New Ground
107
July - August, 2006
Contents
New Ground
107.1 - 07.22.2006
0. DSA News
Chicago DSA Membership Meeting
A Note from the Editor
1. Politics
Big Box Store Ordinance
Defending Workers' Rights
2. Democratic Socialism
Frank Zeidler 1912 - 2006
3. Upcoming Events of Interest
New Ground
107.2 - 08.07.2006
0. DSA News
Chicago DSA Membership Meeting
SI Calls for Cease-Fire
1. Politics
Big Box Store Ordinance Fight Continues
Local 1 Rising
2. Upcoming Events of Interest
New Ground
107.3 - 08.30.2006
0. DSA News
Your Support Is Needed
Summer, 2006, "Democratic Left"
DSA Statement on the Rights of Undocumented Immigrants
New on the Chicago DSA Web Site
1. Politics
Big Box Store Ordinance
Immigrant Workers Justice March
Peace Fair
Students for a Democratic Society Reloaded
2. Democratic Socialism
The Soul of Socialism
3. Upcoming Events of Interest
Crime
and Punishment Reconsidered
by Tom Broderick
When it was decided that we needed to
be tough on crime, there was an outcome that was not publicly
discussed by the politicians who supported locking people up
and throwing the keys away. As we build more prisons to house
more people for longer periods, the incarcerated will grow old
and die in these institutions.
Our criminal justice system is about
punishment. Caring for an aging population is not something it
can cope with. As physical or mental health deteriorates in people,
they require more attention. They may need increased medical
care, special therapy, a variety of costly medicines, and physical
modifications to living spaces. But if we're talking about the
incarcerated, well, what's to talk about? They're convicted criminals.
When I asked one prison official why
a weight machine had been removed from a prison, the response
was "this is not a country club." After the removal,
some of those who once used it became visibly heavier. Obesity
is linked to several health problems. So not only will our prisons
be warehousing great numbers of people for many, many years,
they will be manufacturing health problems. How will this growing
population of aging and infirm prisoners be dealt with?
At this point, I could offer up something
like: "As a tax payer, I object to this bumbling plan that
is only going to increase my tax burden." But really, I'm
against this tough on crime, three strikes your out mentality
that we've been sold as criminal justice. Poverty, oppression
and the lack of opportunities for a successful and meaningful
human life are the crimes we need to get tough on. These are
not accidental conditions, but attacks on the rights of human
beings. We need to refocus the war on crime.
In the meantime, what are we going to
do with the growing population of prisoners aging inside the
Illinois penal system? Right now, the problems that can come
with aging, become additional burdens on the convicted and their
loved ones. As the mind goes, the cage is the cure. As the body
goes, the remedy is the same. Some form of over the counter analgesic
can be purchased through the commissary. This is cost containment
that promotes suffering.
The Illinois Legislature passed a joint
resolution that calls for a committee to study long-term and
life sentencing, House Joint Resolution 80 (HJR80). State Representative
Art Turner (D-9) introduced it during the last legislative session.
Among the issues that will be considered are: costs of confinement,
warehousing prisoners, life without parole, truth-in-sentencing,
recidivism, and whether long-term incarceration is the best use
of state funds to further the goal of public safety.
Among the elements of the Resolution:
"Section 11 of the Illinois Constitution
states: 'All penalties shall be determined both according
to the seriousness of the offense and with the objective of restoring
the offender to useful citizenship';
"Illinois is one of only 11 states that has life without
parole sentences and one of only 6 states where all life sentences
are without parole;
"Thirty years ago only a handful of prisoners in Illinois
served sentences longer than 30 years; this year approximately
4,000 Illinois prisoners have sentences of 30 years or more .
. . amounting to about 10% of all Illinois prisoners;
"In Illinois at least 500 people each year are sentenced
as lifers or long-term prisoners;
"It costs at least one million dollars to confine a person
in prison for 30 years;
"It is estimated that close to half of those lifers and
long-term prisoners will never be released from prison if current
policies stay in place."
There will be seventeen Committee members,
appointed as follows: 3 by the Senate President; 3 by the House
Speaker; 2 by the Senate Minority Leader; 2 by the House Minority
Leader; 1 by the Attorney General; 1 by the Governor; 1 by the
Cook County State's Attorney; 1 by the Cook County Public Defender;
1 by the State Appellate Prosecutor; 1 by the State Appellate
Defender; 1 by the Illinois Department of Corrections. It is
unlikely that the Committee will be appointed until after the
November elections.
There will be public hearings. If you
remember the public hearings that were held when former Governor
Ryan was considering commuting the sentences of everyone on death
row, the hearings were tragedies. These could easily be a replay
of those. When family victims of serious crimes are told that
those convicted of the crimes will spend between 30 years and
life behind bars, there is a conclusion. Changing those sentences
will cause problems. There is already tension about this in the
movement to abolish the death penalty. Life without possibility
of parole was and is a key element in doing away with state exterminations.
While those behind bars are included
in the census, they can't vote. It will take a great deal of
pressure on the Committee to require any hearing of the incarcerated,
but their voices need to be part of this.
The Committee will hold public hearings
and submit a written report about long-term prisoners to the
General Assembly by June, 2007. The report could include recommendations
to change conditions within the prison system, including sentencing.
It could also make recommendations that do not require legislation.
However, since the Committee will not likely be in operation
until after the November elections, there will not be much time
to do any in-depth work.
The Long-Term Prisoner Policy Project
(LT3P) is a project of the John Howard Association. The John
Howard Association is a Chicago-based organization concerned
with prisoners' rights, and the LT3P is taking a lead roll in
influencing the outcome of the Committee's work. They have identified
issues that they would like to focus on and create position papers
around. These include: reduction in sentences, basic fact sheet
about long-term prisoners (demographic information, etc.), health
care in prison, mental health care in prison, programs in prison,
clemency, transfer policy, special focus on Tamms (a Super-Max
prison in Illinois), restorative justice, and how long-term incarceration
affects prisoners' families and loved ones. If you would like
to work on any of these issues, please contact Shaena Fazal at
the Long-Term Prisoner Policy Project at 312 782 1901.
Don't
Sleep with Stevens!
by Bob Roman
"Don't
Sleep with Stevens!" the J. P. Stevens Campaign and the
Struggle to Organize the South, 1963 - 1980 by Timothy J. Minchin. Gainseville: University
Press of Florida, 2005. 264 pages, $ 59.95
Trust a journalist for the conventional
wisdom. In Stephen Franklin's excellent account of three major
labor confrontations in 1990s central Illinois, Three
Strikes, he describes his story as grinding "through
the inability of labor's breathless old guard to catch up with
corporate America's new tactics and defend the workers' rights
that had been so hard won 60 years earlier." He continues,
a bit further on, "This was not the new global economics.
It was the old rule of the strong making the rules. When the
unions had the upper hand, they did the same. But those days
were gone. The unions had squandered their talent and insight."
Trust the conventional wisdom to be
at least partially correct. Typically, though, the fact of the
matter is more complicated and ambiguous than what you would
gather from the conventional wisdom. And the circumstances of
labor's decline are not an exception. This is one reason why
Don't Sleep with Stevens! is an important book. Another
is the ongoing amnesia that afflicts our culture. The Textile
Workers Union of America's 17 year campaign to organize the textile
giant J. P. Stevens was an epic battle, worthy of the lyrics
of Homer, if not Edgar Lee Masters.
Timothy Minchin will not provide you
with that lyrical an account. But this first book-length treatment
of the campaign will provide you with a challenge to the idea
that labor simply collapsed on its back and that it didn't go
down fighting, often in creative ways. For in fact, it was in
the J. P. Stevens campaign that innovative techniques such as
corporate campaigns were invented and others, such as worker
organizers, card check recognition, international union solidarity,
and the consumer boycott, were further refined. These tactics
were not applied from the very beginning but evolved in response
to Stevens' adamant opposition to its employees organizing.
The decline of labor isn't Minchin's
concern; his focus is on the campaign itself. Consequently, one
important question is not much covered in the book: how did the
small community of labor leaders view the campaign's outcome?
Did they look at the Stevens campaign as an inspiration or, because
of its ultimate outcome, as a fight more expensive than they
could afford?
Because from the very beginning of the
campaign, the Stevens campaign was envisioned as something much
greater: an opening wedge for organizing the union movement in
the South. It was not a trivial commitment. Between 1963 and
1980, the union movement spent at least $30,000,000 on the campaign,
over $100 million in today's money. The campaign essentially
bankrupted the Textile Workers, leading to its 1976 merger with
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. The merged Amalgamated Clothing
and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) finished the campaign in 1980
in difficult financial circumstances. ACTWU proclaimed the campaign
a success but did the labor movement, apart from natural self-congratulation,
really agree?
Minchin doesn't tell you. But the reader
does get a fairly intimate look at how the union's tactics and
strategies evolved in the face of J. P. Stevens' resistance,
how the company's tactics evolved, how each side miscalculated
the response of the other, and the degree of resistance from
the union's own constituency: the workers at J. P. Stevens. Was
the campaign a success? Minchin echoes the proclamation of victory,
but he gives you enough information for you to jump to your own
conclusions.
In truth, "success" depends
upon the criteria you use for judging victory. As a campaign,
it reached a favorable exit point: an agreement by J. P. Stevens
to recognize the union in plants where it had already successfully
organized, a contract, and agreement to apply that contract in
any other plants the union successfully organized afterwards.
Okay: success.
But J. P. Stevens did not agree to cease
its opposition to the union in its unorganized shops. ACTWU was
largely unsuccessful in organizing in the few years left to J.
P. Stevens, before the growing wave of "free trade"
imports resulted in its takeover. Nor did the agreement open
any doors to other union organizing in the South. None of this
could have been encouraging to any unorganized workers contemplating
a union. By these measures, the campaign was hardly a victory.
On the other hand, it is clear that
J. P. Stevens made some very significant improvements in occupational
health and safety and employee relations directly in response
to the ACTWU's organizing efforts. And to one degree or another,
some of these practices were adopted by other employers for a
time, if only because they had to. Furthermore, the campaign
itself was the proving ground for a wide range of strategies
and tactics presently employed by unions including, it seems
to me, the present campaign directed at Wal-Mart. In a very real
way, this campaign is one of the places where the 21st Century
union movement was born. By these measures, the campaign looks
better.
Don't Sleep with Stevens is one of the latest titles in a series, "New
Perspectives on the History of the South", edited by John
David Smith and published by the University Press of Florida,
where Minchin has contributed most of the labor titles. The book
deserves to be widely read, but the price the University Press
has put on it guarantees obscurity. If you or your institution
has the disposable income to buy it, do so; otherwise, your local
public library's interlibrary loan department would be happy
to find it for you.
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