Ken Burns on Telling Stories

Muir and the Hetch Hetchy

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Why has "UNION" become a dirty word?

By Kristopher Hite

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

...and on and on, as most people who attended grade-school anytime in the later half of the twentieth century probably know. This classic ballad of the American landscape was written by good old Woody Guthrie. But there is a song, most people probably do not know, that was written by this same brilliant American - the ballad of the Ludlow Massacre.

On April 20th, 1914 twenty men, women, and children were murdered in Ludlow, Colorado by the Colorado National Guard. The men in these families were part of the mine worker's union that were staging a labor strike. This struggle represents the roots of the American labor movement and unfortunately has been forgotten in recent years.



In his penetrating dissection of the recent financial meltdown and subsequent corporate power-grab Matt Taibbi makes a subtle point regarding unions and their political decline in recent decades. Taibbi describes how Bill Clinton's administration turned their back on unions simply because the Democrats were sick of loosing the fund-raising game during campaigns. Of course there has been a concerted effort by Republicans to undermine the philosophical concept of a union for the better part of the last century, but this relatively recent change in Democratic attitudes towards unions has further eroded any remaining traction unions held in the minds of the electorate.

Cornell University has an entire college dedicated to the study of industrial/labor relations. Much work here focuses on giving workers the tools they need to use leverage when undertaking collective bargaining. The college helps the research process of unions so they might identify weaknesses in corporations and exploit them in order to gain the basic rights they deserve - health care, decent pay, respect.

This is where, I think, there is a fundamental misunderstanding amongst the general public. What is the purpose of a union?

To guarantee basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

This is the reason I am writing about this on Tom Paine's Ghost.

People have been made to believe that unions are filled with fat lazy socialists who don't want to work. This is part of the distorting barrage of information that oozes from broadcast corporations such as the Sinclair Broadcast Group who have their tentacles wrapped around the visual cortices of the American Midwest. Some unions may have behaved improperly and over-stepped their bounds when considering the United Auto Workers Union and others. But this is no reason to disband the concept of unions altogether!

Again. The main purpose of a Union is to guarantee basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

Upon recommendation from a friend that attended the college of Industrial Labor Relations I began reading a book titled Global Unions. This book is the distillation of a conference held in February of 2006 regarding the past current and future role of unions on the international stage. Video of each talk given can be found here.

The main point made here, through historical perspectives and contemporary examples, is that in order for unions to be effective, from now on, they need to operate on the same scale as the multinational corporations they serve to balance.

While we approach the anniversary of the Ludlow massacre I feel obligated to breath onto the embers of understanding unions. It will be interesting to see how ideas about unions evolve in the recently bluing state of Colorado. This state has maintained an anti-union err up until very recent history. Traveling to Pueblo, CO in fall of 2008 I heard many first-hand accounts of scabs blocking the efficacy of a steel-workers strike at the Oregon Steel Mill there in the early 2000s.

On the birthday of Clarence Darrow I feel it appropriate to reignite an understanding and passion for core union precepts; basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

The Darwin/Lincoln Coincidence

Two hundred years ago today the men pictured above simultaneously drew their first breaths. The serendipity of their shared bicentennial is enhanced by the recent ascent of the current U.S. President to his post. Like the uncanny coincidental death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson today's anniversary serves to give thinking minds a pause. A pause to reflect on the balance between CHANCE and WILL. When we think about the birth of Lincoln and Darwin we know this coincidence was purely a product of chance. There was no conscious connection between Lincoln's mother Nancy and Darwin's mother Susannah during the winter of 1809. There was however a strong conscious connection between Adams and Jefferson who had been in regular correspondence as they laid in their deathbeds. Both Adams and Jefferson were ill prior to the day of their mutual death but somehow willed themselves to survive to see the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the great experiment. Similarly Lincoln and Darwin both spent large parts of their lives fighting chance itself. Through the power of intellect they lead and changed the flow of ideas through written and spoken word.

Even more perplexing than a shared birth is the relationship between the social effects originating from this pair. Lincoln's visage stirs up thoughts of equality and emancipation, while Darwin's life's work drives home the fact that all organisms are engaged in a struggle for existence and do not begin life with equal footing. This does indeed include man. So here we see the dichotomy between equality before the law and inequality before nature.

I would like to make it clear that I think it self evident that the preservation of equality before the law is paramount for a sustainable democracy. It would take volumes to address here the complex attitudes of the public towards the idea of social Darwinism but it is easy to summarize an average public opinion regarding one massive case in which an attempt was made to apply social Darwinism to a population by a governing body. That summary is "evil." The specter of EUGENICS and Nazi death camps haunts and pervades the collective memory. The idea that man can judge the worthiness of a human life repulses the senses. But even now the beginnings of a rift in the genetic constitution of humanity is beginning with a whisper in the esoteric and often-times inaccessible language of clinical genetics.

Here I present the most pertinent and contemporary application of the ideas of Lincoln and Darwin. The practice of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis or PGD gives a prospective mother the ability to choose genetic characteristics she wishes to eliminate from here offspring. Simply put, multiple embryos are fertilized, tested, and the one free of the undesirable gene (like breast or colon cancer predisposition) is selected for implantation and a human that has been selected based on genetic constitution is born. This is not something that is 50 or 100 years away it is happening now. Before I lose readers that say "no no no that is horrible. It should be banned" it should be known that this technique is not ubiquitous and is not currently being used for genes like eye color or obesity, but is mostly used for the colo-rectal and breast cancer genes.

If you had a decision to remove something from your life that gave you a 50:50 chance of getting cancer at age 40 would you remove it? Maybe not but it is not unethical to want to do that and parents with children that are a product of PGD should not be condemned for their decision. They are using science to protect their children and that is something all people should have the right to do. The major ethical concern here is access. Right now there is no federal regulation surrounding PGD and as a result insurance companies can deny PGD to parents. If this trend continues there will be a genetic difference between families that have the money to pay for the procedure (>$10,000) and those that do not. A world where a genetic rift mirrors the financial rift in society is not a world where equality reigns. May this day be a day to contemplate and compose legislation guaranteeing the right of all families to protect their children, not just those that can afford the cost.

Subsequently I would like to share some of the highlights from the web regarding both Lincoln and Darwin. Doris Kearns Goodwin articulates the philosophy of life after death through memorable acts and words in the following video. This forms the basis for the title "Tom Paine's Ghost" for I do not believe and en ectoplasmic glowing form of Thomas Paine floating in the aether, but I do believe that his pen keeps his spirit alive past death.



I am currently reading the Origin of Species in honor of the Bicentennial of Darwin's birth and I have to say it takes a while to dig into. The first 40 pages are dedicated to a rather dry topic - pigeons. Specifically the un-natural process of pigeon breeding which is controlled by man. The first breath of literary gravity did not come for me until page 76 when Darwin describes the adaptations of some particular organisms.

"How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being to another being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which dives through the water; in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze; in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the organic world."

One of the most thorough blogs dedicated to discussion of everything Darwin is the Rough Guide to Evolution. This week's highlights include a rap by Baba complete with Richard Dawkins voice over riffs.

Thomas Paine Day 2009 - Celebrating a Revolutionary

Happy Birthday to Thomas Paine: an American Revolutionary and ABOLITIONIST.

In preparing for this day I have been reviewing several pieces written by and about Thomas Paine. Inevitably the Wikipedia article about him comes up as the top hit when submitting his name to the Google gods. Upon reading this entry I felt like I was wandering through a reader's digest version of the biography by Craig Nelson. But one passage about Mr. Paine puzzled me for days and has led me down a rabbit hole of hearsay and speculation. The passage includes the assertion that Thomas Paine's "fervent objections to slavery" led to his exclusion from power during the early years of the Republic. This assertion was made by the historian John Nichols and was questioned in the Wikipedia entry, saying it was "dubious" and needed to be discussed. Have historians tried to suppress the opinions of Thomas Paine regarding slavery? Why is the abolitionist article "African Slavery in America" which was first published in the Pennsylvania Magazine, no longer listed as being penned by Paine when it once was assigned to him? This article was published in the periodical during Paine's tenure there and is of content that echos his opinions expressed elsewhere. Where is the evidence that he did not author this article? These are some of the questions that still loom regarding Paine as an abolitionist. It is perplexing to me that a writer lauded for his clarity could be ambiguous regarding his opinions on an issue as monumental as slavery. The answer came to me as I was reading a collection of his writing last week. In a letter Paine sent to the medical guru among the founding father's (Benjamin Rush) Paine pronounces his opinions on the slave trade. The letter is dated March 16th 1790 and was sent from Paris.

"I wish most anxiously to see my much loved America - it is the country from whence all reformations must originally spring - I despair of seeing an Abolition of the infernal trafic in Negroes - we must push the matter further on your side the water - I wish that a few well instructed Negroes could be sent among their Brethren in Bondage, for until they are able to take their own part nothing will be done..."

Further, Paine authored the preamble to the 1779 Pennsylvania proposal to abolish slavery in that state. Tom Paine died alone and destitute with no money to his name and little respect amongst his contemporaries. He knew that his opinions about universal fairness and opposition to the stranglehold of organized religion over the minds of the masses would not make him popular, but he held his opinions without apologies until his death. Nearly 200 years have since passed, and nine days ago President Barack Obama vindicated this "better angel" of history by quoting Paine's words during his historic inauguration. I can think of no better way to celebrate the lives of those that forged the ideals that enable the "great experiment" that is the United States to continue evolving than by breathing life back into the words of people like Thomas Paine; forgotten by the writers of history but not by the makers of history.

Thomas Paine Quoted in Obama's Inauguration Address

Though not mentioned by name, the hand that penned some of the last words of President Obama's Inaugural speech belonged to Thomas Paine. Taken from his work entitled The American Crisis #1, the following words remind us that even when held at the brink of despair, hope has and will rally these United States to survive and thrive.

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."

Thomas Paine was not mentioned by name perhaps because of the controversial stigma that came to be associated with his character later in life along with the publication of his treatise criticizing all established religions of the world The Age of Reason. This caused his image to reflect poorly in the minds of some of the United States greatest leaders. Teddy Roosevelt once labeled Paine a "dirty little atheist." Though, Paine was in fact a self proclaimed deist believing in one God.

As a president cognizant enough to mention non-believers by name in his inaugural speech begins the immense task of rebuilding a nation torn apart by fear it is my hope that the subtleties of the founder's intellects will be explored and extolled once again.

As for the climax of the inaugural speech; it came for me with the following paragraph.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

This extends a friendly hand to the planet while echoing the wise words of Benjamin Franklin when he said.

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

With the promise of the still waters of peace on the horizon may this be attained swiftly and with minimal human suffering.