Michigan’s
Democracy: A Requiem for the Doomed
I
woke up on the frigid morning of Tuesday, 12/11/12, and received a last minute
carpool offer from my friend, Matt Erard, a political activist and incumbent of
Detroit’s Downtown District Citizen’s Council. I dressed well and warm, knowing
that today I was going to a funeral. Death of the culture that built up this
state, the union culture our industrial state is known for. Union’s have put
food on the table for many families, fought in sit-down strikes like the Flint
Strike of 1937, and secured bargaining rights that give us the very basics to
the freedom to negotiate our labor contracts. That means damn near nothing to
the Rick-tatorship in Lansing and the Republican’s in the snake pit and reptile
zoo we call our “House” and “Senate”. Right-to-Work laws were guaranteed to
pass. Honestly the Democrat’s probably wouldn’t care either, except that some
of those union dues go to them, so they can be just as greasy as the Old
Elephants. This is a requiem for the worker in Michigan.
Nearing
the exit towards Lansing, six blue State Police cars and a van sped furiously
past us in a caravan, must have been the welcome wagon. On arrival though, it
was all relatively peaceful, far too peaceful for what was going behind all the
scab-cops and doors. Both equally as “thick”, but still not thick enough to resist
the sentiment radiating from the 13,000 protestors just outside the ornate,
Roman-esque capitol building. As we made our way into the large crowd, I
stepped over a collapsed white tent. Not thinking twice about it, I later
realized this tent had been from the Koch Brothers funded political advocacy
group “American’s for Prosperity” and that the union members had done what any
rational person faced with an AFP tent should do. They destroyed it. Class
warfare in America, it exists.
The
crowd was made up largely of middle-aged and elderly union members, an
illustration of Michigan’s diverse working class in a sea of hard-hats,
coveralls, and protest signs. Every worker from Detroit teachers to Yooper
longshoremen could found within the crowd along with trade unions like UAW, USW,
AFL-CIO, SEIU, and even revolutionary unions like the IWW. Plenty of younger
workers were there in support, including activists from Planned Parenthood,
family members of union-workers, and even a few determined anarchists. The House was
now in session, a few suits peeked their heads out the window looking
frightened and disgusted by the proles who had gathered around their building,
chanting and banging on their tom-tom’s like Apaches. A few rubbed the money in
their pockets then sniffed their fingers, calming themselves as they went back
to screw them. Perhaps they would have not been so calm if not for the cops
with large wooden sticks there to dash the brains out of anyone daring to cross
their line. They guarded the public entrance, allowing about 10 people in every
half hour, trying to prevent the people from accessing the building they built.
Horse-cops and a Roman Legion of State Police protected the vipers within. Some
violence ensued, but it was all big armored dudes against elderly union members,
the cops used pepper spray, and even attacked an elderly gentleman, neither of
which I personally witnessed, but there are videos I will be linking.
At
around 1 or 2 PM a cardboard sign was stuck out of the window of Democrat Representative
Segal informing the crowd that Right-to-Work had passed 58-51. Fear and loathing,
the crowd turned sour, well even more sour than before. It was speculated that
around this time Governor Snyder took the supposed tunnels under the capitol building I
dub “das bunker” to the George W. Romney building across the street. The horde
of livid working men and women soon shifted their attention to the Romney
building only to be met with more cops and even the building’s rent-a-cops. We
finally got the chance to enter the capitol building. The ornate rotunda was
filled with people on every balcony. At the lowest level people were occupying
it, lying down, and listening to Jesse Jackson give a speech. Chants of the
era like “This is what democracy looks like!” and “We are the 99%” filled the
room up to the mythological spirits adorning the ceiling, almost in a hopeful
and religious manner. Across the street, this is what democracy looked like.
So
what even is Right-to-Work or Freedom-to-Work as we call it? Why is it bad? Why
does it deserve this reaction, isn’t something about “right” and “freedom”
desirable? The fact they keep changing the name should give people the
realization that it is confusing newspeak, a law meant to sound desirable, but
actually reduces your freedom as a worker. Right-to-Work is best described by
Dr. Martin Luther King, “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must be on
guard against being fooled by false slogans as ‘right to work.’ It provides no ‘rights’
and no ‘works.’ Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of
collective bargaining.”
Right-to-Work
laws reduce your ability to negotiate your labor contract as a whole and allow
people to receive benefits from a union-shop, i.e. an employer that has a union
security agreement that was collectively bargained for by individuals in the
union without paying dues to support the union they are receiving benefits
from. States with Right-to-Work laws have workers on average making $5,333 a
year less in wages, 21% more people lack health insurance, the poverty rate is on
average 12%, and workplace deaths are 51% higher according to
(http://www.aflcio.org/content/download/4358/46418/version/1/file/rtw.pdf) . To
confuse this for something that provides you and others greater freedom is an
utter sham. Union busting, is quite disgusting.
At
the end of the day a crowd had occupied the Romney building, holding a furious
spirit against the culture of this state that was being savaged behind closed
doors, with scummy deals far from our ears, but our noses are pretty keen on
smelling the bullshit emanating from the capitol. The shit-mist of corruption has
reached far and wide across not only this state, but the Mid-west, as well as
the nation. Hopefully the dump that was taken on democracy that day will
continue to tremble indignation in the people. The outcome was not pretty, but spirited
like an Irish funeral. Unfortunately some of that sentiment placed hope in the
next election, a hope I feel is misplaced if the working-class truly wishes to
emancipate itself. Time and time again in unionism has it been proven that
direct action gets the goods. Can we hope for a General Strike? Maybe, but I’ll
leave Michigan an epitaph, one to grow on from Abe Lincoln.
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had
not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much higher
consideration.”
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