Watching CNN

Ain’t no doubt about it, capital is in a serious global crisis. And are we surprised? There’s only so long you can make money without labour.

But what I’m finding most interesting right now is that the cheerleading is just plain over, full stop. No more hope for markets to rally, for this all to turn around, for folks just to stop panicking and it’ll all be fine, for anyone at all to pretend that the market will work itself out.

I rarely watch TV anymore, but the last couple of days I have been spending some time with CNN, to see how they are talking about all of this. And it’s really quite fascinating.

Anderson Cooper, big-time political commentator, is saying that state and capital have thrown everything they can at this and getting zero traction - nothing is working this time. And Suze Ormon, star financial expert responds to questions of faith in the market like so:

‘We may start seeing breadlines. It is that bad, and we’d better get used to it cause it’s here for a good long while. If you have credit card debt, if banks are foreclosing on your home, if you work in manufacturing or any industry that could see job loss — you’re in trouble. People are moving into their cars.’

And that ain’t the half of it. Suicide rates are up, with unemployed workers and investment bankers alike driven into despair. Yup. The dream is over. The myth has exploded. And the general consensus is that things ain’t getting better any time soon.

Now, of course, there is no structural explanation for this in the general media. Instead, everyone looks around for who’s to blame, the prime target at the moment being AIG - the largest private insurance company n the US - who took an $85 billion dollar bailout, then came back for another $37.8 billion, and yet just blew half a million on a spa weekend for its top agents. But, even without an anti-capitalist analysis, even in a country in which anti-market rhetoric is so anathema, folks know where this all started, and the fingers are pointed squarely upon capital’s greatest, upon the financiers and speculators, upon the state that nurtured them, and upon the idea that war and patriotism are enough to live on.

The death-knell of capitalism? Perhaps not. But the last few years have looked a whole lot like the pre-Depression era. President Calvin Coolidge’s famous pronouncement, “The business of America is business.” The orgy of speculation leading to a massive over-extension of credit, such that by 1924 newspapers were already imagining what was to actually occur five years later - that the mountain of debt would come tumbling down and the system would be thrown into serious crisis.

So this isn’t the first time, by any means, and, yes, capital has weathered such storms before. But rarely has it survived anything this bad without a major overhaul, and without injecting a serious dose of regulation. So at least as far as varieties of capitalist rule are concerned, after watching the neoliberal juggernaut spit and stall at least since the mid 1990s - clearly at the end of its days despite hype to the contrary - that there ain’t much question that it’s ready for the scrap-heap. 

Yup, a crisis of capital.

And what that really means is a crisis of capital’s ability to command labour effectively. A crisis in the drive to to extend the power of the market into new spheres of life. And that certainly creates a whole lot of uncertainty and a whole lot of instability and raises a bunch of questions we can’t begin to answer. What comes next? Does this take us even further down the road to barbarism or might some alternative - and I don’t mean Obama - begin to seize the public imagination? No doubt we’ll see a little of both.

There is no doubt human tragedy here. There is no question that for a whole lot of working people, this will translate into personal crisis. And there is no question that a political response is necessary - a housing response, an anti-poverty response.  But in terms of the financial crisis itself? This is a big moment, a paradigm-shifting moment, and a hugely profound crisis not only for the neoconservatives but for the market and for American Empire. And that ain’t something I’m crying over.

Union Identities

Y’know, doing the union thing can be mighty strange, particularly when you come to it as a radical. The way various emotions are triggered, the competing and conflicting ideas and analyses and reactions you feel - it involves living with and in multiple identities. And I don’t mean putting on a game-face or playing a role, though there’s certainly lots of that. No, this is something else. You really do become different kinds of person in the process. Responsible and reasonable negotiator. Expert advisor. Enforcer of the law. Radical troublemaker. Pissed-off worker. Hurt employee genuinely wanting to be valued for your contribution. All of these come into play, often simultaneously. And that can be not only hard to manage, but hard to live with emotionally. It can throw you into some real turmoil.

Being a radical in the trade union movement ain’t easy, and it takes its toll. It is a constant struggle to hold onto one’s values, one’s critique, one’s politics while working in an environment and for a labour-relations regime whose very premise is the sell-out, whose foundation is opportunism and self-serving justification, and whose daily work involves the search for what is overwhelmingly a fiction - common ground with the boss.

But there’s another challenge as well, which has a more personal dimension. We remain workers, and though we may critique and rail against notions like ‘productivity’ and ‘value’, somehow still we carry those within us. Much as we know these concepts and the culture they arise from belong entirely to the boss, we somehow still feel pride in our work, and want our contributions to be recognized. We can scoff at this stuff on a collective or abstract level. But individually, it still matters. Alot.

I wrote here last Spring about a moment in which I faced all this in my own working life - in a conversation with my employer about my job, a dispute between us, my decision to quit that particular work, and the emotional toll it took on me. Well, last night it was the girl I love dealing with these kinds of feelings, that mix of rage and hurt, of fight-back and defeat, of seeing the boss act exactly as we know bosses do and yet still being floored by it, by that personal hurt that comes when one’s work isn’t valued, one’s dignity doesn’t matter, one’s contributions are not deemed worthy of any real attention. It hurts.

Cause though capital’s shit about values and teamwork and contribution is just so much garbage, the struggle of us as workers does indeed start from our labour, and the desire to re-define ‘value’ and ‘worth’ in new ways, collective ways, life-giving ways.

.

Mavericks

Normally I write here about whatever’s on my mind. But this piece from the New York Times, following on the heels of the US Vice Presidential Debate and the Palin-McCain deployment of that age-old strategy to seize the populist imagination - however much of a stretch - deserves to be read. And not only because of the election. Actually, not even particularly because of the election. More interesting, in my opinion, is the origin of the word and the light it shines on a little corner of history. I like words, I Iike radicals, I like the ways strugglers and resisters capture the imagination and become part of our cultural landscape. And I always feel a little jolt of excitement when something like this comes along and gives me another little glimpse in something forgotten.

New York Times       October 5, 2008

Who You Callin’ a Maverick?

By John Schwartz

There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate,
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe
herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times,
at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”

But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is
a bit of a stretch - and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit
offensive.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita
Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family
that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an
early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation
for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for
not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land
he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle,
then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear
another’s brand.

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman
and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when
conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt
administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for
another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at
the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer
who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He
served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery
columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on
Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in
Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board
of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and
progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists
that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a
maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible - the nerve! - to suggest that he’s not part of that
Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my
family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ “

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

House-Porn

Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky

Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same

There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one

And they’re all made of out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same

Malvina Reynolds

 

Yes, I live in one such little box. Actually, a pretty big box. But it is a pink one, and does indeed fit all the other criteria of the song. It’s a terribly ugly house, and one that really doesn’t suit my personality at all. Indeed, on more than one occassion, when friends have come by for the first time, I’ve seen them standing on the sidewalk looking at the house and re-checking the address several times because they simply cannot believe this is the right place.

Now, there are reasons I live here, of course. The main one being that when the place was bought, I had some important practical considerations, including:

 - a location as close as possible to Mica’s school - and, yes, we are now 2 blocks away;

- a home including two separate but relatively-comparable suites, both above-ground, so that my ex and I could be in the same house - seemed a good idea at the time, but now moot as she’s moved out after a year of not-insignificant tension

Anyway, I write all this by way of preamble because I am thinking a good deal about houses lately. Meg and I are likely to be looking for a place together in the next year, and while there are aspects of that that worry me - mainly moving my kid again when I know she’s really fucking tired of moving every couple of years - there is really no better way to waste time (particularly at work) than browsing the MLS listings and inventing all kinds of scenarios for that perfect home in that perfect neighbourhood.

You know the place - the one that comes with a yard that feels like a small-town, complete with wildflowers, water and a fire-pit. The one that comes filled with singing and the strumming of guitars. The one that always smells like apple pie or fresh basil or bread-just-out-of-the-oven. The one that is always open to friends and exiles looking for a place to land. The one that’s always clean but never antiseptic, cozy with room to spare, whose fireplace burns real wood but ignites as easy a gas-switch.The one built 104 years ago whose original windows are nonetheless double-paned, and which sits in that two-square blocks that is at once close enough to walk to the school, stumble to the WISE for a drink, and get anywhere and everywhere worth going in less than fifteen minutes.

OK, perhaps we won’t find all of that. But the fantasy is worth something nonetheless.

I lucked my way into home-ownership a few years ago, when my parents decided to move out of town and offered to sell me their home at a hugely-discounted price - the only way, it seems, anyone can get into the Vancouver market these last number of years. That’s been quite a gift, providing me with options that few in this city have and allowing me the luxury of housing-dreams that are at least somewhat-attainable.

So, what I find now is that as I contemplate a new future with Meg, as I think about a life together, that life invariably takes shape around a living-space - a space for many many books, potluck dinners, music and laughter and love and sex and politics. And somehow, certain homes seem to fit that dream just so, to make it feel concrete. Not brand-new homes. Not stunning, manicured homes. But homes that have been lived in, that look well-loved and nurtured, that have grown and aged into themselves.

It is compellng and comforting and exciting, this imagining. So I find myself looking over and over at page after page of houses, not because I’m going to live in any of them but because of the fantasy. And in that, it is like porn. Not plastic tits and 12-inch cocks and airbrushed poses of the second before penetration. But more like the couple down the road who grabbed a camera and caught themselves real and sweaty and laughing, and where you know these people are fucking cause they want to be fucking. There’s something in the housing fantasy that’s similar, that is at once just a representation, just a spectacle, but also one that is attainable, that is a turn-on precisely because it is close-enough-to-now that it isn’t just about a fleeting orgasm.

Yeah, I’m flipping through MLS listings. I’m imagining my books alongside Megan’s. I’m imagining the after-work kiss at the door, the quiet nights that everyone just sits back and reads, the mingling of furniture, the washing up after dinner and the breakfasts together before school and work. I’m imagining that house that doesn’t feel like the suburbs in the city, that wants its doors opened to the world and has a front porch made for watching and chatting up the neighbourhood that passes by, that isn’t just something to keep the rain off our heads but something to grow with and grow into, that is part of a community.

And y’know, it feels both like a dream and like something that we’re already living. We’ve spent this last year building time together, growing slowly into our parnership, coming slowly into this new family, reaching that place of day-to-day living before actually making a home together. And perhaps that’s what it is that is different here, that’s what makes this house-porn so much of an attraction. Now, I am drawn to the houses not for the houses as such, but for the right place to carry on the living we are already doing. The right place to fit the very real lives we are already sharing.

And the best part, by far….this a fantasy to share. We take turns sending each other links to the houses we won’t end up in but which look like the places we want to end up in. We get turned on by the same kinds of images, we get inspired by the same imaginings, we respond to the same pictures in the same ways, envisioning the same every-day moments that life is made of. 

These are the pictures that make you think, ‘hmm, maybe we should try that!’ These are the images that make you want to grab a video-recorder and make your own tape.

Working Out a Living

Just back from the gym. It’s been close to three weeks now that I’ve been doing this exercise thing, and over two weeks that I’ve been managing around 45 minutes almost every day. And it’s good. I feel good, I’m losing the pot belly, and I’m starting to think this isn’t necessarily such a bad thing to incorporate into my life.

It is, however, giving me pause to reflect on exercise and society more generally.

I am reminded of Back to the Future iii. Yes, that’s right, I am referring not only to a Michael J. Fox movie, but to the last of his installments as Marty McFly, time-travelling teenager. In this one, he’s taken back to 1885 to experience the Old West as only Hollywood fluff-comedy can imagine it, and in one scene wanders into a bar and begins to chat up the rough-and-tumble types on the subject of the future. Among other items thrown around - exercise. There are cars, he says, to take you wherever you want to go. Really, scoffs his audience - so no one needs to be able to walk anymore? Oh sure, people walk, answers our young hero, but for fun. This, of course, generates no end of laughter and a serious consideration of whether this young weirdo ought to be pummelled for spewing such ludicrous ideas. But wait, I think today…What an interesting little scene that is. Cause it reflects exactly what I’ve been thinking on since doing the gym routine.

Humans are made to move. To run, to jump, to be active. Like all animals, our bodies are constructed in such a way that the daily routine of living should, as a general rule, keep us strong and healthy. I mean, God and Evolution didn’t get together and invent creatures that needed to take any special steps to stay alive. No, living is enough to keep life going, each animal well-balanced so that it’s appetites, growth requirements and social needs all get met through your basic day to day activities.

So, as I make my way to and from the gym, I am struck by how this exercise thing is illustrative of what’s happened with us as beings, how dramatically we have transformed our basic way of life in the world. I mean, what this shows is that the society we have created is so far from natural that it cannot even provide for the basics required to sustain life. In a significant part of the world, humans now - like no other animal and like no time previously - have to make a conscious choice to live, to engage in activities that will sustain us. And that, to me, is just plain frightening.

We know capitalism is pure evil. We know what it does to us as social beings. We know that it destroys communities and destroys souls. And we know, too, that this disposable culture has been devestating for us physically as well. This isn’t news. But somehow the act of working out every day has brought it to the front of my mind in a new way, has made me particularly aware of what exactly this indicates. That we have built a society that does not sustain life, that for the first time ever, life does not flow naturally from the living but is something that must be consciously nurtured. Thought you had it all worked out, God and Evolution? Hah! We won’t be bound by your grand designs! We can re-create ourselves as something else entirely, something never before seen - a being whose social order, whose daily routines, are inconsistent with the requirements of life and yet which continues to exist aganst all odds.

Treadmills and rowers and weights, oh my!

Markets, Money and Dorothy’s Slippers

Last evening Mica and I went down to the local Neighbourhood House to check out their new community gathering - a movie and potluck the last Monday of each month. Tonight’s feature - The Wizard of Oz. Now, as I’m sure we all have, I’ve seen this movie countless times. But tonight was interesting, because I watched the film with new eyes for a number of reasons.

First, this summer Mica and I went to visit my brother David, who lives in Queens, New York. Mica’s been keen to see New York City, and among the must-dos we identified was a Broadway show. Our choice? Wicked, based on Gregory Mcguire’s simply fantastic novel about the back-story to that most infamous of villains, the Wicked Witch of the West. The musical’s a good show - lots of fun and worth seeing. But the book is just fucking incredible. The Wizard is a dictator, using political manipulation, Nazi-esque scape-goating, a network of spies and naked military force to bring the previously-autonomous regions which comprise Oz under his control. The woman we all know as the Witch is Elphaba - a strong-willed young girl who bit by bit begins to uncover just what the Wiz is up to, and enters into a life underground - her mentor an outspoken academic critic assasinated by Oz’ right-hand woman, her lover a freedom-fighter murdered by the Wizard’s guard, her teachers in all things spiritual and ‘witchy’ an ancient order of holy women increasingly self-cloistered to protect themselves and their knowledge. It’s a brilliant novel which not only delves deep into the ways that states manufacture consent to the poiint that governing myths become simply ‘culture’ but which manages to tell a damn-good story too. Needless to say, read through Wicked and you’ll never see the Oz story the same again.

But that’s just the start. A few years back I was in Chicago for a union conference, and went on a fantastic labour history tour that included some awesome mural projects, Haymarket Square - site of the events that inspired the banner at the top of this blog - and the home of Chicago’s Evening Post, the newspaper that employed Oz author Frank L. Baum.

This in a labour history tour? Yup. And why that was appropriate came out in a long story told by the tour leader, based on a thesis that’s been kicking around academic and political circles for a number of years: that The Wizard of Oz is much more than a kids’ story - it’s a parable about America, industrialization, and the political economy of financial markets. Now, whether this is indeed the case is widely-debated. But a concensus begins to be emerging that whether Baum intended the book as such or not is largely irrelevant at this stage. Increasing numbers of people read Oz as a story of nation-building and struggle, and so it means that now, whatever the original vision of its author. OK. That’s a logic I understand, and one I appreciate. So, making no claims to historical truth, here’s the myth that keeps growing in a nutshell.

The whole thing is a parable about the debate over the gold standard. The value of US currency was pegged to gold, whose small world supply was controlled by a small group of bankers and financiers. In the 1890s, a substantial political movement - represented most notably by William Jennings Bryan  - sought to have the dollar pegged to silver, which was plentiful in the American West, in hopes that this might break the political-economic power of the financial elite and give greater clout to the broader mass of the population. At the time, many of the characters and symbols we associate with the Oz story were common devices in editorial cartoons and popular media, representing specific figures or ideas of political import. So, what to us appear products of Baum’s imagination were widely understood in that time as something else entirely.

The cyclone was a common symbol of political upheaval and social revolution at the time, figuring prominently in many a political cartoon.

The Scarecrow is the politically-naive farmer, his common-sense knowledge increasingly eschewed in favour of the bullshit spewing from economists and bankers.

The Tin Woodsman is the industrial worker - alienated, dehumanized, reduced to a cog in the machine.

The Cowardly Lion is Jennings Bryan himself, talking a good game but never willing to go far enough to force the confrontation with big finance that is necessary.

The Wicked Witch represents the money-elite of the West, foreclosing on farmers and destroying the agricultural heart of America. And she is defeated, of course, by water - the rains being the primary protection for small farmers for whom drought so often preceded the eviction notice.

The Wizard himself, of course, is the political manipulator - no individual as much as the machine that is the political system.

The Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard. And where does it lead but the Emerald City, which represents the dollar, and is fundamentally a place of all style and no substance - an imaginaed wealth which has nothing of real value behind it.

And Dorothy? The Everyman/ Everywoman, just trying to make her way in the world. What’s critical here, though, is the slippers. We all immediately fly to images of the ruby shoes, but that was a device of the movie. In the book, Dorothy wears silver slippers - representing, of course, the silver standard proposal at the heart of Jennings Bryan;s campaign, and the only thing that can safely carry America through this land that is all magic and mystification.

Oh, and Oz as title? That’s something we still see today, in gold and cookbooks - shorthand for ‘ounce’.

Again, is all this true? Who knows. Frank L. Baum always maintained that The Wizard of Oz was just a children’s story. But he was a reporter, he fell on the Jennings side of the gold-silver debate, and in later books he was known to mention political figures by name and go hardcore on the offense against massive institutions like Standard Oil. But really, at this stage it just don’t matter. The metaphor is there. It’s been debated extensively, and has taken on a life of its own. Cause books are as much about the readers as the writer.

Well, with all that in the back of my mind, what better day to see The Wizard of Oz again than on a day filled with news about the financial crisis in the States and the House of Representative’s rejection of a $700 billion bailout package for the speculators behind said crisis. As I sit down to the film, all this other Oz-related stuff comes floating back to me, and all I can think about is how much of an Oz-like moment we’re watching unfold. The great Wizard huffs and puffs and casts about for the right combination of smoke and excuses to hide his complete and total failure; the political-economic crisis is mystified as some unforeseen bit of black magic rather than the structural crisis that it is; the screen comes down and the bankruptcy of the market is laid bare for all to see, but so far there’s no Scarecrow to state so plainly, ‘You’re nothing but a humbug!”

Capitalism is fucking amazing. Every few years a crisis. And every few years a state steps in to declare that nothing’s really fundamentally wrong, it’s just a little tweaking, just a little ‘tighten-your-belts-and-pull-up-your-bootstraps’ and somehow, with the smoke and mirrors and flashing lights of ‘freedom freedom freedom’ the state helps capital to pull itself back from the the precipice. Morally bankrupt. Politically-illigitimate. Economically-disastrous. Ecologically-murderous. But that great founding myth, that one that tells us the invisible-hand is some infallible Wizard, that cities of emeralds are worth the sacrifice of munchkins in the fields, that the glory of the state is somehow the glory of us all - it keeps ticking on.

Capital, like Oz, is all about mystification and sleight of hand. That’s the very nature of the market - to mask the real relations of labour and coercion, of theft and murder, in this oh-so-natural exchange of money. You kill some people and take their stuff. You put them to work to feed themselves. And their children go to work. And their children go to work. And after a while no one remembers anymore that this process of going to work to get some cash to buy some food so you can wake up the next day and go back to work - all this began with killing some people and taking their stuff, and that the exchange of money for work is just the carrying on of that same theft and violence by other means. It’s really quite brilliant, really quite magical, how it all works. Cause after a time, all that was stolen appears earned. All these relations of power appear to be timeless and natural. And the real history vanishes in a haze of new explanations magicked out of the air.

When Dorothy and her friends reach the Emerald City, and finally get their audience with Oz, he thunders at them: “I intend to grant your requests. But first you must prove yourselves worthy.”

And this is indeed capital’s primary message of obfuscation. Everything is possible. Everything is attainable. If you can’t find a job that pays more than minimum wage, if you can’t afford to go to school, if you can’t feed your kids, if the bank forecloses on your home - it’s all down to you. You have not proven yourself worthy. And this, in turn, engenders a culture of delusion-inspired risk. A culture than breeds pyramid schemes, get-rich-quick scams, gambling and the stock market. Cause if you haven’t made it, there’s only two explanations. Either it’s your own damn fault cause you just ain’t good enough, or your horse hasn’t come in yet, and it’s only a matter of time. It can be, it must be, just around the corner. It is magic - it just happens, it will just happen, it must just happen, cause the only other option is to admit that I’m the one to blame for my own improverishment. It’s a mass brainwashing, the greatest of behaviour modification programs.

But every now and then….every once in a while, something happens that belies that notion. Something happens to knock down the screen, and the cracks in the foundation become so apparent, so naked, that it becomes possible to see something else. That maybe it’s not all down to individual failure. That maybe there is something bigger that’s wrong. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a systemic problem here. Maybe, just maybe, there’s something amiss with that great myth we’ve been living by.

And that’s what I’m watching these days. I’m watching the cracks in the order. I’m watching the eyes open up and the fingers start to point and the folks waiting for the bus talking and considering that maybe this ain’t their fault after all. I’m watching the screen go down, and we’re in that moment where Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion pause and look at each other, and begin to wonder if this little old man really is the Wizard he’s claimed, or if instead it is all humbug indeed. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is what’s the most fascinating and the most hopeful.

Will a second round of bailout talks save Oz for another day? I have no doubt. Indeed, Dorothy et al decide, after a few moments, to let the myth live on, and they take tjheir trinkets and smile and thank the Wiz and he floats off into the sky and everything goes back to normal again. Perhaps. Perhaps that is how the story ends. But, once again, how the story ends is only half of it. Cause it’s as much about the readers as the writer. And some readers remember. And as I know from my own experiences with Wicked and with that labour tour in Chicago, some readers never read a story quite the same way again.

Whatever happens, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

One Year and Two Families On

A lazy Sunday, cleaning house, playing some guitar, generally relaxing. Mica’s curled up with a book and a Blondie cd, her chores done as well. Megan’s soon to arrive from an afternoon at Word On the Street having some literary fun. It is exactly the kind of the day we need.

Weekended on Vancouver Island. Friday was over to Victoria to have a visit with Meg’s folks - Mica’s first time meeting them - and Saturday was my cousin’s wedding in Nanaimo - Meg’s intro to the extended family of aunts and uncles and many cousins. It was all a bit overwhelming, and as we drove back late last night after catching the last ferry home, every one of us was entirely done.

But today it feels like a great weekend. Yes, it was a bit awkward for Mica being at Meg’s family home and figuring out how she was to interact with these new people. Yes, the wedding was a painful affair of Church and formality and way too many speeches. But we are building family in these moments, and each time - whatever the process itself entails - in the aftermath I can feel a few more of the strings that form among us all. It’s a bit like the spinning, these little ties that take off in various directions with each introduction, and which together form this tapestry that we all walk together string by string.

It’s one year now since Meg and I met - not to the day, but to our own way of counting. It was the last Sunday of September, 2007, as Meg was heading off to Ottawa on an early morning flight, as I planned for my usual early-to-bed on a work-night/ school-night. One quick drink with this person at the other end of a computer screen, just to see….But that quick drink turned into hours of conversation and a kiss that didn’t want to end, and I made my way home somewhere around 2:00 in the morning thinking, “Well, that’s interesting….”

And indeed it has been. Here we are now, firmly in this relationship, with new and larger communities, re-defined families, and a future which neither of us could even have imagined a year ago but which now just feels so much like it was always-already there. You don’t need the details. I don’t need to document them all here. And today, I’m kinda lazy, kinda tired, and not really that into the whole blogging thing anyway. So, I’ll leave it at this.

One year on, and I can’t believe how my life has changed, how so many different possible futures have opened up, and how much we have seen grow from these incremental steps of relationship. But it’s super exciting to me, and while larger family gatherings can be maddening at times, I am finding today that I am glad to have them, because they are touchstones for this little family we are building day by day. There’s something important about holding a partner’s hand and leading them into the world you come from. There’s something special about stolen whispers giving the back-stories to various people - the ones most-loved, the ones best-avoided, the crazy eccentrics. There’s something special about sitting down to brunch with a still-new group of people and feeling how space is made to open the circle. There’s something special about watching as three generations and multiple branches of families make their own little adjustments, face their own questions, display their own quirks as a couple’s courtship extends person by person through the larger family.

Today, on this lazy day after too much driving, too much Heavenly Father and all the angels, too much speechifying and too much weird heterosexual tradition, I am so happy for Meg’s family, my family, and relatives I hardly see anymore. Cause it all reminds us where we come from, it all illustrates a little more about what we’re each joining, it draws Mica, Meg and I together in a different kind of way, as a unique little unit within these larger webs. And I realize just how important these little visits are to the consolidation of us.

Nice place to be on this anniversary day.

Catchin’ Up and Lookin’ Back

Been a couple of days since I’ve managed to write here - not for lack of interest or lack of things to talk about, but simply because it’s gotten pretty damn busy all of a sudden. Tons of cases on my desk at work, preparing to enter collective bargaining for a first agreement with my employer, and - likely the biggest factor - I have been trying to get myself some regular exercise for the first time in a couple of years.

On that front, it’s all good. Did some early morning runs to start, but on the weekend Meg introduced me to the idea of the gym. Never actually set foot in one before, and had no idea what to expect. But I did find that the elliptical trainer, the rowing machine, and the stationary bike are all entirely manageable, and that doing exercise this way, moving between machines, I am able to go for 45 minutes or an hour as opposed to the fifteen minute run I was managing. So, feeling pretty damn proud of myself, and actually starting to enjoy the time each day to get a workout and listen to Dragonforce, Iron Maiden, Slayer or whatever else pops up on the MP3 player.

On top of this, I finally have been sent the author’s proofs for an article on the historical development of the trade union and the limitations of union structure and strategy for current struggles - an article that is now four years old, whose citations as a result appear far less current than they should, and which would likely be written quite differently were I to do it today. But alas, this is simply a reality of academic publishing - delays like this between submission and publication are not uncommon. At least it provides for a bit of change from the grievance work that normally takes my time, and gives my brain a little refresher in academic-think, which is nice every now and then…(but only every now and then!).

So, here I am now with just a few short minutes between meetings - not long enough to put together a proper post on anything, but sufficient for a really quick run-down of what’s been occupying my time and a historical review of the day.

Today is September 24. And it was ninety years ago today that the Industrial Workers of the World was declared illegal in Canada. This I’d known, as tonight is a local IWW meeting which I’m having to miss to attend a parent thing at Mica’s school. But I punched the search into google in order to have a moment to think back on the wobs of that time, the role they played in organizing workers and in opposing the war. And in so doing, I found one of those sites that always intrigues me - a daily recap of historical events and anniversaries.

Remembering is important. Memory shapes us, shapes our interactions with the world around, our expecations, our fears and our hopes. So, flowing from remembrance of the criminalization of radical unions and this article on my desk that needs a final edit, here’s just a taste of things worth remembering today.

1794 - US President George Washington sends in the militia to crush the Whiskey Rebellion. A protest-turned-insurrection in response to taxation on distillers - a tax that disproportionately hit small producers while allowing large, wealthier folks to pay a flat fee - the Whiskey Rebellion marked the first time under the US constitution that the government deployed its military power against its citizens. (Remembering, of course, that state violence against indigenous populations and slaves had a long and active history, but that these folks were not “citizens”.)

1862 - Suspension of habeas corpus in the US, resulting in the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of some 18,000 ’subversives’ and peace activists over the next four years.

1869 - Black Friday - certainly worth remembering in light of the financial crisis currently rocking the US. On this day in 1869 panic sent the US financial system into freefall after speculators sought to corner a gold market which was backed by nothing but credit. One of the central players was robber-baron Jay Gould, famous for his proud assertion, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”

1918 - As noted above, Canada decalres the IWW a criminal organization, membership drawing jail terms of up to five years.

1953 - 23 American soldiers taken as prisoners by Korea during the Korean War refuse to be repatriated to the US, stating, “under present conditions in America, the voices of those who speak out for peace and freedom are rapidly being silenced. We do not intend to give the American government a chance of silencing our voices too.”

1968 - Mexican troops attack protesting university students, killing seventeen.

1969 - Trial begins of the Chicago Seven (initially eight, before Black Panther Bobby Seale was severed from the case and sentenced to four years for contempt). These were the folks, including Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, accused of conspiracy and inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago (noted in a previous post here about folksinger and fellow convention-disrupter Phil Ochs).

1994 - Protesters disrupt the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, DC.

Hmmm. Not bad as days in history go. Lots to recall, lots to ponder, lots to remind us that as much as these same battles face us today, it’s just as true that folks keep on struggling, keep on resisting, and that resistance continues to educate and inspire.

And with that…back to the grievance files. Sigh.

The Wildman Marc Mero vs Corporate Wrestling: the battle for hearts and minds

   

Some months ago I got all hot for a project on professional wrestling as work, and attempts at unionization of wrestlers. I wrote a blog post about it here, and was all fired up to do a couple of different pieces - something for a popular sports magazine, to get the issue some light, something academic, and something concrete around the how-tos that could potentially help to re-kindle an organizing drive. As so often happens, however, the writing never really materialized, and the whole project sat hibernating in the back of my brain for some future date.

Well, a couple of days ago I decided it was time. I pulled up the blog post, saved it as a word document and started thinking on how I’d expand and re-write for the various audiences. And the very next day, out of the blue, my friend Colin phoned from Toronto. Colin’s doing labour law at U of T, and soon will be heading out to BC to article with the firm that represents the union I work for and a host of other faculty unions around the province. Colin, however, was calling with a whole other piece of news. He’s taking a course in sports law, and the prof has worked as counsel to that all-time fave wrestler of mine, Bret Hart. So, Colin’s planning a paper on the whole unionization of wrestlers thing that I had told him about, and wanted to let me know he’d get that to me in a few months so I’d have some legal work to use in my articles, or so we could put something together ourselves. He’s also particularly keen on doing something practical on the issue and trying to push this into some kind of unionization drive.

Funny how that works, how minds can just re-connect on a topic from so far away at exactly the same moment.

Anyway, from all of this, I’ve been thinking again on the wrestlers’ union thing, and finding myself thinking in particular about ‘The Wildman’ Marc Mero.

Marc Mero was never my favourite wrestler. He was skilled, no question. He was interesting to watch work in the ring, no question. But on the other side of the business - the character-development, story-line, entertainment side, Mero never really grabbed me. Hockey player, football player. and boxer, Mero moved into wrestling in the early 1990s, his major characters over the years being Johnny B Badd - a Little Richard knock-off; ‘Wildman’ Marc Mero - standard wrestler plus a little manic insanity; and ‘Marvelous’ Marc Mero - a hyper-jealous, hyper-arrogant a boxer-turned wrestler whose greatest triumph involved winning a match against his wife, whose increasing popularity shadowed his own, driving him insanely jealous. Yeah. that was indeed the storyline.

Marc Mero walked away from pro-wrestling in around 2005, mainly due to various injuries that could not heal properly while he continued to work. He opened a body-building and fitness studio in Florida, and has been there since.

But that’s all just background. What really matters is what else Marc Mero is doing.

When I was talking to Bret Hart, one of the last questions I asked him was who else I should speak to about working conditions in the industry and the whole question of unionization. He gave me a few names, but one comment stuck out in particular. “Talk to Marc Mero. The WWE [virtually monopolistic-wrestling corporation] still tolerates the rest of us, and we’re on decent terms despite our critcisms. But they hate Marc Mero, and have gone after him hard.”

Huh? marc Mero - really? Hadn’t heard his name come up at all before now. So what was the deal here? A visit to his training institute’s website, an email, and fifteen minutes later Marc is writing back keen to talk.

Apparently, after leaving the wrestling business, Marc Mero started getting real vocal about the industry’s rising death toll. And he pinned the blame squarely on the owners. The working conditions, the pressure for bigger bodies, the soul- and body-eating schedule of life on the road, the requirement to work through injuries. Wrestling, Mero said, was killing people left and right. Wrestling owners and promoters, he said, actively encouraged behaviour they knew to be life-threatening. Wrestling, he said, destroyed people, leaving them hurt, psychologically-damaged, and vicious. He pointed in particular to the murder-suicide of Chris Benoit - by all accounts just about the most professional and non-aggressive of wrestlers until years of steroid abuse fucked his brain so bad he murdered his wife and child before killing himself in a psychotic episode. Lots of wrestlers spoke about it, lamenting the tragedy, many indeed taking about ‘roid rage and the impact of abuse of performance-enhancing drugs. But Mero pointed more directly to the industry and the owners, and placed the blame squarely on their shoulders.

And loud. He started getting on every TV show and radio program he could. He talked about the kind of masculinity wrestling encouraged. He talked about the culture of violence. He talked about the drugs as a job requirement. And not content to make his case to newscasters and policy-makers, Mero went straight to the heart of the wrestling industry’s market. Mero went to kids.

Entirely on his own dime, Marc Mero put out the call that he would visit any school that would have him to talk about body image, drugs, masculinity, violence, and wrestling. Now, officially, it’s all billed as a positive-choice, anti-steroid message. But talk to Marc for a few minutes, and it’s pretty damn clear that there’s alot more going on here, and that it’s this work with kids that is precisely what has the wrestling business so pissed off. Because as far as he’s concerned, ‘making positive choices’ is about rejecting the cultural values wrestling promotes. Because talking about steroids means talking about masculinity, violence, working conditions.

Marc Mero was the first wrestler in the WWE to get a guaranteed annual contract rather than getting paid on the basis of a share of the door. Since he managed that, others pushed for the same, and a significant part of the industry has now shifted as a result. Marc Mero isn’t on a union drive, but when I asked him about unions he’s enthusiastic, and eager to do what he can. So there’s some politics here, and some experience in tackling working conditions.

But mostly, Marc Mero is just spending his time and money talking to kids, one by one doing his thing to counter the industry that he was part of so long and that has taken so many of his friends in the last few years. Mostly Marc Mero is just talking loud - to adults about drug-induced psychosis, corporate responsibility for deaths in the ring and out, and the need for regulation and oversight of an industry that is shaping culture in profoundly dangerous ways. And talking, too, to kids - about steroids and self-worth and the difference between healthy and unhealthy competition and bodies and masculinity and the ability to make choices. And though those are words that on first blush appear the most motherhood-and-apple-pie, though those are messages that initially appear indistinguishable from every self-help book on the shelves, they are also the words that have the wrestling industry most on the ropes. And that’s pretty fucking interesting to me.

Cause it’s part of the same struggle waged by the Jesse Venturas, the Konnans, the Bret Harts, to collectivize, to transform working conditions, to go union. But it’s waged on a whole other terrain - hitting hearts and minds of the kids who are the market today, and the cannon-fodder tomorrow. And it’s the one thing the owners can’t turn into a gimmick, can’t package and re-sell.

Reminds me, funny enough, of Pete Seeger. Black-listed for his socialist politics during the McCarthy era, Seeger decided if he couldn’t sing to adults about strikes and struggles, he’d sing to kids about seemingly-innucuous things - all flowers and peace and love. But when you look back on his career, it was that work - that going out to kids with pretty simple messages - that had the greatest political impact. He didn’t know that when he started. It wasn’t apparent in the words he sang. But it mattered, and lasted.

Now, I don’t expect Mero knows that. In fact, Mero may not even have any fucking idea who Pete Seeger is. But seems the owners know that kids count. Alot. Cause while kids don’t make policy, they sure as hell make culture.

Vision Vancouver’s Civilizing Mission

It’s one step forward, one step back, our dance is devilish daring.

A leftward shuffle, a rightward tack, then pause to take our bearings.

We’ll reform the country bit by bit so nobody will notice it.

And just to show we’re still sincere we’ll sing The Red Flag once a year.

That’s Leon Rosselson, a hymn to the Labor Party sung to the tune of England’s equivalent of Solidarity Forever, a tune called The Red Flag. And today, as I read a free paper on the bus, this is what sprang to mind.

Why? Well, no sooner than the ink is dried on the COPE/ Vision deal, we can already see what this was really about - isolating radicals and eliminating any opposition to Vision’s version of the ‘third way’, propped up by the Vancouver District Labour Council et al.

Not many days ago, Bill Tieleman wrote a piece outlining his choices for Vision candidates, all of them loyalists to the original split if not its architects. Gregor Robertson has come out publicly naming his choices - once again, all folks representing the well-behaved and reasonable. And each and every one of Vision’s original coup-plotters has done the same. Now, are they all picking exactly the same folks? No, there are more loyalists than available seats, which makes for some tension. But what is clear is that the entire Vision leadership and all its most public faces are getting out the word to ensure that a Vision candidate isn’t just a COPE-sympathizer in disguise. Yes to Raymond Louie, Geoff Meggs and the like. No one say a word about the few wildcards out there - most notably David Eby, of Pivot Legal Society. If we ignore their bids, if we keep trotting out the same names and faces, maybe just maybe we can make sure his kind of candidate stays in the dark and will eventually just go home.

And in today’s 24 Hours newspaper, Alex Tsakumis writes a little piece entitled, “Of Monsters, Men and Civic Matters”. The basic story? Finally, the NPA might be in some trouble because finally the stake has been driven through the heart of those radical dissenters in COPE.

Really, this is it, and I am not exaggerating. COPE were “Bolshviks”, old-style commies who still show some respect to Fidel Castro, and who believed - crime of crimes - that the purpose of a left opposition was to oppose. Yes, that’s his major issue. COPE said ‘no’ too much, They said ‘no’ to developers too much. They said ‘no’ to the Olympics. They said ‘no’ to more slot machines in Vancouver. COPE was “a spectacle of futile defiance, that would survive only by Promethean suffering.”

COPE, quite simply, didn’t play ball. COPE kept arguing about the rules. Perhaps. But from where I sit, that’s exactly what a political left is there for. From where I sit, defiance is just about the only thing worth voting for. To oppose, to critique, to push, to object, to force the doors a little wider open, to live that “ruthless critique of everyting existing”. If there’s a political role for the left, it’s in refusing to be ‘reasonable’, always playing the voice in the wilderness - because that’s what the struggle is all about, and because - from a strategic standpoint - it’s that radical voice that forces the incremental changes in the first place, after all. 

In the anti-globalization struggle, labout got a seat at the table not because their opinion was valued. They got a seat at the table because the black bloc was outside throwing rocks, and making space for labour was a strategy to silence some of the critique from the left. A higher profile for the Assembly of First Nations - that came after Oka, after the radical voice altered the terms of debate and forced the state to at least pretend to negotiate with somebody. And it’s the same deal here. The folks who became Vision got some extra time in municipal debates because the COPE folks were always there demanding more. It’s an old story, and something we see in every major battle, in every confrontation - it is the radical left that makes the space for the social democrats to step into.  It is the voice of opposition that creates the platform for moderates to get some airtime and, and it is the threat of the unruly mob that forces authority to sit down and talk to the third-way-types.

But what have we got now? We’ve eliminated the opposition. We’ve eliminated the voices of dissent. We’ve eliminated everything the left is supposed to be. Ah, good strategy folks. Isn’t that just about exactly what happened with the NDP?

Yeah, Alex T. is sure tickled that the monster of the left is terminal. And kudos to those few double-agents, he adds, who - while Visionaries at heart - stayed in COPE just to make sure they put the red beast to sleep. We won the day, and no one again can accuse us of being unreasonable, uncompromising. That left is gone, we can only hope forever. COPE is dead, long live Vision. Opposition is dead, long live compromise. The radical left is dead, long live the third way.

Am I being too harsh on these folks? I don’t think so. Let’s look, after all, at the words Alex T. himself chooses to celebrate the death of COPE:

It’s W.H Auden, and it goes like this:

The Ogre does what ogres can

Deeds quite impossible for Man,

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre cannot master speech.

Yes, the big red monster, that fights and bites and gnashes its teeth. Gone, thank God, for something infinitely more civilized, more presentable, more electable. After all, doesn’t electability trump all else? Isn’t that what it’s all about?