Today is the 150th anniversary of Seth Luther’s death.  Since last year’s post, records have  been found locating Luther possible final resting place in Brattleboro, Vermont.  A WIKI page is in formation, and other plans to follow.  Here is a great link to a 1974 essay by on Luther by Carl Gersuny called “Seth Luther – The Road From Chepachet.”

In the week we celebrate the signing of the marriage equality bill, let us remember this great organizer and agitator with what he said so many years ago:

“It is the first duty of an American citizen to hate injustice in all its forms.”

 

Original Post April 29, 2012:

Today is the anniversary of the death of Seth Luther.  He died on April 29, 1863.

Who?

Seth Luther*: Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame inductee; Union Organizer; leader of the Dorr Rebellion and radical of the worst sort.  On the weekend that we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence it also seems appropriate to look a little farther back to our roots here in Rhode Island.  As the saying goes, the most radical idea in America today is a long memory.

Luther was an itinerant organizer and agitator whose father fought in the American Revolution.  He spent time on what was then the American Frontier and Deep South before coming home to try and establish roots and a career as a carpenter.  His passion for justice and the rights of the oppressed led him to join the nascent labor movement as a speech maker and organizer.

In a speech he delivered in Boston in 1834, Luther said:

“It is true, a Rhode Island Nabob said, in a public document, ‘The poor must work or starve, and the rich will take care of themselves.’  But I venture to assert, that the rich never did take care of themselves or their property, in peace or war.  It is protected by the laboring, the producing class.  It is created by the laborer, drawn out of his hands by the means of bad laws and then forsooth he must protect it at the expense of his health, oftentimes of his life, for the benefit of those, who will have nothing to do with the creation of wealth or its protection after it’s created.”

 

Luther could just as easily be describing the conditions working people face today.   In another parallel to the conditions organizers face, then and now. When Luther died, by then a broken man, this was the commentary The Providence Journal added to the notice of his death:

“He was natural radical, dissatisfied with all existing institutions about him, and labored under the not uncommon delusion that it was his special mission to set things right…His ideal of a pure democracy seemed to be that blessed state wherein the idle, the thriftless, and the profligate should enjoy all the fruits of the labor of the industrious, the frugal, and the virtuous. The possessors of property everywhere he looked upon as banded robbers, who he hated as born enemies of the human race. He had considerable talent for both writing and speaking; but he was too violent, willful, and headstrong to accomplish any good. Soon after the troubles of ’42, he became insane, and was sent to the Dexter Asylum, where he remained until 1848, when the Butler Hospital was opened for patients. He was then removed to that institution by the city, where he remained for ten years; thence to Brattleboro where he has just closed his worse than useless life.”

 

Would you expect anything less?

*Source: Peaceably if we can, Forcibly if we must! Writings by and about Seth Luther.  Edited by Scott Molly, Carl Gersuny, and Robert Macieski and published by the Rhode Island Labor History Society, 1998. 

The first is a just released paper from Steven M. Teles, Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, called,  Kludgeocracy: The American Way of Policy . In it he describes the highly dysfunctional, and intentionally confusing policy approach developed in the last 30 years.  Here is a sample:

“The price paid by ordinary citizens to comply with programmatic complexity is the most obvious downside of kludgeocracy. One of the often overlooked benefits of Social Security, for example, is that recipients silently have taxes taken out of their paycheck and then, without any effort on their part, checks begin to magically appear upon retirement.

By contrast, 401(k)s, IRAs, 529 plans and the rest of our crazy quilt of savings incentives (for retirement as well as other purposes like higher education) require enormous investments of time, effort and stress. Just for a start, equity mutual funds charge an annual fee of around one percent of assets — compounded until retirement, this reduces savings by around twenty percent.2 Including items beyond the management fee (like transaction costs and the reduced returns that come from having to hold cash to deal with redemptions), can push that number up considerably.”

One of the books mentioned by Teles is the phenomenal “The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy, by Suzanne Mettler. Released at the end of 2011, Mettler details how ( in my words) we are giving up on democracy because it is too damn hard. We are using the tax code instead of policy and programs, the buy off various interest groups.  She writes:

“As a result, this large portion of the submerged state, which not many Americans realize is subsidized by Government, showers benefits for more generously on the haves than on the have-nots.…

From 1980 until the current recession, the core sector that it nurtures – finance, insurance, and real estate- outpaced growth in other sectors of the American economy. The fortunes of these industries emanated not from “market forces” alone but rather from their interplay with the hidden policies that promoted their growth and heaped extra benefits on them.”

And speaking of taxes, the report that the Republicans tried to kill is finally out! The Congressional Research Service report : Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945 looks at just that, tax rates on the elite to see how they affected the economy and guess what?

“The results of the analysis in this report suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top statutory tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. But as a small proportion of taxpayers are affected by changes in the top statutory tax rates, this finding is not unexpected.

However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be correlated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. The statistical analysis in this report suggests that tax policy could be related to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.”

So how does all this happen?  How does our policy making get stolen and turned into a transfer of wealth from the working class to the 1% ? How does the consulting class take over? How do the “trickle down theorists” keep getting any media air time despite report after report proving their theory is as credible as dinosaurs still walking the Earth? How do so many people in media and the so called “liberal class” fall for such bad ideas like “pension reform” or “education reform” ?

“Inferring the Popularity of an Opinion From Its Familiarity: A Repetitive Voice Can Sound Like a Chorus” is a wonderful social science study from  Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen M. Garcia and Norbert Schwarz, and Dale T. Miller. They write:

 Despite the importance of doing so, people do not always correctly estimate the distribution of opinions within their group. One important mechanism underlying such misjudgments is people’s tendency to infer that a familiar opinion is a prevalent one, even when its familiarity derives solely from the repeated expression of 1 group member.…

…..the present studies convey an important message about how people construct estimates of group opinion, namely that observers appear to infer information about extensity, or the range of group members supporting an issue, from their subjective experiences of familiarity for an opinion position. To the degree that our impressions of what others think influence our own perceptions of reality, the present studies can help inform us about the repetition effect and its consequences.

There are lessons to be learned here.  See you in 2013. Don’t forget to sign up for Leadership for a Future.

For those folks that don’t remember the way Disaster Don used to operate, and are thus “shocked… shocked” at the way his non mea culpa played on Sunday, watch this clip below from testimony he gave at the State House during his time as Governor. The words are even more poignant now:

a teacher at Cumberland High School, a past President of the Cumberland Teachers Association, former State Representative for the Edgewood and Pawtuxtet neighborhoods in Cranston, and for the last 23 years a staff organizer at NEARI, where I got to work with him for the last 7 years.

In every single meaning of the phrase, Jerry Egan is a working class hero.  Hundreds…thousands of people across the state, without even knowing it, benefitted from the work that he did, both as a legislator and more importantly as a Union organizer.   As we learned of Jerry’s passing from lymphoma at the age 68 yesterday morning, the NEARI office began to reflect of our favorite Jerry stories.  They all begin with the story of Jerry in some kind of a jam – with a school committee, or the legislative leadership, or on a picket line—but they all end with laughter and smiles because he just had this way of not caring about what the politic or politically correct thing, or even the easy thing, to do was.  Just the right thing.  And that’s why so many people loved him.

It is Jerry’s big heart — his do anything for his fellow Union members approach to life that he will be most remembered for.  I will always remember one time when he sent out a call for picket line support for some members up in New Hampshire who were going to be picketing an event on a Sunday morning at 7AM in the middle of winter.  Jerry, who had a hard time breathing, especially in the cold, met me at a Dunkin Donuts in Rhode Island and the two of us drove 4 hours through an ice storm to walk a line in the freezing cold for people we didn’t know for a cause we knew little about other than the call went out and people needed our support.  That’s just the type of guy he was.

Jerry was the president of the staff union for myself and my co-workers at NEARI and was on the committee that interviewed me when I applied for the job I was eventually hired for at NEARI.  I can honestly say he changed my life forever.  I never got a change to say this before he died, but thanks Brother.  In the words of our homeland ……..Tiocfaidh ár lá!

His funeral will be Saturday at 8:00 am from the Frank P. Trainor & Sons Funeral Home, 982 Warwick Avenue, Warwick. Mass of Christian Burial in St. Michael Church 239 Oxford St., Providence at 9 am. Calling Hours Friday 3-8 pm. In lieu of flowers donations in his memory to St. Michael Church or the Dana Farber Cancer Institute P.O. Box 849168 Boston, MA 02284 will be appreciated. Burial with military honors will be in the Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery.

Whatever. Four workers were cut down in the street. You can still see the bullet holes in the gravestones from the high powered guns used against the strikers and each labor day some of us gather to remind the powers that be that we are not all dead and buried. This year Maureen Martin, Secretary-Treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO will deliver the address at the memorial to the martyrs created by the Rhode Island Labor History Society to memorialize what is known as The Battle of the Gravestones.

The monument is located in Moshassuck Cemetery, 978 Lonsdale Avenue in Central Falls.

All are invited to a ceremony honoring the event and those who lost their lives.

You can register for the event on Facebook.

If you like, you can see actual newsreel video of the street battle here.

CIVIL WAR AT SAYLESVILLE

Tonight the Society honors its founder, Professor Scott Molloy.  A hero for our times, no strike or rally is complete without a harangue against the injustices of our modern world and the economic royalists and all of their accumulated power from Brother Molloy.  As the invitation from the society reads:

University of Rhode Island Professor Scott Molloy will be honored by the Rhode Island Labor History Society during its 25th annual awards banquet, Aug. 23.

The event, “A Celebration of Labor Day in Rhode Island,” will be held at the Roger Williams Park Casino in Providence. Festivities begin at 5 p.m. Donation is $25 for individuals or $250 for a table of 10.

Molloy is founder of the Rhode Island Labor History Society and was a bus driver, shop steward and business agent for the Transit Union from 1973 to 1984. He has been a URI professor in its Schmidt Labor Research Center since 1986, and he has been education director for the Rhode Island Irish Famine Memorial since 1996. He is the author of Trolley Wars; Irish Titan, Irish Toilers; and All Aboard.

The West Kingston resident, known for his colorful and fiery lectures at URI and before civic and labor groups around the region, was awarded the URI Foundation Teaching Excellence Award in 1995.

In 2004, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education chose the West Kingston resident as its Rhode Island Professor of the Year.

Presenters at the event will be:

• Cathy O’Reilly Collette, president of the Rhode Island Labor History Society, retired director of the Women’s Rights Department of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Washington, D.C. and former president of the World Women’s Committee of Public Services International, Geneva;

• Tom Cute, bus driver with the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority and vice president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Division 618;

• Donald Deignan, president of the Rhode Island Irish Famine Memorial;

• Eve Stern, associate professor of history at URI, author of Ballots and Bibles; and

• Patrick T. Conley, retired professor of history at Providence College and president of the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.

For further information, call Cathy Collette, 315-0535.

 

“…and agreement is sacred.”

“They bought it.”

Five years ago, CNBC ranked us 48^th in the country.  At the time, our unemployment rate was less than half of what it is today, 5.2% for July of 2007.   In the legislative session that followed, there was a progressive proposal to revamp the tax structure of the state, known as the Economic Growth and Fairness Act of 2008.  I’m not interested in re-arguing those ideas here, what I am interested in is the response to the bill from the corporate class in Rhode Island.  Writing in The Providence Business News, Greater Providence Chamber leaders Laurie White and Ed Cooney specifically referenced the CNBC ranking as a reason to kill the bill.  But more interestingly, they ended their essay with these words:

Protect our jobs. Fight for our ability to compete. Stay the course on tax reform.

I could be snarky and ask “Whose jobs?” but I won’t.  But I will point out the current unemployment rate is 10.9% according to DLT. But it is the “stay the course” line that is intriguing to me for two reasons.

1.  We have stayed the course.  And it hasn’t worked.

If 5 years ago we were ranked near the bottom in the country we are now at the bottom (again, assuming these lists matter, which I am not willing to concede, but for arguments sake….).  In those 5 years, we have seen the Flat Tax option for high income earners made permanent, cuts to the income tax, two rounds of draconian pension reform to public sector workers including teachers and state employees, an erosion of collective bargaining rights in the public sector, cuts to social services in the state budget, aid to cities and towns in the state budget slashed and slashed again, and the escalation of the property tax cap at the local level thanks to the 3050 law of 2006.

In other words, state mandated austerity for the last five years and our  “Business Climate Ranking” declined.  Now, we can believe the corporate class and say “stay the course” or as more recently stated “give the cure more time to work” or we can wake up to the realization that Ferris isn’t sick…he’s skipping school.

2.     When did Tax Reform Start?

When Ferris says “They bought it”  who is “they” in this case?  The legislature? The Press? Both? Maybe…. you can help decide.  See, the theme in the debate over the proposal in the last legislative session to raise income taxes on the wealthy centered in part on giving recently enacted tax cuts a chance to work.  SOME local media outlets (I won’t link to them, you can find them on your own and decide) fell for the argument hook line and sinker that tax reform just started in 2010.  That’s why when Chamber Lobbyist Kelly Sheridan wrote in The Providence Journal “It would extremely unwise to dismantle the 2010 reform before the first returns are evaluated” it was a theme repeated by members of the legislature AND, unfortunately, members of the media.

But wait a minute: Didn’t the Chamber use the exact same argument in 2008 about letting tax reform take affect so that it can be evaluated before it is changed?  Yes, as we see in the 2008 piece in PBN referenced above.  They also did it in 2009, when there was a strong push to repeal or reform the Flat Tax for high income earners. That is where the line “give the cure time to work” comes from. ( Of course in 2009, we were still ranked in 48^th place by CNBC).

Why does it matter?  Because if the Chamber and the powerful corporate special interests are allowed to pull the wool over the media and the politicians eyes every year by saying “hey, we just implemented this last year, let’s give it a shot” most people are good natured enough to say “ well, sure, why not? We’ve got to try SOMETHING.”  Well, we’ve been giving them their shot for the better part of a decade, and if only people would remember that they keep using the same argument that “this time, things will work out” then maybe we won’t fall for the sales job. Again. Maybe?  Hopefully? Hello? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Look, I get it.  Ferris Bueller is an endearing kid.  He’s funny, likeable, smart and in a 1980’s John Hughes movie kind of way showing a safe way to “fight the power.”  But it isn’t real.  And neither is the line of argument put forward by the corporate class in Rhode Island that we need to “stay the course” or “give the cure time to work” on austerity.  Hopefully Rhode Island can turn things around – but we will never do it by continuing to run the same plays and chase ideas that continue to drive out economy deeper into a ditch while enriching those at the top of the economic ladder.  You want a cure that works? We can start by stopping doing the things we know that don’t work.

A rally in support of the North Kingstown custodians has been scheduled for Tuesday, July 10 at 6 p.m. at the North Kingstown School Administration Building, 100 Fairway, Drive North Kingstown. 

When I testified at the State House on the Governor’s proposal I pointed out how school committee attorneys use the current broken system of laws governing everything from contract negotiations to lay-offs to enrich themselves : to the detriment of teachers, students, and citizens.  For example, between August 2008 and early 2011, the firm of Little, Mederios, Kinder, Bulman, & Whitney, PC, was paid $1,363,989.96 for their legal advice to the school committee in East Providence.  This extraordinary amount of money was transferred from the public to private hands  during (some would say caused) the worst labor strife the city has seen in years.

Why is this relevant now? Because it keeps on happening and no one in the main stream media seems to want to dig into the practice of how certain (not all) law firms bilk tax payers at the municipal level.  For example, the same firm listed above was recently hired to represent the School Committee in South Kingston.  According to an information request answered John Ritchotte, Chief Financial Officer of the South Kingstown School Department, since July 10, 2010, LMKBW has been paid $226,364.34 in legal expenses.  The school committee has spent a total of $266,206.27 in legal expenses over that same period.  The main lawyer from the firm assigned to South Kingston is named Sarah Rapport.

What has the town’s $226,364.34 paid to Sarah Rapport and LMKBW bought them?  Chaos.  Early this spring, after the terminations of three teachers, a series of protests erupted at school committee meetings.  Local media like the South County Independent and The Narragansett Times have done a great job covering the discord, but state wide media has ignore the strife.  It doesn’t seem to fit the story arc put forward by RIDE of collaboration and cooperation.

But that’s another story.  Or maybe it’s not.  Maybe that’s the point – maybe the whole point of this is to show that what is really happening at the municipal level and the school committee level has multiple perspectives.  Too often we only get one side of the story shared by the media, especially the dominant media sources in this state.   When you drill down and really start to look at root causes of problems at the local level and say “hey wait a minute…..” and see a high powered Providence law firm travelling from town to town, earing millions of dollars by creating discord and disharmony maybe then the story has to change a little bit.  Maybe the problem isn’t the all-powerful unions.  Maybe the problem isn’t overpaid public sector workers.  Maybe there is a different problem we need to address.