Joe Allen is a former Teamster and the author of <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1441-the-package-king">The Package King: A Rank and File History of United Parcel Service</a>. In this article, he discusses the iconic Teamsters union, the largest transport union in the United States. The union’s image lately has been tarnished by President Sean O’Brien’s association with the far right. O’Brien’s courting of Donald Trump and his appearance at the Republican National Convention have provoked a backlash among rank-and-file union members and a debate about how the Teamsters should orient in the lead-up to the presidential election next month. 
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The Teamsters’ <a href="https://teamster.org/2024/09/teamsters-no-endorsement-for-u-s-president/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">backhanded</a> endorsement of Donald Trump for president has caused an uproar in the US trade union movement. Teamster General President Sean O’Brien, who just a year and a half ago was being touted as a new militant leader of the union, hosted at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAkjSm3m3FA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Labor Notes</a> conferences, <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/2022-08-21/bernie-sanders-joins-cambridge-rally-for-workers-rights-highlighting-massachusetts-union-battles" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">toured</a> the country with Bernie Sanders and Sarah Nelson, and received enthusiastic coverage in the left media, is now considered toxic.
His open courting of the far right began last autumn, followed by a private meeting with Trump, donations to the Republican National Committee (RNC), his speech at the Republican convention all culminated in the vote by a majority of the union’s General Executive Board (GEB) <a href="https://teamster.org/2024/09/teamsters-no-endorsement-for-u-s-president/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">not to endorse</a> any candidate for president, while releasing dubious <a href="https://teamster.org/2024/09/teamsters-release-presidential-endorsement-polling-data/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">polling</a> that the majority of Teamsters supported Trump. This was a shock to many <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/teamsters-union-sean-obrien-harris-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">observers</a> of the US labour movement, but this side of O’Brien has been hiding in <a href="https://newpol.org/where-are-the-teamsters-going/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plain sight</a> for a long time.
The polls for the presidential election are either balanced on a knife’s edge or show a Trump lead, especially in the <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/10/02/us-news/donald-trump-shows-strength-in-upper-midwest-which-kamala-harris-needs-to-win/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">upper Midwest</a>. Teamster votes could make the difference in the outcome of the race. So, it’s understandable that anger and bewilderment at O’Brien and the Teamsters is widespread. A <a href="https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/08/letter-open-rebellion-against-teamsters-gp-sean-obrien/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">backlash</a> against O’Brien’s embrace of the far right has been building, however. <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4826837-national-black-caucus-teamsters-endorsement-kamala-harris/">The Teamsters National Black Caucus</a> first broke ranks, along with Teamster Vice-President at-large <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/politics/video/teamsters-union-vicepresident-harris-endorsement-john-palmer-trump-musk-ebof-digvid" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">John Palmer</a>, and endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket.
At the same time, in a confusing political summersault, those members of the Teamsters’ GEB who <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=512018861785335&amp;set=a.273224618998095" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">voted not to endorse</a> any candidate nor to go record against Trump, or who skipped the meeting entirely, returned to their <a href="https://www.teamsterslocal705.net/teamsters-local-705-endorses-kamala-harris-for-president" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">local unions</a> and Joint Councils and quickly issued statements—representing as many <a href="https://www.wispolitics.com/2024/harris-campaign-councils-representing-one-million-teamsters-endorse-kamala-harris/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1 million</a> out of total Teamster membership of 1.3 million—that endorsed Harris and Walz. Even members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), the former reform organisation, which is now comfortably part of the leadership of the Teamsters, have played a central role in launching <a href="https://act.teamstersagainsttrump.org/pledge?utm_source=20240830-google_nat-80&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwx4O4BhAnEiwA42SbVIDnqLCJGI5YIe6LHfUtXZbMPj3wcm543CPpypB1X65z8SoP5xbITRoCC5MQAvD_BwE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Teamsters against Trump</a> to mobilise Teamster votes for the Democrats.
It appears that a majority of the Teamsters GEB and the leadership of TDU, though, are desperately trying to avoid a clash with the white nationalist sympathiser leading their union, who they have invested heavily in for several years now. For many trade unionists, Trump represents an existential threat to trade unions and broader democratic rights in this country. Yet he also receives significant support among union and non-union workers across, despite his <a href="https://aflcio.org/press/releases/donald-trumps-catastrophic-and-devastating-anti-labor-track-record" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">long anti-union record</a> and <a href="https://usa-works.org/prevailing-wage/afl-cio-exposes-anti-worker-policies-in-trumps-second-term-the-afl-cio-has-raised-alarms-about-the-anti-worker-policies-embedded-in-former-president-donald-trumps-proposed-second-te/?gad_source=1&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw6oi4BhD1ARIsAL6pox1vou6WXWjrESWwRg2CRFZp_c_Bzt3M2dNb_1OQteinvmy0sUZt1vEaAg0bEALw_wcB" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plans</a> to dismantle many of the legal rights of trade unions.
Can partisan Democrats on the Teamsters’ Joint Councils across the country and Teamsters against Trump beat the MAGA vote in the union? If it can or can’t, what does that say about the state of rank-and-file politics in the Teamsters, and what comes after?
Joint Councils to the rescue?
John Nichols of the Nation magazine enthused about the Teamsters’ Joint Councils’ endorsement of Harris across the country, which appeared to have check-mated the Teamster leadership’s non-endorsement. He enthused:
“The Harris campaign may not have won over the national leadership of the Teamsters in Washington, it has ended up with something more important: a bonanza of endorsements from Teamsters units in the battleground states that will decide the presidential race.
“In fact, Harris received so many endorsements from Teamsters joint councils and union locals in states across the country that her campaign is now touting endorsements of the Democrat from units representing more than 1 million of the labor organization’s 1.3 million members. And they’ve gotten a boost from James P. Hoffa, who led the union for decades as its general president. Hoffa ripped into the current leadership, calling the failure to back the Democratic ticket this year ‘a critical error and, frankly, a failure of leadership by O’Brien’.”
Reading Nichols, I was struck by several things about his take on developments in the Teamsters. I find his embrace of the former general president of the union James P. Hoffa, Jr. bewildering. Nichols ignores Hoffa’s two-decade-long, disastrous leadership of the Teamsters, including endorsing every Democratic Party presidential candidate from Al Gore in 2000 to Joe Biden in 2020. While O’Brien was the first Teamster leader to address the RNC, Hoffa was lavishly courted by the GOP in 2000. According to the <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/2000/08/01/party-gives-hoffa-the-podium-to-play-field/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chicago Tribune</a>:
“For the first time in 20 years, the Republican National Committee threw a bash for a Teamsters chief. The glad-handing assembled included Republican senators like Michigan’s Spencer Abraham and Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum, who face tough re-election races in union-heavy states, and old-guard stalwarts like Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Ted Stevens (Alaska).
“Hoffa, a delegate to this month’s Democratic convention in Los Angeles, obviously was thrilled. ‘I didn’t know I had so many Republican friends,’ he said.”
One of those Republican friends was fascist sympathiser <a href="https://fbaum.unc.edu/lobby/040_PNTR/Organizational_Statements/Teamsters/Hoffa_Leads.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pat Buchanan</a>, whom Hoffa leaned on to ramp up anti-Chinese xenophobia. Hoffa was close to Trump during his one term in office. In late 2019, I <a href="https://newpol.org/where-are-the-teamsters-going/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>:
“Despite having endorsed Hilary Clinton in 2016, Hoffa who earned a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/01/27/hoffa-pledge-to-work-with-trump-where-it-helps-organized-labor.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reputation</a> as one of President Donald Trump’s most reliable union supporters on trade and infrastructure projects, including the environmentally disastrous <a href="https://teamster.org/news/2017/01/teamsters-applaud-executive-orders-advancing-pipeline-projects" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Keystone</a> XL and Dakota Access Pipelines and the ongoing <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-teamsters-president-supports-trumps-new-tariffs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">trade war</a> with China.
“Hoffa admitted in an October <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teamsters-union-james-hoffa-trump-promises_n_5dbb26ace4b00d83f724e5a3?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADFfEoKh5m0A0DLPBS0Dtd0Jy2JZYRFBl8NNUrwV6dBtsHrx6AKu5bLiRoxdTMxsMDl5pe3uF8qbY_UZIwlZQPa_Wcs4rLIW4-zIItrrAIxFy9Wdr5evQoJ8Nty-8msHRx4JUAxcwMabY9UtEBmB9Wn0FZkp-enfRQT_9_rzj1GW" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">interview</a> that many Teamsters voted for Trump in 2016. Hoffa also predicted that many ‘Teamsters are likely to vote for Trump again in 2020, regardless of who the Democratic nominee turns out to be’.”
Hoping that Hoffa can push back the MAGA vote is an act of political folly. “But, pretty much the same can be said about the Joint Councils across the country, also.” Joint Councils are important administrative bodies in the Teamsters but are obscure at best to the broad membership. They have also been derided for decades by union reformers as undemocratic, stuffed with patronage employees, and an easy way for local union principal officers to gain another paycheck for little work. Earlier this year, I <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/18/chicago-teamsters-are-still-stuck-in-the-past/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reviewed</a> the role of Chicago’s Joint Council 25 in local elections:
“Despite some changes, the JC 25 remains pretty wedded to the old ways of doing things in their own unions and in city and county politics. For example, last year the largely immigrant, non-English speaking members of Tom Stiede’s Local had to overcome the retaliatory behavior of their employer, the Anthony Marano Company, a major produce distributor in the Chicago area, and the hostility of their union over wage and working conditions documented by Labor Notes’ Luis Feliz Leon, <a href="https://labornotes.org/2023/03/chicago-grocery-teamsters-face-firing-and-retaliation-exercising-their-rights" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>. With this kind of record, how is someone elected to a leadership position in the Chicago Teamsters?”
In August, West Coast Teamster and UPS driver Edgar Esquivel took a <a href="https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/08/letter-after-sean-obriens-spectacle-at-the-rnc-teamsters-withdraw-premature-endorsement-of-racist-kevin-de-leon/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">deep dive</a> into the backstabbing, racist world of Los Angeles area Joint Council 42:
“In the aftermath of Sean O’Brien’s embarrassing homage to the most <a href="https://oaklandsocialist.com/2024/07/17/republican-convention-teamster-reform-leader-channels-gregor-strasser-and-betrays-the-working-class/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reactionary</a> and xenophobic Republican party in generations at their party’s National Convention last month, the largest Teamsters joint council (JC) in the union, JC 42, had prematurely voted in mid-July to endorse the reelection of Democratic party xenophobe Kevin de Leon for Los Angeles city council’s 14th district—only to withdraw it two weeks later. The city councilman gained national notoriety when he compared a colleague’s adopted black son to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/20/kevin-de-leon-reelection-la-00116827" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">luxury handbags</a> almost two years ago. De Leon’s remarks triggered protests in the second largest city in the US and calls for his resignation.”
Chicago’s Joint Council 25 and Los Angeles’ Joint Council 42 are two of the largest in the Teamsters. How anyone can think that these people can fight the MAGA vote is beyond me. But, it does reveal, I think, that many of the professional, middle-class liberal and social democratic observers of the Teamsters actually know very little about how the union operates and interacts with its members.
Teamsters against Trump
Teamsters against Trump <a href="https://act.teamstersagainsttrump.org/pledge?utm_source=20240830-google_nat-80&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw6oi4BhD1ARIsAL6pox241j4D9tlhK9AWxYe8y1pXCiJe6ftxUI2L0KUKz5eosq6qCGM3aJ8aArYEEALw_wcB" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">(TAT)</a> is different from the Joint Councils that have endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket, if only by a few degrees. It’s a pretty bare-bones operation initiated by members of TDU and held its first online meeting for volunteers on 28 September. It also leans heavily on a few staff members of Teamsters Local 89 in Louisville, Kentucky, the home local of Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman. Zuckerman ran with O’Brien on the same Teamsters United slate that won a landslide election in 2021.
Listening in on the discussion, it struck me that TAT acts largely as a campaign vehicle for marshalling votes for the Harris-Walz ticket. It made no demands on the Teamsters union or the Harris-Walz slate, and this was largely reflected in the discussion, which emphasised getting our side out to vote in key battleground states and, most importantly, not to engage Trump supporters in the union. So far, it has put out one <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7IGFErp5Es" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">video</a>. With only a few weeks to go in the election, this may strike people as very practical, but it is also short-sighted. Far-right politics, particularly around anti-China and anti-Mexican xenophobia, has been stoked for decades in the Teamsters. It’s hard to see how one defeats the MAGA vote without taking it on.
The other major problem for TAT is that it has to carry the burdens of the Biden-Harris administration. The American Rescue Plan saved <a href="https://act.teamstersagainsttrump.org/pledge?utm_source=20240830-google_nat-80&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw6oi4BhD1ARIsAL6pox241j4D9tlhK9AWxYe8y1pXCiJe6ftxUI2L0KUKz5eosq6qCGM3aJ8aArYEEALw_wcB" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Teamster pensions</a> across the country, which didn’t get one Republican vote, and is reason alone that many Teamsters in the upper Midwest will vote for the Harris-Walz ticket. (Their broader appeal on this issue could be undermined by a recent report that Governor Tim Walz <a href="https://pensionwarriorsdwardsiedle.substack.com/p/ny-post-minnesota-teacher-pension?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=1498647&amp;post_id=149859330&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=nn3z2&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cooked the books</a> on the Minnesota state teachers’ pension.) Trade unions, however, only represent 10 percent of the US workforce and a minuscule 6 percent of the private sector. Issues like labour law, important to unions, don’t necessarily resonate with the broader working class, whose lives are very precarious, from housing to food costs.
A recent article in the <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/inq2/philadelphia-working-class-voters-republican-20241001.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawFvuk5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRXI9w4P5itkfD_UvCY6zX7c9t9CjiUWoGB16QJoRkSuUvWcJx8UxIJahA_aem_XdAJQRIaBEJJRuReIjR-Jw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Philadelphia Inquirer</a> captured this well:
“Jim Kohn voted for Democrats much of life — that is, until Trump came along in 2016. Kohn, a retired truck driver who lives in South Philly and for years voted along with the Teamsters union, is still a registered Democrat. But he’s planning to vote for Trump for the third time, and he believes more of his neighbors frustrated with inflation and the high cost of goods will, too. ‘When Trump was president, everything was cheaper,’ he said. ‘Now, everything is so sky high.’”
Another Philadelphia resident told the Inquirer:
“They’re saying Kamala is going to save our democracy. That means very little for people who can’t keep the lights on.”
TAT also has to carry the burdens of Teamsters and TDU into the election. One of the battlegrounds that they are planning on intervening in is Michigan, with its large Arab and Muslim population. The Teamsters are one of the few major unions to have not called for a ceasefire in Gaza. This will work against their credibility, but TDU also<a href="https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/12/a-tale-of-two-resolutions-why-is-tdu-so-hostile-to-anti-war-activism/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> tabled</a> a motion for a ceasefire at its last convention. That the wider war initiated by Israel in the Middle East is tied so intimately with the Biden-Harris administration’s policies will be a huge barrier in their campaigning. With less than a month to go in the presidential election, anti-Trump Teamster campaigners being so closely tied to the Democratic party may, once again, prove to be a false road taken.
First published at <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/07/can-teamsters-against-trump-beat-the-maga-vote/">CounterPunch</a>.

Joe Allen

Can Teamsters unionists in the US beat the Trump vote?

Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade 
By Jeff Schuhrke. Verso, 2024; 352 pages.
Reviewed by Joe Allen.
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Soon after Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza with the full support of the US government, opposition emerged to the Biden administration in a place that many professional political commentators found confounding: within <a href="https://laborforpalestine.net/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">US trade unions</a>. President Joe Biden regularly <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=355239130231216" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">boasts</a>, “I am the most pro-union president in American history”. So it was something of a surprise to outright shock that many unions—including major industrial unions such as the United Auto Workers <a href="https://uaw.org/uaw-statement-israel-palestine/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">(UAW)</a> and an array of smaller local unions and leadership bodies—called for a ceasefire in Gaza. The most notable <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/29/the-teamster-connection-apartheid-israel-and-the-ibt/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">exception</a> to this trend has been the Teamsters, led by Sean O’Brien.
Yet, at the same time, trade union opposition to Biden’s support for Israel has been frustratingly limited, never really threatening to disrupt what the late historian Mike Davis called the <a href="https://indypendent.org/2022/11/mike-davis-forgotten-book/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“barren marriage”</a> of the US labour movement and the Democratic Party. Resolutions and public statements by union leaders haven’t led to strike action in vital industries to stop the manufacture and distribution of weapons destined for Israel, despite it being one of the <a href="https://twitter.com/WorkersinPales1/status/1713908923848130880/photo/3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">demands</a> of the Palestinian trade union movement. Shawn Fain, the President of the UAW, a union representing many defence contractors, for example, <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/what-the-uaw-ceded-in-endorsing-biden" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">undermined</a> the union’s call for a ceasefire by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvXnFAR52yI" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">endorsing</a> Biden for reelection, then Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out.
However, the echo emanating for a ceasefire from US unions has spread far and wide, surprising many. This is a dramatic change from the past when US unions were reliable, if not enthusiastic, supporters of US foreign policy, especially when it came to Israel. Historian Jeff Schuhrke has played an important role in chronicling the burgeoning labour opposition to the US support for Israel in <a href="https://jacobin.com/author/jeff-schuhrke" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jacobin</a>
and other <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/authors/jeff-schuhrke" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">publications</a>. Jeff teaches <a href="https://sunyempire.edu/news/releases/2023/harry-van-arsdale-school-of-labor-studies-professor-featured-on-matter-of-fact-with-soledad-obrien.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">labour studies</a> at Empire State College. His new book Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade examines on a much grander scale the American labour movement’s support for US imperialism.
Jeff sets out his goal early on in Blue Collar Empire:
“The same twentieth-century American labor movement that brought a measure of economic security and personal dignity to millions of working people also participated in some of the most shameful and destructive episodes in the history of U.S. imperialism. For decades, trade unionists in the United States have struggled to make sense of this, reluctant to discuss or even think about it. But, with the U.S. labor movement now undergoing a youth-led renaissance, and with renewed superpower rivalries threatening billions of lives amid a host of other planetary powers, it is long past time for a thorough reckoning.”
Indeed.
The publisher, Verso, calls Jeff’s book “the untold story”, yet he is the first to admit that parts of this seedy story have been told before: “Union activists, journalists, and scholars first began documenting US labor’s Cold War intrigues in the late 1960”. In the decades that followed, many books on the subject have been published: Ronald Radosh’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/americanlaboruni0000rado" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">American Labor and United States Foreign Policy</a>; Paul Buhle’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/takingcareofbusi0000buhl/mode/2up" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor</a>; Kim Scipes’ <a href="https://archive.org/details/kim-scipes-on-the-afl-cios-secret-war-against-developing-country-workers-solidarity-or-sabotage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The AFL CIO’s Secret War Against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity Or Sabotage?</a> 
I would even include in this list Hugh Wilford’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Wurlitzer-How-Played-America/dp/067403256X" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/El-Golpe-Labor-Mexico-Wildcat/dp/074534562X" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico</a> by Rob McKenzie and Patrick Dunne, published in 2022.
Jeff argues that there was a narrowness to many of the earlier studies:
“Early studies and exposé characterized the AFL-CIO as being little more than a puppet of the US government. The spotlight was especially shone on labor’s shadowy ties to the CIA. Many assumed the spy agency was corrupting hapless union leaders, while many others mockingly called the labor federation the ‘AFL-CIA’. More recent studies have demonstrated how the CIA was only the most notorious government entity that organized labor partnered with. In reality, the AFL-CIO became closely allied with almost the entire US foreign policy apparatus—not simply the CIA, but also the State Department, Agency for International Development, and the National Endowment for democracy.”
American labour leaders were partners in this international criminal operation, not dupes or paid off lackeys. They were true believers in the anti-Communist crusade. What makes Jeff’s book unique is that he provides us with a century-long history—with an emphasis on the post-WWII era—that chronicles the hand-in-glove workings of the AFL-CIO and various US government agencies, most importantly the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the covert and later overt ways that the US unions operated abroad. It’s illuminating and shocking. Reckoning with this history and changing it is the challenge, given that American trade unions continue to have a significant presence in countries around the globe.
I don’t want to recount the whole sordid story here. You should read the book. But I think it worth saying that this alliance between the US government and American trade unions would not have been possible without the crucial role played by ex-Communists, most notoriously by Jay Lovestone, the former leader of the US Communist Party, ex-socialists like Walter or Roy Reuther of the UAW (who later became critics of the CIA connection), or the octogenarian leader of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas, in the 1950s and 1960s. They provided the US government with inside knowledge on the union movement, the left, international connections, and political cover for US government operatives abroad.
There are two areas in Jeff’s book that I’m critical of. I think he looks back to the founding of the World Federation of Trade Unions in 1945 as a lost moment in international solidarity: “With the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), communist and noncommunist labor organizations attempted to build the kind of international that might have served as a powerful rebuke to the Cold War, but the AFL and the CIO sabotaged this vision”. While Jeff is correct that the AFL and CIO sabotaged the WFTU, the member unions from the former USSR and other “socialist” countries were <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Workers-Against-Monolith-Communist-Parties/dp/0902818414" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">state-controlled</a> trade unions, pursuing their own countries’ foreign policy interests, especially the USSR’s.
This leads to a second problem, which is a bigger issue for the left internationally. Jeff writes:
“If they are to be serious vehicles for strengthening and protecting the working class both at home and abroad in this era of overlapping crisis, today’s AFL-CIO and its affiliates must adopt the kind of principles labor internationalism that would inevitably bring them into conflict with U.S. foreign policy instead of reflexively serving it. But a labor movement that places class struggle and anti-imperialism ahead of deference to Washington’s international designs will not come into being unless workers, both within and outside the AFL-CIO, built it themselves.”
I wholeheartedly agree with Jeff, but how do we do this without mass-based revolutionary working-class parties—the kind of parties spawned by the Russian Revolution of 1917, which had a short-lived existence during the early years of the Communist International? We have lived with the deadening legacy of Stalinism and social democracy for many decades, only to be followed by the collapse of both, along with the unravelling of the older industrial union movement across Europe and North America. These have been some of the most difficult decades for the class struggle and anti-imperialism in modern history. Rebuilding a socialist, anti-imperialist, working-class movement is an international task.
The roots of the current opposition can be traced back in a herky-jerky manner to opposition to President George W. Bush’s invasion of <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/unions-against-the-war" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Iraq</a>, and even further back to Ronald Reagan’s wars in Central America in the 1980s and the closing years of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Labor-Vietnam-Philip-Foner/dp/0717806723" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vietnam War</a>. War weariness is <a href="https://time.com/6590408/us-biden-middle-east-war/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">widespread</a> in the United States today, a product of two decades of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Forever-War-Dexter-Filkins/dp/0307279448" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“forever wars”</a> in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with an expanding and visible social crisis at home—issues I have <a href="https://jacobin.com/2020/01/iran-antiwar-movement-united-states-iraq-afghanistan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">written</a> about and <a href="https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/12/a-tale-of-two-resolutions-why-is-tdu-so-hostile-to-anti-war-activism/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">participated</a> in. Much work needs to be done. The world is a much more dangerous place now than just a few years ago. Jeff’s book is an important contribution to understanding how we got here and how we can move forward.
First published at <a href="http://www.joeallen-60224.medium.com">Joe Allen on Medium</a>. Joe Allen is a socialist based in the United States and the author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the US Lost.

How US union leaders worked with the CIA to undermine democracy

Soon after Vice President Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, the attacks on his military record began. Quick comparisons were drawn in the media to the <a href="https://politicaldictionary.com/words/swiftboating/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“Swiftboating”</a> of Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004. Too be straight about it, debating the finer points of Walz’s military record misses the larger point being made here, that the cult of military “service” in the United States is a widespread and dangerous one.
Responding to attacks from Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, Walz <a href="https://singjupost.com/transcript-tim-walz-speaks-at-las-vegas-rally/?singlepage=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a> a campaign rally—filled with enthusiastic <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/5-key-takeaways-from-the-harris-walz-rally-in-las-vegas-3126570/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hospitality workers</a>—in Las Vegas:
“I was born in a small town in Nebraska where community was a way of life. There’s some Nebraskans in the house. You think I’m kidding. You think I’m kidding. 400 people, 25 kids in my class, twelve were cousins. That’s small town. That’s small town. But you know what?
“My parents and my community taught me generosity towards my neighbour and to work for the common good. My dad was a chain-smoking Korean War-era veteran who, two days after my seventeenth birthday, took me down to sign up to join the National Guard. I was proud for the next 24 years to wear the uniform of this country.
“Thank you to every single one of you who wore that uniform. And I have to tell you, like my dad before me and millions of others, the GI Bill gave me a shot at a college education. And just like Tillie, my dad was a teacher.
“My older brother was a teacher. My sister was a teacher. My younger brother was a teacher. And we married teachers. The privilege of my lifetime was spending two decades teaching in public schools. And you might have heard coaching football to a state championship.”
Walz ticks all of the boxes for one kind of Democratic presidential campaign: small-town America, family tradition, military service, teaching and football. He was introduced by Tillie Torres, a Las Vegas teacher. The message was pretty clear that military service was the natural and honourable stage in one’s life from a nobody to a somebody in the Great American community. Connecting military service to teaching is also a sinister one given that <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/06/military-recruiters-should-have-no-place-in-our-schools" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">high schools</a> across the country are one of the main recruiting grounds for the US military.
I was pretty shocked that one of the first widely circulated <a href="https://www.instagram.com/mngovernor/p/CNbBvDvnxR5/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pictures</a> of Walz was a stern-faced, seventeen-year-old version of himself in 1981-era combat fatigues holding an M-16. For a candidate that caught the attention of the US media by calling the Republicans “weird”, a seventeen-year-old clutching a machine gun is not? Walz was, by many accounts, a <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/former-students-and-colleagues-recall-high-school-teachers-tim-and-gwen-walz-as-allies-and-advocates/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">popular</a> teacher with his students and liked by his colleagues. But the role model of the soldier-teacher is not a good one, especially for young men.
I don’t know if he ever directly encouraged any of his students to join the military or what happened to them after they signed up. But young people, especially <a href="https://www.vvaw.org/commentary/?id=687" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">high school</a> boys, can be easily impressed by the glamour of the uniform and combat through films, television and video games. This was particularly true during the 1980s and 1990s, when political leaders and their friends in Hollywood spent a lot of time rehabilitating the military following the US defeat in Vietnam, along with demonising the Vietnam anti-war movement.
Walz joined the National Guard in 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the beginning of a massive military build-up and a resurgent anti-Communism and US imperialism. It wasn’t until the end of the decade, however, that the US could again send large numbers of ground troops to fight wars in far-flung corners of the globe. Panama, the first Gulf War, and after 9–11, the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—the latter two dubbed the “forever wars”. The disastrous results for the countries that the US invaded and the large numbers of US soldiers who suffered debilitating physical and mental health conditions are still with us.
Walz was deployed only once overseas, to<a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/10/03/tim-walz-national-guard-career-minnesota-governor-race" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> Italy</a> during the forever wars, and saw no combat. He spent seven months abroad before he returned home. Others from Minnesota were not so lucky. More than 8,000 Minnesota National Guard soldiers and Airmen were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2011. <a href="https://ngmnpublic.azurewebsites.us/our-fallen/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sixteen members</a> of the Minnesota Guard died in Iraq and another 79 were awarded Purple Hearts for combat injuries. Nearly 100 soldiers with some connection to Minnesota were killed in combat during the forever wars.
Walz retired from the National Guard in May 2005; he was elected to Congress during the Democratic sweep in 2006. <a href="https://reason.com/2024/08/06/tim-walz-is-against-unaccountable-wars-but-he-voted-to-fund-them-anyways/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reason</a> magazine summarised his record on the forever wars:
“For all his strong feelings about war powers, however, Walz has also shown a tendency to shrink from tough political fights on the issue. During the debate over the surge, Walz <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/washington/02policy.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">voted to force</a> the US military to withdraw from Iraq within 90 days. Yet less than five months later, he voted to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2007/06/01/10634318/minnesotas-democratic-rep-walks-line-on-iraq-war" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">continue funding</a> the war. It was a position that put him at odds with a majority of his Democratic colleagues ...
“A similar pattern unfolded throughout Walz’s congressional career. According to <a href="https://www.peaceaction.org/legislator/tim-walz/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">voting records</a> compiled by Peace Action, an antiwar advocacy group, Walz often voted to repeal the War on Terror-era <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/02/09/the-inside-story-of-how-the-pentagon-blocked-efforts-to-end-the-iraq-war/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">authorizations for the use of military force</a> (AUMFs), while also voting against restrictions or cuts to military funding.”
Walz proved to be a reliable vote for the Democratic leadership during his years in Congress.
Another aspect of the military service cult is never to discuss what the military actually does beyond blandishments of “serving” or “protecting” our nation. Walz spent his entire military career in the Minnesota National Guard. A cursory survey of its history reveals one that parallels many others. But it’s not a good history: from suppressing the <a href="https://www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn/us-dakota-war" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dakota uprising</a> in 1862 to the failed effort to crush the <a href="https://libcom.org/article/1934-minneapolis-teamsters-strike-photo-gallery" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Minnesota Teamsters strikes of 1934</a> to strikebreaking at <a href="https://againstthecurrent.org/atc002/behind-the-hormel-strike-fifty-years-of-p-9/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Horme</a>l in 1986 to defending the 2008 Republican convention from demonstrators.
This is not just a Minnesota story. The National Guard has deep roots in the history of the United States, stretching back to the earliest days of English colonisation of North America in the early 1600s, when colonists organised militias to defend themselves from Indigenous attacks and destroy native resistance to their expansion. Slave patrols in the Old South were replaced, <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-modern-day-policing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> the NAACP, by “militia-style groups who were empowered to control and deny access to equal rights to freed slaves. They relentlessly and systematically enforced Black Codes, strict local and state laws that regulated and restricted access to labor, wages, voting rights, and general freedoms for formerly enslaved people”.
Following the <a href="https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/great-labor-uprising-of-1877_by-philip-s-foner" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1877 Railroad Uprising</a>—which was the closest the United States ever came to a workers’ revolution—the National Guards or state militias in many states had to be reorganised after they demonstrated too much sympathy for the strikers across the country. The legacy of this era is hiding in plain sight. “Cities across the US still bear the physical legacy of the 1877 railroad strike”, <a href="https://enotrans.org/article/rutherford-b-hayes-1877-1881-the-great-railroad-strike/#:~:text=Cities%20across%20the%20U.S.%20still,units%20and%20suppress%20labor%20movements.%E2%80%9D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to the logistics Center for Transportation. “To quell social unrest, many states and cities—with financial support from wealthy business owners—constructed armories resembling medieval castles to house National Guard units and suppress labor movements.”
When Walz was governor of Minnesota during the Black Lives Matter rebellion following <a href="https://www.kare11.com/article/news/verify/did-gov-walz-or-trump-deploy-the-national-guard-in-2020-unrest/89-edf24d97-dc4f-49a3-bcc5-fad7f7504a32" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">George Floyd’s</a> police murder, he deployed National Guard troops to Minneapolis, a move was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tim-walz-trump-audio-riots-george-floyd-3b349ec2a8611f242333b76512a82d4f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">praised</a> by President Donald Trump at the time. This was no aberration in its long history. Minnesota is quite proud of the National Guard’s role in foiling “domestic unrest”. The Minnesota Military Museum boasts:
“Since its formation ... the Minnesota National Guard has been called upon to support the State of Minnesota 91 times in response to a variety of civil disturbances. Minnesota has experienced a wide range of race, labor and other social conflict since its inception and these upheavals received varied responses from state governments to include the deployment of the National Guard.”
The National Guard in many states recruits soldiers by emphasising their heroic role during natural disasters, as this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYm8tEC7uk0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">video</a> demonstrates. National Guard members are sold as do-gooders or “citizen-soldiers” who rarely if ever see combat. But the post-Cold War reorganisation of the US military has meant that the National Guard is more integrated into military operations abroad, in sharp contrast to the Vietnam War era. Since the end of the draft in 1973, the US military has had to rely on various means to recruit its soldiers.
The cult of military service sprouted in the era of the volunteer army. While it means that professional politicians like Tim Walz may ride this into the White House with Kamala Harris, for others, it is a road to the graveyard.
First published at <a href="http://www.joeallen-60224.medium.com">joeallen-60224.medium.com</a>. Joe Allen is a socialist based in the United States. He is the author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the US Lost.

The US cult of military service

Except for a handful of insiders in the Teamsters and the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), few of us were aware that negotiations were being held to affiliate the ALU with the truckers’ union, until the recent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/amazon-labor-union-affiliates-with-teamsters-2024-06-05/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announcement</a>. If anything, most of us stopped paying attention to the ALU, which two years ago had an important breakthrough in winning a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/01/tech/amazon-union-election-staten-island/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">union election</a> at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment centre in Staten Island, New York. Soon afterwards, the ALU was inundated with <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/1091130929/chris-smalls-amazon-union-50-warehouses" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">calls</a> from 50 Amazon workplaces across the country. A spark had been struck, but would it catch fire?
Disappointingly, the initial success was followed by a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/10/18/23410675/amazon-union-vote-results-upstate-albany-new-york-alb" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">string of defeats</a>, and ALU supporters began pushing for change. Some of us were aware that there was a “<a href="https://labornotes.org/2023/07/reform-caucus-rises-sues-elections-amazon-labor-union" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reform movement</a>” in the ALU that was demanding a democratic structure and challenging the leadership of its president, Chris Smalls, who became an <a href="https://www.workers.org/2023/05/71148/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">international celebrity</a>. When Smalls incorporated the ALU in New York, it was more like a NGO rather than a recognisable union. The ALU was also similar to an NGO in that it was also heavily dependent on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/business/amazon-labor-union.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">outside contributions</a>, not from a dues base of a membership.
ALU is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10163934408876164&amp;set=a.10153734476311164" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">voting</a> on affiliation with the Teamsters, and it is likely to pass, especially given that the <a href="https://twitter.com/ReformALU/status/1798384859137937869/photo/1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reformers</a> in the ALU were part of the negotiations with the Teamsters and have endorsed the agreement. The Teamsters also helped fix the vote by unilaterally <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=868166402018829&amp;set=a.227247562777386" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announcing</a> that the ALU had already affiliated, with a social and mainstream media blitz. I would guess that affiliation will pass overwhelmingly, since no one in the ALU has put forward a fundamentally different strategy for moving it forward, rather than affiliating with the Teamsters.
Smalls has proved to be so unpopular with the ALU membership that he <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chris-small-amazon-labor-union-president-not-seeking-reelection-2023-12#:~:text=Chris%20Smalls%2C%20Amazon%20Labor%20Union%20president%20and%20founder%2C%20tells%20Business,will%20not%20run%20for%20reelection&amp;text=Smalls%20led%20the%20union%20to,organizing%20than%20his%20own%20image." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> last December that he would not be running for president. While ALU members are voting for affiliation with the Teamsters, the election of a new leadership this summer has been <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/amazon-union-rivals-reach-court-deal-in-move-to-quell-hostility" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ordered</a> by the courts. I don’t have a position on whether the ALU should affiliate or not, but I would be suspicious of Teamsters bearing gifts.
Talking to several people over the last week, I’ve been trying to get a handle on some of the motivations for ALU reformers embracing the Teamsters, and what they expect will change for them.
Myths about the Teamsters being a “powerful” union persist to this very day. This was well on display during last year’s UPS contract campaign, during which widespread media coverage amplified this image—including much of the US left, which repeated continually that we were on the eve of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4e8jI_qzro" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">biggest strike</a> in modern US history. This, of course, did not occur, leading to the frustration and<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/28/what-happened-to-the-big-ups-strike/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> demoralisation</a> of the hundreds of young radicals—many identified with the Democratic Socialists of America, <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/strike-ready-2023/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DSA</a>—who went out and got jobs on some of the worst shifts at UPS to be part of this transformative campaign.
Let’s be clear that the Teamster leadership of General President Sean O’Brien and General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman chose a social media campaign, despite their bloviating rhetoric. And, since the beginning of the year, UPS has ravaged its workforce by closing over <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ups-to-close-200-sort-centers-in-modernization-push#:~:text=Up%20to%20200%20facilities%20are,outlined%20by%20management%20on%20Tuesday." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">200 shifts and buildings</a> across the country, with the union acting like little more than a bystander. Revealingly, during the UPS contract campaign, <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/yellows-demise-2-decades-in-the-making" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Yellow Freight</a>, one of the oldest freight companies represented by the Teamsters, went bankrupt and 20,000 union jobs disappeared without a fight from the union.
The hollowness of the Teamsters at UPS and Yellow Freight was clearly revealed when Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW, called <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/12/1211602392/uaw-auto-strike-deals-ratified-big-three-shawn-fain" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">strikes</a> at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis last fall. In sharp contrast to the bloviating from the Teamsters, the UAW actually struck at the auto companies formerly known as the Big Three. And while legitimate criticisms can be made of the conduct of the strikes and their final settlements, I think there is little doubt that <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/04/why-striking-matters/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">real strikes</a> are better than bloviating and empty posturing.
Some ALU reformers and supporters argue that for the ALU to succeed at Amazon it needs a “big gun” to back it up. While you can understand the allure of being affiliated to a larger union after a series of defeats, is this a solution to the existential crisis of ALU? Even recent history at Amazon doesn’t suggest this is a silver bullet solution. Way back in April 2021, the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union affiliated with the mammoth UFCW, but lost two to one in a union election at Amazon in <a href="https://tempestmag.org/2021/04/defeat-in-bessemer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bessemer, Alabama</a>, despite having a successful record of organizing in the South.
Part of the motivation for the Teamsters in wanting the shell of the ALU, I can’t help but think, is to deepen their claim on Amazon while doing little work to earn it. The 2021 Teamster convention, the last one presided over by James P. Hoffa, passed a series of resolutions on Amazon, including creating an Amazon department and plans for a campaign directed at Amazon drivers across the country.
So far, all the Teamsters have to show for their paltry efforts is a contract at <a href="https://teamster.org/2023/10/amazon-teamsters-bring-prime-week-strike-to-l-a-county-warehouse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Battle Tested Strategies</a>, a former Amazon contractor, in Palmdale, California, with a resulting recognition “strike” and “roving pickets” at Amazon facilities that few actual Amazon workers participated in. It appears that the Teamsters are using the media strategy that they deployed in the UPS contract campaign. But the larger point is that the illusive “big gun” is not ultimately about affiliating with a larger union, but collectively organising workers for militant action to wrest a contract from the employer.
Chris Smalls initially had an inkling of this. He dismissed affiliating with Teamsters soon after the victory on Staten Island, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/amazon-workers-staten-island-christian-smalls" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">telling</a> the Guardian: “If established unions had been effective, they would have unionized Amazon already. We have to think about 21st century-style unionizing.” He never elaborated on what he meant by this, but the Teamsters haven’t changed.
First published at <a href="https://joeallen-60224.medium.com/beware-of-teamsters-bearing-gifts-25ee74ffb645">Joe Allen on Medium</a>.

What happened to the guy who organised US Amazon workers?

It was a beautiful warm night on the south lawn of White House. Five hundred guests of President Biden gathered for an official state dinner for Kenyan President William Ruto on the evening of 23 May. There were “stunning D.C. views, a knockout menu, a dose of celebrity star power and even a little family drama”, according to ABC News. Hunter, the president’s perpetually indicted son, provided the drama.
It was the usual mix of Washington dignitaries, administration officials, Hollywood stars, as well as two former presidents — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — and one former presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton. “The menu featured fruitwood-smoked beef short ribs, poached lobster, chilled heirloom tomato soup and a white chocolate basket.” A few hours before the sumptuous dinner, Reuters reported:
“Some of the food supplies waiting to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt have begun to rot as the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/why-gazas-rafah-border-crossing-matters-why-egypt-is-keeping-it-shut-2023-10-17/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rafah border crossing</a> remains shut to aid deliveries for a third week and people inside the Palestinian territory <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/details-humanitarian-crisis-gaza-2024-05-01/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">face worsening hunger</a>. Rafah was a main entry point for humanitarian relief as well as some commercial supplies before Israel stepped up <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/israel-hamas/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">its military offensive</a> on the Gazan side of the border on May 6 and took control of the crossing from the Palestinian side.”
Nobody, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the best-known members of “The Squad”, brought up the icky subject of starvation and genocide in Gaza. Who wants to ruin a good meal and great company, especially with the president and his secretaries of Defense and State, who are enabling it? President Biden gave an “Irish toast” and everyone went on to have a great night together, though, apparently, Obama left early.
There was an array of big city, African-American, Democratic Party mayors present from various battleground states, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/us/politics/biden-state-dinner-kenya.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>:
“The mayors of Charlotte, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Augusta and Atlanta all traveled to Washington to dine on chilled heirloom tomato soup and fruitwood-smoked beef short ribs within a few tables of the president.”
Despite the honoured guest being the President Ruto of Kenya, the guest list revealed a focus on domestic politics. The president is fighting for his political life and is desperate to turn out the Black vote, which overwhelmingly supported him in large numbers in 2020 but has <a href="https://kansasreflector.com/2024/04/12/black-voters-were-key-to-bidens-2020-win-but-money-woes-make-some-question-their-support-in-2024/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">weakened</a> since then.
Among the invited guests was Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson. I don’t know if Johnson had a choice table, but it’s a sure sign that you’re part of the in-crowd if you are invited to a state dinner. Illinois is a deeply blue state, it will vote for Biden, but Brandon will be the host for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August, which the Democrats are <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4624805-growing-campus-unrest-sparks-democratic-fears-over-chicago-convention/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fearful</a> could turn into a public relation fiasco with mass protests and arrests over Biden’s support for Israel’s genocidal war.
Chicago will soon be turned into a police state to protect the DNC in an effort to sideline any protests. The Johnson administration has so far <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/16/protesters-plan-gaza-dnc-march-no-permit/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">denied</a> six permit requests, missed deadlines, or ordered the police to offer protest routes far-away from the DNC. The Chicago Tribune recently <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/16/protesters-plan-gaza-dnc-march-no-permit/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>:
“Authorities required to offer alternative protest routes have repeatedly proposed demonstrators instead march on a two-block, tree-lined stretch of Columbus Drive in Grant Park. Organizers across the board have criticized that location as too far from the convention’s hotspots, the United Center and McCormick Place, where delegates and top Democrats will congregate and the national media will focus its attention.”
Some pro-Palestine organisers have tired of waiting on Johnson and decided to march on the DNC without a permit. Pro-Palestine organisers are enraged with the city after the Chicago cops attacked the DePaul University encampment. “CPD messed it up today. So because of that, we are not filing [a permit]”, said Nida Sahouri, chair of American Muslims for Palestine Chicago, as she tore up the application in front of the media. “We are going to be protesting no matter what.”
Johnson, as he often does, tries to lean on his activist past to deflect criticism. “I’m not here without that movement”, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnMPTlZJ70w" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> in March. “We just want to make sure that it is done in a safe and secure area so that that right to assemble doesn’t get taken over by individuals who may have other interests.” Raising the false spectre of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/nyc-mayor-adams-outside-agitators-were-part-of-campus-protests" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">outsiders</a> has been used to crack down on peaceful protests on campuses across the country.
Any threat to the safety and security of the demonstrators comes not from outsiders but from the notoriously violent Chicago Police Department (CPD) or local pro-Zionist and far-right vigilantes. Sometimes they are one and the same in <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/16/the-return-of-the-hamburgs-white-vigilantes-the-chicago-police-and-anti-fascism-in-chicago/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chicago</a>. It should be noted Johnson and his police chief Larry Snelling have not disciplined or fired at least nine members of the fascist <a href="https://graphics.suntimes.com/extremism-ranks/2023/oathkeepers-proudboys-extremism-mayor-brandon-johnson-chicago-police-investigation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Proud Boys</a> currently serving in the CPD, despite having pledged to do so in the past. Neither contentious city council hearings or repeated <a href="https://abc7chicago.com/southern-poverty-law-center-rebukes-chicago-police-department-for-lack-of-action-officers-tied-to-oath-keepers-proud-boys/14816593/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">calls</a> from groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have moved them.
Kennedy Bartley, the former executive director Illinois United Working Families (UWF), was recently hired by Johnson to be managing deputy of external relations, a job to reach out to his allies that, in some cases, have soured on him. Bartley <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/24/mayor-johnson-hires-organizer-as-administration-liaison-to-progressive-groups/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a> the Tribune
that her job is to “make sure that we are executing the vision Chicago elected him to execute”. How she will do that given that she now works for the mayor is a good question. It would appear that her job right now is to manage protests at the DNC.
It may also be worth asking, in light of Bartley’s appointment, what is the UWF for? The 2016 UWF Platform and Points of Unity, says:
“We declare our commitment to form a new political party, independent of corporate control, with a grounding in working-class communities and leadership from the emerging American majority—Black, Latino and Asian, female, queer, and young.”
Accepting a job in the Johnson administration appears to be working against the stated goal of “a new political party”. In another recent example, Alderperson Rossana Rodriguez, who has been repeatedly endorsed for office by the UWF, was elected <a href="https://www.cookcountydems.com/ward_commttee_people/33rd-ward/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">chair</a> of the 33rd Ward Democratic Committee. Instead of forming a new party, the UWF appears to be working for the old party, despite much of the <a href="https://hammerandhope.org/article/brandon-johnson-chicago-teachers-union" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">left media</a> promoting it as a potential organising space of <a href="https://tempestmag.org/2023/05/the-left-under-brandon-johnson/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">opposition</a> to the Johnson administration.
Brandon’s embrace of the political establishment shouldn’t surprise anyone; this is how politics works in the United States. All of it was plain to see and hear while he was running for mayor in 2023. He repeatedly proclaimed, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs5jeBCvqI0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">I’m the real Democrat for mayor</a>”, but the left chose not to listen. His election last year was described as a “shock” and <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/an-unlikely-mayor-chicago-brandon-johnson" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">historic opening</a> for the broad left. Six months into his tenure as mayor, I <a href="https://tempestmag.org/2023/10/chicago-mayor-brandon-johnson-complicit-in-the-murder-of-wadea-al-fayoume/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>:
“Johnson, a favorite of the labor-left, upon taking office has disappointed many supporters on several fronts, including signing a <a href="https://democrats.org/news/dncc-and-chicago-labor-unions-sign-historic-labor-peace-agreement-for-2024-democratic-national-convention/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">no-strike pledge</a> with the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) during next year’s Democratic National Convention, signing a contract with <a href="https://southsideweekly.com/company-building-asylum-seeker-camps-ran-troubled-detention-facilities-in-canada-texas/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GardaWorld</a>, a dubious Blackwater-like security, to house the burgeoning migrants, and appointing Larry Snelling, the former head of the Chicago Police Department’s Counterterrorism unit, as the city’s next police chief.”
Since then, the list of things has piled up even higher. During several city council debates on Gaza, Johnson tossed pro-Palestine demonstrators from city hall. In October, he played a key role in allowing a <a href="https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-city-council-approves-israel-solidarity-resolution/377c55f6-27c4-4174-9295-51eea0bd9d62" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pro-Israel resolution</a>, sponsored by Alderwoman Debbie Silverstein, to pass overwhelmingly. When he came around to <a href="https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-city-council-approves-israel-solidarity-resolution/377c55f6-27c4-4174-9295-51eea0bd9d62" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">supporting</a>
a ceasefire resolution in February, it was clear that it was popular with the Democratic Party supporters, but it also didn’t require him to do anything, not the least of which was going to a state dinner at the White House.
But, many of Johnson’s staunchest defenders that I know have gone silent in the face of his support for the newest, proposed Chicago boondoggle—a <a href="https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/report-bears-new-stadium-would-cost-taxpayers-almost-7-billion-higher-than-team-says-according-to-state-official/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Sun-Times,week%20would%20be%20%246.9%20billion." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">domed</a> Chicago Bears stadium on the Lakefront priced at $4.7 billion, to which the Bears would contribute $2 billion and the rest would be public money. The Chicago White Sox also want a <a href="https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/report-white-sox-owner-jerry-reinsdorf-offers-own-money-to-help-finance-proposed-new-ballpark-in-the-south-loop/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new</a> partially public funded stadium in the South Loop. Johnson has embraced these proposals and gratuitously defended them, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/chicago-mayor-says-stand-billionaires-despite-progressive-outcry-citys-new-nfl-stadium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">saying</a>, “Having the opportunity to stand with billionaires, you could not have convinced me a decade ago that I would have the opportunity to do that”.
Not satisfied with standing with Chicago billionaires, he is standing with an Italian one <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdogs/2024/05/24/carmen-rossi-brandon-johnson-lori-lightfoot-lobbying-brown-derby-luca-garavoglia-campari?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0gRDIEZ1bo2ck-sGuCbRDBeZnwUYUNbrwYrGOLpJt6vTIabWzzQllgNxs_aem_AafzHbVKZoQVy3mIFS8Z1LbOz-UzpVVV6PUgrnTXxSxOiAMMwvH8qk_J4dN4HZJYpFnmxNe2VK4DAj6bm_z27EpD" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to the Chicago Sun-Times: “Johnson’s administration wants to give $28 million in tax-increment financing to Rossi’s lobbying client—an Italian billionaire who plans to convert one of four Loop office buildings to affordable apartments under a program that Lightfoot initiated”. Such actions by previous mayors would provoke <a href="https://www.ctulocal1.org/posts/nine-ctu-members-due-in-court-for-arrests-at-sterling-bay-lincoln-yards-strike-action/">demonstrations</a>
and sit-ins along with vocal denunciations by the Chicago left, yet we hear little to nothing.
Brandon Johnson’s one year in office should make it clear that he is not on our side.
First published at <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/">CounterPunch</a>.

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