Re: [Leica] Covering Anti-War protest in Philly

[Matthew Powell <mlpowell@directvinternet.com>]

On Sunday, February 16, 2003, at 05:15 PM, Marc James Small wrote:

> At 08:25 PM 2/15/03 -0600, Matthew Powell wrote:
>> Labor rights "would have been handled by Congress" without strikes,
>> without protests and without the work of labor unions, who often had to
>> fight government thugs as well as strike-breaking thugs? Please.
>
> Almost all basic labor legislation was passed prior to 1920;

Which would be years after the earliest labor movement was essentially 
broken by WWI sedition acts. Eugene Debs jailed for protesting the war 
comes to mind - he was drawing millions of votes nationally.

>   only the creation of the NLRB and OSHA came after that.  And there 
> were no effective
> labor PROTESTS prior to that date or, really, until the end of that 
> decade,
> though the Wobblies tried hard enough to organize such.  There were 
> lots of
> STRIKES but the purpose of those was to obtain specific concessions 
> from a
> specific employer, not to obtain legislation from Congress.

Who said anything about "obtain[ing] legislation from Congress"? That's 
your argument. You said protests are useless, that Congress changes 
things. I'm talking about protests, mass actions, action outside of the 
government changing things. You said that doesn't happen.

The IWW, the AFL, earlier labor unions and movements - hell, the labor 
movement stretching back to the 1840s in the Northeast. All of these had 
done the legwork and the real change long before Congress was forced to 
adapt and pass laws in the '20s and onward.

That's part of what our government does by making some concessions - to 
the labor movement, to civil rights, the New Deal, the Great Society - 
it undercuts the power of non-governmental movements. You defang the 
radical left with the New Deal and the Great Society, you defang the 
radical black power movement by moving toward civil rights without 
radical changes in the way things work.

>> Civil Rights - when did Congress "handle" things of its own accord?
>
> Oh, 1953, 1957, 1959, 1961, and 1962,  for starters.  The major piece of
> Civil Rights legislation, the '64 Act, would have been passed in early 
> 1963
> -- BEFORE the initial Civil Rights protest march -- had Kennedy not been
> snowballed by the Democrat leadership in Congress.
1953?
1957 was the first civil rights statute passed since Reconstruction, 
protecting voting rights - without success.
And from 1957-1962 you're in the middle of the civil rights movement, 
and when courts have begun to do what Congress and the states wouldn't.

As for "the initial" Civil Rights protest in 1963 - I'm not sure what 
history you've been a part of. The sit-in movement began in 1960, the 
Freedom Riders in '61, the NAACP had been around since the '20s, people 
like Thurgood Marshall were taking it to the Courts throughout the '50s.

>  For that matter, Truman obtained Congressional approval in 1948 of the 
> additional budget for the FBI to add a Civil Rights office and, again, 
> obtained this same approval
> for the additional costs brought about by desegrating the military the
> following year.
Ah, yes, adding a civil rights office and anti-lynching legislation. 
Great leaps forward in human rights.


>> Women's suffrage - you had fifty years of action by women before
>> Congress and the states allowed women to vote. Where was Congress
>> working on its own there?
>
> Hmm.  You have a marginally better case for this one.  There were some
> minor suffragettes attempting to hold protests prior to 1920 but these 
> were
> quite small and obtained no significant press coverage in this country,
> though similar protests did obtain good press in the UK.  But, again, it
> wasn't "protests" which led the Constitution to be amended;  it was a
> growing awareness among the power elite (the yeomanry and gentry) that 
> it
> was time that such be done, the same manner in which all of these 
> changes
> are brought about -- and protests are the most certain manner of 
> alienating
> these groups.

You mean, the "power elite" had been forced to adapt to societal 
changes? You mean, Congress and the "power elite" didn't just take the 
initiative on their own?

Why, that's exactly what I've been saying. The entire time.

As for protests alienating the power elite - yes, they probably do. The 
aristocracy have never appreciated an uppity rabble. But changing the 
minds of the aristocracy isn't the point. You change the minds of the 
rest of the society, or enough of the rest of society, and you make your 
issues public - and you force the people who runs things to adapt.

>>
>> Why did "liberal Democrats and mainstream Republicans" finally get
>> around to it after almost a century? Because of protests. Because of 
>> the
>> civil rights movement, because of court actions by civil rights 
>> lawyers,
>> because people outside of the government made it an issue, and because
>> Congress had to respond.
>>
>
> Wow!  You are confusing and conflating a zillion things, sir!  There 
> were
> no general Civil Rights protest marches until that of 1963, though there
> had been specific protests over specific issues before this.
This would be important, had that ever been my argument. Protests in and 
of themself are nothing - they're one facet to what I've been discussing 
and what Zinn mentioned - protests, strikes, boycotts, letter-writing 
campaigns, leafletting, pamphletting. You combine all these things to 
work outside of the government.

You're trying to confine my argument to protests and protests only, 
allowing you to ignore everything I've mentioned outside of, in this 
instance, "general civil rights protests."

That's simply intellectually dishonest, to attempt to alter someone 
else's words.

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