Labor Day 2024, As We Face The Most Important Election In American History

 

As we celebrate Labor Day this year, I would suggest that we celebrate it with a sense of caution and use it as an impetus to renew our personal commitments to fight to protect the working class, the middle class, and all threatened classes of individuals with our vote on November 5, 2024, to elect President Kamala Harris.  Labor Day is a day which was set aside as a national holiday on June 28, 1894, when Democratic President Grover Cleveland signed a federal law making Labor Day a national holiday.  Labor Day had previously been celebrated in roughly 30 states.  Labor Day has been celebrated ever since both as celebration of the working class and a tribute to all the people who worked over the past 250 years to make America the country and the Democracy it has always been.  But this year we are facing the worst attack on the American working class, middle class, elderly, infirm, racial and ethnic minorities, women, children, and nearly every human in America who is, in one way or another, vulnerable to those who have no respect for laws, the US Constitution, constitutional rights, human rights, and any other idea which is intended to protect, defend, educate, provide health care, and all other basic rights to such vulnerable individuals.  That attack is being perpetrated by TRAITOR Trump, the Right Wing Radical Repugnican Party, Project 2025, the super wealthy, and those who comprise all such groups and their ideas.  

In this election, we have what is actually the most clear cut choice ever posed in an election for an electorate to choose between Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Human Rights and Total Disregard For Such Rights.  The choice is between Vice President Kamala Harris who represents all those positive possible outcomes and TRAITOR Trump who represents all that is Evil and Destructive in the world. Kamala Harris is a person who has spent her life fighting for and defending all that is Good and Positive in the world.  TRAITOR Trump has spent his life fighting to destroy literally everything in the world which he cannot find a way to dominate, control, and hoard unto himself.  This choice is so simple that it baffles me and millions of other good, decent, rational Americans to understand how any human on earth can fail to understand the simplicity and the seriousness of this choice.  TRAITOR Trump and everything he represents is geared to destroy America, American Democracy, Constitutional Rights, Individual Rights, and to wipe all that is good and productive off the face of America.  

I am asking each of  you who read this to either make or renew a personal commitment to fight every day from now until President Kamala Harris can be elected, protected, and sworn into office to uphold the Constitution, to elect President Harris, and to insist that TRAITOR  Trump finally be held criminally responsible for all his crimes against America, American Democracy, the world, and the planet.  He must be convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned for his crimes.  If he is not, this country cannot survive as a Democracy.  We are literally facing a choice between the future of America and the total destruction of all that America and American Democracy represent.  We will either save America and American Democracy or we will lose them forever as a result of this election.  

What Is A Scab?

 Recently on a social media group of which I am a member, I saw someone post a photograph of a group of scabs being guarded by Kentucky National Guard soldiers in order for them to cross a picket line in a historical Harlan County strike in order to assist the coal company to break the strike.  This person had described the scabs and their activity in this manner: "1939 Harlan County Kentucky. Miners being escorted to work by the National Guard. This is how the name Bloody Harlan mostly came about among other reasons."  This was obviously an attempt by someone with anti union sentiments to make the scabs appear respectable and normal as if they were ordinary coal miners which is the furthest thing from the truth.  I immediately confronted the anti union nature of the description in this manner: " You are partly correct but you forgot the most important word. Those were not miners. They were SCABS, the lowest form of life in the mining world."  I attached a link to Jack London's famous description of a scab from over a hundred years ago.  Jack London died in 1916, and I have no idea exactly when he initially published that beautiful piece of writing.  But it just as accurate today as it was when Jack London first sat down to write it.  I am including a small portion of London's description so none of you can ever say you haven't known about at least part of it.   

"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.  When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab hasn't." (Jack London, "Ode To A Scab")

 

This is a fine little story about a scab from a speech Mother Jones, the great female union organizer, told during a speech to striking miners in 1912.  

"An old Irish woman had two sons who were scabs. The women threw one of them over the fence to his mother. He lay there still. His mother thought he was dead and she ran into the house for a bottle of holy water and shook it over Mike.  “Oh for God’s sake, come back to life,” she hollered.  Come back and join the union.” He opened his eyes and saw our women standing around him. “Sure, I’ll go to hell before I’ll scab again,’ says he." (Mother Jones, "Autobiography", Chapter 11, from the website of The International Workers of The World)

 

Although John L. Lewis did not specifically use the word "scab' in the quote I am using below, he definitely was talking about scabs, gun thugs, all other forms of vermin which follow on the heels of corporate managers hoping to pick up some small bone or crust which these greater vermin leave behind for doing their bidding all the way up to murder and robbery, and they know in their small, black hearts that they are unfit to sleep in an honest woman's bed, eat a meal at an honest man's table, or father a child capable of becoming a decent, hard working human.  

“No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.”  (John L. Lewis) 

 

I must say here, in the interest of total honesty, that I have never spent one day as a member of  a labor union.  But I grew up in a home and a community where nearly everyone knew the important work that labor unions have done and will always continue to do for the good of all working men and women.  The hundreds of benefits which have been won for the working class have been won by the blood, sweat, and tears of good, fearless union men and women who have faithfully stood their ground against corporations, their officers, and their scabs until all those parties realized the error of their ways and stopped resisting union efforts to improve the world.  Several members of my extended family have spent their lives as union members.  As child by the time I was 9 or 10, I was allowed to read the "United Mine Workers Journal" each month after my uncle Mabry Hicks, an electrician at a tipple in Wheelwright, Kentucky, was done with his copy.  I often spent long winter evenings sitting in my parents' grocery store listening to the union members in our community talk about their efforts to organize, and how much they benefited from union membership.  As an adult, I came to know several men and women who had spent their lives fighting as union organizers all over Central and Southern Appalachia.  They served as my mentors and professors, teaching me on a daily basis just how important trade unions are to the success of America. I came to know at least four people who had been hauled in front of Fascist Senator Joseph McCarthy's committee in the 1950's and who stood their ground against his efforts to destroy their lives.  I attended the funeral of my brother Hewie Hicks who was killed in a nonunion punch mine in Floyd County Kentucky and knew full well that he might have lived a much longer life if he had been working in a union mine.  I know full well the danger that scabs have helped coal operators perpetrate against the working class of  Appalachia and other coal producing states.  I also know that labor unions all across America, in all forms of industry, have saved thousands of lives with the contracts they have won and the laws and government regulations they have brought into existence.  You should recognize these truths also and support unions wherever they are working for the betterment of working conditions for men and women in America.  Union, Yes!  

"A Union For Appalachian Healthcare Workers, The Radical Roots And Hard Fights Of Local 1199" by John Hennen

 

The advertising blurb on the back cover of this book states in part:

"The union of hospital workers referred to as the 1199 sits at the intersection of three of the most important topis in US history: organize labor, health care, and civil rights.   John Hennen's book explores the union's history in Appalachia, a region that is generally associated with extractive industries but has seen health care grow as a share of the overall economy."

John Hennen is professor emeritus of history at Morehead State University and this is his third published book.  He is a native West Virginian and was educated at Marshall University and West Virginia University.  This is his third book.  He is an excellent researcher and a damn fine writer.  This book is the history of one of the most unique unions in America, Local 1199, a union which defends the rights of healthcare workers in several states, most of which are in Central and Southern Appalachia.  But the union was actually chartered and did its first organizing work in New York City.  The book provides a scholarly account of the work of original organizer Leon Davis who was an immigrant from Belarus.  It also covers the work of Tom Woodruff, another native West Virginian who was educated at Marshall University, and explores the connection between Tom Woodruff and Don West, the founder of The Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, and co-founder of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.  Woodruff and West both taught at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia, during a time when Woodruff was also running Appalachian Movement Press in Huntington, West Virginia, before Woodruff left those two positions to become an organizer for Local 1199 and began what is a storied career as a union organizer and eventual operating officer.  

The book chronicles organizing efforts by 1199 in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Southern Ohio in the 1970's which were both successful and hard fought.  The union and its organizers and members were resisted, red baited, and drug through the court systems of nearly every county they attempted to organize in.  Hospital administrators frequently hired strike breaking companies which were generally billed as "consultants" and which used every means possible including arrest, red baiting, and general harassment to attempt to break 1199.  The union did not win all its organizing effforts but, in the long run, it was more successful in organizing healthcare workers in Appalachia than anyone in the region ever imagined it could be.  Across several small communities and small  hospitals, they won key strikes, benefited from support among the communities which often had been strongholds of the United Mine Workers of America, and made union membership and its benefits a real part of life and the American Dream for workers who had generally been poorly paid, without benefits, and forced to live and work at the whim of hospital administrators many of whom proved to be just as mercenary as the local coal operators had been in earlier times when the United Mine Workers were attempting to organize coal miners in the early twentieth century.  

If you are a student of organized labor, the Appalachian Region, a healthcare worker anywhere in America, or simply a supporter of basic human rights, you should read this book.  It is a fine lesson in how determined organizers and union members can win against long odds.  This union, its officials, and members lived a proud portion of history in the Appalachian coal fields and their story deserves to be heard wherever workers have felt as Ma Joad did in "The Grapes of Wrath" when she said, 

"...it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn't have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared... ."

 The organizers, national officials, and members of Local 1199 never gave up, never backed down, and never were willing to accept being in a world where it seemed the whole world was their enemy.  Read this book!  :Union, Yes! 

Right Wing Radical Repugnicans In Frankfort Declare War On The Working Class

On February 10, 2024, I wrote in a blog post about the current Kentucky state legislature and their active effort to become the worst legislature in America.  I had promised at that time to continue to write about their effort to destroy democracy and individual constitutional rights in the state.  I have to admit that I have been remiss in not having written about them on a daily basis since they have been working on a daily basis to pull off their plan.  This post in particular is about one pending piece of legislation which is as diabolical as anything passed in any state legislature in the nation.  It is literally a declaration of war on the entire working class in the state.  It is labeled House Bill 500 and the key elements of it are listed in the image below which is from the Kentucky State AFL-CIO.  

 

 As you can see in the image above, House Bill 500 will repeal several elements of pro-labor legislation which have been considered sacrosanct all across America for more than 50 to 100 years.  Union men and women literally fought and died for these rights all across the United States and the working class has grown to assume that they would never be attacked or eliminated in a democratic country or state.  But Kentucky is no longer a democratic state.  By the phrase "Kentucky is n o longer a democratic state", I do not mean that the state is being run by Right Wing Radical Repugnicans which it is except for the governor and his appointed staff.  I mean that the Right Wing Radical Repugnicans in the state legislature and the majority of statewide elected offices have been working to destroy democracy in Kentucky on a daily basis since they gained control of the majority of the elected offices in the state.  When a state legislature even quietly considers taking away the rights of workers to have a designated lunch period, a designated break or rest period, or to receive overtime pay if they are forced to work 7 days in a row, or the other rights they want to destroy with this legislation, they are declaring war on the entire working class in the state.  And the only reasonable response to such an act must be for the working class to declare war on that state legislature and remove every one of them from office in the November 2024 election.  A vote for any Right Wing Radical Repugnican for any office in Kentucky is a vote against the working class; against teachers, nurses, EMT's, police officers, and every other blue collar worker in the state.  This is a link to House Bill 500 as described above.  You can go to this link and read the bill for yourself to see exactly what it and its sponsors intend to destroy.  This bill will literally rob every worker in the state of their individual and collective rights to have a decent, acceptable working environment.  Every legislator who votes for this bill or even speaks out loud in favor of it must be voted out of office in the November election.  We must remove these people from office all across the state and we must give Governor Andy Beshear a Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature for the last three years of his term so all the actions of this legislature can be repealed, revoked, and never again be thought of in this state.   Phillip Pratt is the original sponsor of House Bill 500 and is also sponsoring another bill, House Bill 255 which is intended to weaken child labor laws in the state.  He must be defeated and so must any other public figure at any level in the state of Kentucky who votes for, publicly speaks out in support of, or commits any act in defense of these two bills.