This page was last updated on April 6, 2011.
Fighting for Our Future & Honoring Martin Luther King With Solidarity; Carl Davidson; Progressive Democrats of America – PA 4th CD Chapter; April 6, 2011.
The internal title is “April 4 ‘We Are One’ Events: Uniting Labor and Community For an Upsurge in Class War” and is the more honest of the two titles.
The leadership of Progressive Democrats of America – PA 4th CD Chapter consists of Tina Shannon (chairperson), Randy Shannon (treasurer), Robert Schmetzer (vice president), Peter Deutsch (secretary), and Carl Davidson (webmaster and perhaps unofficial leader), a self-described Marxist who once “tr[ied] to create a new communist party.” They also appear to be the leaders of Beaver County Peace Links. Of this group, one was a leader of the now-defunct Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and, according to KeyWiki, two are (or at least were in 1993) members of the Communist Party USA. The Shannons were also leaders of the apparently-defunct Beaver County Coalition for Social Justice. In the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) [originally a splinter group of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA)], Mr. Davidson is a co-chair and the Shannons are members of the CCDS national coordinating committee. Robert Schmetzer is Democrat party local town chair for South Heights.
Just as I finished a long critique, Mr. Davidson published this piece on the same topic. Therefore, please forgive me for repeating where I could what I wrote in that critique and not touching every point I’d like. For today, I’m tired of refuting lefty propaganda.
“The occasion commemorated the anniversary of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his effort to help striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee win union recognition.”
[RWC] The idea is to convince us Mr. King was assassinated because of his support of collective bargaining for public sector unions, something FDR and George Meany (first president of the AFL-CIO, 1955-1979) opposed. A racist assassinated Mr. King because he opposed Mr. King’s position on constitutional rights for black Americans. Had Mr. King been in Memphis only to attend a wedding that day, he would still be dead. Mr. Davidson and the rest of the left are simply trying to wrap themselves in MLK in an attempt to convince us the collective bargaining privilege is really a constitutional right.
There are three photos embedded in the article as I’m writing. While the photos show some signs with an arm raised in a clenched fist, in none of the three embedded photos do you see a single MLK sign. The real clincher? As I noted above, the internal title of the article is “April 4 ‘We Are One’ Events: Uniting Labor and Community For an Upsurge in Class War.” FYI, the clenched-fist salute is part of the logo for The International Socialist Organization (ISO), so unless all these folks are coordinating with a group claiming it “stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialists Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky,” I think ISO may have a copyright or trademark infringement lawsuit to pursue.
Another example of lefties trying to hijack the MLK “brand” is in the BCR piece two articles before this one. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Andrew Rush shot the video. The video’s title on the PG website was “Protesters target budget cuts, natural gas drilling.” By the time “CCDSNational” (probably Mr. Davidson or one of the Shannons) copied the PG video and uploaded it to YouTube (with no apparent attribution), the title changed to “Pittsburgh April 4 - 500 march to honor King, back natural gas.mp4.” Granted the video is only two minutes long, but not once did anyone mention MLK, let alone “honor” him. Further, amid the hundreds of signs in the video, there’s only a flash of a single MLK sign appearing to say something about jobs for all being a right.
After the Tucson shootings in January, I thought we weren’t supposed to use words of violence in our political discourse, yet signs and/or speakers/writers talk about “fighting,” “fight back,” “attacks on workers,” “war,” et cetera with images of a clenched-fist salute. I thought this also applied to demonization, yet Mr. Gerard’s piece is demonization (“freeloaders,” “greedy,” “insatiable”) from beginning to end.
“The entire U.S. labor movement seized the time to organize public protest … its ‘We Are One’ campaign for the day was a grassroots dress rehearsal and consciousness-raising effort.”
[RWC] Well, which was it? An event organized by labor union management and other leftist leadership across the country and the world or “grassroots?” Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.
Remember when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) referred to tea party events as “Astroturf,” meaning they were centrally organized and not grassroots? Do you also remember all the homemade signs, banners, and t-shirts? Now look at the “grassroots” “We are one” event photos and videos and notice all the professionally-made signs and “As usual, different contingents of workers wore their color coded T-Shirts for the day.”
“USW President Leo Gerard fired people up at the first stop, the Equitable Gas headquarters. ‘These rich bastards aren’t paying any taxes and sending the bills to us and giving themselves record-breaking bonuses. If tax cuts created jobs, Bush would have left office with full employment. The speculators gamble with our money and want us to cover their losses. Well, when they come around again, they can kiss my ass.’”
[RWC] I addressed some of Mr. Gerard’s comments in another critique. As for the tax cuts and jobs comment, Mr. Gerard is wrong yet again. Before the current recession caused by leftist housing policies, programs, and government-sponsored entities, unemployment dropped to 4.4% during the Bush administration in April 2007. Around 5% is considered “full employment.”
Regarding bailouts, I agree with Mr. Gerard, to a point. I didn’t support bailing out anyone; Mr. Gerard fully supported bailing out Chrysler, General Motors, and their union management. As with most of Mr. Gerard’s positions, they vary depending on whether they benefit his allies or his enemies.
“Another theme was ‘Tax the Gas,’ aimed at the free ride the GOP state legislature is giving to the exploiters of the giant gas deposit in the Marcellus shale. Not only are they endangering water supplies by their methods of drilling and recovering the natural gas, Pennsylvania under the GOP is the only state not imposing an extraction tax on the industry. Mel Packer of the Green Party and several of his comrades carried a huge and colorful banner linking environmental and labor issues: ‘Fracking, Drilling Spilling, Killing: Unnatural, Unethical Unwanted, Unsafe!’”
[RWC] I addressed Mr. Davidson’s Marcellus Shale natural gas comments in my critique of “Cash rewards.”
“In nearby Wheeling West Virginia, the Communications Workers of America designed April 4 as ‘wear red to work’ day.”
[RWC] This means their clothing was color-coordinated with the ideology they promote, knowingly or not.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
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