Letter to the Editor on Early Voting

A LTE I recently submitted to a local paper. I did a similar post here 2 years ago. UPDATE 8/23/24 This was published in the Boulder Weekly on 6/16/22. (UPDATE  1/6/25 The last sentence of the second to last paragraph should read: "And the white ones who get in that situation have less to worry about as far as their white supervisor firing them for coming in a couple hours late than their black and brown co-workers do.")

 

Editor,

It may have been better if I had written this letter about a year ago BEFORE Republicans in many states made large changes to their state’s election system. But I don’t think that those of us who believe in a democratic system are completely defeated and I want to comment on this.

I didn’t read about every change made by these Republicans but I was always relieved when I read that those Democratic state lawmakers standing up to this had succeeded in preserving early voting. I’m not saying the other stuff isn’t important, but I believe that early voting is incredibly important, partly because I don’t think the Republicans have even tried to suggest that it’s easier to commit voting fraud with early voting. I mean as important as voting by mail is, it IS a little more vulnerable to fraud than in-person voting. But not voting early in-person.

I frequently hear reports about long lines at polling places in certain areas. I haven’t seen it myself but I have always voted in Boulder and I’m not surprised that it doesn’t happen in a liberal, middle-class white area. It seems these long lines, which result in some people going home without voting, are in areas with a lot of working-class black and brown people.  I don’t know what happens to cause long lines at such polling places. My theory is that some mid-level employees and maybe some senior employees of county elections departments provide an insufficient number of working computers. However it’s done, it seems like a great solution is LOTS of early voting.

This is a serious problem when people leave the line without voting so that they can go home and sleep so they can get up for work the next morning. And it’s even more classist and racist than I have already suggested. To some extent a lot of voters who are middle-class and in that situation have some flexibility in their job and can make arrangements to skip the next day or part of the next day so they can sleep in a couple hours after staying up late to vote. And the white ones who get in that situation have to worry less about as far as their white supervisor firing them for coming in a couple hours late than their black and brown co-workers do.

I think that some areas need MORE early voting and no areas needs less, and it’s also a good idea to either make election day a holiday or to have elections on Saturdays.

Tom Shelley
Boulder

Comprehensive Post on Unions and Racism in the White Working-Class

At some point in early 2020 I was working on a post about Affirmative Action and although it was partly aimed at the Hard Left (anarchists, Leninists, etc.) I decided to include (towards the end) some thoughts that are more aimed at moderate and liberal Democrats than at progressives. They were about the role of unions in rolling back racism in the white working-class. I did the same sort of thing in a June 2020 post about Black Lives Matter and the Trump administration (that post was aimed at the general population).

In the first month after the George Floyd killing I read many articles about racism on Politico and on the CNN site. Although CNN is pretty corporate, their coverage of BLM stuff in that first month was pretty good and Politico has never seemed centrist to me. But in the articles I was reading about BLM from these sources there was nothing about unions. And when I have read stuff about unions (from progressive or liberal or centrist sources) I don’t think I have ever read anything about rolling back racism among white workers. (UPDATE 8/6/24 Although I DID email a LOT of people about this CNN article last October, I am only now remembering to add it to this post- in that article a CNN reporter talks about pretty much what this post is talking about)

Soon I’ll explain why I believe unions help challenge racist views among white people, but I need to first explain why I believe that most or almost all of the leadership of the American labor movement is anti-racist.

About 27 years ago the late John Sweeney was elected President of the AFL-CIO. He became a member of the Democratic Socialists of America around the same time and DSA is an incredibly anti-racist organization. He was elected on the same slate as Linda Chavez-Thompson who became Executive Vice President and held that position until 2007. He also hired Bill Fletcher Jr. as Assistant to the President. Fletcher Jr. was "national organizer" for the Black Radical Congress and part of the coordinating committee from 1998-2003.  (The BRC was a coalition of Black people and organizations on the broad Left in America).

In a full statement below Fletcher Jr. says that unionization can spread anti-racist education and practices. I imagine that means that leaders at lower and/or higher levels push an anti-racist agenda. Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin wrote a 2008 book about the split in the labor movement that produced Change to Win. I am not incredibly well educated about the labor movement but one of the things  I HAVE read is that book and although it says that there is room for improvement when it comes to racial justice and organized labor, it gave me the impression that most or almost all leaders of organized labor in the last 27 years are anti-racist.

Why do I believe that unions will help roll back racism among the white working-class? I have known for decades that exit polls during American elections indicate that voters from union households are more likely to vote Democratic than other voters are. This is anecdotal, but in 2000, on the discussion list of the Young Democratic Socialists (now YDSA) a member who was organizing workers in Indiana said that his competition (for the hearts and minds of the workers) was the Ku Klux Klan.

Bill Fletcher Jr. sent me the following statement: “unionization has proven, time and again, to be a critical instrument in promoting democracy. Unionized workers tend to vote in a more progressive direction, though not uniformly.  And unions offer a unique opportunity to bring workers together across race, ethnic, religious and gender lines, to seek a common resolution to the challenges of economic injustice.  Through unionization anti-racist education and practices can be introduced to the broader workforce, often leading to the isolation of racists and rightwing populists.”

In a column included in a 1998 collection of his work in previous decades, Northern Ireland journalist Eamonn McCann wrote that the labor movement had the most potential to eradicate religious bigotry in N. Ireland. He wrote: “No other institution brings Catholic and Protestant workers together on a regular basis in pursuit of a common purpose which is antipathetic to sectarianism.” McCann’s columns have been published by an average of 1-2 publications (magazines or newspapers staffed by professionals, including the Irish Times (Ireland’s biggest newspaper)) at any given time in the last 40 years and he has held senior positions in Ireland’s labor movement for 2-4 decades and he was one of the main leaders of the N. Ireland civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In  2016 he was elected to the N. Ireland Assembly and in 2017 he would have been re-elected but they had reduced the number of Assembly members elected from each constituency from 6 to 5 and he was runner-up. He is an expert on fighting sectarianism in N. Ireland and believes that organized labor has a crucial role to play. Mark Langhammer, who was head of the N. Ireland part of the Irish Labour Party for several years around 2010 told me in 2005 that he agrees with McCann’s comment on the subject.



Many people believe that there are great similarities between the conflict in N. Ireland during The Troubles and the conflict over racism in this country. This includes people like Angela Y. Davis and in 1972 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. For more about this, see posts on my blog here and here, And/or read the 1998 Brian Dooley book “Black and Green.”

Although I am not a psychologist or sociologist I believe that both academic fields are relevant to this. On a similar issue (the effect that anti-racist actions by American supporters of Sinn Fein can have on the racial attitudes of many Irish-American supporters of SF) I sought the opinion of a woman with a BA in both psychology and sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Denver and she agreed with me that if SF and it’s anti-racist American supporters would do more anti-racist stuff in America, many racist Irish-American supporters of SF would start questioning racism. I asked another psychologist with some background in sociology the same question and she agreed with me as well. That makes me confident that I am right about this theory I have about unions and racism.

I believe unions in America play a role in combatting racism and that that can be escalated when they return to the level of strength they were at before their decline began decades ago. If racist working-class whites see multi-cultural anti-racist unions negotiating collective bargaining agreements that they benefit from, many of them will start to question racism.

I think that if organized labor and it’s supporters talked about this that would help win over fiscally moderate and conservative Democrats. 

Unfortunately many such Democrats have declined to vote in favor of strengthening labor unions. I’m sure these same Democrats are alarmed at the rise of Donald Trump and at the existence of the Proud Boys. What’s more important to them- protecting capitalism, or fighting racism?

(Another version of this was published in the Boulder Weekly, a widely read alternative paper for all of Boulder County, here) (it was also published a second time here).

(I am much more of a Sinn Fein supporter than a supporter of Eamonn McCann, but McCann wrote that quote about trade-unions in N. Ireland)

Some Thoughts About the Republican Party, COVID-19 and Democracy

When it comes to a few voting reforms like vote-by-mail, they claim there is potential for the almost non-existent problem of voting fraud (that they believe is common) to get worse. Apparently there is a little more than almost zero potential for fraud with voting-by-mail, but in at least in some states it is so tiny. There is also a history of mail-in ballots being challenged more often than regular ballots.

READ THIS AS FAR AS WHY VOTE-BY-MAIL MIGHT BE A BAD IDEA.

But there is apparently even less possibility of fraud or challenges with early voting (perhaps no more than voting in person on election day) and the GOP hates that as well.

The thing that vote by mail and early voting do is reduce lines on election day outside polling places in precincts that don’t have enough stations (I just looked it up to be sure and a station is sometimes defined as "A place where one performs a task" and I wasn't sure if "machine" is the right word because I think that sometimes there is no machine involved). So many people in such precincts end up leaving the line because, (and this is more common with working-class people), they have to go to sleep so they can get up and go to work. And if they’re people of color they’re more likely to have a boss who will penalize them for being late for work than if they’re white. (UPDATE 11/5/20 There's also a class dimension as self-employed and professional people often have more control over their schedule than everyone else does and can make arrangements to sleep late the day after the election in case they're in line to vote late at night)

With COVID-19 early voting is also an important option, and one that can be set up pretty easily, easier than setting up vote-by-mail. If there’s early voting about 8 hours a day (everyday and on work days, 12-8 PM or something like that) for 1-2 months before the election, we’ll have plenty of time to vote, we can do it a small number at a time (depending on how big the room is, so we can be six feet apart). If you go there one day a month before election day and there’s a line stretching around the block because of social-distancing, just come back another day.

(For all I know it *MIGHT* be necessary for a county to have greater security (including cameras?) where the ballots are stored, but that would only be for 1-2 months’ and it wouldn’t be a lot of extra security. I haven’t heard of any problems with the accumulation of ballots due to vote-by-mail and/or early voting, although this would be different and MIGHT require new arrangements like extra security)

It’s not absolutely perfect, I was thinking as I typed the paragraph about security, but I think it might be best, especially with COVID-19, if we have both vote-by-mail as available as possible, and also have extensive early voting. We are rapidly approaching a point where it will be too late for Congress to effectively mandate vote-by-mail for everyone in every state (that has to be mandated soon, so states can have all the materials needed printed, which takes a long time) and last I heard, the GOP is totally against that. There might be a massive number of challenges in the event of universal vote-by-mail, which would seriously delay the results, maybe for months.

Sectraian Murder and Class in N. Ireland

In The Troubles, roughly 1969 until roughly 2005 (when the IRA decommissioned) Loyalist paramilitaries killed almost exactly 696 Catholic civilians, and the security forces killed almost exactly 161 Catholic civilians. A comparable scenario in America would have meant around 67,000 unarmed people of color killed by cops or Nazi skinheads (etc.) in the same time period (based on what I’ll describe below, I would guess that the actual number for that was probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000).

I just sort of confirmed, using the Sutton Database on the CAIN site, what I sort of understood, that if you combine North Belfast and West Belfast and then look at South Belfast (North, South, and West Belfast are all, individually, roughly the same size as far as population goes, and both South and North had a small Protestant majority and West was about 85% Catholic), there were about 4.5 times more loyalist murders of Catholics in the former bloc than in South Belfast (in the former bloc, almost exactly 329, and in South Belfast almost exactly 74). I also looked at figures for the security forces, and the West/North combo had a figure 47 times higher than that of South Belfast (almost exactly 94 for the former bloc (27 in the North and 67 in the West) and almost exactly 2 for South Belfast). I just looked (using the very credible and academic site “Northern Ireland Elections”) at the 80s and 90s Westminster and 1996 Forum and 1998 Assembly elections (and 1-2 sets of local elections results that were grouped together based on Westminster Constituencies), and on average the SDLP did roughly as well as SF in North Belfast. So it's not because North Belfast was a republican stronghold, although obviously West Belfast was, but there were almost twice as many sectarian murders in the North than in the West. And although of course South Belfast was mostly Unionist, so was North Belfast.

So, in this post I'm sort of telling you what some of you already know. But I think it’s safe to say that WORKING-CLASS Catholic civilians were MUCH more likely than middle-class Catholic civilians to be killed by loyalists or the British (for Catholics, South Belfast is pretty much the only solidly middle-class area in Belfast). I think it’s because, as sectarian as the State was, a lawyer and/or professional or business connections and/or media connections and/or political connections to the Alliance (a slightly Unionist, mostly Protestant liberal democratic party, see this and this) help relatives or survivors put pressure on the police and Stormont (either the sectarian devolved government that died in 1972, or the N. Ireland Office of the British government, or the devolved, non-sectarian Assembly that has been there most of the time since 1998) to get who did it? I mean, in all fairness I imagine the SDLP (see this and this) always or almost always did what they could for relatives or survivors, even those who were working-class and/or republican, but, the SDLP was of course possibly MORE Catholic than SF and certainly much more Catholic than the Alliance, and was much more in favor of uniting Ireland than the Alliance and were much more likely to have contacts with republicans. I just confirmed what I knew which is that the Alliance was/is MUCH stronger in South than North or West. The likelihood of a victim's family or a survivor being close to Alliance politicians or leaders or activists was higher in South Belfast.


There is also some relevant stuff here, starting with the paragraph "I go into some detail...." and end with the paragraph "UPDATE 1/31/20...."

*****************

What makes me confident about my statement “probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000”?

1. Between 1996 and 2005 according to the FBI there were 38 racist murders. I have read that the Department of Justice officially estimates that for every hate crime reported to the FBI there might be 20-30 that aren’t reported because not all local law enforcement agencies report such crimes to the FBI. So I came up with 1,140 for those years.
2. I heard (from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest) that in a 12 month period during a 2014 (apparent) surge in police murders of black people including those of Eric Garner in NY, Tamir Rice in OH, and Michael Brown in MO among other highly publicized such cases, that around 200 black people armed or unarmed, had been killed by cops in America. Although I’m very open-minded about accusations that cops plant guns, this country also has a ridiculous number of guns.
3. Bear in mind that decades ago the number of people of color and the number of cops in this country were both smaller or much smaller than they are today.
4. If it’s worth much, about 10 years ago I read a huge amount of what the Southern Poverty Law Center put on their web-site in the previous 10-15 years. I also got an Ethnic Studies degree if that’s worth much.
5. There was little or no talk about “Brown Lives Matter” so I get the impression that very few Latinos/Latinas/Chicanos/Chicanas have been killed by cops in recent years (as far as I know, even Arpaio’s sheriff’s department in AZ didn’t kill a single such person) and that might reflect the situation in earlier decades. I have practically never heard of Asian-Americans being killed by cops. And if Native Americans were being killed at a high rate in the 80s and 90s I would have heard (a massive chunk of my major was Native American Studies).

UPDATE 6/9/21 I just found a Democracy Now! story relevant to this. It's about the last 20 years, but there's a small overlap between that and the period I was looking at Catholics and people of color (1969-2005), and it's possible that what I said about this comparison is off a little. Bear in mind that the figure I refer to in item #2 above came from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest.

Babylon 5 Reviews J

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

Last year I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it goes further than usual. There are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes. I also will probably say nothing about the conflict with the evil race the Shadows- sure, I could say Trump is as evil as they are or compare them to Nazi Germany, but that’s kind of silly (I’m sure there is nothing political about the Shadows, they’re just evil, like the Borg or the Empire). And I might skip most of the stuff about the conflict between B5 and the Earth government- I don’t remember it involving stuff like a strong capitalist agenda or racism or something.


**Season 4, Episode 12 “Conflicts of Interest”** See this for a plot summary.

We learn a little bit more about Mars and it indicates something that I had kind of missed earlier. I still believe that the Earth-Mars conflict (before the Civil War) is comparable to the conflict between London and the original 13 American colonies. I am suddenly unsure if there was bigotry towards the colonists and if I should have known (from an earlier episode) there was hostility towards people born on Mars that might be considered racial. We learn in this episode that judges on Mars are appointed from Earth and are biased against those born on Mars. There was a weaker indication of this kind of stuff earlier, but I decided that it was a mistake by the writers, or that it was POLITICAL (not racial (or "planetary?")) bias and I ignored it.


**Season 4, Episode 13 “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies”** See this for a plot summary.

About 25 episodes earlier, the Minbari government, the Grey Council (GC), was dissolved. Without it, conflicts have arisen between the religious and warrior castes (there is also the workers caste but they weren’t mentioned in this episode). Delenn’s aide says that the GC suppressed the conflicts between the three castes but couldn’t erase them.

Delenn heads for Minbar and meets a leader of the warrior caste. She appeals to him for a solution where neither caste is the victor, believing that if one of them won it would break the delicate balance of Minbari society. But it turns out that the warrior caste isn’t as interested in dialogue and compromise as they pretended to be.


**Season 4, Episode 14 “Moments of Transition”** See this for a plot summary.

This episode is the conclusion of the conflict over power on Minbar. There is one issue that comes up and has little to do with the how the conflict is resolved.

That is the question of when is it acceptable to go to war. Although I am generally against war and assume it is horrible for everyone involved, I believe that sometimes it is justified and/or helpful and/or necessary. The leader of the Warrior Caste (Shakiri) says that wars should only be fought for practical gains, not for religious reasons or other principles.

I am sticking with my earlier impression that the Religious Caste is not as religious or (anywhere near) as right-wing as, for example, the Taliban, so I’m open-minded about what they might call a holy war. I might assume it would be less offensive to me than campaigns in reality that might be called holy wars- in general the Crusades would be examples, and so would Cromwell’s war in Ireland, etc.).

As far as wars for practical gains, I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of such wars would be offensive to me- they would probably be clearly imperialist wars (i.e. Indian Wars here, or the Indonesian occupation of East Timor).

I am open-minded about supporting wars that are for progressive principles. Of course one obstacle is the fact that people who might be called neo-imperialists can and will spin what they’re doing as principled. A recent example of that I believe was the Persian Gulf War (the 1991 conflict). Ones that I would have supported would be WWII (it was far from totally invulnerable to criticism, but I believe it was overall a pretty good cause and 99% of the time the Allies fought honorably), and perhaps the two conflicts the US was involved with in the former Yugoslavia.

Going back to the episode, it turns out that the junior leader of the Warrior Caste who seemed to double-cross Delenn at the end of the last episode actually WAS cooperating with her to some degree. Shortly after that, with Minbari cities being destroyed because of the war, Delenn (who has become possibly THE leader of the Religious Caste) surrenders.

As the Warrior Caste are formalizing the surrender, Delenn says something about how their surrender doesn’t mean they are giving up the right to participate in Minbari politics. Although I like her very next move, I’m not sure what to think about that statement by her. The Religious Caste was in a very weakened position. I don’t know if the anti-fascist side in the Spanish Civil War demanded such a right after they were defeated. And the ANC seemed to RELUCTANTLY agree to a limited and very brief period of sharing power with what I think would be called a post-Apartheid, overwhelmingly white party.

In any case, she basically challenges Shakiri to settle the conflict the way inter-caste conflicts were settled before the Grey Council by standing in some kind of heat beam. The first leader to leave the beam and live loses (this was developed partly because Minbari felt that leaders should risk death in conflict just as much as their soldiers did). Delenn enters the beam but Shakiri is hesitant until a junior leader calls him a hypocrite for refusing to risk his own life. Shakiri enters, then leaves. Delenn is then carried out by the junior leader.

The very best part of this episode is at the end. Traditionally the Grey Council has nine members- three from each of the three castes- worker, religious, and warrior. Forming a new GC Delenn gives two seats to the religious caste and two to the warrior caste, and FIVE to the workers caste. Although I think it’s a little flawed, for the most part her little speech justifying that is worth quoting. She seems to be speaking mostly to the other two castes:

“You had forgotten the Worker caste, hadn’t you? When our two sides fight, they are the ones caught in the middle, forgotten until it is their time to serve, to build and to die. They build the temples we pray in, the ships you fight it. They look to us to guide their hands. But prayers are fleeting and wars forgotten. What is built endures. They do not wish to conquer or convert, only to build the future. And now they will have that chance. The Religious caste and the Warrior caste will advise and counsel. We will serve, as is proper. Religion and war must act in the service of the people- not the other way around.”

My favorite parts are underlined.


**Season 4, Episode 15 “No Surrender, No Retreat”** See this for a plot sumamry.

At the end of the previous episode it was learned that Earth Alliance forces massacred civilian passengers of a space ship, killing thousands. Sheridan decides that enough is enough.

First, though, he needs to secure defensive forces for B5. He talks about the mutual support treaties that members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds have with Earth and says that in exchange for the security Sheridan’s forces have been providing for those worlds, the treaties must be torn up and those planets must each provide one large military vessel for the defense of B5. He also, on a more ethical note, reminds them that the President of Earth is a xenophobe promoting mistrust of aliens.

While trying to get the Narn leader G’Kar to sign a joint statement about both races supporting Sherdian, the Centauri ambassador Mollari describes them both as patriots. Although he played a role in ENDING his race’s near genocidal occupation of Narn worlds, he also played a role in BEGINNING and SUSTAINING it for about a year. G’Kar was a leader, in exile, of the resistance on Narn. They might both be patriots, but there is a huge difference between them when you look just a little deeper.

The vast majority of the episode is about Sheridan going on the offensive in what would probably be seen as an important and medium-sized space battle between Sheridan’s fleet and six Earth Force ships that might be compared to battleships. One enemy ship is destroyed, one leaves the battle rather than fight for a corrupt government, one leaves without plans to take orders from Earth anymore, another stays to defend the planet they were earlier laying siege to, and two fully defect to Sheridan’s command. I find this sort of thing inspiring. Even if we look throughout human history and all over the world, I’m MUCH more an opponent of the military than a fan, but some times they do good, and the idea of senior officers defecting to support the re-instatement of freedom and/or democracy in their nation is great. I am not real familiar with this, but I know that in the mid-1970s elements of the Portuguese military overthrew a fascist dictatorship and, within a small number of years a democracy was created.