I was reading some biographical sketches of Mother Jones last night. I have always been fascinated that a woman at the turn of the 20th Century in her 70s would end up being declared “the Most Dangerous Woman in America.”
Some of the more interesting notes is that she lost her entire family, her husband and four children, to a Yellow Fever epidemic in 1867 when she was just 30. Four years later she had moved to Chicago, and the textile factory where she worked burned to the ground.
One of the reasons such history fascinates me is that in a lot of ways I feel that my life, though not nearly as dramatically, was veered off its predestined course through a serious of accidents. “I’m not even supposed to be here,” a rejoinder from the 1990s cult movie “The Clerks,” often seems an ample reprise for my life.
Folk Singer Utah Phillips remarked that Mother Jones was not an organizer, but rather an agitator, which he said often put her at odds with the organizers of the day.
She was particularly noted for her fiery speeches and fearlessness in facing down lawmen and militias often sent in to quash strikes. Labor rights, it would seem, were acquired often at gunpoint, paid for in blood.
To segue this back to my life, I was headed toward a doctorate degree in political science back in early 2006. I had little interest in local politics and was not expecting this community to end up being my home.
However, my wife, who had attended school here since 1990, had deeper roots and more involvement. She was working and serving the community on the Human Relations Commission one early day in 2006.
I had heard about the incident involving young Halema Buzayan. Actually, when the issue hit I was studying political psychology for a summer at Stanford.
I found the description of the incident appalling, but believed that as Davis was a progressive community, it would soon be resolved, just as issues like hate crimes had been rectified.
It was a complete accident of history that I would learn otherwise. The story, as I have told countless times, is that my wife Cecilia called me from the council to ask me to record the council meeting. She had done this numerous times over the years, and I set the VCR to record, and typically I would not watch.
In fact, I had never watched a city council meeting. For reasons I will never know or understand, for some reason this time, I left the TV on as I worked on the computer next to it.
The meeting I was recording was the discussion on Jim Antonen’s proposal for a police ombudsman, meant to co-opt and short-circuit discussions for a more sweeping civilian oversight committee that the Human Relations Commission was recommending.
What happened next changed my life forever as first Don Saylor and then Ted Puntillo, both members of the Davis City Council at the time, spoke on the issue of police oversight.
Don Saylor spoke first and said, “During the discussions that the council has had, and our investigations, and inquiries into litigation matters, I fail to see any of them that call into question the operations or behaviors of Davis Police Officers. And I’m very confident in the operation of the department as it reviews allegations of behavior of Davis police officers.”
This was surprising to me because I knew enough about the Buzayan incident, and a couple of others that eventually never really came to public light, to become concerned.
It was Ted Puntillo’s comment that floored me, though. He said, “What I want are police officers out there that are using their training and their instincts, I don’t want them thinking about, oh, somebody’s going to be reviewing what I’m doing.”
That was probably the most appalling local statement that I had heard, because it suggested that an elected official did not believe there ought to be any kind of oversight or scrutiny over the actions of public officials, in this case, police.
As much as I had gotten involved to help my wife, as my friends have pointed out, that was not the first time my wife was criticized. The difference in this case was that I realized that the Davis City Council did not reflect my values, and in fact their values violated my sensibilities.
Ted Puntillo’s views seemed more akin to those of George W. Bush circa 2004-06, than something we would see in progressive Davis. To me this was the opposite of democracy, checks and balances, transparency and accountability. It was a Bush-era government mentality, in my view.
It was a few weeks later that the Davis Human Relations Commission presented their report, that they had spent months of volunteer time working on, that Ted Puntillo would declare was not worth the paper it was printed on.
To me, agree or disagree with the report and recommendations, there was a level of respect for a volunteer citizen body that was ignored, a line that was crossed.
As most know, the Vanguard emerged in July of 2006, a little over a month after the City of Davis shut down the Human Relations Commission, following criticism from outgoing Chief of Police Jim Hyde toward the body and its chair.
The Vanguard started as the effort to tell the other side of the story, and has grown from there. It became an observer and critic of the Davis City Council on a variety of policies.
The last few months, however, have taught me an interesting lesson. The biggest problem with the Council Majority, as we termed it, was not just their policies, but their attitude toward governance and citizens of this community.
There was a generalized lack of decency by members of the council. For most of the time of the Vanguard’s existence, there has been a sharp 3-2 split on most issues of import.
Things slowly began to change back in July, as Joe Krovoza and Rochelle Swanson emerged on the council as more centrist and less calculating members. But it was not until Don Saylor left that we saw the most dramatic change on the council.
Suddenly the tension and rifts disappeared, almost overnight. As Joe Krovoza and Rochelle Swanson took Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem respectively, we saw interactions on the council grow more collegial, the disappearance of voting blocs, and a general change in the approach of council to community issues.
In a lot of ways, the appointment of Dan Wolk, ironically enough, serves as not just the continuation of that progressiveness, but the embodiment of it.
It is not that I have always agreed with the council these days. It is that when I do not agree with the council, I feel like dissenting views are nevertheless weighed, ideas are exchanged, there is a mutual respect for the process, and most of all I suspect we will not have another exchange such as the ones we saw back in 2006.
Some will point out that on the major issues of the day, we do not know where this council will come down.
The issue of the budget and pensions has replaced that of police operations, in the years since Landy Black brought a new level of professionalism to the Davis Police Department, replacing the in-your-face style of his predecessor Jim Hyde.
Over the course of the last decade, compensation, retirement health care and pensions have soared. And the most powerful public employees union, the firefighters, had seemingly bought and paid for most of the council in the last decade. With the exception of Lamar Heystek in 2006 and Sue Greenwald in 2008, the firefighter-backed candidates won every time.
One thing is clear. Watching the last council go through labor negotiations, we knew the outcome. When Bob Aaronson tried to present his report on the firefighters and the Grand Jury, it was hidden from the public. There was a real sense that the previous council had been bought and paid for by public employees, and therefore the outcome was predetermined not to rock their sensibilities.
Now, the refusal of both Joe Krovoza and Rochelle Swanson to accept money from the firefighters changed the playing field, particularly after Don Saylor left. The appointment of Dan Wolk to the council means there is only one councilmember left whose last election was backed by the firefighters.
On a policy level the council has changed, but more dramatic, I think, is that no longer should our sensibilities be challenged and troubled by the actions of those in power.
We have a council now, by and large, composed of people who are of decency and integrity.
Where we disagree, we shall disagree. But no more shall we worry about who is pulling the strings and no more shall we have to question their basic decency and integrity.
For that, we have achieved a long awaited victory. But of course, democracy is not one for sitting back on one’s laurels, and the price of liberty is indeed eternal vigilance.
As Mother Jones might say, “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
dmg: “But it was not until Don Saylor left that we saw the most dramatic change on the council.”
Interestingly, Saylor caused discord immediately on his first day at his job on the County Bd of Supervisors. He unwisely decided to go on the attack and criticize Supervisor Provenza for “grilling” members of the public. Provenza had merely asked several very polite and appropriate questions of a member of a public organization who was well versed in public speech and the issues at hand. Saylor’s improper pretentions were quickly deflated by Chair Matt Rexroad and Supervisor Provenza himself. Clearly Saylor was out of his element. One can chalk it up to inexperience, but my guess is Saylor is not going to fit in very well with the Bd of Supervisors unless he changes his adversarial tactics.
dmg: “The issue of the budget and pensions has replaced that of police operations, in the years since Landy Black brought a new level of professionalism to the Davis Police Department, replacing the in-your-face style of his predecessor Jim Hyde.”
It has also been pretty clear based on news reports coming from where Hyde is working now juxtaposed against the professionalism shown by Police Chief Landy Black that Hyde was THE PROBLEM in the City of Davis for law enforcement here, much as Saylor has been one of the major problems on the City Council. (It should be remembered that Saylor could not have done what he did w/o the complicity of some of his fellow City Council members – the Gang of Three as it were.)
dmg: “But of course, democracy is not one for sitting back on one’s laurels, and the price of liberty is indeed eternal vigilance.”
This City Council can be just as influenced by various forces/hidden agendas as the previous City Council, if the public does not continue to voice concerns. The upcoming Cannery project is a case in point. Just bc a City Council is more collegial and not purchased by moneyed interests, does not mean they will necessarily make good decisions. The public must stay engaged, and speak up. The difference is now the votes will not be preordained despite what citizens say/do…
[i]I was reading some biographical sketches of Mother Jones last night. I have always been fascinated that a woman at the turn of the 20th Century in her 70s would end up being declared “the Most Dangerous Woman in America.”[/i]
It is worth pointing out that Mother Jones’s labor union, the Wobblies, were Marxists. Not surprisingly, the primary leader of the Wobblies, Bill Haywood, was pro-Stalin. He eventually moved to Russia to live under the kind of totalitarian system Mother Jones believed in.
If you find Marxism a contradiction to living in a free society, as I think most people do, then you should find the Mother Jones ideology obnoxious at best and dangerous if implemented. Here is what the Wobblies declared as the goal of their organization: [quote]It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.[/quote]
Jones was an unabashed socialist, as were many of the early labor leaders in this country and in fact most of the world. One of the reasons that socialism failed to take hold in this country and indeed Marx’ prediction failed was the ability of capitalism to incorporate aspects of socialism into a market oriented system, which enabled the workers who in Jones’ day lived a subsistence lifestyle to achieve middle class status in later years. Writing off Jones’ importance because you disagree with her ideology, would be akin to dismissing Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson because they were unabashed racists.
Her historical context was the worst depression in the United States up to that date, with massive unemployment, business failures, wealth disparities, unregulated businesses, monopolies, and no social safety net. Fortunately, the progressive era ensued.
[i]”Jones was an unabashed socialist …”[/i]
Which made her a rotten human being who did not value liberty.
[i]”… as were many of the early labor leaders in this country and in fact most of the world.”[/i]
See above.
[i]”One of the reasons that socialism failed to take hold in this country and indeed Marx’ prediction failed was the ability of capitalism to incorporate aspects of socialism into a market oriented system …”[/i]
Marx was wrong in every prediction he ever made. You don’t need to find reasons for his mistakes. He was a poor historian, a worse economist, and a failure as a futurist.
[i]”… which enabled the workers who in Jones’ day lived a subsistence lifestyle …”[/i]
The reason most industrial production workers at the turn of the 20th Century lived a subsistence lifestyle was mostly due to their low productivity. They were unskilled laborers. Their interests were also harmed by an over-supply of unskilled labor, as the teeming masses of uneducated immigrants poured into the United States.
That said, the median standard of living in the United States in 1900 was far higher than it was in 1800. That was due to the rise in the productivity of labor brought about by the industrial revolution.
[i]”… to achieve middle class status in later years.”[/i]
People achieved “middle class status” by being more productive. Some did this by way of education. Most others by improved skills on the job, made possible by better technology.
[i]”Writing off Jones’ importance because you disagree with her ideology, would be akin to dismissing Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson because they were unabashed racists.”[/i]
First, if you think Teddy Roosevelt was an unabashed racist, you are a fool and an ignoramous. Teddy Roosevelt was the least racist president the United States had from the founding of our country up to his time.
Second, who said I “wrote off her importance.” Hell, Hitler was important. So was Mother Jones’s good friend Uncle Joe Stalin. I don’t discount her importance. I write off that she stood for anything good. to my mind, she was a very bad person whose ideology was counter to living in a free and democratic society. Were it up to the marxists, we would have had a monopolistic economy with marxist technocrats making production decisions regardless of price signals. The vast majority of our country in her day (employing more than 90% of adult males) was in the agriculture sector. Under a marxist scheme favored by Stalin and Jones, farming would have been collectivized and the system of free labor and private property would have been destroyed in the name of a radical, anti-American ideology.
[i]”Her historical context was the worst depression in the United States up to that date.”[/i]
That’s no excuse. She was a marxist ideologue long before, during and after the recession of 1896. (It’s also very hard to know if recessions earlier in the 19th Century were not worse, because we don’t have any good measurements of them. One thing is clear about that panic: it was made worse by a liquidity crunch, just as the nut William Jennings Bryan argued. However, Bryan offered no viable solution. Silver was just as problematic as gold.)
you are a fool and an ignoramous
Rich, stop calling people names, please.
“Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson…were unabashed racists.”
David, stop calling people names, please.
“Pray for the dead….”
Actually, I enjoyed your musings about what set you off here in Davis. Without getting into the merits of Mother Jones’ activities, this write-up provides interesting insight about how your [u]Vanguard[/u] motivations have developed since 2006.
Those who think you take on important causes that others avoid will be pleased. Those who think you tend to react too early and too strongly will better understand your intensity.
The reason most industrial production workers at the turn of the 20th Century lived a subsistence lifestyle was mostly due to their low productivity. They were unskilled laborers. Their interests were also harmed by an over-supply of unskilled labor, as the teeming masses of uneducated immigrants poured into the United States.
And child labor laws were not universally enacted, nor was compulsory grade school (K-12) education.
“By 1890, 19% of U.S. children between 10 and 15 years of age were employed.”
[url]http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6967/[/url]
It’s true. Those ten-year-olds have very low productivity.
Rifkin: “Not surprisingly, the primary leader of the Wobblies, Bill Haywood, was pro-Stalin. He eventually moved to Russia to live under the kind of totalitarian system Mother Jones believed in.”
Eventually moved? Haywood fled to Russia after being convicted during what is known as the First Red Scare.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/First_Red_Scare
civil, Haywood could have gone anywhere in the world. He chose the most brutal, oppressive dictatorship possible. He did so because he was being funded by Joe Stalin.
[i]It’s true. Those ten-year-olds have very low productivity.[/i]
If you would have surveyed the quality of life of 10 year olds (or people of any age at that time), you would have found that American 10 year olds on average lived far better than others that age anywhere else in the world.
Most of those who had families and who were forced to labor–most working kids in cities in those days did piece work to help their mothers–were from immigrant families which came from places where the working conditions were far worse. Life was far worse for the large percentage of boys in cities which had no families. We used to have tens of thousands of homeless boys roaming all of our big cities.
Outside of our cities in those days, most children lived on farms, where they too were put to work. The same was true in farms all over the world, but life was even worse in most other places.
It was only the great rise in the standard of living brought about by mechanization and the resultant increase in worker productivity which permitted families to earn enough money so their kids did not have to work at a young age. The child labor laws had very little impact in stopping children from working compared with the rise in productivity of workers borught on by capitalist enterprise.
This change in child labor was especially marked on the farms, when tractors replaced laborers in many crops after World War 1 (long after the laws changed).
It was (not by chance) the case in the United States that the mechanization of farms, which displaced millions of laborers, most notably blacks in the South, coincided with the tremendous increase in worker productivity in U.S. factories (brought on by new industrial technologies).
From roughly 1915-1930 we had a mass domestic migration off of the farms and into the major cities. This process continued up to and after WW2, but the industrial jobs naturally were much harder to come by from 1930-1940 due to the depression.
[i]Rich, stop calling people names, please.[/i]
Look, Don, David called Teddy Roosevelt an “unabashed racist.” It’s an ignorant and false charge. As such, anyone who would say that deserves to be called an ignoramous. There is just no softer word to describe such a foolish claim.
Let me quote TR in his time in the White House, where he responded to charges in the South that he was too progressive when it came to his treatment of and attitude toward blacks: [quote]”I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but [b]I cannot consent to take the position that the doorway of hope – the door of opportunity – is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color.[/b] Such an attitude would, according to my contentions, be fundamentally wrong.” [/quote] TR’s record with regard to blacks was not perfect. But compared with all presidents who came before him, Roosevelt was a huge step forward. He was also the least anti-Semitic president compared with all of his predecessors. (US Grant, by the way, is often tarred with being an anti-Semite. While his record was not perfect from the standards of our times, that charge against Grant is mostly bogus, too.)
Note to participants: please do not call blog participants names. Please don’t attack individuals with personal characterizations. Discuss the issues. I will edit out personal attacks. If you have questions or concerns about moderation of the blog, contact me at donshor@gmail.com
you should find the Mother Jones ideology obnoxious at best and dangerous if implemented.
I think you could say the same about other notable individuals such as Henry Ford and Richard Wagner. They were dispicable individuals for certain ideas they held, but admirable and influential for other ideas.
If we’re talking about advocating for safe and ethical working conditions, then I find it hard to condemn Mother Jones for that.
[i]”I think you could say the same about other notable individuals such as Henry Ford and Richard Wagner. They were dispicable individuals for certain ideas they held, but admirable and influential for other ideas.”[/i]
Ford and Wagner were scumbags as human beings. However, it is ridiculous not to give merit to their great contributions to society through their work.
[i]”If we’re talking about advocating for safe and ethical working conditions, then I find it hard to condemn Mother Jones for that.”[/i]
Mother Jones was not “about advocating for safe and ethical working conditions.” She was about imposing a totalitarian marxist dictactorship of the proletariat on the United States. She was about destroying civil liberty. She was about elimination private property and forcing farmers onto collectives. That is a dangerous and in my mind evil set of political values.
As rotten a person as Ford was, he never advocated Naziism in the United States. He tried very hard to spread the evils of anti-Semitism. But as far as I know he never advocated confiscating the property of Jews or prohibiting Jews from entering any professions.
Rifkin: Mother Jones was not “about advocating for safe and ethical working conditions.”
This excerpt below is an example of a fairly standard narrative about Mother Jones, with supporting references. In my mind, it is unethical for children to be working like this. To disprove my assertion, I suppose you will have to say that it is indeed ethical, or that the supporting sources are lying. I am not one to think people are 100% good or bad, and would concede that you could find some unpleasant views of Mother Jones. But in my book, this was a positive thing:
[quote]
Although she agreed upon a settlement which sent the young girls back to the mills, she continued to fight child labor for the remainder of her life.[11]
In 1903 Jones organized children, who were working in mills and mines at the time, to participate in the “Children’s Crusade”, a march from Kensington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, New York, the home of President Theodore Roosevelt, with banners demanding “We want to go to School and not the mines!” As Mother Jones noted that many of the children at union headquarters had missing fingers and other disabilities, she attempted to get newspaper publicity about the conditions in Pennsylvania regarding child labor. However, the mill owners held stock in essentially all of the newspapers. When the newspaper men informed her that they could not advertise the facts about child labor because of this, she remarked “Well, I’ve got stock in these little children and I’ll arrange a little publicity.”[12] Permission to see President Roosevelt was denied by his secretary and it was suggested that Jones address a letter to the president requesting a visit with him. Even though Mother Jones wrote a letter for such permission, she never received an answer.[13] Though the President refused to meet with the marchers, the incident brought the issue of child labor to the forefront of the public agenda. Mother Jones’s Children’s Crusade was described in detail in the 2003 non-fiction book, Kids on Strike!.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Harris_Jones#Children.27s_Crusade[/url]
[/quote]
As rotten a person as Ford was, he never advocated Naziism in the United States. He tried very hard to spread the evils of anti-Semitism. But as far as I know he never advocated confiscating the property of Jews or prohibiting Jews from entering any professions.
And financed the printing of 500,000 copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the U.S., probably the most anti-semitic book written in the past 500 years.
[urlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion#United_States[/url]