American Workers Unite!
There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America
by Philip Dray
Reviewed by Anna Burger
Barack Obama’s election, a Democratic majority in the House, and 60 magical votes in the Senate gave the US Labor movement real hope: after decades of decline, Labor had reason to believe the US now had a pro-worker government and that we could level the playing field and begin to rebuild the worker’s movement.
Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act could give American workers a chance to form a union when a majority of workers want one. And it would make it possible to impose penalties on employers who violate workers’ rights with threats, terminations and harassment, and give newly organized workers a mechanism for a first contract. Nothing really new, just a re-establishment of basic ground rules that governed during the generation that created the middle class. Union leaders—who supported the democratic 
agenda—believed victory was within reach.
Two years later, labor law is unchanged, union density in the private sector is at an all time low—down to seven percent. Public sector unions face an attack on the funding needed to sustain union-won pensions and benefits. Right wing politicians, many in the pocket of big corporation and pseudo news host, blame unions for the failures of the economy and glibly pit the unemployed and underemployed against unions and immigrants. The tolls of globalization, collapse of the housing and construction market, and the excesses of Wall Street have the labor movement on the defensive, keening to protect its current member while 14.6 million people are out of work.
Labor celebrated victories in health care, women’s equity and now the end of the war in Iraq, but our big dreams are hard to fulfill. Then, I read Philip Dray’s new epic of labor in America. As a union activist and leader I’ve spent the last 38 years organizing, giving workers a voice and a chance for a better life. We’ve been up against the same corporate powers and lived through a continuing alliance, on the part of government, with wealth and corporate greed rather than working people.
Dray tells a moving story of the ordinary people who’ve had the courage to stand up for themselves and other workers. From young girls working in the mills of Lawrence in the 1830s to the men in the steel mills, coal and copper mines, railroads, and factories throughout our history, ordinary citizens people stood together for a better life. They took risks, lost their lives—and sometimes the struggle—to the guns, the courts and power of a government in the pocket of big corporatists.
Over and over again, leaders rose from the ranks, took to roads across America and lead a movement for economic justice. Their stories tell us of courage, determination and the constant struggle of the labor movement, and, the endless restating of the essential question: are we just about us or about justice for all? Do we include all workers who break through gender and racial lines, align with other movements, issues and ideology, or, are we a silo and narrowly focused? And what is our role in politics and government? Are we a lap dog for a political party, a mad dog on the issues or a bull dog determined to make a difference? Courageous young men and women, motivated by justice, ideology, and moral outrage, became leaders throughout our history and never gave up in challenging the laws, corporate greed and power to give workers a better life. Dray tells the stories of their leadership, intermittent defeat and continuing struggle.
Intertwining the political, economic, ideological and historic perspectives that influence the world around labor’s story, Dray is brutally honest in the failures of leaders and missed opportunities but in the context of a labor movement with the best intentions and facing enormous odds.
Activists of all movements should read There is Power in A Union. It is an epic. Prepare for 730 pages, which include the notes of a powerfully, well-researched documentation of American workers and their pursuit of the American Dream.
Dray leaves us with questions about the future of the labor movement. But he gives an unambiguous answer. The blue print for rebuilding our movement is in our history. Our strategies are clear.
We win when we work together across all movements, when we link the issues of union members with the unorganized and the unemployed, when we speak for justice and peace and an economic agenda that works for workers, corporations, our communities, our country and our world. We win when we have a vision and an agenda larger than ourselves. We win when we mobilize and agitate. And we have the resources, strength, determination and working people on our side. When movement leaders strategize together, support each other or get out of each other’s way, we can get elected leaders to stand up for us, the workers, the voters, the people of America. As long as people work for a living, they will step up, speak out and take what is rightfully theirs—a better life for themselves and for the next generation. Philip Dray provides an inspired sense of the determination and strength of working people.
The barns were unpainted. I wondered why Canadian farmers would allow their barns to degrade from exposure to the elements. The answer, I discovered, was government. At the time, Canada taxed painted buildings, so farmers left their structures exposed to avoid the penalty. These things make quite an impression on a child.
Yes, but what if it's the wrong impression?
My fact-checking suggests it is. Large unpainted barns were often erected in Southern Canada in the late 19th Century --- and far from degrading, some of them were surely on the Armeys' route North when Dad took Dick fishing in 1950.
The Canadian government had nothing to do with the décor of those barns.
The reasons the barns were unpainted were culture and esthetics.
A childhood misimpression casts a long shadow. At some point, Armey might have run across a different explanation. But this one fits his politics so perfectly. And now he passes that misinformation on.
Misperceptions can be useful. In the early '90s, the economics professor cast his lot with Conservative Republicans at exactly the right time, beating the drums in the House of Representatives against Bill Clinton's efforts to reduce the deficit the old-fashioned way --- by raising taxes. Later, when his side was in charge, he was one of the Republican leaders who delighted in cutting taxes and growing the federal budget.
But consistency was never Armey's strongest suit. His view of the Clinton sex scandal: "If I were in the President's place, I would not have gotten a chance to resign. I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying, 'How do I reload this damn thing?'" This quip backfired --- it inspired some of his former students to recall episodes of sexual harassment by Professor Armey. (There is now a second Mrs. Armey.)
In 2003, after eight years as Speaker of the House, Armey resigned and joined the Washington law firm now known as DLA Piper as a senior policy advisor, or, in plain English, as a lobbyist. The job paid well --- a reported $750,000 a year. But lobbyists are not in the public eye, so he also became co-chairman of Citizens for A Sound Economy, which, the following year, became FreedomWorks. The cause grew rapidly, and, by 2008, FreedomWorks was paying Armey a salary of $550,000.
The philosophy of FreedomWorks is straightforward: “Lower Taxes. Less Government. More Freedom.” Lobbyists have more pliable philosophies. So while FreedomWorks loathes national health care --- in his book, Armey and his collaborator, Matt Kibbe, write that “the government should be concerned with protecting my liberty, not my liver” --- DLA Piper represented drug companies that, at least initially, supported health care reform. FreedomWorks opposed TARP; Armey's firm represented General Motors, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.
Conservative bloggers noted these conflicts and attacked. Armey said he was the victim of a conspiracy --- 'I wouldn't be surprised if it [the criticism] stemmed from information put out by allies of the Obama administration” --- but in August of 2009, he resigned from DLA Piper. "I hated to walk away from that kind of money," he said. “How many times in your life, or anybody's life, do they have an opportunity to earn that kind of money when they are 69 years old?"
These days money is not his problem. The Tea Party movement is. Not its numbers --- by Armey's count, the movement is hotter than Lady Gaga. And not its message --- that is now Republican doctrine.
The problem is that Armey and Fox and the right wing bloggers have been screaming “Take back America” for so long that I don't see how they fail to incite some event that sets “real” America against illegals, deviants, liberals and, mostly and especially, the President.
It gets worse. In the courts, the Tea Party is losing, The Administration vs. Arizona. Overturning Proposition 8. A New York lesbian on the Supreme Court. With every decision that “they” lose, you can picture their rage spiking.
At some point, this kind of volatility has its catalytic moment. At a Tea Party event, someone will turn on an idiot protestor. Or a Tea Party member will decide to right some wrong. A gun will go off. And there, along with blood and death, will be the media's useless and overdue finger-pointing.
On August 28 --- the anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington --- Glenn Beck is leading a march on Washington of his own. This is worrisome. Since January 19th, 2009, Beck attacked the Tides Foundation on his show 29 times; in July, one of his fans was arrested after a shootout with the California Highway Patrol. His plan: “to start a revolution" by attacking the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation. So Beck has called for marchers at his rally to sign an oath of non-violence. Bring your gun if you must --- it's your Constitutional right --- but don't pull the trigger.
This is the key point: Glenn Beck must make sure he cannot be held responsible for any violence.
Ditto Dick Armey.
That is why, I think, Armey uses the final 65 pages of his 245-page book to make it clear that FreedomWorks is not a leader of the Tea Party movement. Nobody is. It's local. Grassroots. FreedomWorks is around simply to support those groups and give them tips on organizing their events and meetings. Talking points, rallies, slogans --- all that comes, spontaneously, from patriots whose names we wouldn't recognize.
These pages are not terribly illuminating. They are very likely untrue. But to talk about them in journalistic or literary terms is to miss their purpose. “Give Us Liberty” may bear a publisher's imprint --- surprise: the publisher is Rupert Murdoch --- but it is not a book.
Dick Armey has, cleverly, published his legal defense.