The source is a very brief book review of *Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement* by Stephen Ashby and C.J. Hawkins (U of Illinois, 2009) in case anyone else is interested. It was published in a free weekly 'alternative' paper based in Springfield, *Illinois Times*, April 8 (-14), 2019. https://www.illinoistimes.com/springfield/the-epic-labor-struggle-in-the-decatur-war-zone/Content?oid=11445590
The quote - "Heroes and villains abound. Among the latter are the leaderships of the United Paperworkers International and AFL‐CIO. The former essentially sold the local out while the latter gave at best lip service to the struggles in Decatur. (Sampson 2010 <https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/doi/full/10.1111/wusa.12245#wusa12245-bib-0041>)" - struck me because the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) was the backbone of the effort to build a Labor Party in the U.S. (the Labor Party was officially founded in 1996). OCAW had financially underwritten "special assistant to the president" Tony Mazzochi in leading the Labor Party organizing effort since 1991 when Bob Wages became OCAW president. But in 1999 Wages led OCAW into a merger with the conservative United Paperworkers union (creating PACE, Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union) which crippled Mazzochi and the Labor Party effort. [Then PACE merged into the Steelworkers Union in 2005.] I've always wondered about Wages' motivations and understanding of what he was doing with that merger. Wasn't it obvious that merging into the much larger Paperworkers Union would end OCAW's progressive political work? Things got worse for Mazzochi and the Labor Party effort when the Democrats/liberals/neo-liberals falsely framed Ralph Nader as the cause of Gore's defeat in the 2000 presidential election. Mazzochi had personally endorsed his longtime ally Ralph Nader (i.e. in establishing the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, OSHA; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Mazzocchi ) in his 2000 Green Party presidential campaign. Then early in 2002 Mazzochi was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died that fall. These were crucial developments in the short life of the Labor Party which lost momentum and was essentially wrapped up in 2007. [Labor Party leader Mark Dudzic has soldiered on with the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare.] Seth Ackerman's influential November 2016 Jacobin magazine article *Blueprint for a New Party* is largely a tendentious accounting of the failure of the Labor Party effort. Ackerman claims that the Labor Party could have been successful if (we)/they had run candidates as Democrats. It appeared to me (as a member of DSA) that Ackerman's article/argument was the foundational rationale for DSA to support candidates running on the Democrat Party ticket. https://jacobinmag.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democratic-labor-party-ackerman -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1357): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1357 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76730065/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
