The Hudson Valley Radical: July 2012

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Spotlight: Community Voices Heard

From their mission statement, "Community Voices Heard (CVH) is an organization of low-income people, predominantly women with experience on welfare, working to build power in New York City and State to improve the lives of our families and communities. CVH is an organization of, by, and for low-income workers that recognizes the centrality of women and people of color."
The following is CVH's "Theory of Social Change"

Community Voices Heard believes that we must build the power of low-income people, particularly women, through building an organization that low-income people control and lead.

We also believe we have a successful model that has and can continue to mobilize large numbers of low-income people to: DEVELOP into community leaders, PARTICIPATE in the policy making process, WIN concrete policies that improve our members' lives, and CREATE a more fair and equitable community for everyone. We believe we win on our issues and contribute to a broader movement for social change by acting on the following theories:

BUILDING A PEOPLES ORGANIZATION

Social change comes through building and maintaining strong, powerful, independent people’s organizations, not relying on mobilizing numbers of people at isolated times. At CVH, low-income people, particularly women, develop their skills, engage in political education and strategic development, and directly negotiate and deal with power. This process is key for sustaining and keeping people involved over the long-term. At the same time, it ensures that we retain a place at the negotiating table.

SHIFTING THE PARAMETERS OF THE DEBATE

We actively and strategically embrace and represent political positions that might not be popular and in the mainstream. We aim for policies that will truly improve our members’ lives and change the balance of social, economic and political power, while negotiating for concrete wins along the way. We seek a position that will move the debate away from the center, and to the left of the political spectrum, where economic justice issues are better represented.

USING A COMBINATION OF STRATEGIES

We actively embrace and implement a combined strategy of organization building, leadership development and mass mobilization. We derive our power through the effective combination of these strategies.

SEEKING AND BUILDING CONSTITUENT-LED COALITIONS

Coalition and ally work is critical to certain campaigns and goals, but we seek to participate in coalitions that are led and directed by base-building organizations that are directly accountable to their constituencies. For us, this creates opportunities to nurture and develop community leaders, which builds our organizational strength and power.

ENGAGING A BROADER MOVEMENT

While we believe that building our own organizational power is critical to social change, we support activities within and outside of our organization that help to build the greater social change and economic justice movements. This includes our work on global justice issues, training young people of color to be organizers, assisting in the start-up of other nascent organizations, and participating in key solidarity events and actions.

Visit Community Voices Hear online at cvhaction.org
Join CVH's sister organization Community Voices Hear Power at cvhpower.org

Con-Ed Workers' Struggle Revives Labor in NYC

NEW YORK, NY- After making our way through several blocks of barricaded and closed-off roads, Emily Woo of the Freedom Socialist Party and I made our way into Union Square in mid-town Manhattan to the blaring music of Bruce Springsteen. Someone asked me who was performing, and though The Boss wasn't there (only speakers), hundreds of unionists and their supporters were. It soon became clear that the fight against the Con-Ed lock-out is the latest in a long line of historic labor battles in New York.

It was clear Tuesday that the spirit of solidarity was in the air. Those who spoke represented various unions. Many speakers re-iterated the message that this was our collective fight, a fight that we as workers must take on together. As one pointed out, re-stating the classic Wobbly slogan, "An Injury to One is an Injury to All." In opening his address to the crowd, UWUA Local 1-2 stated, "Today we are all utility workers." A handful of socialist groups like the FSP also made it out to the square, with signs reading messages like "No More Wisconsins, Labor Must Break with the Democrats!"

To understand why this fight has captured the anger and the fighting spirit of all trade union activists and radical workers in New York, it is important to understand what led to this point. Con-Ed made $1 billion in profits last year alone. Their CEO, Kevin Burke, pocketed $17 million.Yet, for him, that's not enough. Con-Edison, New York's energy giant, demanded that the workers' pensions be replaced with a 401(k), the notoriously risky retirement plan that is beholden to the whims of the market. The workers would have none of it, and union negotiators backed their stance. In response, Con-Edison's 8,500-strong workforce was, and still is, locked out. In order to keep the city running, Con-Ed's 5,000 (yes, 5,000) managers were put to work alongside scab labor brought in from out of state. The lock-out is intended to strong-arm the workers into accepting the owner's demands. So far, Con-Ed workers have had none of it. We call on the lock-out to end immediately and for contract negotiations to result in the full re-reinstatement of workers' pensions.

Now, you might wonder why Con-Ed has 5,000 people to manage on 8,500 workers. This is obviously not logical if the goal is to run an efficient operation, although it is logical if the goal is to establish a labor hierarchy. A demand of Local 1-2 must be to put this managerial class to work. This, alongside cuts to CEO Kevin Burke's 17-million dollar salary will allow these workers to take home the pay check they deserve.

This fight may also be remembered as the one that began radicalizing the labor movement. I have to be cautious as I say this because, well, "cautious" has been the nicest way to define labor leaders in past 30 or so years. Labor unions will hold on to every last shred of faith in the socio-political establishment. It remains to be seen whether the latest prolonged crisis will finally shake that faith to its foundations and replace it with a newfound radicalism. Yet, if anything defined yesterday's rally, it was the recognition, or as Nick Pinto of The Village Voice put it, the "embrace [of] class war."

This embrace of class war is mirrored around the globe, from Quebec to Cairo. In this context, the Con-Ed struggle is not only the latest in a long line of New York labor fights, it is also the local focus of a world-wide uprising. And this local focus is much needed, as the American labor movement has been stalling for years on end. There's nobody around who still remembers the emergence of the American labor movement that abolished sweatshops, child labor and put in place the 40-hour workweek. The fights of the Wobblies and the radicalized working class in the first two decades of the 20th Century are available to us only as chapters in a handful of leftist history books. Few still alive today were participants in the great labor struggles of the 1920's and 30's such as the Auto-Lite and West Coast Longshore strikes of 1934. Yet it is this legacy that labor may be poised to continue today. All unionized workers must play a role in making their union emerge from this 80-year long thaw.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Spotlight: Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson

Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson did not exist, even in embryonic form, 12 months ago. While there were organizations that worked to defend homeowners against foreclosure, there was not nearly the kind of community support for this defense tactic. However, at an event last month, 100 people from various different community organizations and activist groups, along with individual concerned citizens, marched through the streets of Poughkeepsie. As we rallied outside of 3 foreclosed homes, a clear message was sent to our local government: Either you fix up these homes and house the homeless, or we will.

This change is largely due to the emergence of the Occupy movement. Like other Occupy encampments around the country, Occupy Poughkeepsie set up an Anti-Foreclosure Working Group to tackle the increasing wave of home foreclosures. Incensed that taxpayers funneled 7 trillion dollars into the banks only to have the same banks kick our neighbors out of their homes, this working group garnered a great amount of support from the community and eventually spun-off to become its own organization, Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson.

Right now, the largest problem effecting the organization is its ability to reach out to homeowners in foreclosure. Volunteers are needed to canvass homes and spread the word. If you want to get involved, search Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson on Facebook or e-mail nobodyleavesmidhudson@gmail.com

Is your (or a friend's) home being foreclosed on? Contact nobodyleavesmidhudson@gmail.com and fight together to keep your home.