"Home Away from Home" - Piers Faccini
Sorry for the lack of posting -- I've been doing conference stuff, trying to keep up with work back at the office, and grabbing a little San Diego sunshine. (I just wrote a post and was about to put it up when my hotel internet time expired -- very, very aggravating.)
AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka spoke yesterday to the union lawyer's conference that I am attending and he was excellent as always. It was more of a considered talk on the state of things rather than the kind of tub thumper at which he excels. Instead it was a more muted and thoughtful rumination on where things stand for both the labor movement and the country writ large. The perils and opportunities presented by the situations in Wisconsin and Ohio loomed large, as you might expect, but were by no means the focus of the speech. The broader theme was that a strong and prosperous middle class would only exist if the country had a strong and vibrant labor movement -- and that the absence of the latter was clearly helping to drag down the former. Trumka made clear that victories in Wisconsin and Ohio would be important, but that they must be just the first step in a path toward a labor movement renaissance -- that a mere return to the status quo was not going to cut it, as a labor movement with only 7% private sector density simply cannot function as the kind of counterveiling political force to corporate power that the country desperately needs. Ultimately he stressed the need for greater activism, of a movement that needed to insinuate itself into the fiber of society on a far greater basis, one which had stronger links with all kinds of progressive communities, so that it has the heft necessary to wrest political and economic power from the clutches of corporate America and, in so doing, benefit the vast multitude of Americans.
It was a powerful speech and one which led to me to be both angry and incredulous that this guy has a hard time getting air time in the mainstream American media while a serially bankrupt racist with a mangy ferret perched upon his head -- a truly stupid and vulgar man -- can command national attention at a moment's notice.
I was hoping that the conference would boost my morale and possibly arm me with some new ideas to help clients, but I am afraid it failed on both fronts. It was great seeing members of our small fraternity, many of whom I haven't seen for years, but it seems to me we are all grappling a bit futilely with the enormity of what is going on out there. I found myself identifying completely with a guy on the elevator who noted that he had been to all thirty of these annual conferences, which he then laughingly, but ruefully, attributed to a "life misspent." I knew what he meant -- I don't think any of us regret the side we chose or are less than fully committed to our clients and their cause. Still, I suspect that many of us thought we might have accomplished more and feel to some degree that our work has been ephemeral. I never expected the path to be easy -- hell, I started working for the labor movement during the height of the Reagan era -- but I must say that the present times are more discouraging than I would have hoped. My natural sense of optimism -- tempered as it has been by a sense of lawyerly realism -- has started to really get beaten down the last couple of weeks.
I am worried that the tenuous recovery is being buried by high gas prices and the likely embrace of austerity. Our elites -- both political and journalistic -- persist in ignoring the true problem plaguing us, high unemployment, underemployment, rampant job insecurity, and wage stagnation in favor of tilting at the phantom problem of deficits. Sadly, many people are so economically illiterate that they don't really comprehend the degree to which they are being bamboozled by this tact. There is a simple message for the Democrats to convey -- the best way to reduce the deficit is to get people back to work. Alas, I'm not holding my breath.
So what's depressing you?
