From: Newdem-AT-aol.com
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 11:01:43 EST
Subject: AUT: autoworkers on MassRefusal


Hi--

My three-monnth old Dell computer has been dead since Monday afternoon, so 
I've been hors de combat. I've got a borrowed laptop this morning.

You may be interested in this post below, from Tom Laney, a Ford worker with 
31 years in the assembly plant in St. Paul and a New Democracy member. Tom is 
replying here on an autoworkers' list to a worker at another plant, Doug 
Hanscom. Doug responded on the autoworker list to my Open Letter to Nader. In his 
reply, Doug said that he is all for revolution, agrees that we need one, but 
desn;t expect to see one in his lifetime; in the meantime, Doug believes we 
should make an assault on Solidarity House ("Sod House"), HQ of the UAW, throw the 
bastards out, and take over the UAW. 

Dave Stratman
*******************
>From Tom Laney (tlaney-AT-pressenter.com)

Hi Doug,
 
Good people have been picketing SOD House forever. A lot of things end there 
but the democratic revolution will never begin on that traitorous doorstep. It 
is more like the consolidated, dictatorial power at SOD house will continue 
to push it's own revolt to destroy solidarity and install dog eat dog 
everywhere. That is going to go on until there is a solidarity movement independent of 
and opposed to competitiveness powerful enough to stop it. We should refuse to 
even acknowledge them as "union" since they are the opposite. 
 
If you're looking for a solidarity movement, you have to see that what is at 
SOD House is the opposite of Solidarity. You have to see that there is no 
"there" there at SOD House. Trying to start a solidarity movement there just isn't 
going to happen. "Reforming" the UAW, is like suggesting that the original 
UAW join the AFL company union to "reform" it. Of course they didn't do that 
because reforming Capitalism is a waste of time. They started their own, 
independent movement which became the UAW. And today, it is clear that it is easier to 
start a revolution for democracy than reform the traitorous UAW. Is there 
anyone left out there suggesting that today's UAW is any less of a company union 
that the AFL company union of the 1930's? And if we all agree that the UAW is 
a company union and understand what that means, then should we be trying to 
reform Ford, GM and GE? 
 
Our democratic revolt will mean something entirely different. Democratic 
revolution stems from our principled friendships on the job and around our homes, 
it is based in solidarity and direct action and grows as we are able to 
connect ourselves in conversations about we exercise our power. It means seeing who 
our friends really are, persuading them that we all need to get back to 
solidarity and direct action. We need to make it clear that worker who trust 
other workers in slowdowns can be build that direct action solidarity into shutting 
down the docks. You say you will never see the revolution in your lifetime? I 
say there are little revolutions going on everyday. When one worker assists 
another when the Forduaw program says throw people away, friendly assistance 
becomes a revolutionary act.
 
Some years ago, I argued with Owen Bieber about there being no difference 
between Clinton and Bush on NAFTA. This was not long after Clinton,  who had 
broken a UAW strike, was being held up as the reformer.  That was the contest with 
Bush 1. Pete Kelly, an old picketer of SOD House along with being a great 
guy, was fairly angry with me. Pete said, "We've got to get rid of Bush! Nothing 
else matters." And that is the way Pete retired from the UAW, joining Bieber's 
push for the lesser of two weevils.
 
So we got Clinton, who starved somewhere between 1 to 1.5 million innocent 
people in Iraq, dismantled welfare for the poor, and whose favorite "union" was 
the strikebreaking, dog eaters at SOD House. Did we win?
 
Voting for evil does what? 
 
Mass Refusal is not apathetic or passive. Mass Refusal calls on voters to 
think abut what it means to support evil. (Even the lesser of two evils is still 
evil.) Mass Refusal suggests that good people should refuse to participate in 
the Presidential charade and instead, organize meetings with other good people 
to talk about what democracy really means. Mass Refusal asks people to think 
about real change, think about how we can gain a society based in solidarity 
instead of greed? Mass Refusal suggests to people that things can only change 
for the better when good people organize themselves in direct action to change 
the country and world to happy places for everyone. Mass Refusal is a strike 
for common sense.
 
Mass Refusal also suggests that we stop cooperating with bad stuff. Why are 
we assisting our enemies? In order to do anything good we first have to stop 
supporting, participating in and cooperating with nonsense WHILE calling for 
solidarity. We should all stop going to joint meetings and call for worker 
meetings. We should all stop paying for nonsense politics like UAW-CAP and the 
Democrats and call for real democracy. We should all refuse to do more work and do 
less work and create a shorter day and more jobs. We should refuse to join 
Sweeney and the Finger in Miami to save us from "bad" competition and start 
calling for dock closure until every worker in the world has a good wage. We 
should stop belittling the bad folks and find the good ones. We should stop looking 
for democracy and hope amongst the Capitalists and start seeing it in our own 
friends. That's the kind of revolution New Democracy is talking about.
 
In order to win the Accuride strike, we needed worker to worker, local to 
local connections to discuss how we Mass Refuse to handle any of the struck work. 
We lost at Accuride because we don't have those kind of connections anymore. 
We don't even have the connections to discuss building connections and direct 
action. We don't have them because the UAW dictators did their best to wipe 
them out. We also don't have them because too many people go the wrong way for 
solutions which is to say up rather than across the country. 
 
The answers for solidarity and direct action are found laterally, between 
ourselves and our communities not in the hierarchy of the once great UAW.
 
What if Bush is re-elected? We still need to organize. What if Kerry wins? 
He's already committed to 40,000 more troops in Iraq. He's already committed to 
the war industrial profiteers and the ruling class. He's already lecturing 
peace people about "reality". He's already committed to corporate tax cuts. He 
certainly is NEVER going to help us win slowdowns and strikes and shut down the 
docks. But his win may stop many good people who are now organizing against 
Bush from doing much at all. Like Clinton, he is a far better liar than the 
dopey Bush. Sometimes it helps to understand who the enemy is. 
 
I understand that the UAW's concerted dog eat dog activity over the past 25 
years has caused many people to turn on themselves. I know my own plant has its 
share of sucks and snitches to make us believe we can't trust each other. 
These people are there in all our plants causing us great disappointment every 
day.
 
On the other hand, as we look laterally, we can also see lots of good, 
frustrated people. They help each other out on their jobs and continue to stand up 
to the (Forduaw)  bosses. Most of them don't believe they can do much more than 
that because of the disappearance of wide solidarity. We need Mass Refusal to 
believe we can't connect these good people and start a democratic movement. 
Mass Refusal to lose is what we need.
 
And we can only get that by having faith and confidence that our friends at 
work are like millions of other people in our country and world. If we just see 
them as the answer and keep working on the solidarity conversation about 
direct action we can change our factories and world to the way we want them.
 
Tom
 



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