[Marxism] Trumka on race and the elections

[Aaron Aarons]

At 01:40 -0700 2008/09/02, I wrote:
>For a white, give-us-back-our-share-of-the-spoils-of-empire, AmeriKKKan worker, the most usual reason for not supporting Obama probably IS racism, although some such white workers might vote for Nader, or just not vote, because they (rightly) don't expect the Democrats to give them their share of the loot.

At 09:27 -0400 2008/09/02, S. Artesian wrote:
>Could you be more specific in identifying this section of the working
>class-- not that I doubt it exists--  KKK and like organizations had
>partisans inside the auto and steel plants in Detroit-- but they quite
>consciously acted and articulated their racism.

White racism in the auto plants went far beyond those who were conscious, open racists. If you look at the history of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Revolutionary Union Movements in various Detroit-area auto plants in the late 1960's and early 1970's, it was the nominally anti-racist UAW that violently defended white supremacy in alliance with the police. (The documentary about those struggles, "Finally Got The News", is available as a bittorrent download or as an overpriced DVD. Also, the book "Detroit I Do Mind Dying" has, I think, been republished.)

Also, about 20 years later there was a pandemic of anti-Japanese racism among auto workers because the Japanese were producing better cars than the USians.

>So these imperialist parasite workers-- where are they saying "give me back
>my part of the empire"?  When they oppose NAFTA, CAFTA, outsourcing?  When
>the strike against the war at the maritime terminals?

Any time they fight (or, more likely, beg) for the restoration of "the American Dream", they're doing it. And opposition to NAFTA, CAFTA, and outsourcing are clearly based far more on wanting to protect USian jobs from competiton from "foreigners" than on any desire to improve the standard of living of non-U.S. workers. (There is, of course, the contradiction that some U.S. workers lose their jobs as a result of the process that supplies the U.S. population, including the working class, with the cheap commodities and services that make their (our) high levels of material consumption possible.)

How many strikes, or even demonstrations, by U.S. workers have taken place in support of struggles by workers in other countries. Over the last 25 years or so, there have been a few actions by the ILWU, especially in the S.F. Bay Area, that were genuine acts of solidarity. (I was personally on several of the non-member pickets that were integral to a number of these actions.) But the ILWU has a unique history as a left union and many of its members were left activists before becoming longshoremen. Also, the majority of its members (at least in the Bay Area) are Black. Even then, it took a major effort by respected union activists like Jack Heyman and Clarence Thomas to get the whole union to call for a coastwide shutdown on May 1. And I believe it was Jack who said (I'm loosely paraphrasing from memory) that it only got passed because a number of right-wingers in the union had stopped supporting the Iraq war because it was a disaster for the U.S.. In other words, it was an an
 ti-imperialist action for some and a dissident pro-imperialist action for others.