public before the Supreme Court considered a pair of cases on same sex marriage, but apparently not soon enough to sign onto an amicus brief submitted to the Court by a few dozen somewhat prominent Republicans.

I’m fascinated by the processes through which people change their minds, and surely, experience should matter.  Parents should be able to learn from their children–although there are more than a few stories of prominent figures who are unable to come to terms with their children’s sexual orientation.  (The sad stories of well-known conservative parents, including Phyllis Schlafly, Pete Knight, and Alan Keyes, who are estranged from their gay children, make for a long and melancholic read.)

Of course, we’d like to be able to develop empathy for people facing troubles that we haven’t personally encountered, whether discrimination, poverty, disease, or even crappy schooling.  (See Matthew Yglesias’s thoughtful commentary at Slate.)  And experience and empathy don’t always translate into political sympathy.  (Is Clarence Thomas still reading Politics Outdoors?)  No church should dismiss the slow converts.

Publicly changing position is another matter.  Senator Portman hasn’t exactly been a leader here; more people support same sex marriage now than oppose it.  But he’s stepped toward the leading edge of the Republican Party; certainly, he risks alienating key Republican constituencies.

Given the composition of their respective parties, it’s somewhat easier for President Obama to “evolve” on gay rights than Senator Portman; indeed, it’s pretty costly not to do so.  Evolution is dependent upon environment, as Darwin observed.  When Obama announced his evolution, Americans who valued his opinion on other issues were encouraged to evolve as well.  Portman will be part of a similar, but likely slower, process in the GOP.

Coming out brings a distant grievance closer, person by person.  Everyone who comes out makes it a tiny bit easier for the next person to do so, and a little bit harder for others to deny the issue–or the people attached to it.  Calling it safety in numbers is too simple, but larger numbers of people coming out does reduce the risk for all of them.

The coming out strategy for gays and lesbians is decades old, but it is not limited to them.  Undocumented young people who publicly announce their status are coming out, and taking substantial risks to do so.  People who put on a button announcing their politics, for a candidate or against a war, are coming out too, even if it’s usually easier to cover or remove a badge than a racial, sexual, or legal status.  Wearing a crucifix is also coming out.

Those who come out tell people who agree with them that they are not alone.  Those who don’t agree, well, at least they can no longer say that they don’t know anyone in that group.

Cabell Chinnis was one of Justice Lewis Powell’s clerks in 1986 when the Court considered Bowers v. Hardwick, a case about Georgia’s law criminalizing sodomy.  By all accounts* Justice Powell liked and respected him, and, while considering the case, told him that he didn’t think he’d ever met a gay person.  He didn’t know that Chinnis was one of many gay clerks who had worked for him, and Chinnis didn’t offer that easily available evidence to enlighten the justice.  Years afterward, he spent a lot of time wondering whether such a revelation would have made a difference.

Will Portman won’t have to wonder.

*A particularly good one is Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price, Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court.

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Template blinders: the where’s the movement question?

Posted on March 4, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Anti-austerity protests have reappeared across Southern Europe.  Citizens are taking to the streets to protest cuts in services and high unemployment.  Where’s the protest in the United States, where we are embarking on new cuts in government spending (call it sequester) and unemployment remains high.

To ask the question suggests a misunderstanding.  There’s plenty of protest in the United States, although it is surely taking different forms than the demonstrations in Spain or Greece.

When most of us talk about protest movements, we have some kind of example in mind.  It

Madrid, February 23, 2013 (Reuters)

might be the Arab Spring events that ran across the Middle East and North Africa or the Occupy encampments, or, probably more commonly, the civil rights movement of the 1960s or labor organizing in the 1930s.

A signal movement becomes a template for each of us, and while we search to see it repeated, we risk missing what’s happening around us because what comes next is different.  This happens all the time.  Really.  It happened the other day:

Europeans have protested in dramatic and disruptive ways about austerity policies their governments are trying to impose.  You’ve seen the pictures of massive demonstrations, sometimes veering into confrontation with police and destruction of property.  HuffPost Live invited me to participate in  a discussion that was on the absence of such protests in the United States.  You can watch it here (discussion online).

The host kept asking why Americans don’t protest, but that’s wrong.  This was just days after 35,000 people turned out to protest the Keystone Pipeline, a month after the annual Right to Life March, and in the wake of the Tea Party and Occupy movements.

The complicated and perhaps unsatisfying answer is that austerity programs–and unemployment–are worse in Southern Europe than in the United States, and that we lack strong institutional actors invested in supporting such protests (look for a labor movement, to start).

The larger, perhaps more interesting point, is that tomorrow’s movements won’t be just what we expect, and if we focus only on what we call a movement in the past, we’ll neglect the meaningful politics of the present and future.  People will protest on the issues they care about and in ways that they think will be effective, and not follow old scripts or analysts’ directives.

The movements that spring up to challenge tomorrow won’t follow the recipes laid out by analysts or activists.  Every day, new campaigners demonstrate anew what democracy looks like.

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