Making a Right Turn

ETS!,

What the fuck!? You bunch of lame, loser lefties! By carrying ACORN in your "activist" listing, you are helping unwitting people become scabs for an organization whose workers have been on strike for union recognition for a month. The president of ACORN wrote in Labor Notes @ 4yrs. ago an article which supported union organizing on a shop-by-shop basis. Now he sings a different tune as his workers in Philly & Seattle have joined the IWW, & you sleazy bastards couldn't care less! Why not change your name to BOW DOWN TO THE STATE? You're playing the same goddamn game as those you bag on in your now-useless rag! Motherpigfuck you all to hell!!

--Benjamin Ferguson

G.P. comments: The month-long ACORN strike has put ETS!, like many individuals, in an awkward position. Several of us have worked with IWW in the past, but we've had great affinity and respect for both IWW and ACORN. We ran a pro-strike insert flyer, along with a story (2-28-01), but also continued to run (in a separate layout process) an ongoing ACORN directory listing.

That six-month ACORN ad is due to expire. At the last meeting, we decided not to insert ourselves further into the strike by pulling one side's ads, though we will not solicit ACORN ads until there's an amicable settlement. We have had no contact with ACORN since the strike began.

It's a complex situation. Unlike this week's angry letter-writer (who never asked whom among us makes ad decisions or why--anyone associated with the paper is just a pig-fucking tool of The Man), we've all felt the need for nuance, not rhetoric, and to answer questions. Quite simply, a number of conflicting strike opinions are circulating in the community, and rather than having us judge who's "right" and tell you what to think, we'll lay out what we've heard, invite response, and you can decide.

If even a fraction of the striking ACORN workers' allegations are true-- missed, late, and partial paychecks, poor worker safety, scab workers--ACORN, locally and nationally, is guilty of utterly reprehensible conduct.

But there's more. A personal friend of mine witnessed the original presentation of demands for unionization by workers. She reported that the workers were out picketing without even waiting for a response. She, and others, also say that the workers hadn't signed cards--a basic unionization step whose omission would leave ACORN's striking workers open to all sorts of legal harassment, including termination.

Quite a few sympathetic radical unionists similarly question the IWW's competence. They ask: are the modern-day Wobblies--who don't hold a single actual union contract--a "real" union, or a tiny, dysfunctional ideological construct, invoking the glory of 80+ years ago? Or both? The local IWW's track record on this score, from Anacortes to the Lincoln Mini-Mart, and back through strikes by canvassers at local peace and environmental groups years ago, isn't encouraging. They don't win--so far.

That complicates any assessment. But one wonders--if it's true--why the IWW turned down an ACORN offer of recognition of a national bargaining unit? The laborites are asking whether inexperienced ideologues are leading--and in some cases, speaking out of turn on behalf of--a half dozen even less experienced, genuinely aggreived workers, down a path from which no jobs may emerge?

At this point, ACORN staffers across the country are organizing. Is ACORN using its local/national dynamic as an excuse to avoid accountability? Is IWW? Are ACORN's national SEIU patrons fighting unionization? At minimum, ACORN has not negotiated in good faith. Has the IWW? Or are the Wobs spoiling for a fight, at the expense of the workers they're defending?

ACORN says its locals are not only self-funding but tithe 17% of their income to the national outfit. Is it true? If so, who's responsible for Seattle's allegedly short paydays? The Executive Director, Doug Bloch? The canvassers who presumably raise the operating money? How can ACORN afford to double-shift canvassers (for safety) if it can't afford the ones it has? Is it simply overstaffed? If so, wouldn't layoffs be the logical outcome of the organizing drive?

Finally, and most importantly, when the original grievances involved are endemic to organizing jobs in the lowly left, why target the only paid grass roots outfit in the region that was actively organizing low-income people of color? Who benefits if ACORN folds here? (Or operates with scabs?) Who loses, and why? This is not some greedy widgetmaker, seizing labor's rightful share of the gains of its production. It's a local nonprofit trying, by all accounts, to do valuable work on limited resources, and the local IWW seems intent on destroying it.

To be replaced with--what? If the IWW settles into intractable demands, it doesn't benefit workers or ACORN--just the redlining mortgage lenders and vindictive bureaucrats ACORN once fought, and that the Wobblies have never concretely worked against. The ACORN workers are young, smart, and can get other jobs (some reportedly already have). ACORN's poor, largely non-white clientele, the strike's most hurt "side," doesn't get out so easily.

These aren't our questions; they're out in the community already. Before blindly rushing to the axiom that All Workers Must Be Supported At Whatever Cost--which, admittedly, is what I tend to blindly embrace myself--these questions need answering. Responses, from all sides, are welcome.

ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.