The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

I attended my first Black History class in 1968 at the University of Maryland. The class came about because Black students demanded it in that tumultuous year. They were supported by a small but significant number of white students.

On the first day of class it was a shock to all of us to find out that a southern white professor was the teacher. Because of UM's Jim Crow history, it had almost no Black faculty at the time. But Professor Dan Carter turned out to be very knowledgeable and an relentless foe of Dixie apartheid. All of us learned a lot from that man.

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I still have my old green 59 cents button around somewhere. That relic symbolized the female pay gap in the early 1970's. I can't help feeling we should have done a lot better over the past decades.

Women in the United States are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

And for women of color, the numbers are even worse. African-American
women earn 63 cents and Latinas earn 52 cents for every dollar paid to
white men

It’s time to take action.

In Jean-Paul Sarte's play, No Exit, 3 people are locked in a room together forever. Eventually they figure out that they are in hell and this is their punishment.

If being locked in a room with 2 other people is hell, what do you call it when the room is on fire and you can't get out?

That's what American writer Florence Lasser explored in her play, The Story of the ILGWU (International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union). One of the episodes includes the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 when 146 mostly immigrant Jewish and Italian women workers were killed because the fire exits were locked. Some of them leaped to their deaths as the flames drew closer.

Since Reverend Wright is not running for office or a place on the Sunday morning gab fests, he can speak truth to power in a way that is forbidden to mainstream political candidates and pundits. Speaking truth to power does not mean that one is always right. Some of his pronouncements are off-base, but he does appear to be speaking from his heart.

Of course one's heart is not where most public political pronouncements come from. Most of these come from the word processors of fresh-faced communications graduates filtered through the mesh of endless focus groups. That way all genuine substance can carefully strained out before being released to the public.

On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5 by Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger. Monthly Review Press: 240 pages, 2008. $17.95.

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,

But the union makes us strong.

This old labor hymn was written by Ralph Chaplin way back in 1915 and is the unofficial anthem of the US labor movement. It's sung at labor rallies and gatherings, but with an interesting twist. Organizers often pass out songsheets because many of the assembled labor activists don't know the words.

It's a sobering and even embarrassing moment for the US labor movement which is now down to about 8% of the private sector workers. Those who romanticize organized labor based on college history classes or nostalgic folksong fests need to remember that solidarity always begins with a hope....not a certainty.

And if solidarity leads to even a small partial victory, you can bet there will have been lots of hard work, hard feelings and heartaches along the way to that ecstatic moment when the victory celebrations begin.

Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger have put together a book that tells how solidarity really works and that yes, the words Ralph Chaplin penned can become a reality even to those of us who can't remember the lyrics without a songsheet.The book is the product of years of research and writing from a team that consists of a former union organizer and an anthropologist . You couldn't ask for a better combo.

A few weeks back, we did a cartoon about management waterboarding employees.

According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, a Provo Utah based motivational coaching business called Prosper, Inc actually did waterboard an employee to demonstrate that they should work as hard at sales as the unfortunate employee had worked to breathe.

It's tough to lead a union local these days. Your members expect miracles and your boss would rather see your hindquarters disappear over the horizon, never to return. It's especially hard to lead a union local in the heart of Dixie where the scars of slavery and Jim Crow still cut deep into the body politic.

The FreightLiner 5

How did it happen? We finally had a Democratic primary where a genuine national discussion could perhaps cut through the Gordian knot of race, gender and class. Instead we blinked at the last minute and settled for something far less. We cry for "change" at political rallies then like the horses in Anna Sewell's classic Black Beauty, we run back into the burning barn of familiar prejudices and stale political infighting.

It would be easy to surrender to cynicism and sit this one out. I have a Trotkyist friend who impatiently dismissed all of the candidates, even Dennis Kucinich, as tools of capitalism, not worthy of anyone's vote. What made me sad is that a lot of his criticisms of the Democratic Party candidates actually made sense, despite being framed in a 20th century left-over ideology.

So what are we supposed to do?

Amazing rebel music from Matthew Grimm and the Red Smear. Best damned thing out of Iowa since sweet corn.­

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One Big Union­­