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What Was Teamsters’ Leadership Thinking?
Being Trump’s buddy is not going to save you from the end of the NLRB and a return to pre-New Deal hostility to all forms of union power.
Sep 22, 2024
Why should anyone give a damn about a labor union’s presidential endorsement? A few reasons. Philosophically, since a good union is a democratic organization, an endorsement allows a politician to claim the legitimate support of a large group of hardworking Americans, that most treasured of groups. Politically, a good union’s endorsement also comes with money for the candidate and a team of union members to make calls and knock on doors, a valuable asset for any campaign. And practically, an endorsement allows a union to shore up support for its own priorities by cozying up to a future elected leader. A union backs a politician, the politician fights for the union’s needs, and the mutually beneficial cycle carries on.
The Teamsters’ non-endorsement of any candidate for U.S. president this week is notable in that it fails on every last one of those metrics.
In fairness, it’s not like every big union in America is some paragon of political virtue. Many or most big unions have a distinctly undemocratic endorsement process, dictated by a small group of leaders in a room rather than by an honest vote of the membership. (This can cause internal uproars, as we saw in 2020 when a number of union locals that supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) railed publicly against their parent unions’ endorsements of U.S. President Joe Biden.) Credit the Teamsters for, at least, releasing some “member polling” data showing that Biden was the candidate supported by most Teamsters this summer, but that Trump had taken a lead after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race. This fig leaf of democratic legitimacy is undermined by the fact that there was no methodology released—one number came from “Town Hall Straw Polls,” and another from an “Electronic Member Poll” that some members griped they hadn’t heard about. The American Prospectreported that the eight rank-and-file Teamster members who attended Kamala Harris’ sit down meeting with the union subsequently said they supported her—though the General Board proceeded to vote 14-3 for no endorsement.
A true union leader, who understands the stakes of this election, must stand up and tell his members: “Hey, if Trump is elected, unions, the working class, women, and your immigrant brothers and sisters are going to be fucked in the following ways.”
In reality, there is every indication that Teamsters president Sean O’Brien just… kinda likes former President Donald Trump. He posed for pictures with Trump in the lobby of Teamsters headquarters, unnecessarily. He had a private meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He had the union donate $45,000 to the Republican National Committee, alongside a donation to the Democrats. And, to cap it off, he gave a prime time speech at the Republican National Convention, mixing pro-worker slogans with ingratiating compliments to a smiling Trump. In doing so, O’Brien made himself into a useful patsy for the false and dangerous attempt by the Republicans to brand themselves as some kind of “working class” party.
O’Brien’s long flirtation with Trump has been marked by notable levels of insincerity. The Teamsters leader will say: I’m open to both sides! We’re having a fair and transparent process! This seems believable, as long as you are a child who has never encountered the American political system in action before. Want to have all candidates come to your union’s HQ to take questions? Great! You do not need to also pose for a publicity photo that they can use in their specious fascist propaganda. Want to maintain open lines of communication with both parties? Sure. That is vastly different from giving a prime time speech at a party’s convention, which is a television event that expressly exists to help get one candidate elected. Acting as if it is possible to speak at the RNC while maintaining independence is a bit like sitting in a car with the windows rolled up as your friends smoke a pound of weed, and claiming that you yourself are drug free. Have you noticed where you are, man?
Want to work with both sides of the aisle on your union’s political priorities? That’s fine. That’s great. Judge politicians not on their party label, but on what they actually do for workers. So here is a summary of the two sides in the upcoming election: One side gave you $36 billion to save your pensions. The other side was against that. One side put the most pro-union general counsel ever at the head of the NLRB. The other side will fire her, and then appoint a bunch of right-wing judges who will rule the NLRB unconstitutional. One side will try to pass the PRO Act to improve America’s labor laws. The other side will oppose the PRO Act and support every last legal and regulatory measure to drain your union of its power and make it harder to organize new workers.
Hmm. Hmm. Choices, choices.
The most plausible theory of the Teamsters’ weird endorsement fiasco is this: The union’s membership has a lot of Trump supporters, plus O’Brien himself is a bit of the macho-esque type of guy who might think Trump is sort of cool, plus—before Biden dropped out of the race—it looked like Trump was going to win. This combination of factors may have been enticing enough to convince O’Brien that he could pave the way for a plausible case to endorse Trump, which would then allow him to accrue power as the lone major union leader that Trump liked when he went back to the White House. O’Brien could then use his uniquely positive relationship with Trump to shield the Teamsters from the bad things the Republicans would do, and make himself labor’s biggest political player at the same time.
Let us count the flaws in this plan. First, Biden dropping out has reset the entire race, making the Democrats the betting favorite once again. But by the time that happened, O’Brien had already pissed off the Democrats so much with his RNC speech and general refusal to endorse that they froze him out of the DNC, instead putting a group of Teamsters members on stage to drive home the point that the Democrats saved their pensions. As soon as the Teamsters International announced they would not endorse anyone this week, Teamsters locals, councils, and caucuses across the nation began quickly announcing their own endorsements of the Harris-Walz ticket. Those endorsements piled up so fast that the Harris campaign was able to blast out their own press release saying that they add up to a total of 1 million Teamsters—the vast majority of the union’s total membership. (The Trump campaign issued its own press release bragging about the non-endorsement, thereby completing the full spectrum of political uselessness.)
Now, Sean O’Brien has pissed off the Democratic Party. He has pissed off the Harris campaign. He has pissed off the rest of the labor movement, and his union allies. He has pissed off the most politically astute segment of his own membership. He looks weak, since his own locals staged a backlash against him. O’Brien’s actions have led to an internal opposition campaign to his reelection. If the Democrats win, he will have to try to rebuild all of these bridges that have been burned. And—the cherry on top—if the Republicans win, organized labor will be fucked anyhow! Being Trump’s buddy is not going to save you from the end of the NLRB and a return to pre-New Deal hostility to all forms of union power.
Smoothly done, sir. Canny maneuvering.
I do not want to end on such a snide note. Let’s imagine that O’Brien did this all in good faith—that he truly felt that his members did not support one side or the other. It would be a positive step for union democracy if every major union had a set internal processes to solicit all members to vote on presidential endorsements every four years, and followed their will. But such a democratic process does not erase the need for leadership. A true union leader, who understands the stakes of this election, must stand up and tell his members: “Hey, if Trump is elected, unions, the working class, women, and your immigrant brothers and sisters are going to be fucked in the following ways.” The Teamsters’ process obviously did not play out like that. Perhaps we can all do better four years from now. Assuming the whole democracy thing still exists.
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Mass Deportations Would Harm Immigrants and the Country
The mass deportations promised by Project 2025 would sweep away the dreams of DACA recipients like me and cause a logistical disaster, taking decades and costing billions.
Aug 12, 2024
There’s an image that’s stayed with me for weeks: A sea of people holding up “Mass Deportation Now” signs at the Republican National Convention.
Since then, I’ve been plagued with nightmares of mass raids by the military and police across the country. I see millions of families being torn apart, including families with citizen children. And I see DACA recipients—like me—carried away from the only life we’ve ever known.
Mass deportation wasn’t just a rallying cry at the GOP convention. It’s a key plank of Project 2025, a radical document written by white nationalists listing conservative policy priorities for the next administration.
Imagine your friends, neighbors, colleagues, peers, and caretakers being dragged away from their homes.
And it would be a disaster—not just for immigrants, but for our whole country.
I moved to the United States when I was six. Until my teenage years, I didn’t know I was undocumented—I only knew I was from the Philippines. I grew up in Chicago with my twin brother. Our parents worked hard, volunteered at my elementary school, and ensured we always had food on the table. They raised us to do well and be good people.
But when my twin and I learned that we were undocumented, we realized that living our dreams was going to be complicated—on top of the lasting fear of being deported.
Everything changed right before I entered high school in 2012: The Obama administration announced the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA. The program was designed to protect young people like my twin and me who arrived in the U.S. at a young age with limited or no knowledge of our life before. We’re two of the 600,000 DACA recipients today.
DACA opened many doors for us. It’s allowed to drive, attend college, and have jobs. And we’re temporarily exempt from deportation, a status we have to renew every two years.
DACA helped me set my sights high on my studies and career. Although I couldn’t apply for federal aid, with DACA I became eligible for a program called QuestBridge that granted me a full-ride scholarship to college. Today I work in public policy in the nation’s capital, with dreams of furthering my career through graduate school.
But if hardliners eliminate DACA and carry out their mass deportations, those dreams could be swept away. And it would be ugly—mass deportation would be a logistical disaster, taking decades and costing billions.
Imagine your friends, neighbors, colleagues, peers, and caretakers being dragged away from their homes. For me, it would mean being forced back to the Philippines, a place I haven’t seen in two decades. My partner, my friends, my work—all I’ve ever known is here, in the country I call home.
This country would suffer, too.
An estimated 11 million undocumented people live here. We’re doctors, chefs, librarians, construction workers, lawyers, drivers, scientists, and business owners. We fill labor shortages and help keep inflation down. We contribute nearly $100 billion each year to federal, state, and local taxes.
Fear-mongering politicians want you to believe we’re criminals, or that we’re voting illegally. But again and again, studies find that immigrants commit many fewer crimes than U.S.-born Americans. And though some of us have been long-time residents of this country, we cannot vote in state or federal elections.
Despite all the divisive rhetoric, the American people agree with immigration advocates: Our country needs to offer immigrants a path to legalization and citizenship. According to a Gallup poll last year, 68% of Americans support this.
My dark dreams of mass deportations are, thankfully, just nightmares for now. And my dreams of a secure future for my family and all people in this country outweigh my fears. We must do everything possible to keep all families together.
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Be Prepared to Fight Trump's Mass Deportations
Are we poised to witness the greatest domestic act of genocide since the expulsion of Indigenous people?
Jul 27, 2024
I visited Annunciation House in November of 2019. This is a Catholic-run haven for homeless migrants, a drop of water to combat a limitless thirst. Most people, fleeing climate catastrophe and the political violence orchestrated by decades of U.S. efforts to destroy progressive regimes in Latin America, find no such respite. Nonetheless, people flee starvation, political instability, and death squads, even if the trek across the searing desert kills a great many of them. Families, children, pregnant women, the elderly—people with absolutely nothing—have been trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place. During my 2019 visit to El Paso, Annunciation House was nearly empty due to then-U.S. President Donald Trump's "remain in Mexico" policy.
Refugees flee from deadly conditions no matter how slight their chances for asylum. These migrants are chess pieces for U.S. politicians. North of the Rio Grande, refugees seeking asylum encounter the myths and biases of political theater. Immigrants—suffering, dreaming, striving, and dying—have only symbolic worth to politicians. They are the commodities that can be driven with the sledge hammer of propaganda, deep into our reptilian brains.
Many Americans have always hated immigrants, and U.S. leaders have used that hatred to pump up frothing voters. We have drawn a peculiar line of delineation between those whose ancestors arrived long ago, and those who belatedly attempt to make the same transition. The collective sport of reviling the foreign born has grown in direct proportion to the ruin of forests and fields. As the climate slashes bloody fissures in the agricultural systems of the Global South, politicians in wealthy countries gather the spoils and trade cruelty for votes.
Do Trump's reprehensible promises inevitably become policy? Likely, yes. Trump has staked his legacy to his vow to punish undocumented residents mercilessly.
On the walls of Annunciation House residents display their works of art—a random jumble of shoes lie haphazardly within a glass display case. These shoes represent those who died in the desert. Thousands of people succumb to heat stroke, hypothermia, falls in rough terrain, and dehydration. Border patrol agents have famously spilled water from containers left by good Samaritans. The Chihuahuan Desert heat acts in tandem with the merciless border agents. One staff person at Annunciation House told me about a man and a small child on their knees in prayer. They gave thanks for having survived a 10 day ordeal in the desert, she told me.
One recalls that a much larger pile of shoes represent the gassed victims of Auschwitz. We associate shoes with mobility, opportunity, life—"pull yourself up by your bootstraps." When an assassin's bullet flicked off a piece of Trump's ear, he dropped and his shoes fell off to be photographed on the stage. Even the near death of a tyrant can be reduced to shoes.
Our media pundits seldom focus on refugees with discipline and depth. We rarely reflect on why people come to seek asylum—it is our government that has assisted in the installation of right-wing military juntas, and thus intervened in the political systems of Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The U.S. has instituted embargos upon Cuba and Venezuela in the effort to inflict suffering on citizens of these countries and spread instability. Our relentless burning of fossil fuels and our corporate plunder of Amazonian rain forest have caused climate collapse in the Global South.
We don't usually have an election that has been as perfectly choreographed as this one in 2024. Every brick, every bolt, wire, and ornament has been lovingly placed by predetermined forces. President Joe Biden's descent into slobbering senility, a bullet that precisely pinpricked Trump's ear (drawing just enough blood for dramatic effect and not a drop more), a cascading series of events in Israel and Gaza to frame the Democratic Party's suicidal connection to the genocidal IDF, the rise of the Supreme Court in its newly mutated enormity—everything has been handcrafted to give us fair warning. Every nuance of random chance has fallen exactly in the direction of Republican favor.
It may seem that Biden's withdrawal and the abrupt emergence of Kamala Harris from the crypt of vice-presidential anonymity now changes Republican good fortunes, but it does not. Harris is unlikely to significantly distance herself from the travesty of Gaza, or crawl out from Biden's shadow (though I anxiously hope that she surprises skeptical progressives and becomes an advocate for peace). Democrats continue on the treadmill of hasty choices. So long as the Democrats fail to produce a movement of working class passion in favor of pulling centrists out of the emergency supply closet, the groundswell of fascism will continue. This will not be an election like 2016, where people wake up in shock the next morning.
In 2016 comedian Jim Jefferies quipped that he might vote for Trump to see "just how crazy shit gets." We more or less know now, but not exactly. Trump has no policy, no platform, no values. He is absolutely not Hitler with an orange wig. Hitler was young and riveted upon the fine details of a society driven by the principles of eugenics. Trump is ancient, scattered, barely intelligent, and trivial to the core.
His bigotry is less deeply felt than transactional. Still, like a rat that understands which lever releases a pellet of food, Trump has figured out that cruelty toward immigrants inspires the love of his acolytes. His chaotic, stupid, disorganized blather gains coherence and meaning only by returning again and again to the fantasy that millions of snarling migrants have been marauding throughout the nation, murdering, raping, selling fentanyl, living in luxurious hotels, and sucking the life blood out of the American people.
Are we to watch passively as up to 20 million innocent souls are dragged from their homes to be interned, deported, or butchered? The only line of defense against genocide is the American public.
Without this preposterous, delusional tale, Trump could not get enough votes to become the animal control officer of the town of Bumfuck. Immigration, or rather, the racist fairy tale about dark-skinned, barbarian invaders raping and pillaging at the urging of the Biden administration—which allegedly aspires to bludgeon white political power with an unlimited roster of illegal voters—is pretty much the solitary plank in the MAGA platform.
There are a few so-called cultural issues that add flavor to the MAGA gruel—stuff like eliminating transgender access to bathrooms of choice and tossing books willy-nilly out of schools and public libraries. The Republicans also cling to their free market/neocon policies—welfare for billionaires, charity for fossil fuel megaliths, private prisons, increased funding for military and police—but these are honorable, bipartisan policies near and dear to the heart of America. No one gets excited about erasing Darren Woods' tax bill. The crown jewel, indeed the only jewel, in the MAGA world view is the imminent public display of vicious and violent military force enacted upon unarmed, dark-skinned civilians. Immigration narratives provides cover for an old-fashioned, Tulsa-styled race riot.
That is what energizes voters, and that is why Trump rambles distractedly about windmills and flushed toilets, but always returns to the horror story of a nation being ravaged by criminals and insane asylum escapees from the Global South. The true target of MAGA rage is not even immigrants or illegals, but rather, poor people. This passage from Ken Cuccinelli, writing for the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025—the reimagining of the Department of Homeland Security as The Waffen-SS—displays the MAGA passion for a eugenics informed policy of immigration:
The incoming administration should spearhead an immigration legislative agenda focused on creating a merit-based immigration system that rewards high-skilled aliens instead of the current system that favors extended family-based and luck-of-the-draw immigration. To that end, the diversity visa lottery should be repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family, and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to award visas only to the "best and brightest."
Cuccinelli's vision involves military deployment on the southern border and Coast Guard intervention on the high seas. Cuccinelli's MAGA utopia features internment camps and strong-armed threats of sanctions against countries that balk at receiving the millions and millions of rounded up unfortunates. Police forces across the nation will be preoccupied with this anti-Latino pogram.
How will this be implemented? We all have the German WW II template in our brains—we picture door to door roundups, a bureaucratized system of collaborators and para-military forces, and a parallel deployment of Jewish police. But the U.S. is not WW II Germany or occupied Eastern Europe. Jews were well under 1% of the German population, whereas undocumented people comprise 3% of U.S. residents, and many of these have blood or marriage connections to people with U.S. citizenship. Those with Hispanic heritage comprise nearly a fifth of the U.S. population.
We have been warned well before the fact that the Trump administration, upon its inauguration in January of 2025, will launch a protracted genocidal action upon a large segment of our residents. This policy will be costly—potentially ruinous to our economy with lost labor and tax money in the trillions. But political theater defines life in the U.S. Trump is a mirage. We never quite understand the connection between his lies and his behavior. Do Trump's reprehensible promises inevitably become policy? Likely, yes. Trump has staked his legacy to his vow to punish undocumented residents mercilessly.
Depend on the Democratic Party to do jack shit. The Dems are already neck deep in MAGA immigration mimicry. What about the rest of us? Are we to watch passively as up to 20 million innocent souls are dragged from their homes to be interned, deported, or butchered? The only line of defense against genocide is the American public.
We should not be caught ruminating about our plan of action as the deed unfolds. We have about six months to prepare. And, please, no one should be believed in the future when they claim, "We had no idea."
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