A video of then Republican Presidential Nominee Ronald Reagan giving a speech on Labor Day, 1980. He is referring to Poland in the speech, but he frames the concept as universal:

These are the values that are inspiring those brave workers in Poland.

The values that have inspired other dissidents under Communist domination who have been willing to go into the gulag and suffer the torture of imprisonment because of their dissidence.

They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.

They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

You and I must protect and preserve freedom here, or it will not be passed on to our children, and it will disappear everywhere in the world.

Today, the workers in Poland are showing a new generation how high is the price of freedom, but also how much it is worth that price.

I want more than anything I have ever wanted, to have an administration that will through its actions, at home and in the international arena, let millions of people know, the Miss Liberty still lifts her lamp beside the golden door.

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The conservative philosophy of government can be summed up by a single passage in historian Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of The United States:

Inasmuch as the primary object of the government, beyond the mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government.

In other words, the interests of the rich must dominate the government through influence or direct control.

The trouble with this philosophy is that it goes against the interests of the vast majority of people. If the lower classes were to unite against the wealthy, it would be difficult to maintain a government that exploited the masses to serve the wealthy. In order to prevent this unification, the wealthy and powerful created and fostered divisions within the people by deflecting frustrations away from themselves.

The strategy of divide and conquer has been used throughout this country’s existence. In 1814, Andrew Jackson as treaty commissioner, “granted Indians individual ownership of the land, thus splitting Indian from Indian, breaking up communal landholding, bribing some with land, leaving others out” (Zinn).

During slavery, “the slaveholders…suspected that non-slaveholders would encourage slave disobedience and even rebellion, not so much out of sympathy for the blacks as out of hatred for the rich planters and resentment of their own poverty” (Genovese). Their solution: “paying poor whites–themselves so troublesome for two hundred years of southern history–to be overseers of black labor and therefore buffers for black hatred” (Zinn).

In the 1800s, anger among the lower classes grew as working conditions became more perilous while wages became less livable. During this period, which Howard Zinn calls “The Other Civil War,” the anger of the people was deflected in multiple directions: “Sometimes there were spontaneous unorganized uprisings against the rich. Sometimes the anger was deflected into racial hatred for blacks, religious warfare against Catholics, nativist fury against immigrants. Sometimes it was organized into demonstrations and strikes.” The economic elite at the time was as good or better at manufacturing conflict than at manufacturing products.

While dividing the foci of the people’s frustrations, the economic elite also fought against another challenge to their power: the formation of organized unions. In 1860, New England shoeworkers via a newly formed Mechanics Association, called a strike and gathered by the thousands to protest low wages:

Police from Boston and militia were sent in to make sure strikers did not interfere with shipments of shoes to be finished out of the state. The strike processions went on, while city grocers and provisions dealers provided food for the strikers. The strike continued through March with morale high, but by April it was losing force. The manufacturers offered higher wages to bring the strikers back into the factories, but without recognizing the unions, so that workers still had to face the employer as individuals. (Zinn, emphasis mine.)

Women weavers formed a union to strike against a 10% pay cut in Fall River, Massachusetts. Their employers held out, knowing that their children needed food and they would have to return to work. To do so, they were forced to sign an “iron-clad oath” not to join a union.

Since that time, the Labor movement has won major victories, much to the chagrin of today’s economic elite. For the last few decades, conservatives have been utilizing the same divide and conquer strategy as they did 200 years ago.

Conservatives have used the media to foster resentment among non-union workers towards union workers through a clever deflection: instead of looking at how the can gain from unionizing themselves, they look with envy at those workers whose unions have protected them from being exploited as badly as themselves.

The second division is public workers unions and private workers unions. Employers have created a false narrative about greedy, overpaid public workers with their overgenerous benefits. In reality, for all but the lowest paid, non-high school graduating workers, public employers trade lower compensation for greater benefits and job security. Private sector workers are manipulated into seeing public employees as “overpaid” and with “overgenerous benefits” as opposed to realizing that they themselves are underpaid with inadequate benefits.

The third division is within public workers: public safety versus the rest. Conservatives rarely mess with the police and firefighters unions in order to keep them from joining with other public workers, and also because it is much harder to vilify a police officer or firefighter.

Initially, Gov. Scott Walker was in a powerful divide and conquer position. The media has been pushing a false narrative that public employees are overpaid with overgenerous benefits, the teachers unions being vilified more than any other. His cuts were directed to exempt public safety workers, maintaining the separation between these two factions of public unions. Additionally, he had the cover of media hyperpanic about budget deficits (even though the deficit was created by his own corporate tax cuts and the Wall Street-created recession). His position was so strong that the members of the public unions themselves were agreeing to pay freezes and benefit cuts. His problem was that he did not stop there.

For a divide and conquer strategy to work, you must not take a dramatic action that could galvanize the previously divided groups. His return to the 1800s-era tactic of forcing workers to give up their right to organize did exactly that. While the police and fire unions were exempted from this collective bargaining ban, they realized that if such an act were successful their own ability to collectively bargain would be at jeopardy in the future. Members of private sector unions also sensed the danger, joining in support. Walker’s attempt at divide and conquer had the exact opposite effect: it brought together union members and supporters who have feuded and quarreled for decades.

Walker’s error may prove to be extremely costly in the conservative elite’s war against the working classes. He single-handedly united a divided Labor movement, called into question the prevailing media narrative, and shone sunlight on the relationship between the economic elite (i.e.the Koch brothers) and conservative philosophy.

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If you needed any more proof that technology has made the world dramatically smaller and that people across the world are identifying with each other beyond the constraints of borders and nationality, here it is:

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Rep. Alex Cornell du Houx, a young state legislator in Maine, Iraq War veteran, and National Committeeman of the Maine Young Democrats, has authored an excellent piece on the Employee Free Choice Act in the Times Record.

The economic challenges Mainers and Americans face are diverse and serious. I wonder how we honor the men and women who fight to protect our way of life when we allow them to slip through the cracks in an economy where there are fewer and fewer opportunities. I wonder how crippled the economic futures of young men and women will be by the reckless and irresponsible decisions that created the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. I wonder what steps our elected leaders will take to rebuild an economy that works for everyone.

While Wall Street only recently went into crisis mode a few months ago, working families have been feeling the pain of our imbalanced economy for years. American workers have generated soaring productivity over the last 25 years, but wages have gone flat. Too many working families have been forced to turn to second jobs, credit cards and toxic loans just to stay afloat.

Meanwhile, the corporate executives have squandered workers’ increasing profitability on their own jet-setter lifestyles.

Thankfully, we have a president who is committed to standing with us in confronting the greatest economic crisis of our lives. If there’s one thing that really strikes me about President Obama, it’s his understanding of what Americans are going through. He doesn’t need economists to tell him that working families have been stretched to the limit — in many cases, past the limit — just trying to make ends meet.

Workers must have the tools to level the playing field if we are ever going to build an economy that works for everyone. We need the Employee Free Choice Act.

This common-sense piece of legislation would give workers the freedom to join a union without intimidation and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits.

The entire article is worth a read: Employee Free Choice Act: A sustainable stimulus

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On Saturday, March 1 YDA showed its overwhelming support for Disney hotel workers and UNITE HERE Local 681 at an energetic picket march with over 260 members.

Throughout the Anaheim conference Young Democrats made their support known by wearing stickers in support (as seen on the left) and by having conversations with the workers.

There was an overwhelming consensus that the labor march was one of the most successful events/actions ever undertaken by the organization.

Saturday’s march allowed Young Democrats to show exactly why they are Democrats and what they believe in: fair wages, health care, and justice for working Americans in Anaheim and throughout the United States.

YDA President David Hardt, DNC Committeewoman Crystal Strait and DNC Committeeman Francisco Domenech hand-delivered a signed letter from the Young Democrats supporting the workers to hotel management after waiting them out as the hotel executives pretended to be unavailable.

The most inspiring aspect of the march was the reaction from the hotel workers themselves. They came up to a number of Young Democrats thanking them for their support, letting them know how important it is that the hotel executives realize that the workers do not stand alone and that people around the country are united in support.

Special recognition goes out to the YDA Labor Caucus and CYD Labor Caucus for making this event possible and a success beyond the wildest expectations.

YDA will be monitoring the labor dispute between the hotel workers and hotel management in the future, and I will cover the situation on this blog as developments occur.

Thank you to all the Young Democrats who came out and marched in support of the Disney hotel workers. Feel free to comment on this post about your experience at the march.

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Building off the momentum of YDA’s huge rally in support of the Disney Hotel workers fighting for fair wages, health care and dignity,please help us grow the YDA Labor Caucus.

1) please join our YDA Labor Caucus email list

http://groups.google.com/group/yda-labor-caucus

2) Invite all of your friends to join the YDA Labor Caucus facebook group! Arrive with five!

See rally pics and YDA Labor Caucus leader Mike Corbett interviewed prior to rally at our facebook group.

Thank you for standing up for workers and building a stronger YDA.

Isaac Robinson
Chair
YDA Labor Caucus

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