Change. Do you want it? Do you REALLY want it?

[TygrBright]

Because, with great thanks to Allen Lutins, whose site http://www.lutins.org/labor.html provides a timeline that illuminates the great arc of change that produced the now-defunct American middle class and the beginnings of its destruction, I would point out that change does not come from electing politicians who agree with the change agenda.

Here is just one sample:

>>20 June 1947
The Taft-Hartley Labor Act, curbing strikes, was vetoed by President Truman. Congress overrode the veto.

20 April 1948
Labor leader Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins.

27 August 1950
President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later.

8 April 1952
President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike. The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court on 2 June.

5 December 1955
The two largest labor organizations in the U.S. merged to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million.<<

Truman vetoed Taft-Hartley. Yay!

Truman used the ARMY to prevent a railroad strike. Boo! The Supremes upheld his action. Double Boo!

Truman tried the same trick with the steel mills. Boo! The Supremes overruled him. Yay!

But by the mid-1950s, Union membership was a powerful force in America, and the efforts of more than 100 YEARS of organizing and struggling and bleeding and dying had resulted in the beginnings of a real middle class of Americans.

Let's take a break to define terms, before someone accuses me of hyperbole for referring to the "now defunct American middle class."

"Class" can refer to any number of distinctions between social groups and in this case it's critical to distinguish between "class" based on subjective or social factors such as education, accent, cultural tradition, aspiration, etc., and a more objective economic definition. In the economic definition I use:

"Upper class" refers to those members of society who reap substantial economic benefits from the social and economic structure in return for no, or comparatively little, wage or salary labor. (Yes, this includes CEOs who make $200 million for attending meetings in luxurious environments, making phone calls telling other people what to do, and "strategizing." No, it does NOT include business owners who put in twelve hour days negotiating with suppliers, arranging loans to stay afloat, managing payroll, pitching in when an employee calls in sick, etc., and end up with a net profit little more than they might have made working forty hours for an employer.)

"Middle class" refers to those members of society who reap sufficient economic benefits from working reasonable hours at one full-time job to support a household in comfort, engage in leisure pursuits and take regular vacations, ensure a quality education and a high standard of living for their children, and enjoy a comfortable and secure retirement from a reasonable age, for themselves and a spouse.

"Working class" refers to those members of society who must choose between having adult household members (and occasionally older children) work more than one job for far too many hours, or living an (at best) marginal standard of living in constant danger of destitution and economic collapse.

"Poor" refers to those members of society who cannot manage even a marginal standard of living regardless of whether they labor, or are available to labor, or not.

With the definition out of the way, let's return to the subject of change and how it happens, with a sidelight on the role of elected officials and politicians, and reasonable expectations thereof.

We are often deceived by the fact that we refer to our elected officials as "leaders." The terms are not synonymous. Sometimes a leader is an elected official, but elected officials, while styled "leaders" by virtue of the powers and prerogatives of their offices, are more usually "followers." That is, they are servants of the interests they perceive as most likely to enable them to retain the powers and prerogatives of their elected office.

In fact, the leaders who actually make change happen, or help it to happen, are rarely elected to office. They are frequently obscure, operating well out of the view of journalists and camera operators. They are rarely widely known beyond the passionate few they inspire. They are often vilified and hated by a change-phobic culture. Leaders who achieve wide renown and great public notice are often those who come in at the end, rather than the beginning, of a change process. They stand (and frequently acknowledge that they stand) on the shoulders of predecessors more obscure. They provide the final push over the edge, the saturation point.

But before that point is reached, hundreds of leaders toil for decades under the radar. They are known, not as leaders, but as "wackos" and "radicals" and even "extremists." They are willing to be regarded as criminals. They are willing to live in poverty, to be ignored, to get beaten and arrested and laughed at. Often only history will distinguish them from the wackos, radicals and extremists whose socially-unacceptable viewpoints spring not from the passion of ideas that inspire others, but from their own tortured self-inadequacy.

In the marketplace of ideas, real leaders have a superior product. It may not achieve instant recognition, but it has staying power. And over decades of hawking the product, a core of loyal customers grows and grows and grows until a tipping point is reached. This is in contrast to the cheap, flashy, insubstantial products hawked in the marketplace of ideas with over-produced infomercials that generate a terrific buzz that ultimately fizzles out or leads to buyer's remorse. It may seem that everyone is buying them--huge market share, this year, next year! But even while the trashy product's bubble is building to bursting point, the real leaders with their superior idea-product are gaining a few more customers, and a few more, and a few more.

The change I want is this: I want an America where we value the intangibles of equity, justice, tolerance, education, and care for the future over big screen teevees and cool cars and being able to do anything we want to do today because we can, whether it's good for our community and our future or not.

I want an economic system founded on the value of ensuring a floor of well-being below which no member of society will be allowed to fall, because all members of society are valued whether I agree with them or not. Where all members of society are valued whether they are like me or not. Where justice is administered based on the ideals of our Constitution, fairly and swiftly, and where punishment is based on protecting society rather than satisfying the instinct for vengeance.

I want an economic system where there are rich people and incentives to strive and be innovative and create new tools and technologies, but where the overall wealth of society is concentrated in a large, real, and vibrant middle class (my definition, see above,) not in the top one-tenth of one percent.

I'd like a society where there are no poor people, but I'll settle for one where the poor are few in number and where poverty is relative rather than a grinding oppression of the human spirit and a life-threatening lack of necessities.

I believe this change is possible. Indeed, I believe we have been working towards it for more than two hundred years, always with steps back whenever we make some forward progress. Dr. King was right: The arc of history is long and it DOES bend toward justice.

But in any given degree on that arc, we are faced with the progress that has not yet been made. We are faced with gains that have been lost or given up. We are faced with "leaders" who disappoint us. We are faced with the strife and division that arises from the aversion to change.

Martin Luther King was a flawed man and, indeed, a flawed leader. He did not end racism. He cheated on his wife. He partook of the sexism and homophobia of his era and background. He disappointed many, many, many black people who felt that he caved in to the status quo, that he compromised too much. His decision to refocus the struggle from justice for an oppressed race, to the oppression of poverty, regardless of race, was regarded as foolish and impractical at best, and as a retreat, even a sellout, by many.

But he was the right person in the right place at the right time to bring to fruition a long, long struggle. Not every leader is so blessed. Some are the right person in the right place, but the time has not yet come. Some are the right person at the right time, but they are in the wrong place. Sometimes the right place and time come and go without the right person there. Yet change continues, regardless.

Because change isn't about leaders. Leaders are useful, leaders can offer short cuts occasionally. But real change lies in the dozens, then the hundreds, then the thousands, then the millions, who are passing through the marketplace of ideas, and who see the vision of change and buy it.

Maybe they "do something with it." Maybe they try to lead. Maybe they organize. Maybe they take to the streets. Maybe they release classified documents or engage in civil disobedience or call for a bank run or start a video blog.

Those are the minority. They are the necessary minority: they keep the product visible in the marketplace of ideas. But it is the product itself--its value and its worth--that ultimately compels the decision to buy. I believe this change, the one that I want (see above) is a superior product.

It is the dozens and hundreds and then thousands and millions of buyers who will make it possible for the right leaders at the right times to make the small increments of change happen.

I guess all of this long-winded blathering is by way of explaining how hard it is for me to spend much time on DU right now. I've always come here looking for people who believe in the same kinds of change that I believe in, and who will strengthen me, with encouragement for each other and righteous anger at the status quo and witty satire and biting commentary and hopeful narratives of the small triumphs of the human spirit.

Where are you?

Are you still here?

Or is it just the angry people left? The hopeless ones, the apocalyptic doom-seers? The trolls and sly provocateurs? The endless cascade of "See? See how awful it all is? See how stupid and flawed and incompetent our so-called 'leaders' are? We're fucking DOOMED, I tell you!" is getting to me.

Maybe it's just my annual bout with depression making it harder and harder for me.

But I really want change, and over the decades I've come to believe that we get more mileage when we focus on the small things we CAN do as well as railing at the large things that yield only to decades of blood, toil, sweat and tears.

I thought I'd throw that out there. Feel free to ignore my reality if it conflicts with yours.

wistfully,
Bright

(on edit: fixed typo)

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Thanks for this.

If I may count myself as one of those earnestly striving toward change, I'm here.

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[Newest Reality]

3. Change is the only solid constant

that I have found in all my years. So, we have that going for us and it can be understood in both the larger and the more specific contexts.

Change then, is not a problem at all. When we focus on who does or does not want it and the reasons for preventing the various processes from flowing to more equitable and transformational patterns, we can all utilize change for a change ... and in very powerful and flexible ways starting now. The current scene can allow us to make the pictures, sounds and express the feelings that support our growing need for a transition of values and outcomes.

We could start with a presupposition that questions the speed and pain involved with change. Many of us have seen changes that were both fast and, not only painless, but incredibly beneficial to everyone involved. Consider how absolutely delicious and desirable making good changes can be and then it is fully possible to have a lust for a dynamic process that can go as quickly as is truly desired.

Liberating change from the arbitrary constrictions of time, (long, slow change usually has a meter on it) and anchors of pain associated with belief were the barriers that created a mindset we can no longer afford to indulge in when we see outside of the conceptual barriers erected for us ... to knock down?

[zentrum]

4. Thanks so much for the history lesson

Wonder if you'd be interested in continuing to chart out the timeline for labor through later decades, under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and at least through Nixon.

[TygrBright]

5. Follow the link at the beginning of the post. Lutins' timeline goes through the eighties. n/t

[struggle4progress]

6. We need to stop expecting change to flow from the top down and start

organizing from the bottom up to push the agenda we want

[FailureToCommunicate]

7. K & R

[bertman]

8. Lots of us are still working for it, Bright. But we still reserve the right to scream

bloody murder when the people WE elected act as if we are their ATM machine instead of their constituents.

Great post. REC.

[LiberalEsto]

9. My family is no longer middle class

It was a shock to read your definition of middle class, and to realize that we were no longer part of it.

Luckily we still have a roof over our heads and food on the table. But like most Americans. we've been screwed economically over the past decade,

My husband, a database administrator, works ridiculously long hours, including weekends, just to keep his job, because he knows he could be replaced by a foreigner on an H1-B visa. He is constantly exhausted.

I've been out of work for more than two years, but am not eligible for unemployment benefits, and can't afford retraining.

Our younger daughter can't afford to continue college beyond an associate's degree.

We've gone from having 4 cars for 4 working people & students, to two cars, both old and one of them barely operable

We live from paycheck to paycheck.

We can't save for retirement because there is nothing left over after paying the monthly student loan bills for our daughters. One can't find work; the other doesn't make much at her nanny job.

My husband's retirement savings were mostly in the form of Fannie Mae stock - he worked there 17 years. A few years ago, the CEO and other Fannie execs barred employees from selling stock, while dumping their own as fast as they could. This left employees with near-worthless stock in their retirement funds, while the company officials got out just in time. They didn't want the Fannie workers to sell stock because it would have lowered the price and the poor little executives wouldn't have gotten as much money.

And yet we consider ourselves fortunate, because far too many people have lost their homes, their jobs, and their futures entirely.

[JTFrog]

10. kick

[defendandprotect]

11. Who do we trust? I'll take Sen. Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore ....