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| Fr. William J. Bischel S.J., center, spoke at May Day's labor rally. Here he's participating in an Occupy Tacoma demonstration last fall. (Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2011.) |
*
Occupy
Tacoma survived the trials of a winter of discontent and dissolution to
re-emerge as a small but fiercely determined affinity group – veteran
activists who met for an early-afternoon barbecue in Tacoma's Wright
Park on a chilled and rainy May Day, then proved their effectiveness by
publicly joining hands with organized labor.
The
immediate result was a day of informational picketing at St. Joseph
Medical Center, Tacoma's increasingly anti-union, anti-working-class
Catholic hospital. The pickets, never less than about 50 women, men and
children, were mostly from Service Employees International Union Local
1199NW. They were reinforced by a few Jobs with Justice and Food Not
Bombs people and maybe a dozen Occupiers from Tacoma, Puyallup and
Kitsap County.
An
oft-chanted slogan told the story: “What do we want? A FAIR CONTRACT.
When do we want it? NOW!” Workers in SEIU 1199NW have been negotiating
with the bosses at St. Joe's and its parent Franciscan Health System
since last summer. Parallel negotiations were underway with MultiCare
Health System, which includes Tacoma General, Allenmore and Mary Bridge
hospitals.
Here's an SEIU after-action photograph
of the pickets. (I'm bearded bespectacled geezer with the tan canvas
field coat, broad-brimmed felt hat and upraised fist. Yes, crippled
though I am, I walked the line for about an hour, cane in my right hand,
placard – “Affordable Care for the Whole Community” in my left,
chanting myself hoarse. )
Just
before the photo session we had marched seven-tenths of a mile from the
hospital for a union rally at Shiloh Baptist Church, where an hour of
impassioned speechifying was followed by a dinner of southern fried
chicken, salad (choice of potato or cole slaw) and freshly made dinner
rolls. It was the most delicious fried chicken I've had in years; hence I
was not surprised when one of the cafeteria-style servers told me all
the food been cooked by the ladies of Shiloh's mostly African-American
congregation.
By
far the most memorable of the pre-dinner remarks were those by Fr.
William J. Bichsel S.J., the 84-year-old internationally applauded
radical Jesuit priest who has so often been imprisoned by the U.S.
Government in retaliation for his pacifist activism.
Bix,
as he is known to friends and colleagues, denounced the anti-worker
greed of the Franciscan Health System executives as hypocritical
defiance of the values of Francis of Assisi,
the saint after which the system is named. Citing his own Catholic
faith, Bix said the Franciscan executives' behavior causes him “deep
embarrassment and sorrow.”
Though Franciscan and MultiCare hospitals are allegedly “non-profit,” SEIU sources say the two systems are in truth among the most profitable
in the state of Washington. Franciscan recently amassed an operating
profit of $147 million, while MultiCare made $95 million – this
according to data released by the Washington State Department of Health.
Meanwhile the anti-worker stance of Franciscan management seems to be part of a larger trend of zero-tolerance anti-99 Percent policies
at Catholic hospitals throughout the United States. This has led to
speculation the pronouncements by Pope Benedict XVI demanding
socioeconomic justice are merely eyewash to conceal intensified
profiteering by the Vatican – a probability bolstered by the
authoritarian nature of the church's organization, a dictatorial chain
of command that stretches from papacy to parish and tolerates neither
disobedience nor dissent.
Nor is this first time the church has proclaimed Beatitude-based charity doctrines
to conceal its vicious exploitation of impoverished peoples – though
that hypocritical practice was hitherto limited to the Third World. Its
appearance in today's United States is therefore wrenchingly
significant: it is undeniable proof the global Ruling Class now regards
us – the 99 Percent – as it formerly regarded the peoples of Africa and
Latin America: yet another colonial population from which to extract
maximum profit by slavery then destroy by genocide.
Once
again, welcome to the New Order of capitalist governance: absolute
power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation and
premature death for all the rest of us.
When O when will we finally awaken?
***
Perhaps
at last the awakening is at hand. Perhaps the transformation of Occupy
Tacoma is part of the process by which we seize the time. But how did
maybe 150 men and women so stubbornly individualistic they could hardly
agree on anything become a functional cadre of no more than one-tenth
that number? How did OT evolve from ferociously opposing any sort of
alliance with anyone – especially organized labor – to embracing a
united-front policy of cooperation?
Since OT's publicly endorsed May Day allies
were Food Not Bombs, Jobs with Justice, SEIU and (at least implicitly)
the entire spectrum of unions including the newly rejuvenated Industrial
Workers of the World, the question is relevant not just as a point of
local history but – perhaps – as a teachable moment for Occupy groups
elsewhere.
Deborah
Petri, an OT activist since the beginning, says it was a matter of
trial and error. “We learn from our mistakes,” she said. “We've become
lot more easy going.”
In
other words OT – or rather what remains of it – has learned to
practice the tolerance it originally claimed but too often did not
exhibit; the patience it originally rejected but now has embraced; and
the serve-the-99=Percent determination that, from the very beginning,
has always been the defining trait of its most committed activists.
Nor
does this betoken any loss of the avowedly democratic OT dynamic.
“We're still debating whether to endorse groups (as in making formal
alliances) or to endorse (only) actions,” said Petrie.
But will OT's older, wiser more mature persona suffice to ensure its endurance – and, more importantly, its influence?
Naomi Wolf poses the question for Occupy in general and does so as succinctly as I've seen it stated anywhere:
“Is
May Day's Occupy turnout a chimera – a groundless gesture to be hedged
in by rapidly escalating new surveillance technologies and punitive new
laws? Or is it a new beginning – a base, finally, to be built into a
massive electoral lobby, built out of 'the people's coalitions', with
sound messaging, reporter follow-up, and clear legal and political
strategies?”
Meanwhile Wiebke Hollersen describes Occupy from the perspective of the European Ruling Class:
“It
is a popular front of the indignant, a confusing and mutually
contradictory throng of millions of people with varying demands, united
only in their rage.”
Only time will tell whether Occupy's rage will evolve into ideology and organization, two of the four requirements for successful revolution. (The other requirements are mastery of technology and the support of a major foreign power.)
But
it appears OT is already attempting to grow beyond the more
self-destructive expressions of rage. It seems to have consciously
abandoned the self-righteous arrogance that fueled much of its
dissolution over the winter. Good riddance – not the least because this
was exactly the sort of snobbery by which the Anti-Vietnam War Movement
irreparably shattered New Deal solidarity, inflicting
blue-collar/white-collar class antagonisms that persist to this day.
Indeed
OT seems to be repositioning itself to resume what I have always
believed is Occupy's most promising function: providing the 99 Percent a
vehicle for the articulation of grievances – our first step toward
formulating ideological solidarity and effective strategies and tactics
of resistance.
***
I began writing this piece yesterday, Friday 4 May, the 42nd anniversary of the Kent State Massacre,
the event so many of us in New York City and the Northeast in general
assumed was the beginning of a second American Revolution.
We
were wrong, of course – not just abysmally mistaken but utterly
deluded. And perhaps our most important post-delusional realization is
the need to proceed with extreme caution in assuming any local
conditions anywhere in this nation are a microcosm of the whole.
Hence,
though I was initially thinking of writing about class struggle in
Tacoma as exemplary of class struggle elsewhere in the U.S., reading the
reports from other locales – always a good idea before laying out such a
generalization – convinced me Tacoma is instead unique, probably a rule
unto itself.
But
to see Tacoma's uniqueness it is necessary to contrast May Day here
with May Day elsewhere in the land the One Percent ever more obviously
regards as its One Big Plantation, the United Estates.
In
other, larger cities the government is employing new, much more brutal
tactics against Occupiers – methods that seek to induce maximum terror
(and provoke violent retaliation) by including obviously organized
campaigns of sexual assault against women.
As I noted via the linked item's comment thread, these are precisely
the tactics utilized by the U.S.-supported fascist regimes in the Third
World and elsewhere.
But
here in Tacoma the authorities have apparently rejected all such
brutality in favor of peaceful co-existence, not just with Occupy but
with every other nonviolent expression of 99 Percent anger and
resistance.
I
can only guess why and how the Tacoma Police have seemingly resisted
takeover by the Department of Homeland Security and have thus far
blessedly avoided being turned into the One Percent goon squads the cops
in Oakland, New York City and Seattle have so notoriously become.
But
three factors seem relevant. Tacoma is not just a seaport city but one
that has managed to retain some of its industry, which means organized
labor is still relatively powerful here. It is a Working Class city – a
city of the 99 Percent – and its municipal government sometimes yet
displays what the Right invariably denounces as an “unAmerican”
consciousness of those roots. It is also a city in which the citizens
give the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution the same regard they
give the First Amendment.
In
any case, as was notable during the Occupy events here last fall and
winter, so it was on May Day: the police, though present, were
respectfully unobtrusive, and the few cops who were obvious were
invariably friendly or at least neutral. There was none of that
Cossacks-guarding-the-Winter-Palace malevolence the police now routinely
display in Oakland, New York City and Seattle.
Indeed
for the first time ever, I who so often have so desperately missed life
in Manhattan – the good life from which I was permanently exiled by
gentrification 25 years ago – now thank whatever benevolent deities
might exist I am here instead of there: here in what I can no longer
deny has become Home, said with all the pride that befits such meaning.
And
now let us raise a toast to the heroism of Allison Krause and Jeffrey
Miller: may we never forget it is their blood too that colors the Red
Banner we in the 99 Percent must soon raise as our own.
LB/5 May 2012
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