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Episode 275 – Insurgent Labor with David Van Deusen
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In a previous episode of this podcast, David Van Deusen spoke about the radical ten-point program adopted by the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO. This time, he and Steve discuss David’s new book, Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO from 2017 to 2023.
They look at the importance of working-class unity, the need for unions to be more democratic and inclusive, and the need for a new approach to labor organizing. They touch on the problems of racial oppression, police unions, global labor movements, healthcare, and the futility in relying on the political parties. David’s book provides insights and lessons from their experiences in Vermont, offering a potential roadmap for a more effective and inclusive labor movement in the US and abroad.
They discuss the global race to the bottom and international solidarity of the working class.
“We can’t have the US government foreign policy defining our foreign policy as a labor movement. We need to look for those groups that are truly engaged with struggles against the capitalists, against the elite, against the billionaires. And we need to make one on one direct relationships with them and support them where we can … We should be reaching our hands out as a labor movement, as a US labor movement, saying ‘what can we do to support you?’ Because if they win there, they’re going to set the example that could spread to other regions of the Middle East, Europe, and aspects of the United States. And shouldn’t we be supporting democracies, especially those that actively invite labor activists, labor unions, to be part of the molding of the society that they labor within?”
Check out the other interview with David:
Episode 186 – The Power of Organizing with David Van Deusen
David Van Deusen is a longtime organizer and militant union leader. He served two terms as President of the Vermont AFL-CIO (2019-2021 & 2021-2023) and is part of the working class left United! Slate. He is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a past member of Anti-Racist Action. His new book from PM Press is called Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017-2023.
Macro N Cheese – Episode 275
Insurgent Labor with David Van Deusen
May 4, 2024
[00:00:00] Geoff Ginter [Intro/Music]: Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.
[00:00:45] Steven Grumbine: All right. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today’s guest is none other than the return of David Van Deusen. He is a longtime organizer and militant union leader. He served two terms as president of the Vermont AFL-CIO from 2019-2021 and 2021-2023, and is part of a working class left united slate.
He is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, [DSA] and a past member of anti-racist action. His new book from PM Press is called Insurgent Labor, the Vermont AFL CIO from 2017 to 2023. Let me bring on my guest, David Van Deusen. Welcome to the show, sir.
[00:01:34] David Van Deusen: Thanks for having me, Steve. It’s always a pleasure being on your show. You guys do a great job out there.
[00:01:38] Grumbine: Thank you. I really appreciate that. I’ve got a copy of your book. Thank you so much for providing that. But it was really exciting to see the threads of our communication network. I’ll call it the leftist mycelium that connects us all together here. And Joe Burns, who I happen to have tremendous respect for, blessing this book and saying, ‘this guy’s living class struggle unionism.’
[00:02:06] Van Deusen: Well, that was great. Joe is a great guy, great organizer, really good values. I felt honored that he would provide a blurb to the book. So, hats off to him.
[00:02:17] Grumbine: Absolutely. It’s a testament to the work that you’re doing though. I think that’s really the star of the show, for at least today’s podcast anyway. And I want to talk to you because we talked previously, you’ve been on the show, we’ve talked about the Vermont AFL CIO and the little green book. I am very interested in understanding what the heck got you to do a book?
That’s a lot of work. What pushed you to write a book? What was your inspiration for writing this?
One of
[00:02:48] Van Deusen: When I think about it, our history, working class history, the things we do in the 100, 200, 300 year struggle for a better life, more dignity, more power for working class, regular people, often, unfortunately, I find the history is not written by the folks that really compose society… it’s written by a lot of people who have never experienced the nine to five struggles that us regular working people do.
So, where it’s possible, it behooves us to capture our own history. To map out the lessons we’ve learned, the challenges we’ve faced, and how we’ve overcome certain challenges, how we’ve fell short in others. So, the next incarnation, the next generation, has something to build on, to look back on, to grow from, and to become stronger.
So, I frankly felt it was my political obligation to capture our recent history here at the Vermont AFL CIO. Because frankly, we’ve done things very differently, and I think that we do show through our success and through our different methodologies, that there is a different path forward for the labor movement, if the will exists to implement it.
And I wanted to get that down. I didn’t want it to be something that lives, for only as long as those who are presently involved are in office.
One
[00:04:12] Grumbine: of the things that fascinates me about the union movement, as a whole, is there’s two different worlds of unions. There is the corporate union, and then there is the class struggle union. And the corporate union, I’m sure it has its own value, be it probably far less impact than what class struggle unions would have.
But this concept of class struggle has been lost on America. People don’t even understand that we’re in the middle of a class war. They’re in a war they don’t even know they’re in. And that extends beyond the union floor unfortunately, because we’ve stripped unions down. What is union participation rate right now?
Very low, even though we’re seeing an uptick, it’s been hampered by all forms of attacks from capitalism and capital, and the powers that be that support capital.
Reagan, Clinton, there are no good guys on that side of the ball. Tell me a little bit about the state of unions, as you wrote this book.
[00:05:17] Van Deusen: Every day of the week, I’d rather belong to a union, rather than a no union. Absolutely having a union contract is very important, just for your job security, getting decent raises, this kind of thing. But when you were talking before about there being a qualitative difference between a corporate union, the old guard model, and class struggle unions, you’re spot on.
Since the 1950s, or at least for the last couple generations, big unions in the United States have gone down the road, being more conservative, putting their eggs in the basket of a Democratic Party, which abandons them and fails them time and time again. And sinking a huge portion of our resources into supporting candidates in elections, that frankly, don’t support us. And then lobbying in Washington for bills- 9 out of 10 times, if not more- that never see the light of day, never get passed. And what that’s done, is that has driven down union participation, has driven down the interest- the natural interest- of the broader working class unions. And we’ve gone from 35% union density in the 1950s, to roughly nationwide, 10% today, 10%.
And so, when we talk about class struggle unions, when we talk about not being afraid of the strike. When we talk about calling a spade a spade, and recognizing that both major political parties in the US don’t stand with us, that they’re capitalist parties. And even if the Democrats give us some lip service, they don’t stand by it.
And by not recognizing these facts, by not being unafraid to build- and then utilize- our power, we’ve seen less people feel a sense of ownership over the union and less people are participating. Less people joining. And so we’ve seen declines, decade in, decade out. Now that’s starting to turn around. The national AFL CIO leadership now, does put a priority on organizing.
The Vermont AFL CIO, a period of time where the book Insurgent Labor covers 2019 to 2023, we have grown every year. We’re one of the few labor councils in the United States of America, consistently growing. In 2019, when we came to power, we had 10,000 members who were members of AFL CIO unions in Vermont. And today, we have 20,000 members. So, we’re doing some things right. And the things that we’re doing right, is we’re creating our own independent political poll.
We’re not going to stand by a party, just because they have a D next to their name, or just because they’re the better of two bad options. We’re going to fight, and we’re going to ask our members to fight, on those issues that they care about. And furthermore, we’re going to actually ask our members what they care about.
And we’re not going to be afraid, and we haven’t been afraid, to debate hard questions. Not just the easy ones, but the hard questions. And then ask our members to raise their hands and take a vote and tell us what the priorities should be. So, we’re not putting the cart before the horse- meaning the political party in front of the interest of unions- we’re asking our members to define what the priorities are. But since they have the sense of ownership, because they define the priorities, then stand up and fight. Be it on the picket lines, be it with work stoppages, contract campaigns, political fights, whatever it is. And we’re growing as a result of it, because we’re not afraid to call a spade a spade.
We’re not afraid to say openly, that we are in a class war, and frankly, we have to win it. It is an existential fight, and that means making some folks uncomfortable. That means doing things differently. That means being confrontational.
[00:09:03] Grumbine: I appreciate that very much. What you’ve just stated is very much in line with the work that we’re doing here. I’m looking at your book and realizing yoUStart off with what I think is really important, and that is working class unity. This has fundamentally changed because there has been a bastardization of the term “class” by splintering it.
And they’re trying to make these class distinctions through micro-segmentation
[00:09:35] Van Deusen: You’re so right…
[00:09:36] Grumbine: as opposed to simply ‘those who work for a paycheck.’
[00:09:40] Van Deusen: You’re right.
[00:09:42] Grumbine: Take me through your concept of working class unity.
[00:09:46] Van Deusen: I’ll tell you something funny about that. The degradation of working class unity is not by accident. That is a cultivated objective of society, the powers that be in society, going back again, decades. I remember my mother telling me, my mother used to say we were ‘lower middle class’ growing up, we’re lower middle class.
My dad was a union member, made a modest income, with good benefits. And one day, when I was older- an adult- I remember going back, visiting her for Easter or Christmas or something like this. And I asked her, I said, “mom, where’d you come up with this idea that we are lower middle class, why did you never say we were working class?”
And she told me that growing up in the public schools, in elementary school, the teachers taught the class that if you hung pictures of your family, largely, on the wall, you were working class. And if you hung any art on your wall, that meant you were some version of middle class. So I thought that was hilarious.
But I also find that very revealing, that there’s been this contrived notion, that does seek to divide, that does seek to put people in different categories of class. The bottom line is this, if you depend on that next paycheck to pay the bills, if you are two, three, four paychecks away from being totally screwed- which I guarantee you just about everybody is in the United States of America- you are working class.
That’s the deal. And working class people do not currently have the power in society to shape those conditions in which we live. But we inherently do have the potential to capture that power and build that power. Because, as should be common sense, if we don’t do our jobs- we’re 99% of the people- the entire world shuts down.
So, the trick is not to allow ourselves to put such an emphasis on those things that divide us, the minutiae that maybe keeps us apart, but to contemplate those broad areas that, frankly, bring us together. And that is us as a working class, because we have a common interest in having access to health care, universal health care.
We have a common interest in ourselves and our neighbors being paid a livable wage or prevailing wage. We have a common interest in our children being able to go to university or technical training. We have a common interest in achieving full employment. These things bring us together as a class. And if we recognize that together, not just as one union, not just as one international union, or a local at one state federation, or unionized workers or non unionized workers, but all of us together as a working class, and we start to coordinate those efforts, work together in those efforts, break down silos, work with community organizations… there is absolutely no limit to the amount of power we could build and wield. Change the world, to change what is politically possible, in Vermont, in the United States, in the world.
[00:13:01] Grumbine: I do want to get this giant elephant out of the way.
[00:13:05] Van Deusen: Sure.
[00:13:06] Grumbine: The working class is typically derided, even by leftists, as class reductionist. When we say the working class, people say, ‘what about my specific issues?’ And I am a believer that in order for the working class to unite, it must be an intersectional movement.
It cannot be what the Democrats do, “now is not the time for us to worry about working class unity, now is the time to vote blue.” So, all the different groups that are marginalized, that make up the working class, that have their own specific class work components, how do we create a unified working class, while recognizing those splinters and not silencing them, but incorporating them as the larger case for a working class struggle.
[00:14:03] Van Deusen: I don’t buy into the notion that there’s any negative connotation to, frankly saying in a factual way, that the great majority of people in this country, and on this planet, are working class, and that is where our commonalities lie. We’re not going to build a mass movement capable of challenging the status quo and the elites- be they from the Republicans, the Democrats, or anywhere else- we’re not going to be able to do that unless we do recognize our commonality and act in solidarity with each other. And the one thing that brings us together is the fact that we all belong to the same class. That’s not to belittle or to somehow disregard the fact that lots of different groups in the United States have faced other levels- or subgroups, I should say- of oppression.
We’ve all faced oppression if we’re working class, but other groups have very specific histories. Black people in this country were largely brought over in chains. That’s an historic injustice that is not going to be set right easily. Native Americans in this country, faced hundreds of years of attempted genocide.
These are realities that we have to recognize. And we need to be in solidarity with their particular struggles, in their particular communities for sure. But building a bridge between Pine Ridge [the Lakota Reservation] South Dakota, and the struggles of working class people in Trenton, New Jersey, or a black community in Los Angeles… the bridge that we build between these struggles is our commonalities found in the class system we live in. And the fact that it is a minority, super minority, 1% capitalist class, the elite, Republicans and Democrats, which are in a position of power to define the terms and conditions in which we live.
So we need to recognize the various struggles. We need to reach our hand out in solidarity. But at the end of the day, we need to come together as a working class first, and find that unity within us. I’ll give you an example: here in Vermont, one of the things we did as United, after we came to power in 2019 is we- very early on- met with an organization called Migrant Justice, which largely represents about 2000 [mostly undocumented] farm workers, on our dairy farms here in Vermont. And frankly, they don’t have legal recognition as a union, but they’re doing all the same things as a union, to uplift the working conditions and the pay on the dairy farms. So, we met with them to learn about their struggles and frankly, many of their struggles were similar, or the same types we face day to day in the labor movement.
And we started coordinating solidarity with their picket lines against bad players, and they were happy to come on our picket lines and provide solidarity with us. And in this way, both of our voices were amplified by working together. And frankly, internally within the unions, we were rightly actually able to say, look, these are working class people just like us.
They have a different situation, they were not native born like most of us were, and they lack certain legal protections that we have as American citizens… but they’re fighting for an eight hour day. Shit, our grandparents or great grandparents had that same fight years and years ago. And they’re having that fight right now for safe working conditions, which we still struggle for on the shop floors to this very moment, in traditional union shops.
So, I think there’s more commonalities than there are differences. And I think we need to focus on those commonalities at the same time, by recognizing the acute struggles that specific trainees may face.
[00:17:49] Grumbine: Well stated. One of the remarks I saw, is that you’re working on building relationships between other unions. You’re working on building power between industries, between different corporate unions to develop this class struggle union, which represents that larger body politic that you just described.
And I think that’s really important. I get a lot of folks that are old guard union people, that want to tell me how it was 30 years ago. And I’m saying it didn’t work great. Look at all the losses that we’ve had, by doing it the way you used to do it. Stop selling us a failed strategy and give us a strategy that brings us the kind of gains that we can all stand behind. I really want to hear more about what you expect, as part of this unified working class, amongst different unions. What does that look like in praxis?
[00:18:54] Van Deusen: First, my intent with the book- and with the serious organizing that I’ve been engaged in for a number of years- my intent is not to belittle, or somehow offend those that came before me. I think that many union leaders did the best they could for many years, but the reality is this, we meaning the labor movement, for decades have done the same thing over and over.
And I’ve said it once, but it’s worth saying again, we hitched our wagon to the Democrats, we put a massive amount of resources into lobbying, a massive amount of resources into backing political candidates that don’t back us, and we’ve gotten next to nothing for that in return, and our union density has massively shrunk.
So, if you keep doing that over and over as a strategy, and expect a different outcome, that becomes insane. We can’t do that. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. The [Vermont AFL-CIO] United Slate here in Vermont is not so arrogant to think we know all the answers, but we do know this, we need to experiment and we need to do things different, because we need a different outcome.
We need to learn to grow and we need to learn to build our power, and build a new political context where real wins are possible. And that’s what we’ve sought to do. That’s what the book tries to get into. The thing with the old guard though, is we need to break. Feelings are hurt with the old ways.
We need to break with the old ways and we shouldn’t have the goal of running anyone down, but at the same time, we can’t be afraid to hurt people’s feelings. So, when we came to power in 2019, one of the very, very first things we did, was we massively cut our budget, our state annual budget that goes into lobbying, and instead put that into organizing.
And here we built a stable of what we call ‘on call organizers’, who are able to work as needed. When affiliates call us and they say they’d like support, either for new organizing campaigns, or internal organizing campaigns, or some sort of community project that’s helping to build working class power.
And since 2019, we’ve been able to deploy those resources in a very real way, and see measurable results in the campaigns where they are deployed. And that is a contributing factor from a number of the shops that we’ve organized, since we came into office. And before that, with all of our money, we spent a lot of it and we were just like in Washington DC, even though the Democrats have historically been a veto proof majority here in our state house, we saw very little in return.
I think what we need to do is we need to focus, at this time, in building our numbers and building our power. Getting ourselves internally organized, so the rank and file, the actual union numbers with calluses on their hands, are willing and able to step up and do what needs to be done, to change the political context in which we work.
And if we do that well, and if we grow, and if we do this the way it needs to be done, then we could pivot, and put more of a focus- or more than we would be during this time- on the legislative end or on the political end. And as we grow our power, the politicians are going to be more apt to listen to us and want to do what we say, because frankly, as we get stronger, they will fear what the ramifications are if they don’t. But to try to leapstep that growth period, to try to disregard the need for growing power first, and instead from a weak position, try to win minor gains on the legislative or electoral front… it seems we have the whole dynamic backwards and we can’t be doing it anymore.
[00:22:37] Grumbine: David, what you just said, we have got to build power outside of the electoral process, before the electoral process is going to matter. And if we don’t have that power and we’re not organized to build parallel structures, to be able to support each other during a strike, you’ve got to earn a general strike, you don’t just do one. You’ve got to be building the mutual aid, the ability to help support people financially, to take bold action. You’ve got to build that external power, to be able to facilitate the bold moves that people frequently talk about, but they don’t have any means of executing.
[00:23:18] Van Deusen: You have to build those muscles. You’re not going to walk in the ring tomorrow afternoon- because you really want to fight- and win the world championship. You got to do your training. You got to do the hard work to get to that part. I’m with you all the way on that. And let’s not forget, they were in the Great Depression during the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t just wave a magic wand, and all of a sudden we had social programs. It wasn’t like that. There were millions of people out in the streets. There were mass demonstrations across this country. There were mass work stoppages, and record numbers of strikes going on across this country.
And the politicians, from both parties, rationally observed that they had two options there. They could either go with something like the New Deal, what FDR was advocating for, and change the social contract in the United States, or frankly, they were terrified that they could face a revolutionary situation, and that was a reality there, and that was driven by the workers. Working class people being organized, and more and more using power, not being afraid to use power and doing what needs to be done.
And that’s a motivation from a political point of view, that was fear that motivated the politicians of status quo to move towards a New Deal. So, if we’re going to have those kind of gains, again, and go beyond that, we also have to build our level of rank and file participation, ownership over the labor movement.
We need to democratize the labor movement, so workers actually have a say in the policies we pursue and how we do it. Cause they’re not going to man the barricades for us, if they don’t have a sense of ownership.
[00:24:54] Grumbine: And let me just say one more thing before I dive deeper into your book. I think that it’s important to recognize that what you’re doing, you’re not building this unity at the labor movement, inside the Democratic Party. You’re building it as a union. You’re building it beyond the structure of a political party.
And I’ve said this, and I keep getting lambasted by well meaning people… the Democratic Party, first of all, it’s not a working class party. It is a bourgeois capitalist party.
[00:25:25] Van Deusen: Absolutely.
[00:25:27] Grumbine: And second of all, every single time you have some power, there’s always going to be a parliamentarian based on what they do.
There’s always going to be somebody that is long term party apparatchik, that’s going to make the caucus go a certain way.
[00:25:42] Van Deusen: A foil, there’s always going to be a foil, a Joe Manchin or a Sinema.
[00:25:46] Grumbine: The rotating villain.
[00:25:48] Van Deusen: It’s a shell game. They move around who the villain is, so they have an excuse to say, “sorry, we couldn’t deliver on the Employee Free Choice Act, but you know what, next election, if you only double down and get us 20 more Democrats, we’ll definitely deliver next time.”
But you know what? We’ve been waiting since post New Deal, and they’re yet to deliver. So, at a certain point, you gotta say, that’s not working, and we need to do something else.
[00:26:14] Grumbine: We have had more Democratic super majorities, where you’ve got President, Supreme Court, the House, the Senate. Democrats have been a kissing cousin and they have done nothing in that space. Let’s jump into your book. You start out with this mass labor picket and Scott Walker, the Vermont Republican Party.
Talk to me about how your book gets going.
[00:26:40] Van Deusen: Here in Vermont, same year, before campaign season started in 2019, the Republican Party brought in Union Buster #1, [then Wisconsin Governor] Scott Walker, for a fundraiser in our largest city of Burlington. A bunch of locals got together, a lot of locals got together, at first from AFSCME [American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] and said, this can’t go unchallenged.
We have our own challenges here in Vermont, and if things like this become normalized, then what comes next? Are we going to face some sort of Wisconsin challenge of our collective bargaining rights one day? So anyway, largely AFSCME locals got together and says ‘we’re going to organize a picket’, and rapidly coordinated with the Vermont building trades.
And the building trades unions and AFSCME represented the core of the organizing that went into it. Now, 500 folks, 500 union members and allies marched on that picket line. It was major news in the state. You got to keep in mind Burlington has a population about 38,000. State of Vermont has a population of about 600,000.
So, in this rural state that we live in, mountainous, wooded, rural state… 500 people on the picket line is a big deal. I believe that was probably the largest labor backed rally, one of the largest labor backed rallies, in the decade that preceded. It was noteworthy. A comrade of mine told me that in New Hampshire, Scott Walker made an appearance and there was about 10 people on the picket line.
So, having this huge cross mix of just about every union in the state and allied organizations turn out to say, ‘Vermont is a union state, Burlington is a union city, get out of town Scott Walker’, created lots of energy. And created lots of notions that we don’t have to play on the back burner. We don’t have to be afraid to call for mass action.
And we could count on rank and file folks to get involved and care when it mattered. And for me, and a lot of folks that ended up running on our United slate later in 2019, it became apparent to us that there was an appetite. There was an energy that’s been brewing, it was building over time, for workers to really be active, for unions, to be active and to go to the next step.
And we were really inspired by that and realized that there was a real opportunity for us to make a major change, leadership change in the Vermont AFL CIO. And start to make these cultural changes, these structural changes, these attempts to further democratize the labor movement, that we started off talking about.
And so we ran, it was an incredibly close campaign. We ended up winning overwhelmingly, as far as seats on the executive board. And we won in total now four straight elections in a row where this working class left slate, this caucus united, has had a great majority on the executive board and the top officer positions.
[00:29:32] Intermission: You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible. Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon. Substack or our website, realprogressives.org. Now back to the podcast.
[00:29:54] Grumbine: In your book, you talk about the near death of Vermont labor talk to me about the near death.
[00:30:02] Van Deusen: Go back two years, 2017. And I’m not exaggerating when I say this, there were 20 something delegates at our convention, representing [at the time] 10,000 AFL CIO members in Vermont. Now, again, we now have 20,000 AFL CIO members in Vermont, a few short years later. But at the time, 20 something delegates, allegedly representing 10,000, you might not as well have an organization.
For all intents and purposes, it doesn’t exist. And the work that the AFL was doing for years, really was polite lobbying in the state house. Not much different than what’s going on in DC. Polite lobbying in the state house, spending a bunch of money on political mailings for a hundred or so Democrats we supported, who rarely, if ever, did anything measurable for us. And rank and file folks, a lot of them, when we started campaigning, when we started going around the state in 2019 saying it’s time for change, we can’t do this anymore… one of the most common questions that I heard in shops from regular working people is ‘what is the AFL CIO?’
Now, let that sink in. These are AFL CIO members. Now, they would know that they’re a member of IBW or AFSCME or Labors, whatever it is. They would know that and they know what local they’re in. A huge amount of them had no clue what the AFL CIO is.
And we’re supposed to be the federation that brings all the major unions together, to build political power. And our leadership, and I don’t think it had any sort of bad intent, it would do the best it could, but there was next to no communication between the top leadership and the rank and file. No one knew when there was an executive board meeting, maybe they met three times a year.
No one saw any minutes. Nobody saw any agendas. Nobody was invited to anything. The rank and file was never consulted or, in any meaningful way, asked their opinion on any political matters that could impact them. And so, it was natural that there was a lapse in understanding of what the AFL is or was. So, one of our first efforts when we campaigned in 2019, and one of the first things we did, is we explained to folks what the AFL CIO is.
We confirmed that, yes, it’s a problem that you don’t know what it is, and that’s a sign that it’s doing the wrong thing. But here’s how it could be a very powerful vehicle for change, to advocate for working class people like us, union, and frankly, non union too. And folks got that, it’s not rocket science.
You pose the question to a working person and you explain that, they get it. And when election day came, we went from, again, two years before, 20 something delegates, to a convention with a hundred plus delegates at it. The most well attended one in decades, and we won, and we’ve been fighting and succeeding in changing our labor movement ever since.
[00:33:00] Grumbine: You bring up Black Lives Matter and the police. And before we go there, regardless of how you feel about how Black Lives Matter has become today, back then, if you remember during [especially] the 2016 election, where Black Lives Matter was particularly active and bold. With that in mind, talk to me about the surrounding issues with Black Lives Matter, the police, and the politics of reality.
[00:33:29] Van Deusen: If you recall, right after the murder of George Floyd [and that was a murder], right after the murder of George Floyd, there were uprisings and demonstrations going on everywhere in the US, and rightly so.
And look, you would have to absolutely have blinders on and willfully choose to lie to yourself, if you say anything other than the fact, that our black community, working class black community, has been a subject of oppression since they were dragged to this country by the capitalists of their day, and sold them to slavery.
Those issues continue to this day. If you think about how many generations have passed since slavery was abolished, it’s not that many. If you stack some folks, life to death, some generations, it’s only a few generations, really, when you think about it, since the conclusion of the Civil War. And when George Floyd was murdered, it became immediately clear to the Vermont AFL CIO that we could not be a bystander in this historic moment.
We had a moral and political obligation to speak the truth. To stand in solidarity with those folks in the black community. Including those folks in the black community in Burlington, who are saying enough is enough, it’s time for a real change in society, it’s time to really confront racism and institutional racism, and change the playing field.
So, we were very thoughtful, as the elected executive board from the United, about how our public position should be. We took two executive board members, I invited input on my own from allied organizations and activists, especially from the black community, and sought to define a new labor politics when it comes to black oppression.
And I’m proud to say, coming out of that [not without much controversy], we are the first and only major labor organization in the United States to explicitly support black self-determination in the US. The experience of the black worker in the US, the black person in the US, is qualitatively different than many other groups, national groups or minority groups, that have also suffered race or nationality based oppression… the fact that slavery cannot be ignored.
So we also called for, controversially, a moratorium on organizing new police unions, because we wanted to make sure that the labor movement, frankly, is upholding the interests of regular working class people, and not folks that maybe can be engaged in activities that hurt those same communities.
That was met with much resistance from the National AFL CIO. They, frankly, flipped out against us, threatened us. I was concerned for a period of time, they might try to put us under trusteeship for that act, and seek to remove us from power, and that’s how serious it was. Richard Trumka, who is now decesased, was the president of the National AFL CIO. And I think he was terrified of revolts within the labor movement, demanding a more radical analysis, a more basic fundamental change in the way we relate to various communities, and policing in those communities. So, I’m proud of my executive board at the time.
I’m proud that United did the right thing and stood up. We also provided resources to our local Black Lives Matter chapter to help them organize. And also the Jericho Movement, in support of political prisoners, specifically those that came out of the Black Panther Party, and other groups such as the Black Panther Party out of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
The struggle is ongoing. We’re not going to solve the class, race, or capitalism problem in this country overnight, and we’re certainly not going to do it by taking good policy positions alone. They have to be coupled with action, and real support from the ranks. But we did do our part. And I like to say that as long as United is in power in Vermont, we’re always going to do our part.
[00:37:38] Grumbine: That’s a great point. There’s a class contradiction in there that is real challenging. And that is the beginning of policing in America, out here with the coal miner unions, and they fought back against those coal barons. And you ended up with the police force coming and shooting and killing them, and putting them back to the line.
So, I find a challenge to see the police union, without trying to get too in the weeds, they’re there to protect private capital, private property, and to do things that maybe run counter to the class in which they belong. That contradiction makes for a challenge, does it not?
[00:38:21] Van Deusen: Yeah, I understand your point, but I do think that the question of policing can be a nuanced one. Let’s not forget that during the same era, historically referenced, there are instances of IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] members running for sheriff and things like this. With the theory behind it that, if we use what means of democracy we have to capture these positions, then a person in authority on the policing side of things can be there to say, ‘no, we’re not going to go in and break up the strike, we’re not going to do that.’
So, there are examples where that has been used in history. And then I think that, we also would be wise not to paint every dynamic between citizens and policing with the same brush, with the same stroke. What goes on in Chicago, may be different than what goes on in Idaho. I think that we have to look at these specific cases and dynamics in place, in different communities.
Also in Vermont, in a small way, every community here may have degrees of power, but they directly elect from the people once every year or once every two years, depending on the community, two constables, a first and second constable, and they are accountable. If they abuse their rights, the next year they’re not going to get re-elected.
So, I think that we have to look at ways to make policing more accountable to people. We have to have civilian oversight boards with subpoena power, in order to help maintain that dynamic and shift control of policing back to actual citizens. But at the same time, despite all the problems that we have seen with racist policing in many parts of the US, things like the murder of George Floyd would never be justified and must be met with resistance on every front. At the same time, I understand the value of having that phone number to call at 3 o’clock in the morning when you hear things go bump in the night. So, I think it’s a complex issue and I think we need to engage in it.
And we can’t have the blinders on, and talk about it in ideological terms because they suit our ideologies. I think we have to talk about it from a democratic lens that starts from a base saying that we need direct citizen accountability, regarding the policing that takes place in our community.
[00:40:42] Grumbine: Fair enough. I want to move on to exporting the revolution
[00:40:46] Van Deusen: Yeah.
[00:40:47] Grumbine: To me, I find it challenging watching what the US official geopolitical strategy is around the world, which is, subjugating global South countries. Stealing their resources, basically using their underpaid labor in the worst possible conditions, to undermine the labor position of United States workers as well as other global North working class people.
Everybody but the elite, loses in this scenario. How do you export class struggle outside of this country?
[00:41:27] Van Deusen: First thing I gotta say about this, is when we’re talking about the race to the bottom [globally], often we’re talking about quote unquote “free trade”. And let’s not forget that it was the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton that led that charge, and got NAFTA passed. And let’s not forget that we lost hundreds of thousands of good union manufacturing jobs, as a direct result of those actions from Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party.
And now, it’s the Democrats, and largely the Republicans, that continue to support these job-killing treaties and trade agreements. I don’t think, in fact, I know it’s not a question of us exporting the class struggle. The folks in the global South, the folks in the so called third world, the folks in developing nations, they know the class struggle every day. And they are engaged in the class struggle.
The question is what do the United States unions do, to reach out their hand in solidarity to help support them, from within the capitalist behemoth that is the United States. Because, I’m a big fan of Sean Fain and the new UAW leadership. And you look at what they’re doing right now, trying to organize major car plants in the South, which politically, is unfriendly to unions… they’re doing God’s work.
And if they’re able to be successful down in the South, and start building a union base in the South, then the next thing we have to worry about is, we need to make sure that labor is strong enough all around the globe, so the capitalists [the elite, the billionaires], can’t just shut down those plants and then move them to Mexico, or another country where labor is even more exploited than it is here.
We need to think long term. So, what the UAW under Sean Fain is doing right now, is actually sending resources and know how to Mexico, to the unions in Mexico. To help them grow their power there, with the thought that is going to be a stabilizing factor here in the US. The stronger the Mexican unions are, that gives car manufacturers, capitalist class, a reason to pause, and not be so quick to try to send jobs down there.
If there’s a serious class conflict down there and there’s where they could be at our risk as well. So, this is what we need to do, as a labor movement, but we can’t let the tail wag the dog. And this has happened in the past, in decades past. We can’t have the US government and foreign policy, defining our foreign policy as a labor movement.
We need to look for those groups that are truly engaged with struggles against the capitalists, against the elite, against the billionaires. And we need to make one on one direct relationships with them, and support them where we can. One of the examples that jumps to mind is, right now today, in Northeastern Syria, huge swaths of the country, in a region called Rojava, are liberating themselves from ISIS.
Largely Kurdish forces there drove ISIS out. That’s fine and good. That’s great. That’s heroic. But now here’s the interesting thing, the folks in that part of Rojava, they are now seeking to build a direct participatory democracy. Which is secular and which includes labor unions as a decision making body, a participant in the construction of an economy, one that would be geared for the greater good of the whole, and not private capitalist interests. That is far reaching and that’s on par with what we may have seen in Paris Commune in 1871, or the Spanish Civil War in 1936, in certain regions of Catalonia, etc. Now that is a prime example of where we should be reaching our hands out as a labor movement, as a US labor movement, saying ‘what can we do to support you?’ Because if they win there, they’re going to set the example that could spread to other regions of the Middle East, Europe, and aspects of the United States. And shouldn’t we be supporting democracies, especially those that actively invite labor activists, labor unions, to be part of the molding of the society that they labor within?
[00:45:35] Grumbine: I absolutely agree 100% on that. I do want to bring up one thing, that’s a current thing, and I don’t know how this plays in, but I do find it to be incredibly important. And that is, we have a president that is saying that the support for, not only the proxy war with Ukraine, but also the murderous behavior in Palestine, is a jobs program for the US. Because that money is being spent in the US military contracting, and therefore is creating jobs. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:46:13] Van Deusen: If we want to have a jobs program, why don’t we have universal public health care for everybody and open up community health clinics in every single town and village in the United States, and put people to work that way? If we’re going to do that, as opposed to creating weapons that are being used to slaughter children in the occupied area of Gaza.
So, Joe Biden turned his back on the rail workers, when they took the right to strike away from this contract cycle [a little while ago now], and forced a bad contract down their throats- they had no paid sick days. He showed some real true colors there. Now, I don’t want to pretend that somehow that equals ‘it would be good if Donald Trump gets elected next term.’
Donald Trump is rabidly anti-union, and the amount of decisions that came out of his appointees, be they his appointees in the Supreme Court with the Janus decision, or the appointees he made to the National Labor Relations Board were horrendous, and were existential attacks on labor.
But Joe Biden, you’re absolutely right, he is hell bent on giving Israel every weapon it could possibly ever want to kill children. And that is what’s going on. This is ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza. Now, those folks in Gaza are working people too. They’ve been living in an occupation for generations. They have been in a state of crisis for generations.
And frankly, these are all ongoing war crimes on behalf of the right wing Israeli government. Something over 30,000 people, largely civilians, half being children have been slaughtered. Most of the population has been driven all the way to the South. And now that area is under threat from the right wing Israeli forces.
It is horrible. It is ethnic cleansing happening under our nose, and the United States government is supporting this, directly providing the arms, which makes us complicit. That also makes us less safe as a country too, because then we become perceived as a potential target for those that are looking to do things to retaliate against this ethnic cleansing.
I’m very proud of the fact that many of our major labor organizations- including the national AFL CIO, including the UAW, including APWU [American Postal Workers Union], the list goes on and on- are on record in support of a ceasefire. But we got to take it to the next level and we’ve got to use our power. We have to use our voice to say, calling for a ceasefire is not good enough.
We need all armed shipments to be shut down, that go to Israel, today. Cause it’s the only right thing to do. This bloodbath has to stop.
[00:48:53] Grumbine: Yes. So, I want to pivot slightly. We’ve got blue MAGA and we’ve got red MAGA not serving the working class. They are serving some other class and it has nothing to do with people, regular working people. It has to do with the moneyed interests of the Oligarch Olympics, and which oligarchs interests are tended to. So, with that in mind, I don’t want to be perceived as saying Donald Trump is good, because I don’t think he’s good at all. I’m just unwilling to allow a person an inch of saying Biden has done good things. [DVD: I hear you.] I don’t think the working class wins, regardless what happens in November. I think we lose across the board. That said, your thoughts on why we must keep Trump away from the White House.
[00:49:47] Van Deusen: It’s saying, in the next election, do you want to vote for Hitler or do you want to vote for the devil? And I don’t buy the notion of, we vote Democrat and we put all of our resources in the Democratic Party because they’re less of a threat than the modern Republicans. But here’s what concerns me about Trump’s Republican Party.
Now, the Republicans and Democrats historically have been the capitalist parties, they’ve been very similar on many policy issues. And they find smaller areas to disagree, to make it look like there’s a difference. However, in recent years, with the rise of Trump, I’m increasingly concerned that the national Republican Party is becoming more and more neo-fascist.
One that won’t even pretend to support the vestiges of democracy we still have in this nation. One that is increasingly apt to challenge, or overturn, or eliminate those vestiges of democracy we have, and that very much troubles me. On January 2021, we were a few bad generals away from shooting, taking part in the street of Washington, DC. We can’t forget that our democracy was in peril at that time, and we’re not out of the woods yet. So, I don’t think representational democracy in a capitalist system is all that together democratic. I think we have to fight for a much more participatory democracy model, of the social contract here in the US.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to risk the notion of even losing those representational avenues for expression, we currently have. I’m concerned, especially when Trump seems to use these quasi fascist organizations like Proud Boys or other close to being Nazi or racist groups as unofficial stormtroopers, unofficial street thugs, in an equation that he’s calculating for growing or maintaining his version of power.
That is frightening, and we need to look that in the eyes and know that is a challenge placed before us. And I think we’d be foolish, as a labor movement, to rely on the state, to rely on the Democratic Party, to rely on courts, to defend us from that. We need a galvanized, motivated, rank and file mass labor movement, that really does seek to have the involvement, of millions and millions of members, in every state of the union. Ready to go and ready to do what needs to be done, be it a general strike or other forms of direct action, to resist such challenges, to fight against such a rise in fascism. And it’s not going to be easy. And God knows, I hope I’m wrong about this because I certainly don’t wish that type of existential crisis again. But when I have serious concerns, that is the path we are heading on today and the labor movement would be wise to prepare for that now, and not seek to scramble to do something about it when it’s too late.
[00:53:02] Grumbine: Fair enough. And I think that’s really important because the forces of fascism are hiding in plain sight. I don’t know which is worse the one that comes at you from the front or the one that comes at you from the back is a wolf. But regardless, it’s fascism and it’s showing itself in Brazil, in Milei, throughout Europe.
It’s showing itself all around the world, and I believe a lot of that comes from austerity. And austerity is what feeds a lot of the capitalist system, to empower capital to squash labor. And so, I think that this is a system issue.
[00:53:39] Van Deusen: It is, but we [the labor movement] have to have some responsibility in this rise of the far right in the United States too. So, when the only alternatives by working people are perceived to be the Democrats and Republicans, and when time and time again, both those parties, regardless of who’s in power screw us, and when real wages are going down, when union density is going down, because our jobs were shipped overseas to super exploited markets, then people are going to say something needs to give, something needs to be different.
And if the national voices within the labor moment say, ‘yes, the solution is to double down and really do more for the Democrats this time’, at a certain point, if there’s no return on that investment, folks are going to be open to other voices. And if that alternative voice is a Trump type voice that says, ‘yeah, it’s the immigrants and I’m going to deal with them, and we’re going to mass deport them, and we’re going to do what needs to be done.’ And they present these false solutions, these fascist solutions to the problems, there’s going to be a bunch of folks that are disenfranchised, that have been taught the only choice is a Democratic Party, that over and over screws them, or the old war regular conservative party. And if those are their only choices and they know in their lives, their daily struggle, something needs to be different, if the MAGA folks are the ones painting themselves as the option, there’s going to be people that turn to that. So again, that gets back to why the labor movement needs to build itself as its own independent political pole, with its own set of priorities, with its own articulation for a different social contract, a different future, a worker centered future, then that becomes the alternative. And then we could start building real power, real strength in our communities, to change the world for the better. In a real way, not as a false or terrifying way, within the notion of a fascist alternative.
[00:55:41] Grumbine: David Van Deusen, this was a wonderful conversation. Where can we find more of your work and where can we buy your great book?
[00:55:49] Van Deusen: Thanks, brother. Folks who are interested in reading about what the United slate and the AFL CIO has achieved, since coming to power in 2019, are welcome to go to www.pmpress.org and they could order the book there.
[00:56:06] Grumbine: Fantastic. David, this is how it gets done. We start with labor. We’re all workers. Let’s start thinking about ourselves outside of the duopoly, and start thinking about what is it that we want and need. And David is leading that charge. David, thank you so much for your time. We’re going to have your book on our bookshelf and our RP Book Club.
So, I really look forward to getting more people to learn about this, then hopefully begin organizing themselves. Once again, thank you so much, David Van Deusen. My name is Steve Grumbine. I’m the host of the podcast, Macro N Cheese for David, my guest. We’re out of here. Thank you for tuning in. We’ll talk soon.
[00:56:56] End Credits: Production, transcripts, graphics, sound engineering, extras, and show notes for Macro N Cheese are done by the fantastic team of volunteers at Real Progressives, serving in solidarity with the working class since 2015. To support our work, please go to patreon.com/realprogressives, realprogressives.substack.com or realprogressives.org
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In a previous episode of this podcast, David Van Deusen spoke about the radical ten-point program adopted by the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO. This time, he and Steve discuss David’s new book, Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO from 2017 to 2023.
They look at the importance of working-class unity, the need for unions to be more democratic and inclusive, and the need for a new approach to labor organizing. They touch on the problems of racial oppression, police unions, global labor movements, healthcare, and the futility in relying on the political parties. David’s book provides insights and lessons from their experiences in Vermont, offering a potential roadmap for a more effective and inclusive labor movement in the US and abroad.
They discuss the global race to the bottom and international solidarity of the working class.
“We can’t have the US government foreign policy defining our foreign policy as a labor movement. We need to look for those groups that are truly engaged with struggles against the capitalists, against the elite, against the billionaires. And we need to make one on one direct relationships with them and support them where we can … We should be reaching our hands out as a labor movement, as a US labor movement, saying ‘what can we do to support you?’ Because if they win there, they’re going to set the example that could spread to other regions of the Middle East, Europe, and aspects of the United States. And shouldn’t we be supporting democracies, especially those that actively invite labor activists, labor unions, to be part of the molding of the society that they labor within?”
Check out the other interview with David:
Episode 186 – The Power of Organizing with David Van Deusen
David Van Deusen is a longtime organizer and militant union leader. He served two terms as President of the Vermont AFL-CIO (2019-2021 & 2021-2023) and is part of the working class left United! Slate. He is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a past member of Anti-Racist Action. His new book from PM Press is called Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017-2023.
Macro N Cheese – Episode 275
Insurgent Labor with David Van Deusen
May 4, 2024
[00:00:00] Geoff Ginter [Intro/Music]: Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.
[00:00:45] Steven Grumbine: All right. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today’s guest is none other than the return of David Van Deusen. He is a longtime organizer and militant union leader. He served two terms as president of the Vermont AFL-CIO from 2019-2021 and 2021-2023, and is part of a working class left united slate.
He is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, [DSA] and a past member of anti-racist action. His new book from PM Press is called Insurgent Labor, the Vermont AFL CIO from 2017 to 2023. Let me bring on my guest, David Van Deusen. Welcome to the show, sir.
[00:01:34] David Van Deusen: Thanks for having me, Steve. It’s always a pleasure being on your show. You guys do a great job out there.
[00:01:38] Grumbine: Thank you. I really appreciate that. I’ve got a copy of your book. Thank you so much for providing that. But it was really exciting to see the threads of our communication network. I’ll call it the leftist mycelium that connects us all together here. And Joe Burns, who I happen to have tremendous respect for, blessing this book and saying, ‘this guy’s living class struggle unionism.’
[00:02:06] Van Deusen: Well, that was great. Joe is a great guy, great organizer, really good values. I felt honored that he would provide a blurb to the book. So, hats off to him.
[00:02:17] Grumbine: Absolutely. It’s a testament to the work that you’re doing though. I think that’s really the star of the show, for at least today’s podcast anyway. And I want to talk to you because we talked previously, you’ve been on the show, we’ve talked about the Vermont AFL CIO and the little green book. I am very interested in understanding what the heck got you to do a book?
That’s a lot of work. What pushed you to write a book? What was your inspiration for writing this?
One of
[00:02:48] Van Deusen: When I think about it, our history, working class history, the things we do in the 100, 200, 300 year struggle for a better life, more dignity, more power for working class, regular people, often, unfortunately, I find the history is not written by the folks that really compose society… it’s written by a lot of people who have never experienced the nine to five struggles that us regular working people do.
So, where it’s possible, it behooves us to capture our own history. To map out the lessons we’ve learned, the challenges we’ve faced, and how we’ve overcome certain challenges, how we’ve fell short in others. So, the next incarnation, the next generation, has something to build on, to look back on, to grow from, and to become stronger.
So, I frankly felt it was my political obligation to capture our recent history here at the Vermont AFL CIO. Because frankly, we’ve done things very differently, and I think that we do show through our success and through our different methodologies, that there is a different path forward for the labor movement, if the will exists to implement it.
And I wanted to get that down. I didn’t want it to be something that lives, for only as long as those who are presently involved are in office.
One
[00:04:12] Grumbine: of the things that fascinates me about the union movement, as a whole, is there’s two different worlds of unions. There is the corporate union, and then there is the class struggle union. And the corporate union, I’m sure it has its own value, be it probably far less impact than what class struggle unions would have.
But this concept of class struggle has been lost on America. People don’t even understand that we’re in the middle of a class war. They’re in a war they don’t even know they’re in. And that extends beyond the union floor unfortunately, because we’ve stripped unions down. What is union participation rate right now?
Very low, even though we’re seeing an uptick, it’s been hampered by all forms of attacks from capitalism and capital, and the powers that be that support capital.
Reagan, Clinton, there are no good guys on that side of the ball. Tell me a little bit about the state of unions, as you wrote this book.
[00:05:17] Van Deusen: Every day of the week, I’d rather belong to a union, rather than a no union. Absolutely having a union contract is very important, just for your job security, getting decent raises, this kind of thing. But when you were talking before about there being a qualitative difference between a corporate union, the old guard model, and class struggle unions, you’re spot on.
Since the 1950s, or at least for the last couple generations, big unions in the United States have gone down the road, being more conservative, putting their eggs in the basket of a Democratic Party, which abandons them and fails them time and time again. And sinking a huge portion of our resources into supporting candidates in elections, that frankly, don’t support us. And then lobbying in Washington for bills- 9 out of 10 times, if not more- that never see the light of day, never get passed. And what that’s done, is that has driven down union participation, has driven down the interest- the natural interest- of the broader working class unions. And we’ve gone from 35% union density in the 1950s, to roughly nationwide, 10% today, 10%.
And so, when we talk about class struggle unions, when we talk about not being afraid of the strike. When we talk about calling a spade a spade, and recognizing that both major political parties in the US don’t stand with us, that they’re capitalist parties. And even if the Democrats give us some lip service, they don’t stand by it.
And by not recognizing these facts, by not being unafraid to build- and then utilize- our power, we’ve seen less people feel a sense of ownership over the union and less people are participating. Less people joining. And so we’ve seen declines, decade in, decade out. Now that’s starting to turn around. The national AFL CIO leadership now, does put a priority on organizing.
The Vermont AFL CIO, a period of time where the book Insurgent Labor covers 2019 to 2023, we have grown every year. We’re one of the few labor councils in the United States of America, consistently growing. In 2019, when we came to power, we had 10,000 members who were members of AFL CIO unions in Vermont. And today, we have 20,000 members. So, we’re doing some things right. And the things that we’re doing right, is we’re creating our own independent political poll.
We’re not going to stand by a party, just because they have a D next to their name, or just because they’re the better of two bad options. We’re going to fight, and we’re going to ask our members to fight, on those issues that they care about. And furthermore, we’re going to actually ask our members what they care about.
And we’re not going to be afraid, and we haven’t been afraid, to debate hard questions. Not just the easy ones, but the hard questions. And then ask our members to raise their hands and take a vote and tell us what the priorities should be. So, we’re not putting the cart before the horse- meaning the political party in front of the interest of unions- we’re asking our members to define what the priorities are. But since they have the sense of ownership, because they define the priorities, then stand up and fight. Be it on the picket lines, be it with work stoppages, contract campaigns, political fights, whatever it is. And we’re growing as a result of it, because we’re not afraid to call a spade a spade.
We’re not afraid to say openly, that we are in a class war, and frankly, we have to win it. It is an existential fight, and that means making some folks uncomfortable. That means doing things differently. That means being confrontational.
[00:09:03] Grumbine: I appreciate that very much. What you’ve just stated is very much in line with the work that we’re doing here. I’m looking at your book and realizing yoUStart off with what I think is really important, and that is working class unity. This has fundamentally changed because there has been a bastardization of the term “class” by splintering it.
And they’re trying to make these class distinctions through micro-segmentation
[00:09:35] Van Deusen: You’re so right…
[00:09:36] Grumbine: as opposed to simply ‘those who work for a paycheck.’
[00:09:40] Van Deusen: You’re right.
[00:09:42] Grumbine: Take me through your concept of working class unity.
[00:09:46] Van Deusen: I’ll tell you something funny about that. The degradation of working class unity is not by accident. That is a cultivated objective of society, the powers that be in society, going back again, decades. I remember my mother telling me, my mother used to say we were ‘lower middle class’ growing up, we’re lower middle class.
My dad was a union member, made a modest income, with good benefits. And one day, when I was older- an adult- I remember going back, visiting her for Easter or Christmas or something like this. And I asked her, I said, “mom, where’d you come up with this idea that we are lower middle class, why did you never say we were working class?”
And she told me that growing up in the public schools, in elementary school, the teachers taught the class that if you hung pictures of your family, largely, on the wall, you were working class. And if you hung any art on your wall, that meant you were some version of middle class. So I thought that was hilarious.
But I also find that very revealing, that there’s been this contrived notion, that does seek to divide, that does seek to put people in different categories of class. The bottom line is this, if you depend on that next paycheck to pay the bills, if you are two, three, four paychecks away from being totally screwed- which I guarantee you just about everybody is in the United States of America- you are working class.
That’s the deal. And working class people do not currently have the power in society to shape those conditions in which we live. But we inherently do have the potential to capture that power and build that power. Because, as should be common sense, if we don’t do our jobs- we’re 99% of the people- the entire world shuts down.
So, the trick is not to allow ourselves to put such an emphasis on those things that divide us, the minutiae that maybe keeps us apart, but to contemplate those broad areas that, frankly, bring us together. And that is us as a working class, because we have a common interest in having access to health care, universal health care.
We have a common interest in ourselves and our neighbors being paid a livable wage or prevailing wage. We have a common interest in our children being able to go to university or technical training. We have a common interest in achieving full employment. These things bring us together as a class. And if we recognize that together, not just as one union, not just as one international union, or a local at one state federation, or unionized workers or non unionized workers, but all of us together as a working class, and we start to coordinate those efforts, work together in those efforts, break down silos, work with community organizations… there is absolutely no limit to the amount of power we could build and wield. Change the world, to change what is politically possible, in Vermont, in the United States, in the world.
[00:13:01] Grumbine: I do want to get this giant elephant out of the way.
[00:13:05] Van Deusen: Sure.
[00:13:06] Grumbine: The working class is typically derided, even by leftists, as class reductionist. When we say the working class, people say, ‘what about my specific issues?’ And I am a believer that in order for the working class to unite, it must be an intersectional movement.
It cannot be what the Democrats do, “now is not the time for us to worry about working class unity, now is the time to vote blue.” So, all the different groups that are marginalized, that make up the working class, that have their own specific class work components, how do we create a unified working class, while recognizing those splinters and not silencing them, but incorporating them as the larger case for a working class struggle.
[00:14:03] Van Deusen: I don’t buy into the notion that there’s any negative connotation to, frankly saying in a factual way, that the great majority of people in this country, and on this planet, are working class, and that is where our commonalities lie. We’re not going to build a mass movement capable of challenging the status quo and the elites- be they from the Republicans, the Democrats, or anywhere else- we’re not going to be able to do that unless we do recognize our commonality and act in solidarity with each other. And the one thing that brings us together is the fact that we all belong to the same class. That’s not to belittle or to somehow disregard the fact that lots of different groups in the United States have faced other levels- or subgroups, I should say- of oppression.
We’ve all faced oppression if we’re working class, but other groups have very specific histories. Black people in this country were largely brought over in chains. That’s an historic injustice that is not going to be set right easily. Native Americans in this country, faced hundreds of years of attempted genocide.
These are realities that we have to recognize. And we need to be in solidarity with their particular struggles, in their particular communities for sure. But building a bridge between Pine Ridge [the Lakota Reservation] South Dakota, and the struggles of working class people in Trenton, New Jersey, or a black community in Los Angeles… the bridge that we build between these struggles is our commonalities found in the class system we live in. And the fact that it is a minority, super minority, 1% capitalist class, the elite, Republicans and Democrats, which are in a position of power to define the terms and conditions in which we live.
So we need to recognize the various struggles. We need to reach our hand out in solidarity. But at the end of the day, we need to come together as a working class first, and find that unity within us. I’ll give you an example: here in Vermont, one of the things we did as United, after we came to power in 2019 is we- very early on- met with an organization called Migrant Justice, which largely represents about 2000 [mostly undocumented] farm workers, on our dairy farms here in Vermont. And frankly, they don’t have legal recognition as a union, but they’re doing all the same things as a union, to uplift the working conditions and the pay on the dairy farms. So, we met with them to learn about their struggles and frankly, many of their struggles were similar, or the same types we face day to day in the labor movement.
And we started coordinating solidarity with their picket lines against bad players, and they were happy to come on our picket lines and provide solidarity with us. And in this way, both of our voices were amplified by working together. And frankly, internally within the unions, we were rightly actually able to say, look, these are working class people just like us.
They have a different situation, they were not native born like most of us were, and they lack certain legal protections that we have as American citizens… but they’re fighting for an eight hour day. Shit, our grandparents or great grandparents had that same fight years and years ago. And they’re having that fight right now for safe working conditions, which we still struggle for on the shop floors to this very moment, in traditional union shops.
So, I think there’s more commonalities than there are differences. And I think we need to focus on those commonalities at the same time, by recognizing the acute struggles that specific trainees may face.
[00:17:49] Grumbine: Well stated. One of the remarks I saw, is that you’re working on building relationships between other unions. You’re working on building power between industries, between different corporate unions to develop this class struggle union, which represents that larger body politic that you just described.
And I think that’s really important. I get a lot of folks that are old guard union people, that want to tell me how it was 30 years ago. And I’m saying it didn’t work great. Look at all the losses that we’ve had, by doing it the way you used to do it. Stop selling us a failed strategy and give us a strategy that brings us the kind of gains that we can all stand behind. I really want to hear more about what you expect, as part of this unified working class, amongst different unions. What does that look like in praxis?
[00:18:54] Van Deusen: First, my intent with the book- and with the serious organizing that I’ve been engaged in for a number of years- my intent is not to belittle, or somehow offend those that came before me. I think that many union leaders did the best they could for many years, but the reality is this, we meaning the labor movement, for decades have done the same thing over and over.
And I’ve said it once, but it’s worth saying again, we hitched our wagon to the Democrats, we put a massive amount of resources into lobbying, a massive amount of resources into backing political candidates that don’t back us, and we’ve gotten next to nothing for that in return, and our union density has massively shrunk.
So, if you keep doing that over and over as a strategy, and expect a different outcome, that becomes insane. We can’t do that. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. The [Vermont AFL-CIO] United Slate here in Vermont is not so arrogant to think we know all the answers, but we do know this, we need to experiment and we need to do things different, because we need a different outcome.
We need to learn to grow and we need to learn to build our power, and build a new political context where real wins are possible. And that’s what we’ve sought to do. That’s what the book tries to get into. The thing with the old guard though, is we need to break. Feelings are hurt with the old ways.
We need to break with the old ways and we shouldn’t have the goal of running anyone down, but at the same time, we can’t be afraid to hurt people’s feelings. So, when we came to power in 2019, one of the very, very first things we did, was we massively cut our budget, our state annual budget that goes into lobbying, and instead put that into organizing.
And here we built a stable of what we call ‘on call organizers’, who are able to work as needed. When affiliates call us and they say they’d like support, either for new organizing campaigns, or internal organizing campaigns, or some sort of community project that’s helping to build working class power.
And since 2019, we’ve been able to deploy those resources in a very real way, and see measurable results in the campaigns where they are deployed. And that is a contributing factor from a number of the shops that we’ve organized, since we came into office. And before that, with all of our money, we spent a lot of it and we were just like in Washington DC, even though the Democrats have historically been a veto proof majority here in our state house, we saw very little in return.
I think what we need to do is we need to focus, at this time, in building our numbers and building our power. Getting ourselves internally organized, so the rank and file, the actual union numbers with calluses on their hands, are willing and able to step up and do what needs to be done, to change the political context in which we work.
And if we do that well, and if we grow, and if we do this the way it needs to be done, then we could pivot, and put more of a focus- or more than we would be during this time- on the legislative end or on the political end. And as we grow our power, the politicians are going to be more apt to listen to us and want to do what we say, because frankly, as we get stronger, they will fear what the ramifications are if they don’t. But to try to leapstep that growth period, to try to disregard the need for growing power first, and instead from a weak position, try to win minor gains on the legislative or electoral front… it seems we have the whole dynamic backwards and we can’t be doing it anymore.
[00:22:37] Grumbine: David, what you just said, we have got to build power outside of the electoral process, before the electoral process is going to matter. And if we don’t have that power and we’re not organized to build parallel structures, to be able to support each other during a strike, you’ve got to earn a general strike, you don’t just do one. You’ve got to be building the mutual aid, the ability to help support people financially, to take bold action. You’ve got to build that external power, to be able to facilitate the bold moves that people frequently talk about, but they don’t have any means of executing.
[00:23:18] Van Deusen: You have to build those muscles. You’re not going to walk in the ring tomorrow afternoon- because you really want to fight- and win the world championship. You got to do your training. You got to do the hard work to get to that part. I’m with you all the way on that. And let’s not forget, they were in the Great Depression during the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t just wave a magic wand, and all of a sudden we had social programs. It wasn’t like that. There were millions of people out in the streets. There were mass demonstrations across this country. There were mass work stoppages, and record numbers of strikes going on across this country.
And the politicians, from both parties, rationally observed that they had two options there. They could either go with something like the New Deal, what FDR was advocating for, and change the social contract in the United States, or frankly, they were terrified that they could face a revolutionary situation, and that was a reality there, and that was driven by the workers. Working class people being organized, and more and more using power, not being afraid to use power and doing what needs to be done.
And that’s a motivation from a political point of view, that was fear that motivated the politicians of status quo to move towards a New Deal. So, if we’re going to have those kind of gains, again, and go beyond that, we also have to build our level of rank and file participation, ownership over the labor movement.
We need to democratize the labor movement, so workers actually have a say in the policies we pursue and how we do it. Cause they’re not going to man the barricades for us, if they don’t have a sense of ownership.
[00:24:54] Grumbine: And let me just say one more thing before I dive deeper into your book. I think that it’s important to recognize that what you’re doing, you’re not building this unity at the labor movement, inside the Democratic Party. You’re building it as a union. You’re building it beyond the structure of a political party.
And I’ve said this, and I keep getting lambasted by well meaning people… the Democratic Party, first of all, it’s not a working class party. It is a bourgeois capitalist party.
[00:25:25] Van Deusen: Absolutely.
[00:25:27] Grumbine: And second of all, every single time you have some power, there’s always going to be a parliamentarian based on what they do.
There’s always going to be somebody that is long term party apparatchik, that’s going to make the caucus go a certain way.
[00:25:42] Van Deusen: A foil, there’s always going to be a foil, a Joe Manchin or a Sinema.
[00:25:46] Grumbine: The rotating villain.
[00:25:48] Van Deusen: It’s a shell game. They move around who the villain is, so they have an excuse to say, “sorry, we couldn’t deliver on the Employee Free Choice Act, but you know what, next election, if you only double down and get us 20 more Democrats, we’ll definitely deliver next time.”
But you know what? We’ve been waiting since post New Deal, and they’re yet to deliver. So, at a certain point, you gotta say, that’s not working, and we need to do something else.
[00:26:14] Grumbine: We have had more Democratic super majorities, where you’ve got President, Supreme Court, the House, the Senate. Democrats have been a kissing cousin and they have done nothing in that space. Let’s jump into your book. You start out with this mass labor picket and Scott Walker, the Vermont Republican Party.
Talk to me about how your book gets going.
[00:26:40] Van Deusen: Here in Vermont, same year, before campaign season started in 2019, the Republican Party brought in Union Buster #1, [then Wisconsin Governor] Scott Walker, for a fundraiser in our largest city of Burlington. A bunch of locals got together, a lot of locals got together, at first from AFSCME [American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] and said, this can’t go unchallenged.
We have our own challenges here in Vermont, and if things like this become normalized, then what comes next? Are we going to face some sort of Wisconsin challenge of our collective bargaining rights one day? So anyway, largely AFSCME locals got together and says ‘we’re going to organize a picket’, and rapidly coordinated with the Vermont building trades.
And the building trades unions and AFSCME represented the core of the organizing that went into it. Now, 500 folks, 500 union members and allies marched on that picket line. It was major news in the state. You got to keep in mind Burlington has a population about 38,000. State of Vermont has a population of about 600,000.
So, in this rural state that we live in, mountainous, wooded, rural state… 500 people on the picket line is a big deal. I believe that was probably the largest labor backed rally, one of the largest labor backed rallies, in the decade that preceded. It was noteworthy. A comrade of mine told me that in New Hampshire, Scott Walker made an appearance and there was about 10 people on the picket line.
So, having this huge cross mix of just about every union in the state and allied organizations turn out to say, ‘Vermont is a union state, Burlington is a union city, get out of town Scott Walker’, created lots of energy. And created lots of notions that we don’t have to play on the back burner. We don’t have to be afraid to call for mass action.
And we could count on rank and file folks to get involved and care when it mattered. And for me, and a lot of folks that ended up running on our United slate later in 2019, it became apparent to us that there was an appetite. There was an energy that’s been brewing, it was building over time, for workers to really be active, for unions, to be active and to go to the next step.
And we were really inspired by that and realized that there was a real opportunity for us to make a major change, leadership change in the Vermont AFL CIO. And start to make these cultural changes, these structural changes, these attempts to further democratize the labor movement, that we started off talking about.
And so we ran, it was an incredibly close campaign. We ended up winning overwhelmingly, as far as seats on the executive board. And we won in total now four straight elections in a row where this working class left slate, this caucus united, has had a great majority on the executive board and the top officer positions.
[00:29:32] Intermission: You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible. Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon. Substack or our website, realprogressives.org. Now back to the podcast.
[00:29:54] Grumbine: In your book, you talk about the near death of Vermont labor talk to me about the near death.
[00:30:02] Van Deusen: Go back two years, 2017. And I’m not exaggerating when I say this, there were 20 something delegates at our convention, representing [at the time] 10,000 AFL CIO members in Vermont. Now, again, we now have 20,000 AFL CIO members in Vermont, a few short years later. But at the time, 20 something delegates, allegedly representing 10,000, you might not as well have an organization.
For all intents and purposes, it doesn’t exist. And the work that the AFL was doing for years, really was polite lobbying in the state house. Not much different than what’s going on in DC. Polite lobbying in the state house, spending a bunch of money on political mailings for a hundred or so Democrats we supported, who rarely, if ever, did anything measurable for us. And rank and file folks, a lot of them, when we started campaigning, when we started going around the state in 2019 saying it’s time for change, we can’t do this anymore… one of the most common questions that I heard in shops from regular working people is ‘what is the AFL CIO?’
Now, let that sink in. These are AFL CIO members. Now, they would know that they’re a member of IBW or AFSCME or Labors, whatever it is. They would know that and they know what local they’re in. A huge amount of them had no clue what the AFL CIO is.
And we’re supposed to be the federation that brings all the major unions together, to build political power. And our leadership, and I don’t think it had any sort of bad intent, it would do the best it could, but there was next to no communication between the top leadership and the rank and file. No one knew when there was an executive board meeting, maybe they met three times a year.
No one saw any minutes. Nobody saw any agendas. Nobody was invited to anything. The rank and file was never consulted or, in any meaningful way, asked their opinion on any political matters that could impact them. And so, it was natural that there was a lapse in understanding of what the AFL is or was. So, one of our first efforts when we campaigned in 2019, and one of the first things we did, is we explained to folks what the AFL CIO is.
We confirmed that, yes, it’s a problem that you don’t know what it is, and that’s a sign that it’s doing the wrong thing. But here’s how it could be a very powerful vehicle for change, to advocate for working class people like us, union, and frankly, non union too. And folks got that, it’s not rocket science.
You pose the question to a working person and you explain that, they get it. And when election day came, we went from, again, two years before, 20 something delegates, to a convention with a hundred plus delegates at it. The most well attended one in decades, and we won, and we’ve been fighting and succeeding in changing our labor movement ever since.
[00:33:00] Grumbine: You bring up Black Lives Matter and the police. And before we go there, regardless of how you feel about how Black Lives Matter has become today, back then, if you remember during [especially] the 2016 election, where Black Lives Matter was particularly active and bold. With that in mind, talk to me about the surrounding issues with Black Lives Matter, the police, and the politics of reality.
[00:33:29] Van Deusen: If you recall, right after the murder of George Floyd [and that was a murder], right after the murder of George Floyd, there were uprisings and demonstrations going on everywhere in the US, and rightly so.
And look, you would have to absolutely have blinders on and willfully choose to lie to yourself, if you say anything other than the fact, that our black community, working class black community, has been a subject of oppression since they were dragged to this country by the capitalists of their day, and sold them to slavery.
Those issues continue to this day. If you think about how many generations have passed since slavery was abolished, it’s not that many. If you stack some folks, life to death, some generations, it’s only a few generations, really, when you think about it, since the conclusion of the Civil War. And when George Floyd was murdered, it became immediately clear to the Vermont AFL CIO that we could not be a bystander in this historic moment.
We had a moral and political obligation to speak the truth. To stand in solidarity with those folks in the black community. Including those folks in the black community in Burlington, who are saying enough is enough, it’s time for a real change in society, it’s time to really confront racism and institutional racism, and change the playing field.
So, we were very thoughtful, as the elected executive board from the United, about how our public position should be. We took two executive board members, I invited input on my own from allied organizations and activists, especially from the black community, and sought to define a new labor politics when it comes to black oppression.
And I’m proud to say, coming out of that [not without much controversy], we are the first and only major labor organization in the United States to explicitly support black self-determination in the US. The experience of the black worker in the US, the black person in the US, is qualitatively different than many other groups, national groups or minority groups, that have also suffered race or nationality based oppression… the fact that slavery cannot be ignored.
So we also called for, controversially, a moratorium on organizing new police unions, because we wanted to make sure that the labor movement, frankly, is upholding the interests of regular working class people, and not folks that maybe can be engaged in activities that hurt those same communities.
That was met with much resistance from the National AFL CIO. They, frankly, flipped out against us, threatened us. I was concerned for a period of time, they might try to put us under trusteeship for that act, and seek to remove us from power, and that’s how serious it was. Richard Trumka, who is now decesased, was the president of the National AFL CIO. And I think he was terrified of revolts within the labor movement, demanding a more radical analysis, a more basic fundamental change in the way we relate to various communities, and policing in those communities. So, I’m proud of my executive board at the time.
I’m proud that United did the right thing and stood up. We also provided resources to our local Black Lives Matter chapter to help them organize. And also the Jericho Movement, in support of political prisoners, specifically those that came out of the Black Panther Party, and other groups such as the Black Panther Party out of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
The struggle is ongoing. We’re not going to solve the class, race, or capitalism problem in this country overnight, and we’re certainly not going to do it by taking good policy positions alone. They have to be coupled with action, and real support from the ranks. But we did do our part. And I like to say that as long as United is in power in Vermont, we’re always going to do our part.
[00:37:38] Grumbine: That’s a great point. There’s a class contradiction in there that is real challenging. And that is the beginning of policing in America, out here with the coal miner unions, and they fought back against those coal barons. And you ended up with the police force coming and shooting and killing them, and putting them back to the line.
So, I find a challenge to see the police union, without trying to get too in the weeds, they’re there to protect private capital, private property, and to do things that maybe run counter to the class in which they belong. That contradiction makes for a challenge, does it not?
[00:38:21] Van Deusen: Yeah, I understand your point, but I do think that the question of policing can be a nuanced one. Let’s not forget that during the same era, historically referenced, there are instances of IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] members running for sheriff and things like this. With the theory behind it that, if we use what means of democracy we have to capture these positions, then a person in authority on the policing side of things can be there to say, ‘no, we’re not going to go in and break up the strike, we’re not going to do that.’
So, there are examples where that has been used in history. And then I think that, we also would be wise not to paint every dynamic between citizens and policing with the same brush, with the same stroke. What goes on in Chicago, may be different than what goes on in Idaho. I think that we have to look at these specific cases and dynamics in place, in different communities.
Also in Vermont, in a small way, every community here may have degrees of power, but they directly elect from the people once every year or once every two years, depending on the community, two constables, a first and second constable, and they are accountable. If they abuse their rights, the next year they’re not going to get re-elected.
So, I think that we have to look at ways to make policing more accountable to people. We have to have civilian oversight boards with subpoena power, in order to help maintain that dynamic and shift control of policing back to actual citizens. But at the same time, despite all the problems that we have seen with racist policing in many parts of the US, things like the murder of George Floyd would never be justified and must be met with resistance on every front. At the same time, I understand the value of having that phone number to call at 3 o’clock in the morning when you hear things go bump in the night. So, I think it’s a complex issue and I think we need to engage in it.
And we can’t have the blinders on, and talk about it in ideological terms because they suit our ideologies. I think we have to talk about it from a democratic lens that starts from a base saying that we need direct citizen accountability, regarding the policing that takes place in our community.
[00:40:42] Grumbine: Fair enough. I want to move on to exporting the revolution
[00:40:46] Van Deusen: Yeah.
[00:40:47] Grumbine: To me, I find it challenging watching what the US official geopolitical strategy is around the world, which is, subjugating global South countries. Stealing their resources, basically using their underpaid labor in the worst possible conditions, to undermine the labor position of United States workers as well as other global North working class people.
Everybody but the elite, loses in this scenario. How do you export class struggle outside of this country?
[00:41:27] Van Deusen: First thing I gotta say about this, is when we’re talking about the race to the bottom [globally], often we’re talking about quote unquote “free trade”. And let’s not forget that it was the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton that led that charge, and got NAFTA passed. And let’s not forget that we lost hundreds of thousands of good union manufacturing jobs, as a direct result of those actions from Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party.
And now, it’s the Democrats, and largely the Republicans, that continue to support these job-killing treaties and trade agreements. I don’t think, in fact, I know it’s not a question of us exporting the class struggle. The folks in the global South, the folks in the so called third world, the folks in developing nations, they know the class struggle every day. And they are engaged in the class struggle.
The question is what do the United States unions do, to reach out their hand in solidarity to help support them, from within the capitalist behemoth that is the United States. Because, I’m a big fan of Sean Fain and the new UAW leadership. And you look at what they’re doing right now, trying to organize major car plants in the South, which politically, is unfriendly to unions… they’re doing God’s work.
And if they’re able to be successful down in the South, and start building a union base in the South, then the next thing we have to worry about is, we need to make sure that labor is strong enough all around the globe, so the capitalists [the elite, the billionaires], can’t just shut down those plants and then move them to Mexico, or another country where labor is even more exploited than it is here.
We need to think long term. So, what the UAW under Sean Fain is doing right now, is actually sending resources and know how to Mexico, to the unions in Mexico. To help them grow their power there, with the thought that is going to be a stabilizing factor here in the US. The stronger the Mexican unions are, that gives car manufacturers, capitalist class, a reason to pause, and not be so quick to try to send jobs down there.
If there’s a serious class conflict down there and there’s where they could be at our risk as well. So, this is what we need to do, as a labor movement, but we can’t let the tail wag the dog. And this has happened in the past, in decades past. We can’t have the US government and foreign policy, defining our foreign policy as a labor movement.
We need to look for those groups that are truly engaged with struggles against the capitalists, against the elite, against the billionaires. And we need to make one on one direct relationships with them, and support them where we can. One of the examples that jumps to mind is, right now today, in Northeastern Syria, huge swaths of the country, in a region called Rojava, are liberating themselves from ISIS.
Largely Kurdish forces there drove ISIS out. That’s fine and good. That’s great. That’s heroic. But now here’s the interesting thing, the folks in that part of Rojava, they are now seeking to build a direct participatory democracy. Which is secular and which includes labor unions as a decision making body, a participant in the construction of an economy, one that would be geared for the greater good of the whole, and not private capitalist interests. That is far reaching and that’s on par with what we may have seen in Paris Commune in 1871, or the Spanish Civil War in 1936, in certain regions of Catalonia, etc. Now that is a prime example of where we should be reaching our hands out as a labor movement, as a US labor movement, saying ‘what can we do to support you?’ Because if they win there, they’re going to set the example that could spread to other regions of the Middle East, Europe, and aspects of the United States. And shouldn’t we be supporting democracies, especially those that actively invite labor activists, labor unions, to be part of the molding of the society that they labor within?
[00:45:35] Grumbine: I absolutely agree 100% on that. I do want to bring up one thing, that’s a current thing, and I don’t know how this plays in, but I do find it to be incredibly important. And that is, we have a president that is saying that the support for, not only the proxy war with Ukraine, but also the murderous behavior in Palestine, is a jobs program for the US. Because that money is being spent in the US military contracting, and therefore is creating jobs. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:46:13] Van Deusen: If we want to have a jobs program, why don’t we have universal public health care for everybody and open up community health clinics in every single town and village in the United States, and put people to work that way? If we’re going to do that, as opposed to creating weapons that are being used to slaughter children in the occupied area of Gaza.
So, Joe Biden turned his back on the rail workers, when they took the right to strike away from this contract cycle [a little while ago now], and forced a bad contract down their throats- they had no paid sick days. He showed some real true colors there. Now, I don’t want to pretend that somehow that equals ‘it would be good if Donald Trump gets elected next term.’
Donald Trump is rabidly anti-union, and the amount of decisions that came out of his appointees, be they his appointees in the Supreme Court with the Janus decision, or the appointees he made to the National Labor Relations Board were horrendous, and were existential attacks on labor.
But Joe Biden, you’re absolutely right, he is hell bent on giving Israel every weapon it could possibly ever want to kill children. And that is what’s going on. This is ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza. Now, those folks in Gaza are working people too. They’ve been living in an occupation for generations. They have been in a state of crisis for generations.
And frankly, these are all ongoing war crimes on behalf of the right wing Israeli government. Something over 30,000 people, largely civilians, half being children have been slaughtered. Most of the population has been driven all the way to the South. And now that area is under threat from the right wing Israeli forces.
It is horrible. It is ethnic cleansing happening under our nose, and the United States government is supporting this, directly providing the arms, which makes us complicit. That also makes us less safe as a country too, because then we become perceived as a potential target for those that are looking to do things to retaliate against this ethnic cleansing.
I’m very proud of the fact that many of our major labor organizations- including the national AFL CIO, including the UAW, including APWU [American Postal Workers Union], the list goes on and on- are on record in support of a ceasefire. But we got to take it to the next level and we’ve got to use our power. We have to use our voice to say, calling for a ceasefire is not good enough.
We need all armed shipments to be shut down, that go to Israel, today. Cause it’s the only right thing to do. This bloodbath has to stop.
[00:48:53] Grumbine: Yes. So, I want to pivot slightly. We’ve got blue MAGA and we’ve got red MAGA not serving the working class. They are serving some other class and it has nothing to do with people, regular working people. It has to do with the moneyed interests of the Oligarch Olympics, and which oligarchs interests are tended to. So, with that in mind, I don’t want to be perceived as saying Donald Trump is good, because I don’t think he’s good at all. I’m just unwilling to allow a person an inch of saying Biden has done good things. [DVD: I hear you.] I don’t think the working class wins, regardless what happens in November. I think we lose across the board. That said, your thoughts on why we must keep Trump away from the White House.
[00:49:47] Van Deusen: It’s saying, in the next election, do you want to vote for Hitler or do you want to vote for the devil? And I don’t buy the notion of, we vote Democrat and we put all of our resources in the Democratic Party because they’re less of a threat than the modern Republicans. But here’s what concerns me about Trump’s Republican Party.
Now, the Republicans and Democrats historically have been the capitalist parties, they’ve been very similar on many policy issues. And they find smaller areas to disagree, to make it look like there’s a difference. However, in recent years, with the rise of Trump, I’m increasingly concerned that the national Republican Party is becoming more and more neo-fascist.
One that won’t even pretend to support the vestiges of democracy we still have in this nation. One that is increasingly apt to challenge, or overturn, or eliminate those vestiges of democracy we have, and that very much troubles me. On January 2021, we were a few bad generals away from shooting, taking part in the street of Washington, DC. We can’t forget that our democracy was in peril at that time, and we’re not out of the woods yet. So, I don’t think representational democracy in a capitalist system is all that together democratic. I think we have to fight for a much more participatory democracy model, of the social contract here in the US.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to risk the notion of even losing those representational avenues for expression, we currently have. I’m concerned, especially when Trump seems to use these quasi fascist organizations like Proud Boys or other close to being Nazi or racist groups as unofficial stormtroopers, unofficial street thugs, in an equation that he’s calculating for growing or maintaining his version of power.
That is frightening, and we need to look that in the eyes and know that is a challenge placed before us. And I think we’d be foolish, as a labor movement, to rely on the state, to rely on the Democratic Party, to rely on courts, to defend us from that. We need a galvanized, motivated, rank and file mass labor movement, that really does seek to have the involvement, of millions and millions of members, in every state of the union. Ready to go and ready to do what needs to be done, be it a general strike or other forms of direct action, to resist such challenges, to fight against such a rise in fascism. And it’s not going to be easy. And God knows, I hope I’m wrong about this because I certainly don’t wish that type of existential crisis again. But when I have serious concerns, that is the path we are heading on today and the labor movement would be wise to prepare for that now, and not seek to scramble to do something about it when it’s too late.
[00:53:02] Grumbine: Fair enough. And I think that’s really important because the forces of fascism are hiding in plain sight. I don’t know which is worse the one that comes at you from the front or the one that comes at you from the back is a wolf. But regardless, it’s fascism and it’s showing itself in Brazil, in Milei, throughout Europe.
It’s showing itself all around the world, and I believe a lot of that comes from austerity. And austerity is what feeds a lot of the capitalist system, to empower capital to squash labor. And so, I think that this is a system issue.
[00:53:39] Van Deusen: It is, but we [the labor movement] have to have some responsibility in this rise of the far right in the United States too. So, when the only alternatives by working people are perceived to be the Democrats and Republicans, and when time and time again, both those parties, regardless of who’s in power screw us, and when real wages are going down, when union density is going down, because our jobs were shipped overseas to super exploited markets, then people are going to say something needs to give, something needs to be different.
And if the national voices within the labor moment say, ‘yes, the solution is to double down and really do more for the Democrats this time’, at a certain point, if there’s no return on that investment, folks are going to be open to other voices. And if that alternative voice is a Trump type voice that says, ‘yeah, it’s the immigrants and I’m going to deal with them, and we’re going to mass deport them, and we’re going to do what needs to be done.’ And they present these false solutions, these fascist solutions to the problems, there’s going to be a bunch of folks that are disenfranchised, that have been taught the only choice is a Democratic Party, that over and over screws them, or the old war regular conservative party. And if those are their only choices and they know in their lives, their daily struggle, something needs to be different, if the MAGA folks are the ones painting themselves as the option, there’s going to be people that turn to that. So again, that gets back to why the labor movement needs to build itself as its own independent political pole, with its own set of priorities, with its own articulation for a different social contract, a different future, a worker centered future, then that becomes the alternative. And then we could start building real power, real strength in our communities, to change the world for the better. In a real way, not as a false or terrifying way, within the notion of a fascist alternative.
[00:55:41] Grumbine: David Van Deusen, this was a wonderful conversation. Where can we find more of your work and where can we buy your great book?
[00:55:49] Van Deusen: Thanks, brother. Folks who are interested in reading about what the United slate and the AFL CIO has achieved, since coming to power in 2019, are welcome to go to www.pmpress.org and they could order the book there.
[00:56:06] Grumbine: Fantastic. David, this is how it gets done. We start with labor. We’re all workers. Let’s start thinking about ourselves outside of the duopoly, and start thinking about what is it that we want and need. And David is leading that charge. David, thank you so much for your time. We’re going to have your book on our bookshelf and our RP Book Club.
So, I really look forward to getting more people to learn about this, then hopefully begin organizing themselves. Once again, thank you so much, David Van Deusen. My name is Steve Grumbine. I’m the host of the podcast, Macro N Cheese for David, my guest. We’re out of here. Thank you for tuning in. We’ll talk soon.
[00:56:56] End Credits: Production, transcripts, graphics, sound engineering, extras, and show notes for Macro N Cheese are done by the fantastic team of volunteers at Real Progressives, serving in solidarity with the working class since 2015. To support our work, please go to patreon.com/realprogressives, realprogressives.substack.com or realprogressives.org
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