Exorcising the Ghost of Roy Cohn

Not for the first time, I am proud of my congressional Representative, Bobby Scott. Last May he introduced the “Protecting the Right to Organize Act” to do away with the stultifying “Right to Work” laws which smother our rights to organize on the job. Like many laws, the name implies the opposite of the reality. It has more accurately been called the “right to work for less.” Virginia has long been a “right to work” state along with the added indignity of “At Will” laws. This is why pay is lower in our state and in other, mostly southern and rural states. “At will” means you can be fired anytime for any reason or none, with no right to challenge the decision, rendering the workplace a dictatorship of fear and mistrust. This is made worse in our state because our rules for unemployment compensation require being let go for no reason of your own. Companies pay into that compensation and thus have an incentive to fire rather than to lay off workers.

Laws like “Right to Work” are the same, word for word, in many states because they are written by corporate consortia like the National Chamber of Commerce and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) who also fund political campaigns. The purpose is to keep the costs of the most variable business expense down – and that expense is you. The lower the cost and the greater the disposability of workers, the greater the take at the top. Dumping workers raises the value of stocks rewarding investors which makes the business climate look great. Thus “business is booming” when more of us are struggling to make ends meet. This is nothing new and goes back to the rise of industry in the 17th century. It is essential to understanding the founding of our own country.

Let us not forget that our nation was established by a wealthy merchant and slave holding class to free itself from British dominance and to protect and maintain its wealth. In order to get the support of the population, most of whom were poor farmers and former indentured slaves who mistrusted the landed gentry as much as they did the British, they ensconced the new Constitution with the Bill of Rights. Though initially only men with land or wealth were citizens able to vote, the promise of equality and guaranteed rights were there. As Madison noted in the first decades of the 19th century, the door to popular democracy had been opened. He feared that the rabble would eventually demand entry and real equality. The entire history of our country since that time has been a struggle for inclusion and basic rights for the rest of us. This includes the struggles for emancipation, for women's equality, and for civil rights which continues to this day.

The struggle against institutional bigotry and fair wages, workplace safety and basic economic security is inseparable from the history of our country. I would advise anyone interested in this history, our history, to read “Labors' Untold Story” written, not by cloistered academics but by working class historians Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais. There has always been lucrative work for those defending business interests in keeping us poor and powerless. Trump's appointees and partners, from Wlliam Barr and Rudi Giuliani to Bret Kavanaugh and Trump's newest judicial appointee Steven J. Menashi are a prime examples. As a continuation of his agenda to demolish every public protection in sight and cozy up to corporations, Trump has chosen Eugene Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to run the Department of Labor. He is a longtime corporate lawyer whose client roster has included Goldman Sachs, Facebook and Walmart. Scalia now leads the federal agency tasked with overseeing employee rights and labor laws.

Though Trump is more extreme, the direction is nothing new. An example of this dating back to the 1950's was Roy Cohn, a vicious opportunist and aggressive agent of corporate interests who joined with Senator Joseph McCarthy in a successful effort to cripple and break the considerable power of the labor movement at that time. Cohn partnered with the infamous Sen. McCarthy in his campaign to tar progressives, destroy lives and most importantly, break the labor movement. Notably, like many closeted Gays in politics, Cohn publicly railed against and targeted Gays in the army and those employed in federal jobs. This is how he and those like him cover and distance themselves from their own homosexuality. Cohn eventually died of complications from AIDS. Even today, you can count on the most viciously outspoken anti-Gay clergy and politicians likely being closeted Gays. A truth-telling documentary by filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer on Roy Cohn will be showing at the Naro Cinema on Wednesday, Dec 4 with discussion to follow. This documentary is titled “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” because Trump reportedly shouted this line in frustration when his attorney general Jeff Sessions dared to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. He had to settle for the addlepated and deeply conflicted Rudi Giulliani for legal council even as he threatens armed insurrection should he be impeached. Ironically, the ghost he wished to summon built his career prosecuting many on the false charges of threatening to overthrow our democracy by force and violence and for promoting sedition.

As Peter Travers writes in a Rolling Stone review of the film, “Tyrnauer’s flashes of compassion for this self-hating Jew and homosexual — taught from childhood to feel ashamed of what he was and who he was — remind us that his subject’s toxic, insidious amorality did not go to the grave with him. It’s all around us, among opportunists still looking for their own Roy Cohn — just one of several reasons why Tyrnauer’s doc hits you like a punch in the gut.“

The “Red Scare” that McCarthy, Cohn and Richard Nixon made their names with was never about Russians or even about communists. It was about dis-empowering organize labor. The strongest labor leaders have always been socialists like John L. Lewis, William Z. Foster and Harry Bridges. This resulted in the highest standard of living working Americans ever had. As union leadership was replaced by corporate players and shady opportunists our wages and conditions diminished. They continue to do so as we are pitted against low-wage foreign sweatshop workers in a race to the bottom. The lasting legacy of that period include laws designed to cripple our ability as employees to organize in our own defense; laws like the Smith Act, Taft-Hartley and that ole' “Right to Work” which still plague us today.

As for Trump and the ghost of Cohn, a famous political thinker once noted that everything in history happens twice; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. This is not the 1930's or the 1950s no matter how strongly some wish for their return. We are not the same society nor are most of us willing to return to the dark days of political and gender repression, lynching or segregation. We are not helpless nor can we afford to be passive players. As I wrote in the editorial of the recent issue of the Blue Collar Review: we often feel helpless and afraid for our own futures. We struggle to survive, to hold on to our jobs and to what little security we have from day to day. But that isn't enough. We must continue to struggle together against an ecocidal corporate dictatorship. Fortunately we are not alone in doing so.

In our area and state there are experienced citizen groups working to defend and expand our hard-won legislative gains in the halls of power and to curb and resist the efforts of corporate fronts to limit our rights, exploit the desperate, and undermine our public safety. One such grassroots group with a strong record of success is Virginia Organizing. The local chapter has won protections for residents of a mobile home park, passed zoning restrictions on predatory lenders, lobbied for lower prescription drug prices and organized monthly vigils for immigration reform. They are currently working to address the problem of flooding caused by climate change in Norfolk, immigration reform, voting rights, problems in local public schools, and statewide and national issues of health care including expanding medicaid access. If you are interested in joining with them or learning more, you can contact local organizer Megan McNamara at meghan@virginia-organizing.org, or you can go to their website. As the season of gift giving is upon us, donations to support these important efforts on our behalf can be sent to Virginia Organizing, 703 Concord Avenue, Charlottesville, VA 22903.

It is vital to remember that we are all in this together, that we must have each other's backs and that we are not alone in standing up to ugly hatreds and the venal, self-serving power of corporate greed.

Greta and Us

I was recently heartened and impressed by the massive protests against government inaction on climate which occurred around the world. This included a local protest organized by Mothers Out Front in Virginia Beach. This massive event was inspired by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager who began a weekly strike from her school classes to protest the disregarding and sacrifice of her future. These strikes have caught on, grown and spread culminating in global action. There has also been a growing movement of radicalized youth demanding real climate action in Europe, and now in our own country, calling itself "Extinction Rebellion.” Though their actions involving civil disobedience by shutting down business as usual are important, young Greta Thunberg has become the catalyst of a larger generational uprising.

While there has been a range of coverage on Ms. Thunberg in the corporate media, from respect to vicious slurs and condemnation, her words to the leaders at the United Nations speak for themselves:
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. . . For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit), and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us – we who have to live with the consequences.”

Ms. Thunberg makes a strong point regarding what we have known for decades. As reported in Scientific American, “Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977. In the 1970s and 1980s it employed top scientists to look into the issue and launched its own ambitious research program which empirically sampled carbon dioxide and built rigorous climate models. Exxon's senior scientist James Black stated that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels. A year later he warned Exxon that doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by two or three degrees – a number that is consistent with the scientific consensus today. He continued to warn that “present thinking holds that mankind has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical." That was nearly 40 years ago, but what Exxon did in response was to lie to Congress and to spend tens of millions funding climate denial.

We in Tidewater are among the most threatened. We have the second highest rate of sea level rise after New Orleans, and as some are experiencing, increased sunny-day flooding in some areas at high tide.

I asked local scientist, Anna Jeng, Sc.D., member of the Virginia Board of Health and a professor in the School of Community and Environmental Health at O.D.U. about the health impacts of climate change in our area. She was kind enough to respond, stating, “Current data on heat waves and extreme heat show that climate change has posed increased health risks for Virginia residents and that we have already felt climate-related health impacts. Recent Virginia Department of Health data shows that the number of days in Virginia with temperatures above 90° Fahrenheit has doubled over the last 10 years.”

“Heat and humidity already pose a range of threats to Virginia residents, from minor illnesses like heat cramps to deadly conditions like heatstroke or heat-related heart attacks. From 1975 to 2010, the Virginia Beach metropolitan area experienced an average of approximately 20 excess deaths per year on dangerously hot summer days. “Excess deaths” are the number of deaths above the daily standardized summertime average for a given area. Increased emergency room and hospital visits coincide with the zip codes of communities with higher temperatures, low-incomes and few shade trees. Anyone faces the risks of getting sick from extreme heat, but impoverished disadvantaged populations with pre-existing respiratory and/or cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, young children, and older adults are particularly vulnerable.”

Dr. Jeng also emphasized that, “The Trump administration has imposed an immense threat to the existing U.S. environmental health policy. It launched an overt attack on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, undermined science-based policy and launched a policy of deregulating hazardous pollutants. Recent examples include that the EPA defies climate warnings and has rolled back emissions requirements and standards for coal-fired plants to revitalize America’s sagging coal industry. More specifically, a proposal has been made to roll back mercury emission regulations put in place during the Obama administration.”

Temperature rise is not the only factor affecting our local health, though as temperatures rise, tropical insects and diseases move north as well. We still host the largest coal export facility and are daily exposed to toxic coal dust. Other ubiquitous industrial pollutants in our environs affect our health as well. Results of testing by the Virginia Department of Health – Office of Drinking Water, as well as information from the U.S. EPA Enforcement and Compliance History database, show nine carcinogenic and thyroid contaminants detected above health guidelines in Norfolk tap water. These include: Bromodichloromethane, Chlorate, Chloroform, Chromium (hexavalent), Dibromochloromethane, Dichloroacetic acid, Trichloroacetic acid, trihalomethanes and Radium 226 & 228. These are carcinogenic contaminants that permeate us locally. As in the past, it may be that beer is safer than water – depending on the water used to make it.

It is easy to feel hopeless, angry and depressed about the overwhelming extent of pollution we are exposed to and the looming existential threat of the growing climate catastrophe. The best way to counter this is to be active on the issue or at least to support those who are.

In our area, the Sierra Club is active on important issues like supporting a state climate plan with a target of reducing carbon pollution 40% by 2030. This includes creating the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Our local chapter's focus is on encouraging solar panel use on homes and businesses, adaptation and mitigation to flooding, opposing offshore drilling and methane (natural gas) pipeline projects, limiting coal dust and moving to clean energy. You can support, or join them, online.

Other local groups active on climate issues are Mothers Out Front and The Chesapeake Climate Action Network which actively works to promote good climate policy.

How we live has an impact on our environment but we have to live with the real options we have where things like transportation and work are concerned. The greatest impact on climate comes from polluting industries limited or not, by public policy and by those who make it. Thus, our taxes fund fossil fuel industry efforts from fracking and oil drilling to gas pipelines as well as efforts to expand wind energy off of our coast. Beyond how we live day to day, getting involved with or supporting climate activism is vital to countering corporate influence on our elected representatives. Voting for candidates not underwritten by polluting industries who will stand up to corporations and, as Greta says, “listen to the scientists” is vital as well. It is past time for us to take responsibility for our actions, to understand that a system based on endless growth in a finite reality is an untenable recipe for disaster. It is past time for us to live responsibly within our actual, physical means rather than borrowing from the future.

A new generation is rising up to defend itself and we must join with them to insure a livable future. As Greta Thunberg stated to world leaders at the UN,“We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming, whether you like it or not.”