The History of the LABOR Movement is being erased from our nation's History Books.

[jtuck004]

51. "They WILL have to fight these same battles all over again." Don't think so.

I agree with you, but...

We are in a fundamentally different era.

No longer do we have tens of thousands of people to organize and shut down production, because there isn't shit for production left here. (And it would take perhaps $20 to $40 trillion or more to bring it back in any meaningful fashion, and the other countries now have their own facilities, so we would have far less of a market to sell it to). Now we get a few hundred or thousand to shut down, what, McDonalds? To get a wage that still won't send the kids to school or pay for retirement?

We are about to be awash in old people like me, and we will be seeing bigger fights over social security and food stamps and health care. Smart kids are getting training that will let a few work internationally in ways we never dreamed of, even while we pull the rug out from under research that would solve some of the problems we are about to face.. There will be over a trillion in student loan debt that has no hope of every being paid back, we are replacing full-time jobs with part-time jobs in wholesale numbers, and home ownership is now down to the levels not seen since 1996, but with 50 million more people. Oh yeah, and a few people want an immigration bill which the CBO says will make us better off, but everyone skips the two paragraphs where it says it will increase unemployment for the next 10-15+ years before it gets better. (Because a lot of old folks will die off in those next 10-20 years).

Finance has replaced manufacturing, and it's tough to organize people who make a living by taking advantage of others.

I think when today's unions, government, and business conspired to kill off the labor movement in the 20's, their success paved the way for exactly what we have today. Until we can get people to consider doing what is needed to take control, they best many will ever be able to hope for puts them in a position of being what Malcom X termed the "house negro", and many, many more won't even have those "advantages". Here.

One can disagree with that, but, ironically, they can't even turn on their TV or pick up a copy of Time magazine without getting only what the corporatists WANT them to see. Harriet Tubman said "I saved a thousand slaves. I could have saved a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves". We are living those words.

Unless we consider where all that is taking us, we will be just running around in circles wondering where the cheese is, when the facts are that it is gone.

I agree that for a strong, secure, and independent people we need to not lose the spirit of what they fought for and taught us. Their actions were appropriate for the time, and unless we are together we will fail. But what does that mean in this very different world from theirs going forward?