Saturday, May 28, 2022

 SOME OLD MEMORIAL DAY STUFF

 Salamis, Not Bombs

Send a salami to the troops.


Memorial Day:
'Salamis, not bombs'

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 29, 2011

Since I live in North Central Indiana I use every opportunity I can to import bagels from Chicago. In the past I have publicly defined socialism as including “bagels for all” (particularly garlic or onion ones). Also I have written about the political economy of the bagel , arguing on good authority that during periods of intense class struggle workers have used day old bagels as weapons against the ruling class.

On a recent visit to a Chicago area bagel bakery, I came across a big sign in front that puzzled me. The sign said:

Naborhood* Bagel and Delicatessen
Join Naborhood and
the USO Sending
A Salami to the Troops

(*Fictitious name.)

My first reaction was to laugh. This sign sounded pretty funny. But on reflection I began to ask myself what it meant. I began to think of different responses to the question and, after I sent out a picture of the sign, some of my friends offered their views on the subject as well.

One interpretation, the patriotic one, suggests that the delicatessen wishes to mobilize all its customers to support our troops in Afghanistan. From a delicatessen point of view, sending salamis is a way that it could support the troops. Salamis could reflect support for the troops alone or for the troops and the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

Another, perhaps more neutral, interpretation is about selling salamis, using the patriotism in the old neighborhood to make a few extra bucks. Since the salamis they sell are really good, it could entice troops and Afghan peoples to want more salamis. Before you know it, they could be hooked on them. Who knows: bagels could be next. But this view, I think, is unfairly harsh in its evaluation of the motivations of the delicatessen; too economistic.

Finally, it can be argued, and frankly this was my first thought, that the delicatessen saw the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a mistake that had to be ended as soon as possible. The salami, from this perspective, was a metaphor for a “dud,” a smelly, greasy, and heavy food that can lead to ulcers or heartburn. The 10-year war in Afghanistan therefore was a colossal heartburn in the body politic. (One of my friends wrote that Bush and Obama already had sent Afghanistan the salami.)

This intellectual puzzle, I realized, reflects the various ways in which the sign could be interpreted. Perhaps the delicatessen owners wanted to create a mental construct that could be appreciated by every side of the issue.

That is classic American politics. I bet the Democrats and Republicans who are debating resolutions on the war in Afghanistan in Congress right now would love to come up with a metaphor like this. Maybe Congress should pass an appropriations bill, HR 111: The U.S./Afghanistan Military Nourishment and Rehabilitation Act, or the Send Salamis to Afghanistan Act.

This Memorial Day, as we reflect on the pain and suffering that our wars have caused, perhaps we would all agree that sending salamis overseas is preferable to sending drones and bombs.


WORKERS' MEMORIAL DAY, 2014: WHAT WORKERS NEED

Harry Targ, Sunday, April 27, 2014

Progressive America Rising via Diary of a Heartland Radical


The stench is vomit-making as never before. The fat and plucks, the bladders and kidneys and bungs and guts, gone soft and spongy in the heat, perversely resist being trimmed, separated, deslimed; demand closer concentration than ever, more speed. A helpless, hysterical laughter starts up. Indeed, they are in hell; indeed they are the damned. Steamed, boiled, broiled, fried, cooked. Geared, meshed.

In the hog room,108 degrees. Kerchiefs, bound around their foreheads to keep the sweat from running down into eyes and blinding, become saturated; each works in a rain of stinging sweat. Almost the steam from the vats seems cloud-cool, pure, by contrast. Marsalek falls. A heart attack. (Is carried away, docked, charged for the company ambulance.) Other hearts pound near to bursting. Relentless, the conveyor paces on.

Slow it, we got to slow it. (Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio: From the Thirties, 1974)

American workplaces from the dawn of the industrial revolution to the recent past were living hells for workers.

Novelist and essayist Tillie Olsen described working conditions in meat-packing plants in the 1930s. Others have written about auto assembly lines, mines, textile assembly plants, and food-processing plants. Analysts such as Harry Braverman, in Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), pointed out that employers have usually sought to control the minds and motions of workers. Profit-making has been seen as tied to controlling every movement of workers, the speed-up of production, and cutting costs for health and safety. After years of labor mobilization, the Occupational Safety and Health Act passed in 1970 to begin to address the problem of how dangerous it was to go to work each day.

Every April 28, workers across North America assemble to remember those workers who died or were injured on the job. Workers’ Memorial Day, initiated in the United States by the AFL-CIO in April, 1989, celebrates the inauguration of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (1970). Workers’ Memorial Day is about remembrances, reviews of progress toward safety and health, and re-commitment to making the workplace safer.

In April, 2013 the AFL-CIO issued its annual data-based report, “Death on the Job: the Toll of Neglect,” to review the current state of worker health and safety, given the administration of OSHA rules initiated over forty years ago. “Since that time, workplace safety and health conditions have improved. But too many workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death as workplace tragedies continue to remind us.” These tragedies have occurred in mines, oil refineries, fertilizer plants, meat-packing plants, manufacturing facilities, and on construction sites.

The AFL-CIO report indicated that 4,693 workers were killed on the job in 2011 (13 workers per day). Over 3.8 million work-related injuries were reported with unofficial estimates of such injuries doubling or tripling that total. Particular sub-groups, such as Latino workers and those born outside the United States, experienced excessively high injury rates, presumably because of their fears of raising safety concerns within the workplace.

The report indicated that workplace inspections had decreased over the years because of budget constraints limiting the hiring of inspectors. Given the numbers, federal OSHA employees could be expected to investigate a workplace once every 131 years and state OSHA inspections can be expected every 76 years. Penalties for workplace violations also are inadequate to deter violations.

The Report indicated that budget allocations for OSHA must be dramatically increased, more laws must be passed to regulate the complex reality of workplace dangers, and worker rights to protest dangerous conditions at the workplace must be strengthened.

This year, Workers’ Memorial Day events will highlight demands to address contemporary issues of concern such as

-defending the OSHA process from political campaigns to reduce workplace regulations.

-requiring employers to establish work-site safety and health programs with worker participation to address enduring hazards.

-adding safeguards against respiratory diseases from silica, combustible dust, and Black Lung.

-protecting workers who seek to challenge workplace safety hazards, particularly for immigrant workers.

-passing more legislation such as the Protecting America’s Workers Act to expand protection for workers not yet covered by OSHA rules.

-increasing worker voices on the job including creating an environment that would allow workers to freely choose to form unions.

Earl Cox, Community Services Liaison, Northwest Central Labor Council, Indiana AFL-CIO, concluded as he announced the 2014 event that legislators must be made aware of workplace health and safety “…so when a vote comes up to slash funding for OSHA, they vote to protect workers and not corporate interests.” The AFL-CIO believes that “safety laws and regulations don’t kill jobs—but unsafe jobs kill workers.”

(For those living in Tippecanoe County, Indiana Workers’ Memorial Day events will occur April 28, Inside the Depot, Riehle Plaza, Lafayette at 5:15 p.m.)


REMEMBER THOSE WHO PROTESTED WAR ALSO!

Harry Targ, Monday 30, 2011

"In a society where it is normal for human beings to drop bombs on human targets, where it is normal to spend 50 percent of the individual's tax dollar on war, where it is normal...to have twelve times overkill capacity, Norman Morrison was not normal. He said, 'Let it stop.' "(a gravesite speech by John Roemer at the funeral of Norman Morrison quoted in Hendrickson, Paul. The Living and the Dead. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996).

On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison brought his daughter with him to the Pentagon. Outside the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Morrison set himself on fire to protest the escalating war in Vietnam. His daughter, Emily, somehow was passed to others and survived the flames. Morrison, however, died as he had lived, protesting the bombing of villages in South Vietnam, killing innocent men, women, and children.

I was part of an educational tour to Vietnam last March. We were taken to a powerful museum, known as the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. On the second floor an exhibit featured images of international solidarity with the Vietnamese people during the American war. Included there was a framed copy of an American newspaper account of Morrison’s self-immolation. Earlier, in Hue, we had seen an exhibit of the automobile used by a Buddhist Monk, Thích Quảng Đức, who killed himself in protest of the brutality of the Diem regime in South Vietnam. Presumably this act inspired Morrison’s tragic protest.

I had forgotten Morrison’s dramatic act, and the acts of several others who bravely sacrificed their bodies and lives to oppose the murderous war in Vietnam. Today, Memorial Day, 2011 I thought about Morrison, the exhibit at the Vietnamese Museum, and parallel acts of self-sacrifice.

First, on reflection, I am in awe of the courage and self-sacrifice of the acts of these brave and principled people. Yet, I wish they had not made the ultimate sacrifices they did and had put their courage and willingness to sacrifice to the long-term struggles of the peace movement to end war.

However, I believe we must “take back” Memorial Day from those who celebrate war, see sacrifice only from those who kill and die, and ignore the bravery of the men and women everywhere who fight to end war. We mourn those who were sent off to fight in ignoble wars in the name of the United States. Also we must declare Memorial Day as a day to remember all the Norman Morrison’s who have said “no” to war and empire.





The Bookshelf

CHALLENGING LATE CAPITALISM by Harry R. Targ

Read Challenging Late Capitalism by Harry R. Targ.